Kon
Krailat's short fiction about an alienated male sex worker.
Chiwin
sits quietly in a dark corner, waiting for his moment to come…
Tonight the place is packed, since it’s the beginnig of the
month and people still have enough cash to go out and enjoy
themselves. Chiwin lights up a cigarette and inhales listlessly. It’s
very strange, but this evening he feels lonely, moody, not himself.
He’s got a lot of complicated problems on his mind, among them a
letter from his mother: “Win, my dear son, your father isn’t
very well. The riceplanting season’s already here, but there’s no
one at home. How are things going for you in Bangkok? Have you found
a job yet or not? We haven’t heard from you at all…” Parts
of the letters Mother wrote usually went like this. In fact, of
course, she hadn’t written them at all. She was illiterate, so she
must have asked someone in the neighbourhood to write them for her.
Actually, it’s only now that
Chiwin takes cognizance of how long it’s been since he left home.
Days turned into years before
he was aware of it. In this city, where he now lives, night and day
are unlike night and day anywhere else… They rush by so rapidly
that he doesn’t have time to think about things as the happen…
If he does think about them, it’s
only cursorily, for a moment or so…. Like a brief gust of wind
which merely rustles the leaves and then vanishes without a trace….
His mother’s letter brings to
his mind images of various people, but heaped up on one another in
such confusion that he feels dizzy and disoriented. And Chiwin
inhales cigarette smoke, puff after puff, one after the other…
It’s so dark in that corner
that people can’t see each other’s faces. The customers sitting
at the tables loom up only as obscure silhouettes. The waitresses
move back and forth, some holding flashlights to guide new arrivals
in search of empty tables. On the tiny stage a naked girl is dancing
to the pounding rhythm of a song. Her name is Latda. She has two
children, plus a do-nothing husband drunk day in day out. So she’s
had to come and work as a go-go girl, stripping her body for people
to have a look. She’d told him all about it one day, not long after
they’d got to know each another… The Tale of Latda… cracked in
pieces like the lives of all the women in this place, full of knots
and problems. If one had a good and happy life, who would ever want
to bare every inch of one’s body for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to
stare at? Chiwin reflects, like someone who thinks he understands
pretty well how the people working here tick.
The last strains of the song die
away. Latda steps down from the stage. There’s some halfhearted
clapping from a few customers, none of whom know why they clap. Utter
silence for a second, as though the spectators sense that the moment
they’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. The lights on the
stage turn pale pink. A slow, soft melody….
Laa-laa-laa-laa-laa-laa… strikes up…. Another girl, dressed in
black underwear, takes her turn on the stage. She makes her
appearance slowly and silently.
And now they’re playing
Chiwin’s musical cue. He stubs out his cigarette and pushes himself
to his feet. He steps out of the dark corner into the pink glow, with
the lithe movements of a young man of twenty-four. Some of the male
spectators who remember him stare at him now, half in scorn, half
wanting to do it themselves.
“You know, it’s not easy at
all,” Chiwin had once told one of those who spoke to him in this
tone. “It’s only when you’re on stage that you realise it’s
really no piece of cake.”
No one has much of an idea about
the music that’s now being played, and it seems as if no one has
the slightest interest in finding out. Most of the spectators simply
know that when it’s played it’s time for the house’s “special
program” to begin. The words, accompanied by rhythmic sighs, most
likely describe the mood of a young woman on a lonely night. The girl
on the stage stretches out on her back and begins to writhe and
quiver as though her flesh were burning with desire. Then slowly she
removes the two little bits of clothing from her body.
Her name is Wanphen…
Chiwin has now stepped up onto
the stage. The play of spotlights moves back and forth between
purple, blue, and red. Wanphen’s act is so well done that it makes
some of the young men close by the stage almost forget to breathe.
Chiwin slowly unbuttons his shirt, then shakes his head two or three
times. His eyes are getting used to the lights, which keep changing
colour like a magic-show.
