Shemales on Heat

I have this friend called Bob who works for a large electrical company. He likes his job and does it well enough to get paid a lot of money while living in a city infamous for not paying employees what they deserve. Much of that money he spends pursuing individuals of an unconventional sexual identity.

“The thing I love about this town,” said Bob over a plate of deep fried eggs and bacon that looked like ham, “is that while it is no paradise it’s one of the few places you can be felt up by ladyboys while drinking a beer and watching the game.”

I don’t know when this penchant for the transgendered first emerged in Bob. He had a wife and two kids back in the states and I know he has never once missed an alimony or child support payment. In his late forties he’s a big bear of a man with an impressive head of curly hair. His nose is twice broken and his eyes have the warm geniality of Santa Claus. Unlike the number of westerners who occasionally dip into the murky world of transsexual action and blame a drunken miscalculation Bob is quite unashamed and exclusive in his preference.

“To be honest Turk it’s not something you can explain. They make me feel good. They make me feel more like a man than a woman can if that makes sense. As for the rest… Well… I quite like having something to play with. Nothing gets my heart racing like seeing that the honey I brought home has a little something extra.”

It was that little something extra that bothered me. Call me homophobic but I just don’t like the idea of getting that close to someone else’s something extra. It could be some deep innate heterosexual obsession or it could be something as basic as me worrying that my something extra couldn’t stand the comparison. Either way… The idea always made me squeamish. Perhaps, as things turned out, a little too squeamish.

On this particular night there were five of us out on the town drinking, talking shit, chatting up hookers. As the evening wore on we all got drunker. Three got sucked in by brilliant professionals leaving myself and Bob sitting in the Thermae.

It was a relatively quiet night in the Thermae. The odd late night scuffle between lionesses trying to feed off the same wounded antelope. Women who sat and fixed you with stares full of intent. Small raised eyebrow invitations. Full on whores bumping into you and having a go at your pockets. All the things that make life worth living… But quieter than normal.

“You gotta love it here.” I said.

“Love is a strong word.”

“Not for me. I feel like I was born within these walls. This is life at its richest, purest, most basic, most pure, most basic, richest…”

“Drunkest.”

“Yes… Yes… Bob… You totally get me. I am definitely the drunkest cunt in the building. But it won’t last… Next time the man comes round I’m ordering a coffee. Some of these women… Some of these women… If you show the slightest sign of drunken weakness they’ll take you home and fuck your brains out. That’s why you have to be so careful. Watch yourself… They’ll turn you back.”

“No… As charming and beautiful as all these ladies are they lack the essential ingredient.”

“That’s what I’ve always meant to ask you… If you were out on the town without us what kind of place would you go?”

Bob smiled… “I don’t think you’d like the kind of places I’d go.”

“Try me.”

“Shit Turk. One minute in Casanova and you go running out like a little girl.”

“Well it was new to me then. It was a shock. They kept grabbing at my dick and laughing.”

“They probably didn’t realise how sensitive you are.”

“Would one of your places be open now?”

“I tell you what Turk… I’ll take you to my favourite place in Bangkok… But if you chicken out and decide to run you have to pay the bill.”

“Does that mean if I stay you’ll pay the bill?”

“Yeah… But I should warn you. This place… It’s not Casanova. People don’t pop in for a laugh. If we go there you’re taking a step through the looking glass.”

“I understand. Yeah… Of course…”

Bob smiled and without ordering a coffee we drunk up and paid up. As soon as I stood up I felt the world sway a little. But what the fuck… Tonight I was going to take a trip through the looking glass. I almost forgot that through the looking glass I was essentially going to encounter a whole bunch of chicks with dicks.

We grabbed a tuk tuk outside the Thermae and Bob tried giving directions to the driver. After a minute or two he gave up saying that this particular driver was hopeless and we both climbed out. We got a second tuk tuk and this driver, knowing the address, simply nodded in a noncommittal non-judgemental way. I caught his eye in the rear view mirror a couple of times and couldn’t help thinking that in the eyes of this particular tuk tuk driver I was now branded for all time as a homosexual. But then again what did it matter. Who cares what anyone thinks.

I don’t know how long the journey took… It seemed to take forever. I watched the streets become unfamiliar as we crossed the river. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of Bob and he’d say something consoling like “not far now” but I couldn’t help thinking that when it came to weird sexual kinks even your most trusted of friends start to look odd. What was he plotting for me? Had I walked into a trap? He knew I had a perverted curiosity. Even while the world around us was dark and peaceful I got mental images of being gangbanged by sheboys and Bob saying “This is how they got me… Now I can’t do it with regular women anymore.”

