A few portraits of fellows seen on Moon Mueng Street - denizens of the meetup bars.
Deep wrinkles – the signature of a life of sun-worship. Walnut-coloured kopf, steel-rimmed spectacled German lone wolf. Graven expression of dissatisfaction might just be a ‘don’t even think of talking to me’ face. Heavy-lidded water-coloured eyes looking at the back of his skull. Grey, freshly brushcut hair. Hunched over his boiled potatoes and sausage, rolling his jaws like a ruminant, drawing slowly, continuously on his Marlboro with jaundiced fingers of his right hand.
Grizzled, ectomorphic Brit with a half-hearted comb-over that hovers like a chinook cloud above a corduroy brow. Sucking unconsciously on his snaggly, ancient-ivory teeth, nursing a Chang beer. Legs crossed prissily, leaning capaciously back, looking for all the world like a failed playboy – David Niven era. Armpits hooked around the chair back. Thousand-yard stare that occasionally snaps to a saccadic tracking of a nubile Thai girl passing by. The faint lip-curl; is that ennui or disapproval or is he a woman-hater looking for a woman he can hate?
Angry Cockney in a morning cafe with his cronies. 60-somethings. He with a once-upon-a-mullet. Long, stringy kinked hair to his shoulders. What’s missing is the roof - something reminiscent of a Bozo the Clown tonsure rises like a feathery grey-brown flame above his shiny pate. He has a large hook nose and deepset eyes, looking for all the world like Fagan might have - except tanned. He has a serpentine vein bulging on the right side of his towering brow, pulsing in the warm, golden morning light on Ratchamakan. Gigantic eyebrows flex and wave as he talks angrily to his mate – two peas in a pod, these fellows. Every second word is ‘fuck or fucking’ but he’s not talking about conquests, he’s angry about some compatriot who has bagged his broad. ‘Fuck ‘im, ‘e can ‘ave ‘er if ‘e wants ‘er!’ Lots more where she came from.’ Though he broadcasts his voice for at least 20m he hunches forward conspiratorially to his friend, looking up regularly to see if he is being overheard. When a tiny young girl; perhaps five years old, who clearly knows him, appears, he changes his demeanour altogether, smiling and teasing the child, passes her some small money – brings out an instinctual reaction of fear and aggression in me.
Baggy-eyed dissolute American, 50-something and the same number overweight. Glistening with sweat and breathing audibly though he his only effort in the past 5 minutes has been raising a glass. He sits in a nook next to the bar, tucked into a little niche where he can watch but is not easily seen. His shirt is stained from perspiration under his arms and near the folds of his gut. Three-button poly-knit striped golf jersey circa 1985. He sits drinking doubles of Jim Beam, scratching his thready scalp in abstract contemplation – of what? His face is the colour of smoked salmon, three-day growth. He occasionally tries on Archie Bunker grimaces to no one, clearly carrying on an internal dialogue; with mother, wife or super-ego?
Younger American leaning hungrily or angrily towards a homely, pudgy Thai woman. Heavily tatted arms, wearing a grimy white wife-beater. Burn-victim eyelids with no eyelashes, like he got caught in a tank in Afghanistan or something blew up in his face. His face doesn’t quite work correctly but I can’t decide what’s wrong. Not enough muscles working? He has a sort of frozen rictus - may be an attempt at a smile. He’s gesturing much too aggressively with his hands and arms, leaning in from time to time as if to head-butt her - so the face and the body-language don’t match. When he laughs it’s more like the bark of a fox. She is forced-smiling, trying to appear to enjoy his conversation – her fingertips play softly on the top her bottle of beer but I suspect she doesn’t understand much of what he says. She nods or answers monosyllabically from time to time. She is turned ever-so-slightly away as if she is prepared to bolt if something lights his fuse.
These men have travelled a very long distance for cheap sex – assuming they don’t get ripped off. Western society doesn’t accommodate the needs or wants they have. Sex is dirty, sinful, forbidden where they come from. In truth one can purchase sex anywhere on earth. So what is the reason they’re here. Is Thailand the Zellers of the sex world? Are they far enough off-radar that they feel safe? There are very many sixty-something lone-wolves here – one wouldn’t describe them as happy-go-lucky types. Do they come here to retire and drift around, spending their mean budgets on an occasional rub and tug?
What is the legacy of this? Thailand must owe a significant percentage of its GDP to the working women who perform their services for the comfort and pleasure of Western males. What do the young Thai males think? Is the famous Thai smile an endangered artifact?
Khabkun Kraph.
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