from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
In the lobby of the Malaysia Hotel, the Internet is coin-operated, 8 minutes for 10 baht, which is rather exorbitant. These messages, therefore, will not be too lengthy, just three coins long. If anything runs on, or gets too graphic, by all means skip it.
Despite the city's reputation, there are many hotels in Bangkok that are entirely decent and respectable. This is not one of them. The Malaysia Hotel deserves every well-oiled inch of its sleazy reputation. The sofa in front of reception is at all hours draped with hustlers. There is no charge for guests. Even single rooms have two beds because it is assumed you'll need them. The restaurant (poor, but get the Chinese broccoli with preserved pork) is open 24 hours and there are times I am the only person dining not accompanied by a gorgeous transgendered whore.
I do not purchase anyone. I do my push-ups and wait with bearded quivering lip for volunteers. I am 34--lately it seems I am waiting longer. Still, I prefer volunteers. I recognize this may be difficult to believe, considering my location, but, as anyone who knows me will attest, I have a tendency to confess everything, no matter how embarrassing or even shameful. If I start buying muscle boys I'll let you know.
I stay at the Malaysia Hotel because I am, like hornpout, most at home in murky, sleazy, bottom-dweller type environments. The Oriental is simply not my hotel, and neither is the Sofitel. There is no use in pretending I am rainbow trout.
Showing posts with label Three-Coin Prose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Three-Coin Prose. Show all posts
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Visitors to Soi Twilight
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
In Tokyo you can ride the train all day wearing a Santa hat and no one will even smile. The other extreme is Bangkok and what happens if you show up in Patpong wearing a Superman t-shirt.
"Superman!" shout a bevy of girls in white bikinis from the doorway. They catch my arm as I walk past, their shapely strong hands studded with kryptonite nails. I smile apologetically and extricate myself. "Sorry!" I mumble. "I'm gay."
And, in unison, the girls scream, "SUPERMAN IS GAY!"
The boys in Soi Twilight don't take it any more calmly. Hey, Superman! Yoo-hoo, Superman, over here! Rescue me Superman!
One confident lad reckons I belong to him. "Superman?" he asks, then beams, and aims a thumb at himself. "Superboy!"
Ordinarily, of course, I prefer to keep a low profile. I sit at Dick's Cafe and people-watch and keep an eye out just in case, you know, somebody needs to be rescued.
You may or may not consider the activities of Soi Twilight morally reprehensible--a dozen bars with fucking shows and young men with numbers on their underpants--but it has got to be one of the best places to people-watch in the universe.
I notice first the thirty-somethings, out on a lark with a gang of friends, off to see the fucking shows. Few of them are buying boys--or if they are they'll come back later, alone. We are the well-to-do white promiscuous horde. We've done everything else, we might as well do this too. In this group I place myself.
The first time I ever went to Soi Twilight was in the company of an Englishman named William, an admirably funny and compassionate sleazebag. He noted that in Soi Twilight there are those who stroll, laughing, smiling and looking around, and then there are the "businessmen" who walk as quickly as possible, eyes straight ahead, jaw clenched and William mimicked their internal dialogue in a quick peevish whisper: "I'm here on business, yes, very important business." As if the Swiss Embassy was at the other end of the alley and they simply had no choice but to walk down it.
When in fact what's at the end of the alley is a bar where boys swim buck naked in fish tanks.
"Very important business!" hissed William. "Highly confidential international business. I've got very pressing top-secret big business in my pants, in my pants, in my pants!"
Other visitors: there are the standard decent tourists and those who wish to appear as such. They've seen the Grand Palace, the Emerald Buddha, the Amulet Market, and now they must visit the alley of men for sale. Just for, you know, well-roundedness.
Particularly satisfying are the gleeful wives dragging reluctant husbands who have just this moment learned something new about the woman they married, as in: "I just sat through the Ping Pong show, buster, and now you are going to watch Men Get Fucked!"
There are packs of straight men who come to joke and mock and in every group of them there is one man shot through with undisguisable yearning. We'll be seeing him later.
Once I even saw a family, Scandinavian I think, who walked through holding hands with their young son and daughter. I had to get off my bar stool and peer down the street after them.
Now, I'm sure this doesn't happen every time, but this family moved inside a cloud of pacification. As they neared each bar the barkers, boys and doormen stopped shouting and hassling and stood smiling, as amiable and harmless as Disney characters, little white underpants not withstanding.
And now we come down to business. The preceding groups do not contribute much money to the soi. Money comes from men who are—I could say old. Most of them are old. I could say fat. Many of them are fat. Certainly I could say scowling. Their faces are remarkably sour. But this is not enough.
Watching them my mood turns. I am repulsed.
They have shrill voices, poor posture, comb-overs. Skin conditions. It is not enough, clearly, to be only old, or just fat. To only have just an unpleasant personality, or just bad teeth. These men are accidents involving multiple vehicles. These men are paying for sex. Certainly they will not be having it for free.
How effortless it is to condemn them, these nasty old queens, to go on condemning them—as I pray never to pile up enough negatives to be one of them—and meanwhile I condemn them, as I imagine they have been condemned all their lives.
(Because time is less an issue here than is generally supposed. I am confident that many repugnant old men were recently repugnant young men. They simply got tired of waiting and decided to go shopping instead.)
Among all of us who condemn them, I would like to call a meeting. I am calling for a meeting and asking for volunteers. Since buying sex is wrong, I would like to see a show of hands--
Who is willing to love them for free?
