by Jim Algie
All these years Kendall had spent working as a freelance photographer in Asia and something still surprised him almost every day. That was the upside of the job. The downside was that he would never really understand any of these cultures, and no matter how proficient he became in Mandarin or Hindi or Thai or Khmer, he’d never really feel at home and never feel like he belonged in any of these countries. He would remain exactly where he was standing then in Malaysia, or sitting by himself now in Bangkok: on the periphery of every scene, wandering through Asian lands and flash-points where he was one of the white foreigners the Chinese referred to as “long-nosed ghosts,” watching scenes like that at the Festival of the Hungry Ghosts: a family kneeling in front of a bonfire praying to gods and goblins he could scarcely comprehend, with no one paying any attention to him at all—except for the staring kid. (In any gathering like that, there was always one kid staring at him with frightened awe like he was a potentially lethal animal in a zoo.)
You’re the real ghost, mate, a hungry ghost, never satisfied, always on the move, forever on the outside looking in.
There was only one temporary remedy for that long-standing affliction.
Kendall trudged up the worn, wooden steps of the guesthouse to see how the rice farmer’s son was doing.
WET NIGHTMARES
The fat guy grabbed Watermelon’s hand, pulled her onto his lap and squeezed her breasts. When he kissed her, she felt like digging her long, sparkly silver fingernails into the soft spot at the bottom of his throat and ripping out his vocal cords—anything to stop him from treating her like she was public property and shoving his tongue down her throat so she almost gagged on the taste of garlic and gin and tonic.
Instead, she pulled her mouth away, giggled and said, “You pay bar, I come your room, okay?”
He shook his head and his bearded jowls flapped.
Pay the fucking bar fine or stop squeezing my tits, she thought.
Watermelon leaned over, kissed him on the cheek, and smiled. In her helium-high voice, she squeaked, “You handsome man.”
“No, I am fat ugly man, ja.”
She suppressed a laugh: at least he was right about that.
Then she looked over at the stage of the Hot Pussies Go-Go Bar, where nine or ten women were dancing in matching red thongs and bras to a techno song. The flashing lights painted their faces and bodies with shades of pink, blue, orange and green. At the front, Bird was rubbing her crotch against a silver pole and smiling down at some cute young guy sitting at the bar that ringed the stage.
That greedy bitch had stolen Watermelon’s customer last night after she’d been sitting with the guy for two hours. It was only halfway through the month and Bird had been bragging to the other girls that she’d already racked up ten bar fines and eighty-five drinks. Although Watermelon, tiny and fair-skinned, considered herself to be the prettiest girl who worked there, she’d had a dismal month: only two bar fines and fifteen drinks.
As Bird turned around to rub her crack up and down the chrome pole, the German leered at her.
“Don’t look at her. She have AIDS.” It was the kind of vicious lie she’d been telling lately about any of the girls who made more money than she did, to the point where none of the other go-go dancers wanted anything to do with her.
After four years of working at various go-go bars around Patpong, she couldn’t hustle the way she used to. More and more often, when she wasn’t dancing, she found herself sitting alone in the corner, thinking of ways she could get enough money to start her own little beauty parlor in Bangkok, bring her daughter back from her parents’ village in Chiang Mai province, and find a new husband who had a decent job.
She didn’t think that was too much to ask for from life. So why was she stuck here?
To end up as a whore in this life she must’ve committed some terrible sins in her previous one (probably even killed somebody); that’s why she was being punished like this. But as long as she kept doing good deeds when she could, and giving alms to Buddhist monks, then she might be able to improve her bad karma.
With the money she’d already saved up, all she needed was a couple of thousand more dollars, and then she’d have enough to go into business for herself.
The fat guy beside her, now rubbing her pussy through her thong, was going to be her ticket out of here. Looking at his gold Rolex watch, diamond ring and Versace shirt, it was obvious that he was rich. Since he was staying in a fancy hotel, it was also obvious that his expensive clothes and jewelry weren’t the fakes that they sold in the Night Bazaar right outside the bar.
