Rough Living

by Vago Damitio

  “Tomorrow” the pirate laughed in my face. “You wait til tomorrow.” He pulled his cap down over his eyes.

  Johnny stood up from the boat now. “Listen…Mate,” he laid his big hands on Saechao’s shoulder, “You’re going to take us now… understand?”

  I figured a fight was coming…soon.

  “How much you pay him?” a man in a blue baseball cap asked.

  “Five hundred thousand,” Johnny said. “He said he would get us to Huey Xai…today. This is going to be a problem.”

  “Wait..” the man said, “Just wait a moment.”

  He started to speak Lao rapidly to the pirate and his two companions. The pirate answered and laughed loudly looking at us. His three companions looked unhappy. They kept gesturing back and forth between the boats. It seemed the other three were not too pleased with the pirate’s methods. A problem was coming soon. I decided to lighten the mood a little.

  I stepped back into the cigar boat and sat in Saechao’s seat. I made as if I would start the engine. “Hey,” I yelled at the men on the dock “No problem, I’ll drive.” I took a look at how I could start the engine hoping they wouldn’t kill me.

  The guy in the cap laughed and motioned me out of the seat. “No, you load bags in this boat. I take you to Huey Xai. Him,” he motioned to Saechao, “No good. I take you. No cost.”

  Saechao laughed and pulled his cap over his eyes sitting back on two legs of his chair. Johnny navigated himself back to the boat and began transferring our soaked bags to the new guys boat.

  “What’s your name?” Johnny asked him.

  “Sok,” he said. ”Let’s go.”

  The rest of the journey was tame compared with the earlier speed and frequency of obstacles. The sun got lower and lower until finally he brought the boat into a small dock in a village where a young boy tied us off and Sok told us to wait for him.

  “Here we go again,” I said.

  “No, I think Sok is a good guy,” Johnny said. “Let’s wait.”

  A few minutes later Sok came back and motioned for us to get our bags. ”Too dark for river. I pay for taxi to Huey Xai for you. You take.”

  He led us to the large transport truck with the tarps rolled up the sides. He put our bags inside, paid the driver, and turned to walk away.

  “Hey…Sok…” I called out to him. “ Kop jai lai lai.” Thank you.

  “No problem, “ Sok called back over his shoulder. “Lao people good people, not like Pirate Saechao. Him no good.” He walked back to the river and sat down with the boy sitting on the dock. The sun glinted on the Mekong as the truck pulled away down the bumpy dirt road.

  These old Yao women sold me an ounce of shitty weed for about $1. I’m not very tall but in Laos, I sometimes felt like a giant.

  Bar Girls in Ko Samui

  The three girls got up from their bar stools as I stumbled past the Macho Lounge.

  “Hey, you… come have drink.”

  “Handsome man, come inside, say hello.”

  “Hello, handsome man, have drink inside.”

  They were three variations on the same theme. The young plump bar girl The slightly older and skinnier bar girl And the worn down, missing a tooth, speaks better English but doesn’t look any good at all anymore bar girl.

  The three muses turned to Thai prostitutes. Sirens beckoning the old and the drunk into a bar that must have been named in the 80’s but probably was only a year or two old.

  Thailand was the sex change capital of the world and had more transvestites and transsexuals than anywhere. It was also the capitol of AIDS in Asia.Anybody foolish enough to sleep with a prostitute in Thailand deserved what he got…and there was no telling what he was going to get…boy, girl, lady boy, or a cornucopia of venereal diseases which could debilitate or kill you.

  Star, a Thai woman I’d met in Laos had explained to me how parents sold their daughters to pimps in Bangkok and the young innocent girls from the villages were thrown into a life of sordid sex and exploitation. She knew the story from experience.

  Since then I’d met dozens of young men who either wanted to or already had invested in the sex stock exchange. I’d heard the stories about the beautiful girl who pulled a big dick out of her pants, broken condoms in a Bangkok brothel, and of course all the stories about the sex bars in Puttaya.