I was almost ready to try backing out claiming that I was just too drunk to hack it when the tuk tuk pulled up to a small place with Chinese writing and red lanterns over a blacked out window. There was a “lady” on the door wearing a scarlet dress with a high neck that tightly followed the contours of her body down to her ankles and her Dorothy in Oz sparkly red shoes. She smiled a pretty smile that I knew I shouldn’t have really found pretty and ushered us through the door.

A slim older man wearing eye shadow and rouged lips appeared and smiled as he recognised Bob. Bob handing him a couple of thousand baht bills and the man bowed. Catching my eye he blew me a kiss and I felt something turn over in my stomach. I was on the other side of the looking glass alright.

Bob led me down a maroon walled stairwell and we were passed by pretty looking ladymen wearing silver sequinned gowns and thick make-up. They all smiled when they saw me and one whispered a question to Bob. Bob laughed and said that she’d be better off asking me herself.

At the bottom of the stairwell we stepped into a ballroom sized theatre/restaurant that looked like it was in the grip of a power cut. The only illumination in the place was a single candle burning in a glass lamp in the centre of each table and each table was arranged on a semi-circle of tiers so everyone could face the darkened stage. Another pretty katoey, so pretty and petite she looked nothing like a katoey, found us a free table and Bob handed her a five hundred baht note. Taking a swift glance around the room I could see that while the place was near full we seemed to be the only westerners. Everyone else looked Chinese, Japanese or Korean. All of the customers were male and I guessed that the mostly topless women sitting with them were technically male too.

Bob ordered drinks while I found myself babbling on about the décor. When the drinks came a pin spot opened on the stage capturing the face of a woman who was not a woman. She was singing or miming some archaic sounding Chinese song. Everything seemed absurdly still as the music filled the room and the pin spot enlarged to reveal the singer naked but for a heavy looking silver chain that bound her to a chromium pole that was the corner bar in a camp version of a prison cell. As the light opened up more and more it became apparent that there were three other ladyboys on the stage wearing the outfits of prison warders – the kind of warders who probably don’t exist outside exploitation movies; prison warders wearing short skirts and suspenders. Each prison warder ladyboy held a sparkling gold handled whip.

The Chinese song ended and lounge lizard jazz started playing as the prison warders unchained the woman from the pole. The guards drew attention to her small dick and called her katoey and ladyboy and queer and a whole bunch of words in a variety of languages I did not understand while jabbing at the tiny member with the golden handled of their whips. A rack that looked like the wiring from a double bed was pulled in by two more ladyboys in guard uniforms and the naked star of the show was tied spread-eagled to the rack and mercilessly whipped and beaten with exaggerated sound effects from the BBC radiophonic workshop. After this period of tenderising the prison warders removed their skirts to reveal surprisingly large and erect dicks with which they took turns relieving the day to day stresses of being a prison guard on the poor unsuspecting star of the show.

I didn’t get turned on by the show but it did make me uncomfortable. I felt a deep need to make jokes but the music and the dubbed in screams was so loud that I could only make them in my head. They weren’t good jokes but they made me chuckle as the spunk started flying and, oh yes, the spunk did fly. Someone must have been serving up raw eggs back stage because this particular show ended up in bukake climaxes of arcing white semen decorating the face of the leading ladyboy who was the only ladyboy whose dick wasn’t bigger than mine.

This work of drama finished and all the main players took a bow as if we’d just watched a Whitehall farce or an end of pier show. The leading player went off to have her face cleaned off and then returned to the stage completely naked to take her individual bow.

Bob leaned in and told me “That one makes a fortune.”

“Well she deserves to. She’s extremely talented. I’m surprised she doesn’t have her own television special.”

With the sophisticated entertainment over with the stage props disappeared and a new set of men and ladyboys appeared on stage to enact a comparatively dull display of post Viagra priapic gay sex.

“Well thanks for bringing me Bob. That was great.”

“No problem.”

“How often do you come here?”

“I didn’t come here so much before but I have a special friend here.”

“Special friend? I didn’t know you had any special friends.”

“There she is now.”

I looked around to where Bob was looking and recognised his special friend straight away. She was one of the prison warders. With a burst of enthusiasm she darted daintily between the tables and kissed Bob on the lips. She had a pretty face although with all the make up and the absurdly long eyelashes it was impossible to know what she really looked like. As her pink tongue dipped briefly between Bobs lips I couldn’t shake the fact that this “woman”, Bob’s special friend, had just been fucking another “woman” with a dick that was not just bigger than mine but in a completely different league. It was slightly dispiriting.