A moment later and Chiwin has
nothing left to himself but his bared body. It’s a handsome,
well-proportioned body, full of young flesh and blood. He throws his
clothes in a heap in one corner. Everything takes place with the
utmost slowness, as if in this piece of life time has ceased to
exist. At this moment no one can think of anything else-even if
country should meanwhile collapse in ruins.
Chiwin stretches his body out
alongside Wanphen and embraces her, while caressing her naked flesh
with his hands. He kisses her once, and she kisses him in turn, then
turns her face away and snuggles it into the hollow of his neck.
“How many times have I told
you, Elder Brother Win!” he hears her whisper,
“Please don’t
smoke before doing the show with me. It smells horrible. I can’t
stand the stink, and I lose the mood…”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers
back, as he rolls his body back and forth over hers.
“Something’s
been bothering me. I’ve been in a bad mood, so I forgot…”
How
many times now had he partnered this woman!….
Chiwin thinks about the man with
the unremarkable face who comes to wait for her every night when the
bar closes. He can’t imagine what the man’s real feelings are. He
comes to wait here in silence, and he goes home in silence. He must
feel something. How could one man not understand another? But the two
of us don’t even know each other. And we both suffer. At least the
man had once stared at Chiwin with a strange, cold gleam in his eye.
“He’s my husband.” Wanphen
had once explained, “a real husband, you know; we’re properly
registered and all”.
“How can he stand having you come here
and do this kind of show with me?” He couldn’t put the gleam in
the man’s eye of his mind.
“What can you do?” she’d
answered seriously. “It’s a job. It’s a way to make a living.
If you live with a woman like me, you have to be able to take it.”
She’s right. That’s what it
is, a job. O.K. At least it’s a job for me too right now. Chiwin
has the feeling that he won’t be able to perform well tonight. He
doesn’t feel prepared at all. The young man rolls over and down.
Wanphen knows the signs very well, so she presses her body tightly to
him. Deploying her skills, using everything she has, she begins, with
intense concentration, to arouse his desire. The play of the lights
halts for a moment at pink, bathing the bodies of the couple and
bringing out their beauty.
Chiwin stretches out full length
and closes his eyes. The whole world darkens before his vision. The
air-conditioning makes the air cold and moist, but he feels the sweat
beginning to ooze from some of his pores. His ears catch the soft
music… when the song comes to an end, it starts up again, in an
endless, indolent cycle, making his thoughts drift far away, to the
past, to broad ricefields and to days and nights long gone.
….. By now the rains must have
started back home….
Sometimes one could see the grey-white
rain pouring down, moving in over the ricefields from the horizon,
blurring everything in sight. The nights would be chilly and damp,
and filled with the loud croaking of big and little frogs. And
mornings, if the sun shone at all, its beams would be soft and
tender, soon to vanish as the thick rainclouds piled up once more. In
the rainy season, the earth would be turned over once again with the
plough. And it wouldn’t be long before the rice-plants came up
green, ripening later to a brilliant yellow throughout the paddies.
But this isn’t his work any more. He abandoned it a long time ago.
It’s hard work, backbreakingly hard. Worse still, the harder you
work, the poorer you get. He’d been so utterly, indescribably tired
of that way of life that he’d struggled to get a better education,
and with every ounce of will turned his face and headed towards
Bangkok to find a new life…
…. And my little brother Wang….
I wonder if he’s out of the monkhood yet? Mother doesn’t mention
him in her letter. He’s been in since last Lent.
Does he really want to study
in the temple to become a Maha?