  All the backpackers went to Puttaya whether they were men or women…just to see it, was the way they put it. To see the snakes, coins, bananas, and who knew what else emerging from the vaginae of Thai women. To see hundreds of prostitutes strutting their stuff in the sex capitol of the sex capitol of the world. I’d turned down at least 10 offers to join different groups who were going to Puttaya…just to check it out. I had no desire to see exploitation and degrading use of the female body first hand. The second and third hand accounts were enough. I’d passed a wide circle around Puttaya.

  It was why I was here, in Ko Samui. I’d heard so many people complain about the ‘tameness’ and the ‘family atmosphere’ that had taken over on Samui in the past few years. It sounded like a cleaner, safer, less tempting version of Thailand to me. But now that I was here, I couldn’t really understand how anyone had found it tame or suitable for a family.

  Walking down the main street I passed dozens of small bars where three, four, or five girls sat calling out to men as they walked by. The bars all had huge speakers and no walls resulting in a contest of decibels as each place attempted to prove it was the best spot. Thai people apparently measure fun with volume so unless you had a guesthouse a decent distance from the beach, you got to listen to throbbing techno beat all night long.

  It was like a carnival here with bungee jumping, tailoring, food stalls, and prostitutes side by side and huge white people walking down the center of the streets ignoring the cars which honked at them while trying to drive from point A to point B.

  It was overwhelming. I’d looked for nearly an hour before I found a bar I could sip a whiskey in without being propositioned. I didn’t want to stay there either but ended up meeting an Englishman who bought me a few rounds while explaining how the Chinese owned the whole island and simply rented it to the Thais who actually lived and worked here.

  Four whiskeys on an empty stomach and here I was. Stumbling past the Macho Bar.

  “Hello, handsome man, you come in, please.”

  Why not? I could get to know the girls, find out why they were here, what made them tick. I stepped into the bar and only then noticed it was empty except for the three bar girls and the bartender.

  The girls clustered around me and I felt like some sort of sinning pervert for even being in such close proximity to them. “I wonder if any of these three are men?” I thought to myself as I searched for Adams apples, man hands, and hairy upper lips. None of them exhibited the characteristics of a transvestite I’d learned from a young Irishman the day before. They seemed to be the real deal.

  Were they prostitutes?

  “What will you have?” the girl behind the bar spoke pretty good English. I noticed how pretty she was and found myself wishing she were a prostitute… just for a moment though until I caught myself and attributed it to the whiskey.

  “Mekong whisky on ice,” I had gotten to where I liked Thai whiskey. It was sweet and didn’t have the same bite as Canadian or American blends. Actually, it was crap, but it was so cheap it was almost free.

  She smiled and poured it. “You play darts?” She pointed to where the plump young bar girl had begun throwing darts at an ancient dartboard and mostly missing. “You should play her.”

  It sounded like a good idea. I got up and moved over to where she was playing. ”Hey, can I play?” It felt foolish asking her.

  “She doesn’t speak English. She love you play.” The bartender spoke rapidly in Thai and the girl smiled at me and handed the darts my way. The two older girls were standing nearby watching the whole exchange. I shot my darts, hitting a bulls eye and two twenties. All three women clapped and cheered for me. It felt go
od. I retrieved the darts and handed them to the bar girl She shot and stuck one in the board and the other two in the bamboo paneling.

  “That last one was a good shot,” I told her. Each time I shot the whole bar got excited and cheered making me feel incredibly…well…macho. Even though the whole bar consisted of me, the bartender, and the three bar girls I was having an incredible time. I played darts, rolled dice against the bartender for drinks, bought rounds of sodas for the girls, danced, and had nonsense conversations with the girl who spoke no English. I liked the way she looked at me. I lost track of how many whiskeys I drank. I lost track of everything.

  “Hey, Joe, you take her home now, okay?” The bartender, my good friend, gave me a conspiratorial wink. “She like you, so you take her back to guesthouse…okay?”

  “Okay,” it came out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying.

