Private Dancer (5 page)

And Joy never made me feel like I was a customer. She didn't hustle me for drinks, in fact sometimes when I offered she'd refuse. Generally I'd buy her three or four because part of her earnings came from commission, and obviously if she was sitting with me she was giving up the opportunity of earning money elsewhere. She never pestered me to pay her bar fine, either,

though she was always pleased when I did. I guess on average I bar fined her twelve to fifteen times a month. Often we'd just go and eat, or visit another bar so she could see her friends.

Sometimes I'd go and have a drink in another bar before going to Zombie, usually if I was with one of the guys from Fatso's - Jimmy, Rick, Nigel, Bruce or Matt. Whenever I did, girls would always come over and wag a finger at me and accuse me of being a butterfly, of being unfaithful to Joy. I'd always laugh and deny it. I knew better than to bar fine another girl in Nana Plaza -

there was an underground communication system that worked at something approaching the speed of light. Early on in our relationship I'd gone into Spicy-a-go-go and bought drinks for a girl called Mai. She had the longest hair I'd ever seen, longer even than Joy's, and I guess I was thinking about paying her bar fine, out of curiosity more than anything, but before I could take it any further, Joy appeared in the bar with her friend, Apple. Joy was wearing a long green cocktail dress that she often wore to work. Apple saw me and said 'sawasdee ka' but Joy didn't seem to notice me. Actually, I was pretty sure she was pretending not to see me. She did a quick circuit of the bar and then left. I paid my bill, said goodbye to Mai and hurried over to Zombie.

As soon as I went in Joy came over and hugged me. She'd already changed into her dancing gear.

I bought her a drink and asked her what she'd been doing in Spicy-a-go-go.

“I go see my friend,” she said and smiled sweetly. She'd known all right, someone from Spicy-a-go-go had called her and told her that I was getting friendly with another girl and she'd moved to protect her interests. I was flattered. If she was jealous, it showed she cared.

I was jealous, too, but I didn't know what to do about it. I liked her, I liked her a lot. It was more than like, it was almost love, but I was holding myself back because of what she did, of what she'd done. She was a hooker, for God's sake, and whenever I felt myself falling in love with her I tried to pull myself back to reality. The guys were always telling me horror stories about farangs who got involved with bargirls. Most of the girls had Thai husbands or boyfriends,

they said. Most spent their money on drugs or gambling. And no matter how much you thought you could trust them, they'd rip you off eventually. I'd look at Joy and I'd think no, she was different, but at the back of my mind was always the worry that maybe she was lying to me, that I was only a customer and it was only my money she cared about.

Part of me wanted to ask her to give up work, because I hated the thought of her going with other men and I hated the fact that she danced. Early on in the relationship I'd started paying her a thousand baht a month to keep her knickers on while she was dancing. Sunan and Mon still danced naked, and I know Joy was happy that I'd made the gesture. I knew she'd be even happier if I gave her enough money to not have to work at all, but that was going to cost me tens of thousands of baht a month and I was still wary of making that sort of commitment.

I was pretty sure she didn't take drugs. I'd asked her several times and she'd always denied it vehemently, and there were no needle marks on her arms. She said she didn't have a Thai boyfriend. She said she'd had one in Surin, but that had ended when she'd moved to Bangkok. I guess I believed her. She was in the bar working for eight hours a night and she didn't finish until half past two in the morning, and she telephoned me most days so I couldn't see how she'd have time for a boyfriend or a husband. Plus she always had my photograph in her wallet and I couldn't see how a Thai boyfriend could put up with that.

One thing that did worry me was that she'd never let me see her room. She said it was in Suphan Kwai, not far from the Chicago karaoke bar, and that it was a slum. Sa-lam is the word in Thai. Almost the same. She said to get to the building where the room was, she had to walk down a narrow alley and that it would be dangerous for me. And she said the room was small and dirty and that she was ashamed of it. “I not have money, Pete,” she said. “I not have nice room. I shy, Pete.”

I told her time and time again that I didn't care, that I wanted to see where she lived, but she always refused. She said there was no phone in the room, so I couldn't call her there. There was a phone in the building, though, and she used that to call me sometimes, but I couldn't use it to contact her, she said.