Who'll volunteer? To love for free?
Will you?
Hey, Superman, will you?
(March 16, 2008. Bangkok, Thailand)
Packaging
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
The bar Banana, at the top of the street, is Soi Twilight's hassle-free zone. Sitting there, I watch visitors arrive, out on a lark or in a hurry. Others do not enter, but only stand peering down the soi--a net of little blue lights turns to extravagant neon fruit further on--and they are curious or horrified. They've already passed through the city of women. Now here is the alley of boys.
Across from Banana is Hotmail and the grinning bar man whose job it is to pull people in. He was here last year too--something has happened to him. His is not sick, not old or worn. Here's what it is: he has become processed, packaged. He is a product now, his smiles as uniform as citrus in Tokyo. I don't blame him. I hope the boy from a village up North is stowed away, inside, safe.
Last night, as the pretty boys patrolled and the johns mulled their choices for the night, a beggar arrived in Soi Twilight. A skinny young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, each of his limbs twisted thirty degrees in the wrong direction. He hobbled past the the boys with spiked hair and white tank tops, past the bar men in tight black shirts and began to beg from men sitting at the bar.
He turned and I saw, on the back of his left leg, a long red open wound. Surprised, I touched my own leg, my crippled leg in its white plastic case.
I try to remind myself often that, born in another country, I would have been a beggar boy, instead of -- a sturdy scrappy man with big arms and a big chest, carefully packaged in hopes you won't notice the limp.
I should have given to him. I meant to. He didn't get as far as me. I should have followed him, but I was stuck on my barstool, leaden with beer and manners.
The chipmunk-cheeked guy across the way had waved him off, not caring if he went or not. But now the manager was here, stocky buttoned down authority: not for sale. He barked, he pointed, he ordered him out of the soi.
The beggar limped away, obedient shuffling blue. At the top of the soi the beggar received a smile from one of the spike-haired boys who was bopping decorously along to bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha, bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha ha, and the beggar man, in response, did a quick crippled ecstatic jig clear across the entrance to the soi.
The bar Banana, at the top of the street, is Soi Twilight's hassle-free zone. Sitting there, I watch visitors arrive, out on a lark or in a hurry. Others do not enter, but only stand peering down the soi--a net of little blue lights turns to extravagant neon fruit further on--and they are curious or horrified. They've already passed through the city of women. Now here is the alley of boys.
Across from Banana is Hotmail and the grinning bar man whose job it is to pull people in. He was here last year too--something has happened to him. His is not sick, not old or worn. Here's what it is: he has become processed, packaged. He is a product now, his smiles as uniform as citrus in Tokyo. I don't blame him. I hope the boy from a village up North is stowed away, inside, safe.
Last night, as the pretty boys patrolled and the johns mulled their choices for the night, a beggar arrived in Soi Twilight. A skinny young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, each of his limbs twisted thirty degrees in the wrong direction. He hobbled past the the boys with spiked hair and white tank tops, past the bar men in tight black shirts and began to beg from men sitting at the bar.
He turned and I saw, on the back of his left leg, a long red open wound. Surprised, I touched my own leg, my crippled leg in its white plastic case.
I try to remind myself often that, born in another country, I would have been a beggar boy, instead of -- a sturdy scrappy man with big arms and a big chest, carefully packaged in hopes you won't notice the limp.
I should have given to him. I meant to. He didn't get as far as me. I should have followed him, but I was stuck on my barstool, leaden with beer and manners.
The chipmunk-cheeked guy across the way had waved him off, not caring if he went or not. But now the manager was here, stocky buttoned down authority: not for sale. He barked, he pointed, he ordered him out of the soi.
The beggar limped away, obedient shuffling blue. At the top of the soi the beggar received a smile from one of the spike-haired boys who was bopping decorously along to bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha, bla dee ya hee, bla dee ya ha ha, and the beggar man, in response, did a quick crippled ecstatic jig clear across the entrance to the soi.
The Pied Piper Gangster Reunion
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok
A year later the same show: same cowboy, same hot wax, same horsehung guy wearing a monster mask, same buff little guy in a leather cop cap fucking the same girlie geisha boy--and it was incredibly acrobatic the way they did it, involving both a step-ladder and a trapeze, pounding away at every possible angle, keeping time with the music, both of them smiling broadly all the while like two proud twirlers heading up a parade.
Ideally there should be a heavy-duty bleach solution in a little bucket beside my hotel bed and at the end of the night I could leave my mind to soak in it and start the next day pure, with a high opinion of myself. As this is not possible, I must write.
In the back corner of Tawan, Bangkok's big muscle boy bar, there was the most preposterous gangster. Instead of watching the stage I kept turning around to look at him: a young man in a sports coat, his silk dress shirt half unbuttoned, wearing big sunglasses at one o'clock in the morning. The overall effect was not imposing, not like an actual gangster but instead like a seventh grader who'd told him mother, "No, I was a vampire last year, this year I want to be a pimp!"
The gangster had a muscle boy on either side of him. One was the biggest guy in the bar and the other--well, I'm not even allowed to look at him. Last year I looked, and even spoke to him, and I just barely escaped. Tattooed Burmese muscle man the size of a Volkswagen with the sweetest baby face you can imagine. Lord, protect me from what I want.
