Bangkok Knights

by Collin Piprell

  I took it easier going back in to the beach. Still, I could see Sunantha was getting back into the spirit of things. She gave me the idea she wouldn’t have argued too much if I had suggested we do one more hour before going in again. I was a bit worn out, however. Anyway, we were paying by the hour, and we had already been out a good long time. I hadn’ t brought very much money with me, as I’d told her.

  What a lady, though. When a windsurfer went whizzing past us, once, the guy hanging in his harness, one with the elements, Sunantha told me she wanted to learn to do that; could I teach her? She meant it,too. Extraordinary.

  I could see Sunantha was getting sunburned. I’d told her to put on the sunblock cream. She also had raised welts running across her tummy and her thighs from where the jellyfish tentacles had lashed her. She told me it didn’t hurt very much anymore, though. Mine were just red tracks, by now.

  “It was like fire,” she said. “I thought it was yaw.”

  “Joss?” I asked. “Karma?”

  “No, no —joss. You know: big fish, like in the movies. Joss.”

  “A shark, you mean? Jaws?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Sharks.” She put her arms around me, then, and squeezed hard. “I thought sharks were eating us.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. ‘There aren’t any sharks around here.”

  “Really?”

  Well, really there were, but why think about it? I’d done some diving here and there in the Gulf of Thailand, and I hadn’ t seen all that many sharks. In fact, a few friends and I had spent some time trying unsuccessfully to get close enough to photograph them underwater. So if we couldn’t find them even when we wanted to... Of course, there was the old wisdom, it occurred to me, about there never being a taxi around when you wanted one, but when you didn’t... “No,” I told her again. “You won’t find any sharks around here. Don’t worry.”

  Back on the beach, we enjoyed the happy relief of all shipwreck survivors. We’d neither been eaten by sharks nor been required to spend the night floating around the Gulf of Thailand waiting to be picked up, preferably not by pirates. The noodles were delicious; we had two bowls each.

  Sunantha was bubbling. She was full of plans to come back to the beach. She was going to learn to windsurf. She was even going to go sailing again. She kept asking me how I liked her suntan, and I kept telling her she was burning, put some sunblock on.

  One thing led to another, and before you knew it she was looking at me in that way — as though she wanted to climb in through my eyes and take up residence. In fact, taking up residence turned out to be the very next thing on the agenda — an old issue, well-worn over the past several months.

  “But why?” Sunantha asked. “Why don’t we get a house together? Why should I spend money on my apartment? I stay with you all the time.”

  This was true, she did. Almost all the time, anyway. But I kept trying to find an opportunity to tell her that she couldn’t go on staying with me all the time. Not all the time. I didn’t want to share a house with her. This situation, the way things stood, had just kind of crept up on me; by no means was it something I’d planned. But as long as she had her own place, and kept at least some of her gear there, then we each had our own independence. That’s what I wanted to think.

  “We can save money if we get a house together. I can give you the money I spend for my apartment. I want to be with you all the time,” she said.

  I had been bitching about money. What I really meant, but didn’t say, was that there wasn’t enough for me to lead the life of a thirty-six-year-old arrested adolescent and to undertake fully the responsibilities of a household. I was still trying to find myself— I was only thirty-six years old, after all—and I wasn’ t ready to have my horizons narrowed unnecessarily. I’d chosen to live in Thailand for a while, trying to make it as a free-lance writer, and I’d been doing pretty well by local standards. Still, most months I didn’t earn the housing allowance of many Westerners woriring in Bangkok, the oilmen and engineers and suchlike.

  “I do like you, Sunantha. I like you a lot. But we live in two different worlds, when it comes right down to it. We’d never get along if we were married.”

  “I didn’t say we should get married. I don’t want to get married to you. I hate you.”

  I wonder how much I´d have to give her. Probably 500 baht a day. And I´d have to give some more to the mamasan back at her bar, I don t know how much. Say 750 baht total for her and the bar. Ridiculous, really. You can buy fifty red roses— the ones Sunantha likes —for only twenty baht, back at that market by the river in Bangkok. For one measly dollar. How many would 750 baht buy, then? 3,000 roses? More. Christ. I wonder how old she is; nineteen or twenty would be okay but who can tell with these girls, she could be sixteen years old. Look, she’s running her hand under her bikini top, easing the lime-green cloth away from her flesh; I can feel her erect nipple by telepathy, she’s looking right at me. I wonder how much English she speaks. I should go down there and swim. I can say something to her maybe that’s a nice bathing suit you’ve got there.

