Cowboys, Perverts, Girls, Boys and not quite anything.

I’ve been here a month now things are pretty much routine at this point. I wake up, go to work, come home and work some more. I struggle to make ends meet coming into a foreign country with no money to begin with. Everything I do is on credit until I get paid and once that happens, I have to pay off the credit, and start all over again. I do my best to spend far less than I actually make, but, I’m not always successful. I’m in Bangkok-- I indulge too much sometimes.

If I try hard, I can survive on less than $3 a day. I only make $30 a day. That means no drinking, no smoking, 2 meals and rent are paid for that. It’s a very tall order to fulfill. Booze is cheaper, but not by much-- it sucks me dry, continuously. And then, the girls... I’m only a man, and a weak one at that. I can hardly avoid my mistress-- the beer. The constant lure of nubile Asian Lolitas is too much. I spend my time drawing them instead. I watch, I observe, I feel a little like a stalking serial killer that doesn’t follow through on any of his desires.

So here I sit outside a bar on street called Soi Cowboy. The same bar a shootout occurred in a movie about drinking too much and the day after. The girls don’t wear panties. At least I know they ain’t boys. Across the street, I see a whole lot more girls. I know these aren’t actually girls because when you see a person in a bikini, there is a huge difference between camel toe and a bulge, even if it’s a small Asian bulge. They have really great boobs, though.

The thing that strikes me as the most weird is the endless stream of white western girls with their western boyfriends. Is this a test? How long do these relationships last? Who’s the more interested? The girls or the boys? We all know the boys are walking down the street with their eyes bugging out at all the sex. The girls either look fascinated or disgusted. Even more weird than that is the couples of 60+ plus females. They look like tourists on a package tour and they look truly disgusted-- didn’t anybody tell them what this street is or what it means? Did they just stumble upon it or did they search it out?

I go to a number of different bars. All in the name of research, of course. The second one has about 50 girls on a small stage about the size of 2 king size beds. Right above it is a glass ceiling. The girls that have risen above this glass ceiling are dressed in nothing but running shoes and a short pleated skirt. Underboob takes on a whole new meaning when you look at it from 10 feet below and there is no shirt covering up the rest of it. There’s the added bonus of the up-skirt shot with no underwear as well.

I go outside because even in Asia, in this “high-class” part of town, you have to smoke outside, and I take a seat. Beside me are two fat Russians wearing the stereotype of an LA pimp. They speak fluent Thai to the staff, and the bouncers at the door treat them like royalty. These must be the owners. This is where I notice the lady-boys across the street, the chunky western woman testing their goggle-eyed boyfriends, the old lady couple visiting the zoo. The children spending their lives growing up on this street starting by selling flowers, graduating to drug running, pimping and “dancing”

Back inside, a beer is double the price of anything in a store just so perverts like me can stare at the ceiling looking upskirts and at underboob while 50 young Asian Loitas dance on 2 mirror king sized beds. I gladly pay it. And I pay it again and again. And again. Each girl has a number, so you can choose. I think of Z, I ffel nausea and a small amount of vomit rises in my throat. The male part of me chokes it down, I can’t help myself-- I thinking with the brain in my pants and I’m disgusted with myself, but I haven’t killed anybody yet, so I continue to watch with intense fascination like a stag in rut caught by headlights.