Private Dancer

by Stephen Leather

  Extract from CROSS-CULTURAL COMPLICATIONS OF PROSTITUTION IN THAILAND by PROFESSOR BRUNO MAYER

  Self-mutilation is a common phenomenon amongst the girls involved in prostitution. Many have scars on their wrists, not from serious suicide attempts but from superficial cuts, usually carried out in a rage under the influence of drugs or drink. For much of their lives the girls have little or no control over their environment or their relationships. Women are generally subservient to men in Thai culture, and throughout their childhoods they are under strict control as to where they can go and what they can do. In the poorer areas of the country, especially in rural communities, sexual abuse is common. Many are abused by their brothers or fathers or by male relatives, actions over which they have no control. Often the girls themselves are unwilling to complain of the abuse, accepting it as the norm.

  Even when the girls leave the environment of their village and move to Bangkok, the family continues to exert control on them with requests for financial assistance. No matter how much the girls earn, they are often unable to save because of the family's ever-increasing demands. In an effort to establish some sort of meaningful relationship, the girls often become involved with Thai men working in the bar environment - DJs, waiters, and touts. Often these men have been working in the bars much longer than the girls and tend to be older and more experienced. As a result, they are adept at getting the girls to give them money and early on in the relationship they begin to exert control over them. The girls then find themselves trapped between the demands of their family and the demands of their newly-acquired boyfriend.

  To aggravate the situation, the Thai boyfriends usually refuse to wear condoms, which frequently results in pregnancy. If the girl keeps the baby, as many do, she has yet another demand on her, emotionally and financially. All through her life, the girl has little or no control over her surroundings, and as a result anger and resentment builds up until it cannot be contained any longer. But when it is finally released, it is often directed inwards, at herself. The girl feels that she is worthless, that in some way she is responsible for her own predicament, and as such she tries to hurt, to punish, herself.

  JOY

  Pretty much all the girls in my family have cut their wrists at some point or another. Except Sunan, she never loses her temper. Everything Sunan does is thought out in advance. Me, I'm totally different, I do all sorts of crazy things on the spur of the moment, especially if I've been drinking or taken a yar bar tablet. Like the time I got back to the room early and found Park in bed with Daeng. Daeng's a little slut, she's only seventeen but she'll have sex with anything in trousers. She's a nymphomaniac and she's bar fined every day that she works, sometimes two or three times a day. But twenty-odd farangs a week isn't enough and so she decides she's going to seduce my man. Pete had come into the bar just before eight and had paid my bar fine. We'd gone to dinner, but he wasn't saying much. I did my best to lift his spirits but there was something wrong with whatever book it was that he's working on - to be honest I was having trouble understanding him because his Thai is awful - but I nodded and sympathised and tried my best to make him feel better.

  He didn't want to go short-time so he gave me a thousand baht and we got into a taxi and I dropped him off at the Dynasty Hotel. I thought about going back to Zombie but it was Park's day off so I thought I'd go home and surprise him. Take him out for a meal, or maybe go and see a movie. He was surprised all right. He was lying on his back with Daeng on top of him. She was screaming so much that they didn't hear me open the door.

  I could have killed her. In fact, I almost did. I took off one of my high heels and belted her across the head with it. Park didn't notice at first because his eyes were closed and she was making so much noise in the first place, but I slapped her again with the shoe and this time I almost broke her nose. I started calling her all the names under the sun. Park leapt off the bed, throwing Daeng against the wall, but it wasn't him I wanted to hurt, it was her. Park should have known better but when it comes down to it he's a man and men think with their dicks. If it's offered to them on a plate they're not going to turn it down.

  I kept hitting Daeng until she ran out, stark naked. I threw her things after her and told her that if she set foot in my room again I'd kill her. Park was laughing, so I started shouting at him, waving my shoe and threatening to hit him with it. He just laughed in my face, said that she wasn't important, that it was only sex and what did I expect, I was out working, he was a man with needs, what else was he to do? I really lost it then. I threw my shoe at him and told him what a lazy, ungrateful pile of buffalo shit he was. Who did I give my money to? Who paid for his clothes, his drugs, his motorcycle? He earned five thousand baht a month as a DJ, that wasn't enough to pay for his booze. I paid the rent on the room, I paid for everything we had. The more I shouted, the more he laughed, and eventually he walked out.

