THE AMNESIA OF ME by Peter Nolan Smith

Eight years ago I was sitting on Pattaya's notorious Soi 6 listening to SOMEBODY TO LOVE. As I grooved to the Jefferson Airplane's hit, a trio of sub-20 Thai girls had invited me to visit an upstairs short-time room.

"You sexy man. How old you? 40?" asked the youngest.

Even through beer goggles my mirror doesn't lie more than 49.

"Older."

"45?"

"Gair-gwar?"

"50?"

"More?"

"Buah, you not old. You boran." The bar-girls was tired of the guessing game and they went to seek out younger picking.

Boran meant ancient in Thai.

I was ancient to someone south of twenty, but as my friend Tidball was wont to say, "I like to think of myself as the Acropolis. In a state of ruins, but you can tell once it must have been something."

I left Soi 6 before someone accused me of being gao or decrepit.

Back in Jomtien my wife laughed upon hearing these girls thinking I was boran.

"You old man, but you my old man." Her belly swelled with our child.

"And you are thuut-sawn."

"Barg wan." My angel led me into the house. She loved sweet talk, which was very popular in Pattaya, which was a refuge for men not wanting to face their age and to misquote TS Eliot. "As I get old I shall wear my trousers rolled where the women don't speak about Michelangelo."

No one in Pattaya had ever mentioned Michelangelo, unless they were a Ninja Turtle fan.

I've been old for a long time, but the old age truck never blows its horn when it backs up over you and I never forgot the first time I became old.

Back in 1986 I returned to New York from Paris. I had sublet my East Village apartment to a Swede. Sven moonlighted as a bouncer at Danceteria. Everyone liked him and he liked black chicks. I had no trouble with the male nurse. He paid the rent on time and helped the super with the plumbing.

When I informed him that I was coming back for good, Sven moved out three days before my return. Nothing was missing in my flat. Not one of my books or records or clothing. Even the old lady next door, Mrs. Adorno, said good for Sven.

"He good man. He like chocolate ladies." The old witch was in love with the young Swede. She was only 4-10 with chronic pains from a spinal injury. ?He help me with my back. I miss him already."

"What about me?" I had not been in New York more than six years.

"Not miss you long time." The ancient bruja waved a hex sign. "You old man."

"Old man." I was 34.

"I old. I know old, viejo." Senora Adorno slammed shut the door.

Mrs

Adorno was right, however my heart was forever 15 and I swore that I was going to be young forever, despite the old bruja's curse.

But time was slipping away.

My college friends were employed as lawyers, realtors, bankers, and doctors.

Real jobs weren't for me.

Arthur Weinstein got me a spot at the door of the Milk Bar. The club on lower 7th Avenue was decorated like the Malchek Bar in CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Scottie Taylor the owner hid in an egg chair. His manager ran the bar and hired the help. She had good taste in funny people and in late-September we had a new bargirl. Shane came from the UK. Her ambition was to be a pop singer. She had dreads and a cute body. I never hit on her and she asked if I had anything against black girls.

"You're more high yellah than black." More Chinese than African too.

"So why don't you take me home?" Shane was forward and I couldn't think of a single reason for not taking up her offer. I was single. She was over 18. We rode on my Yamaha 650 to East 10th Street. As I parked my motorcycle on the sidewalk Shane looked at the building with a frown.

"What?"

"I've been here before." The declaration wasn't based on deja vu.

"Let me guess. With Sven."

"Yes." She followed me upstairs without any fear of disappearing like Orpheus' dead wife.

I had a joint and she liked smoking weed. All Rasta girls do.

Once inside the apartment she picked up an LP.

The Mothers of Invention's FREAK OUT.

I put the album on the stereo.

Hearing HELP I'M A ROCK Shane laughed, "This is your apartment, right? I was here more than once. I would look at the records and wonder who lived here."

"Who did you think it was?" My apartment was a classic homage to the 1960s. Wood covered the walls like a rural shack. Bathtub was in the kitchen and the water closet was in the back.

"Seeing these LPs I thought it was some old hippie."

"Hippie?" I had hitchhiked to San Francisco in 1971 three years too late for the Summer of Love and more a punk than anything else.

"Yes, an old hippie."

Mrs. Adorno was right and I couldn't bring myself to make love with Shane. No newly old man should resurrect his youth in a young woman's flesh. I didn't have such a problem later in life, because old can get very old without the young.

