Private Dancer

by Stephen Leather

  So then he goes to see a fortune teller, and the fortune teller tells him that I was good for the company, but that I shouldn't be involved in the day-to-day running of it. The fortune teller used my date and place of birth in his calculations, but it sounded like hocus pocus to me. Anyway, it effectively meant that I was on sabbatical for six months, and when I went back we had even more staff than before. And things he promised just didn't materialise. He said I'd get a BMW, but the delivery date kept changing and I had to make do with an old Toyota. Then a Beamer arrived, but Saravoot said it was for his wife and that he'd ordered me a Range Rover. I'm still waiting.

  And he told me I'd be getting business class flights home. But whenever I get tickets, they're always economy. There's always an excuse: they booked too late, the travel agent made a mistake, but that's bollocks. There's no point in confronting him because that doesn't work with Thais, they pretend not to understand or they just walk away. So I just grin and bear it.

  The business in Dream Bar was typical Thailand. It was a rip-off joint, but by adopting the right attitude, by not showing aggression, everything was sorted. If we'd shouted or sworn at them, they'd have got violent, guaranteed. And you can't win a fight against Thais because they never fight one on one, they're always mob-handed. For a start there were half a dozen of them in the bar, but even if we'd got past them, there'd have been another ten outside, probably tooled up. There's no shame in Thai culture about ganging up on someone, no Queensbury Rules or anything like that. But fighting is always a last resort. Handle yourself properly, show the requisite amount of respect, pay a little money, smile a lot, and you can talk your way out of any situation.

  Anyway, we walked out of Patpong and caught a taxi in Silom Road. The guy wanted two hundred baht at first but I spoke to him in Thai and he agreed to use the meter.

  Pete wanted to go to Zombie in Nana Plaza - he'd mentioned it two or three times while we were in Safari. I'm not a big fan of Zombie, I prefer Spicy-a-go-go on the opposite side of the plaza. As soon as we walked into the bar, Joy came running over to Pete and practically threw herself at him, hugging him around the neck and kissing his cheek. She was a pretty thing, long hair, quite curvy, terrific breasts. She sat next to Pete and he introduced her to me. She shook my hand. That always makes me smile. There they are, sitting there topless but holding their hands out like we were at a business meeting. Come to think of it, I suppose it was a business meeting at that. Pete had to buy her drinks and she wanted him to pay her bar fine, so it was all about money.

  It's practically impossible to know if the girls in the bars really like us or not. They are working, after all. But I think there's a difference between the way they treat us long-term residents and the way they act with tourists. They know we're going to come in week after week, so I guess they know they can't get away with stinging us. But did Joy love Pete? Tough call. She was very attentive, hanging on his every word, pouring his tonic into his gin, rubbing his leg, leaning her head against his shoulder, but those are standard bargirl tricks. I'm sure she'd act exactly the same way with any other customer. Pete was definitely infatuated with her, though. He couldn't take his eyes off her. And we'd only been there a few minutes before he asked her to go off and put on a bikini top. That was funny, because when we went in she was stark bollock naked, except for a pair of black ankle boots. Must be love, huh?

  Joy's two sisters came over to join us. Sunan and Mon. Sunan was a hard-faced girl in her late twenties, tall with a tight body but cold eyes. She sat next to Nigel and almost immediately asked him to buy her a drink. I hate it when they do that. I don't mind offering, but I don't want to be pushed into it, you know?

  Mon was different. Actually, she looked a bit like Joy. She was older, she said she was twenty seven but I think she's probably about thirty. You could tell from the stretch marks on her stomach that she'd had at least one kid, but she had a beautiful face and a great figure. She was cuddly, you know. A bit like my ex-wife. She didn't hit me for a drink but I bought her four colas and we had quite a decent conversation. Her husband had cleared off not long after her daughter had been born, she said, and she'd had no choice but to work in the bars. She was saving like mad and as soon as she had enough money she was going to go back to Surin. I felt sorry for her and when I left I gave her a thousand baht. Pete stayed on. He'd paid Joy's bar fine and she'd gone off to change. I went along to Fatso's Bar for a nightcap.

