by Peter Jaggs
“Hi, Joe, do you remember me?”
How could I forget. It’s not every day you grope a bloke.
“I’ve had a sex-change operation now and I am married,” the lady-boy told me proudly, as if these developments were every day occurences. “To a handsome, good-hearted, rich young guy from Sweden.”
I looked at Joy thoughtfully. There was no doubt about it, she still looked great.
“You’ve been very lucky, then,” I congratulated her, marvelling that this seductive young woman used to possess a bigger plonker than I did. “Your husband must love you very much to accept you for what you used to be.”
Joy grinned at me conspiratorially.
“I never told him,” she replied, with a wicked grin.
Bidding Joy goodbye, I couldn’t help wondering what would happen should the truth ever come out by way of an incautious word spoken in anger during one of those little spats all too common between every husband and his wife in the world.
“Aren’t you going to help me with the dishes?”
“No, it’s your turn to do the washing up.”
“You’ve turned into a lazy bitch!”
“Yes, and I used to be a bloke.”
The only other time I fell foul of a Pattaya lady-boy was way back in the eighties when one of them put me flat on my back with a right hook Muhammed Ali would have been proud of. I was walking down Soi Six one night slightly the worse for wear when one of the women of the second category standing outside The Jasmine Bar imagined I had thrown a dirty look at her.
“You got a problem with me?” she growled, hands on hips and big, silicon breasts jutting out alarmingly.
“You’re the one with the tits and the big cock, I reckon you’ve got the problem,” I quipped back, feeling smart.
Bosh. In hindsight, I guess I would have done better to have kept my big mouth shut.
Anyway, I digress. Back on Victory Hill, there was no way this particular lady-boy was going to be mistaken for anything other than what she was. She had bigger biceps than Sylvester Stallone, an expression like Wayne Rooney with a toothache and a magnificent scar from a previous knife fight all the way down one stubbly cheek. When she saw how things were progressing between Kanya and myself she made her way over to us, no doubt hoping to provide a bit of translation and earn herself another dollar tip.
“She very good girl—you like her?” Putrea rumbled at me hopefully.
Of course I did.
“You can boom-boom her, twenty dollar all night, bar-fine ten dollar before twelve o’clock, five dollar after twelve o’clock,” the laddie of the night continued with great subtlety. Not perhaps how I would have liked my intended night of romance to have been described, but it sounded like a pretty good idea to me, just the same.
So, at precisely six minutes past midnight I paid my bill, together with the five dollar bar-fine necessary to take Kanya out of the bar, and the two of us walked back to the Crazy Monkey. As we neared Narith and his cronies at the crossroads, I was anticipating a barrage of ribald comments from the boys and I was very surprised when they all did nothing more than take a good look. I thought that was pretty nice of them. They were rough lads, and with a few choice comments they could have had a big laugh at Joe Bucket and his new girl and made them feel very awkward. I don’t know whether it was respect or simply good business sense that made them keep quiet—or maybe they were just all terrified of Louis the gangster—but it was a surprise and a pleasure when I got nothing more annoying than a few goodnight nods. I’ve had guys spit at my feet in similar situations in some countries in Asia.
Back in my room, I followed Joe Bucket’s standard Pattaya proceedure. I handed Kanya a big fluffy towel and showed her where the shower was. There are plenty of girls I would have joined in the shower at once for a bit of soapy fun, but Kanya was not one of them. Since we had left the bar this girl had suddenly become way too shy and I could tell if I’d walked in on Kanya it would have scared her to death. This also gave me the chance to stash anything of value I might have left lying around. I had no reason to distrust Kanya, but why put temptation in somebody’s way? It was already plain to me that most of the poorer Cambodian people posessed absolutely fuck all.
After what seemed like a very long time, Kanya eventually emerged from the shower with the towel wrapped around her body. She looked lovely, far better than she had done in the bar. This girl was no hardened professional like Khwan had been. Her eyes were wide with trepidation and she looked very much as if she would liked to have made a run for it. The young girl’s skin looked very dark against the stark whiteness of the material and her long, wavy hair glistened with droplets of water. I was trying not to stare too hard at her breast, the size and shape of which looked spectacular even under cover of that towel.
