Thailand Calling

My Two Cents by Joe Jeffries

Cell phones were supposed to bring us closer together, but now that everyone and their pimp have one, the question has to be asked, How close is too close? I have a friend who likes to call me from the toilet just because he’s bored and has a cell phone in his pocket. I know it’s a great way to multitask, but frankly he’s not that busy. My mother likes to use her cell phone to pepper me with strange trivia questions throughout the day. What’s the name of that gay cowboy movie? Or what’s another word for melody? Thanks to cell phones, I have become her personal Google. And then there is my wife. My wife called me yesterday to tell me that she was thinking about me and to ask if I was thinking about her. Her follow up question was why hadn’t I called her yet or sent her a text message? It was only 11 a.m.

I admit that cell phones are useful (they have thwarted bank robberies even), but I can’t help but notice that what was supposed to make our lives better has also led to the proliferation of bad jokes, booty calls, drunken ramblings, solicitations, and scams. Last year a friend of mine almost required professional help after falling victim to a particularly malicious cell phone prank. It began when his own twelve-year-old son sent him a text message threatening to kill him. My friend was shocked to say the least. His son had seemed perfectly non-homicidal at breakfast that morning. He quickly tried to call his son, but could get no answer. When he called home to see if his son was home yet, his wife answered the phone in tears. She too had received a death threat from their son.

To make a long story short, the son came home a few minutes later with the sad news that he had lost his cell phone on the subway. He had no knowledge of the mass death threat that had been sent. My friend was relieved, but at the same time angry. A random stranger had found a lost phone and caused mayhem for his family. It got him thinking a bit differently about the power of cell phones.

I’ve been thinking, too. For all their convenience, I sometimes wonder if cell phones are really making our lives better. Sometimes I miss the old days when people were harder to get, but you were always happy to hear from them. I’m Joe Jeffries and that’s my two cents.

P.S. They also give you brain cancer.

Chicago Examiner

1  Snapshot from Pattaya

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Pattaya Beach

11:30 a.m.

There’s Hans and Franz and the bald one we call David Hasselhoff, all baking in the hot sun. There are dozens of them actually—at least a bus load, all red-skinned and dozing on the loungers that clutter the beach in front of the Jomtien Plaza Hotel. They are German businessmen from a company that they won’t disclose. They arrived at the hotel last night and early this morning, shortly after Nick and I had already planted our sun umbrellas in the sand, they flip-flopped their way across Beach Road and took up residence all around us. They had matching red bikini briefs and matching bellies that hung over them. Almost from the moment they arrived, they annoyed me.

They haggled with the beach attendant over the cost of the five-dollar beach umbrellas and then haggled again with the fruit sellers over the price of their fruit. They eventually passed on the sun umbrellas, but bought the fruit in bulk. I watched them cut it up with a hunting knife and then proceed to eat it in the manner of a sex crime: sucking on mango pits, slurping up pineapple chunks, and burying their faces into watermelon rinds until the juice ran down their chins and dripped onto their stomachs. In Hasselhoff’s case, I saw the juice pool up in his belly button and stay there. I was repulsed.

I was contemplating a move down the beach when the massage girls showed up to slightly improve the scene. They came down from the hotel dressed in their prim white-collared T-shirts and loose floral pants, and although not very young or beautiful, they were smart enough to offer the Germans a group rate right off the bat. The beach got quieter after that. The Germans got four-hundred-baht foot massages for three hundred apiece, and then one by one fell asleep like fat, hairy, babies—snoring, drooling, and exposing their deodorant-caked armpits to the sun. These guys just don’t give a shit, I thought as I watched them sleep. They are ten thousand miles from everyone who knows them, and for all intents and purposes they are invisible. 

Of course, the worst thing about watching the Germans has been a slow realization that after seventeen days in Thailand, I’m not much better than this. In many ways, in fact, I’m worse. Of the seventeen days I’ve been in Thailand, it’s noted in my travel journal that I’ve been grotesquely drunk for twelve of them. Even during the daylight hours, I have been walking around the streets in a kind of stupor, looking at the pink taxis, the ladyboys, and the mirage-like heat waves coming off the pavement, and feeling not quite certain that it isn’t all a dream. My behavior has reflected this fact. In the past two weeks, I have vomited on the street once, and pissed in a public pool twice; I have kicked a dog, and slapped a ladyboy. At night-time, I’ve done much worse.