  I went into the bathroom and cut my wrist, three times. I'd done it before just after my mother died, and no, I wasn't trying to kill myself, I just wanted to show how angry I was. There was a lot of blood so I wrapped a towel around it and held my arm up in the air.

  Sunan had heard the noise and she came around and helped bandage my wrist. She told me how stupid I was, that Park was a good man, that I had to understand that sometimes men strayed, that was their nature. She said that Park cared about me, that he loved me, loved me a million times more than the farangs who paid my bar fine. The farangs would come and go, farangs would always lie to me, but Park was Thai, Park was my man.

  Park didn't come back for two days. When he did he had a red rose and he gave it to me and said he was sorry, that Daeng had led him on, that he didn't know what he was doing and he'd never do it again. He made love to me so tenderly that I started to cry, and he kissed my bandaged wrist and told me that he loved me and that I was never to hurt myself again.

  PETE

  I bumped into Nigel in Fatso's Bar, nursing a Singha beer. I told him about Joy cutting her wrist and he was really dismissive about it, said that Thai girls were always cutting themselves, usually after they'd had too much to drink.

  I wanted to tell him that Joy was different but I could see that he was drunk so I didn’t bother. I wanted to tell him that not all Thai girls were the same. Joy was different. She was a bargirl, but she wasn't a bargirl from choice: the life had been forced upon her by circumstances. She was making the best of a bad job, that was the way I looked at it.

  The one thing I wasn't sure of was what she thought of me. In many ways she behaved like a girlfriend. She telephoned me pretty much every day, just to chat, to ask what I was doing, how I was getting on with the book. I'd found a copy of the guide to London that I'd written a few years earlier and I'd given it to her. She'd been thrilled and had gone through it, looking at the pictures and asking me questions. My picture was at the front and she'd giggled at it, telling me that I looked much younger in real life. She kept asking when the book on Thailand would be finished and if I'd be writing about her.

  Sometimes we'd go out together during the day, usually to one of the Robinsons department stores. She never asked me to buy her anything, but I always did. Usually clothes, or a music tape. Once I got her a CD player. She never pestered me, though, she wasn't like some of the girls I saw with farangs, dragging them by the hand to the jewellery or perfume counters. Sometimes we'd go and eat ice cream together, and a couple of times we went to the movies. But she always had to leave by 5pm because she had to go home and shower and get ready for work. If I didn't want her to go to work, I had to pay her bar fine. Always. Joy explained that if her bar fine wasn't paid, the mamasan would take the money off her wages. I knew she didn't earn a great living working in the bar, and it didn't seem fair that she should be penalised for going out with me, so I paid. I didn't feel good about having to pay her each time I made love to her, but I knew that she needed money. That was why she was in the bar in the first place. I kept asking her if she loved me or my money, which was a
stupid question, right? She'd laugh and she'd say ‘I love you number one, Pete, but number two I love your money.’ I really do believe that if I stopped giving her money she'd still see me, but I knew that that wouldn't be fair. It'd be the equivalent of me writing and not getting paid. I mean, I might do it for a friend, but I'd still have to work, I'd still have to find someone to pay me for what I did. So I guess I justified it to myself by thinking that if she was working as a prostitute, it was better that it was me who was giving her money and not a succession of strangers.

  The thing is, it didn't feel like prostitution. It didn't really feel like I was paying for sex. Well, I mean I was, but it was never as if she demanded money, or withheld sex if she didn't get it. But I'd always give her money after we left the short-time hotel. Sometimes two thousand baht, sometimes one thousand, but usually fifteen hundred, the amount she'd asked for the first time I'd slept with her. When I gave her less than fifteen hundred baht she never complained, but she always seemed extra pleased when I gave her more.

