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I heard this story in an opium den in Luang Prabang, Laos in June of 2008 from a young woman who at the time told me her name was Dao, and that she was Laotian. She prepared my pipes, brought me food, and, if I was up for it, met my rather modest sexual needs. I mention these few facts because at the time I was told the story by Dao I had had one pipe and was feeling quite relaxed and a bit dreamy. But given my opium habit of many years, the reader can be assured that my senses were not impaired. I have, of course, put the story that follows into my own words.

*

Marcel Stone had been through three marriages by the age of twenty-nine, and in each case the marriage ended because the wife did not want to keep the schedule to which she agreed when they decided to get married. The Agreement (as it was formally known), gone over several times for the benefit of the young woman about to be his wife, was that she would give Marcel her undivided attentions between the hours of ten p.m. and ten a.m. During the other twelve hours of the day, he would have no claim whatsoever on her time.

There was more to the Agreement. Marcel made it clear that during a good part of the night and early morning, and right up to ten a.m., he would want to have sex, or do other things. When and how much sex was not specified; the woman was simply to be available at anytime during the twelve hour period and do whatever he had in mind. Since he was a young boy, Marcel had trouble sleeping, and he required little sleep. Which meant that at any hour of the night he might be awake and interested in, well...whatever came to mind. It might be looking at a movie, going out to a bar, writing in his diary, or having sex. Marcel apparently loved sex, and before he got around to an Agreement with one of the three wives that would divorce him by the age of twenty nine, he made certain—as certain as was possible—that the woman had a strong sex drive and, from what he had learned up to that point, enjoyed sex in all its many varieties as much as he did.

There had to be inducements to women to buy into such an unusual Agreement, and indeed there was. One such inducement was the freedom to do whatever the woman wanted to do during the twelve hours between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. If she wanted to work, or sleep, or have affairs with other men or women, this was fine with Marcel. He simply did not care, and in fact had surprisingly little interest in what the woman was up to during her free twelve hours each day. All that concerned him was the attentions that she gave him during those hours between ten p.m. and ten a.m. About this period of time he was uncompromising.

Another inducement that Marcel offered to get the three women that married him, all in their early to mid twenties, is that upon marriage he would buy the woman a new car, a new and expensive wardrobe, and give her a bank account into which monthly he would deposit seven thousand dollars. It was money that she could spend anyway she so desired. In addition, they would be living in a nine million dollar home on a cliff overlooking a small bay near Laguna Beach, California, not far from where the infamous O. J. Simpson once owned a home. Live-in help would do all the house cleaning and cooking and make all arrangements for travel and personal appointments for the wife and for Marcel.

So it would seem that queer or unusual as the Agreement was, it would have great appeal to many young woman. And indeed it did.

The one hitch, or rather the major one as time would show, was that hard as the women tried, they simply could not abide Marcel’s nightly demands. They could not adjust, so to speak—or were not willing to adjust—their biological clocks, in part because it meant they would have to sleep a good part of the day that was theirs to use as they chose. Too, Marcel could be terribly demanding. At times he was voraciously hungry for sex. He would wake the women at eleven, and then at two or three, and then perhaps one more time at seven or eight and insist that he wanted, as he put it, “to go animal.”

Five months after Marcel’s third divorce, he found himself looking at some Internet sites in Southeast Asia. It took him less than a week to see just how many obliging young women—for money, of course—were to be found in that part of the world. Two things came to mind as he went from one site to another: that the prostitutes would spend an entire night with a customer (cost was of no concern to Marcel as he was worth millions; he was a day trader in stocks and commodities futures), and that there was something called a Girlfriend Experience, one where within an hour of meeting the girl, if not much sooner, the young woman—a prostitute—would behave as if she had been a faithful and loving girlfriend for some time.

