Harry Nicolaides' Weekly Column

Exclusively for Phuket-Info.com

WESTERN UNION LOVE

When Ulysses was passing the Island of the Sirens during his ten year Odyssey he strapped himself to the mast of his ship while his men filled their ears with wax to escape the fate of many others who were lured into treacherous waters and ultimately their death by the seductive 'songs of the Sirens'. Rumours abound that this legend ended in shipwreck at Patong beach where brawny sailors were mesmerized by the inimitable Patong bar girl pitch: "Welcome. Massage Sir? Where you go handsome man?" Centuries later, the American fleet was marooned here too. Recently, I ventured into these same waters (for the purposes of journalistic integrity, of course) and nearly drowned in a whirlpool of lust, jealousy, unbridled passion, uninhibited sex, voyeurism, fetishes, sexual fantasies without frontiers, blackmail, extortion, penis dismemberment, attempted suicide, and threatened execution - Thai Style! Well it all started in September with a girl named June.

June is a bargirl who works in Patong's Soi Eric. I met her at her bar and have seen her several times over the last month. She has recently invited me to visit her family in rural Thailand. This was the culmination of heartfelt and tender proclamations of love by her. In this conspiracy of love I am also guilty so far as never ruling out the possibility of joining her on one of these trips back home. Last night, when she was straddled over my prostrate body, her mobile phone rang. The song was "One Love" the surrogate anthem of most bar girls in Patong, given a full unabridged rendition several times a night at Taipan, the island's largest nightclub.

"Have you sent the money?"

.................................?

"Like before. You have my bank number."

...................................!

"I love you."

...................

"I do not want to go to Patong. I not like work bar."

..................................!

June pressed her hips down further on to my body. She moved her buttocks over my engorged penis and pressed down on me.

"I love you and your money."

..................................!

"OK. But send quickly. I need money. I have sold my ring and neck chain."

.......................................................!

"I work KFC now. Not pay much. I do not want to go to Patong again."

.............................................!

"Yes. I know you send to Udon Tani. My family love you very much."

..............................................?

"But now I need more money."

....................................!

"OK. I check tomorrow."

...............................!

"I love you."

June threw her mobile onto the bed and bent down to kiss me. Before her lips touched mine she said "Tomorrow, can you show me where Western Union is." June had boyfriends in almost every country represented at a full meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Italy, Germany, Australia, America, Sweden, Holland, Canada, England and Norway. At her rented house in Patong she kept an album full of photographs of romantic holidays with a gallery of men. Her enthusiasm for international relations afforded her many opportunities to cultivate a moderate proficiency in the languages of her multi-national clientele. She also developed some sophistication with money transfers, bank accounts and the Western Union service.

The next day, we left early for Patong from Kata to locate a branch or agent for Western Union. The national Thai Farmer's Bank promoted Western Union services. We entered and looked for a teller. May sat down with a bank employee who presented her with a form to complete. The form had provision for June’s name and address as receiver of funds and a requirement for the sender's address. These details together with a ten-digit number provided to June by her admirer in Holland were enough to complete the transfer of 4000 Baht on the spot. June was visibly relieved and grabbed my crotch in exuberance.

We returned to June's house in Patong. June lived with six other bargirls from the same bar. The area was the most impoverished in Patong. Open sewers spilling effluent, naked children playing on pot-marked, decaying roads and rabid dogs meandering in lackadaisical sun-struck stupor. The dry crackle of motorbike exhausts peppered the air with puffs of black smoke. We walked across a small courtyard and under some washing hung out on a makeshift clothesline to the door. Outside there were dozens of pairs of shoes, sandals and stilettos. The single bedroom white- washed house had a kitchen - a sink and a tap - and an open shower/toilet area. Mattresses littered the floor where the girls made their beds and stuffed toys crowded for attention on a solitary vinyl couch. Photos of bar girls with Falangs featured on a small table. From inside the house I heard desultory voices. A girl was cooking a few pieces of fish in a wok on a small portable gas stove. Another girl hung out some washing. Together these girls were here for a single purpose: Extort as much money from male Caucasian tourists with a penchant for silken Thai skin. We left after half-hour and went to an internet cafe.