One of the managers sat at the gangster's table pouring his whiskey, making sure the ice was fresh. This is what the big spenders do at Tawan: they buy a bottle and share it with the boys. The gangster finally took off his shades. His eyes glinted and darted like little blue lights.
I didn't believe what I knew to be true. Everything was the same, even my Pied Piper Gangster at his troublemaker's table in the corner. His hand was on my shoulder. "When did you get back?" he said and asked me to join him for a whiskey.
I said I was glad he was still alive. "You know, I kept the gorilla. It's in a place of honor back home in Tokyo."
History of the Pied Piper Gangster, in brief: I met him a year ago, or rather I was one of innumerable people he collected in the course of the one long night. I followed him as he ranted at, entertained and infuriated every single person he came across. He had to speak to everyone, buy everything, give everything away, had to sing and praise himself and raise holy bedlam at every step.
At one point he'd seen an old woman selling toys. He shouted to her in Thai and haggled passionately before buying a large sad-faced stuffed gorilla which he hardly glanced at before passing it to me. "Here," he said and forgot about it.
The manager sat at his table partly because he spent so much money but mostly because he had an extraordinary gift for causing trouble every single minute. He smoked and smoking was forbidden. He refused to put it out. He groped anyone nearby, shouted orders to the stage in Thai, stood up, spun around, nearly knocked over a table, nearly got caught in a cum shot--it was the part of the show when the men line up on stage and diligently shoot a load.
He must have been an avatar of Loki--how else could he survive? He tumbled back at my side. "Stay with me," he said. "For free. I've got an extra room." I didn't need to say no; I just waited a minute.
How can such forces exist in equal concentration: fucked-up, holy, pathetic, kingly, radiant, hopeless. The brilliant conflagration of a young man destroying his life. For the love of God, Pied Piper, eat soup. Stay home.
The Pied Piper Gangster says hello to everyone but he never says goodnight. He lurched up. Muscle men held onto tables nearby. On his way to the door he spun around and around; he did everything but chant Hare Krishna and then he was gone.
A year later the same show: same cowboy, same hot wax, same horsehung guy wearing a monster mask, same buff little guy in a leather cop cap fucking the same girlie geisha boy--and it was incredibly acrobatic the way they did it, involving both a step-ladder and a trapeze, pounding away at every possible angle, keeping time with the music, both of them smiling broadly all the while like two proud twirlers heading up a parade.
Ideally there should be a heavy-duty bleach solution in a little bucket beside my hotel bed and at the end of the night I could leave my mind to soak in it and start the next day pure, with a high opinion of myself. As this is not possible, I must write.
In the back corner of Tawan, Bangkok's big muscle boy bar, there was the most preposterous gangster. Instead of watching the stage I kept turning around to look at him: a young man in a sports coat, his silk dress shirt half unbuttoned, wearing big sunglasses at one o'clock in the morning. The overall effect was not imposing, not like an actual gangster but instead like a seventh grader who'd told him mother, "No, I was a vampire last year, this year I want to be a pimp!"
The gangster had a muscle boy on either side of him. One was the biggest guy in the bar and the other--well, I'm not even allowed to look at him. Last year I looked, and even spoke to him, and I just barely escaped. Tattooed Burmese muscle man the size of a Volkswagen with the sweetest baby face you can imagine. Lord, protect me from what I want.
One of the managers sat at the gangster's table pouring his whiskey, making sure the ice was fresh. This is what the big spenders do at Tawan: they buy a bottle and share it with the boys. The gangster finally took off his shades. His eyes glinted and darted like little blue lights.
I didn't believe what I knew to be true. Everything was the same, even my Pied Piper Gangster at his troublemaker's table in the corner. His hand was on my shoulder. "When did you get back?" he said and asked me to join him for a whiskey.
I said I was glad he was still alive. "You know, I kept the gorilla. It's in a place of honor back home in Tokyo."
History of the Pied Piper Gangster, in brief: I met him a year ago, or rather I was one of innumerable people he collected in the course of the one long night. I followed him as he ranted at, entertained and infuriated every single person he came across. He had to speak to everyone, buy everything, give everything away, had to sing and praise himself and raise holy bedlam at every step.
At one point he'd seen an old woman selling toys. He shouted to her in Thai and haggled passionately before buying a large sad-faced stuffed gorilla which he hardly glanced at before passing it to me. "Here," he said and forgot about it.
The manager sat at his table partly because he spent so much money but mostly because he had an extraordinary gift for causing trouble every single minute. He smoked and smoking was forbidden. He refused to put it out. He groped anyone nearby, shouted orders to the stage in Thai, stood up, spun around, nearly knocked over a table, nearly got caught in a cum shot--it was the part of the show when the men line up on stage and diligently shoot a load.
He must have been an avatar of Loki--how else could he survive? He tumbled back at my side. "Stay with me," he said. "For free. I've got an extra room." I didn't need to say no; I just waited a minute.
How can such forces exist in equal concentration: fucked-up, holy, pathetic, kingly, radiant, hopeless. The brilliant conflagration of a young man destroying his life. For the love of God, Pied Piper, eat soup. Stay home.
The Pied Piper Gangster says hello to everyone but he never says goodnight. He lurched up. Muscle men held onto tables nearby. On his way to the door he spun around and around; he did everything but chant Hare Krishna and then he was gone.
Of Appearances
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
How can you stay in Bangkok? After three days it is finished. There's nothing to see, nothing to do.