Kanya didn’t seem to know what to do at all. I motioned her towards the bed. I picked up the other towel, intending to take a shower myself. The scared girl took advantage of my movement to scamper across the room, and still wrapped in the towel, she threw herself between the sheets and pulled them up to her neck. Her large, brown eyes gazed up at me. I couldn’t help remembering a hare I’d caught in my car headlights on a dark night back in England. I didn’t have time to stop and the poor animal had looked up at me in terror for a second before I unintentionally flattened it into the quiet, country road.
I took a shower quickly, then dried off a bit. When I had finished, I wrapped the towel around my waist, opened the door and walked towards the bed and lay down beside Kanya. And that’s where it all started to go wrong.
Before I had put so much as a hand on the frightened girl she sat up in panic and stared straight in front of her. She then began repeating the same sentence in Khmer over and over again, which of course, I couldn’t understand. It wasn’t difficult to see that the young girl was really terrified of me. As Kanya sat up, the towel fell away from her. Even though events had taken a turn for the worse, I couldn’t help noticing what was hidden under the towel was dazzling. I had guessed Kanya would look pretty good unwrapped, but the fleeting glimpse I caught before she pulled the towel back around herself again showed me she possesed one of the most magnificent, perfectly proportioned bodies I have ever seen. Unfortunately, it was beginning to look as though Joe Bucket was not going to get his hands on it.
Still repeating that same phrase, Kanya stood up and backed away from me into a corner of the room. I was thoroughly confused and I tried to calm her down. If I had been in Thailand, I would have known what she was saying and could have put things right, but here in Cambodia I was beginning to get a situation on my hands. I went to put my hand on her shoulder, but she drew back like an alarmed wild animal and a note of panic crept into her voice. I was now sure Kanya was not acting. This was no scam. The terror in her voice and face were real and I wondered if I had unwittingly done something terribly wrong. Could I have angered or scared her in some weird Cambodian way by something I had unintentionally done?
Realising Kanya was about to lose it completely, I sat down on the bed and cautiously handed the young girl her discarded clothes. She pulled them on quicker than a lover caught in Mike Tyson’s bedroom would have done. Once the girl was dressed, she began to calm down a bit. I opened the door of my room for her, then did the same with the metal door that led out into the yard. As she left, I put twenty dollars into her hand. I wasn’t having Louis the gangster banging on my door in the wee, small hours asking why I had upset one of his girls and not paid her. Kanya tried to give the notes back to me but I shook my head and motioned for her to take them. I wasn’t enjoying this experience at all now and I just wanted to get her out.
Confusingly, just before Kanya walked out of the door she threw her arms around me just like she had done in the Shark Bar and kissed me hard on the lips. Then she disappeared through the sliding gate and out into the dark of the night. For the first time since I had arrived in Sihanoukville I wished I was back in Soi Eight where I knew what the hell was going
on.
I sighed, then went back to bed and lit up a Sihanoukville special and contemplated my luck. I felt a bit better when Stumpy the lizard popped out to say hello and do me a favour. Since Kanya had left so prematurely, an annoying mosquito had been buzzing around my head emitting a high pitched drone. I didn’t have the energy to chase the little bugger around the room myself, but Stumpy came to my rescue and darted forward from his crack in the wall when the mosquito settled nearby. The insect disappeared like magic into the lizard’s mouth on the end of its long, sticky tongue. Stumpy blinked at me and regarded me proudly and I realized I had made at least one friend in Cambodia. The lizard’s tail had grown back now and although it looked strangely stunted, at least he was a proper lizard again.
Although I had evoked the undying love of a common house gecko, it appeared that I was not having so much success with the Sihanoukville girls. I wondered what I had done to upset the lovely young girl so much. In my mind’s eye, I could still see that perfect body when the towel had fallen away from Kanya. This could never have happened to me in Pattaya, where I was always one step ahead of the game. Once again, I became aware just how familiar I had become with Thailand over the years and realized how despite the obvious similarities, Cambodia is a very different country with very different people.