I asked her why she didn't find herself a room in a nicer part of town if where she was staying was so bad. She'd shrug and say that she didn't have any money. I could never understand that. I'd been taking Thai lessons at the American University Alumni School and I knew that the teachers there earned less than Joy, but they all seemed to have quite a high standard of living.

They earned about twelve thousand baht a month and all were well dressed, lived in decent apartments, and several had cars and mobile telephones.

Joy's salary was about five thousand baht a month. Six thousand including the money I gave her so she didn't have to dance naked. The bar gave her a hundred baht each time I paid her bar fine, so that was another thousand baht a month, minimum. She normally got five or six drinks a day, so that was another four thousand baht a month. That meant that from the bar alone she got eleven thousand baht, almost the same as the teachers earned. But I gave Joy another fifteen thousand baht a month. Even if no one else paid her bar fine, Joy was earning twenty six thousand baht a month, more than a nurse, several times more than a policewoman, not much less than a doctor. So where did the money go?

Asking her just resulted in shrugs and shakes of the head. She didn't know. Bangkok was expensive. She had to get a taxi to and from work, and each journey cost more than a hundred baht. Six thousand baht a month in taxi fares? That was crazy, I said. Why didn't she get the bus?

She said a bus would take too long, and it would be dangerous at night. I asked her why she didn't get a room closer to Nana Plaza and she said that all her friends were in Suphan Kwai, and so were her sisters. She had to pay for a motorcycle, she said. Five thousand baht every month.

And she had to send money back to Surin to help her family. Discussions about money always seemed to go around in circles, getting nowhere. One thing was for sure - she never had enough,

no matter how much I gave her.

JOY I don't know where my money goes, I really don't. It slips through my fingers like water. I tried explaining to Pete, but he doesn't understand me. How could he? He's a rich farang, he can't know what it's like to be from a poor family, to have nothing. How much did he have to pay for his ticket from England? Twenty thousand baht? Thirty thousand? And it costs him a thousand baht a night to stay at the Dynasty Hotel. That's thirty thousand baht every month. And he spends money in the bars every night. Hundreds of baht. One night he sat down with a pen and paper and asked me to tell him how much I earned and how much I spent, like he was an accountant or something. I was really offended but I didn't say anything, I tried to make a joke of it. He told me that I'd be better off if I lived closer to Zombie, but that would mean I wouldn't be near my friends. I think he wants me to sit in a room all on my own, waiting for him. He's crazy. He kept asking me why I wasn't saving money. Saving what? I have to pay for my room, I have to pay for taxi fares. There's food, make-up, shampoo, clothes. Bangkok's an expensive city.

And Pete doesn't understand my family commitments. I've three younger sisters, all at school.

They need money for clothes and for books. My father owns a little land but it's not good land and not much grows there. My father makes charcoal from the trees that grow there but it's hard work and he doesn't make a lot of money. My grandmother's old and she needs medicine and my brothers don't work, they've always been lazy and they won't lift a finger to help my father. If it wasn't for Sunan, Mon or me, my father would have to sell the house or the land.

The other thing Pete doesn't understand is that when you've got money, people are always asking you for it. Friends who can't pay their rent, a few baht for food, a pack of cigarettes,

maybe. My friends know that Pete is giving me money and so when they're short they'll ask me to help them out. What's a girl to do? They'd help me if they had money and I didn't, we always do, we help each other. We have to. When I first moved to Bangkok, friends would let me sleep on their floor, they'd share their food, their cigarettes, they lent me clothes and make-up until I could start earning enough to take care of myself. Last week Apple was sick and couldn't work and her landlord put a padlock on her door and wouldn't let her back in until she paid her telephone and electricity bill, almost two thousand baht. She didn't have the money so she asked me. Of course I helped her. She's my friend. But if I told Pete that, he'd get angry. He keeps saying that he wants to help me, not my family and friends. I don't know if or when Apple will pay me back, but that's okay. What goes around comes around. The day might come when she's got a rich boyfriend and I haven't, then I'll be able to ask her for money.

