Playing Poker Blindfold

I met Tony in Apache. He looked like some old English gentleman who’d lost his way and stepped in for a beer and didn’t quite know how to react to the attractive women. Of course that wasn’t the story. Nobody finds themselves on the Soi Cowboy by accident. He just didn’t feel at home with the concept. He’d been conditioned by decency into a life of abject misery. He didn’t quite have it in him to stare at the dancing girls so he’d opted to stare at his beer while just sneaking the odd glance.

“New to Bangkok ?” I asked.

“Yes… I’m sorry. I’m a bit jetlagged.”

“Don’t worry about it. It takes a few days.”

“I’m glad this place has air conditioning. I don’t seem to be able to get on in this heat.”

“Yeah. The heat has a way of grinding white men down here. That’s why it’s absolutely vital to keep drinking.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

Tony looked up at the girl dancing on the podium. She wore a floral bikini, a belly button ring and ground her hips into the pole never once taking her eye off the fine older gentleman.

“So what brings you to Bangkok ?”

Tony laughed an embarrassed childlike kind of laugh. “This is going to sound stupid but… I’m looking for a wife.”

“A wife.”

“I told you it sounded stupid.”

“No… Not stupid.”

“Just ill advised?”

“I’m the wrong person to call anything anyone does ill advised or otherwise. My whole life is ill advised. I just wonder why you would come to looking for a wife.”

He smiled one of those smiles that people who’ve lived a lot longer than you sometimes smile when you’ve said something that only a younger man would say. “Because I couldn’t find one back home.”

“Oh.” I said.

“I’ve never been good with women. I worked for an auto parts company for forty years. I enjoyed working. I just never knew how to unwind. I mean I could take a drink and chat with my friends but I never got involved in anything where I could get to meet women and when I met women I never knew how to speak to them. And, I know this is a bad thing to say, but it always struck me that the women I did meet seemed harsh somehow. I’m probably just unlucky or too timid or something but… I’m saying too much. I’m probably boring you.”

“Not at all.”

He livened up suddenly and said “I grew up in the fifties. People didn’t have much back then and in most ways it was a terrible time but there was always a sense that people looked out for each other a little bit… I thought I’d find a girl who was just like my mum. All my mum really wanted was to take care of us all. She took care of my dad when he got home. She always made sure the beds were made and there was food on the table for tea. She enjoyed taking care of us. She’d have a natter with the neighbours and once a month we’d go down the races but really she was happy with very little. The thing is that I knew how to speak to women my mum’s age but women my own age… They all had different ideas. I lived at home until I was twenty eight and I bought a house with all the money I’d saved. I still went round to my mum’s for tea almost every day. Especially after my dad died. And every day she and her friends would ask ‘Are you courting yet Tony?’ and I’d always say that I wasn’t but lead them on to think that I probably was. I was terrified anyone thinking I was queer. Any bloke that didn’t get married by the time he was twenty five got called a confirmed bachelor and that just meant he was a poof. But finding a woman that I could live with, that I could trust, well… It just never happened. Anyway. About eight years ago my mum got sick. Cancer. I went to see her and took care of her when she got really ill. The last four years I virtually lived there nursing her I suppose. I mean… When I was a kid she took care of me so it’s the least I could do. My brother and sisters all had their own families. They wanted to put her in the home. But I couldn’t have her spending her last years surrounded by a bunch of strangers. Thing is, I know this all sounds a bit bad, but when she died I think I realised, for the first time, how alone I was. I won’t say I’d never been with women. I have. But not many. And none that I was ever serious about. None that I trusted or who I felt really liked me. But when my mum died I looked at myself in the mirror and I said ‘Tony… You’re a fucking pratt.’ I was completely alone. I’d done it to myself. I’d put myself in that position. I couldn’t blame the sixties or feminism. It was me. I’d done it. I thought of trying those dating sites but, to be honest, the women were all so horrible. Then I found this site for meeting Asian women; mainly Thai and Filipinas. It wasn’t just that the women were lovely looking - I’m not interested in marrying some girl in her twenties – It was just that the things they said about themselves and what they wanted from life. But then I didn’t want to be getting some mail order bride only to find out that some bloke had written all this shit for her and that she was like that fella off Little Britain. That's like playing poker with your life while wearing a blindfold. I wanted to come out here and see for myself.”

