LOVE YOU LONG TIME - CHAPTER 4 by Peter Nolan Smith

The staff of the front desk at the Malaysia remembered my room. 203 overlooked the pool. Overweight farangs basked in the torrid sun like walruses oiled for a boiling pot. The bar girls sheltered in the shade, eating sum-tam or spicy papaya salad like the world was ending tomorrow or beginning by waking up next to a complete stranger.

After washing up I walked down Soi Si Bamphen to Kenny's Bar. He wore my ring. The girls were older, but the beer was cold. The ex-pats told the same stories as always and Fat Pat sold me a small bag of Ma. I stayed two nights and called Sam Royalle down in Pattaya on the third noon.

"You get trapped in Bangkok?" The Englander had adapted to Thailand after one Singha beer.

"It is an easy thing to do, but I'm on my way."

"I have your room all ready. Be prepared. It's Songkran."

"I forgot that."

The Songkran celebration ushered in the Thai New Year and the rains ending the hot season. The festival was focused on Wan Parg-bpee or April 15, when homage was paid to deceased ancestors and young Thais poured scented water into the palm of their elders, who utters wishes of happiness and good luck. The practice was quite charming, but the tradition has changed in recent years and how much was revealed by my bus ride from Ekemai to Pattaya.

Traffic packed the roads into town. People bucketed water at each passing motorists. It took the taxi an hour to reach Rob's high-rise overlooking the Gulf of Siam. His girlfriend was a teenager named Dtum. She was eager to party with her friends.

Sam peeled off ten red hundred-baht notes from a thick stack of bills.

"Have sanuk."

The Thais had been slaves till 1905. The Thai upper-classes treated the common people like 'muaan' ma noot' and their former serfs loved nothing better than having a good time to show the elite that money meant nothing as long as you could laugh free.

Sanuk trumped money for the poor.

Sam, his workmate, Dougie, and I went to a beer bar on the Beach Road. We chucked threw water at everyone in sight. I soaked a girl. Her name was Vee. She was pretty, despite having one eye.

"I lose eye on motorsai. Lucky not dead."

"I have accident too. I die."

"You die?"

"Yes, many times, but only for a second." A second lasted forever in other dimensions.

"You dead now?"

I took her hand. I invited her to dine at a small restaurant. She ate like an entire NFL football team and said she wanted to go home with me. We spent the week together and she quit working the bar. Rob and Dtum didn't like her and said she was money hungry.

They weren't wrong.

Farangs had supported hundreds of small villages throughout the country, as if they were charitable NGOs. Most returned West broke or jumped off their condo balcony. Few wanted to leave paradise.

Vee and I traveled up north in a rented car to see her baby in Isaan Plateau. This was the hot-season. The temperature lurked in the high-90s. We stopped in Khorat and stocked up on food and beer. Vee filled a shopping cart with enough to feed an army.

"I have big family."

"So do I." There were eight of us and I cut her off at $100.

She made a face like she thought I was kee-nioo or cheap. I ignored the facial insult and popped open an icy cold Singha and drove east on Route 24.

Dust devils skated over dust of the parched rice paddies and vultures ascended over thermal updraughts. Water buffalos lunged in muddy pools. Not a single human was in sight. Vee said, "Turn right."

I had ten seconds to brake for the turn. We proceeded down the narrow road and arrived at a wooden house on stilts. At least twenty people sat underneath in its shade and cheered our coming. Her sons ran to Vee.

"You said you had one son."

"My eye no good."

I envied their affection. Everyone ate and drank like the world was ending tomorrow. Vee fawned on her sons. I gave them each 100-baht.

$100 went fast on the Isaan Plateau and I sent out a 'cousin' to get 1000-baht of lao-khao. Night dropped over flat fields like spilled black paint. Vee put her to sons to bed . We sang around a bonfire. Vee and the other women danced to 'luk krung'. The celebrants left a minute after the last drop of rice whiskey.

Inside the house a photo of a farang was on the wall.

"He just friend?" I asked Vee.

"More than friend." She looked to her sons.

"Oh."

The next evening we drove through the sweltering heat through deep Isaan. No electric lines ran from the dirt road to the house surrounded by the only tree stand in the middle of a vast rice. Two bonfires lit the yard. Candles illuminated the house. A line of women stood on the stairs. There was a chill in the night.

"House belong Mae-mod."

"Witch?"

"Good witch."

"Why come here?"

"See future."

"About us?"

"No, future me and Englishman. Men stay there." She pointed to the right and joined the queue. "Women go see phram. Shaman."

I joined the men around the blaze. They drank 'lao khao' or rice whiskey and passed me the plastic bag. The whiskey was fire. None of them spoke and watched the women enter the house one by one. An old farmer pointed to the other fire. Six old women huddled around the glow. They looked to be a thousand years old.

"Dead women."

"Dead how?"

"You ask your wife. Look."

A young man emerged from the shadows and walked to the women. He picked one and led her into the trees. He emerged from the forest out alone.