  I'd never paid for sex before I went to Thailand. The thought had never crossed my mind. It's not that I'm against prostitution, because I'm not. I believe it should be legalised everywhere, legalised and regulated. There are plenty of men around, the crippled, the old, the ugly, who probably have a tough time finding a sexual partner, so doesn't it make sense that such people should be able to purchase sexual gratification from medically-examined professionals? And wouldn't it give potential rapists and the likes a safe outlet for their urges? That's what I believed, though I never thought that I'd be the one to be paying for sex.

  With Joy, I didn't feel as if I was going with a prostitute, it felt as if I was helping a girlfriend who didn't have as much money as I did. I'd helped out girlfriends in London, paid their dental bills if they were short of cash, picked up the bill in restaurants and so on. I'd lent money to a couple - one had needed money to attend an interview in Glasgow, another never told me why she needed the money but said it was a matter of life and death - and both times I'd handed the cash over not expecting to see it back. Sure, I'd never handed them money after sleeping with them - God, I could only imagine what an English girl would do if I did that - but then they weren't as strapped for cash as Joy.

  And Joy never made me feel like I was a customer. She didn't hustle me for drinks, in fact sometimes when I offered she'd refuse. Generally I'd buy her three or four because part of her earnings came from commission, and obviously if she was sitting with me she was giving up the opportunity of earning money elsewhere. She never pestered me to pay her bar fine, either, though she was always pleased when I did. I guess on average I bar fined her twelve to fifteen times a month. Often we'd just go and eat, or visit another bar so she could see her friends. Sometimes I'd go and have a drink in another bar before going to Zombie, usually if I was with one of the guys from Fatso's - Jimmy, Rick, Nigel, Bruce or Matt. Whenever I did, girls would always come over and wag a finger at me and accuse me of being a butterfly, of being unfaithful to Joy. I'd always laugh and deny it. I knew better than to bar fine another girl in Nana Plaza - there was an underground communication system that worked at something approaching the speed of light. Early on in our relationship I'd gone into Spicy-a-go-go and bought drinks for a girl called Mai. She had the longest hair I'd ever seen, longer even than Joy's, and I guess I was thinking about paying her bar fine, out of curiosity more than anything, but before I could take it any further, Joy appeared in the bar with her friend, Apple. Joy was wearing a long green cocktail dress that she often wore to work. Apple saw me and said 'sawasdee ka' but Joy didn't seem to notice me. Actually, I was pretty sure she was pretending not to see me. She did a quick circuit of the bar and then left. I paid my bill, said goodbye to Mai and hurried over to Zombie. As soon as I went in Joy came over and hugged me. She'd already changed into her dancing gear. I bought her a drink and asked her what she'd been doing in Spicy-a-go-go.

  ‘I go see my friend,’ she said and smiled sweetly. She'd known all right, someone from Spicy-a-go-go had called her and told her that I was getting friendly with another girl and she'd moved to protect her interests. I was flattered. If she was jealous, it showed she cared.

  I was jealous, too, but I didn't know what to do about it. I liked her, I liked her a lot. It was more than like, it was almost love, but I was holding myself back because of what she did, of what she'd done. She was a hooker, for God's sake, and whenever I felt myself falling in love with her I tried to pull myself back to reality. The guys were always telling me horror stories about farangs who got involved with bargirls. Most of the girls had Thai husbands or boyfriends, they said. Most spent their money on drugs or gambling. And no matter how much you thought you could trust them, they'd rip you off eventually. I'd look at Joy and I'd think no, she was different, but at the back of my mind was always the worry that maybe she was lying to me, that I was only a customer and it was only my money she cared about.

  Part of me wanted to ask her to give up work, because I hated the thought of her going with other men and I hated the fact that she danced. Early on in the relationship I'd started paying her a thousand baht a month to keep her knickers on while she was dancing. Sunan and Mon still danced naked, and I know Joy was happy that I'd made the gesture. I knew she'd be even happier if I gave her enough money to not have to work at all, but that was going to cost me tens of thousands of baht a month and I was still wary of making that sort of commitment.