June sat at a terminal with a camera facility where she could communicate in real time with men from around the world. These men would be logged on and registered in a chat room. As soon as June entered the chat room a few men invited her to 'open' her camera and they would 'open' theirs allowing for face to face (body to body) conversations. June delighted in preening herself for the camera, smiling mischievously. As her image beamed out into the nebulous ethernet of the world wide web I gasped at the live images beamed back to her through video portals (mini TV's) on her computer screen. Massive, blood engorged penises with bulbous heads moist and inflamed with arousal! These men - some appeared to be in office cubicles at work and others at home - stroked and masturbated themselves to orgasm while typing questions and answers to June! June called me over to help her with her English. I could not resist writing a few lines to a man from Italy who had one hand on his keyboard and the other massaging his erect penis. "Wait," I wrote. "My mother has just entered my bedroom. She comes in to collect my soiled panties. She hates it when I peel them off with one hand and then kick them under the bed..." The Italian wrote "OK, I wait." A few minutes passed and another girl walked passed June's terminal. The Italian asked who it was. I said "My little sister has come in to play." The Italian man said "Sure, we can all play now..."

Back at my bungalow June made herself some noodles while I worked. As I tapped the keyboard of my laptop computer June approached my desk chair and sat on me like a kitten and started to type: "She get money now 4,000 Baht. She is very beautiful. Now I want to stay with Khun Harry but he don't want. I am very so sad now and when I go home next month he has another bar girl named 'Am' and girl from Songkla and many girlfriend. Do you know how much I love him? I want to marry with him now because he is very nice man and good man for me. He want to change lady now and he want I go back in Patong now I am very cry and stupid because I love him very much. I want to stay with him for 1 year now. I want to have baby with him together."

June could have walked out of the pages of Nabocov's salacious and controversial book "Lolita". She was young, playful and sexually alluring. She aroused prurient thoughts of the illicit defilement of a minor. She would bite her bottom lip and half-smile igniting a wanton lust to ravish her. Her eyes twinkled with wicked complicity. The promise of carnal voluptuousness was palpable. She could become the source of an all consuming obsession. As an object of lust she was treacherously seductive and sultry. She was petite and graceful in proportions, fleet of movement and radiated the innocent charms of a 12 year old girl.

June had never read Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel, "Lolita" or become acquainted with Freud's work on sexual psychoanalysis involving the subconscious and a father's incestual lust for his daughter (the Electra Complex corresponded to the Oedipus Complex and in contemporary psychology provides an explanation for a daughter's sexual attraction towards her father). Yet, June played her part as innocent nymphet undermining the family unit and patriarchal structures of authority and power like a consummate professional. Was June familiar with the subconscious dream landscape of male sexuality? Unlikely, but she had become the ultimate 3-D animated school girl fetish - without the dress but heavy on the eye shadow, mascara and lipstick. Was she really like this or was I projecting my lecherous fantasies onto a blank canvas? Like an elaborate pantomime was she performing a role that I had written in my head and she had divined intuitively?

The night of unbridled sexual passion between June and me was as cataclysmic as a tropical storm. Torrid thrusts and tussles of sweaty lovemaking ended in almost complete physical exhaustion. Breathless and sated we embraced. I wiped June's forehead of perspiration while the small beads of sweat that formed on her upper lip belied a salty hunger for more. Her appetite for sexual fulfillment was insatiable. She got out of bed and stepped into the kitchen. I heard the clinking of cutlery. When she returned she got under the sheets and emerged playfully holding a razor-sharp fruit knife. I gasped and she said she would "cut" me if I ever betrayed her. I insisted she put the knife down. Somehow, she concealed it and we fell asleep in exhaustion. Later that night I awoke and found myself out of the bed clutching her by the arms. Evidently, I was dreaming of severed appendages and woke in fright! She also liked to go dancing at Taipan the nightclub where bar girls migrate to at about midnight when the prospect of been picked up at their bar has diminished.

(At Taipan girls gyrate and groove to the latest dance numbers in an orgy of flagrant, self-absorbed sexuality. Towards 2:30 PM (nightclub closing time enacted by local government ordinance and enforced rigidly by the local brown-shirted constabulary) the girls look furtively around for a "farang"(male Caucasian tourist) to go home with and provide sexual services for short (500 Baht) or long (1000 Baht) time. The few minutes leading up to the "Witching Hour" are a frenetic and frenzied. Bar girls clamour for podium space to maximize their exposure to the purveyors of flesh cooling their testosterone-fuelled voyeurism with Carlsberg beer. The music throbs as girls posture and preen. A glance at a girl for more than a few salutary seconds will be interpreted as an invitation for a booking.)