Doesn’t he know these days
there’s no road to Nirvana any more? And what about my little
sister Wan? She must be buckling down to looking after the kids she
produces year in year out, giving her almost no breathing-space for
anything else. She got married to a boy from another sub-district
before she was even eighteen. Everyone’s left the family home. Only
Father and Mother still remain, and how much can they do on their
own? And now Father’s sick too…
Last night he’d had a terrible
dream. It seemed that Father was in it somehow, but he couldn’t
arrange the images of the dream properly in place. All he knew was
that it was so horrible that when he woke up his heart was pounding
with fear. And then he remembered that it was a long time since he’d
dreamed at all. Every night he fell into a deep sleep, as though his
body’d been picked up and laid casually down on the bed, feeling
nothing, till a new day dawned and the time came for him to get up
once again. And when the next night fell, he’d be picked up and
laid down once again in the same old place. Dreams are the travels of
one’s soul. It’s no good if one lives without dreams. It shows
that there’s no soul left inside. So it’s a good thing he dreamed
last night, even if the dream was a nightmare…
Chiwin feels Wanphen’s body
arching up and pressing tightly to him almost all over. As she rains
kisses over his chest and in the hollow of his neck, she
whispers…
“What’s the matter with you tonight….huh?”
“I
told you, I’m really feeling down…” Chiwin embraces her in turn
mechanically, “I keep thinking about my father…..”
“You
crazy? This is no time to think about your father…. If you go on
like this, how can we do the show? In no time at all, the crowd’ll
be booing us!”
Chiwin
shakes his head once. Some sort of realization makes him push his
body up from hers on outstretched arms. If only this night were over!
The spectators are dead quiet, each pair of eyes glued to the stage.
He puts everything of out his mind, draws Wanphen’s body onto his,
and begins to go through all the acts he usually performs on this
stage.
Many of the people up front move
closer and closer. Some of them even poke their faces in, right close
up-as though this were the single most extraordinary thing in life,
something they’d never seen from the day they were born. Some of
the customers who have girls sitting with them begin to grope them
obscenely. His gaze meets their eyes in a flash he senses in that
some things men may not understand other men at all. In their eyes
glitter a thousand and one things-pleasure and desire. Some of the
men pretend to be unaffected by the scene, though in fact their souls
are seething through every vein.
“What have I become?” Chiwin
asks himself. He feels like a male animal in the rutting season,
brutishly copulating with a female animal, right before the eyes of a
group of studmasters. The more powerfully he performs, and the more
varied the couplings, the more they’re satisfied.
He glances down at Wanphan for a
moment. He is now fully astride her body. She is sighing and
groaning, twisting and writhing her body as if she’s being aroused
to the limit, even though actually she experiences nothing from what
she’s doing. This is the
first time that Chiwin understands her life clearly, and he feels a
heart-rending pity for her. He wants to ask her just one question:
how much does she suffer from living this way? Having intercourse
with a man she doesn’t love in front of a crowd. Pretending to
experience so much pleasure to arouse all these people… in exchange
for no more than a hundred baht a night. Do her children back home
know what’s going on? Isn’t there a night when she goes back
home, lies down and cries? After all, she still has feelings, doesn’t
she?
Chiwin lifts his head and stares
once again at the audience, as if searching for even one person with
some understanding of the things that go on in the stories of the
people working here. But he sees nothing but faces burning more hotly
than ever with satisfaction and excitement. In fact, it looks like
some of them have even reached a climax.
Chiwin begins to see the truth...
All
of us here are simply victims… Latda… Wanphan…. Me…. Even
those people sitting there watching with such satisfied expressions.
All of them feel the pressure of the society outside. So they come
here for emotional compensation, to build up a superiority complex.
They come to eat and drink. They come to sit and watch others expose
their genitals and perform every variety of sexual intercourse. This
allows them to feel contempt for people they can then regard as lower
than themselves. Man has a deep abiding instinct to shove his way up
over his fellow men. The truth is that we’re all animals of the
city, who live lives of pain and suffering in the midst of a demented
society. The only difference between us is that those who have
greater advantages stand on top of those who have less, and so on
down the line.
“Give it to her! All the way,
kid…!” comes a roaring cheer from a table to the left, mixed with
delighted laughter from a group of friends. Wanphen clutches him
still more tightly to her body. I wonder what she’s thinking about
now. Chiwin stares at her, but can’t see her clear. In her eyes
there’s an expression of entreaty. He grits his teeth, swallows his
saliva down his dry throat, and gasps for breath. The sweat oozes
from his forehead, back, and shoulders. A stinging drop trickles down
into one eye, blurring his vision. Feeling a numb rage, Chiwin is
almost at the point of jumping up and kicking out in the direction of
those voices. But on fact he doesn’t dare do anything, not even
respond with words.