"Dead?"

Ban-tee."

I understood the degrees of 'maybe' and ordered another bag of lao khao.

Twenty minutes later Vee exited from the house.

"You have good future?"

"Good some. Bad some."

Once in the car I asked her about the old women around the bonfire.

"Old ladies pick number. One get 4. She go jungle. To die. Other women live longer."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I started to get out of the car.

Vee held my arm.

"No one die. All show. Magic. Red-lum." Vee's good eye widened, as if to better envision the candle-lit hut.

"Yeah, Red-lum." Vee had later told me that the set-up was a scam and the same woman loses every night.

"And the fture?"

She tell future> Easy. Not hurt no one. Kill black magic. Mohn dam." "I not do you magic. Only magic is in my heart."

We left Isaan in the morning.

"You scare magic."

"Only scare nothing. You take plane before. Plane magic. Fly same birds."

"Fly where?"

"Surprise."

Koh Samui's beaches were beautiful and we made love in the warm waters at sunset. I wrote a comedy about the first men having sex in Space. I thought it would make a great movie. After six months my money ran out and Vee asked, "I wait for you."

"No, I can't say when I can come back." I left her enough money for a month. Her boyfriend from England was coming around Christmas. There would be no long-distance phone calls. Sam later called to say she had moved to the UK. It was better that way.

Sam parlayed his computer expertise into a corporation. He phoned with a job offer in Bangkok. A ticket was waiting at JFK. His father was getting tired of my ping-ponging between Asia and New York.

"One day you'll find out you don?t have a job here."

"That day will come, when I can't make you money. Give me my commish."

I flew to Bangkok business-class on upgrades. Rob had an office on Wireless Road. His company built websites for Asian corporations. My job was writing content. Most of his employees were paid a fifth of my salary. I didn't deserve it and figured this was his thanks for having transferred that money from his wire scam. During the week his work crew hung at Bangkok's trendy clubs and weekended at his beach house in Pattaya. Rob called his plan.

"Work in Bangkok. Play in Pattaya."

Vee had married the Brit. I was free to do whatever I wanted and Rob's wife hated us going out even more than before. I never brought anyone home other than her mates. She had plenty of those.

In truth I was getting old. My friends' children had grown up. My nieces and nephews were attending college. I seemed doomed to spend my life in the last Babylon on Earth.

I was not alone in my damnation.

My friend, AJ, flew out from London. The cameraman and tai-chi teacher had told everyone that he was traveling to Thailand for a diving certification. Pattaya had plenty of schools for PADI courses and a lot more too. I took off the week.

One evening AJ and I stopped at a bar of Soi 8. A slender Thai girl danced on a platform to a boy band hit. A skinhead farang was obviously her date for the night. She winked over his shoulder with a mercenary mirth and I was pierced by a deja-vu arrow.

In 1970 BLIND FAITH had released an album cover featuring a shirtless blonde waif. This girl was her Asian twin and I memorized her hips walking away from the bar and heard CAN'T FIND MY WAY HOME in my head. A mischievous backward glance should have warned me to watch my freedom.

ome curse are self-generated and I didn't go out at night after that. AJ kept saying it wasn't a problem.

"I have to get up early for my diving courses."

I went to the bar on Soi 8 twice. The girl wasn't there. The mama-san said she was on holiday with man from England. There were thousands of Brits in Pattaya, but I knew the Englishman, because AJ was a birddog.

After AJ departed for the UK, Sam's wife banned him from going out with me. She had seen him with a girl at a disco. She blamed me. I moved to the Sabaii Lodge on Soi 3. It had a swimming pool and I didn't have to listen to their fights.

I returned to the Soi 8 bar. The skinny girl wore a band-aid bra over a breastless chest. Long black hair snaked down a bare back. She hopped from the dance platform and sat next to me. She pronounced my name wrong and told me hers. I offered her a drink and Ae said, "I no drink lao, maybe drink coke."

I expected her to rattle off the typical list of bargirl questions; "Where are you from" How old are you? You have a wife" How long you stay" instead she sobbed out a tale about a man leaving for London. "He diver for Navy.

"His name AJ?" Girls in Belize, Manado, and Bali had also heard this tale.

"You know him?" Ae stifled a sniff.

"The very best of friends."

"You think he come back?" She bit her lip in anticipation.

AJ was not one to fall in love during a ten-day or one year holiday. Like most men he only thought about himself.

"Only Buddha knows."

Her cascade of tears brought the mama-san over to see what was wrong. I might not have understood the exchange in Thai, but recalled Cato's quote, "The strongest acid in the world is a woman's tears.

I excused myself, "I'm going home."

"I come with you. Same I stay with AJ. Only have you." The tears dried to a smile.

Saying no would have been easy. Ae wasn't working the bar for laughs. Girls got 1000 baht or $25 per night to go with men. Ours wasn't a match made in heaven, but I had money in my pocket.

"You come with me, but I can't say it will last forever."