I was tired and resisted June's overtures to go to Taipan. My overplayed contrition was not enough to placate her adolescent angst and I sensed she started to brood. She lunged out of bed and put her clothes on. The intermittent buzz of her mobile phone being switched on hit a raw nerve of jealousy with me. June took a small piece of paper out of her bag and keyed a phone number in her phone. "Do you remember me. I saw you in Taipan." I heard a muffled voice emanating from the phone, decidedly male. "You gave me your number". June continued " Your hotel in Patong? Which room number? "The voice was conversational and upbeat. "Ok, I'll see you soon" I felt crushed.

June stepped out of my bungalow onto the balcony. She seemed to be phoning for a Tuk Tuk. It was unclear whether she had difficulty getting though or was prevaricating. Prevaricating, posturing, preening - these were but a few of the verbs that most women conjugate with alarming proficiency! Eventually I went outside on the balcony and tried to persuade her to return inside to bed. June remained obstinately opposed. Eventually I lost my patience and provoked by the injury to my sense of masculine pride I dragged her by the hand back into the bungalow. June moped around for a while and then fell in a heap on the bed, fully clothed. I could hear a stifled sobbing but couldn't be sure. Then it was my turn to be petulant. I became enraged by the ever growing late hour and deprivation of sleep. I presented June with an ultimatum: Explain her behavior or leave. June collected her things and went outside. I could see she was forlorn and frustrated by not getting a Tuk Tuk. I went outside overwhelmed by compassion and confronted her. June tossed her mobile phone onto the grass in anger. Eventually we returned into the bungalow. We lay on the bed and she turned to initiate the lovemaking we left unfinished earlier. I felt I was in bed with the devil incarnate. I became aroused and my studied indignation was smothered by naked lust. Pride, anger and betrayal were eclipsed by a primeval imperative to copulate. In that moment nothing else mattered except arousal, erection, ejaculation.

The next day the incident was not discussed except for some sweet nothings muttered in a delirious state of abandonment as we embraced in the morning. However, the undercurrents of jealousy, suspicion and mistrust were raging. The next four days we hardly emerged from the bedroom devouring each other in pools of sweat. Her natural fragrance filled my nostrils and set off a chemical reaction that produced a long and sustained pseudo-hallucinogenic state. My heart thundered with passion. The whooshing ceiling fan crystallized tremulous beads of sweat on our bodies into icy bullets. The white bed sheets became my body bag. Enveloped in an ethereal shroud of seduction I could not punch, kick or grab. I was suffocating and decided to end the affair the next morning.

When I tried to end the relationship June refused to accept it. She maneuvered and manipulated to postpone the inevitable. She even said she would cut my penis off while I slept I went with other girls or crossed her. I drove her back top Patong and said goodbye. She was clinging to me with desperate resolve but had to let go once I reached fourth gear. I was relieved that this dangerous strumpet was out of my bungalow and my life! My friends warned me about Patong bar girls and their self-serving agendas. However, my contentment was short lived. At 3AM that evening June was at my door drunk and delirious from hours of dancing and drinking at Taipan nightclub. With a fistful of Baht and a giveaway Kristov Vodka T-shirt she said "Because I love you," and collapsed into my arms. I took her into the bathroom where she vomited violently into the toilet. At that moment I looked at her and felt a pang of conscience for an eighteen-year old girl who was quite obviously not in control of herself. Suddenly, I realized that my assessment of her as an experienced and manipulative temptress may have been entirely mistaken. I cleaned her up and carried her to my bed. Her feet were blackened for dancing without shoes and I sponged them clean. She slept for 14 hours.

The next day June seduced me into our old routine of sex and sleep, hypnotized by the corkscrew effect of the spiraling, swirling ceiling fan above the bed that I stared at lying on my back. After some hours of sustained thought while lying in bed I manage top summon the presence of mind to make a decision to take her home. In the afternoon I drove her back to her bungalow in Patong. Like a hungry kitten she turned up on my doorstep at 3AM that evening! In fact, for four nights in a row she did the same despite my clear instructions to the contrary. On the 5th night she turned up at 5AM. We talked and fell asleep.

