Bangkok Haunts

breast, underclutches and overgropes, squeezing-with-fingers-apart, squeezing-with-closed-hands, and other borrowings from the martial arts. I study her expression to ensure that humor does not trespass into offensive satire, but she’s a good sport, and the only objection she makes from time to time is
jikatee:
tickles.
    “Do you want me to suck you?”
    I make a face expressing a polite and reluctant
no thank you.
She smiles, pleased with me. “You’re a good man. There aren’t many like you left.”
    “Well, the circumstances of my own birth were not ideal. I want the kid to have every chance.”
    She nods wisely and watches my fingers while they rub her nipples as if they were money. “I know what you mean.” She beams. She had assumed I was a spoiled rich boy, like all the others. There is a subtle change in her use of Thai: more countrified, more idiomatic, lower class. Before long, we’re exchanging stories about growing up in poverty in Thailand and the problem with financing smallholdings. Her parents own more than twenty acres of not-bad farming land in Isaan, near Kong Kaen, but it is virtually impossible to make a profit because of the agricultural subsidies in the G8 nations, a topic on which she seems to be an expert. I decide to deepen the interview by decisively taking both her breasts in my hands and holding them for a moment in the way of irresistible objets d’art. She looks down at my hands and smiles.
“Siaow,”
she says: horny. “Are you sure you don’t want to do it?”
    “Sure,” I say, but she has noticed a certain stirring. Vanity requires her to play the temptress, but I catch her chin gently and raise her face again to look into my eyes. “I know you don’t really enjoy this kind of work,” I say.
    There is no better phrase to get a whore talking. Now I am receiving in great detail the saga of her fall, and how she might have enjoyed a wonderful loving marriage with a wonderful loving man and been able to live a good honest Buddhist life, were it not for her parents’ indebtedness and the need for her to send at least ten thousand baht per month home just to keep them and her siblings alive and well. People don’t realize that having enough to eat is not even half the story—what about medical bills, school fees, all the things that you need to be fully human in this world? I say I suppose all the girls working here come from similar backgrounds. She agrees, most are poor country girls who managed to get enough sophistication to be eligible to work here; otherwise they would be working in bars very much like my mother’s. Except for the Chinese prima donnas on the top floor, who have spent small fortunes modifying their bodies and often come from more affluent backgrounds. I say that a friend of mine also belongs to the Parthenon, which is what prompted me to join. He was particularly impressed, I say, by a girl called Damrong.
    There is a momentary hesitation in her caress, before the hand resumes the mesmeric massage. “You’re
his
friend?” Her tone is more formal, tinged with fear.
    I cough, taken by surprise. “You mean she only had one customer?”
    She stops immediately and challenges me with her eyes. “You’ve come to check up on her for him, haven’t you? That’s really why you’re here. Your friend is the most possessive man I’ve ever known. Well, I’m afraid she hasn’t been seen here for more than a week. We all thought she’d gone to live with your friend.”
    Now I’m in a fix because I can’t think of a way to get her to name him. “Hasn’t he been here for a week either?”
    “No.”
    “Maybe he went home.”
    “To England? He hates England, he told me as much.”
    “Ah.” I take a long shot. “He never told me that.”
    “Really? Khun Smith told me his life didn’t start until he came east.”
    “Actually, I don’t know him that well,” I explain, “an acquaintance more than a friend. A business associate, actually.”
    She seems relieved that Khun Smith and I are not close.
    After ten minutes I seem to have exhausted her stories about the possessive Khun Smith—on two occasions he became quite uncontrollable and had to be restrained—and ascertained that he is an English lawyer working in Bangkok for an international law firm. He uses the club to entertain certain kinds of clients, met Damrong here two months ago, and became obsessed with her. He is tall, dresses well, and speaks Thai with a thick English accent. I