Last night, for example, I walked into a bar called Lolitas and straight away stuck my cock into a young woman’s mouth. I wasn’t the first person to do this, and judging by the number of Minty-Fresh Scope bottles around, I won’t be the last, but after I finished up, I did something much worse than most. While the girl was still on her knees, I grabbed her by her thick black hair and tried to stuff a two-hundred-baht tip into her mouth. Even by blow-job-bar standards, it was a step too far. The girl spat the money out and began to shout at me in Thai. She called me, Baa, baa, baa (crazy, crazy, crazy,) like an angry sheep. She was getting ready to hit me with a beer bottle, I think, when my friend, Nick suddenly appeared to intervene. Standing between us, he quickly explained to the girl that I was an American war hero on medical leave—that I was drunk, and jet-lagged, and heavily medicated, but not at all the sort of man that stuffs money into a woman’s mouth. Spoken in the gentle form of Thai, this whopping lie seemed to charm the girl. She put down the beer bottle and began to complain in a quieter tone about rude customers, and a motorbike that had been stolen. At Nick’s prompting, I handed over another small tip (into her hand this time) and watched her anger completely vanish.

Thanks, I said to Nick, when it was all over. I don’t know what got into me.

Forget about it, said Nick. It’s the heat.

Nick is next to me now, peacefully sleeping in the pale blue shadow of a sun umbrella stabbed into the sand. The Thailand heat doesn’t seem to bother him. Nick is a thirty-something Englishman with cool blue eyes, jet-black hair, and what I’ve only just noticed are unusually large pink nipples. His skin is the color of mushrooms. Asked how this is possible after years spent in Thailand, he tells me: Complete disinterest in day culture. It’s the best explanation I can give as to why we are friends.

It’s hard to believe now, but I only met Nick a few weeks ago. I met him on my first night in Bangkok and in our first conversation he confessed a dissolving marriage, a drinking problem, several affairs, and an interest in ladyboys. I liked him immediately. In a sea of unsavoury characters who tell you they are spooks, navy seals, and millionaires in disguise, Nick struck me as somebody who enjoyed telling the truth about himself. I felt I could trust him. More than this, I thought I could use a man like this on my travels. Nick spoke the language and understood the culture; he seemed to take perverse pleasure in telling me what to do. It seemed only natural that he should become my friend and travel advisor. 

This is how it went more or less and the reason I now find myself on this dirty beach full of perverted Germans. Not that I’m blaming him, but it was Nick who first suggested I come to Pattaya. Back in Bangkok, he told me that Bangkok was a feast for pigs, but Pattaya was a paradise for fools. It didn’t strike me as a great endorsement at the time but did strike me as a good line. It stuck with me, and a few days later, when the waters of Bangkok became suddenly muddied, I found myself hopping a bus to Pattaya without even thinking about it. What does a paradise for fools look like? I wondered on the bus ride down. Was I foolish enough to love it?

I’ve been here for a week now and haven’t been disappointed. Despite a lot of ugliness during the daytime, Pattaya at night-time, I’ve come to know, is a different story. A few hours from now, this dirty landscape will fade into darkness; the neon lights of Beach Road and Walking Street will come on, and from out of nowhere, a few thousand pretty girls will appear. They say there are fifty-thousand girls in Pattaya at high season. With their bright smiles and toned brown bodies, they make everything else in Pattaya seem trivial.

To my left right now, there is a small example of the girls I’m talking about. Her name is Tan (or maybe Ten), and I’ve been ogling her through my sunglasses for a while. She arrived with the one we call David Hasselhoff and first came to my attention about an hour ago when, in between molesting fruit and getting a foot massage, Hasselhoff chased her into the water, and in broad daylight, on a crowded beach, tried to remove her small bikini top. It was an ugly scene really. It began as a hackneyed bit of beach humor, but when the girl resisted more violently than expected, it quickly devolved into real animal struggle. Only after a full minute of kicking, splashing, and swearing did the German finally come away with the girl’s bikini top. He held it aloft like a sizable fish he’d just caught as he waded ashore. His colleagues had applauded his fine catch, and for Nick, who had been biting his tongue for most of the morning, it was the final straw.

There hasn’t been this many Germans bound for hell since the war ended, he commented loudly.

It made me laugh like a naughty schoolgirl.

But that was an hour ago.

An hour later, this beautiful girl has her bikini-top back and seems to bear no grudge against her attacker as she straddles him on the lounger next to me, rubbing mango-scented suntan oil into the gray hair of his chest. She is quite stunning as I watch her up close. She has straight black hair, doe-like eyes, and a slim brown body. But it’s her small brown hands that really capture my imagination. As I watch them move around the German’s chest hair, I suddenly get a twitch in my cock. Her cunt must be incredibly tight, I think to myself.