Bob said “Turk… This is Sawannii… Sawannii… This is my very good friend Turk.”

I thought she would wai me but she offered her hand. It was a soft and soapy handshake. More excessively feminine than most women would give. “I’m very pleased to meet you Turk.”

“Well… I’m pleased to meet you too. Charmed I’m sure.” She held my gaze for a few seconds too long as if examining me for any glimmer of desire. Then she leant forward and whispered something into Bob’s ear.

Bob nodded and Sawannii smiled broadly before slipping away.

“What’s that about? Has she got another show?”

“Oh no… Nothing like that. She just wants to introduce you to a friend.”

“A friend?”

“A new girl… She’s from China.”

“Thing is Bob… You know I’m perfectly cool with all this… I’m you know… I mean… Sawannii… She seems like a really nice girl… Sort of… And I know I said that I wasn’t scared of a few trannies… And I’m not… But…”

“Hey… Turk… I told Sawannii all about your little phobia… Nobody’s going to grab your dick...Not unless you want them to.”

“Okay Bob…Ha ha. Funny… But…”

Bob looked over my shoulder and I turned round to see Sawannii standing there next to one of the most staggeringly beautiful women I’d ever seen in my life. “This is Ming.”

Ming curtsied and waied.

Ming’s skin was whiter than snow. And I don’t mean it was painted whiter than snow. It really was that white; unblemished as porcelain. Her face… Her face was like some wild combination of the most beautiful Italian actresses ever to grace the screen and the most beautiful Chinese actresses to grace the screen. As she smiled small dimples formed in her cheeks. Her breasts were almost visible beneath her light silvery and white dress and my throat felt tight.

Ming came and sat next to me.

“She doesn’t speak much English. You can speak Mandarin?” Said Sawannii. I shook my head and Sawannii smiled. “Maybe you can speak with your hands.” Sawannii clearly spoke near perfect Mandarin probably matching her near perfect English and babbled off a machine gun attack of “shhrrr” sounds rising, falling, deep rising, mid, high, low, extra high and extra low tones. Ming laughed sweetly, turned and looked at me as if she really really liked me… And the thing is that when a girl that beautiful looks at you like she really really likes you something in the part of your brain that feels like your heart just snaps.

Ming looked in my eyes and I looked into hers. That’s the way these things start. I wanted to look away. I couldn’t believe this was now or ever had been a man. No fucking way. But this was the place it was. Desire would be too small a word. This was the kind of girl who, if she was a girl, would have made the lowest barhopping whorefucker settle down and marry. She was a rare jewel in a world of fakes…Except she was a fake. If she was here she had to be a very well concealed fake.

She mimed a circle, pointed at my face and gave me a thumbs up. I smiled. I didn’t know what else to do. I kept looking deeply at her pores. I kept looking for signs of a shaving rash or any kind of rash. I kept looking for any sign… Any sign at all. Trying to see the join.

She spoke across me and Bob saying something to Sawannii in Mandarin. Her voice was light as air and I’ve always had a thing for women speaking Mandarin even if I can’t understand more than ten words. Maybe it was a little low. Maybe, just maybe, this was a man who had trained himself to speak exactly like a woman.

Sawannii translated for me “She like you. She say she want to talk with you but she very sorry. She want to go your room with you.”

I smiled

Damn.

Damn because I wanted to go with her too. But she wasn’t a her. This was Bob’s through-the-looking-glass house of katoeys. And if I wanted her so much maybe, just maybe, I was, like Bob, a borderline katoey fucker just waiting for the perfect feminine katoey to push me over the edge. Maybe this was how it all started. You met that one girl/boy who was just so beautiful that you didn’t care. Then you realised that you weren’t really straight at all and the next thing you know you’re in bed with someone whose dick was big enough to give them the lead in a porno film.

Bob paid the bill. In fact he not only paid the bill. He barfined both Sawannii and Ming. Okay. So Bob’s not poor and he can well afford to barfine an entire bar any time he so desires but that wasn’t the point. The point was he was really happy to have his friend and his special friend out there with him. I didn’t want to disappoint him. And you could feel this general sense of the dawn being about to close on us as we stepped out into the street. Everything felt fresh and Ming took my hand. It felt good to walk along holding her hand in a part of town I didn’t know at all. I looked at her. She looked back at me. We both laughed. And it felt light and beautiful to laugh with her.

She said something to Sawannii and Sawannii said “She say she happy to see you laugh. Most of the time you look frightened like a rabbit.”