The next day while a friend was telling me how difficult it is to get bar girls to leave your place once they have been there for more than 3 days (The Iceman - a Caucasian resident of Phuket and an incorrigible denizen of the Bangla Road dens of iniquity - has a 72 hour rule and will not allow bar girls to stay any longer) June wrote the folllowing on a sheet of paper: "My name is June from Udon Thani. To Khun Harry (handsome man). Why you do not love with me? You know I love you very much. I want to marry with you but why you don't to marry with me? Can you tell me? I never lie to you. You are very good man and very nice man. I want to have baby with you together. Why you pay money every night for me? For what? I want to stay with you. I don't want money, you understand me now? I do everything for you. Happy and good time for you. Why you don't want to stay with me? I am so sad. I want to have good time. Please!!! Understand me now! I wait for you. I love you very much." I was unimpressed. After all, the consensus of opinion amongst the seasoned expat community on the island of Phuket was that these bargirls are convincing actors - cry on command, look fallen and forlorn and swallow an ostrich egg with serpentine ease.

On the way to lunch we stopped at an internet cafe. We each had our own terminal. Absorbed in our work an hour passed before I quietly got up and went over to June. Unbeknown to her I saw her chatting, Cam to Cam with a Caucasian man. After the exchange of pleasantries and compliments, the young man informs June he will be in Bangkok over the next few days. June provides he mobile number and requests his, arranging to call him to meet in Bangkok. I said nothing and walked towards the cashier, enlightened. I drove to a friend's massage shop where I had arranged to have his Thai wife speak to June and inform her that I thought it would be best for both of us to resume our lives and daily routines and responsibilities. June reacted with anger and resentment to the overtures refusing to get out of my jeep. Eventually, two girls from the massage shop spoke to her and recommended that they return to my bungalow with June and me collect her things and see her off. I agreed and off we went. The drive was short and tense. Going around a corner June opened her passenger door and tried leap out of the jeep! I reached over and clutched her arm dragging her back into the cabin. Eventually we reached my bungalow where June gathered her belongings and went out into the rain refusing a ride back into town and an umbrella. I received a text message: "fuck you and fuck off!" A subsequent phone call involved a threat that her silent and shadow-lurking Thai body guard would execute me. There was a further hint that she was on on the payroll of the Thai mafia who had been enjoying a percentage of her earnings. These chaps would be motivated by her malicious lies to 'Give me problem.'

The other girls said that she was a seasoned prostitute and had probably been working in her own province and Bangkok since the age of 14. I reflected how back at her house she clung to me with tender affection professing her heartfelt love and devotion to me and then a short time later was arranging to meet a stranger via the internet. In the West this would be treacherous. However, here in Thailand, the notion of a lie is anathema. Thai people conveniently rearrange the facts to keep their Falang friends happy and their interests ( business and relationship) served. They do not see this as deceptive or false. Saving face and preserving an outward appearance or semblance of social equilibrium is paramount.

June, like most Patong bargirls are from the remote, impoverished provinces that we in the West would regard as the Third World. Muddy rice fields and rickety shacks on stilts surrounded by grazing buffalo (the ones that aren't sick) set the scene for a rural landscape that never saw the Industrial Revolution. Many work to support family in these regions. Few bargirls drive BMW's or wear designer labels. In this regard they are selfless and charitable citadels on whom many in large extended families rely for survival. Or is this a lie we Western men tell each other to assuage our injured masculine pride when they openly flirt and betray us with other clients when they should be enthralled by our presence. The notion of betrayal presupposes a sense of conjugal loyalty and monogamy usually found in relationships in the West. Does this apply in Thailand where the imperative of survival glistens on a reptile's tongue and in the twinkle of a bargirl's eye?

Bar girls are not cognizant of the romantic tradition that has become the foundation of contemporary relationships, as we know them. Romance was born in the songs of wandering minstrels and troubadours during the Middle ages. The notion was further embroidered by Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays. Finally, "love" was bestowed the gift of immortality by Clark Gable, Vivian Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise and the other stars who inhabit the pantheon of gods in Hollywood's Golden Year's film legacy. We learned to kiss, swoon, dance and flirt from celluloid. Thai girls have learned to imitate these nuances and copy them like the ubiquitous elephant figurine in the bazaar. In fact, in Phuket there is a proliferation of stores selling flawless imitations of famous, iconic artworks - Rembrandt, Picasso, El Greco, Renoir etc - copied from art books. Love and romance are also commodities in this bazaar and are just as expertly reproduced, word for word, sigh for sigh, for a consumer who clamours for it in the West but finds the price extortive. In Thailand, love is sold on a stick, seasoned with sugar and spice and lightly roasted by flames leaping about like the forked tail of the devil. Caveat Emptor!

Harry Nicolaides

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