The next evening I set off for the Shark Bar wondering what sort of reception I would receive. Louis the gangster saw me coming and perhaps anticipating trouble, nodded to his toughest Cambodian henchman to take care of the situation. I ordered a beer and the barman approached me cautiously, obviously unsure of my intentions. I beckoned him over.
“I’m not complaining, I don’t want my money back and I have no problem with anyone,” I told him, in an attempt to get things off onto a good footing.
The barman’s hard eyes softened a little as he began to realize he wasn’t going to have to punch anybody, after all.
“But can you tell me if I did something wrong?” I asked him, genuinely wanting to know the reason for the girl’s terror. “I’ve never been to Cambodia before and I don’t want girls running away from me every time I pay a bar-fine because I’ve fucked up. It’s my first time here and I don’t know the score.”
The Khmer barman then relaxed completely and told me what had gone wrong.
“Kanya is a virgin,” he said. “She has never been with a man before—Cambodian or farang. You have probably heard this story before, but in this case it’s true.”
The beefy barman looked at me for a few seconds before he continued his explanation, his eyes challenging me to call him a liar.
“Kanya’s mother is very sick and she needs money for medicine so she came to work here. Last night was her first night in the bar. She saw you were a good guy and agreed to go with you because twenty dollars is a lot of money, but she could not go through with it.”
We both looked towards the young girl who was over the other side of the bar watching us nervously, probably thinking I was making a complaint. I smiled and beckoned her over.
The barman spoke to Kanya in Khmer and her face lit up. She put her arms around me and clung to me in exactly the same way as she had done in the bar the night before. Not surprisingly, I had already decided I wasn’t going through another experience like that again, so I bought her an orange juice and gave her a friendly hug, thinking I would choose a girl who looked like she could take care of herself next time I fancied getting my leg over.
Was the barman telling the truth or was it all just a scam, a complicated trick designed to relieve Joe Bucket of twenty bucks without even giving him the chance to dip his wick? Remembering the girl’s terror in the room, I am inclined to go with the former theory. Whatever the case, just for once the cloud did turn out to have a silver lining for Joe Bucket, because Victory Hill is a very small place. It wasn’t long before the word got around that I had let Kanya keep her twenty bucks without relieving her of her virginity, whether it was fabricated or not. After that, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was very much the good guy in every bar on The Hill. Every time I sat down for a beer I was besieged by girls hanging off me, massaging my back and generally being nice until the end of my stay.
Perhaps there is something in Karma after all.
Later on, Le Requin’s brutal mate Didier was less impressed with my compassion.
“You paid for her,” he told me gruffly. “You should have thrown her on the bed and fucked her hard.”
Eventually, I suppose it was inevitable that some other Joe Bucket on a visa run from Pattaya would do just that, but I’m kind of glad it wasn’t me.
What with Louis, Didier, the Vietnamese scammer and the Khmer virgin, I was already beginning to realise that Cambodia truly is a country of contrasts.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The longer you stay on The Hill, the smaller it becomes and if you hang around for any length of time you are bound to bump into old Asian hands you know. People are beginning to hear about the way things are shaping up in Sihanoukville and are coming to check the place out for themselves. During my month on Victory Hill I was pleasantly surprised to bump into Alex, a wild Australian sheep-shearer I hadn’t seen for ten years since we had teamed up for a fortnight-long piss up in Vietnam. The last time I had seen Alex the Vietnamese police had locked him up for a night, shaved his head and his long straggly beard and given him a boot up the arse after he had become so pissed he thought it would be a good idea to borrow some poor bloke’s bicycle rickshaw to visit The Street of a Thousand Bars—which hadn’t existed since the war ended in 1975, anyway. Alex found the whole incident highly amusing and said he thought he had looked quiet dashing with his new, free haircut. He was only in Sihanoukville for a night and before he left for The Philippines the next day, we tried reminiscing about our time in Vietnam, but we found that neither of us could remember very much as we were plastered the whole time.