Earlier, when he’d taken out his wallet to give her a tip, she’d noticed that it was stuffed with American dollars. Then Watermelon lied and said she was going on a trip to Chiang Mai soon—and was it a good idea to take traveler’s checks with her?
“I never use in Thailand. I come here three times every year for ten years now, and I never have problem. Thailand is very safe, ja.”
So maybe he had more money and jewelry back in his hotel room. Maybe there was an expensive camera she could steal, or even a video camera. But would he keep the rest of his cash and valuables in the room’s safety deposit box?
He’d already given her a one-hundred baht tip and bought her three “Lady Drinks,” so he must like her. Now she had to get him to pay the bar fine and take her back to his hotel. Hot Pussies was going to close in half an hour, and she was worried that he might wander off to an after-hours disco and pick up someone else. After another song she’d have to go back on-stage to dance again. Her feet were already sore from shuffling and grinding all night in her high heels, and if she did go back on-stage then Bird or one of the other girls might steal her customer. She couldn’t take that chance. She had to get him to pay the bar fine now.
With one hand, Watermelon stroked the lump in his trousers, while she rubbed his right nipple through the silk shirt. His blue eyes closed slightly. She then put her hand inside his shirt and circled the nipple with her fingernail as the lump in his trousers grew. The man’s eyes closed a little more and she could feel his heart pumping out of sync with the pounding drums. Squeezing the lump reminded her of milking cows on the family farm. She opened another button, leaned over and rimmed the nipple with her tongue, before taking it between her teeth and sucking on it.
His eyes were closed now, and the lump was wriggling as she put her tongue in his ear and tasted some bitter wax. Then Water-melon moaned, “I so horny. You pay bar for me, okay?”
His eyes opened and there was a dazed smile on his face, like he was awakening from a very pleasant dream. “Ja, I pay bar.”
Watermelon smiled, gave him a hug and kissed his prickly cheek. “Thank you.”
In the dressing room she changed into a bright pink mini-dress with matching high heels and took all of the perfume, makeup, underwear, tampons, her miniature panda bear, and the capsules she was going to use to drug him, out of her locker, and put them in her Snoopy backpack. In the cracked mirror, she wiped the lipstick smears off her cheeks and chin with a wad of damp toilet paper, put some fresh lipstick on, and then brushed her long, lustrous black hair.
Walking out of the bar behind the fat guy, she stopped near the front of the stage and called out Bird’s name. When the other woman turned around, Watermelon gave her the finger, yelled, “Fuck off!” and giggled. As she did it, she imagined that it wasn’t only the greedy bitch she was telling to fuck off: it was every customer in the bar, the owner, the mamasan, and the entire red-light district of Pat-pong, too.
IN THE BACK of the taxi with her customer, Watermelon’s guilt and nervousness about robbing him gave her an upset stomach.
But how many men had ripped her off?
Even after she’d told them in the go-go bar, or in another after-hours club, that her prices were fixed—for “short time” and “all night”—they still kept cheating her. The younger, better-looking guys were usually the worst: they never wanted to pay or they lied and said they would.
/> As she looked out the window of the taxi at a little stand selling red-pork-and-egg-noodles soup, she remembered that one cute guy with the spiky blond hair. Among her customers, the manicured bankers and cologne-reeking diplomats, the alcoholic whoremongers and the tattooed backpackers like him, many shared the same fantasy: They were such virile lovers that they could even make a prostitute climax. Watermelon spurred on his fantasy with a series of sighs, cresting on each breath as she moaned, “Oh yeah…oh yeah. You hit my G-spot,” like an actress repeating lines in a stage play she’d performed dozens of times, while wondering what she would have to eat afterwards (the sweet green curry or the rice noodles with fish balls?). And which pair of flats would go with the new top she’d bought today?
In the throes of arousal, her customers became such mindless animals that they did not realize she was only engaging them with her body. Her thoughts still ranged freely. So it was a little better than working as a seamstress in that garment factory, following patterns on an industrial-sized sewing machine, amidst a racket that made the fillings in her teeth ache and nullified all thoughts. That job demanded both her body and her mind and it didn’t pay nearly as well as working in a bar.