  I was pretty sure she didn't take drugs. I'd asked her several times and she'd always denied it vehemently, and there were no needle marks on her arms. She said she didn't have a Thai boyfriend. She said she'd had one in Surin, but that had ended when she'd moved to Bangkok. I guess I believed her. She was in the bar working for eight hours a night and she didn't finish until half past two in the morning, and she telephoned me most days so I couldn't see how she'd have time for a boyfriend or a husband. Plus she always had my photograph in her wallet and I couldn't see how a Thai boyfriend could put up with that.

  One thing that did worry me was that she'd never let me see her room. She said it was in Suphan Kwai, not far from the Chicago karaoke bar, and that it was a slum. Sa-lam is the word in Thai. Almost the same. She said to get to the building where the room was, she had to walk down a narrow alley and that it would be dangerous for me. And she said the room was small and dirty and that she was ashamed of it. ‘I not have money, Pete,’ she said. ‘I not have nice room. I shy, Pete.’

  I told her time and time again that I didn't care, that I wanted to see where she lived, but she always refused. She said there was no phone in the room, so I couldn't call her there. There was a phone in the building, though, and she used that to call me sometimes, but I couldn't use it to contact her, she said.

  I asked her why she didn't find herself a room in a nicer part of town if where she was staying was so bad. She'd shrug and say that she didn't have any money. I could never understand that. I'd been taking Thai lessons at the American University Alumni School and I knew that the teachers there earned less than Joy, but they all seemed to have quite a high standard of living. They earned about twelve thousand baht a month and all were well dressed, lived in decent apartments, and several had cars and mobile telephones.

  Joy's salary was about five thousand baht a month. Six thousand including the money I gave her so she didn't have to dance naked. The bar gave her a hundred baht each time I paid her bar fine, so that was another thousand baht a month, minimum. She normally got five or six drinks a day, so that was another four thousand baht a month. That meant that from the bar alone she got eleven thousand baht, almost the same as the teachers earned. But I gave Joy another fifteen thousand baht a month. Even if no one else paid her bar fine, Joy was earning twenty six thousand baht a month, more than a nurse, several times more than a policewoman, not much less than a doctor. So where did the money go?

  Asking her just resulted in shrugs and shakes of the head. She didn't know. Bangkok was expensiv
e. She had to get a taxi to and from work, and each journey cost more than a hundred baht. Six thousand baht a month in taxi fares? That was crazy, I said. Why didn't she get the bus? She said a bus would take too long, and it would be dangerous at night. I asked her why she didn't get a room closer to Nana Plaza and she said that all her friends were in Suphan Kwai, and so were her sisters. She had to pay for a motorcycle, she said. Five thousand baht every month. And she had to send money back to Surin to help her family. Discussions about money always seemed to go around in circles, getting nowhere. One thing was for sure - she never had enough, no matter how much I gave her.

  JOY

  I don't know where my money goes, I really don't. It slips through my fingers like water. I tried explaining to Pete, but he doesn't understand me. How could he? He's a rich farang, he can't know what it's like to be from a poor family, to have nothing. How much did he have to pay for his ticket from England? Twenty thousand baht? Thirty thousand? And it costs him a thousand baht a night to stay at the Dynasty Hotel. That's thirty thousand baht every month. And he spends money in the bars every night. Hundreds of baht. One night he sat down with a pen and paper and asked me to tell him how much I earned and how much I spent, like he was an accountant or something. I was really offended but I didn't say anything, I tried to make a joke of it. He told me that I'd be better off if I lived closer to Zombie, but that would mean I wouldn't be near my friends. I think he wants me to sit in a room all on my own, waiting for him. He's crazy. He kept asking me why I wasn't saving money. Saving what? I have to pay for my room, I have to pay for taxi fares. There's food, make-up, shampoo, clothes. Bangkok's an expensive city.