  “But I can’t stay here tonight; I must work tomorrow!”

  “Right; but I don t have to be in Bangkok tomorrow,” I told her. “Why shouldn’t I stay another day or two? I haven’t been windsurfing in months.”

  Listening to myself, it occurred to me I was almost whining. I put more authority into my voice: “I’m staying. Finished. Understand?”

  “I can’t go back alone.”

  “Why not?”

  “I am your woman: I came with you, I should go back with you.”

  If this was syllogistic logic, I couldn’t follow it Or maybe —most likely—it was another case of East meets West. Whatever it was, I was getting annoyed. Why the hell couldn’t I stay at the beach if I wanted to? We weren’t married, after all. If we were married, come to that, there’d probably be no problem — this was worse than being married.

  But what I said was: “Listen, I’m not married. If I want to spend a couple of days at the beach, I’ll spend a couple of days at the beach. Understand? Now, have you got enough money? Good.”

  It was getting on towards late afternoon and, as luck would have it, a detachment of bargirls chose that moment to troop down past us and bivouac on the sand in front of a klatch of ursine German men. The girls were very young and each was more beautiful than the one before and they were wearing little ‘Baby Gogo Bar’ half T-shirts and string bikini bottoms. Of course I looked at them as they went by. I didn’t ogle or anything; I just looked at them. You couldn’t help it, really. Anyway, you would have thought Sunantha would’ve learned trust in all our months together.

  “You come back to Bangkok now,” she said.

  I said I wouldn’t.

  She said I’d screw around.

  I said I’d windsurf.

  She said I’d drink too much.

  I said it was none of her business if I did, but I wouldn’t; I’d go to bed early that night and windsurf the next day.

  And so it went, until finally we exchanged hot words. Her last sally was “So. Then. You won’t come back with me?” This was delivered in tones of hurt accusation, with distinct undertones of ultimatum.

  I had managed to accomplish what neither ‘jerryfish’ nor sharks nor shipwreck had done — Sunantha was in tears when she left. I felt like hell, actually; and I felt a dull resentment, at the same time, that she had led me to act like such a prick. I almost went after her.

  But now Sunantha was gone and all I was left with were the aches and pains from my nautical adventures and a nagging feeling of guilt. Guilt compounded and confused by irritation. Irritation that Sunantha should feel she had this kind of claim on me, and irritation that I should feel guilty for simply having established my basic rights as a person.

  I really should’ve ended the affair long ago, I reflected. It wasn’t fair to Sunantha, and it wasn’t fair to me. After all, there was no future in it. There was no way we were going to get married; I k
new better than that No matter how attractive, no matter how sweet the lady was, our backgrounds were too different. Our basic interests and objectives in life were worlds apart And so on and so forth.

  Down the beach, where the German bears were at play, I watched as one of the Baby Gogo girls stepped high into the water. A portly graybeard strutted along purposefully behind her, as if to say I´m a busy man, but now I’m on vacation and enjoying myself so let’s get on with it.” As he closed in on the statuesque arse ahead of him, his head swung this way and that, probably looking for ways to make a buck.

  That’s not the way to have a good time, I thought.

  She says her name is Oi, which means ‘sugarcane’. She smells of coconut oil but I am too inhibited to lick and nuzzle her oily warm brown skin right here on the beach. I can’t believe V m doing this. But I’m only talking, we don’t have to go to my hotel. Do we? Actually we do. I want to say we do have to go, this is bigger than the both of us. I should be in vaudeville. She speaks very little English, and my Thai is not so good. What have we got to talk about anyway? She says she is seventeen years old. I could almost be her father. I am glad I am not. She’s smiling at me at point blank range now and I see her teeth are brilliantly white and she is slightly buck-toothed which makes her even more desirable, I don t know why. Would she like to sit and have a drink with me here on the beach? Yes, she would and she screams at the vendor up by the road. She has the kind of voice that makes fishwives look up in amazement. She screams once more leaving this sunny day in shards all around my beach chair, and I am relieved to see the vendor finally coming down to see what’s happening. Oi asks for a cold coconut and a bowl of noodles and I think about having a beer but I have a coconut instead, the coconut water sweet and strengthening, the flesh young and soft so you can scoop it with a spoon. Oi wants to know how I got all scraped up, and I tell her, although I don´t think she understands completely. Where is my fen, my girlfriend, she asks, and I tell her back in Bangkok. We don´t have much to talk about, we only joke a little and Oi eats her noodles and I go for a little swim.

