Drink, Play, F@#k

by Andrew Gottlieb

  In the happy aftermath of his great good fortune, Peter set his sights on more philanthropic pursuits. At least that’s how he sees it. In my mind, buying breast implants for attractive would-be starlets, visiting the Playboy Mansion fortnightly, and traveling the world looking for the next ball-jangling hedonistic experience aren’t exactly acts of philanthropy. But what do I know? If Andrew Carnegie had created How I Met Your Mother, he might have done the same thing. (Note: How I Met Your Mother is just an example. Peter did not create How I Met Your Mother.)

  When I told Peter my story, he was extremely interested. Actually, at first he was extremely bored. Then he asked me for an abbreviated version of my story as he didn’t think he had the patience to wait out the normal-length one. So I crystallized the nuggets for him—heartbreak, divorce, Ireland, Vegas, Krabi. That’s when he got interested.

  “This Rick guy was right on the money. If you’re looking to get back on the horse—sexually speaking—then Thailand is definitely the place for you.”

  I’m not sure that “getting back on the sex horse” was exactly what I was aiming for, but I nodded politely. Peter was an interesting guy. And he was funny. And he spoke English, which was a huge plus. Frankly, it was nice to have someone to talk to while I killed time waiting for the jam-packed fish ball of Asian line-cutting humanity to squeeze itself up the stairs and into the airplane.

  He was going to be staying at some fancy beachfront villa in Phuket and he suggested that we stay in touch. We exchanged information. Then he told me which Hollywood stars who are rumored to be gay really are gay, and which are not—and vice versa. I have since discovered that this is a popular topic of conversation in Hollywood. And I have to admit—it was pretty entertaining.

  Peter and I parted ways at Phuket and I continued my endless trek on to Krabi. I have never been that good at math so I honestly cannot compute how many hours it took me to get to the hotel at Krabi. It was, without a doubt, the longest, most uncomfortable, most exhausting and unpleasant trip of my life. Upon entering the grounds of the hotel, however, I knew in an instant that every second was worth it. Rick was right yet again. The place was freaking paradise.

  26

  First things first: I will not tell you the name of the hotel. To even call it a hotel is to do it a disservice. Hotel sounds so pedestrian, so run-of-the-mill. And you can’t just call up and make a reservation there anyway. So, technically, I guess it really isn’t a hotel at all. It’s kind of like that famous old Italian restaurant Rao’s in New York City. You can’t make a reservation to eat there—you have to already have one. But how can you already have one if you can’t make one to begin with? I have no idea, but the joint is always packed. The only way to get in is to be invited by someone who has managed to circumvent the system by miraculously already having a reservation. My idyllic beachfront spot in Thailand operated under the same set of bizarre restrictions. Fortunately, I was friends with an insider.

  Rick was my conduit to Eden. And I can’t reveal the name and exact whereabouts of this tropical heaven on earth because I promised Rick I wouldn’t. If I tell you, then you’ll tell someone else, who’ll tell his cousin, and she might mention it to her dentist—and before you know it there would be dentists there. And that would be unacceptable. There shouldn’t be any dentists in paradise, right?

  For the purpose of simplicity, I will call the spot where I spent most of my time while in Thailand the Cove. I will call it the Cove for two reasons. 1) The Cove sounds cool. And 2) It’s in a cove.

  Did anybody ever see that Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Beach? My wife tried to get me to go when it first came out, but I had absolutely no interest in seeing it. I remember thinking at the time that I’d rather go jogging than voluntarily see that piece of garbage—and I hate jogging. After I got back from Thailand, though, I went out and rented it. Guess what? It’s even worse than I imagined. Beyond moronic—one of those movies that you forget about while you’re watching it. Of course the beach itself is lovely. Soft white sand, warm turquoise water, dense, lush tropical foliage swaying in the breeze, natural plunge pools, brightly colored fish, and coral arches framing the setting sun. The scenery in that movie was truly stunning. But compared to the Cove, DiCaprio’s beach looked like a greasy February morning on Coney Island after a circus freak convention and a cheap beer festival coincided with a condom giveaway.