Humping away with short, sharp, repetitive strokes, not even varying the tempo at all, he reminded her of the two bunnies she’d bought for her daughter when they got in to mating mode. “Rabbit” was too young and vain to possibly be a good lover. He was more interested in admiring his tattoos, piercings, and muscles in the mirror beside the heart-shaped bed than he was in pleasing her, the kind of customer she had often overheard boasting to his friends, “I shagged that tart rotten last night.” Since few of the men spoke much Thai, they were unaware that the bargirls were constantly ridiculing them. Watermelon repeated his boast about her to her former friend Bird, who was sitting in a man’s lap beside the bar. Over top of the throbbing dance music, Bird yelled back, “So you had a really big romance last night?”
Watermelon shouted, “Are you kidding? It was the most well paid two minutes of my life.” Her and Bird shrieked with laughter.
Another dancer chimed in with an expression for a premature ejaculator, “He’s a sparrow dipping his beak,” and that caused another chorus of cackles.
All the jokes she made about her customers were less about revenge than a need to prove she was more than just an empty mortar to be pounded by a series of blood-engorged pestles. Almost any man could rent her body for the right price, but none would ever possess her mind or heart. That was what she used to think. But the longer she worked in a bar, the less true that had become.
After she took a shower and put on her clothes she politely asked Rabbit for her money.
“I don’t pay for it, luv.”
“You say me already you will to pay, na.”
And then there was that smug little smirk of his, like he was so superior to her (she wished she could travel back in time now and return the smirk), followed by: “Nobody likes a whore, dear.”
Without even letting her pick up her purse, he grabbed her arm, dragged her out of his hotel room, and slammed the door. For a few minutes she pounded on it and yelled at him to give back her purse until a security guard came up and said the man had accused her of trying to steal his watch. So he had to throw her out of his room.
After a long argument with the guard, who also knocked on the door repeatedly, the “cheap Charlie” opened it just wide enough to throw her red purse, emblazoned with gold hearts, on the floor, so that half of the contents spilled out. Blushing with embarrassment, she quickly shoved the package of condoms and the thong back inside it, then checked her wallet to find that the guy had stolen a thousand baht from her. Not only that, the security guard demanded some money—leaving her with barely enough for cab fare—or he said he’d report her to the police for stealing from one of the hotel’s guests.
That was far from her worst experience, though. She forced herself to remember the most terrible encounter because it alleviated her guilt about what she was going to do tonight.
Watermelon couldn’t remember if that businessman had been from Japan, or Hong Kong, or Singapore—what did it matter?—but he came into the bar after playing a round of golf and still had his bag and clubs with him.
His sick fantasy was for her to sit on the floor of the “short-time” hotel with her back against the bed and spread her legs and sex apart, so he could use his putter to try and tap a golf ball inside her. But he was far too drunk to realize that it was impossible. After about thirty attempts he shoved the ball inside her, raised the club and his other arm above his head, cheered and yelled, “A hole in one!”
Later, he made her kneel on the bed like a dog while he shoved the thin end of two clubs into her anus and vagina, screwing her with them while masturbating. Naked except for his blue socks and white golf cap, the sadist kept ordering her to look in the big mirror on the wall. “Look! Look in mirror!” It wasn’t enough for him to make her lose face like this, she thought, his real excitement depended on Watermelon seeing her shame and his superiority.
In between gasps and stabs of pain, she continued to look down at the pillow and think, “I’m being used as a scapegoat for every woman who’s ever rejected this fucking creep. And who wouldn’t?”
Because he had a pug-nose like a Pekinese, she decided this client’s nickname would be “Dog.” So when he growled, “You like? You like?” she replied in Thai, “I’ll bet you were born in the Year of the Dog, weren’t you?” and giggled. Every time he demanded to know if she liked it she made another joke and giggled.