Several days after seeing how these young Asian women would fit into his needs, Marcel Stone—a man with no more moral scruples than a baboon in heat—booked a flight to Bangkok and began enjoying the pleasures of the city’s thousands of prostitutes, those at Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy, and Patpong. If a play-for-pay woman wasn’t enthusiastic about accommodating his needs, Marcel quickly moved on to someone else. There were a few requirements that the young prostitutes had to meet. They could not have a child. They could not smoke. They could have no more than one or two small and tasteful tattoos. And they had to be open to whatever sexual demands Marcel placed on them. They also had to speak reasonably decent English. This last requirement eliminated from consideration a great many of the youngest and freshest girls, and in fact Marcel was largely forced to choose among young women who had been in the business at least six months, and perhaps a year or more. This invariably meant that they were not new to the game, and they would know how to get the most out of him or any other foreigner who paid for their services.

For the first seven weeks in Bangkok, Marcel gave little consideration to returning to the U.S. with any of these women. It was not that they were prostitutes and therefore a higher risk than a young woman who had never been one; it was rather that he had come to enjoy moving from one girl to another after a night or two. He relished the surprises and unpredictability of what would happen with someone he had never been with before.

But some women are simply more charming or “magical” than others, and Marcel, like so many men doing what he was doing, found himself falling for a hooker who had been in the business less than three months. She had learned English at university and then in a banking job before turning, at the age of twenty-four, to something far more lucrative. Kanya became a Bangkok prostitute because her parents had been in an automobile accident and now both of them were invalids. They were not only unable to support themselves but had two daughters and a son, all of whom were younger than Kanya.

Because Marcel had so much money to deposit in an account in Kanya’s name, he had no problem getting a visitor’s visa to the U.S. for her. The visa in hand, he bought Kanya’s plane ticket to California, following a long day in which he exhaustively went through his list of requirements—the same list he had given to his three ex-wives. He also told Kanya as he had the ex-wives that should she prove to be as good in meeting his needs as he thought she would, he would give her a new car, an allowance of seven thousand dollars a month, and the freedom to do whatever she wanted during the daylight hours, and up to ten at night. The only proviso that Marcel made abundantly clear to Kanya was that should she ask for so much as a single night away from him during the hours of ten p. m. to ten a.m.—for whatever reason, that would be the end of their relationship. He would take back the car (which he maintained in his name), he would immediately shut off her very considerable allowance, and she would have to move out of the house. He put all this in writing, and even gave her a Thai translation of the agreement so that there could be no misunderstanding.

Like almost all Thai women, and indeed women from all over the Third World, the monetary inducements, and the car, and even the freedom, made Kanya jump at the offer. She declared again and again that there was nothing she would not do for Marcel. She told him she loved him without reservation, and that above all else the one thing she would not do would be to endanger their relationship or his trust.

Kanya moved to California, and, Dao said, they lived happily, “for a while.” Then Dao said no more. The story was over, that’s all there was to it. Or so I thought.

Almost immediately following the words “for a while,” Dao asked what I wanted to eat and said she would get it straightaway, as she had done previously on a couple of occasions. I was getting hungry—it was late morning—and as she left I slipped into a dream, and then a light sleep.

Presently, she returned with food for both of us: tam mak houng, a spicy green papaya salad, plenty of sticky rice, and three large bottles of Beerlao. We ate in silence. I had one of the bottles of Beerlao, then fell asleep, Dao in my arms. As I was falling asleep, I thought that I might have sex with Dao, and then perhaps another pipe or two.

But when I woke, she was gone. She left only a short note saying that she got a call from a friend who had a “problem” and would not return that day. She said she hoped to see my again and asked me to call her in two or three days.

I drank the two remaining bottles of beer, fell asleep, and in the morning took a taxi to the airport. I was lucky enough to get an afternoon flight to Udon Thani, Thailand. A week earlier I’d met a girl there by the name of Pootka, and we’d hit it off. I spent two days with her—most of it at her rice growing family’s shack northeast of the city—and was eager to see her again. We hadn’t yet had sex or in any sense gotten romantic, but I figured that with a bit of luck I could persuade her to spend a night or two at the hotel where I’d be staying.