  It’s hard to describe beauty. Ugly is pretty easy. I can describe something really vile (like that Coney Island image) and have you try and picture its diametrical opposite. But true beauty has to be experienced to be comprehended. When I hopped off the ferry in Krabi, I thought the setting was amazing. As Chula, the representative from the Cove who met me at the dock, drove me through some light underbrush in an open-top 4x4, I couldn’t believe how much more striking the scenery was becoming. After we parked the 4x4, I was led onto a flat-bottomed skiff that was poled across a shallow tidal estuary. That was even more striking. And when we passed through an opening in the trees on the other side of the estuary, and bounced along a path through the jungle in another open-top Jeep, and I got my first glimpse of the Cove, I just sat there in shock. What I was looking at was so much more impressive than what I’d already been impressed by that I really could not process what I was seeing. The colors were more vibrant, the light seemed clearer, the smell in the air was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. The whole place just seemed more . . . alive than anywhere I had ever been. I feel like an idiot, but I just can’t make these words tell you what I wish you could know. The Cove is beautiful. You’ll just have to take my word for it and substitute in your mind’s eye whatever beauty means to you.

  Chula, God bless his heart, had obviously seen this kind of reaction many times before. He waited patiently for my paralysis to fade away. After a while he looked at me with a grin. “Nice, right?”

  I looked down at him—he couldn’t have been more than five feet tall—and nodded my head foolishly.

  “Come,” he said. “This is not even the nicest view. Just wait until you see your room!”

  Chula lead me along a path toward a large teak structure that jutted out from the greenery. Exotic birds squawked and screeched in the air. Fluorescent geckos scrambled through the grass. I could only assume that adorable monkeys were eating ripe papayas in the treetops. As we approached the main hall, two of the most stunningly gorgeous coffee-colored women in brightly colored sarongs and bikini tops came down the steps and headed into the forest. There was a moment there that I literally thought my head might explode. I actually staggered briefly and had to reach out to the railing by the stairs to keep my feet underneath me. Chula patted me lightly on the back.

  “It is a special place here, is it not? But your friend Rick sent a message for you that he asked me to relay. He says, ‘Pace yourself, Bobby.’”

  I laughed and shook the cobwebs out of my head. The transcontinental advice was just what I needed. I let go of the rail feeling sturdy again. Damn, that Rick is a good guru.

  “Thanks, Chula. Lead on, my man.”

  27

  I think I need to talk a little about sex now. Sex was the primary catalytic force behind my move to Thailand. Although, in my defense, it wasn’t like I was some horny loser desperate to get laid. I just realized that a big part of my life that had been dormant for a long time was starting to wake up. Rick thought that the Cove would provide a soothing, pleasant wake-up call, as opposed to some other place that would be more like a harsh, buzzing alarm clock (Detroit, for example). Rick had been clear about why he was sending me here: I needed to soak up some serious physical pleasure, in all its forms. And he was right. It was like I had just finished a grueling, yearlong workout and all these muscles that I didn’t even know I had before were suddenly aching from lack of use. I was finally ready to feel good. This was not about sex. This was about getting my body right along with my mind. But let’s call it like it is: there’s no way to talk about Thailand without dealing with the whole se
x issue.

  So here’s the deal to the best of my limited understanding of the deal: prostitution is illegal in Thailand. It has been for over forty years. However, there’s an interesting loophole in Thai law that says that, while prostitution is illegal, it’s not illegal for establishments dedicated to legal pursuits to offer “special services.” This means that you can’t open up a whorehouse in Bangkok. You can, however, open up a massage parlor, or go-go bar, or pool hall, or tool-and-die factory and have the women working there offer up “special services” in exchange for a fee.

  I am not being hyperbolic when I say that prostitution is everywhere in Thailand. My first week at the Cove, I borrowed a bicycle and rode the fifteen minutes into town to see what it was like. My first impression was that it was a charming but quiet seaside village—nothing out of the ordinary.