"Forever same one day for heart. I happy with one day. One week. One month. Maybe more." She bid good-night to the mama-san and we drove to my hotel.

In bed Ae faked orgasms like a porno star. The lie turned on the old fool in me. Our one evening lasted the weekend. We lay in bed and spoke of our lives.

The English father of her son had deserted her for a younger woman. Ae was 22.

Go-go dancing supported her children, although the real money came from going with men. She couldn't tell me how many. Neither to me or herself. She wired money upcountry for her kids' schooling, for this altruistic streak fooled most farangs into thinking they have met a saint without considering that these women have also abandoned the dirt-poor villages to forget their cheating ex-husbands and drunken boyfriends.

Neither side of the equation asked too many questions and neither did I, when Ae announced on a beautiful Monday morning, "I say good-bye to Finland friend. Not boyfriend. Friend. Go see him to airport. He give me 5000 baht. I come back. Stay with you."

"Mai pen rai." I recalled a story from the Pattaya Mail.

A westerner had marrying a dancing girl from t. They celebrated their wedding at the Royal Cliffs, the most expensive hotel in Pattaya. The next morning he woke to an empty bed. The hotel staff knew nothing. The police even less. A week later his wife showed up at his house and explained, "Have old boyfriend come see me. He give me 50,000 baht. You not mind?"

"No problem?" Ae was disappointed by my absence of jealousy, but in Pattaya you never lose the girl. Only your turn and I was willing to wait, because I loved drinking at a bar and Pattaya had hundreds of those.

"None at all."

She tenderly kissed my cheek and said, "I call you from Bangkok."

Two days passed without a phone call.

British partner reneged on the balloon payment of his investment and our company joined the Internet crash.

Katmandu was three hours away by plane. The monsoons weren't due for another two months. A small guest house in Annapurna's rain shadow served pancakes in the morning. Life would cost $10/day. Mustang lay to the north. A months stay in the sacred Himalayas was penance for several months in the Last Babylon. I didn't make it out the hotel door. Ae stood in the hallway and looked at my bag. "Where you go?"

"I'm going to Nepal to see the mountains."

"Mountains?" Her face scrunched up in disbelief. "Why you go see mountain, when see me?"

The hotel door remained shut for two days.

Our holiday on Koh Samui was a month-;ong honeymoon. She taught me Thai as a sleeping dictionary. I learned the words for love, caress, hug, kiss, and jealous. I said "Rak-khun" more than a man my age should tell a younger woman, but Senora Adorno's love curse had been vanquished by a slender go-go girl.

On the beach fat female westerners gawked, as if I were a sex tourist.

In some ways they weren't wrong. Ae and I had sex three times a day.

"It good with you. You not too big. Not too small." She lay with her thighs clasped to trap me inside her. "I not finish with men from go-go. With you all the time."

I didn't need to hear about these other men, because my cousin Sherri had told me how easy it is to fake an orgasm. She had done so in hundreds of films and thousand more in real life.

"Yes, say, but not true. With you true." Her hand caressed my shoulder with a tenderness absent from my life for years and I reciprocated with a gentle embrace.

"When we return to Pattaya, will you live with me a little?"

"Long as you want." She was telling the truth, but only about that, because the truth in Thailand or anywhere else in the world is an onion with many layers.

We rented a utility apartment off Soi Boukhao. Her youngest son Dtut joined us. Three of us in one room. Our love life suffered, but not as much as when her father had completed a murder sentence at the Rayong Prison and came to town.

"We go see father."

I only extracted 1000 baht from the ATM and drove across the railroad tracks down the end of a dirt road. Den shared a filthy room with his son and his drug addict girlfriend. She was six months pregnant. They drank heavily and played cards.

"You help my family." My donations to Ae had improved no one's lives, but I said, "Yes."

$200 settled a gambling debt. Another $100 to buy off a police loan shark. I rented her brother and father a small restaurant. They transformed the enterprise into a ya bah or Methedrine den. Her children went shoeless. Crooked policemen came to my house for tea money. Loansharks for delinquent loan.

After this lesson in the futility of foreign aid I withdrew my sponsorship. I should have left her, but I couldn't and I recalled the glass of beer. Everyone was angry and Ae spat, "You not understand Thai life."

"Pom khao jai 100% and I understand not knowing is good."

My bank account was low. My old boss, Richie, called from New York. He needed an extra salesman for Christmas season in the Diamond District. Ae said, "Go. You want leave me. Go."

"I'll be back."

"Same you tell Vee."

"No, I swear I'll come back."

I worked forty days in a row and sold 25-carat cabochon Burma sapphire to a well-known interior decorator, who whispered over dinner at a fancy Soho restaurant, "You?re sexy."

Tony drove a convertible 1960 Ferrari 250 GTO, lived in a 5th Avenue apartment, and owned a house overlooking a surfing spot in Montauk. Richie said I should marry him, if only to have him buy a big engagement diamond from his store. I didn't play for that team and called Ae every day. I didn't tell anyone. Not even Sherri and I booked a flight to the Orient.