True, of course, but still I needed a haircut. I walked to Silom and asked a smiling lady in front of a foot massage place if she also did hair. "Sure I do!" she said and led to me to a chair.
Now there's a first time for everything and this may have been her first time to do hair. She snipped a little, at random it seemed, then stepped back to study the effect. Snipped a little more, stepped back. Laughed uproariously.
"Don't worry," I said, though she was not the one worried. "Just make sure it's short." She was so charming I knew I'd be powerless to complain even if she left me looking like I suffered from mange. I consoled myself that, realistically, there isn't much that can render me more funny-looking, or less.
She clipped another twenty minutes or so and proclaimed me a handsome man. Really it was not so bad. Especially the left side. The left side was really quite professional.
A few minutes later I was back on the street admiring myself in a mirrored window when a white guy interrupted me to ask for money. I gave him twenty baht, asked where he was from.
"I'm Thai," he said. "My Dad was white, so everybody thinks. . ." His skin was gaunt, his eyes sunken and red-rimmed. His English was perfect and spoken with a heavy German accent. He said he needed 300 baht for a bus ticket back to his village near the River Kwai. He had eyes green as green glass, same as another Thai man I'd met, the child of Thai mother and an American soldier, who was working as a bar boy in Pattaya. He'd hovered around the edges of the bar, skittish and uneasy, and did not join the other massage boys as they gossiped by the door on folding chairs. He seemed estranged from himself, a Thai man who looked 100% suburban New Jersey, a body that distanced him from his own family and countrymen, a body that now was up for sale.
"I hate this city," said this moment's green-eyed man. "It makes you sick." He continued walking down the street.
I stopped for a beer in Soi Twilight, which is an entirely different place, in the middle of the afternoon. A few tourists were sitting around, impatient for the night, looking extraordinarily sour-faced.
When I am in a pissy mood I make plans for a shrill and unpleasant book, which is to be titled The Gay Men's Guide to Mastering the Art of Unhappiness, because I believe we've brought unhappiness to whole new levels and straight women ought to come to us to be tutored in this, instead of hair and interior decorating. Has there ever been a group of people so good at making themselves and each other miserable?
Or, how about this, there could be a TV show with five gay guys and one straight guy. The gay guys would sit the straight guy down and explain to him why he was never ever going to be good enough.
You've got to have washboard abs and perfect pecs, you must get fifty dollar haircuts, you must have an enormous prick. You must have a very respectable job, you must be a success. You must be an original and also the same as everyone. Why are we even bothering to tell you all this? You are already too old. Save your money. Stay home. Maybe some day you can fly to Bangkok and buy someone pretty.
That said, there were two guys in the cafe who were having a really good time. (My theories are extraordinarily short-lived.) They were deaf and cussing each other out with tremendous merriment. This was an extraordinarily efficient process. I reckon they managed to curse each other 150 times within 30 seconds, a whirlwind of gestures that proceeded naturally to poking and slapping.
Can I ask a really ignorant question? Do deaf people get into more fights? Fighting words are already almost fighting.
The light outside was gentling now. It would be night but not soon enough. I had no idea what to do. That was a relief. I resolved to wander some more. As my master, Robert Walser, wrote, "We don't need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much."
How can you stay in Bangkok? After three days it is finished. There's nothing to see, nothing to do.
True, of course, but still I needed a haircut. I walked to Silom and asked a smiling lady in front of a foot massage place if she also did hair. "Sure I do!" she said and led to me to a chair.
Now there's a first time for everything and this may have been her first time to do hair. She snipped a little, at random it seemed, then stepped back to study the effect. Snipped a little more, stepped back. Laughed uproariously.
"Don't worry," I said, though she was not the one worried. "Just make sure it's short." She was so charming I knew I'd be powerless to complain even if she left me looking like I suffered from mange. I consoled myself that, realistically, there isn't much that can render me more funny-looking, or less.
She clipped another twenty minutes or so and proclaimed me a handsome man. Really it was not so bad. Especially the left side. The left side was really quite professional.
A few minutes later I was back on the street admiring myself in a mirrored window when a white guy interrupted me to ask for money. I gave him twenty baht, asked where he was from.
"I'm Thai," he said. "My Dad was white, so everybody thinks. . ." His skin was gaunt, his eyes sunken and red-rimmed. His English was perfect and spoken with a heavy German accent. He said he needed 300 baht for a bus ticket back to his village near the River Kwai. He had eyes green as green glass, same as another Thai man I'd met, the child of Thai mother and an American soldier, who was working as a bar boy in Pattaya. He'd hovered around the edges of the bar, skittish and uneasy, and did not join the other massage boys as they gossiped by the door on folding chairs. He seemed estranged from himself, a Thai man who looked 100% suburban New Jersey, a body that distanced him from his own family and countrymen, a body that now was up for sale.
"I hate this city," said this moment's green-eyed man. "It makes you sick." He continued walking down the street.
I stopped for a beer in Soi Twilight, which is an entirely different place, in the middle of the afternoon. A few tourists were sitting around, impatient for the night, looking extraordinarily sour-faced.
When I am in a pissy mood I make plans for a shrill and unpleasant book, which is to be titled The Gay Men's Guide to Mastering the Art of Unhappiness, because I believe we've brought unhappiness to whole new levels and straight women ought to come to us to be tutored in this, instead of hair and interior decorating. Has there ever been a group of people so good at making themselves and each other miserable?
