Phantom Lover and Other Thrilling Tales of Thailand

by Jim Algie

  “Thai stick” (as I knew it) and “Buddha stick” (as Mick called it) is like no other strain of marijuana. One of the local drug dealers who worked out of a reggae bar behind Khaosan Road told me that the secret ingredient used to be that the growers would dust their plants with opium resin, which helps to explain the stupefying and euphoric effects. After a couple of throat-scorching tokes we were doughboys with glazed smiles, happy to be kneaded by these attractive, willowy young women who melted our resistance with back-rubs and neck massages and innuendoes delivered in such a giggly, innocent way, “I no have boyfriend and I horny too much,” that they didn’t seem like prostitutes at all: not as I had observed the street-walkers back home, desperate drug fiends and teenage runaways who looked more scary than sexy.

  Between Noi’s come-ons and Mick’s badgering, I was caught between a rock of a hard-on and a much softer place.

  “Go on then. Kick a goal,” said Mick, while making an obscene gesture with his fist. “Don’t be a poof. We’re hardened criminals now”—he winked across the table at me as he said “hardened”—“so let’s see some good laddish behavior.”

  Mick went off to one room with two women. I went off with Noi into another little cubicle whose shabbiness was exposed and amplified by a fluorescent light on the ceiling. (Later I would write in my diary that “it stank like a morgue where all the sexual fantasies of all the men who had passed through here had come to rot and die.”) The sheets on the narrow bed were a washed-out grey and the linoleum was the same shade as the nicotine-yellow stains on my fingertips. After about two minutes of pumping away on top of her, the sexpot who seemed so sweet and polite in the bar turned into a sour little shrew. She looked up at me and said with contempt, “Why you take so long? You take long time come, you pay more.”

  That was the end of that awkward and sordid satire of sex. To make things worse, one of the other bargirls began pounding on the door and shouting, “You take two lady, you take two lady. I suck your cock very good, na.”

  I handed Noi some money. She called me a “cheap Charlie” and demanded more. Not in the mood for any arguments—all I wanted was to flee this shabby cubicle that felt like a crime scene where my self-respect had been murdered—I handed her a few more hundred-baht notes while Miss Congeniality resumed pounding on the door and spewing pidgin English filth.

  These were not the slinky and pliant, exotic-looking sex kittens that they were reputed to be or acted like in the bar. These were tough, ill-educated, rice farmer’s daughters from the fields and backwoods towns of the country’s poorest nether regions.

  Seeing through the illusion of all the makeup and titillation did not make me feel any better. Some men, like Mick and Martin, think that all sex is good sex. I don’t feel that way. To me, awkward sex with someone I don’t know and don’t care about is not worth the exertion. And the lukewarm, monetary strain served up so half-heart-edly in Bangkok’s red-light districts makes a mockery of everything I have ever held sacred about male-female relations.

  When Mick returned from his tryst he smiled and leered simultaneously as he sat down across from me in the rear booth by the windows. “I had a Bangkok sandwich… two birds. They were a bit of all right, the ol’ in and out and a good hard shagging. How was your bunk up?”

  “It was awful, wretched, sordid, sleazy, disgusting, demeaning— did I mention sordid enough times yet? In fact, it was one of the worst experiences of my entire life. Since you brought me here and recommended this place, I’m holding you personally responsible.” I pointed my index finger at him. “When I’m talking to you, you look at me. You don’t fucking look away or I’ll take that as a sign of disrespect and then the payback will be a hundred times worse.”

  I didn’t raise my voice and I didn’t start gesturing wildly or rolling my eyes around, because anger never had that sort of tropical gale effect on me. On the contrary, it blew through and whipped around me like a wintry blizzard that put frost in my voice and ice in my eyes. Mick had never seen one of my controlled outbursts before. He was more than capable of defending himself against physical threats, but when the intimidation was mental he didn’t have the intellectual resources to cope with them. So he sat there picking the label off his Singha Beer.

