The FARANG Speaks 2 Much

SEPTEMBER 2011:

The rains stopped an hour ago. Waves crease the puddles on Soi 4, rippling into neon-pixels as high heels and disco-booties negotiated the cracks in the concrete and tuk-tuks passed by on slow-purr, everyone cruising for an easy mark, a mugg, a Derek or Dieter or Dave fresh off the boat, fending off jetlag with wide-eyed gormless visual-inhalation and hands clamped firmly around a bottle of bia Chang. The Big Mango sound-system delivered the perfect soundbite from another century as Slipknot limned D/D/D: “just another dumb punk/chomping at this tit.” Spit! It! Out!

Tits. I love ‘em. Blame Russ Meyer, blame my mother, blame the first girl who ever let me touch them, her nipple stiffening under the bra fabric, homework forgotten, feeling the universe melt and wondering why such complex infrastructure was required to house these soft mysteries. Funbags as museum artifacts: keeping them under lock and key, forbidden fruit, as haram as a porkchop during Yom Kippur. What the fuck.

I still love tits. A flash of cleavage, the outline of an aureole through a tight sheer top, a nipple pinging its way towards heaven with my face pointing straight towards hell–quality breasticles, bitchin’ bazoombas, all sizes, one I can practically fit in my mouth and ones I can’t even get the catcher-mitt-meathooks I call my hands around. Tits are great. It’s a good thing men don’t have them because businesses would fail and lawns go unmowed while we sat around the house playing with our tits all day long.

It had been three years since the goobers at respected Stateside investment banks had stopped playing with their tits long enough to notice that their modified pyramid schemes were crashing in long slow burning arcs. Fortunes shriveled like the pecker of Johnny the Sailor on Pattaya shore leave when he suddenly realized the luscious babe sucking his yardstick was a katoey. Governments shoveled cash on the flames and orchestrated interest-rate cuts, but once the mad grease-coated scramble to the bottom had begun, it acquired its own maelstrom momentum and swirled a lot of people down. Retirement plans on hold, vacations scrubbed, immigration clerks fast asleep at the arrival desks in Bangkok’s Cobra Swamp airport where broken toilets now went unnoticed and half the Eurocouture shops shuttered, closed tighter than a neon swamphole on Maka Bucha Day.

Not a lot had changed since that first non-high-season of 2008-2009: the ultra-wealthy still flew in for their spa-holidays, hard men resembling the extras from Guy Ritche’s “Borstal Boys” (2010) still prowled Pattaya’s Beach Road and drivers still fled the scene whenever their vehicles hit bone. There was a(nother) bloodless coup, but once Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh was (re)installed the CNN/BBC lens swung elsewhere.

I was on the cheap: our boss had given us a month off in lieu of pay, better that than no job at all, we agreed, so I sublet my flat to a wannabee model and booked a cheap roundtrip to Bangkok on a half-empty plane. The thumbprint-registry machine at the airport was broken when I arrived so my roundtrip ticket was scrutinized by a group of lonely immig officials who tut-tutted, asked me how tall I was, how long I intended to remain in Thailand, the identity of my favorite football club, made a number of cryptic marks in yellow-highlighter on the ticket and waved me towards the Green Channel.

A quick glance at the in-airport train station revealed the dusty signs of rail-denial still standing forlorn between the enormous garudas erected to celebrate the inagural train service a year ago. I reversed course for the public taxi stand, dodging smartly dressed Thais with large signs advertising “limo transport.” The taxi-queue snaked eccentrically around the pouring streams of water from awning-holes but moved rapidly, a pair of taxi-drivers shouted Lao ephithets, arguing over which would transport the wide-eyed sweating guy with four suitcases and which would get the young, sunburnt, raggedy couple who kept saying “Khao San Road?” to anyone who looked in their direction. Taxis backed up, stretching into the squishy gloom, a conga line of drivers hoping for a red-note tip, enough for a half-pint of rice whiskey and a bag of sliced green mango to cut the sweet paint-thinner afterburn of the hooch. After Chavalit’s Songkran 2011 “anti-drug” campaign, known colloquially as the “zap-your-competition turkey shoot,” a few cabbies had gotten full-metal-jacket facial piercings for running the “my friend, you ever try the real Thai Stick?” racket on the Trustafarians who still flocked like lemmings to KSR, the puu-yai who ran that part of town felt every last organic-banana-satang squeezed out of its denizens belonged to them, they’d retail the oregano, thank you very much. Bangkok cabbies, mostly Isaan refugees, longed for Silom and settled for Sukhumvit.