Or, how about this, there could be a TV show with five gay guys and one straight guy. The gay guys would sit the straight guy down and explain to him why he was never ever going to be good enough.
You've got to have washboard abs and perfect pecs, you must get fifty dollar haircuts, you must have an enormous prick. You must have a very respectable job, you must be a success. You must be an original and also the same as everyone. Why are we even bothering to tell you all this? You are already too old. Save your money. Stay home. Maybe some day you can fly to Bangkok and buy someone pretty.
That said, there were two guys in the cafe who were having a really good time. (My theories are extraordinarily short-lived.) They were deaf and cussing each other out with tremendous merriment. This was an extraordinarily efficient process. I reckon they managed to curse each other 150 times within 30 seconds, a whirlwind of gestures that proceeded naturally to poking and slapping.
Can I ask a really ignorant question? Do deaf people get into more fights? Fighting words are already almost fighting.
The light outside was gentling now. It would be night but not soon enough. I had no idea what to do. That was a relief. I resolved to wander some more. As my master, Robert Walser, wrote, "We don't need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much."
Jupiter and Dream Boy #97
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2009)
"Are you going with me to my hotel? I just ask you. Because otherwise I must have #97."
We were sitting in Soi Twilight at the cafe opposite Dream Boy. He was talking fast, drinking his Singha, ignoring the young Thai man at his side. He'd determined that I was an innocent and nothing would dissuade him. He pledged to take me to the very most secret, most wicked places, which he named, one after another, and I had to tell him no, no, I'd been to those places already. And I was not going to Dream Boy, definitely not, even though Dream Boy had the best show, because the last time I went I wound up on stage stripped to my underpants as part of the comedy routine.
He was from Lithuania "a tiny microscopic country, you are from America, you have never heard of it, you do not even believe it exists" but now he lived in Switzerland. He was a small carefully tended man, perhaps 50. When he spoke of retirement, I said, "Oh, but that's a long time away for you." "I use many creams" he confided. He was delighted with me. I had much too much practice flattering middle-aged men.
We'd met at the Balcony on Soi 4, a place for straight people who want to go to a gay bar. From there we went to Soi Twilight, where the go-go boy bars are. He wanted to give me a tour but I'd been to every place he named. Finally he said, "How about Jupiter?"
I'd never been to Jupiter. He turned to the young Thai man beside him and said, "Take us to Jupiter." His name was Ook, supposedly. He'd sat with us all night and been more or less ignored. "He is very passive," the man from Lithuania explained. "In bed he will do nothing but his cock is like this--" and he indicated a place on his thigh above the kneecap. "I can introduce you if you like. It is no problem. Tonight he is just my friend."
Ook led the way to Jupiter and the man from Lithuania told me that the night before he'd had the best boy ever, one of the best anyway. "I was so tired from my flight. I went to the bar at midnight. I have known the mamasan there for a thousand years. 'Give me one with some meat on him and a big cock.' '#97' she said. And #97 it was."
Jupiter was obviously a big money place. The staff was floodlit outside the door: men in pink suits, a kathoy with hair like Diana Ross. He were led to a couch beside a glass tank where two naked men covered in soap suds slid artfully over each other. Their cocks had been pumped so much that they looked entirely unreal, like gigantic latex strap-ons. The man from Lithuania didn't wait long before going out for a smoke. Ook and I looked at each other; we both had the same small nervous laugh. We were already bored. Actually Ook looked as if he'd been bored for a number of years.
I've followed many middle-aged men desperate for talk as they toured Bangkok's nightlife. About this man there was one thing unique: he was paying for my drinks, which at bars like Jupiter are exorbitant. He kept me one side and Ook on the other and I was pretty sure we were both in the same department.
The audience at Jupiter was primarily Japanese and they looked every bit as humorless as they did back home in Tokyo while enduring their morning commute. The stage had two levels. The top-floor boys were bigger and better-looking. They stood in formation and, every twenty seconds or so, shifted position slightly. It was impossible to watch without thinking of rotisserie chicken. The Japanese snapped up boys in a remarkably short time. Five minutes after the show was through most of them were already gone. Once, in Darjeeling, I'd watched a busload of Japanese buy out a tea shop in just the same way.
In twenty years, when I can no longer bluff my way into being an object of desire, will I learn to look at these men the way johns must--to admire their bodies without looking in their eyes? How does a man bought for forty dollars--as they men are, as I have been--ever relearn his own true value?
Ook turned to me and asked, "Do you want to go out now?" I agreed vigorously. We fled Jupiter. The three of us returned to the cafe opposite Dream Boy, where the man from Lithuania learned that I was not available for sexual services that evening. So #97 it was. He hurried across the street and made his request to the doorman. #97 was still available; the bar fee was 400 baht.
#97 came downstairs a few minutes later, a sturdy young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, like a soccer player. It seems moralistic to report how forced his smile was but it can't be avoided. He was magnificently handsome; his smile was terrible to see. Nice to meet you he said and shook my hand. He and Ook carefully ignored each other. Ook had followed the man from Lithuania all night for nothing. All he'd gotten was free drinks, same as me.
The man from Lithuania said stay, stay, but I said I must sleep. It was almost one am anyway, the bars were about to close. "Why don't you take #97," suggested the man from Lithuania. "I can have him any night." #97 didn't understand but continued grinning. Ook sulked and slouched in his seat. I apologized and said good night and hurried past the colored lights and tired doormen out of Soi Twilight.