When his pants and moans became whimpers, he grabbed her by the hair, twisted her head around, and spat gobs of disgusting semen all over her face.
Still panting, Dog said, “You don’t laugh at me. Too many women do like this already.”
Then he punched her in the face and broke her nose.
She curled up in a fetal position, wiping the blood, semen and tears from her face with a sheet, while he got dressed, shoved a couple of bills into her pussy, and left without saying a word.
Since that shameful evening—six months ago—she’d had trouble looking at her face in the mirror without sneering and telling her reflection: “You’re nothing but a stupid, rotten whore. No decent man is ever going to fall in love with you again and want to marry you, because you’re so disgusting.”
Until tonight, Watermelon had never stolen much from her clients except for some loose bills, a couple of expensive watches, and a few hundred multi-hued lighters. Since she didn’t smoke, she super-glued them, in the shape of peacocks, flowers and elephants, to cover the cracks in the walls of the one-room apartment she shared with three other bargirls. But she’d been fucked over too many times; now it was her turn to get even and get out of the business. Besides, this fat and hairy “Gorilla” was rich, so he wouldn’t really miss the money and jewelry anyway, and maybe she’d give him a good blow-job first, so he wouldn’t feel too cheated when he woke up.
If he woke up.
She’d heard a couple of stories about prostitutes drugging their clients. The men overdosed and the women ended up going to jail for twenty-five or thirty years. Watermelon knew one of those women and had gone to visit her a few times at a horrible prison in Bangkok. She always brought her some food, cigarettes, tampons or medicine and fashion magazines. In part, she knew these were selfish gestures: good deeds to help erase her bad karma.
Even working in a go-go bar had to be heaven compared to being imprisoned in a Thai jail, where the cells were so overcrowded that the prisoners had to take turns sleeping on the floor, and the daily food rations consisted of a small bowl of watery rice, and maybe—if you were lucky—a fish head.
Maybe she shouldn’t drug this guy. He’d been quite generous so far and would probably pay her well for sleeping with him tonight.
Then she remembered “Dog” growling at her, “Look! Look in mirror! You like? You like?” and that smirking backpacker with the blond hair thr
owing her favorite purse on the floor in the hallway.
What if Gorilla was a sadist, too? What if he stole her money and beat her up, or gave her AIDS, or even killed her?
To reassure herself, she felt around in her backpack for the switchblade she carried and stroked the plastic handle.
Then she looked down and saw Gorilla caressing her bare thigh. How long had he been touching her like that for? Why couldn’t she feel it?
When she thought about it, over the last four years Watermelon had been groped, kneaded, kissed, licked, bitten, screwed and sodomized so many times that her body was slowly dying and that her heart must look like a withered old rose, turning blacker and getting smaller by the night.
If she didn’t get out soon, her body and heart were going to die completely. Or she’d end up knifing one of her customers.
But she also had to quit for the sake of her daughter.
A couple of weeks ago she’d telephoned her parents’ house in northern Thailand and her five-year-old had picked up the phone. Listening to Duck babble away in that bright voice of hers–a memory of the heart-shaped wind chimes hanging down from the eaves of a Buddhist temple passed through Watermelon’s mind–always made her smile and feel like such a proud mother. It was funny how Duck couldn’t pronounce some of the Thai tones properly, so when she wanted to say, “We’re a very big family,” it sounded like, “We’re a very big strawberry.” She explained the mistake to Duck and they both laughed. In the hope of inspiring her daughter to be more diligent about studying than she’d been, Watermelon taught her the correct tones for “family” and then made her repeat them a few times until she got them right.
Only about three minutes into their conversation, however, her daughter suddenly asked, “Mom, are you really a prostitute? Is that why you never come home and visit me?”
At first, Watermelon was too stunned to say anything. Then she exploded. “I never taught you that dirty word, and I don’t want to ever hear you use it again! Do you understand? I’m a beautician and I have to work in Bangkok to help support you and my parents, younger sisters, and my two lazy brothers who never do anything but get drunk.”