  BIG RON

  I get to see all sorts in Fatso's Bar. The works. That's one of the reasons I enjoy running the bar: all human life is here, and a fair sprinkling of sub-human specimens, too.

  There's the tourists: they come here for a couple of weeks, screw themselves stupid and then head back to England or Denmark or Germany or wherever they're from and dream about the wonderful time they had. Most of them reckon it's a sexual paradise, they can't believe what's on offer here. They sit at the bar with stupid grins on their faces, get tanked up and then head on down to the Plaza. The ones I feel sorry for are the ones who fall in love. They meet a girl the first night and they think it's the real thing. They spend every night with the same one, and by the middle of the holiday they're hooked. They fall for whatever line the girl gives them - the sick mother, the younger sister's school uniform, the bank foreclosing on the family farm, the dead water buffalo, there's a million sob stories and I've heard them all. Sometimes they bring the girls here, like they're on a date or something. They sit at the bar, all lovey dovey, holding hands and making eyes at each other. God, it's enough to make me puke. I've given up saying anything. They don't want to be told, they want to believe that they're a knight in shining armour and that the girl doesn't want to work in the bar, that she's only doing it to help out her family. Bollocks. They're hookers and they know exactly what they're doing. I see the same girls in here week after week with different farangs.

  The mainstay of Fatso's Bar are the regulars, though. We serve good, solid English food in the restaurant upstairs or at the bar. Fish and chips. Roast chicken dinners. Gammon steak and chips. None of the Thai crap. Food you can get your teeth into. Our breakfasts are a big puller, too. We've plenty of regulars pop in for a feed before heading off to the office.

  I don't encourage tourists, to be honest. It's all about repeat business so I want guys who live in Bangkok, guys who'll come in four nights a week or more. The guys who have been here, done that and got the fucking T-shirt. Guys like Jimmy. Been here for more than fifteen years now, runs a chain of furniture shops by fax. You won't catch the likes of Jimmy falling in love with a Thai girl. Same with Rick. Been here almost ten years. Sells condom-making machines, does a roaring trade. Doesn't believe in them himself, none of us do. I've fucked more than two thousand women and a fair amount of katoeys too, and never got anything more serious than NSU. Well, there was the genital warts, a bugger to shift they were, but I don't really count them.

  Rick's the same as Jimmy and me: we go to the bars, choose a girl, and screw them. No attachments, no relationships, they're slappers, pure and simple. That's the only way to treat them.

  In fact, the longer a guy stays here, the more he's likely to go with katoeys, because you know where you are with a katoey. A katoey's a transsexual. But don't get me wrong, it's not like going with a guy in a dress. They're fucking lovely here. Drop dead gorgeous some of them. They take hormones to grow breasts, or have implants, and then they have their dicks cut off. Sex with them is something else, I can tell you. For a start, they give the best blow jobs. That's a fact. You've never had a blow job until you've had a katoey go down on you. You see, a guy knows what a guy likes. You don't have to fuck them, though Jimmy and Rick do it all the time, whether or not the geezer's got a dick. I don't screw them much, what with me being thirty stone and all, but I always fuck one up the arse on World Aids Day. Point of principle.

  The ones who get into real trouble are the ones who fall between the tourists and the guys like Jimmy and Rick. They've been here for a few months, maybe
longer, and they think they know it all. They think they understand Thais, they probably learn to speak a bit of the language, and they let their defences down. That's when they get fucked. There was a Jap guy we knew, came over to work for Toyota. Fell in love with a Thai girl, bought her a house and some land up near Chiang Mai. Gave money to her family, even bought them a pick up truck and a couple of motorcycles. The girl must have been the screw of the century because the Jap decides he's gonna marry her. He goes up to Chiang Mai, and there's a huge wedding party. Food, booze, the works. The whole family gets legless, a great time is had by all. In the middle of the festivities, a Thai guy goes up to the Jap. ‘You can go now,’ says the Thai.

  ‘What do you mean?’ says the Jap. ‘This is my wedding.’