Mine was a yaabaa casualty: muttering to himself like a psychotic squirrel as he careened down the freeway towards my destination: the back streets of Soi San Kasem, a hundred meters from the Scala Cinema. A row of hotels straddled a narrow lane, and enough stragglers stayed here to keep them open and reasonably drip-free–room service might involve a splashy trip to the noodle cart nearby but my favorite hotel knew I’d pay the real rate for a monthly room, amazing what you can accomplish when you smile, joke with the staff and bring them the occasional tu-wenny baht bag of fruit or khanom. After checking in I’d hopped the Skytrain to Nana.

“Boo!” yelled Boo, swinging her hips around me in a carnal arc (damn, did she paint that top on?) and planting her taut butt on the barstool next to mine. I caught a whiff of the Mehkong/coke in her coffee cup as she put it to her lips and sipped. “Isn’t that illegal, Boo?”, I said–it was one of the 137 annual “dry-days” decreed by the new PM, who was also Managing Potentate of the New TAT.

“What’s your point,” she said, hooking the heel of her cowboy boot into the barstool rung, “beeyatch?”, riding the fine line between lady and play-slut, what a coquette, that Boo, if I took girls out of the Big Mango I’d pillowfight her in a second, but as it’s my local hangout (try to find a stronger WiMax signal or a better burger in any other Bangkok bar, I double-dog-dare ya) I tend to flirt heavy there and pull elsewhere. Boo’s straight-up and I like her: once when she was down on her luck (her Swiss sugar-daddy typed “123456″ as her password, scrutinized her emails, then headed back to Zurich with harsh words, leaving no coin) I sprung for a phone card and a meal, and she’s never forgotten.

She leaned forward and perked her cleavage. “You take me tonight?”

“Mai dai, Khun Boo, fen feed ducks.”

“Where? I no see fen.”

“She go Gaw-ree, visit family.” My mythical girlfriend is Korean, and I know so much about her that sometimes I think she’s real. Being not-Thai and not-farang, the girls don’t know how to approach the specter of Miss Korea. Once, a girl asked me if she made noises during sex “same-same Japanese girl sex video.” “Noisier,” I replied, only to be rewarded later with an imitation of what the Thai girl thought a noisier-Japanese-sex-video-girl would sound like. It led to several more orgasms, an awesome pillowfight and some dagger looks from my neighbors the next day.

“Mai pen rai short-time,” said Boo, edging her top down a few more millimeters. Damn.

My iPhone buzzed in my pocket, saved by the (silent) bell. I checked the name on the display and let it buzz: thank Buddha for caller ID. Held the phone to my ear and spoke too-loud: “Ah nah se yo, honey! How’s Seoul?”

Boo made a face, grabbed her coffee cup and spun off the barstool, sashaying into the Mango fray while letting her hand trail idly across my crotch as she exited stage-left.

“Yo, Jack!” It was Smitty, his dreads encased in a woolen cap in the colors of Jah. There was an echo to his voice, “Jack, Jack, Jack,” which sounded oddly like a Thai woman.

I glanced at the iPhone, dammit! Somehow, maybe when Boo bumped me passing by, the “Accept Call” button had been pushed and I was now live-on-air with she-with-whom-I-wish-not-to-speak. I mashed the “End Call” button and turned the thing off, as I knew she would call me ten times in the next hour. Mobile phones: they fuck ya, and they fuck ya.

“Problem with the WiMax? When’d you get in?”

“No, just a call I didn’t want. Good to see you, Smitty, how’s business?”

He sat down on the Boo-butt-warmed barstool and pulled off the cap. Seventy-centimeter dreadlocks splayed out like the legs of a huge amphetamine-crazed tarantula. Smitty laughed.

“Yeah, mobile phones. They fuck ya.”

“Boss gave us a mandatory sabbatical. I’m here for a month, and I’m starting to think I need a project.”

“Interesting, because I’ve got an idea, wanna hear it?”

And it was thus that the Mango Shortin’ Futures Exchange was born.

DECEMBER 2011:
To be continued…