The tourist was turning red and his body had stiffened. He looked like he wanted a fight but obviously thought better of it and moved to a safe distance further inside the bar, near the toilets. Carl didn’t have anything against him but he was not in the mood to adopt him and become his tour guide to the Bangkok red light experience. He was getting less tolerant of people with every passing year.
Carl exhibited all the symptoms of Expatriate Bubble. When old Bangkokhands have had enough, they retreat into their anger-powered Expatriate Bubble where they can control contact with the outside world and avoid being hit by the flying bullshit. In Carl’s opinion this was not a healthy way to live but he had ended up there anyway.
The cool and windowless place made him forget that it was a bit early for his drinking habit and he quickly got back in the swing of it. After all, he hadn’t actually received payment and so was entitled to take the rest of the day off. After the fifth drink Carl always found an excuse to avoid work. It would be a couple of hours before he expected to be called back by his man inside immigration so he decided that he might as well kill some time and enjoy himself.
An older waitress with a reasonable English vocabulary was talking to an obvious tourist. He was besotted with a young girl with the more voluptuous figure of the new generation that had grown up on dairy products. Foremost company of the US had a plant in Thailand during the Vietnam War making reconstituted milk, yogurt and ice cream under contract to the US military. When the troops pulled out they had no customer base, as most Thais were lactose intolerant. By the 1990s they had weaned the younger Thais onto their products.
The girl was under twenty years old so would have got the full calcium, protein, and cow fat package. It may not have been as healthy as the original Thai diet but it had given her a body by Michelangelo, which was fine by Carl. She was too young for him unfortunately. Children had never been Carl’s thing. He still looked though. The love-struck tourist was a bit older than Carl and he seemed to think her age was perfect. She looked bored and disinterested.
The older English-speaking waitress left the amorous barfly and the voluptuous girl together and came over to Carl and said in Thai, “He likes her a lot.”
“Who wouldn’t? She’s very beautiful and very young.”
“She is beautiful but still stupid. She’s my daughter and I am teaching her to be clever. All she wants is to be with young people but I told her, young people have no money. She’ll learn though, I must make sure she learns. She looks up to you. Maybe you can take her for a few days. You could teach her what makes men happy.”
“What makes you think I’m happy?”
“You spend lots of money and get drunk a lot.”
Then she took the frustration off her face, put on a smile, and walked back over to her daughter.
When the phone rang over two hours later Carl was in alcohol’s happy middle phase and surrounded by half-naked women. He was entertaining them with Thai jokes, which are always of a sexual nature. Unfortunately his repertoire was limited and it signalled that it was time for him to leave the party. After having been drunkenly playful and having a dozen or so girls rolling around laughing for half an hour Carl could hardly sit in silence again. So he let the phone ring out while he paid his bill.
As soon as he stepped outside he saw the flood had reduced into a giant puddle. He returned the missed call and got the information he had expected; there was no record of a James Arthur Peabody entering or leaving Thailand at any time in the previous two years. He put the phone back in his pocket and walked through the puddle with his confident and rolling stride, splashing water all around him.
Carl’s next stop was a dimly lit bar where all the waitresses were advertised in lace G-strings. ‘Brevity is the soul of lingerie’ said a sign on the wall. Brevity was taken so seriously that some of the girls didn’t bother with underwear at all. The owner was Croatian and had come to Thailand to escape the horrors of the Balkan war. He went north to the hills of Chiang Mai where he chose heroin over his military uniform. Then, after a couple of years, he had chosen lingerie over the heroin and the result was a fetish lounge on Soi Cowboy. Lingerie is a relatively harmless fetish, which is probably why the place was not overly popular.
The owner’s name was Oleg. He was behind the bar hovering near the cashier. He had the hollow cheeks and vague eyes of a person who had abused narcotics to the extreme and somehow lived to tell the tale. Oleg was tall and very thin. He dressed like a teenager in skinny jeans and an overly elaborate shirt and had hair that was spiked up with gel that Carl had always thought looked like a toilet brush. He atypically bought Carl a drink. Oleg never bought anybody a drink.
“Carl, I need your help,” he said, still with the Balkans still in his accent.
“Do I get a clue Oleg or do I need to guess the problem?”
“You see my bar, it is very quiet, no?”
“Yes Oleg, always quiet.”
As they spoke, a heavy red felt curtain that had been drawn across an alcove at the far end of the bar opened. Behind the curtain was a synthetic leather sofa that Oleg’s girls used to solicit tips for fellatio sessions. A slightly overweight and dangly breasted girl came out followed by an enormous Russian tourist. The Russian grunted at her in Russian and kissed her on the cheek whilst slipping a thousand baht note into her eager hand. The Russian left hurriedly.
“We serve anybody these days,” Oleg said in disgust as the door closed behind the Russian.
“So what can I help you with Oleg?”
“I was wondering after all these years you have been coming to Soi Cowboy if you can give me advice on what to do to make more customers come.”
“I hope what you mean is how to attract more customers to the bar. Otherwise it is way outside my field of expertise Oleg.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Never mind, I will tell you a story Oleg. Once upon a time there was a bar on Soi Cowboy and the owner, being new in town, asked a customer for advice. What is wrong with my bar, he asked his only customer of the night. Quite obvious, he was told, you see, the bar is on the wrong side of the room so when the door opens you cannot see the bar or the customers, and as you know, nobody wants to enter an empty bar. The bar owner took this to heart and shut the place down for a month and had the bar demolished and moved from one side of the building to the other. A few weeks after reopening there was little improvement in the number of customers. One night he asked a customer what he thought the problem was. Obvious, he said, the bar is on the wrong side. What do you mean, he demanded. I mean, when the door opens you can see everybody at the bar and what they are all doing and who wants to be seen by people from the street in such a bar.”
“I don’t get it,” Oleg told Carl.
“You will Oleg, you are already halfway there.”
Oleg went back to his corner at the other end of the dimly lit bar where his computer was situated. Due to his history with heroin he didn’t trust himself with alcohol so was addicted to Coca Cola and the Internet instead. Carl had seen him once sitting at his computer surfing Internet porn sites. Carl had thought this very curious indeed because while Oleg was glued to his computer screen three of his naked girls were putting on a show for a customer with a fat wallet. The show included hot dripping candle wax, spanking, and several dildos. Carl had wondered what Oleg could possibly be captivated by on an Internet porn site while all that was going on but he had decided that he didn’t want to know.
The door opened bringing daylight. Damien Southerby came in and sat beside Carl. Carl knew that his real name was Keith Smith but pretended that he didn’t. It was better that way. In Bangkok if he wanted to be called Damien Southerby he would get it and that was fine by Carl. He wore a starched business shirt with twinkling diamond cufflinks and a bright yellow Zegna tie. His watch was a gold Rolex also covered in diamonds. Damien had perfectly styled hair, manicured fingernails and the clear skin of somebody who eats well and visits his health club regularly.