Girls like Girls in Pattaya

Mam watched me sleeping like the dead last night. My snoring kept her awake. Jet lag was taking its toll. The curfew in pattaya was over and Walking Street was ready for 'business as usual. Mam gave me a green light to go out with Sam Royalle. I told

“It’s holiday. Go out with friend. Don’t come back until you mao kah.” Basically meaning get legless.

"Are you sure?"

"I want good night sleep. Not come back for boom-boom."

"No problem." It was already 9pm. I was ready for pillow land. If I didn't leave now, then I'd never go. I kissed her good-bye and rode my Yamamha Neuvo to Walking Street. No police in sight.The parking attendant asked where I had been. I told him 'New York'.

"Long time no see." It was nice to be remembered and he accepted my 100-baht tip with a wai. He needed it after the three-night closure for security measures.

Sam Royalle was waiting at What’s Up a Go-Go. The manager is a tom boy. Several of the dancers are fag hags. A good number are lesbians. Few of the male customers notice this, because near-naked girls dancing to techno tend to appear straight to a drunken farang, however several girls were glaring at others with jealousy, as a pretty girl was bar-fined by a westerner khang-noi or little elephant. Some of whom are not so little.

At first I thought it was envy, but realized the vicious look directed at the male was that of a lover. The Jefferson Airplane once sang. “Saddest thing in the whole wide world, see your baby with another girl.” Same goes for a girl going with a man.

I asked Oy, the manager, if her girlfriend gets jealous.

“Huung like a snake.” She rolled her eyes mentioning the real Thai word for jealous. “My girlfriend thinks I have sex with every girl here. But not true. I only love here.”

“So you don’t look at any other girls?”

“Looking not same as making love.”

“So when you look, you don’t think about making love with the girl.”

“I not say that.” Oy ordered a round of kamikazes to shut me up.

My friend’s girlfriend was cuddling with another friend’s wife. The two appeared comfortable and when the wife went to the ladies room, I asked the girlfriend, “I know you like girls. Why you go with my friend?”

“He has good heart.” Cher looked across the bar to where he was buying a dancer a drink. She raised a thumb to approve of his choice. They would share the performer for a ménage-a-trois later. “But if I not have him, then I stay with lady. Better than man. Lady love you. Man only want to_____you know. You not think girl love girl bad.”

Bad?

North Hollywood sells several billion dollars worth of DVDs dedicated to lesbianism. I wrote a novel about it. NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD. Men fantasize about a love triangle incessantly, only this solipsical equation doesn’t run true to the dream. Girls who like girls like boys only because they really like girls. At best you’re a man-slave. At worst you’re a spectator.

In 1975 I was hitch-hiking in Big Sur. A hippie. It was getting dark in the forest on US 1. Cars were few. The trees were huge. Camping solo seemed my only option, until a pick-up truck stopped. Two men scurried from the flatbed and ran into the forest like they were wanted fugitives. Tow women were in the front. Both cute in a rubenesque fashion.

“Where you headed?”

“LA.”

“We’re going to San Diego. What you think about getting some wine and camping with us tonight?” The cuter one asked from the passenger seat.

“Cool.” And I jumped in the back.

1975. Over thirty years ago. Long hair. Hippie girls. Big Sur. We bought a jug of wine and drove off the road to a grove of redwoods stretching into a cobalt blue sky. Stars were glowing above the treetops. We exchanged names. Theirs were Flower and Sammy. I gave mine as James.

“James Bond?” Flower was older and had long brown hair.

“James reefer Bond.”

Both of them laughed and Flower tolled a joint. She wore overalls without a bra. Her breasts were big. Sammy’s were small. We started a fire and ate fruit, smoked pot, and drank wine. Within 30 minutes we were naked on a scratchy blanket. They called my cock 007, even though it wasn’t that long. We had sex throughout the night. Flower could take everything I gave her, but the second I entered Sammy my pleasure reached a climax like a storm wave.

Hardly one in-and-out.

Flower didn’t like this. I was supposed to be a tool. As the dawn broke over the redwoods they withdrew began a long sumo wrestling match into a 69 Death Grip excluding any male touch. Flower sneered at me, as if her groans were merely a subterfuge to entice Sammy into this embrace.

They had pulverized my libido and I understood why the other tow men had fled the truck. I crawled away from the redwood grove and caught a ride south, knowing that girls like girls and that was it.

Same in Pattaya.

My friends think these girls are experimenting. Most are tom-dee or lesbians and like Gore Vidal said, “Once is experimentation. Twice is perversity.”

They’re only playing a game otherwise.

I left my friends that night and returned home. Mam and my son Fenway were asleep. I lay on the bed and read a little. Ezra Pound. Within a few minutes I was asleep, because there was only one woman in my menage-a-trois. All the otehres are in my head.