"Are you going with me to my hotel? I just ask you. Because otherwise I must have #97."
We were sitting in Soi Twilight at the cafe opposite Dream Boy. He was talking fast, drinking his Singha, ignoring the young Thai man at his side. He'd determined that I was an innocent and nothing would dissuade him. He pledged to take me to the very most secret, most wicked places, which he named, one after another, and I had to tell him no, no, I'd been to those places already. And I was not going to Dream Boy, definitely not, even though Dream Boy had the best show, because the last time I went I wound up on stage stripped to my underpants as part of the comedy routine.
He was from Lithuania "a tiny microscopic country, you are from America, you have never heard of it, you do not even believe it exists" but now he lived in Switzerland. He was a small carefully tended man, perhaps 50. When he spoke of retirement, I said, "Oh, but that's a long time away for you." "I use many creams" he confided. He was delighted with me. I had much too much practice flattering middle-aged men.
We'd met at the Balcony on Soi 4, a place for straight people who want to go to a gay bar. From there we went to Soi Twilight, where the go-go boy bars are. He wanted to give me a tour but I'd been to every place he named. Finally he said, "How about Jupiter?"
I'd never been to Jupiter. He turned to the young Thai man beside him and said, "Take us to Jupiter." His name was Ook, supposedly. He'd sat with us all night and been more or less ignored. "He is very passive," the man from Lithuania explained. "In bed he will do nothing but his cock is like this--" and he indicated a place on his thigh above the kneecap. "I can introduce you if you like. It is no problem. Tonight he is just my friend."
Ook led the way to Jupiter and the man from Lithuania told me that the night before he'd had the best boy ever, one of the best anyway. "I was so tired from my flight. I went to the bar at midnight. I have known the mamasan there for a thousand years. 'Give me one with some meat on him and a big cock.' '#97' she said. And #97 it was."
Jupiter was obviously a big money place. The staff was floodlit outside the door: men in pink suits, a kathoy with hair like Diana Ross. He were led to a couch beside a glass tank where two naked men covered in soap suds slid artfully over each other. Their cocks had been pumped so much that they looked entirely unreal, like gigantic latex strap-ons. The man from Lithuania didn't wait long before going out for a smoke. Ook and I looked at each other; we both had the same small nervous laugh. We were already bored. Actually Ook looked as if he'd been bored for a number of years.
I've followed many middle-aged men desperate for talk as they toured Bangkok's nightlife. About this man there was one thing unique: he was paying for my drinks, which at bars like Jupiter are exorbitant. He kept me one side and Ook on the other and I was pretty sure we were both in the same department.
The audience at Jupiter was primarily Japanese and they looked every bit as humorless as they did back home in Tokyo while enduring their morning commute. The stage had two levels. The top-floor boys were bigger and better-looking. They stood in formation and, every twenty seconds or so, shifted position slightly. It was impossible to watch without thinking of rotisserie chicken. The Japanese snapped up boys in a remarkably short time. Five minutes after the show was through most of them were already gone. Once, in Darjeeling, I'd watched a busload of Japanese buy out a tea shop in just the same way.
In twenty years, when I can no longer bluff my way into being an object of desire, will I learn to look at these men the way johns must--to admire their bodies without looking in their eyes? How does a man bought for forty dollars--as they men are, as I have been--ever relearn his own true value?
Ook turned to me and asked, "Do you want to go out now?" I agreed vigorously. We fled Jupiter. The three of us returned to the cafe opposite Dream Boy, where the man from Lithuania learned that I was not available for sexual services that evening. So #97 it was. He hurried across the street and made his request to the doorman. #97 was still available; the bar fee was 400 baht.
#97 came downstairs a few minutes later, a sturdy young man in blue shirt and blue shorts, like a soccer player. It seems moralistic to report how forced his smile was but it can't be avoided. He was magnificently handsome; his smile was terrible to see. Nice to meet you he said and shook my hand. He and Ook carefully ignored each other. Ook had followed the man from Lithuania all night for nothing. All he'd gotten was free drinks, same as me.
The man from Lithuania said stay, stay, but I said I must sleep. It was almost one am anyway, the bars were about to close. "Why don't you take #97," suggested the man from Lithuania. "I can have him any night." #97 didn't understand but continued grinning. Ook sulked and slouched in his seat. I apologized and said good night and hurried past the colored lights and tired doormen out of Soi Twilight.
Hunger Looks So Fun, At First
from Three Coin Prose: Bangkok (2008)
In the center of Babylon is a restaurant with glass walls: one side overlooks the courtyard and the other the pool, and everywhere there are tall palms, tile and glass, and gentlemen who make it to the gym not less than five days a week. As you sit with your Singha beer and plate of duck, perhaps feeling a little odd to be in such an elegant place wearing only a towel, you may read the slogan which is printed on the seat back: Twenty years of artistic endeavor beautifully disguised as a sauna.
Of all the sexual paradises gay men have devoted their lives to creating, the Babylon is perhaps the most exquisite. As the light fades, men gather in the courtyard to sip wine beneath the palms. If that is not enough for you, there’s also: a full gym surrounded by buck naked stone pharaohs with truly chiseled abs, a pool, more palms, another elegant bar, a coffee shop with fine desserts and classic movies, a huge wet area with steam, sauna and a honeycomb of tiled showers, the obligatory mile of dark mazes lined with cubicles, as well as a third bar hidden so deep in the guts of the place it’s unlikely you could get there or back without being fellated thrice, at least.
