Links
Our banners
Latest News
Newsletter archive
Interviews
Sileakhunt
Book Store

1

Sometimes life is like a 4 AM tuktuk ride through the heart of Bangkok. You might catch glimpses of scenery while you're waiting at a red light. The rest of the time the whole thing speeds by like a colourful blur and you hardly even realise what's around you because you're too busy focussing on some pretty girl whose head is resting on your shoulder while the wind causes her long hair to whip around your face.

At other times, however, the ride can slow down and you can look around you to see clearly all that has seemed like a blur before. Peering back into the mists of my life I can't begin to say why some moments have significance while other more eventful moments do not. But this story, which is really just the story of a moment, stays in my mind and haunts me on quiet nights. After my son is tucked up in bed and my wife has collapsed in a drunken som tam stupor, I often think about Bung, the madwoman of the Tilac. I don't know at exactly what point I decided she was mad. Bung was one of the prettiest girls in the Tilac back in the early nineties when the Tilac was still the most successful bar on the Soi Cowboy. She had hair down to her thighs and I remember her thrashing about on the stage of the Tilac bar with an abandon that had nothing to do with the pursuit of farang. She didn't seem to exist in the calculating or victimised worlds that most bar girls seem to inhabit. She was on her own private world where her own private rules seemed to apply.

When I say she was mad I'm not talking about the open wrists, and screaming fits way that is the norm around the Bangkok bar scene, though her wrists had been open a few times I'm sure.

No. Her kind of crazy was the real McCoy. That's what I figured at first anyway. She never wore makeup and danced topless even while others didn't. She had a large burn scar between her small breasts and a plethora of other scars and tattoos around her body to match it. Her almost invisible eyebrows arched mischievously above eyes that twinkled more than is sane or decent.

When she wasn't thrashing about on the stage in a blur of auburn hair she'd giggle at nothing as if she was accompanied by joke telling ghosts. She'd stop as if to listen to the punch line and then laugh. Sometimes in the midst of a wild dance she'd stop and look at you as if she couldn't figure out why you were suddenly there in her bedroom watching her dance, which was, after all, a private thing. When she felt someone was watching her she'd try to cover herself or hide behind one of the bars mirrored columns. But then she'd forget about hiding and remember that this was a place where men were supposed to leer at her slim figure. This seeming revelation would lead her to spin around a pole and maybe even writhe against it glimpse teasingly at the watchers through the weightless mists of her hair. But then just when she might seem sexualised the wild child in her heart would awaken and she'd be leaping about again. Sometimes I wondered how she got there. I wondered whether she cared about farang and money or whether she'd just accidentally strolled in off the street one day and started dancing.

She was slim, very slim, and she tended to dress in torn jeans and skimpy vest-like tops that left her midriff bare. She never wore a bra, but her breasts were small enough so she didn't have to. When she smiled it was a warm, sincere smile and she smiled often, but the smile wasn't for business. It could have been but it just wasn't. There seemed to be no business about her at all. I spent a lot of time in the Tilac bar in the early nineties and I often saw her with customers, but if she sat with them she usually looked distanced from them, as if she'd much rather be somewhere else. Other women would act and fawn over men, playing them as fools for a bit of soft touching and flattery, but not Bung. Despite her beauty I think a lot of men felt cheated by her. Cheated even in buying one cola that she never drank.

I got the impression from the point I first saw her in 1992 that she didn't like me very much. I don't think I liked her very much either. After all I was typical of the men who are sold on the bar because of all that fawning and attention. When, David, a good friend of mine paid her barfine I told him he must be out of his mind because she was clearly trouble. David tended to be philosophical about such things however. He was a black guy with dual US/UK citizenship and he truly loved Bangkok despite having to put up with all the "Chocolate Man" and "Ay dam" shit . He said "She's a beautiful child. Girls that that are one in a million. I don't care if she's trouble. It would be a privilege just to spend time with her."

She sat with us and the two of them chatted. Dave spoke pretty good Thai and she actually engaged him in a pleasant conversation. Nobody likes being wrong and I would probably have preferred it if she had been as distant with Dave as she was with everybody else. I let my attention drift away from their conversation and sat back drinking while women chatted, came and went. The next thing I knew Dave had paid her barfine and she was taking off.

"What's going on here?"

David said "She's just got to sort some shit out with one of her friends. She'll be back later."

Dave waited for her. I wanted to see a friend in another bar. When I came back a couple of hours later he was still waiting. "I've got a feeling she isn't coming back." I said. "I get that feeling too." Said Dave. "Another one to put down to experience."

And he kind of forgot about her. Except at one point he said "What did you have against her anyway?"

"Nothing really. Just one of those people I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw her."

I later found out that she had this motorbike taxi boyfriend that picked her up from the bar most nights. It seemed an unusual set up as he was, by all accounts, not the nicest guy on Earth but despite letting her work in the bar he had a jealous streak. There was a rumour that a few of her scars might have been down to this jealous temper.