Troubles with Women

 © TurkFist. All rights reserved by the author.

My trouble with women began long before my first glimpse of Bangkok. My trouble with women began at an astonishingly early age when I fell in love with my hippy babysitter getting silently stoned in the front room while, as a four year old child, I spied on her. Any sign of the merest success with women came much much later and even when that success came it brought about the wrath of ex-boyfriends and protective brothers. Like every other naïve young man emerging from a slightly deluded culture I believed in things like “true love” and “the perfect woman”. Only experience proved to me that true love is something you shouldn’t allow to last more than seventeen hours and that if any woman seems perfect she’s probably blowing all your friends.

I know this sounds misogynistic but I speak from experience and when it comes right down to it my troubles have never stemmed from me hating women; quite the reverse. It’s just that, at a certain point in life, I found that being prepared for the worst in people made it a lot easier to forgive them when they lie or cheat or steal. Nothing was ever gained by holding a grudge. And if I met someone who didn’t seem to lie so much or cheat much or steal at all then it was always a bonus. Finding the odd whore with a heart of gold is much nicer than finding some chaste young virgin who has a heart as black as a Goth’s wardrobe.

I also learnt that sometimes the best experiences come from not being too particular. I might be sent into near orgasmic bliss by the sight of some perfect nineteen year old on a bus but in real life I’ve slept with the ugliest women, old women, evil women, incontinent women, women who preferred women, sadistic women, masochistic women, women intent on summoning devils from hell to snatch my soul, avaricious women, smelly women, women who lay back and thought of Thailand, women who liked it in public, women who liked watching and women who held deeply conservative political views. Some of the women may have been too young for me, some were too old, some had too many children, and some had beefy curtains that flapped in the breeze from a ceiling fan. But I’ll let you in on a little secret. I loved every one of them. Even the most banal of women possesses something magical that makes her unique. Even the dullest seeming woman can surprise you in the bedroom as much as the sexiest seeming woman can be stiff as a board.

I had relationships that lasted months and came to naught. I had relationships that lasted an evening but which live in me still. If the whole thing was a merry-go-round ride or some Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence then I’d happily go through it all again.

But I have always had troubles and those troubles seem to be showing no sign of slowing down or stopping.

I recently returned to the UK, the land of hope and glory which seemed neither particularly hopeful nor glorious. I thought I needed to reconnect to something I might have lost by spending sixteen years in Thailand. I’ve never deluded myself into thinking that I belonged in Thailand. I just sneak around and hope nobody notices that I’m not doing anything useful. I used to teach English because nobody ever thinks an English teacher should do something useful. Now I just drink a lot because even less is expected of a piss artist. As I edge into my mid forties I notice that in some places I get less female attention than I used to in my twenties and thirties but in some ways this is an advantage. I get hit less.

But one shadow remains. Six years ago (I think it was Six years… It might have been more) I met this girl who was, by far, the most destructive and evil force I have ever encountered personally (not counting an insurance salesman who cornered me on a tube train in the early eighties). Her name was Nam and she had hazel eyes and wore her sexuality like a second skin. Nam had no shame, or none that showed, and no illusions about the nature of the world. What she saw in me I can’t say. Maybe she didn’t see anything in me. Maybe she didn’t see anything in anyone and decided that she may as well torment me as anyone else. I’d seen some of the destruction she’d left in her wake so I was wary of her from the outset. As time went on, however, she became a private obsession. I let her take me to places I would not have gone to with anyone else. I let her move in to my flat and disappear without so much as a word and ever since she disappeared I’ve felt her presence in my life. She always seemed to know exactly where I was.

Back in Thailand I feel her less than I did when I was in England. The great thing about Thailand is that there’s always someone to distract you from your obsessions. There’s always a new face; a new body writhing around at five in the morning. There are always friends and bullshit and liquor. In England I felt her absence every day no matter who I managed to pick up. In Bangkok it’s so much easier to just keep going.

This morning I was sitting outside Pii Tid’s small provision shop; sitting on a stone seat at a stone table with a bottle in front of me. It was fairly quiet being so early and hot. Most of my friends would either be at work or still sleeping. A katoey I’d never seen before sat at the table looking away from me as she waited for a friend or whatever it is katoeys wait for when they get up at that hour. She glanced at me and smiled politely before glancing away. I filled my glass half full of Mekhong adding ice and soda until liquid sparks danced their escape. The Katoey looked at me again and said: “You’re Turk right?” Her accent had a hint of American English about it.

“Yes.”

“I thought so. I know your wife.”

It seemed a strange thing to have said out of the blue like that but before I got a chance to find out what she was talking about a bald man a waxed scalp, a weightlifter’s body and a T-shirt advertising “Corona” came walking from the direction of Miami Mansion.

“I thought you were going to meet me at the restaurant,” he said in a broad Essex accent.

“I don’t like it there. It’s full of pimps and policemen.”

“Okay,” he said. “Are we going then?”

Then she looked at me and then at her boyfriend… “This is Turk. He’s Nam’s husband.” The name shot through me like an electric shock.

The man looked at me, smiled, grasped my hand in his steely bodybuilder’s grip and said “Ah… You’re the geezer I keep hearing so much about. The name’s Stu. Odd tells me all the stories. I don’t know why… I thought you’d be a bit bigger.”

“Yeah… My size disappoints a lot of people. Drink?”

“Nah… We gotta get off. Haven’t we darlin’” He bent down and gave Odd a sloppy tongue filled kiss before heaving her upright. “See ya around mate.”

Odd blew me a kiss in the exaggerated katoey manner and then walked off with Stu with her head buried in his pectorals. I looked across at John, a motorcycle taxi driver shaking his head with a smile as he watched the farang walk off into the alleyway leading to Petchburi Road. I smiled too…

The thing is that it’s been bugging me all day. Nam used to like telling strangers she was my wife but as far as I knew nobody had seen her in Bangkok for a couple of years. The way Odd had talked about her made it seem she’d been talking to her that week.  

This very minor incident that I might have completely misinterpreted (though I can’t see how) left my stomach rumbling as if I’d eaten undercooked chicken.

I told a couple of friends about this and it seemed that nobody knew Odd. They suggested she was probably suffering from hormone drug induced confusion. None of them had seen Nam around. They certainly hadn’t seen her at the Miami. She didn’t work any more. She was probably living abroad with some rich foreigner or was dead; killed by one of the many people whose lives she’d ruined.

The thing is that about an hour ago I was walking down Nana, past the soi dogs, over the canal and the whole way I could have sworn that I was being followed or watch. Maybe it’s just paranoia but I’m sitting here at one of my favourite beer bars in Nana and I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that Nam is watching me playing some kind of game with my life. I guess this is what religious people feel like all the time.