I laughed a social laugh but the truth was I was hurting inside. Ming looked ahead and then peeped at me and I felt sick inside. Her narrow eyes and full lipped smile with those dimples in her cheeks just hit me right in the heart. This was Bob’s way of showing me the world was not as cut and dried as I thought. Well done Bob.

“Fuck it,” I thought. “So I’ve turned. So I’m in love with a ladyboy. So I’m a queer. So what? Oscar Wilde was queer. Leonardo Da Vinci was queer. Being queer wasn’t such a bad thing. If that’s what you were that’s what you were. I mean… This is the 21s century. Things like this didn’t matter any more. Okay… There was AIDS but then there were condoms. And then my imagination gave me another shock. I suddenly saw Ming in my mind’s eye. I saw her and thought of her undressing to reveal one of those huge fucking dicks and a hairy arse. No… No. I was not queer. As beautiful as she might be now would she look like this when I woke up next to her in the morning? How would I feel waking up to her with the soreness from the stubble on her chin and an even greater soreness in my bleeding arsehole.

A taxi meter appeared on the horizon and Bob caught it. We all piled in and I ended up so close to Ming that one bump in the road and I would have made the ultimate transition. Bob and Sawannii were whispering and laughing which did nothing to set me at ease. The dawn crept across the sky in yellow streaks and violet clouds.

The taxi stopped at Bob’s apartment and we all almost fell out of it laughing. In the elevator we were laughing too. I don’t know what we were laughing at. I suspected everyone was laughing at me because I’m both vain and paranoid but I figured I may as well join in.

At Bobs we drank some more. I drank a lot. Bob put on The Blue Danube and started showing Sawannii how to waltz. Ming immediately joined the game and showed me how to waltz. She was leading. I thought of Joe E. Ross and Jack Lemmon dancing the tango in Some Like it Hot.

Eventually all the spinning and the alcohol was making it harder to keep going. We ended up falling in a messy heap with me on top of one of Bob’s bean bags and Ming on top of me. I felt her soft chest against mine and looked into her beautiful eyes. She moved over me and kissed me on the lips. There were tongues. At no point did I feel like I was kissing a guy. But then again I didn’t know what kissing a guy felt like. Hell… For all I knew maybe there wasn’t a difference. I held her and we engaged in what used to be called snogging. For a while it didn’t bother me at all. Maybe my inhibitions were down. Maybe it was the drink.

I looked across at Bob and saw that Bob was really going at it with Sawannii. And this gave me a jolt. It gave me a jolt because I was drunk and I was completely messed up paranoid drunk.

I could have stayed with Ming but suddenly, like some Christian putting Satan behind him I pulled myself away from her.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.”

Bob looked at me for a moment with lipstick smeared weirdly across his chin “What?”

“Sorry Bob… I just remembered my wife. My wife… I can’t do this to my wife.” It was pathetic but it was the only thing that popped into my head at the time.

Bob looked at me like I was insane but decided to back me up.

Sawannii explained to Ming in Mandarin. Ming looked at me as if to say “why?” Her eyes filled with tears. I told myself they were crocodile tears of course. That always helps you feel better about making someone cry.

I said sorry to her. I said sorry and started talking garbage and lies to someone who couldn’t even understand the garbage and lies I was making up.

Then I buggered off into the Bangkok morning. Once outside I told myself how dangerously close I’d come to going off the rails completely. “That was close” I said out loud while passing a couple of touristy looking farang who gave me a funny look.

It was a couple of days before I ran into Bob.

“Okay…” I said. “You almost had me there.”

“What?”

“Mate… That was the most convincing katoey I’ve ever met in my life.”

“You mean Sawannii… Yeah… She is a looker. I don’t know what she sees in me.”

“No… The other one. The Chinese girl. You know I’m not into katoeys but I was that close. If she hadn’t started leading when we were doing the waltz I might well have ended up in bed with her.”

Bob looked at me and laughed “She wasn’t a katoey.”

“What?”

“How long have you been in Bangkok? You can’t tell when a woman isn’t a katoey. Besides why would I set you up with a katoey? You don’t like katoeys. You thought she was a katoey?”

“Yeah. But didn’t she work at that bar.”

“Lot’s of people work there. Ah man… She thought you really liked her. When you took off with that wife bullshit she was crying for fucking hours. I hardly got any action at all. Wait til I tell Sawannii.”

“Yeah. Well. I said I thought it was a katoey but obviously I didn’t think… I mean I thought it was just a really convincing… I mean… What I mean is… What I mean is… I’m a total cunt aren’t I?”

“Yes Turk… You may just be the stupidest cunt in Bangkok.”

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