  “If you ever put me through shit like that again, here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to break into your room in the middle of the night when you’re sleeping and pour hydrochloric acid all over your face. Then you’re gonna be so completely disfigured for life that not even any of these stupid little tarts will ever shag you again. In fact, you’ll be permanently blinded and the acid will melt the flesh on your ears so you can’t even hear properly. Think your life is shit now? Wait till you get a hydrochloric acid bath. Got it, fuck face?”

  Mick continued picking at his beer label. I could barely hear his mumble and I didn’t give a shit. “Sorry it didn’t work out, mate, but it ain’t my fault the fittest birds ain’t here tonight.”

  Quite by accident I had discovered his Achille’s heel; any kind of criticism made him shrink like a schoolboy before the headmaster.

  Had it not been for Mick rolling another spliff and passing the peace pipe as a pair of middle-aged couples in the standard-issue tourist wear of T-shirts, shorts and sandals sat down across from the empty stage with three chrome poles, we would have kept bickering. To be fair, Mick had gotten in a few good stabs too. “If you keep moaning about this, that and the other like a fucking Brit, Queen Lizzie is going to make you an honorary subject of England. Then you’ll really be in the shit.”

  The tourists were already drunk on local spirits and beer which, spiked with all the sunshine and tropical heat, made them deliriously giddy—easy prey for the bargirls who soon had them smoking pre-rolled joints and buying them drinks. Office workers from Wyoming or Winnipeg or wherever, the tourists were living out their one-night-in-Bangkok fantasy. Soon the women were dancing around the chrome poles with a couple of bargirls in bikinis and the men were dancing in front of the stage with two other prostitutes.

  Watching the tourists gyrating was rejuvenating, because they’d become born-again teenagers enjoying a second shot at college high jinks. The alcohol encouraged their exhibitionism and the freedom of being ten thousand miles from the prying eyes of neighbors and professional colleagues emboldened them even more. Perhaps this was the wild youth they wished they’d had.

  For many of the barflies and sex tourists on Patpong, who looked like the accountants, computer geeks, and middle managers of the world’s office towers, guys so bland and meek that you could not even remember their faces or anything about them a minute after they passed by, this was the red-light district’s main attraction: it gave them an instant makeover. All of a sudden, the dullest office nerd had become a Casanova surrounded by beautiful women, and an aging secretary was a go-go dancer encircled by leering men.

  “Look at these fat Yank slags,” said Mick with a sneer that instantly poisoned my good spirits. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled at them: “Get your tits out, love, and get your kits off too.”

  But the tourists were too lost in the aural sex of the dance music and the mists of marijuana conjuring up the ghosts of their youth to pay him any attention.

  This infuriated Mick even more. He started rolling another spliff, added some white powder, sparked it and passed it to one of the men. For a few seconds he almost looked happy when he turned to me and smile-sneered. “Put some heroin in it, didn’t I? Let’s make a move before they cotton on and throw a right wobbly.”

  On our way out, I trailed behind Mick so I could ask the tourists for a hit. Then I took a few steps, dropped the joint on the floor, ground it out with my heel, followed him down the stairs, and Mick was none the wiser. Nobody deserved to have their night—maybe their whole vacation—ruined by this malicious prick who had a grudge against the world and took everyone else’s happiness as an insult to his own misery.

  In the guesthouses and street-side bars of
Khaosan Road, the backpackers enjoyed bragging about how they were superior to the package tourists, like these office workers, while the expats thought they were superior to everyone, including the locals. In one crucial respect, all of us foreigners were pretty much the same. Everyone was either running away from something or someone, or trying to find some kind of new life, a new love, or just a life-altering adventure.

  The trouble was, Mick and me and Martin were changing identities so often that it was becoming more and more difficult to remember who we weren’t supposed to be anyway.

  NOT LONG AFTER that, Mohammad reappeared at the door of my guesthouse room at 4 a.m. after Mick and I had only just said our goodbyes for the night, with his usually cheery, “Good morning, my friend,” followed by a limp and damp handshake.

