Private Dancer (4 page)

Joy explained that she'd had a customer who'd paid her bar fine so that he could take her to dinner.

“Are you sure it was only dinner?” I interrupted.

She raised her eyebrows and sighed in mock annoyance. "Pete, why I lie to you? Only dinner,

okay?"

She started grinning again, and continued her story. After dinner the man realised that he didn't have enough money for the one thousand baht tip he'd promised her. She held up the chain. “But he had this around his neck and he gave it to me. He said he wanted to sell it, but didn't know how. Pete, he said I can sell it and keep half. He's coming here tomorrow for the money.“ She leaned forward, her eyes wide. ”Pete, I can keep five thousand baht.”

She spent the rest of the evening showing the gold to all her friends and relating the story of her good fortune. She was like a little kid who'd been told that Christmas was coming early this year.

The next evening I went back to Zombie and found her sitting in a corner, her eyes red from crying. She grabbed me tightly and put her tear-stained cheek against my neck. “Why farang lie?” she asked me between sobs.

“What do you mean?” I asked. She felt so small in my arms, small and soft and vulnerable.

“Gold not real,” she said, hugging me around the waist.

She'd taken the chain to the gold shop and the woman there had laughed in her face. It was fake, not worth more than fifty baht. It wasn't even gold-plated.

“Why farang lie?” she kept repeating between her sobs. I paid her bar fine and took her out for dinner at the German restaurant in Soi 4 and kept telling her silly stories until her smile returned. I didn't take her to a short-time hotel that night because I could see she was still upset,

so I gave her two thousand baht and let her go back to the bar and her friends.

I went back to the Dynasty Hotel to work on the book. It was going really well. During the daytime I was visiting hotels and getting their details, checking rooms, facilities and prices, and in the early evenings I was checking out restaurants, usually eating in one and getting menus from several others. Then I'd go and see Joy. Most evenings I'd pay her bar fine, but we didn't always go to a short-time hotel. Sometimes we'd just sit at one of the outside bars and talk, or go for a late-night Thai snack. She was introducing me to all sorts of dishes I'd never had before, the real hot, spicy food that most farangs don't get to experience.

I still hadn't taken her back to the Dynasty. Joy was very pretty, but she dressed like most of the girls who danced in Nana Plaza - tight jeans, high heels and a T-shirt - and she had just a bit too much make up. To put it bluntly, she looked like a hooker, and I didn't want the staff at the hotel to see me taking a hooker back to my room. She didn't seem to mind.

JOY I should have known better than to trust a farang. I'm not the first girl to be conned and I won't be the last, but I learned my lesson, that's for sure. He was from Switzerland, an old guy, big and fat like they all are, and he smelled like he hadn't showered for a week. He had a thick gold chain around his wrist and the big one around his neck, the one that he gave me, so I figured he had money. He bought me five colas and when I put my hand on his crotch I could feel that he was hard already so I knew he'd want to pay bar for me. I figured Pete wouldn't be around until ten and it was only eight so I gave him a couple of rubs and asked if he wanted to go short-time.

We went to Uncle Rey's Guest House, it's only a five-minute walk from Nana Plaza. He wouldn't shower or anything, just stripped off and lay down on his back like a huge beached whale. He was covered with hair, grey and curly, and he lay there playing with himself while I undressed. His prick was huge, and thick, and it seemed to get bigger and bigger as he played with it. I wanted to shower but he said he didn't want me to. He said he wanted me to suck him. I shook my head and said I didn't do that and I tried to get on top of him. He pushed me down and tried to force me, but I kept turning my head away. It stank, like old fish. He kept trying to force me, but I wasn't having any of it. Eventually he sat up and took off the gold chain. He told me that he wanted to sell it, and that if I sold it for him I could keep half. It looked real enough, and it felt real, so I put the chain around my neck. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on not being sick. He started to thrust himself in and out and I almost choked. I could feel him start to come so I tried to pull my head away but he put his hands on the back of my head. I actually didn't resist too hard because I figured I was getting five thousand baht. Anyway, he came in my mouth and then held me there until I swallowed.

I dressed and rushed out of the room while he was still on the bed because I didn't want him to change his mind and ask for his gold back.

