Bangkok Haunts

a bit younger than his thirty-eight years. A product of what I believe his countrymen call “the tall poppy syndrome,” he manifests normality to a morbid degree. He drinks beer with men, has sex with women, loves rugby, football, cricket, and gambling on what he calls the
jee-jees,
and is always bright and friendly with a ready “G’day” in all stages of inebriation except the last.
    It is Lek, usually, who rescues dear Greg from his fits of uncontrollable sobbing at the end of a Foster’s-intensive evening, usually in the lavatory, when he feels no embarrassment at being hoisted from the pit of suicidal despair by an exceptionally effeminate transsexual:
    Greg says to Lek, “I’m all in fragments, mate, atomized. Me mum drove me dad away when I was a kid. Then she worked on me mind, mate. She hates men, see. All Australian women do—there’s something in the food down there. Must be the mushy peas.”
    Lek shudders in revulsion. “Mushy peas? Oh, you poor thing.”
    “I never really had a family,” says Greg, “grew up all by meself. I’m like the product of a Saturday night bunk-up. You’re the only family I’ve got—that’s the god’s honest truth.”
    “How awful. Don’t worry, love, we’ll take care of you.”
    “I love the girls—they’re terrific. They do more for me in an hour than anyone else ever did for me in thirty-nine years.”
    “Well, that’s because you’re all man, dear,” Lek says.
    “Am I? You’re looking pretty good from where I’m sitting right now.”
    “You’re drunk, love.” He giggles. “Don’t do that—you can’t have me, darling. I’m a cop.”
    “You’re rejecting me?”
    “Me? I don’t reject people, darling. I’m at the bottom of the bottom of the bottom—getting rejected is my role. Don’t make me jealous, now.”
    Having won on the horses today, Greg is feeling generous and doesn’t mind buying drinks for Henri, who is nursing his thousandth rejection by Marly. It doesn’t take long for them to rebond in the medium of alcohol (they had a fight last week that neither remembered the next day), and as they get drunker, their voices get louder. I’m pinned to my seat at the table with Marly and Nong, who try not to look at me while my guts are laid out for public consumption by the two drunks.
    “D’you remember her?” Greg asks Henri. “She worked here a few years ago.”
    Henri glances quickly over his shoulder, apparently believing we cannot hear him. “Of course, she wasn’t a common prostitute. She was a born courtesan, a creature of the Belle Epoque stranded in this age of functional barbarism. I felt a certain camaraderie, but she was so formidably
elegant,
I didn’t dare even speak to her. I was afraid of what her starting price might have been.”
    “I did. I saved up. She was terrific between the sheets, but she had a way of screwing your head up. After the second time I was depressed for a week. She was way out of my class.”
    “
Shush.
The boss’s son had her too.”
    Greg is surprised. “Sonchai? He never goes with his girls.”
    “He fell for her. It was the original
coup de foudre, avec
bells and whistles.”
    Greg says conspiratorially, “The beat on the street is there’s a snuff movie. That’s how she croaked.”
    “
Mon Dieu,
I didn’t know that.”
    “Sonchai, why don’t you check upstairs to see if the cleaners did their job properly today?” Nong says, avoiding Marly’s eyes and casting a furious glance at the backs of Greg and Henri.
    I go upstairs to lie down on one of the beds to let my mind wander. Musing: prostitutes were the world’s first capitalists. The ancients understood very well that men need sex more urgently than women. It was natural, therefore, that this imbalance should be redressed by means of cash, which hitherto nobody had had any use for. Later, of course, whores found other things to sell, and many were reincarnated as lawyers, doctors, dentists, merchant bankers, presidents, sweetshop owners, mayors, et cetera. Commerce was born, and war became just a tad less fashionable. Hey, if it wasn’t for prostitution, the human race would never have got beyond the siege of Troy. Many haven’t, of course.
    I didn’t intend to do anything more tonight—I was in lazy-Thai mode—but Henri and Greg have stirred up a gut full of bile, and now I’m restless. When I check my watch, I see it’s only eight in the evening. There won’t be any airplanes flying to that part of the