Ae met me at the airport and said, "I happy now."

"I happy too."

The only sad men in Don Muang were those drinking their last beer in Thailand.

"And Dtut?"

"Your son can live with us."

We moved into a house surrounded by swamps. Birds sang in the trees. Butterflies danced in the sunlight. Mosquitos sucked my blood. Ae cooked triple fried fish and vegetables. One night I drank a beer. The taste was off, but I drained the bottle slick with a green liquid.

In the morning uranium spikes drummed my temples. I looked at the beer bottle. It smelled funny and I accused Ae of poisoning me.

"Poison?" "Yeah, phit or a love potion."

"I not believe magic."

"Ching, ching."Thais draped talisman around their neck, inscribed their bodies tattoos against evil, and visited fortunetellers and witches, instead of doctors.

"Not magic. Maybe house have phi."

"Ghosts?"

"Phi Am. She sit on you in night."

"No, I don't think so."

"You not believe in Phi?"

"I know ghosts well." I was from New England, although farangs derided the Thais' belief in souls eating your intestines or a greedy man doomed to wander eternity with a worm-sized mouth. I was not an unbeliever and contracted the monks to exorcise the house, but whatever potion had been in that beer bottle lurked in my belly and its spell was bound to emerge from hibernation at a moment of weakness.

Life settled down after that episode. I woke with the dawn to re-edit my novel on pornography in our air-conditioned bedroom. Thai bar girls were Olympic sleepers and Pi-Ek, the owner of Hot Tuna on Walking Street, theorized that these bargirls preferred the world of dreams rather than a half-translated life with a farang.

"Same you live in a foreign movie and only hear language farang. Jep hoo-a."

His conjecture was worrisome, since Ae was sleeping fourteen hours a day or night.

On each occasion she had arisen from these comas demonized by a tigress in heat. Once I rolled off her sweat-drenched body and she murmured, "You love me?"

"Rak khun."

My heart was pumping too much blood to my head and the twenty-four year-old smiled quixotically. "You write book sound like monsoon rain. Why you love me?"

She knew nothing about the Red Sox, the coast of Maine, or CBGBs in the East Village. I had incorporated her breastless body into my novel without explaining my original attraction was based on a supergroup's album cover. I winged my reply.

"Because I feel young with you."

"You my khun garh." She snuggled into my like a stray cat after a long stay on the streets.

I was neither the oldest or youngest farang in her life. I was somewhere in the middle and replied, "Yes, I'll always be your old man."

She resumed the sleep of the dead and I read Peter Hopkirk's THE GREAT GAME.

Outside the distant hum of cars mingled with the buzz of mosquitoes beyond the netting. The night air was scented by jasmine.

I rested the book on my chest.

Pattaya was so much different than my life in New York.

There I worked. Here I wrote. There I slept alone. Here I made love to Ae every day. She would tell me about her lovers. They were many. In some ways it was like listening to Sherri. The two probably shared the same adventures. I was getting to think Pattaya could be home. Mrs. Adorno would never miss me.

The hot weather melted off my winter gut and daily swims at Jomtien Beach toned up my muscles.

A few friends from New York came out for a visit. We toured the go-go bars and discos. They wondered how they could stay here for the rest of their lives. I did too, since I had no money coming in.

In late March my cousin arrived from Boston with a Red Sox cap and a skimpy red dress for Ae. My mother had sworn me to take care of Bish. Ae modeled the skin-tight sheath.

"Go out, have fun. I meet later."

Bish loved the food, the weather, and the wide-open nightlife. We ate at a seafood restaurant on Beach Road. The hostess greeted us with a shy smile. Only a month in Pattaya Nu didn't speak a word of English and Bish was impressed with my rudimentary Thai.

"I learned it from Ae. My Sleeping Dictionary."

No Thai bargirl encouraged her sponsor to learn their language in fear of losing the advantage of a communication chasm.

"In the States every woman we know would criticize our going to go-go bars."

"Anyone of them donate money to the ballet?"

"No."

"Well, then your tipping these girls after a show is more charitable than a donation to the Boston Ballet. These girls come from the end of the road. Their farms grow one rice crop a year. They have big families. Usually a brother kills someone and to avoid going to prison, they pay blood money to the cops by sending the prettiest girl to Pattaya, Bangkok, or Phuket to make money off some drunken beer lout."

"And is there any salvation?"

"Only if you are lucky."

The next day I bought a medallion of a desiccated Thai monk. The Thai charm seller swore Lop Ngern would protect me. NO one else would. Ae was a ticking time bomb. It was highly unlikely I could walk away from the explosion intact.

"You used to complain about not having served in the Peace Corps after college. Guess you are in the Peace Corps now."

"Volunteer donor."

