These he had purchased among the dim stalls at Wat Rajanada, the amulet market near Klong Saensaep in Bangkok. The amulet was to protect him against accidents and malevolent ghosts. The penis was to increase his potency, to make sure whoever he met up with tonight would have a good time. It was supposed to be worn on a string around his waist, but the first few times he’d done that, his American lovers gave him strange looks.
The amulets were the last thing Suko bought with Thai money before boarding a California-bound jet and bidding farewell to his sodden homeland, most likely for ever. He’d had to travel a long way from Patpong Road to get them, but he didn’t know whether one could buy magical amulets in America. Apparently one could: attached to his Mardi Gras beads had once been a round medallion stamped with an exaggerated Negro face and the word zulu. He’d lost the medallion on a night of drunken revelry, which was as it should be. Mai pen rai. No problem.
Suko was nineteen. His full name was unpronounceable by American tongues, but he didn’t care. American tongues could do all sorts of other things for him. This he had learned at fourteen, after hitching a midnight ride out of his home village, a place so small and so poor that it appeared on no map foreign eyes would ever see.
His family had always referred to the city by its true name, Krung Thep, the Great City of Angels. Suko had never known it by any other name until he arrived there. Krung Thep was only an abbreviation for the true name, which was more than thirty syllables long. For some reason, farangs had never got used to this. They all called it Bangkok, a name like two sharp handclaps.
In the streets, the harsh reek of exhaust fumes was tinged with a million subtler perfumes: jasmine, raw sewage, grasshoppers frying in peppered oil, the odour of ripe durian fruit that was like rotting flesh steeped in thick sweet cream. The very air seemed spritzed with alcohol, soaked with neon and the juices of sex.
He found his calling on Patpong 3, a block-long strip of gay bars and nightclubs in Bangkok’s famous sleaze district. In the village, Suko and his seven brothers and sisters had gutted fish for a few baht a day. Here he was paid thirty times as much to drink and dance with farangs who told him fascinating stories, to make his face prettier with make-up, to be fondled and flattered, to have his cock sucked as often as he could stand it. If he had to suck a few in return, how bad could that be? It was far from the worst thing he had ever put in his mouth. He rather liked the taste of sperm, if not the odd little tickle it left in the back of his throat.
He enjoyed the feel of male flesh against his own and the feel of strong arms enfolding him, loved never knowing what the night would bring. He marvelled at the range of body types among Americans and English, Germans and Australians. Some had skin as soft and pale as rice-flour dough; some were covered with thick hair like wool, matting their chests and arms. They might be fat or emaciated, squat or ponderously tall, ugly, handsome, or forgettable. All the Thai boys he knew were lean, light brown, small-boned and smooth-skinned, with sweet androgynous faces. So was he. So was Noy.
From the cheap boom box in the corner of the room, Robert Smith sang that Suko made him feel young again. Suko scowled at the box. Noy had given him that tape, a poor-quality Bangkok bootleg of The Cure, right after Suko first spoke of leaving the country. Last year. The year Suko decided to get on with his life.
The rest of them, these other slim raven-haired heartbreakers, they thought they would be able to live like this for ever. They were seventeen, fifteen, younger. They were in love with their own faces in the mirror, jet-coloured eyes glittering with drink and praise, lips bruised from too many rough kisses, too much expert use. They could not see themselves at thirty, could not imagine the roughening of their skin or the lines that bar life would etch into their faces. Some would end up hustling over on Soi Cowboy, Patpong’s shabby cousin where the beer was cheaper and the tinsel tarnished, where the neon flickered fitfully or not at all. Some would move to the streets.
And some would simply disappear. Suko intended to be one of those.
Noy was just his age, and smart. Suko met him onstage at the Hi-Way Bar. They were performing the biker act, in which two boys sat facing each other astride the saddle of a Harley-Davidson, wearing only leather biker caps, tongue-kissing with sloppy abandon and masturbating each other while a ring of sweaty farang faces gathered around them.
Immediately afterward, while the cum was still oozing between the thrumming saddle and the backs of their skinny thighs, Noy murmured into Suko’s mouth, ‘Wouldn’t they be surprised if we just put this thing in gear and drove it into the crowd?’
Suko pulled back and stared at him. Noy’s left arm was draped lazily around Suko’s neck; Noy’s right hand cupped Suko’s cock, now tugging gently, now relaxing. Noy smiled and lifted one perfect eyebrow, and Suko found himself getting hard again for someone who wasn’t even paying him.
Noy gave him a final squeeze and let go. ‘Don’t make a date when you get done working,’ he told Suko. ‘Take me home with you.’
Suko did, and even after a night on Patpong, they puzzled out one another’s bodies like the streets of an unfamiliar city. Soon they were the undisputed stars of the Hi-Way’s live sex shows; they knew how to love each other in private and how to make it look good in public. They made twice as much money as the other boys. Suko started saving up for a plane ticket.
But Noy spent his money on trinkets: T-shirts printed with obscene slogans, little bags of pot and pills, even a green glow-in-the-dark dildo to use in their stage show. In the end, Noy was just smart enough to make his stupidity utterly infuriating.
I’m really leaving, Suko would tell him as they lay entwined on a straw pallet in the room they rented above a cheap restaurant, as the odours of nam pla and chili oil wafted through the open window to mingle with the scent of their lovemaking. When I save up enough, I’m going to do it. You can come, but I won’t wait for you once I have the money, not knowing how many ways I could lose this chance.
But Noy never believed him, not until the night Suko showed him the one-way ticket. And how Noy cried then, real tears such as Suko had never thought to see from him, great childish tears that reddened his smooth skin and made his eyes swell to slits. He clutched at Suko’s hands and slobbered on them and begged him not to go until Suko wanted to shove him face-first into the Patpong mud.
This is all you want? Suko demanded, waving a hand at the tawdry neon, the ramshackle bars, the Thai boys and girls putting everything on display with a clearly marked price tag: their flesh, their hunger, and if they stayed long enough, their souls. This is enough for you? Well, it isn’t enough for me.
Noy had made his choices, had worked hard for them. But Suko had made his choices too, and no one could ever take them away. The city where he lived now, Los Angeles, was one of his choices. Another city of angels.
He had left Noy sobbing in the middle of Patpong 3, unable or unwilling to say goodbye. Now half a world lay between them, and with time, Suko’s memories of Noy soured into anger. He had been nothing but a jaded, fiercely erotic, selfish boy, expecting Suko to give up the dreams of a lifetime for a few more years of mindless pleasure. Asshole, Suko thought, righteous anger flaring in his heart. Jerk. Geek.