Still no one in America has called me sexy since high society interior designer Tony Ingrao bought a 20-carat Burmese blue sapphire from me. At our celebratory dinner he cooed, "You're very sexy. For an old man."

Tony only wanted sex.

As opposed to my wife who wanted my heart and soul, despite my age, but during my money-making sojourns to New York I have learned the hard way that "As you get old you forget. As you get older you are forgotten."

Several years ago a woman sent a query to my Facebook page.

"Are you who I think you are?"

It was Shane. I wrote back that I had worked at the Milk Bar as the doorman. Her reply came as a surprise.

"I'm sorry I worked at the Milk Bar too, but I don't think you're the person I was thinking about. It was all such a long time ago. Take care."

Not who I thought you were?

Shane must have wiped her memory clean.

"Old hippie?"

Those two words castrated my pride, then again we never had sex, still her epistle on Facebook reveals she has forgotten about me 100% and the words 'old hippie' too.

She was wrong, for while I might not have long hair, I still listen to Jefferson Airplane and I will never forget the MC5's KICK OUT THE JAMS MOTHERFUCKERS.

Sirens of Soi 6 # 1

Soi 6 was never quiet day or night. Motorcycles roared down the narrow street. Western and Thai music blasted from a score of competing sound systems. The conversations between the girls were in loud Thai accompanied to shouts at the farang men braving the gauntlet of bars running from Beach Road to 2nd Road.

"Hey, sexy man. You want sexy lady." The 23 year-old bar girl on the stoop of Chic Bar had yelled this same phrase over a hundred times in the last two hours. Ping had hooked two western men. Both had gone inside to the bar and upstairs to a bedroom for a short-time session of less than thirty minutes.

Ping was luckier than most of the bar girls. Her long silky hair and large breasts was a magnet to the lust-filled foreigners and she spoke reasonable English.

A shy 18 year-old in the back row of the girls on the terrace watched Ping's every move. This was Oom's first day. Ping was her 3rd cousin on her father's mother's side. Her brother had been arrested for ja-bah.

15 tua or pills.

Jott was languishing in provincial prison. The police demanded bail of 50,000 baht. Oom was the youngest and prettiest girl of the family and her parents decided that her beauty would save Jott from five years in the monkey house.

Two farangs stared at her. They were bigger than any man in her village. One of them was larger than her father's prize pig. Her olive eyes dropped to the ground, although she was not a virgin, since her boyfriend had taken his pleasure with her after drinking too much beer the previous Songkran. He left her for another girl a week later.

"Your brother stay in 'kook' long time, you stay so 'iang aii'." Ping pulled her out of the chair. "You shy family no pay police. Girl like you make big money. Go home fast. Forget here."

"I scared farang." Oom's long hair furled down her bare back like a black sail. Her stick-thin legs disappeared up into her sparkling mini-skirt. She weighted at most 41 kilos.

"Farang man. Thai man same. Want lady short-time. Go away. Leave you 500 baht." Ping had been in Pattaya five years. She had once traveled to Switzerland with a young boyfriend and traveled another time to France with an older man.

Neither had lasted more than 6 months, because Ping was 100% Thai.

Without green papaya salad or sum tam in her belly, she feared the loss of her soul, but maybe her luck would improve if she helped her young cousin.

"Men come here to see new girl. No one Soi 6 more new than you. I help you get good man."

Several men approached Ping.

They smelled of rotten meat and unwashed feet.

Ping said Oom was too good for them. Two young men asked if both girls wanted to go inside. They had nice smiles, but Ping shook her head. Afterward her cousin explained, "Young man fuck long time. Steal your power. Old man better. Not strong."

"How old?" Some of the men staring at her looked old enough to be dead. Ping knew many of them by name. She was very 'hit' or popular with these white-haired elders. The owner of the bar, Frank, was old, but he never touched any of his girls. He called Ping 'Liebsten' or the same as tee-lat in Thai.

Darling.

"Last week I go with man. He 78. Not want sex. Only want to talk. One hour. Better he have sex. Faster. Not steal my time," Ping spoke hard as the gravel-packed road outside her u-country house. She had two babies from her boyfriend. They lived together in Pattaya, where Pi-et worked as an agent for a ja-bah dealer.

"I still scared." Oom didn't like the way her cousin's boyfriend studied her body. She could read her mind. One day he would try something. One day when Ping was with customer long-time. She couldn't not stop him. He was a bad man.

