The Odd Couple

It's still two hours to liftoff for the fourteen hour flight to Taipei, and I'm sitting at a circular table on the floor above the departure area for Eva Air, the airline I'm flying with. John has just introduced himself by way of saying that he's on his way to his condo in Pattaya (Thailand) and his boyfriend--well, sort of boyfriend I will discover-Tom will be right back. He and Tom first started going to Thailand six years ago, after they'd gotten bored with traveling elsewhere in Europe and South America and got tired of being seen and treated as "old farts" by those around them. The first time they went to Thailand they stayed for a month, the second time it was three months, and now it's permanent. Or rather it will be permanent now that they've turned over their million dollar Long Beach home to a real estate management agency that will rent it for $2,500 to $3,000 a month.

Tom comes up on my left and sticks out a long arm to which is attached a mechanic's hand-rough, with dirty nails. We shake hands and he smiles and sits down and immediately takes out two sandwich bags full of pills of many sizes and shapes. He begins sorting the pills into smaller bags, as if somehow they'd all gotten scrambled, or, perhaps, he wants to remind himself what he has so he'll be able to explain to Thai authorities at immigration why he's got such a large collection of drugs. One that he draws to my attention and I'd never heard about before is another kind of dick-hardening pill the size of a 1000 mg. Vitamin C tablet, large enough to choke you to death on if you're not careful. Tom is thin, wiry, with high cheekbones and a gaunt almost scary look in his deep-set eyes. He's wearing a short-sleeve blue and white checked shirt and dark chinos. The shirt is old and needs a serious pressing.

John now says that he and Tom have been together 39 years, but that unlike himself who is thoroughly gay and knew it the day he discovered that all earthly happiness begins and ends just below his belt, Tom is not exactly gay. He's emotionally gay, John claims, but sexually heterosexual. Which means, he goes on, that they have a slightly unusual living arrangement in Thailand. It turns out that there are four of them living in the two bedroom condo they have in Jontiem, a five minute bus ride from Pattaya. Tom, who is fifty-nine, lives with his twenty-six-year-old girlfriend, Jum, in one room,  while John shares the other room with his young Thai boyfriend (he never shared his name with me). John doesn't say how old he is, nor does he reveal the age of his live-in Thai boyfriend. From what he says, and from his appearance-a thick head of white hair, a heavy jowly face and a hundred-pound tumor of fat above his belt-I judge him to be about sixty; and guess from various things he says that his Thai boyfriend is in his twenties.

Pardon me for asking I say to John. I'm curious about AIDS in Thailand, about which I know nothing at all. How's it mainly transmitted and who's getting it?

John, self-assured, all answers, quick to the draw in his flat strong voice, says, Mainly in the villages is where you find it.  The guys fuck around all the time with nothing on and then pass it on to their wives and girlfriends who would never dream of asking if they ever use a condom. Then the girls and women get it and they fuck around too and pass it on.

What about among gays? I say, always innocent, always dumb. Sometimes wondering how dumb I really look when I come to questions like this with all kinds of reading and field questions and answers behind me.

Just like here, it's not a problem among gays. After all, it's a heterosexual problem like I said. You never, ever go without a condom in Thailand if you're smart. He looks over at Tom. Sternly, censoriously. The queen in their relationship I conclude.

I take the Fifth on that one, Tom says. He clears his throat and lowers his head and adds, I get tests for AIDS every time I return here and I'm okay. Only thing is this last time the doctor found a venereal wart on my thing. He laughs. He was supposed to find two of them, they come in pairs. That's what he said.

No, no! Queen John says. It's just a wart, that's all it is.

They got some new thing in Thailand to zap it off, Tom says. Something experimental, but I'll go with it.

I turn back to John. So what's the deal with all the foreigners who go to Thailand? I say. The Canadians, the Brits, the Australians, the Americans? Are they picking up the HIV? I ask, knowing that no one has ever done a survey on the question and it would probably be nearly impossible to really do one in any event.

Same, same, John says, using a familiar Thai way of answering. AIDS is a heterosexual problem there, just like here. Heterosexual are the only dumb ones, and that means you too Tom.