  The salt water stings in my scrapes and cuts. The rope-burns around my waist hurt like hell. Oi tells me to lie down on my towel and she will rub oil on me. She is so gentle and nice I can’t believe these hands belong to that voice. After she rubs oil on me I rub oil on her, and this feels even better. I wonder how Sunantha’ s sunburn is; I told her she should be more careful, she’d been a long time away from the beach.

  The sun is almost down and Oi says she has to go to work now. When I say nothing, but only wait for Fate to make me an offer I can’t refuse, she says again, more loudly, 7 go work now.’ In case I haven’t yet got the message she adds ‘You pay bar, I no go work now; I go with you.’ So that’s the way it has to be, I tell myself I pay for the food and a route-bus we take into Pattaya where we go to the Hot Licks Go go Bar and I give Oi 200 baht which she gives to the cashier who says you want a beer, but I say I don’t, I don t know why. Now Oi belongs to me for twenty-four hours or so. She goes into a back room of the bar to change into her street togs, which turn out to be a shocking pink cotton halter-top worn together with leopard-skin tights with cutouts either side to show the skin of her haunches. An ornate silver belt holds the tights up. Oh, yeah, and green high-heeled pumps. Holy Jesus, I think. There’s no rhinestone in her navel, though.

  We walk along the beach in Pattaya to see the sky turn red and orange and violet and to see the lights on the boats and along the shore in North Pattaya. She buys a bag of fresh mussels with hot pepper sauce and a baked crab from vendors on the beach and we eat as we go. She won t let me feed myself; she pops morsels into my mouth saying ‘Aroi, delicious!’ each time; we are still short of conversation. One of the mussels is gray, I see by the light of a lamp-standard, and I say V ve heard gray mussels are bad. But she just says’ Aroi’ andl eat it anyway. It tastes exactly like all the others, with the pepper sauce on it. She gives me another mussel and tells me it’s called hoi in Thai. She corrects my tone when I say hoi, and then takes my hand and rubs it over her crotch. ‘Hoi douay” she giggles. This is hoi, too.

  There is the piquant aftertaste of the mussel sauce, the warm velvet night with the stars and the glow of the floodlights from the shrimp boats on the horizon. And this warm, sweet girl with the voice like a catfight hugged up against me as we stroll. But I am sad; I am sad thinking about Oi’s sister who she tells me is fifteen and who works at the Caligula Club. Her momma and poppa live in the Northeast and get money from Oi and her sister every month. I am probably some kind of neurotic. We walk back into South Pattaya, and we go to a seafood restaurant where Oi tells me she wants more hoi, only this time it’s not mussels she wants, but cockles and oysters instead, which are also called hoi. We have besides this a big steamed snapper with grated ginger, green papaya, spring onions, mushrooms, and things, and crab with mustard sauce. Oi asks me if I want beer, and I say I don t. The waitress asks if I want beer and I say we will have two glasses of lime juice. Oi has ice cream for dessert, rum-raisin, while I have a plate of fruit.

  Now we are back in the hotel, and Oi takes off the ivory bracelet I bought her after dinner. She’s turning it in her hands and rubbing it. I don t know why I bought it. Probably because we had nothing to talk about. And because I felt sad and didn’t know how to cheer myself up. Oi is only a bar girl, and she’ll still expect her money in the morning. What’s wrong with me? I never buy anything made from dead elephants because this encourages poaching, and soon there will be no wild elephants. Sunantha always says elephants are like people, and we should never hurt them; she says this with great sincerity, but I’m not sure what she means.