  “Good, now you pay me 500 baht. Bar fee.” I was too ashamed to back out now, it was only $30 or $40. I didn’t want to back out.I put the money on the bar. Maybe I would walk the girl home and then send her back. I was kidding myself and I knew it. This was what I’d wanted all along, my secret wish. The girl looked like a younger version of Star. My feelings against the sex trade were all designed to keep me away from this, what I really wanted. Guilt free, responsibility free, sex.

  We got back to my room and she indicated I should take a shower. I didn’t know if we should shower together so I went in the bathroom by myself and dumped dippers full of water over myself, lathered up, and rinsed with more dippers. When I left, she entered and I heard the same process repeated.

  She was strangely shy. Staying wrapped in a towel until the lights were off. I was still nervous she might be a man and lifted the towel from her vagina. It was a real one.

  I put on one of the condoms I carried in my medical kit. The sex act itself was simple and a one time deal. I’d drank too much Mekong whiskey to be a stallion. She didn’t seem to mind just cuddling and holding each other. I started to fall asleep and she got up….”I come back…okay?” Apparently she did speak a little English.

  “Okay,” I said and fell back asleep.

  In the morning she was there. Lying next to me. She watched me as I woke up, ran her hands over my chest, my body, and looked deeply into my eyes.

  “500 baht,” she said, “You pay now, okay?”

  My head was aching. I reached for my wallet, wondering if she had already cleaned it out. I opened it and everything was still there. She could have taken everything if she wanted, instead she came back and spent the night cuddling with me.

  I pulled out a five hundred note, paused and pulled out a second 500 note. I handed them both to her, realizing I didn’t even know her name. She smiled, a sleepy, affectionate smile. Then looking extremely self conscious she leaned down over me and kissed my chest. “I see you tonight. Bye bye.”

  I wondered if I should tell her I was leaving today, decided not to, and rolled over feeling anything but guilty at realizing I was a hypocrite.

  The Guitar Player

  If you were white and someone could see you… then you were a target to the Thai people. They knew you had money, even if you didn’t.

  I had to wait for the bus to Bangkok.I’d walked all over the tiny city of Krabi on the western coast of Thailand for the past 7 hours. It was a nice city, but there was only so much to see. What I really wanted was to find a quiet and secluded place to play my guitar…. a near impossibility given the aggressiveness of the taxi drivers, boatmen, guesthouse hawkers, and food vendors.

  But, I had my blue guitar. A guitar is a great way to meet friends. It goes beyond language. It didn’t matter where I went, if I had my guitar, other musicians found me, found a way to speak to me, and found a way to share the gift of the muse.

  I carried my pack and guitar to the bus station beside the docks. An empty bench was looking out on the islands that littered the Indian Ocean. I was stopped seven or eight times by men of all ages who noticed my skin or the guitar or both.

  “Hey, guitar….take boat tour? See Islands? Come on…” a young Thai man with a sparse mustache.

  “Mei kapkun krap,” no thanks “I leave in one hour to Bangkok.”

  “Mai pen rai, no problem, take short tour with me, okay?” Thai people believed in the ultra hard sell and then got upset when you became rude.

  “No, I just want to play my guitar while I wait for the bus, okay? Kapkun krap.” The guy decided I was a hopeless cause and bee lined towards a white couple that had rounded the corner.

  “Hey,” strumming air guitar “Me play..me play…okay?” the guy was a bit older than the last, usually I would have handed him the guitar but now I could see an empty park bench that offered me a place to turn the anger gurgling within me to harmless notes on the wind.

  “No, I’m going to play now…I want to play my guitar…okay? I play” The man continued talking and air strumming but I ignored him and walked to the bench shucking off my pack and sitting down.

  If I could start playing, I hoped it would build a sort of invisible wall around me so I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone else before my bus arrived. I started playing a new progression of chords and a couple of guys in their mid-twenties stood near by looking at me.

  Finally they decided to breach my musical armor with the standard question among Asians that violates most western rules of privacy etiquette.

  “Hey, where you go now? Where you go?” the thin kid in the yellow T-shirt sort of hurled the question at me. I tried to continue playing and ignore it, but knew my own sense of politeness would necessitate an answer. “Huh, hey where you go?”