More gay bullshit, I think; these guys never give up on blaming heteros.

Tom is silent. He's the well-known unrepentant barebacker that hates condoms and doesn't even want to think about risk or how it's calculated.

Tom volunteers that his girlfriend, Jum, was a bargirl, and he'd choose a bargirl over a "normal" Thai girl any old time. I had a Chinese-Thai girlfriend for five months, he says, and all she did was scheme and lie and screw me around. A real bitch! Jum has never lied to me once about anything. Nothing. I'll take a bargirl any day, don't care what anyone says.

You can trust her when you're away, then? I ask.

Yeah, sure. I'd be upset if she cheated on me. I know she doesn't. I talk to her all the time when I'm away and I can tell where she is.

You're faithful to her?

I go out a little bit when she's not around, he says shyly. Every Saturday I have to go to the Nile Club, about half way down the road to Pattaya. There's about 40 girls there and they have these great, first-class hotel rooms for 200 baht short-time.  I just can't do without my weekly blowjob. Got to have that. He laughs, and I find myself staring at a quarter-sized red scab on his right arm. Then I notice several others, smaller ones.
I say, I heard somewhere that a foreigner a week mysteriously falls out of a window or dies at 35 of a heart attack or a Thai mafia plastic bag over the head hit in Pattaya and Jontiem. Any truth to this?

You can read about that kind of stuff anywhere in the world, John says. Pattaya and Jontiem are normal places, just like other places. All kinds of success stories and normal things going on. People who say otherwise are just exaggerating or looking for the spectacular story.

John looks at his watch and says, We better go to get the plane. You know how to get out of here?

I point over his shoulder to some escalators. Little Tom and Big Belly Queen John grab their very small travel bags and lead the way.

In the waiting area we're standing around and I ask John if he and Tom are retired.

He nods and says, We were both university teachers in human relations, in business schools. I was at Long Beach State and Tom was at Cal State Fullerton. Good to be out of there now. When I got to be 35 I saw nobody would give a gay the time or pay me any attention. You're done at 35 here when you're gay if you want sex. But I still had students who paid attention to me. Then when I retired I found nobody gave a shit about me. Not at all. I didn't exist. You don't exist at all if you're old here. There's obvious bitterness in his voice.

Tom says, What you think is what you say. What you say is what you think. Listen carefully to how many words people have for different things. Like women's breasts. Hooters, tits, jugs, whoppers…he goes on. How many terms have we got for a male breast? One!

Breast and that's all, John says.

What you think is what you say. What you say is what you think. That's what you have to remember about all cultures, Tom says, now on his haunches; and I imagine he taught a whole semester course at Fullerton called: What You Think is What You Say, What…. That's what's good about Thailand, he goes on. Look at all the words they have for old people. All those words show the respect they have for them. He comes forth with two Thai words for old people, then stumbles, can't come up with others. Earlier he'd said he speaks Thai. Maybe it's the Limited Edition, I think. Ninety-five percent of everyone I meet on the road speaks the very limited edition of the local language.

Look at me, John says. I never have trouble getting around Thai people and getting them to pay attention to me and getting anything I want. That's because I'm fat, I'm old, and I'm white. All things Thai people like.

Fat people too? I say, showing surprise.

Just like me, John says, slapping his mid-forty something waistline, getting me to now stare at his oversized white cotton socks stuffed into rough-cut  brown sandals. Long Beach high fashion, I imagine.

We better get in that long line or we won't get these bags in overhead luggage, Tom says.

We pick up our bags and an Asian couple, and then another one, push ahead of us.  China never did have a concept of a line. Just like most Latins.
We're at Gate 103 and I'm leaving on a flight through Gate 102, and as I'm about to head off, I say to Tom, Guess you don't have any family you'll be missing now that you'll be living in Thailand year around?

I have a sister I'll be writing to. She's good. I've got a couple of kids but I don't like them. I hate them. Now I have Jum.

And John too, I guess, talking to myself. Though this is speculation of a sort, and I need to work out in my mind this idea of  having lived with someone for 39 years and being emotionally gay and sexually heterosexual-Tom, that is, according to John.

Korski

© Korski. All rights reserved by the author.

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