  This is her lucky bracelet, Oi tells me. ‘Suay’, she’d said in the shop when I bought it. ‘Beautiful—suay dee.’ But she’ d really wanted the gold chain necklace. 24 carat. Thais like pure yellow gold—it’s readily negotiable in time of need, which enhances its aesthetic value no end. Oiputs the bracelet down on the night-table and takes her clothes off. I am somewhat disconcerted; I haven t even kissed her yet, and she’s walking to the bathroom in nothing but the briefest of panties and no inhibitions whatsoever. I sit on the bed and think she is astonishingly lovely and sweet. But it is all a bit clinical;! haven t even kissed her yet and she’s naked in my shower. She is lovely, though, and so young and I don’t care if she is a bar girl or not—unspoiled. I´ve forgotten to pick up some condoms. These days you’ve got to be out of your mind not to use condoms with one of these girls. It’s hard to imagine this little package of vitality being sick, but there isn’t necessarily any sign, and the consequences of being unlucky can be extreme. Now what? I wonder if they have some downstairs. Or maybe Oi has some in her bag. I don’t like condoms, though.

  To tell the truth, right now I’m thinking I would rather be going to sleep and getting up early to go windsurfing. After all the sun and exercise and the big feed of seafood I think I can sleep very well, indeed. I can’t talk to this girl, and just at the moment I don t really want to do anything else with her, though she is very ornamental and pleasant to have about the place. Like a Siamese cat, all sculptured form and sinuous grace. She’s sexier than a cat, though. Now she comes out of the bathroom, clean and glowing and fragrant and surprised to find me still dressed, coy rascal that I am. She helps me down to my underwear and escorts me to the shower, where she invades my shorts with much giggling and nicely simulated expressions of delight. She turns on the water and begins to lather some parts of me when suddenly she comes up with an exclamation of a different sort, suspicion and alarm being mostly what she means to convey. Quite rudely, I think, she yanks my reproductive organs out for closer inspection and asks ‘What’s this?’ in a voice which reminds me what she is capable of, vocally. At fir st I am surprised she doesn´ t know what this is, given her line of work, and figuring her to be by no means a virgin. Then I take a closer look myself, and I see what she means. There is a funny rash all over my groin. Like a million ants hav
e been grazing in the area. ‘What ho?’ I think. Then it hits me — Sunantha’s talcum powder. Like a curse. ‘You sick?’ Oi asks, not unreasonably, now that I’ve had a look. But I say no. No, this is merely the aftermath of a nice rub-down with cut-rate mentholated talcum powder exacerbated, possibly, by the stings of a giant jellyfish. ‘You sick,’ she decides, no matter what I tell her.

  It looks as though she’s going to leave, and my feelings about this are mixed, with there being maybe more than a little bit of relief in the mixture somewhere. But she can t leave, it turns out, because she’ s already washed her clothes in the bathroom sink, and they won’t be dry before morning. I tell her mai pen rai, never mind, she can stay with me, not to worry, I won’t make her sick. She probably thinks I’m a weirdo, but she says okay anyway, and we climb into the sack, where I have to wear my shorts. We snuggle up spoon-fashion, and she’s asleep in one minute or less, a nice uncomplicated girl who should be asleep back home with her sister in the Northeast, dreaming of village dances and young suitors with many buffaloes. All in all, I’m glad the way things worked out, I think. After a while, however, propinquity sets in and I get to thinking this girl is considerably more interesting than any cat, Siamese or otherwise. To tell the truth, V m wondering if perhaps my rash hasn t gone away already and maybe she should wake up and we can renegotiate. Only I hate to wake her up, she’s sleeping so soundly, and I don’t have a condom. I am not uncomplicated, I guess, and whatever innocence I still possess it is not of the kind that lets me get to sleep easily this night.

  ‘What’s wrong? Pen yang ngai?’

  I have been dreaming. I have fallen face down into a golden, dusty, sweet-smelling field of sun-dried hay, and all of a sudden I am covered with swarms of big stinging ants, and I am thrashing about wildly trying to get them off me. I wake up to a very dark room, and a frightened voice beside me in the bed is asking me what’s wrong. I am disoriented for a moment, this voice doesn’t sound like Sunantha’s. Then it comes back tome—where I am and who she is.