  ‘No,’ says the Thai. ‘This is my house. On my land. And that's my wife. Now you can fuck off.’

  And that was that. The Jap came running back to Bangkok with his tail between his legs. Went back to Japan a few months later, a broken man. He'd been ripped off from Day One.

  You have to realise that basically Thais don't like us. They don't want us in their country. They won't let us buy land, and we have to leave every few months to get a new visa. If it wasn't for the fact that they want our money, they wouldn't even allow us in the country. They don't like the way we look, the way we smell, the way we behave. I absolutely one hundred per cent guarantee you that if a Thai girl says she loves you, she's lying. You see, love doesn't mean the same to a Thai that it means to us. When we say we love someone, we mean we want to spend the rest of our lives with them, we want to have children with them, that we think they're fun, that we like the way they look, the way they screw. But a Thai, when a Thai girl says she loves you, what she means is, I want you to take care of me. And that's all she means.

  There's a guy comes in here to drink from time to time. Grows peanuts up north. He came over here after he left the Army. Met a girl, set her up in a house in Bangkok. Foreigners can't buy land in Thailand and this was a townhouse so it had to be in her name. They started up an import-export business and he was as happy as Larry. Then after two years he went to Malaysia on a visa run. He was only away a couple of days. When he got back she'd sold the house and the business and pissed off. He paid a private eye to track her down. She was back in her village with her husband and two kids. Damn near destroyed him, it did. He started drinking, pissed away what money he had left, and now he's up north, literally working for peanuts. Just another member of the legion of Sad Fucks.

  PETE

  Every night at eleven o'clock, all the girls in Zombie, those who hadn't had their bar fines paid, had to go up on one of the two stages and dance for about ten minutes. It was a hell of a sight, more than a hundred girls, most of them naked, dancing so close together that they were almost touching. It was a way of showing the customers what was available, I guess. I used to hate it. It was like a cattle market. Joy always used to stand next to her sisters and if I was there she'd grin and wave, but I never felt comfortable watching her. And if I didn't go to the bar, I always had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach at eleven, knowing that she was up on the stage and that guys were ogling her.

  After the mass dancing, there were a few shows. Nothing to compare with what went on in the upstairs bars in Patpong - a lesbian show and a show where one of the girls would paint another with luminous paint.

  One night, as Joy sat next to me watching the lesbian show, she put a hand on my thigh. ‘What you think, Pete?’ she asked, nodding at the stage. Two girls, both friends of Joy, were writhing on a blanket. On the other stage, two girls were doing a similar show, trying in vain to synchronise their movements with a slow Thai love song.

  ‘It's okay,’ I said, not sure what she meant.

  ‘Mamasan want me do,’ said Joy.

  ‘The lesbian show? Why?’

  Joy beamed. ‘She say I very pretty. Farangs want to see girl with long hair do lesbian show. She want me do with Wan.’

  ‘What does Wan think?’ I asked.

  ‘She need money. She want to do.’

  ‘How much do they pay if you do the show?’

  ‘Ten thousand baht.’

  I was surprised. That was a lot of money, more than a good secretary would earn in a month working for a multinational company in Bangkok. ‘How many shows?’ I asked.

  ‘Lesbian show every night. Then go upstairs to G-spot for shower show. What you think, Pete? If you not want me do, I not do.’

  She looked at me earnestly, waiting to see what I'd say. I felt flattered because it was clear she was serious. It really was up to me. I watched the two girls on the stage. One was lying on her back while the other licked her breasts and fondled her between the legs. ‘You can do that?’ I asked Joy.

  She nodded. ‘Easy,’ she said.

  Two fat Germans were leaning forward, leering at the girls. I didn't like the idea of Joy performing, but it was just a performance. Acting. And I figured that the more money she earned from 'legitimate' work, the less incentive there'd be for her to let someone pay her bar fine.

  ‘What you think?’ she asked.

  ‘I'm not sure,’ I said. I explained my reservations about farangs watching her with another girl.

  ‘Same dancing,’ she said.

  I wasn't sure if it was. When she was dancing she was always with other girls, often more than a dozen. Doing the lesbian show put her centre stage.