  I saw the way their eyes shifted from me to the guitar and knew the question was only an attempt to wrestle the guitar from my hands and into the most likely talented fingers of one of the young men. I was careful to keep playing as I answered “Bangkok in one hour, so I’m just passing the time playing guitar for a while.”

  I put on a smile I didn’t feel and began to sing a song I’d been practicing thus building up my musical fortifications. It did little to repel the yellow shirted invader. He sat on the bench next to me and then much to my surprise reached out and attempted to pull the guitar from my hands.

  “Here, you let me play..” he said as he grabbed the neck and tugged gently.

  I pulled the guitar back towards me and tried to remain calm as a rage started to burn in my chest.

  “Hey man, what the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m playing a song and you try to grab MY guitar from me in the middle. That’s just rude man. It’s really fucking rude, do you have any idea? Huh?”

  The Thai guy was nonplussed. “Here let me play, I play now, give.” His thin hands reached again for the guitar.

  “No way, if you want to play, you wait until I’m done and then you ask, not just grabbing and demanding,” I looked in the man’s eyes, “Otherwise you’re a rude fucking man, just a rude man, you understand?” My temper was starting to slip out of control.

  The Thai man’s eyes narrowed and he said again “Give me, I play.”

  I felt a confrontation coming on, a scared voice in me told me to just give the guy the guitar, I ignored it and stayed on the dangerous ground my self righteous anger demanded.

  “No, you’re a rude fucking man. Why should I give you my guitar? It’s mine and I’m playing a song, or I was until you tried to grab it. That’s just fucking rude man.” My voice was starting to show a little of the anger I felt.

  The Thai man saw it and recognized the word fuck. He may not of understood the whole content of my sentence, but he understood the meaning. His own sense of’face’ in danger now, he stood up.

  “You..me…Thai box now.” He made a kick towards my head pulling it back before it was in a real threatening position. There are three facets of Thai life that define it. First is a sense of fun, second is maintaining face, and third is respecting the position of those above you. This situation had quickly escalated to a contest to see w
ho would lose face.

  “You, kickbox with me, now, come on.”

  I started to play my guitar again. “No, I don’t want to kickbox. I want to play my guitar. Don’t you get that?” I felt a little fear in my gut but refused to acknowledge it. I’d heard plenty of stories about foreigners who were stupid enough to get in fights with Thai people. As soon as a single blow was exchanged every Thai within seeing distance jumped into the fray, usually killing the stupid tourist. You don’t fight with the Thai’s, not if you have any kind of a brain.

  I was in a bit of a tough spot. I refused to lose face myself. I saw the attention of the fifteen or twenty Thai’s around the bus station shifting towards the bench I sat on.

  “I’m not going to fight you. I’m going to play my guitar.” It was the only way I could see out, I didn’t know how to resolve anything without one of us losing face which could inspire an attack on me. The Thai’s look down on public displays of anger and I hoped the guitar and the music my plucking fingers were again producing would keep the attack from happening.

  “Yeah, okay,” yellow shirt said, ”We see what happen, hey, you watch out.”

  He walked away and joined a group of seven or eight of his friends and stood in a circle with them. Speaking and gesturing towards the bench, the group walked away. Every once in a while one of the guys would turn their heads to look at me. I tried to give them a carefree sort of grin unless it was yellow shirt, in which case we would glare at each other for a moment.

  ‘These guys are gonna jump me and take the guitar’ I thought,’ I’ll either get beat up or killed in the next 45 minutes.’ I considered whether to get up and leave or to let the tourist police around the corner know about the guy. Both alternatives involved losing face myself and I’d already been stupid enough to allow myself to get angry and show it.

  Instead I sat on the bench playing the guitar and waiting for the attack I felt was imminent. It was a nervous game. My guitar playing went on automatic and my concentration went to tracking the movements of the gang of young men using my peripheral vision. After 20 minutes or so, yellow shirt, moved within range of the bench, the two of us continued to exchange hostile glances. He moved closer. I set the guitar down, adrenaline pumping through me. Here it comes.