I did meet up with Pootka, and we did spend a couple of days and nights together as I’d planned. But the chemistry that was there on our first couple of days together was now nearly gone. The sex was not very good, she seemed distracted, and though she didn’t say so I had the strong sense that she either had a foreign or a Thai boyfriend or both. When, midway through our third day together, she wanted to go shopping and buy shoes and a couple of pairs of jeans and some gold, I sensed dark motives on her part. I bought her some sandals, one pair of designer jeans, and then, politely as I could, and after pretending to get a call while in the men’s room, told her I had an emergency that had just come up and I had to leave within the hour to catch a bus for Vientiane. I lied that I had to help a friend who had his wallet and passport stolen. We said goodbye amicably, I kissed her with loving affection, and I promised to call as soon as I got matters straightened out in Vientiane. I knew, of course, that I wouldn’t call and I would never see her again.

It was nearly ten days before I returned to Luang Prabang, a place I’d come to like in spite of all the backpackers and middle-aged tourists. I felt comfortable and safe in the city, and especially in the opium den that an American from the Rio Grande Valley I’d met had put me onto. I was also looking forward to seeing Kanya again. In the couple of days I had known her, she treated me well, I paid her good money for what she gave me, and I found that there was quite a bit we could talk about. She hadn’t told me much about her background and I hadn’t bothered to question her much, but it was clear that she had some, and perhaps considerable, university training in her background.

When I got hold of Dao upon my return to Luang Prabang, I told her I wanted to take her out to dinner, spend the night in a hotel where we wouldn’t get in trouble with the police for being together—always an unknown in Laos, and that the following day we’d repair to the opium den I’d gotten to know. I’d already made arrangements for a room for a day and a night for the two of us.

As we neared the end of dinner, I asked Dao if there was any more to the story she had told me about Marcel and Kanya. I asked as much as anything because on the trip to Udon Thani, I’d remembered how she’d ended the story with the words: “for a while.” Then, too, I wondered where she had gotten all these details about Marcel. Who had told her the story she told to me?

When I asked Dao if the relationship between Marcel and Kanya was still going strong, she turned away and said nothing. This was something she had rarely done to me up to this point. But I didn’t want to press the issue, in a sense not caring all that much about the story. It had just been an amusing little tale at the time, fascinating primarily because I had never heard of someone with habits as peculiar as those attributed to Marcel.

In the taxi on the way to the hotel, Dao’s head on my shoulder, she whispered, I not tell you everything about Marcel. I was afraid you not like me if I tell you. I didn’t respond, and there was a long pause. Then she said, I lie to you. I not Lao, I am Thai. My real name is Kanya.

I swallowed hard, squeezed her and brought her closer. I said, Why did you leave Marcel?

He die.

How did he die?

Maybe one night when we go fishing for shark. Maybe...I don’t know.

You don’t know?

I had boyfriend and we stay together three days and three nights. When I come back to Marcel’s house all my clothes, everything mine, was in big pile in my room. On top of pile was four hundred dollars and plane ticket to Thailand. I to go home in five days, he wrote on note for me. I cried all day and all night and he no return. Next day I get up and shower and my new car he bought me is gone. I know what he done.

I said, But you saw him in the next day or two and you went fishing for shark with him?

I dream that what I do.

Only dream it, or you did go with him fishing?

We are in the boat and I push him and a big shark eat him.

In your dream, or it really happened?

The words barely out of my mouth, I felt Kanya shudder, as if hit by a blast of very cold air. Then she began crying. She dug her long nails into the soft skin around my waist. I was sure that she was drawing blood. The thought excited me.

As we approached the hotel, I grabbed Kanya’s hand, now wet with blood, and gently pushed her to one side while I paid the driver. Asleep, or pretending to be asleep—I could not tell which, I carefully dragged her to the edge of the seat and picked her up like we had just gotten married and were crossing the threshold into our new home, and life.

Before I got into the elevator, all I wanted to do, all I cared about at that moment, was making love to her. And with greater and more intense desire than I had ever felt for her up to that moment.

 

The author can be contacted at:  korski1@cox.net

 

 

© Korski. All rights reserved by the author.