  I entered a bookstore in the vain hope that they might have a USA Today (football season had begun). Unfortunately, the bookstore seemed to stock nothing but Buddhist texts. As a courtesy, I was doing a little browsing when a young woman who worked at the store wai-ed me politely. Having learned my lesson at the airport, I immediately wai-ed her back. Then the owner of the store asked me if I wanted to take this young woman into the back room for “relaxation.” At first I was so flummoxed that I had no idea what he was talking about. I figured it out though when he told me that she would cost extra because she was “very, very virgin.”

  My initial reaction was to punch the guy in the face. I don’t know why this was the case, but it was. The first emotion I felt was anger—as if this man had insulted me. My next reaction was to try and rescue this poor girl. I had to do something to protect this sweet, innocent who was being preyed upon by the Thai religious bookstore’s version of Jabba the Hutt. Upon further investigation, however, it turned out that the “virgin” was the owner’s wife. She then acknowledged that she was only a “semivirgin” and I could have the relaxation at a discounted rate. The pair of them continued their one-sided negotiation with me as I got the hell out of there as fast as I could.

  Obviously there are many men who would be delighted by the prospects of an unanticipated sexual liaison popping up while they were thumbing through a worn copy of The Questions of King Milinda. I am not one of those men. It actually grossed me out. Maybe it was the fact that all those Buddhist texts made me think of my ex-wife and I was in a weird, vulnerable, melancholy state when the hooker first approached me. I’m sure that my upbringing had more to do with my negative reaction than anything else. On a fantasy level, hooking up with a nameless stranger for a no-strings-attached encounter has its appeal. But there’s something lodged deeply in my heart or brain or soul (or maybe all three) that completely prevented me from getting turned on by the reality of prostitution when it stared me in the face. I’m sure that narcissism has a lot to do with it too. I’d like to think that whatever woman I’m with wants me for me—not just my wallet. Which probably explains why I hadn’t been with a woman in a long time.

  But there are plenty of those other types of men in Thailand. As I left the bookstore, the semivirgin was heading into the back room with a fat, bearded white guy who must have been in his sixties and was definitely not there to further his religious education.

  It wasn’t like sex was being offered at every bookstore, tobacco shop, car dealership, and truck stop in Thailand. I mean, the place also functions totally normally like a million other places with kids going to school and grandmothers sweeping the front stoop. But over time it became apparent that, on some level, sex had crept deeply into the fabric of Thai society. It would clearly be very difficult to separate sex from mainstream Thai life, in part because of the popular perception of the country as a cauldron of carnality.

  The following is a snippet of an actual conversation that I overheard on the street, in front of the bookstore, as I was leaving. Two young guys with thick Cockney accents were engaged in a heated debate. One of them was heading into the bookstore and his friend had stopped him.

  Brit. #1: “Oi, what the fuck you wanna go ’ere for? I want to get fucked not read a bloody book!”

  Brit. #2: “They fuck you ’ere, you stupid cunt. They fuck you everywhere in this fucking country!”

  Whether or not the second gentleman’s observation is factually accurate is almost beside the point. He believed it. Many other people believe it. So does the demand meet the supply or does the supply meet the demand? What difference does it make? All I know is that Thailand is a truly stunning country with warm people, a rich cultural history, and delicious food—but when you say “Bangkok,” all anybody thinks of is go-go bars and donkey shows.

  I know absolutely nothing about go-go bars and donkey shows. I don’t even know if donkey shows are real or just some bullshit story I once heard involving Bette Davis and Tijuana. If you want to read about the seedy underbelly of the Thai sex scene, don’t come to me. I got freaked out when some chick in a bookstore wanted to blow me for a few baht. I had absolutely no interest in going any deeper into the lion’s den. Just walking past some of the hard-core bars and massage parlors made me really uneasy. Seeing the crowds of guys window shopping for sad young women with huge fake smiles actually made me queasy.