  Through that forest of black beard, he smiled and, offering no explanation for his disappearance, said, “I have a new job for you this morning.” He handed me a passport. I opened it up to the photo page with my picture in it and squinted at the details that squirmed across the page: Nancy Lars Cohen, thirty-four, from Invercargill, New Zealand.

  I looked back at Mohammad. “Is this supposed to be a joke, man? A Swedish, Kiwi Jew with a woman’s name from a town called Invercargill? Nobody is going to believe this.”

  Mohammad’s smile widened. As always, I had no idea whether he was trying to be reassuring, or laughing at me, or himself, or the absurdity of the situation. “It is very safe, my friend, safe as houses. We have changed the sex on the passport and Asians are not knowing Nancy is a lady’s name.”

  “Oh really? Is that what I should tell my defence attorney?”

  I can’t even remember if it was his persuasiveness or my lack of funds that made me agree to this suicide mission. By the time we arrived at the airport, as bad luck would have it, there was a lengthy line up for the flight. On an hour’s sleep, with a brainpan seared by hashish and eyes fogged, with a tongue thickened and putrefied by beer and cigarettes, standing there under the spray of fluorescent lights with needle-sharp rays was agony. The only thing keeping me awake was working out an explanation for the name Nancy in case one of the female ground crew came past asking questions or the check-in clerk got suspicious.

  After spending forty minutes in the queue, I reached the counter with the vase of flowers, luggage tags and the digital scale with red numbers to weigh check-in bags. She gave my passport a cursory glance. Then she began typing up the boarding pass when her greying supervisor walked by and glanced at the passport. He looked me straight in the eye and, clearly not amused, said, “Nancy is a lady’s name, sir.”

  I smiled, swallowed a guilty lump in my throat and fell back on the only alibi I’d come up with on an hour’s sleep: “Not in New Zealand it isn’t. It’s like the name Michel in France or the nickname Lek in Thailand. Both men and ladies use it.”

  He looked at the woman in her red uniform. They exchanged a few tense words in Chinese, before the supervisor pointed to a spot down the counter in no man’s land, saying, in the way bureaucrats and figures of authority have of making niceties sound like threats, “Please wait over there, sir.”

  Oh god, the fucking supervisor—it looked like this was the most exciting thing that had happened to him in months—was now on his walkie-talkie. He was one of these company men whose pride and pleasure stems from being sticklers for enforcing all the rules and regulations. Soon he had a small crowd gathered around the check-in counter, all of them poring over poor Nancy’s passport.

  I had to rest my elbows on the counter and lean over it because my legs were shaking so much that I thought they were going to give out on me. It was hard to think on my feet when my knees were wobbling that much. My Adam’s apple felt like it had doubled in size and I was having trouble swallowing my saliva, never mind all the anxieties that my luck had finally run out and I was soon going to be in police custody and on my way to jail. The police thugs might even set me up with a kilo of heroin.

  As yet, no one knew what the penalties would be if we were caught with a false identity trying to board a flight. A fine or a jail term? A warning? Deportation? Would they turn us over to the police? No one knew. Nobody had a clue.

  In vain, I searched the crowds milling around for Mohammad and the customer. But they’d vanished, leaving me holding the bag— and what was in that?—as well as the passport, which was either phoney, stolen, or had been purchased from a broke traveller. I prayed that it was the latter.

  The last passengers had now gotten their boarding passes and the final pieces of luggage floated past me on the conveyor belt.

  All the while, the supervisor kept sharpening the suspense and tightening the thumbscrews with each glance in my direction and call on his walkie-talkie. These company men and petty bureaucrats—dumped-on their whole lives—love to stick the knife in as deep as they can whenever a violation occurs and protocol permits.