I no sooner think this thought than the girl seems to hear it, and suddenly looks up to catch me staring at her. She gives me a big white smile, and my heart skips a beat as I imagine for the umpteenth time this week that I have fallen in love. I look at the burnt, bald, head of the man she’s straddling and suddenly want to smother him and run away with my new love. It’s an absurd impulse, considering I only have to wait until he checks out in a few days and pay her bar fine down on Walking Street. As usual, I am saved by Nick.  

What time is it? he asks as he stirs from his sleep.

Around noon.

Bugger. It’s a long day, when you don’t sleep until four. What do you want to do?

Go back to bed, I think. I don’t feel so good.

Yeah, me too. Let’s get a picture before we go. The both of us this time.

For your wife? I ask.

For posterity, he answers.

He takes out his cell phone/camera, and shows it to the beautiful Thai girl next to me. 

Excuse me, he says. Picture?

Okay, she says.

She wipes her oily hand on her own slim leg and accepts Nick’s phone camera while still straddling the German. Nick and I get adjusted on the lounger. We put our arms around each other and smile big for the camera. At the moment the camera clicks, we are just two good friends hanging out at the beach. What could be more innocent than that?

2  Sunset in Pattaya

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Six hours later, the sun is a fiery red ball sliding down the sky towards the ocean horizon. I’m on my balcony, smoking a cigarette in my under shorts and wishing the sun would just drop out of the sky already. I’m impatient to get going. I’ve spent most of my day just catnapping and trying not to masturbate as I think about the girls down on Walking Street—-the half-mile stretch of strip clubs and open air pubs that is the true heart of Pattaya. I’ve been thinking about Fon, with her fake blue eyes, and Soo, who fell asleep with her head on my cock. I’ve been looking ahead to tonight’s girl and trying to imagine what she might look like. I look out at the dusky landscape and wonder if she is awake yet, eating fried crickets and trimming her pussy into a heart shape. This is how I think these days.

The room phone finally rings and I flick my cigarette off the balcony towards the deep end of a pool. I hurry inside to answer it.

Are you alone? asks Nick.

Very, I say.

Are you ready to hear the plan?

On pins and needles.

I sit down on the bed and let Nick’s velvety voice run through the evening’s plan. It’s really only a list of five bar names, but the way he puts them together is like a mix tape, each club has a purpose and a mood and blends seamlessly into the next. Tonight, he proposes the Poon Town Bar, followed by Lucifer’s, followed by Club Insomnia, followed by a couple of others that have just opened and are giving away free drinks. As usual, I agree to everything. Before we hang up, though, I have a question that is new between us.

Are you going to be okay tonight? I ask.

I’ll be fine, he comes back immediately. Last night was a one-off. Every ten years, I have a night like that.

Glad to hear it, I say.

I hang up the phone feeling a bit at ease. I have only known Nick for two weeks but from what I know he wasn’t himself last night. Something was off. He was fun at the first bar, and he was heroic at Lolitas, but by the time we got to Baby Dolls, his mood had changed. He wasn’t laughing anymore. He had ninety pounds of naked girl on his lap and was staring off into space like a beleaguered mall Santa.

Too much Chang, I thought at first. He’ll snap out of it. But a few minutes later he started throwing popcorn at me, like an impetuous child. He was trying to get my attention over the booming music.

Who let the dogs out? he shouted across a door sized table.

I thought I didn’t hear him right and cupped my hand to my ear.

Who let the FUCKING dogs out? he repeated.

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I looked up at the stage of twenty or so dancers shuffling around the poles in black leather thigh-boots. Was he unhappy with the quality of girls? I shrugged my shoulders.

I don’t know, I shouted back.

He nodded his head and dropped back into his seat. He seemed satisfied that I didn’t know. He went back to drinking his pint and absently stroking his bar girl’s head as he stared off into space.

I had already dismissed the exchange as drunken rambling when the song Who Let the Dogs Out came on and the place went wild with excitement. Nick looked at me then with the quiet pride of a fortune-teller. He had been trying to tell me the future. He leaned forward again across the table.

It’s a twenty song loop, he shouted. Over and over. It never changes here.

The way he said it, as though he too was caught in the loop, gave me pause. Who is this guy? I thought. And why is he here if he doesn’t like it?

Two more beers went down in the span of three songs, and out of the corner of my eye I watched Nick get drunker and still more distant with his girl. Eventually, I saw them have a spat about something and the girl take her purse and walk away. Nick only looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. Easy come, easy go, he seemed to say.