It is all very lovely—who looks at it?
OK, for ten minutes, maybe, when one first arrives. Maybe just after shooting a load. But mostly I’m just circling ravenously, elbowing my way through the dark corridors, chasing some Nordic-looking guy with three day stubble and a bulge in his towel. Fuckin’ a, he was here a minute ago, where the hell did he go?
At the end of the night my dick is sore and I feel like I’ve been duped. There is an honest bewilderment: it looked so fun. And yeah, maybe I got turned down a bunch of times, but other men grabbed my arm and dragged me off into a cubicle. Several of them were preposterously handsome. Bangkok attracts full-time sex fiends, graduates of gaydar with high honors. This is not the place for amateurs of promiscuity.
Still it seems that, at crucial moments, I was not there. Or it is as if, upon arrival in paradise, I am transformed into the most unpleasant person I have ever met.
If I was the only person doing this, well, I could institutionalize myself and the problem would be solved. But, looking around, it seems to me that I have never seen such a collection of glowering, stressed-out, miserable, sour faces as I see here, in this sexual paradise --entrance 260 baht, on weekends.
So much sunlight, so much glass, but most of the men are in the back corridors, in the dark, in the steam. We are at the baths, after all. And we have brought our shame with us from all the public toilets in the world.
Two hundred men nearly naked in this, the paradise of bathhouses, and it is remarkable, it is downright newsworthy, how miserable we make it. Into paradise we haul our dull old habituated stuck selves.
Something has gone wrong.
This is particularly sad since a lot men worked so hard to be here—hoarded vacation days, paid the gas surcharge, flew seventeen hours—all so they could stomp around all night with a pouty full-diaper face. Personally, since graduating high school, I have done approximately 300,000 sit-ups in hopes of meriting a friendly reception here. And so have a lot of other guys. This place is packed full of gorgeous forty-five year old men with washboard abs and the grimacing, bratty face of the most spoiled nine year old you’ve ever known, shoving forward for his share of the piñata.
“Dear God, I think, even if I am ugly, don’t let me have that awful look on my face.” But, of course, this place has mirrors everywhere and I can see—I’m working on it.
Some men worked to be here, others give their lives to build the place and keep it going. The lovely ladyboys at the front desk, the gym attendants in their white shorts, the invisible magnate who dreams up clever slogans. How disappointing for them to see that, in the end, they have provided us with only another arena for our despair.
The principal achievement of gay culture is the perfection of a global system for standardized promiscuity. Our network is better than Coca Cola’s and if you’ve got a big dick you can get laid in Greenland or Ghana in under fifteen minutes. This is our grand endeavor. Gaydar and Manhunt are our cathedrals, Ramrod is our opera, we have made statues of ourselves.
This place has been built, our vacations planned with everything in mind except an honest look at how desire works, how it becomes more demanding, more restrictive, the more that it is fed. This paradise is actually a gymnasium for the cultivation of ravenous hunger.
Not that I’ve learned this lesson. Fuck no. (Please here insert spooky hysterical laugh.) I show up here again and again. Because I know it’s a nightmare, I know it’s a drag but, but, but—it looks like it should work.
Two hundred men in towels, all clutching condoms and little packets of lube. This should be as easy as adding water to instant noodles. Right? Right?
Or how about what’s going on downtown: the boys on stage in little white underpants, each with a little red number. Right or wrong, it seems awfully straight-forward. I mean, it seems like it should work.
It’s like that Zen story: the guests are seated at the most sumptuous table and everything they could ever want is there. But, before they can get started, their arms are strapped to boards so that they cannot bring their spoons to their mouths. That’s where we’re at. As good as it looks, we might as well be trying to suck ourselves off.
Some nights there are the jackpot wins: Marco from Peru, Olivier from Toulouse, to say nothing of that Swiss porno Apollo. But a dull anxiety follows, because frankly there are very few years left when a god-ling such a Marco might chose me. (Maybe he only chose me because it was kind of dark?) Olivier looked rather disappointed, and, as for Apollo, well, I wake up with a dull ache missing him.
Satisfaction is satisfaction, blue ribbon, hunk angel. And at the same time it seems to me that satisfaction is the tent peg that keeps the circus of misery in town and intact. It’s just not very satisfying, satisfaction.
In the Zen story, one room starves while another, their arms similarly strapped, learn to reach across the table and feed each other.
And so I would like to send a little message out into all the gaydar and manhunt in-boxes, put a little card in the glossy magazines, stand on a street corner outside the boutique, outside the disco, and hand out little cards that read: is there something else we could be doing? Considering there are, like, only 24 golden lemurs left and 18,000 children who die from hunger every day? Considering we are destroying ourselves with truly 21st century efficiency and not even having that good of a time?
Here it is: an invitation to exit this paradise which, good as it looks, just doesn’t work.
(03.15.08, Bangkok)
In the center of Babylon is a restaurant with glass walls: one side overlooks the courtyard and the other the pool, and everywhere there are tall palms, tile and glass, and gentlemen who make it to the gym not less than five days a week. As you sit with your Singha beer and plate of duck, perhaps feeling a little odd to be in such an elegant place wearing only a towel, you may read the slogan which is printed on the seat back: Twenty years of artistic endeavor beautifully disguised as a sauna.