I wish I was more like Sunan. Sunan saves a lot of her money, and she's got a really nice room and a television and a stereo. Next month she's going to buy a Toyota pick-up and Bird is going to be driving us around. Sunan works really hard. She goes short-time every night, and sometimes she goes with farangs several times a night. She doesn't play cards like a lot of the girls, and she doesn't smoke or drink. I smoke a pack of Marlboro a day and sometimes I drink beer. Sunan's older than me, she's twenty-six, and she's been working in Zombie for about two years. She used to send money to me when I was in Surin, and she bought our father a motorcycle. I've got a motorcycle, too, it costs me five thousand baht a month. It's up in Surin.

Pete keeps trying to get me to sell the motorbike, he says I don't need it because I'm working in Bangkok. He doesn't know what my house is like, it's miles from Surin and even the nearest village is tiny. What does he expect me to do? Walk?

Sunan has a farang who sends her money every month. His name is Toine, from Norway. He met her last year and he said he didn't want her to work so every month he sends forty thousand baht to her bank. He gave her a mobile telephone, too, and that cost ten thousand baht. Toine has a wife in Norway and he only comes to Bangkok twice a year. Sunan's so lucky, I wish I had a farang like that. Toine keeps saying he's going to divorce his wife and marry her, but Sunan doesn't believe him. All farangs lie, she says.

PETE I got a call from Nigel saying that he wanted to get together for a drink. He had an early meeting at an office in Silom Road so he suggested Patpong. There's a bar he likes in Patpong One called Safari. It's a ground floor bar so the girls aren't allowed to dance naked and they play good music, lots of Sixties stuff. The one snag is that the ceiling is really low over the two dance floors so the go-go dancers are virtually midgets. Nigel was already there when I arrived, sitting with a small bald guy with a bushy grey beard who looked like an elf out of uniform, sharp pointy features and mischievous eyes. He wasn’t much taller than the go-go dancers. He was a nice guy and I liked him almost immediately. His name was Bruce and he'd been in Bangkok for eighteen months, running a leather handbag factory for a Thai businessman. He and Nigel had obviously been there for a while because there was a thick wad of blue chits stuffed into the plastic mug in front of them.

We stayed in Safari for an hour or so, then Bruce suggested we go to one of the upstairs bars.

Patpong One is a narrow road linking two major Bangkok thoroughfares, Silom Road and Suriwong Road. I could never work out why it had remained as a red light area. All around it were high rise office buildings and up-market department stores so I would have thought it would have made economic sense to demolish the bars and redevelop the area.

There are bars on either side of the road, filled with stalls selling fake watches, cheap clothes and tacky souvenirs. The bars on the ground floor are mainly go-go bars, each with at least a hundred girls. The first floor bars have dancers too, but they also put on shows. The girls in the upstairs bars danced topless or naked, which strictly speaking is illegal but the bars have lookouts on the ground floor. Whenever the police pass by the lookout hits an alarm button and red lights start flashing in the bar, signalling to the girls that they're to rush off and get dressed.

The shows are what pull the punters up to the first floor bars. They have girls pulling razor blades out of their fannies, bursting balloons with darts fired from blowpipes in their fannies,

writing with felt tipped pens stuck into their fannies. They have shower shows, candle shows,

where the girls drip hot wax over their bodies, and full sex shows. The first time I went into one of the upstairs bars I was amazed by what I saw, amazed at the sort of things girls would do to their bodies for money. Now I hardly even notice what's happening on the stage. Even the full sex show is a disappointment. According to Nigel, the same guy's been doing it for at least ten years. He's tall and thin and not particularly well-endowed, and he makes love to his wife five times a night at five different bars. He starts at ten o'clock and performs every thirty minutes,

usually with the same woman, his wife. I once saw him do the business with a different girl and was told that it was his wife's sister. Apparently his sister-in-law's happy to step in when the guy's wife doesn't feel up to it. A real family business.

Bruce stopped outside a bar I hadn't noticed before. There was a sign saying “Dream Bar” and a flight of stairs leading up to a closed door. “What do you think?” asked Bruce.