We clinked glasses and after a long stay at the Happy-a-Go-Go, we crossed Walking Street to the Marine Disco. The Chicken Farm was loaded with free-lance girls looking for a short-time date. Most of the farangs were drunk enough to think these girls actually considered them handsome. Ae was dancing with Sam's wife. Bish and I stayed on the other side of the bar. He asked, "Isn't this spying?"

"Not if my back is turned," I replied, knowing I only trusted Ae in her sleep. She finally spotted me and arrived in a huff.

"No fair, you see me I no see you."

"And I see you don't have a boyfriend and I don't have a geek." The red dress clung to her body like a boa.

"Only have you, khun garh." She dragged me onto the dance floor.

Dtum asked Bish to join her. I became Brad Pitt and Bish was Clint Eastwood. Sam showed up from Bangkok. He had settled with his investor for a few million baht and we celebrated with tequila. The police threw us out at dawn. Standing on Walking Street amidst the flurry of transvestites, off-duty go-go girls, and short-timers, Bish said, "This place is Garden of Eden."

"More like the farm league for Hell, but I'm not religious."

"For me Hell is a suburban mall. Lots to buy. None of it will make you happy. Not like here."

"I'm in no position to argue, counselor."

When Bish left, tears touched his eyes. He wasn't looking forward to life in America.

"All my life I work. I have money. I have a good job. But no woman. What is wrong with me?"

"The same thing as me."

"Which is?"

"I don't know, but maybe you should move back into Boston."

"I am where I am."

Several weeks later Ae's cellphone rang around 3am. Her hand snatched it from the night table with the speed of a cobra attacking a fat rat. She closed the bathroom door. The word tee-lat muffled through the wall. When she returned to bed, Ae read the murder in my eyes and flashed the number on the mobile's LCD.

"Sorry, have friend call me from Italy. He old boyfriend. Now finish."

Friend never finish. He have money. He come. Mai pen rai," I said, as the love potion tightened every vein power with jealousy. I almost threw her mobile into the swamps. Dtut shook his head. He liked playing games on the phone. He was a good kid, but Thais know how to play farangs at birth.

I smiled at him and asked, "So when is your teelat coming?"

"Not boyfriend. Friend." She pounded her fists on the pillows and rolled over, revealing the naked gap between spread legs. "You not trust me. I never go with man. Only with you."

"What about Finnish man?"

"You are the one I want." Ae might have possessed a grammar school education, but she played my emotions with the virtuosity of a concert pianist and once Dtut was in bed, we made love with an urgency shadowed by an impending Armageddon.

Pizza and pasta were banished from the menu. My jealousy painted a portrait of a young Italian with greasy long hair. He wore a Juventus football shirt and chain-smoked between bottles of wine. Anyone speaking a romance language was suspect, but there was an escape plan.

The Italian.

I took Dtut for ice cream. He liked chocolate. The sun fried the sun. I had a vanilla cone and pulled Dtut to my side. He was a good boy.

The Italian was next on Ae's list. He was the answer, especially since Songkran was coming soon and Songkran was the crazy time of the year for the Thais and even more so for a man lost in Asia.

NAPS OF THAILAND by Peter Nolan Smith

When a Chinese general was asked about how the People's Army were defeated by the Vietnamese in 1979, he replied, "We get up at 5am and they get up at 4."

The draconian work ethic of NVA seemed to have been sapped by the torrid climes closer to the equator, because Thais and Laotians are epic sleepers with an uncanny ability to find comfort in conditions better suited to a CIA rendition camp.

Some farangs attributed this hyper-sleeping habit to oriental lassitude, however their Eurocentric observations are way off mark.

Most Thais wake before dawn to work in the rice fields until the heat hits treacherous body-sapping temperatures and then 'Khon tam khao' retreat from the sun for a good meal followed by a better nap or nge'ep before returning to the fields for the long afternoon.

This rice farming tradition has been transported to the cities where workers labor from dawn to dusk six days a week.

Having lived in the South of France, where siestas are a valued cultural treasure, I often defended the Thais and other Asians' sleeping habits.

"Naps are good for you," I once said at the Buffalo Bar.

"So explain to me why bar girls sleep twenty hours at a clip," an English bar-goers asked in Pattaya. Jim had been here for years. His vocabulary in Thai was limited to orders for more beer and sexual propositions.

"Only can be several reasons." I'd been in the Orient since 1990.

I didn't have all the answers.

Just some of the right ones.

"Like what?" Jim was eying his date. The plump bargirl seemed alert for the moment. The fifty year-old mustn't have paid her yet.

"First is that she's exhausted from having sex with you." Many farangs in Thailand exist on a diet of Viagra and alcohol.

"Could be." The bar-goer smiled with pride.

"Second, she could be on ja-bah and crashes after sex." His girl's fatness excluded her huffing meth. She was a healthy eater.

"No way. The cops piss-tested her at Marine Disco the other night. She came up clean."

