The Doll Shop on Go-Go Street - Part 1

I started this story more than six months ago as a joint project with another writer, a published author who had never written fiction before.

It all went tits up half way through the novel, he took over but couldn't find a publisher and recently he asked me to work on a rewrite and we'd start again.

Co-writing isn't easy and a lot of work and a lot of arguments have gone into this but what you're going to read is pretty much how I'd have written it if left to my own devices. 

The Doll Shop on Go-go Street

Night had only just began to fall over Go-go Street but all ready the giant neon signs were flashing. Advertising their wares to the world while the wares poured into the street from either end. Hundreds of young women, many bearing plastic bags of soup and containers of rice which they sat and ate on the footpath outside the bars and massage parlors that they worked in.

Food was all that mattered, they would worry about money, customers, families and children after they had eaten, then prayed and made an offering to the small shrine that was a part of every establishment.

The old man was a little bemused by the sight but the young woman knew it well. They stood hand in hand in front of the plate glass window of a shop that displayed dozens of dolls of all sizes and shapes.

“You buy me?” said the girl hopefully.

“I thought I already had” said the old man absently then realised what she meant.

Gop, who’s parents had named her after the little frogs that hunted and avoided hunters in the rice fields, never understood anyway. Her English was too poor for all but the simplest transactions; some girls picked it up quickly but she had never acquired the knack, giving up in despair after a night spent with a Glasgow born Scotsman years before.

The Doll Shop was popular with the bargirls, many like to sleep with a large fluffy toy and it made a handy present to take home for the family children. They would usually try their luck when they were on the street with a patron, it was looked upon as an additional tip and for many of the men it fitted with the image they had of enjoying a night out with a girlfriend and buying her a gift.

The old lady proprietor was popular with the girls, if the dolls were surrogate children she was a surrogate mother to many of the younger ones. Aged and balding she had been there since the street had become popular with American servicemen looking to spend their pay on a little booze and sex.

Gop’s hopes hadn’t been all that high that the old Farang would spring for a stuffed toy; it didn’t matter, one of the other girls she lived with would have pinched it for her kid back in her village anyway. She just hoped he’d get on with the business at hand but the older ones always wanted to talk as well. It wouldn’t be so bad if she could understand more of what he said but it never seemed to matter to that type anyway; it was more about loneliness rather than relief, the pretence that the girl was a date, someone who cared rather than a business transaction.

The fool was trying to explain why he had taken her, and that even though the other girls like Daeng, Tim and Nok had been more attractive and out going he preferred her because he could tell she was better than them, more polite and caring. Even though her face was blemished with the acne that affected some Thai girls, looks weren’t anything.

She almost laughed aloud, as if looks meant anything in Thailand, only Farangs cared about that rubbish. A Thai man was concerned only with sex and how hard the woman could work, looks were incidental…if you had a beautiful woman she would probably wander anyway.

She thought about the proposal of marriage she had received the previous week, it was the third for the year and she had reacted enthusiastically. Did they think because she had bad skin she had less customers? That was the trouble with the shy men she attracted, they thought she never went out with customers, just picked up the empty glasses in the bar for a hundred baht a night. She had eight bank accounts and the money went home where her father bought land in her name, planting fruit trees and building houses for her brothers. She knew she would never get any rent out of them, nor did she expect it, but they would show their gratitude in work, clearing the land, planting and harvesting for a share of the income.

One day the right man would come along, probably Thai… maybe even a Farang, she had met some nice ones and she was used to them now. The trouble was the ones who had lived in Thailand the longest and spoke Thai were either married or dedicated “butterflies”, the bargirl term for a man who flits from flower to flower.

End of part 1

© Julian. All rights reserved by the author.

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