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1

This girl... I can't remember her name which is a shame because I should. But then, to be honest, I can't remember her telling me her name so maybe I never knew it. We met under loud circumstances... Very loud. It was in a bar called Firecats, an upstairs bar on Patpong which featured such acts as "pussy eat banana", "pussy drink coca cola", and that perennial favourite "pussy smoke cigarette". I often wonder whose brainchild these feats were. "Yeah... We got all this pussy and it's just standing there. I'm not paying all this pussy for nothing. Can't we get it to do something clever?" The same bar also featured, if memory serves me right, a couple who engaged in an act of connubial bliss while suspended from the ceiling on a motorbike... But I might have dreamt that. Anyway... The point was that the bar was so loud because all this entertainment was played out to the tunes of The Eagles, Guns and Roses, Aerosmith, Europe and other notably loud artistes. It didn't seem to matter what bar you went into on Patpong, The Final Countdown would always be a cue for a stage to fill with naked women dripping hot wax from burning candles on specific areas of their flesh which left the bars smelling in a way curiously reminiscent of a cathedral after mass, while The Scorpions singing The Wind of Change always seemed to be a cue for a bit of luminescent body painting (although this might sometimes carry on into Hotel California). Sorry... Where was I... Oh yeah... This girl... The time I first met her... It was loud... And if she did tell me her name maybe I just didn't hear it... Sounds a good excuse so I'll stick to it.

When we first met I was on a bar crawl with some gentlemen I had met earlier in the day at the Hello Bar on Khao San Road. We told a few travellers tales and shared a few large bottles of Singha. We had no common interests. We weren't really friends nor were we likely to ever become friends but then over drinks it's remarkable how we can feel complete strangers are our closest friends on Earth. One of our number had lost his mind on some island and had managed to significantly overshoot the date on his return tickets, not to mention his return visa, and was in the process of wiring everyone he knew in the world for money. Another was involved in the dubious business of smuggling ecstasy tabs from Hong Kong to Koh Pang Ngan to sell them at a hugely exaggerated price to full moon revellers who while broke enough to haggle for an hour over the price of a pair of flip flops always seemed to have a lot of money when it came to buying drugs. I was the one who spoke Thai. That was my entire personality accounted for.

Each of these fellow travellers were familiar with Patpong but they all had their own distinct approaches to it. None were looking for a hooker. None were the type to pay for sex (or at least to admit to paying for sex). They were each stereotypical backpacker types except for the drug dealer who was a few years older than me. He seemed very into being perceived as cool, laid back and one trick ahead of the rest. When we went into Firecats he ordered a glass of water and roamed around the bar sipping lightly at it as if it were a gin and tonic and he thus avoided getting hit to pay for a real drink. This didn't seem particularly cool to me but it clearly did to him. The rest sat back and enjoyed themselves, got into the spirit of the place. One even bought a drink for the woman who sat with him.

All of which is veering off the topic of this woman. My eye caught her as soon as we entered the bar. She just stood out. She wore a charcoal black matching skirt and jacket. She stood leaning slightly to one side and smiled at me. She looked a world away from the naked girls running around and yelling at each other with whisky and slimming pill fuelled carelessness. It wasn't that she was stunningly pretty. Just that she seemed elegant. Yes... Elegant... That's the word.

I sat with my companions for a while but as women arrived to sit with each of them our tables became a bit cramped and so I moved away and this girl drew me away to another part of the bar. Somewhere darker and cooler. She talked to me about the women on the stage. She told me which girls were good girls though she didn't tell me which girls weren't. She was from Laos and she'd worked in bars in Nongkhai and Korat but was new to the wonders of Patpong. We, farang, were still a bit of a mystery to her. She was more used to Asian tourists. The other girls said we were different from them... That with farang you had to bullshit more. Was this true ?

I said it probably was and pointed out that none of the guys I had come into the bar with would ever, in a million years, admit to paying a woman for sex back home. She laughed and thought this was funny. All men went to bars... All men paid for sex... That was one of the things men did. Unless they were Buddha's.

I asked her if she wanted a drink. She said it was okay... She wasn't working.


I said "If you're not working. Then what are you doing here ?"
"I just came to see my friends."

"But you normally work here."

"Yes."

She held my hand and it was pleasant to have her hold my hand. It felt warm and sincere. She asked me questions like she really wanted to know the answers... And I guess she did... She didn't have that hard edge yet... Maybe that only came from working with farang. She leaned her head against my shoulder but that was all. I told her I had a girlfriend. That I'd been married. She hadn't married. She said this wasn't her fate. Her sisters had married and none of them had married money so she had to work. No-one in her family cared what work she did as long as she sent them money. She was good at making money in one way or another. She had had men that she liked but they always turned out to be a drain on her. I nodded and said nothing.

It struck me how pleasant she was to be with. I didn't love her. She didn't love me. We weren't trying to take each other to bed or the cleaners (or, at least, if she was trying to take me it was in a pleasantly slow unwinding subtle kind of way). Every once in a while the drug dealer would come over and say something sardonic about our companions lost in a salivating snog with a naked or near naked dancing girl. He was looking for allies in the cool and laid back stakes and despite sitting with one of these women I probably didn't seem as much like a kid in a candy store. My kid in a candy store days were long behind me. He soon drifted off again prowling around determined not to be asked to buy a drink. After an hour or so everyone was leaving. The guy with no money was in love and wanted to borrow some money for a barfine. This made everyone laughingly suggest that this attitude was probably why he had no money in the first place. I suppose I could have stayed longer with this girl but I told her I had to go with my friends. She nodded and asked if I would come back and see her again sometime. I said I would.

The rest of the night passed predictably enough. No-one got lost to vampires but only the drug dealer and myself saw the night through to the dawn. We ended up sitting in the Nat talking about Chinese politics and Nietzsche over very weak coffee. A fairly typical way for a night to end.