“So you came to Soi Cowboy.”

He laughed a little. “I’m just here for the fun of it. I’m not that daft. I’m signed on with a couple of introductions agencies. I said I wasn’t interested in meeting anyone who was under thirty five or who had kids still living with her. The blokes at the agencies all think you’re after some twenty year old fresh faced girl but I don’t think a woman like that would last long with an old geezer like me. I want someone who I could offer something to and not someone who’d always be looking over my shoulder for something better.”

He bought me a drink because, well, I guess because he felt he’d given me his life story (trust me – this is the short version) and I’d been a good listener despite sometimes having to strain to hear some of what he said under all the music. We talked a bit more and drank a bit more. I showed him a couple of other bars and saw him off into a taxi when he seemed the worse for drink, heat or jetlag.

To be honest I didn’t think I’d see him again. He seemed so clearly interested in spending his holiday in arranging his marriage that it didn’t seem likely he’d be spending too much time trawling around bars. I did run into him again though. It was about three nights later and he was sitting with his arm around Francine, a katoey whose actual name was Daeng but had changed her name to Francine in an effort to seem European. He looked like a completely different man. He was wearing a short sleeved multi-coloured shirt, he’d got a bit of a tan to him, and he was being fed by a ladyboy outside a well known bar that doesn’t like to advertise the fact it has five katoeys working there.

I probably looked at Francine in a surprised way because the first thing he said was “I know… It’s a bloke… But I don’t seem to care.”

“Good for you.” I said. “How’s the wife hunt going?”

“I’ve decided to put that on hold for a while.”

“You don’t say.”

“I think I might hang around Bangkok a little longer. Examine all my options. I have my retirement pension. I have the money from my mum’s house whether I sell it or rent it out. I’m not sure that I should be rushing into this marriage thing after all. Francine! Could you get my friend a beer and put it on my tab?”

She nodded with a smile that meant she knew he was going to talk about her behind her back but that it was all good and went off inside the bar.

“It’s mad. I used to worry about people thinking I was a poof because I lived alone and here I am having sex with a fella, of course, it’s not really a fella because it’s had everything altered but…”

“This is Bangkok Tony. Nobody cares.”

“The past couple of days… I’ve been happy. I know it’s not something that’s a real important technical point but the thing is I don’t think I’ve ever been happy before. Not like this. I’ve had a couple of women at once and now I’m with a hermaphrodite. It’s like I never even lived before. I mean I know I’m getting a bit carried away with things but I’m sixty two years old and this is the best time of my life. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll calm down. I’ll look at myself and feel ashamed and start acting my age but right now I’m just happy!”

Francine came back with a drink and kissed Tony on the lips like she really meant it. This was a guy who, a couple of months earlier, had nursed his mother through death and here he was sitting there embracing life. Who cared if Francine was a hard bitten katoey hooker with one eye always on his wallet? Who cared if he was probably drinking more than was healthy? Of course in the UK he could go back and watch the cricket on his own in his front room. In the UK he could have all the excitement of going down to the corner shop every morning to get the Daily Mail and find out that the world was getting worse and worse every single day. In the UK he might find some woman who would stay with him but refuse to have sex with him. In the UK he could go down the pub once in a while and suck on a pint on his own in the corner and get scowled at or sworn at by the local gang of kids on his way home. Here in Bangkok he was flying in the face of everything he’d once believed in, committing the crime of being a westerner exploiting the East, a sixty two year old man fucking around like a bisexual teenager. Here in Bangkok he was drunk and laughing and fucking and imagining the sour faces of people who knew him if they could see him here. And maybe that was the thing that made him happier than anything else.

© Turk Fist. All rights reserved by the author.

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