"Well, that leaves only one other explanation and this comes from a very knowledgeable Mama-san of a go-go bar. She said the reason most of these girls sleep so much is that they're trying to escape the reality of having to have sex with a fat farang and would rather live inside a sleep world until they have enough money to rejoin other Thai people. Of course this couldn't pertain to you since you're such a sex hero."

Jim tipped the scales over 280 and his age was a 20th of Methuselah. No one had called him 'sexy' since he was in his teens and that person had probably been the parish priest. For an Englishman Jim had good smile considering he had half his front teeth.

"I'm not so sure about that." Even Jim recognized that he was no Apollo.

Me neither, but I like hearing girls tell me I'm the best I ever had.

It's a lie which improved with age and I sleep in peace content to accept a well-intentioned lie.

Sleeping well is a talent an old man admires with age.

Those damn Thais.

There is nothing like a good nap and as Carrie Snow once said, “No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap.”

Ching ching.

GIRLS LIKE GIRLS by Peter Nolan Smith

The situation in Bangkok had gotten out of control. The red shirts controlled the city. The police did nothing. People called them daeng moh or watermelon. They were red on the inside. Thaksin was a fellow cop. The Army was in the hands of the old elite or phuu laak maak dee. Bloodshed was a daily occurrence. The government was planning a nationwide curfew. Shut down everything.

Even in Pattaya.

Sam Royalle called me from his house on the other side of Sukhumvit.

"You want to go out tonight. Last night. After tonight all the bars and go-gos will be shut." Sam was recovering from a nasty lung infection. His doctor had advised rest. There was only so much staying at home for Sam. "We haven't gone out in ages."

"I know." I spent my holiday with Mam and our son Fenway. "Let me ask Mam."

Mam trusted me as far as she could see, however Sam had helped me on many occasions.

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

Basically meaning get legless.

Mam knows that I like drinking. We made love before I left the house. My libido belonged to her. I was late to meet Sam.

By an hour.

Mam had made sure that I had no desire.

Sam and his friends were waiting at What’s Up a Go-Go. The go-go was packed with farangs looking for a girl to barfine for the duration of the upcoming curfew. Sam ordered a round of tequilas. Low-quality. I winced after my shot.

"What wrong?" the manager asked tossing back her tequila.

"Tequila very good."

"Strong." Oi was a tomboy. Twice the man I'll ever be. Several of her dancers were lesbians. Few of the male customers noticed this, because near-naked girls dancing to techno appeared straight to a drunken farang, however several girls glared at a bald-headed German in his fifties with jealousy, as he barfined a pretty girl in her late teens.

At first I thought it was envy, but realized the vicious looks 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 Oi, the manager, if her girlfriend got jealous.

“Hung 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 her.”

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

“Looking not same as make love.”

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

“I not say that.” Oi 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 egoish 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 going?”

“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 rolled 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 two 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 Fenway were asleep. They smelled god. I lay on the bed and read a little. Ezra Pound. Within a few minutes I was asleep, because Mam is the only girl in the world for me.

And she's no lesbian.

At least as far as I know.

86ed from the Buffalo Bar

I first walked into Pattaya's Buffalo Bar on Third Road in 1997. It became my local after I moved to Soi Bong Koch. The beer was cold, the open-air atmosphere was a welcome change from the go-go bars' tobacco-reek, and more than a few of the hostesses were desirable. My ex-wife understandably hated the place and didn't buy my excuse for frequenting the bar.

 "I only go there because it's not far from home."

It was less than two minutes away by motorcycle.

Telling a lie would have sounded better, but the truth was much easier to remember.

I'd go there with my little dog Champoo. She'd sit on the bar and lap at a small bowl of Heiniken. The girls loved my Szhi-Tzu. They didn't even know my name, but nothing nice lasts forever.

Eddy, the fortyish owner, had taken up with a young Belgium thug. She relinquished the daily running of the bar to Sandy, an old crow from Isaan. The mama-san's constant cawing grated on the ears and she insulted the best girls like Cinderella's stepmother realizing that her beauty had faded for good. They left in droves.

Only Tuk remained, which was enough for me.

She had plenty of salacious stories from her past and present.

One night I was sitting with Tuk and Champoo. My dog was having her usual. Heineken. She didn't like Chang. It was either too strong or bitter. She's been doing this over three years. Everyone loves her, but this night Sandy tells me to get Champoo off the bar.

"Dog dirty. Dog smell. Dog not come to bar."

I thought about it a little. I had been coming there for years. Buying drinks for everyone. Never complained when they added a little chisel onto the bar bill.

I wasn't having anyone speak to Champoo like that.

"Just give me the bill. I'm leaving. You know what. I'm never coming back here as long as you work here."

"Good." The old harridan didn't own the place. She only worked there.

"Good for me too. Save money. And I tired of hearing you speak."

"Good you go too." Sandy screeched with her eyes wide. She was angry at me and Champoo. "You not special. You same all farang. Come and go. Come and go. One day die.

"And you're the same as all women. You get old."