Of all the sexual paradises gay men have devoted their lives to creating, the Babylon is perhaps the most exquisite. As the light fades, men gather in the courtyard to sip wine beneath the palms. If that is not enough for you, there’s also: a full gym surrounded by buck naked stone pharaohs with truly chiseled abs, a pool, more palms, another elegant bar, a coffee shop with fine desserts and classic movies, a huge wet area with steam, sauna and a honeycomb of tiled showers, the obligatory mile of dark mazes lined with cubicles, as well as a third bar hidden so deep in the guts of the place it’s unlikely you could get there or back without being fellated thrice, at least.
It is all very lovely—who looks at it?
OK, for ten minutes, maybe, when one first arrives. Maybe just after shooting a load. But mostly I’m just circling ravenously, elbowing my way through the dark corridors, chasing some Nordic-looking guy with three day stubble and a bulge in his towel. Fuckin’ a, he was here a minute ago, where the hell did he go?
At the end of the night my dick is sore and I feel like I’ve been duped. There is an honest bewilderment: it looked so fun. And yeah, maybe I got turned down a bunch of times, but other men grabbed my arm and dragged me off into a cubicle. Several of them were preposterously handsome. Bangkok attracts full-time sex fiends, graduates of gaydar with high honors. This is not the place for amateurs of promiscuity.
Still it seems that, at crucial moments, I was not there. Or it is as if, upon arrival in paradise, I am transformed into the most unpleasant person I have ever met.
If I was the only person doing this, well, I could institutionalize myself and the problem would be solved. But, looking around, it seems to me that I have never seen such a collection of glowering, stressed-out, miserable, sour faces as I see here, in this sexual paradise --entrance 260 baht, on weekends.
So much sunlight, so much glass, but most of the men are in the back corridors, in the dark, in the steam. We are at the baths, after all. And we have brought our shame with us from all the public toilets in the world.
Two hundred men nearly naked in this, the paradise of bathhouses, and it is remarkable, it is downright newsworthy, how miserable we make it. Into paradise we haul our dull old habituated stuck selves.
Something has gone wrong.
This is particularly sad since a lot men worked so hard to be here—hoarded vacation days, paid the gas surcharge, flew seventeen hours—all so they could stomp around all night with a pouty full-diaper face. Personally, since graduating high school, I have done approximately 300,000 sit-ups in hopes of meriting a friendly reception here. And so have a lot of other guys. This place is packed full of gorgeous forty-five year old men with washboard abs and the grimacing, bratty face of the most spoiled nine year old you’ve ever known, shoving forward for his share of the piñata.
“Dear God, I think, even if I am ugly, don’t let me have that awful look on my face.” But, of course, this place has mirrors everywhere and I can see—I’m working on it.
Some men worked to be here, others give their lives to build the place and keep it going. The lovely ladyboys at the front desk, the gym attendants in their white shorts, the invisible magnate who dreams up clever slogans. How disappointing for them to see that, in the end, they have provided us with only another arena for our despair.
The principal achievement of gay culture is the perfection of a global system for standardized promiscuity. Our network is better than Coca Cola’s and if you’ve got a big dick you can get laid in Greenland or Ghana in under fifteen minutes. This is our grand endeavor. Gaydar and Manhunt are our cathedrals, Ramrod is our opera, we have made statues of ourselves.
This place has been built, our vacations planned with everything in mind except an honest look at how desire works, how it becomes more demanding, more restrictive, the more that it is fed. This paradise is actually a gymnasium for the cultivation of ravenous hunger.
Not that I’ve learned this lesson. Fuck no. (Please here insert spooky hysterical laugh.) I show up here again and again. Because I know it’s a nightmare, I know it’s a drag but, but, but—it looks like it should work.
Two hundred men in towels, all clutching condoms and little packets of lube. This should be as easy as adding water to instant noodles. Right? Right?
Or how about what’s going on downtown: the boys on stage in little white underpants, each with a little red number. Right or wrong, it seems awfully straight-forward. I mean, it seems like it should work.
It’s like that Zen story: the guests are seated at the most sumptuous table and everything they could ever want is there. But, before they can get started, their arms are strapped to boards so that they cannot bring their spoons to their mouths. That’s where we’re at. As good as it looks, we might as well be trying to suck ourselves off.
Some nights there are the jackpot wins: Marco from Peru, Olivier from Toulouse, to say nothing of that Swiss porno Apollo. But a dull anxiety follows, because frankly there are very few years left when a god-ling such a Marco might chose me. (Maybe he only chose me because it was kind of dark?) Olivier looked rather disappointed, and, as for Apollo, well, I wake up with a dull ache missing him.
Satisfaction is satisfaction, blue ribbon, hunk angel. And at the same time it seems to me that satisfaction is the tent peg that keeps the circus of misery in town and intact. It’s just not very satisfying, satisfaction.
In the Zen story, one room starves while another, their arms similarly strapped, learn to reach across the table and feed each other.
And so I would like to send a little message out into all the gaydar and manhunt in-boxes, put a little card in the glossy magazines, stand on a street corner outside the boutique, outside the disco, and hand out little cards that read: is there something else we could be doing? Considering there are, like, only 24 golden lemurs left and 18,000 children who die from hunger every day? Considering we are destroying ourselves with truly 21st century efficiency and not even having that good of a time?
Here it is: an invitation to exit this paradise which, good as it looks, just doesn’t work.
(03.15.08, Bangkok)
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