A Stab in the Dark

I used to regularly sit and talk with a girl that I call “Bee” in Queens Castle 1. As a regular customer, I got to know the girls there, and they got to know what I liked and what I didn’t like. Something that I really don’t like is a drunk, male or female, who becomes unpleasant. Chanada, the Mama-san of the time, knew me as a regular customer who paid the check-bin [bill] without arguing over how many beers I had consumed. When I first started going there, I didn’t drink enough beers in there to make it easy to pad my bill, and later, when I felt confident enough to drink a bit more in there, they must have decided that I was a good customer, why piss me off to get a few hundred Baht out of me and risk me never returning? I was always treated fairly there when I lived in Thailand. Nowadays, the place is a rip-off. They come around regularly with a tips tin asking for donations for the dancers, so I don’t go there any more.

So, one night, when one of the girls had “too much whiskey” to drink, and tried to annoy me while Bee was doing a show, Chanada fired her on the spot after I caught her eye. Chanada took no shit from anyone, customer, employer, or employee. She was good for the place.

One night, I turned up, sat in my regular position and waited for Bee to appear. Soon Bee glided around the bar from the back room, with another relatively tall girl following her. This girl sat on the other side of me from Bee. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, so I just allowed Bee to let on what was happening at her own pace, and soon I had an idea of what she was up to.

This was a new arrival at QC1, I can’t recall her name so I’ll call her “Indy”, and Bee was trying to get the girl to give away the shyness, and feel better about sitting naked with customers. Bee asked if it was OK for Indy to sit with me and talk to me while Bee was taking care of business on stage, and I admitted that I did not mind. She added that I would need to buy a drink for Indy, but there was no need for my usual tip to Bee, Indy did not need to either see or know about our “under-the-table” arrangement.

Indy’s English was fair, but not great, however it was good enough for a basic bar-girl to customer conversation, and most important of the lot, she knew the numbers in English, and could tell me how much the check-bin added up to when I asked her what it was. She was from Buri Ram, and she had an appealingly slim figure that complemented her height. Her looks were much better than average, but the most interesting thing about her was the colour of her skin. She was one of the darker-skinned girls. When she was on the stage under the UV lights, she looked as if she was a negress [without the typical facial shape and features], but the other girls looked to have fair skin. If my situation had been different, I probably would have bar-fined her on the night, but I had my girl-friend at home, and with Bee having taken possession of me in the bar, it just couldn’t happen.

Between sessions on the stage, Bee would sit with us and talk with Indy in rapid-fire Thai, or maybe it was Lao. I missed most of the meaning of what was said, but I guess that it was encouragement or something. When my go-home time rolled around, I check-binned using Indy’s proven skill with numbers, and left both girls a modest tip. Bee was somewhat effusive in her gratitude, draping herself around my neck with her arms and wrapping her legs around my waist. As always in the QC1, she was naked. Such a practical girl! I didn’t know whether this demonstration of gratitude was genuine, or simply a show for the benefit and education of Indy, but I did the gentlemanly thing and helped her hang on to me by supporting her from beneath without bruising the petals.

As I rode home in the tuk-tuk, I half imagined that I might be able to blunder into QC1 on a night that Bee was taking a day off and bar-fine Indy, but I dismissed that possibility out of hand. Word gets around in bars faster than anywhere else in Thailand, and I have a remarkable instinct for self-preservation.

Indy had piqued my interest, so I visited QC1 the very next night. Bee did not invite her to sit with us, so all of the normal things between Bee and me happened, and I went home after only 3 beers. Indy had sat in the upper gallery whenever she was not “dancing” – I kept an eye on her. Damn, she was a really interesting woman, physically.

I soon stopped lusting over Indy; I had too many other things happening in my life to even think about adding another mount to the stable, and late nights were not a good idea when I had to be on deck for work at 7AM most mornings. She became a part of the background noise.

But one night, she broke forth from the buzz and became an individual sound again. I looked at her as she did the pole-shuffle on the stage, and said to myself: “She’s pregnant!” And I was right.

She continued working in QC1, and Bee would tell me a little bit about Indy every night I visited. The sum total of what I was told is that Indy was/had been married to a Thai man who had treated her poorly – don’t they all – and had come to Bangkok with anger in her heart and nothing in her purse. She took the first work opportunity she got, a chance to wear a bikini, and less, in a Patpong bar. Bee thought that Indy was not really mentally suited to do this sort of work, and Indy had been seeing a doctor for depression, or something along those lines. The doctor had given Indy some medication to help her cope; under the influence of the medication, Indy had been too out of it to tell a few Thai guys where she lived to leave her alone, and they had had their way with her. Not just a few after the first few days of her being on the medication, so Indy had no idea of who might be responsible for her “Bun Indy Oven”. Understandably, Indy’s pregnancy made her even more depressed.