When I got home that night I gave the chain to Park. He put it on and made love to me all night. He looked really good in it and I suggested he keep it but he said that no, we needed the money. I wanted to keep it all but Park said it would be better to play the Swiss guy along, give him his five thousand baht share and then get him to keep paying my bar fine and taking me short-time. We'd get the five thousand baht back within a week, with more to come. The old ones are the easiest, they're so quick to fall in love. All it takes is a few sweet words. Park went to the gold shop first thing in the morning, and when he came back he was furious.

He slapped me, hard, and said that the woman in the shop had threatened to call the police. She thought he was trying to con her. Park punched me in the stomach and threw me to the ground,

then spat at me, calling me a stupid whore and a bitch and water buffalo, then he kicked me until Sunan came in from next door and told him to stop.

I was sore, but there were no bruises. Park was good at that, at hitting without leaving a mark.

Sunan helped me up and Park stormed out. He didn't come back for two days, and that hurt a lot more than the beating.

We got our own back on the Swiss guy eventually. I told all my friends what had happened and a month or so later I got a phone call from a girl in the Suzie Wong Bar in Soi Cowboy. Park and five of his friends went around on motorcycles and waited until he came out. They attacked him with pieces of lead pipe, broke both his arms and knocked out most of his teeth. Park stole the man's wallet and we all went to the Chicago Karaoke Bar and drank three bottles of Black Label between us. It was a great night.

PETE One night when I arrived at Zombie, Joy had three red slashes on her left wrist. I could see them from more than ten feet away, and Joy made no move to conceal them. She smiled and waved and as soon as her dancing shift was over she rushed down from the stage and sat next to me. I held her arm and looked at the cuts. They were deep gashes, a vibrant red against her brown skin. She smiled.

“Why?” I asked.

She shrugged as if a suicide attempt was of absolutely no importance.

“Come on, Joy. What happened?”

“My brother crashed motorcycle,” she said.

“Was he hurt?”

She shook her head.

I nodded at her mutilated wrist. “Why did you do that?”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Motorcycle hurt a lot,” she said. “Very expensive.”

“How much?”

She sniffed. “Six thousand baht,” she said.

I was astonished. “You cut your wrist because your motorcycle needed repairing?”

“Pete,” she said. “I have no money.” I put my arms around her and hugged her and her tears fell on to my jeans. I couldn't make sense of it, why on earth would she cut her wrists because of a bike? Besides, she'd said the bike was still up in Surin.

“How did you know what had happened?” I asked.

“My brother telephone me. He say he very sorry but he have no money.” The tears started again.

“Joy, don't worry,” I said. “I'll give you the money.”

She sat up and looked at me in astonishment. Then she threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around me. She stayed like that for several minutes, her soft, wet cheeks pressed against my neck.

I bought her a cola and then went down the road to the Thai Farmers Bank ATM. I withdrew seven thousand baht on my Lloyds Visa card and gave six thousand to Joy. She dashed off to her locker and didn't come back for ten minutes. When she did return, she'd redone her make-up and the tears had gone. She squeezed up next to me and put her hand on my thigh. I was happy that I could make such a difference to her life. A relatively small amount of money to me, but to Joy it was a month's wages. It was worth it to see her smiling and laughing with her friends.

I took her arm again and looked at the cuts. There were no stitches, but they weren't as deep as they'd looked at first sight. Next to the fresh cuts were three old scars. I ran my finger along the raised scar tissue. “When did you do this?” I asked.

“When I fifteen,” she said.

“Why?”

“I not happy,” she said.

I smiled at the simplicity of her reply. Her honesty was sometimes so childlike that I had an overwhelming urge to protect her from the world. Of course she'd been unhappy, why else would she have tried to kill herself?

“Why weren't you happy?”

“My mother die. I want to be with my mother,” she said.

“Why did she die?”

Joy patted her own stomach. “Something wrong inside,” she said.

“Cancer?”

She frowned, then nodded.

“Wow,” I said. “I'm sorry.” I put my arm around her shoulders. A stocky Thai guy with pockmarked skin thrust a bunch of roses in front of me but I shook my head. “My mother died when I was young,” I said.

She looked at me, horrified. “What happened?”

I tapped the side of my head. “A brain tumour,” I said.

“I not understand,” she said.

“Brain tumour,” I said. “Something wrong, in her head.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes again. “Pete, I sorry for you,” she said.

I paid bar fine for her, and we went for dinner. She came back to the apartment, but all I wanted to do was to hold her in my arms, to show her that I cared.

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.