For the next little while, I ignored Nick as I watched a naked girl at the table next to us. She was getting whipped with a rubber hose by four white men and a fellow bar girl sitting at the table. There was a loud cracking noise every time she got hit. I thought it rather cruel at first until I noticed that the rubber hose was actually made of a foam rubber material. It was intended to make a lot of noise but not actually hurt that much. The girl was smiling and sometimes laughing as she rolled around on the beer soaked table showing off her pussy to all angles.

Not surprisingly, one of the guys at the table eventually took a real interest in her pussy, and in what I would call the show’s grand finale, took an ice cube out of his drink and put it inside her. He put his head down and proceeded to suck on the ice cube as his friends looked on. Only in Thailand, I thought.

When I looked over to see what Nick thought of the show, I was surprised to see that he wasn’t watching. In the brief moment I had looked away, Nick had gone from belligerently drunk to sloppy drunk. He was practically asleep now and slumped over to the side. He was a mess. He was a mess that I didn’t want to deal with at the moment, but felt I had no choice. Bros before hoes, I thought. The expression had been coined for this exact situation.

So I put my girl on hold and moved over to sit next to Nick. I propped him up and splashed some water on his face. I forced him to drink some water even as he tried to push it away.

You’re a good man, Joe, he said after finally taking a sip. You’re a good mate.

Glad to hear it, I said. Let me walk you back to your hotel.

He shook his head.

I’m fine, he said. Just let me rest a minute. I’ll be okay.

In the dim light of the bar, I noticed that Nick looked much older than usual. He reminded me of my father on a Sunday morning.

Maybe we should switch it up tomorrow, I said. Maybe hit the beach and get some sun.

He looked at me bleary-eyed and seemed to think for a moment.

You’re a good man, Joe, he said after a long pause. You should get out of this place. Go back to your wife. Pretend she’s got the only pussy in the whole world.

I laughed.

I’ll think about it, I said.

Yeah, you’ll think about it, he repeated, when your bits fall off.

Let me take you home, I said again.

You’re a good man, Joe, he said again. A good mate.

Nick looked me in the eyes and appeared to be thinking again. This time, I could tell he was mulling over something heavy. He soon made up his mind about it and reached into his pocket with two fingers to wiggle out his cell phone. When he finally had it, he took the phone and pressed it into my hand like a grandfather handing over an heirloom.

Call your wife, he said very seriously. Let her know you’re here.

I’m not going to call my wife from a go-go bar, I said, laughing. Are you crazy?

Just call her, he insisted. Just say hello.

I put the phone back on the table in front of him. Tomorrow, I said. 

He fell back into the seat and took a swig of water. Love has to be nurtured, he said.

From practically on the floor, Nick clanged his plastic water bottle with my beer bottle and said a sad, cheers. As I looked at him, I wondered what his story was and if I would ever really know. I also wondered if I would still be friends with Nick if I had met him on the streets of America instead of Thailand. I supposed I wouldn’t, but knew it didn’t matter. I was in Thailand now, and Nick was the only friend I had.

I should mention also that two weeks ago on the streets of Bangkok, Nick saved my life.

3  Arrival in Bangkok

Bangkok  17 days ago

When I first saw Bangkok from the airplane, it was like any other city at night—a mixture of silver and gold lights on a pitch-black canvas. My guidebook said that Bangkok was The City of Angels, but also advised to be wary of pickpockets and confidence schemes. At ten-thousand feet, it was difficult to say what the truth would be. I was excited to find out.

After a sixteen-hour flight with numerous cocktails and only muddled sleep, I should have been dead tired but when we touched down and the pilot announced that the local time was 8:40 p.m., a sudden release of adrenaline set my heart to pounding. I still had time to hit the town.

I quickly borrowed a pen and filled out my entry card on the foldable food table before the plane docked. With my seat belt still fastened, I began to visualize how I would disembark the plane faster than the others, bypass the moving-sidewalks that clumped with old people, and arrive at immigration at the head of the pack. I imagined the stoic immigration officer and how I would only say one month and for pleasure and venture no smile until the stamp came down that said: IMMIGRATION SUVARNABHUMI THAILAND AIRPORT. It was truly the scarlet letter of passport stamps, a stain that could never be removed, but at the moment it was all I wanted in the world. Once I had that stamp, I’d be home free. I’d breeze past the baggage carousels and out the door with only my backpack and a smooth-rolling Samsonite carry-on. If traffic was light, I thought I could be checked into my hotel by 11:00 p.m. By midnight, I imagined myself in a Bangkok go-go bar surrounded by angels.

It was a good plan that saw me exiting the airport even ahead of the first class people that had been given a head start off the plane. As I exited the airport, however, I got my first unpleasant surprise. Stepping through the sliding doors, I hit the wall of