One Warm Night In Bangkok

It was a warm, slightly humid evening in Bangkok; the work day ending for some and just beginning for others as three young men sit on a bench on Soi Twilight, absorbed in their own worlds. One twenty-something stares at an unfocused point off ahead of him, a serpent of smoke rising from the cigarette in his hand as he sits, occasionally checking his oversized watch, his gaze rising like mine every now and then to scan the people walking along the soi.

Beside him are a couple men of a similar age, both absorbed by something being displayed on the cell phone one holds in his hand. His friend looks up and laughs often as the owner’s thumbs move quickly over the keypad, and they chatter merrily in a conversation I couldn’t understand even if I could hear it clearly while sitting at my soi-side table, nursing along a bowl of tom yung goong I’d ordered without remembering to say “pet nit noy”. It gives me time to watch the parade as I allow the fire in my mouth to subside between spoonfuls, though, and that’s a pastime I never seem to tire of.

It’s just past 8:00pm and the tempo of the soi has risen slightly over the past few minutes; a subtle change from dinnertime to show time as the club lights blink on, casting their assorted hues down onto those of us walking or sitting below. The club touts who’d been sitting and having noodles five minutes before are now standing and on the prowl, menus or show bills in hand.

“Come look, sir,” they say with a smile and a gentle bow, waving their arms in an arc towards the open doors where the thump thump thump of music has already begun to spill out onto the street. The bolder ones even say “Show now – show now,” although all but the greenest of visitors would know there would be nothing of the sort for another couple of hours, but every club IS a show of sorts, if truth be known.

Behind the cell phone guy and his friend sit two men in the type of athletic tee-shirt known in some parts of America as “wife beaters,” who both seem to see the same young man at the same moment as he hurries to the entrance of the club next door. Their voices rise and fall together in harmony as they cat-call out to him, as if they’ve just caught him misbehaving: “AaaaaaAAAAAAhhhhh!” they sing in an admonishing tone, and the man smiles sheepishly, knowing full well himself he’s missed his start time – and from their tone probably not for the first time recently.

He pauses briefly to wai at the entrance to the club before bounding up the stairs two at a time. Inside he’ll punch his time card in the time clock, make a brief apology to the boss – in a vain effort to dodge the fine for being late – and head back to the dressing room, where he’ll change out of his street clothes and put on his Speedo-like uniform. Pinning a number to the waistband he’ll attempt to mentally prepare himself for another evening of rotating on and off of a small stage with another couple of dozen similar guys, all hoping to break what is far too often an extended string of nights where their earnings amount to no more than the 100 baht stipend paid for clocking in by 8:00… if that.

Outside on the soi below, a variety of people stroll along in this night made fragrant by a combination of street-side barbecue, jasmine, cigarettes and the mixed-blessing aroma of the soi itself. Some crane their necks to take in the near-canopy of neon above them as they wander, overwhelmed and saucer-eyed, they’re easy marks for the touts who appear at their elbow, ready to lead them into their club. Some walk purposely along, avoiding all possible eye contact in a futile effort to get from point “A” to point “B” without being hounded by the same barkers while fighting the natural urge to take in this ever-changing carnival going on all around them. Some know and are known and they pause here and there to say hello to friends, joke briefly with a club tout, share a joke or make their way to a favorite table or street-side seat, where the waiter greets them by name and scurries away to fill their request for “the usual”.

Allegedly “straight” couples move in a tentative fashion along the soi, the female sometimes smiling in anticipation of later possibilities, sometimes looking somewhat bewildered as the man they’re WITH does the smiling, perhaps also in anticipation of later possibilities. “We ‘offed’ a guy here the other night,” grinned a man with a strong Scottish accent to the male half of the couple he and his girlfriend were walking with. By the leering grin on his face and the slightly puzzled look on his girlfriend’s face there wasn’t much question as to who’s idea that had been – or who’d enjoyed the encounter more. “Did you, now?” said his friend, with a somewhat nervous laugh. He lights a cigarette and looks as though he’d rather be walking through the fires of Hell than here. I could only imagine what their breakfast conversation would be like the next morning, and I chuckled.

Someone walked a tad too close to the group waiting outside the massage parlor, setting off all the guys that weren’t otherwise occupied with their cell phones. “Massaaaaage sir?” offered one. “Come inside and check it out!” “Happy hour?” said another, hopefully – perhaps setting his own fiscal happy hour, three hours after the usual one. Upbeat and playful the group of seven or eight joked amongst themselves, sometimes leaning far out into the soi in an attempt to be the first to see the newcomers entering off the main street. For guys that may well go home with nothing to show for their five hours or so of waiting it was somewhat refreshing, until I stopped to realize that not having to work over (or under) a beached whale for an hour or so was in and of itself a bonus, and I laughed quietly to myself again.

The kid with the cigarette suddenly sat straight upright, peering down the soi to the street entrance. Recognizing the neatly dressed middle-aged farang making his way toward him he dropped the cigarette, snuffed it out with a sneakered toe and got up to meet him, accepting a clumsy hug from his new “online” friend who looked to be new to both the Land of Smiles and this particular type of arrangement. They stood together in the middle of the soi – the farang looking shy and uncomfortable, his younger Thai friend looking just the opposite – and the Thai allowed them to be guided to a table next to me by the same waiter who had welcomed me to my perch an hour before.

It soon became apparent that this was both their first meeting, and that it would go on until much later in the evening at a different location, perhaps capped off by an American Breakfast some 12 hours hence, the Thai looking around the buffet for something a little more to his liking than scrambled eggs and watermelon cut into small heart shapes, the farang looking at another Thai man seated a few tables away, primping his spiked hair as the farang HE was with read the International Herald.

Back on the bench across the soi from me the Thai with the cell phone checked his watch, suddenly realized that he himself was late and, saying a hurried farewell to his friend he rushed off, disappearing into a doorway down the soi.

From the corner of my eye I could see his friend size me up as he looked over in my direction, attempting to make eye contact. Upon doing so he cocked his head and smiled, pointing to his chest and then over to my table, looking for an invitation to join me. I smiled back, and shook my head gently. He leaned back to yawn, stretching as he ran a hand under his oversized tee-shirt and up over his chest, exposing a swath of silky-smooth belly. Shaking off the yawn he again smiled at me, giving me a quick wink. “Flattering,” I said to myself, but again I just smiled and shook my head at him. He shrugged his shoulders as if to say “oh well, I tried,” and rose from the bench, heading off down the soi towards the street entrance.

“Check bin,” I called to the waiter, and after settling my tab I too joined the flow, becoming part of the parade on this warm, somewhat humid evening in Bangkok.