One night – either a Sunday or a Monday - at QC1, Bee was telling me more about this sad situation, and from behind us and somewhere off to our right, we heard a scream. It was Indy, and it was not very nice.

A little bit about the geography at QC1 as it was at that time. You enter by climbing a straight staircase away from Patpong road, and when you get to the top of the stairs, you turn right and the bar/servery is on your left and the square stage is on your right. The other three sides of the stage have a few rows of seats the length of the stage sides for customers to view the shows and maybe engage in some shows of their own with the “hostesses”. The stage is usually brightly lighted, depending upon what is happening there at any given time, but the seating area for the viewers is hardly lit at all. Thus the possibility for events to happen in the audience.

I say that this happened on either a Sunday or a Monday as those are the two nights when there are usually few customers to be seen, but I never noted the date, so don’t take it as gospel. Just accept that there were virtually no other customers in the bar on the night that this happened. I always sat on a stool at the stage with me facing across the stage towards the bar, and the dark seating behind me held a special attraction for Indy that night.

Indy, cold as ice, had gone to the bar and grabbed a “waiter’s friend”. This is an implement which has a bottle-opener, a corkscrew, and a knife which all fold in or out as the user needs. Indy only wanted the knife, and she had stabbed herself in her pregnancy. The knife part of her chosen implement was not particularly sharp so the deed turned out to be particularly painful, ripping her abdomen rather than cutting it. She was about 7 months pregnant at that time. Pandemonium ensued.

Now I have no medical qualifications, but I knew right then and there that that what Indy had done was not a good thing for her unborn child. None of her co-workers would go near her, let alone touch her, and she had decided that the pain was too much, and had lain down on the grandstand seating. Chanada had come up to see what had happened and decided that she needed to consult me. She asked me if I could help as the rest of the girls were not looking too helpful. Being the pliable fool that I am, I agreed to help. Only Bee and one other girl could be persuaded to assist me, but that would be enough.

So, as I was clothed and did not want my clothes to carry home any blood if it was avoidable, I asked these ladies to bring Indy down out of the dark and get her onto the brightly lit stage where I could see anything that I needed to see. She was a bit of a mess, but the damage was not extensive; there was a rip in her abdomen a bit central from the appendix position in the shape of the letter “L”. When the bleeding slowed, I could see no damage to the intestines, so I went to the next phase. I had armed Chanada with a 1000 Baht note and sent her downstairs to the pharmacy for cotton wool and the only antiseptic agent I could think of on the spur of the moment that I could write down, hydrogen peroxide, and I wrote it using the chemical formula, H-two O-two. She came back with a 3% solution.

I sent Bee to look for needle and thread. She went into the dressing room where all of the other girls had retreated, and soon came out with the required articles [her English was really good so she knew exactly what I wanted].

In my younger days, I hunted pigs with dogs, and I always carried some light-gauge fishing line and sail-maker's needles on those forays.  That way, when a pig ripped open a dog's abdomen with its tusks, I could repair the damage and hope that the dog survived the trauma.  I also carried a Remington 700BDL in 8mm Remington magnum calibre to make sure that I never got ripped.  Some of the dogs got ripped, but the Remington worked fine for me.

And on the edge of that square stage in QC1, with three anxious viewers watching me, I sterilised everything with peroxide and inserted three sutures in a very unpleasant gash. Chanada was the only one who would assist me with tying the knots in the sutures; ironically, she used Indy’s waiter’s friend to hold the first turn of the knot while I turned the second for each suture. I used pink cotton...

The rest of the night became a blur of adrenalin, bile, and whiskey, and I remember that I ended up being very ill, vomiting into the gutter of Convent Road. I imagine that it proved that I am only human to Bee and Chanada, who were getting me into a tuk-tuk when the urge came upon me.

I returned to QC1 a few nights later, and was amazed to see Indy there, doing the chrome-pole shuffle. Bee quickly found me and informed me that they [whoever “they” were on the night] had taken Indy to hospital where the attending physician had looked at my handiwork and decided that if it got infected, he would open and redo the sutures. He gave her antibiotics and after 24 hours under observation, released her.

Indy carried the pregnancy to full term, delivered a healthy child – sorry, I don’t remember whether it was a boy or girl – and went back to Buri Ram.

This is one of the few bar-girl stories that I have experienced where there is a moderately happy result. I wish that there were more of them.

Footnote:  I never got any change from the 1000 Baht that I gave to Chanada for the pharmaceuticals.