  But I’m no moral crusader. I understand that there’s a complex social and economic dynamic going on behind all that leering and paying and thrusting and poking. If I’d ever seen any children in jeopardy I would have gone completely nuts and tried to do something about it. If I’d ever witnessed a woman being forced to do something against her will, I would have tried to protect her. But I didn’t. What consenting men and women (in any combination thereof) do together in exchange for cash is entirely their business. In my limited exposure to that whole world I just saw a bunch of adults of (in my opinion) questionable character and/or happiness engaged in a sexual and political tug-of-war as old as time. In the final analysis, my take on prostitution in Thailand is: to each his (or her) own. So I didn’t want to buy sex in a Buddhist bookstore. Big deal. I didn’t want to buy any Buddhist books there either.

  I wasn’t in Thailand to get laid. I was in Thailand to feel good. And nowhere on earth made me feel as good as I felt when I was at the Cove. So, for the most part, that’s where I spent my time. When you’ve been handed the keys to paradise, it would be foolish to waste a lot of time outside the gates.

  28

  I will now cut directly to the chase: during my second week at the Cove . . . I got laid. I realize that it is extremely ungentle-manly to make that statement, and I apologize to anyone who may have been rooting for me to turn out to be a gentleman. I do my best—and I have been known occasionally to rise in the presence of a lady and hold a door or two open for the elderly—but this book does have the word “fuck” in the title, and I have certain responsibilities to my readership.

  Here’s how it happened—and I’ll try to keep things as polite as possible. I’ll also try to keep things as accurate as possible since I’m a little fuzzy on some of the details for reasons that you will soon discover.

  As I’ve already mentioned, the Cove is not like a traditional hotel in many ways. First of all, it’s located in the Garden of Eden, if the Garden of Eden had been located directly on the shores of the most gorgeous tropical lagoon in the solar system. Secondly, the clientele were not your run-of-the-mill tourists. The only people who knew about the Cove and who had any access to it were individuals of great standing in the worlds of art, fashion, literature, finance, technology, politics, entertainment, sports, science, and—apparently—personal training. The place housed a rotating assortment of nothing but the best, the smartest, the most accomplished, and the most beautiful. I felt like a worthless schlub there compared to all these shining specimens of human achievement. And I’m sure that, if most of them had gotten to know me, they would have felt the same way. Thirdly, the main structure at the Cove was a central reception area that housed only a restaurant and the registration and concierge desks. The rest of the buildings
were gloriously appointed individual bungalows perched directly on the beach, with ample patios cantilevered out over the water. Each bungalow felt completely secluded from the others due to the naturally occurring ribbonlike perimeter of the shoreline. Small pockets of fine white-sand beach were separated from one another by lush, sweet-smelling clumps of jungle. So when you were in your room—or I should say rooms, because all of the bungalows were like small, tasteful mansions—you felt that you were the only person in the world. This wasn’t a hotel, it was a heavenly oasis of solititude, beauty, and calm.

  You can imagine my surprise then when I was suddenly woken up at six in the morning on the Tuesday of my second week in Thailand by a stereo blasting Akon’s “Smack That Ass” at full volume (I believe that Eminem also makes a cameo appearance on the track). Even stranger and more annoying than the loud, horrible music was that I couldn’t figure out where the hell it was coming from. It sounded like the source was the bungalow itself. I’d heard of people’s braces picking up radio frequencies but, to my knowledge, this phenomenon has never been attributed to mahogany floorboards, muslin window treatments, or delicately carved teak bedposts.

  I finally tracked down the source of the “Ass Smacking” to my patio. Upon further analysis, I realized that the tunes were actually coming from underneath my patio. I lay down on my stomach, shoved my body out over the cantilevered deck, and looked—upside down—underneath. There, in the shade of my deck, bobbing up and down on the gentle surf that lapped against the shore, was the flat-bottomed skiff that the Cove used to transport guests to and from town. Inside the skiff was a large, ’70s-style boom box blasting the Akon song. And next to the boom box was an attractive young Indian woman wearing a lime green bikini and a tropical print sarong. She was either deeply asleep, profoundly unconscious, or utterly dead.