My old pal Jim the Perv also turned up for a brief stay on The Hill to renew his aquaintance with the local Chicken Farm girls, as did Dozy Dave and Piss-Head Harold. The last time I had seen Piss-Head back in Pattaya he was sitting drinking with Old Tim and Young Thomas in the Nikom Court. Thomas told me that three days previously Piss-Head had bought a kebab from the guy who drives around with a mobile kebab stall welded to the side of his motorcycle. Piss-Head had put the spicy, foil-wrapped kebab into one of the many pockets of the safari waistcoat he habitually wore, intending to eat it back in his room later. He then continued drinking his usual intake of ten large bottles of Chang beer; a daily feat that had given him his name. Three days later the kebab seller turned up outside the Nikom Court again and Young Thomas asked Piss-Head Harold if his kebab had been any good as he fancied one himself. Piss-Head’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open in recollection as he remembered his purchase, which was still festering away nicely in the pocket of his waistcoat. Strangely enough, when Piss-Head unzipped his pocket and gingerly withdrew the putrefied kebab, Thomas wasn’t hungry any more.
I was walking down the little bar-strip late one afternoon when I was delighted to see Keeniaw Kevin from Pattaya sitting with his back to me at the Shark Bar, enjoying a cold one. There was no mistaking him—that small, wiry frame, the shiny, sun-burned bald head and the faded denim shirt he habitually wore were completely unmistakeable. Despite the celebrated stinginess that had given him his name, I had always liked Keeniaw Kevin a lot and found the stories of his legendary meaness both fascinating and funny.
Only Keeniaw Kevin could upset the local Thai shoeshine boy so much with his niggardly bartering that he had ended up with one shoe polished black and the other brown in retribution. Only Keeniaw Kevin had the balls to visit Carrefour and Tops supermarkets daily and virtually live off the free food and drink samples they handed out. And only Keeniaw Kevin had the class to purchase a pair of brown plimsolls in the second hand section of the Soi Buakhoa market for ten baht and that turned out to be Thai Boy Scout’s footwear. For months afterwards, every bar-girl in So
i Eight jumped up and saluted him mockingly at his jaunty approach. Keeniaw Kevin was a part of Pattaya’s folk lore, and having always admired people who do anything properly I was extremely fond of the tight-fisted little git.
I walked up behind my unsuspecting friend and threw both arms around him and gave him a bone-rattling shake.
“What are you doing here, you little baldy bastard!” I yelled into Keeniaw Kevin’s ear, giving him a very wet, playful kiss on the cheek.
Only the guy sitting at the bar wasn’t Keeniaw Kevin at all.
Suddenly—as if by magic—I was flat on my back on the dirt road outside. Everything happened so quickly it was almost surreal. By the time I realized what was happening I found myself in an inescapable headlock with a knife that had apparently appeared from nowhere pointing at my throat, and I was staring into the eyes from hell. Instead of the friendly countenance of Keeniaw Kevin that I had expected to see, a wicked looking face with the features of a furious demon looked down at me in anger and astonishment. The sharp blade pressed into the hollow just under against my Adam’s apple and glinted in the sunlight and pricked my skin.
Luckily for me, Louis the gangster had witnessed the whole incident. In fact, he had been chatting to my assailant just before I had surprised him. Jabbering away in French, La Requin leapt over his bar and jumped into the street and pulled the mad little bloke off me before he could do any serious damage with his knife.
I apologised profusely, explaining how the shaven-headed, sinewy little tough guy in the faded blue denim shirt had looked exactly like my good friend from Pattaya. Fortunately, it appeared that even dangerous French gangsters possess a sense of humour and when the amused villain realised I was no threat to him he grinned at me like a cayman and put his knife away. He then gave me a friendly slap on the back and both he and Louis roared with laughter at my shaking hands and palpable relief.
Later that evening, Louis told me his quick-tempered friend was nicknamed ‘The Butcher.’ Apparently he had spent eight years in the French Foreign Legion, where his speciality was unarmed combat. Louis told me how The Butcher was suspected of two brutal murders in Montmartre; but the gang-related killings were so cleverly planned the police had never been able to prove a thing.