  First I had to look at the situation from the supervisor’s point of view and analyze what he wanted: an admission of guilt, an apology, a bit of grovelling, and some material for his weekly report. That would appease his need for power and respect. But how far would he go and risk a complaint to his superior? The passport and the visa stamps looked fine. He could not prove anything. How many experts on New Zealand could there be in his company? Sure, he could call someone from a Kiwi airline but, given the Asian tendency to avoid losing face, that was unlikely. So would it be worth his while to accuse me of committing any serious crimes and take that chance? No, it wouldn’t. Company men like him get ahead precisely because they don’t take any chances. They play by the rules and they don’t rock the boat.

  Secondly, how would a businessman in my shoes feel, pulled out of a long lineup and made to stand around? Outraged. What would he want? To board that flight and make it to his afternoon meeting.

  What did I want? To leave the airport with the passport and not get arrested. It was too risky. They would call ahead to check on “Nancy” at the gate. The customer would get arrested. Mohammad would be pissed. I had to abort the run.

  Mick said we were outlaws. I thought we were more like character actors in a psychodrama, improvising as we went along.

  The supervisor came back alone with the passport in his hand. Nowhere on his bland face could I see any telltale signs of triumph: no glint in his eyes, no gloating smile pricking at the corners of his mouth just waiting to get out. That told me they hadn’t been able to detect anything wrong with the passport. Other than his suspicions about the name, they had no evidence against me.

  It was time to make my push. “Excuse me, sir, but is there some kind of problem here? The flight is leaving in an hour.” I tapped the face of my watch with an index finger to make my point.

  “There is some question about your name. I’m afraid we can’t let you board that flight.”

  I sighed theatrically. I clasped my hands and wrung them. I forced myself to look back at him. “I have an extremely important business meeting this afternoon in Tokyo. A lot is riding on the outcome of this meeting. Surely you can understand that, can’t you?”

  He looked away. His self-assurance was gone. “I’m sorry, sir, but…”

  “Now you listen to me, sir.” All it took was that interjection and a clipped tone on the verge of escalating to extremely irate for the entire balance of power to shift in my direction. “I’m going to give you a break, okay? I should report you to one of your superiors right now for this heinous mistake and for costing me money, but I’m not going to do that.” The word “superiors” caught his attention. He could no longer meet my eye. “But no, no, I’m in too much of a hurry. So I’m going to book another flight now with a different airline and I’ll be taking my business elsewhere in the future.” I picked up the passport and put it in my shirt pocket. As a payback for his polite threat earlier, I couldn’t resist a parting shot, “Have a nice day, sir.”

  I walked towards the exit, trying not to hurry, trying to look casual, while every step of
the way I was expecting a hand to grab my shoulder or a few plainclothes cops to materialize out of the crowd and block my path. That was one of the longest and hardest walks of my life.

  As it turned out, that walk lasted for a long, long time. The fear and paranoia kept shadowing me for years, when a car backfired, when a silhouette appeared out of nowhere in a dark street, when I caught somebody staring at me on a street corner, because after that first big scare, when every law-breaker realizes that the odds are, sooner or definitely later, you will get caught, and you will go to jail, and you will lay a terrible burden of disappointment on those you hold dearest, that fear is harder to shake off than your own shadow.

  Because it’s become your shadow.

  At dusk, when I told the story to Mick up on the rooftop of the guesthouse during a psychedelic sunset, when the clouds above the pagodas of the Temple of the Emerald Buddha looked like cotton candy and the bats whirled and whirred in search of supper, all he cared about was my latest false identity. Seeing as “Nancy boy” is the British slang for a homosexual, Mick thought Nancy Lars Cohen was the funniest name he had ever heard. For the rest of his short and miserable life, he would introduce me to people as, “This is me mate, Nancy.”

  Mick was much less amused when he and the Bangladeshi ring-leader got arrested the following week. According to Mohammad, Mick threw a temper tantrum in the airport and tried to head-butt a security guard, forcing Mohammad to interject and then he got arrested too. According to Mick, “Someone snitched on us ‘cause those arseholes at the airport had it all sussed out and they was stood near the check-in counters waiting for me.”

  I didn’t know whom to believe.