  ‘Do you want to do it?’ I asked.

  ‘Up to you,’ she said.

  The girls on the stage changed position, one squatted over the other, balancing herself by holding one of the silver poles, and began to moan with simulated pleasure as the other used her tongue. The Germans leered and leaned forward for an even closer view.

  ‘You wouldn't be shy?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘It not real,’ she said. ‘Same movie star.’ She was right. It was acting, a show for the tourists.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Why not try it? See if you like it.’

  Joy nodded. ‘Okay, Pete. I do for you.’

  Two days later it was Joy's first appearance as a 'special artist'. Her new role also meant that her bar fine had increased - before midnight it now cost a thousand baht to buy her out because if she wasn't there someone else would have to be found to take her place. After midnight, her bar fine dropped to seven hundred baht.

  The lights dimmed and Joy and Wan skipped up onto the stage. Wan was a cute nineteen-year-old with shoulder length hair and an upturned nose that had cost her twenty thousand baht from one of Bangkok's top plastic surgeons. She was one of Joy's closest friends and they often arrived at Zombie together.

  Wan spread a tartan blanket over the dancefloor, then the two girls took off their leopard-print sarongs and bikinis to hoots and cheers from the farangs. The slow music started and Joy and Wan went into an unconvincing clinch. Joy reached up and held on to two of the silver poles, while Wan began to plant small kisses over Joy's breasts. Joy looked across at me and began to giggle. In fact she giggled throughout the show. Wan did, too. They knew all the moves, but it was clear that they weren't taking it seriously. At one point the mamasan, a fifty-something old bat with a hairy mole on her left cheek, shouted something to the girls and they began to fake orgasms, but after a few minutes they both collapsed into giggles again.

  When the show was over, Wan gathered up the blanket and Joy pulled on her bikini and shawl and scampered over to where I was sitting. ‘What you think?’ she asked.

  ‘You kept laughing,’ I said.

  ‘Jug ga jee,’ she said. Ticklish. ‘You can come to G-Spot with me?’ she asked. ‘I have to do shower show and I shy go alone.’

  G-Spot was one of the upstairs bars. Along one wall was a glass panel behind which were a number of shower heads. I'd been up a few times to see the shower shows, but basically all you're looking at is a line of girls getting wet. It wasn't much of a turn on, though tourists and first-timers seem to get a kick out of it.

&
nbsp; I paid my bill and Joy took my hand and led me out of Zombie. Several heads turned to watch us go. Joy was one of the sexiest girls in Nana Plaza and in her green bikini top and with her leopard-print sarong tied around her waist, she was drop-dead gorgeous. I was proud to be seen with her, and even prouder that she wanted me to go with her.

  Joy stood by me while she waited to be called for the show. I bought her a cola and she sipped it through a straw. G-Spot wasn't an especially popular bar: most men preferred to stick to the ground floor. I don't know if it was because they couldn't be bothered with the stairs but for most visitors to Nana Plaza, the upper floors were undiscovered country. As a result, the prettiest girls tended to work on the ground floor where the bars were busier. I could tell from the way Joy was preening herself that she thought she was a cut above the girls who worked in G-Spot. Maybe that was why she'd brought me with her, to show to the girls that she had a farang boyfriend, another sign of her status.

  Several guys tried to make eye contact with Joy but she pointedly ignored them. She leaned against me, then turned and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Sorry,’ she laughed, wiping away the lipstick with her thumb.

  Half a dozen girls made their way to a curtained door. Joy patted me on the thigh. ‘Okay, I go now,’ she said. She tottered across the bar on her impossibly high heels. She turned and waved before disappearing through the curtain.

  A few minutes later the main lights dimmed and spotlights came on, illuminating the showers. Water began to spurt out of the shower heads, then one by one the girls came out in single file. There was laughter all around me. Guys were pointing and shaking their heads and the bargirls were jumping up and down and shrieking. Joy was wearing a shower cap. The girls took bars of soap and began lathering themselves. Joy followed their example, but did her best to keep her head out of the water.