The tone of the conversation descended down a slope slippery with expletives in Thai and American. The bouncers rushed into the bar, ready to throw out an unruly foreigner. Seeing me they stopped in their track. I bought them pizza. Sandy gave them shit.

"Don't worry boys, I'm leaving."

"And don't come back." Sandy shouted from behind a phlanx of bar girls.

"No problem."

Outside the bouncers begged me to incite Sandy to a fight.

"You slap her no problem." Dao the head of security winked at me. She was no one's friend, but my mother didn't raise me to hit women and to be honest Champoo was a little dirty, although no more than most of the old farangs haunting the Buffalo or me. At least she never sweats. Not even when she's drunk.

So there ends a beautiful relationship between me and a bar. Funny, not sad at all. Then again there are 3000 other bars in Pattaya. One of them has to be right for me, but in the end I knew Champoo and I would come back to the Buffalo.

After all it was right down the street and neither Champoo nor I liked driving home drunk.

THE SLEEP OF THE DEAD by Peter Nolan Smith

Two weeks after my arrest by the Thai Cyper-Crime Unit in 2008 I was drinking at Donovan's Sports Bar on Pattya's Sai 3. Most of the clientele was watching a golf match, while I concentrated on drinking a vodka-tonic. Golf meant nothing to me.

After Tiger Woods birdied a hole, the TV went to commercial break. Conversations of a normal nature resumed between the drinkers.

An oil worker complained that his new girlfriend slept most of the day.

His friends said that their girlfriends suffered from a similar somnalepsy.

The oil worker hailed from Texas. He was overweight and bald.

"And when she wakes up, she eats like an escapee from a concentration camp, then watches Thai soap operas before dropping into a coma."

"Same with me." His two friends were also dumbfounded by the malaise.

"Sleeping 20 hours a day has to be a disease."

"I'm just glad that it wasn't infectious."

Donovan's owner had a 4-handicap. To the oil worker this skill was genius and he asked Steve, if he had any idea why their girlfriends slept like the dead.

"I don't have a girlfriend." Steve was the smartest man in the bar. His Thai waitresses understood more English than they let on and he changed the subject. "Think Tiger Woods will play the Hong Kong Open?"

The golfers bailed after another drink. Their tee-off at Khao Kheo Golf Course was scheduled for 9. I paid my bill. Steve forestalled my departure with an offer of another vodka-tonic. He knew my story. The police might not have thrown me in jail, but their geek shut down my website. I couldn't leave the country until my trial. My money was very tight.

I accepted his buy-back with gracious humility.

Steve and I discussed Eli Manning's Scramble in the Super Bowl, which gave the Giants the win.

"In the regular season he would have been whistled dead. Caught in the grass. Then again rules are made to be broken by the refs in the Superbowl. They had a lot riding on the game." Steve felt that the only people who can fix games were the officials.

"The secondary stopped playing defense to watch him get his." I believed that the NFL officials were also on the fix.

"Never stop playing until you hear the whistle."

We clinked glasses and I asked about his bachelor status.

"I don't have a girlfriend, because I hear too many stories from my customers about theirs."

"I won't ever tell you about winning the Worst Girlfriend of the Year in 2001."

Bee had left me for an Italian five times in two months. I wanted her to go. She just couldn't say good-bye. She was stuck in my life like gum in hair. She had to be cut out in the end.

"Thanks, my head filled with enough unhappy endings to write a soap opera, but I have a question. Why you think Thai girls sleep so much?"

His question echoed off an unspoken affair whose mysteries defied his rational mind. I speak Thai. I know bar girls on a platonic level. They tell stories about 'customers'. Some of them might be true.

"The most obvious answer is the one no one wants to believe."

"Which is?"

"You try spending a night with a drunken farang sucking down beers and tequila like the Taliban were at the city gates. I promise you that you would be a little slow to get out of bed."

"But that's not the real answer, is it?" Steve wasn't accepting the easy way out.

"No, their sleeping sickness is either pretend or a reaction to having to spend so much time with a farang. Faking sleep keeps a farang off them. Not many people have a fantasy about sex with a sleeping woman. The second option is that they are so freaked by being with a farang that they wrap sleep around them like a blanket. You have to think of it like astronaut in suspended animation for inter-planetary travel only Thai girls sleep after they've landed on Mars. They have no interest in the Martians."

"You mean us?"

"Did you ever see BOB CAROL TED AND ALICE. Ann Margret sleeps throughout her affair with Jack Nicholson. Why? Because she didn't want to be there. So what do you do when your girlfriend sleeps?"

"I certainly don't wake her." The peace during their slumber was priceless.

"Let sleeping dogs lie."

"As long you're in bed for when they wake up."

We clinked glasses again and another drink was pushing my budget, but I ordered it anyway.

Mam was already asleep. She was so cute under the sheets. She was safe and so was I. Tomorrow morning was another story.