"Not scared. Here comes your #1." Ping nodded her head toward a tall farang. His skin was as white as paper. His pants were pulled high over his waist. Several bar girls laughed at his appearance.

"I no like."

"No like. This not TV movie with happy ending. This Soi 6. Your brother in jail. Family need money. Drac easy customer. All he want is kiss your underwear. No sex." Ping whispered to prevent the other bar girls from hearing this trade secret.

"Not want sex?"

"No, he kiss your bikini. He not take off his bikini. One hour 2000 baht."

"2000 baht?" No one in her village made that much money in one hour. Not even one day, except for agents selling ja-bah or the police or the headman who expected money from everyone.

"One hour. Get money after he finish." Ping called to Drac.

He came over.

Ping explained that this was Oom's first day and Drac smiled with yellow teeth.

He smelled nice, despite his sickly appearance.

Ping nudged her side and told the mama-san that Drac was taking her upstairs.

"Not worry, Drac. She know what do."

"Sure?"

100% sure."

"Then let's go inside."

Drac led Oom through the darkened bar to the narrow stairway. The mama-san gave them a key. The farang asked several questions going up the steps to the second floor. Ooom didn't understand them and nodded with a polite grunt. Drac laughed at the doorway to room 7 and said, "You really are new?"

"No kohok. first day."

"You ever be with a farang before?"

"Never."

"Then today is my lucky day."

Drac opened the door.

The bed was clean. It was early in the day.

"Now shower," murmured oom.

The mama-san had told her that you can see if a man's penis is sick if he is naked, and she said

Drac he shook his head. "We not have sex. No reason to have shower."

Oom didn't understand why, but started to take off her clothes.

"Not take off clothes."

Drac waved his hand and pushed Oom onto the bed, then tugged her short skirt over her waist.

He moaned seeing her underwear and undressed down to his underwear. His skin was the same texture as a plucked chicken. She shut her eyes when he spread her legs with his hands. His kisses on her underwear were hot and the hour lasted forever, but in the end he stood up and gave her 3000 baht.

"Thank you."

"Thank you. I want you to have good luck." Drac dressed in five seconds and accompanied her to the bar. "Maybe I'll see you again. I like skinny girls."

The mama-san congratulated Oom's initiation and Ping entered the bar beaming with pride.

The owner, Frank, looked sad and said, "Drinks for Liebsten and her cousin, die schone Ping."

"Two tequilas." Ping held up her fingers and wai-ed the old German. The mama-san poured white liquid into small glasses. It smelled the same as 'lao khao' or rice whiskey and tasted like fire in her mouth and acid in her throat. Ping laughed at her younger cousin. "You will like it soon enough."

"What is skinny?" Oom coughed with her head spinning. She never drank lao.

"Pom and many farangs like girls pom. You big success."

Oom nodded her head, for while this wasn't the success she dreamed of as a child, she was a little closer to getting her brother out of jail. She was good in math and did the numbers in her head. Only seventeen more times with Drac and she could be a young girl again.

Maybe not in her moo-ban, but in Krueng-Thep anything was possible.

After all Bangkok was the city of dreams, where she could forget all about Pattaya.

It was something every girl believe in the Last Babylon.

Until they realized it was a lie.

But for today Oom was happy.

Very sabai-sabai.

For Pattaya's new lcuky girl.

Whores or Virgins

Men come to Pattaya for one reason.

It is not golf or the beach.

They come for the girls.

"I never pay for it." First-timers say as they evict a bargirl from their hotel room without even taxi fare only to get a high heel thunked against their skull the next time the stiffed bargirl spots her cheap lover on Soi 8 0r 7. Blood everywhere, but he didn't pay for it, because he doesn't consider his date a prostitute as don't many farangs.

"She's only doing this to support her family." Many farangs make excuses for their mistresses or say, "Prostitution in Thailand isn't like it is back home."

Those statements may be true, but selling your body for sex classically fits into the world-wide description of prostitution ie money 4 Sex = Prostitution is a simple equation. She is not your girlfriend unless you retire her from a bar and then you're still obliges to cash her up, so it's more like a prostitute girlfriend than a girlfriend, although my friend Jamie Parker, the original Crassanova, claims, "All women are whores."

If that's true then all men are Johns, so stop calling a shovel a spade, but be polite about it, because a high heel to the skull hurts a lot.