Wanphen’s hands, still clasped
around his back, give him a stealthy pinch. “Take it easy, Elder
Brother Win,” her voice is barely audible. “Don’t listen to
those crazy people. I’m not a cow or water-buffalo, you know…”
So that’s it! He’s turned
Wanphen herself into a victim of his own oppression. He comes to
himself at the nip of her nails and the sound of her voice. Suddenly
the tears well up in his eyes, mixed with drops of sweat. He pushes
his body up, leaning on his outstretched arms, and stares Wanphen
full in the eyes. When he bends over and gives her a kiss, she’s
surprised by a touch she’s never felt from him before. Just then
the song ends and the stage-lights dim to darkness.
Chiwin goes into the bathroom,
his shirt still unbuttoned. He turns on the tap, washes his hands,
and scoops up some water to rub in the hollow of his neck. As he
lifts his head, he encounters his own face reflected in the little
mirror above the basin.
Indeed man encounters his real self
when he stands before a mirror…
In the bare, empty bathroom the
fain sound of music filters in. he leans on his hands, gripping the
basin’s edge, and stares at that face for a long time, in silent
questioning.
He thinks back to his mother’s
letter. “How are things going for you in Bangkok? Have
you found a hob yet?” How can
he possibly tell his mother about the kind of work that he has found?
She would faint dead away. And he himself can’t really say why he’s
struggled so hard to make a living this way. The easy answer is
probably because he was hungry and had reached a dead end.
When he’d set off for Bangkok,
carrying his teacher’s certificate with him, who could have known
that for months he’d be clutching at straws, trying to compete with
tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of others, taking test
after test? And then go home, waiting to learn the results of his
applications, place after place, day after day. At first his hopes
had still been bright and clear. But, as time passed, they’d faded,
like a candle that melts itself completely away, dimming down to his
last baht. Then a friend of his, who worked as a bartender in a go-go
club, had invited him along to try this line of work.
“Don’t worry… at first you
feel a bit shy… but you get used to it after a while… A
good-looking guy with a nice build like yours is just what these
people are looking for. You get a hundred a night, two or three
thousand a month. It’s far better than being a teacher. You talk
yourself blue in the face for nothing but a few pennies a month.”
His friend had patted him on the shoulder and said, “Okay? Give it
a go, to tide you over while you wait to hear about your job
applications. You want to starve? You don’t have to worry about
getting picked up. The police don’t make any trouble, the people
there have got connections high up.”
Is this the true image of a man
who’s studied to become a teacher? Chiwin stares at his reflection
with a feeling of nausea. His hair’s a mess, his eyes dry and
lifeless, with a timid, evasive look. The skin on his face and lips
is parched and wan with strain. Not a shred of dignity left, though
he’s still young and strong. How did a man with clear, firm hopes
and goals end up as someone who doesn’t have the courage to
confront even his own face?
Suddenly he feels a terrible
churning deep in his abdomen. It surges up through his insides to his
throat. Chiwin clings tightly to the wash-basin, hiccoughs once, and
then, before being conscious of it, doubles over, arches his neck,
and vomits in a torrent. All the different foods he ate earlier in
the evening, accumulated in his belly, spout in streams, splattering
the wash-basin. Once, twice, three times. Sounds
of retching follow quickly, one after the other. Each time, he spits
out what he’d swallowed earlier, till he’s gasping with
exhaustion. Snot and tears join together in a dirty stream. Chiwin
lifts one forearm to wipe his mouth, and smells the sour stink
pervading everything.
The reflection in the mirror is
now a murky blur, because of the tears which well up and fill the
sockets of his eyes. He feels so dizzy that he almost can not stay on
his feet. Chiwin swallows his viscous saliva and hiccoughs once
again. This time what he vomits up is a thick, clear liquid. It
spouts out so violently that it seems to carry with it his liver,
kidneys, and intestines.
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