NIGHT ON THE TOWN

Back in 2012 I was in Thailand. I no longer resided in Pattaya. Too many Russians, retirees, and I preferred Sriracha up the coast, where I lived with my son Fenway and his beautiful Mom. Sriracha was a totally Thai town and I was comfortable drinking beer with Mam and playing with my son, but Mam understood my need to see old friends and one night I received a phone call from Ed. The Hollywood real estate broker had just divorced his wife in LA and needed a guide to the go-go bars of Pattaya.

"Go see your friend. But not see any women." Mam kissed me good-night at the bus stop on Sukhumvit. Fenway eyed his father with suspicion. The two year-old had no reason to worry. My body and soul belonged to his mother.

"I'll be back early." The sun was setting in the Gulf of Siam. I would be at the Buffalo Bar by 7. Ed couldn't be fussy after 25 years with the same woman. "Before midnight."

"Ha." Mam knew men better than me. "Come home when you want."

"Pai." Fenway waved me onto the bus. I blew him a kiss and he wiped his cheek with a smile. He was a good jokester.

The ride to Pattaya Klang took 30 minutes. The motorsai taxi was another five minutes to the Buffalo Bar. Ed sat with the owner, Eddy. She was my age and looked older. Jamie Parker was by his side. We all knew each other from New York in the 80s.

“Ed thought I was dead.”

“I heard more than one version of your death.” Ed and Jamie had been bad boys at Max's Kansas City.

“None close to true.” Jamie had been a good boy in Pattaya. Most of the time. He excused himself to speak with the owner. We ordered beer. The first was good the second cold. Used to Manhattan prices, Ed laughed at the bill. “The girls in here seem friendly.”

“Friendly as Fereghinis.” Thais bore no physical resemblance to most venal of Star Trek races. They were more beautiful than any woman on Melrose and twice as thin.

“I thought we were farangs.” Ed ordered two drinks for the bar girls who had appeared to massage our necks.

“It’s what they call all of us.” The word’s meaning depended on how it was said.

“Not me. I’m a farang lao.” Jamie returned to the bar.

"Only because you eat insects.” The CIA called his kind 'snake-eaters'.

“And speak a little Lao.” Jamie paid the bill and asked, “Are we taking Ed on a Black Diamond run?”

Jamie’s no-hold’s barred pilgrimage to Pattaya’s night spots included most hellholes not of the regular visitor’s radar screen.

“Let’s stay with intermediate slopes.” Ed was no stranger to Jamie’s taste for danger.

We got on motorsai taxis and headed down to Walking Street. 8pm was early and Jamie suggested the Tiger Lounge. “It has great AC, they’ll play anything we want, and the two early girls are the best-looking on the street. If we're lucky neither has been barfined yet.”

Ed was a happy man. Both girls were in the bar. Their combined age didn't add up to that of his ex-wife.

Beer, AC, The Ramones, plus Wan and Fah stereo-massaging his back.

No man could ask for more and Ed recounted the damages of the divorce from his wife. “Malibu house gone. My firm considered me a pussy for not fighting the divorce and axed me from the board.”

“And that was bad?” Jamie’s history was nightlife and prison. He only worried about parole boards and that was a long time ago.

"From where I sit now it was a good thing.”

“And it’s only going to get better.” Jamie dragged us to Living Doll 2, where he harangued the manager about an erotic hot dog eating contest coupled with the most hot dogs you can eat contest. The manager deemed the idea a little too 'lo-so' for his clientele. Ed disagreed. “A bunch of fat guys sucking down dogs followed by go-go girls eating hot dog. Nothing could be sexier.”

“Really?” I asked, since Ed was seated with twin sisters. The skimpy bikinis revealed that some farang had their silken skin tattooed with the same craven images front to back. Thankfully none showed his name.

“Maybe I’m wrong.” Ed had supported the arts. None more than exotic dance.

“I show you wrong.” Jamie signaled for the chek-bin and we were off to Heaven Above. The white interior reminded Ed of Clockwork Orange and my old club off 7th Avenue. 1986. “The Milk Bar.”

“Except these girls are real.” Jamie had been saving the best for last. Ed rang the bell. The 49 year-old was avalanched by beauties and for the first time in a long time he was happy. An hour later he disappeared. No one had seen his departure. Jamie and I wandered off Walking Street and he dropped me at a taxi stand. The fee to Sriracha was 1000 baht or $30.

I made it home at midnight.

Mam and Fenway sat on the couch watching Ultraman.

My son sniffed at me.

"No perfume." I was ever faithful to my wife. We fought over that fact and made love once little Fenway was asleep. We held each other as if neither of us wanted to let go.

In the morning Ed called me and explained the rest of his night.

“I went back to the Tiger and barfined Wan for the week. I'm taking them to some island not so far away. I’ll call you when I get back.”

“Sure.” Koh Samet was an hour down the coast. I didn't warn him about not falling in love. He had been alone with a woman that didn't love him too long. His holiday might stretch to a week, because time goes fast when you’re having fun. I know, because I've been there too.

GO GO Safety

My cousin Sherrie performed exotic dances around the world. Her skill with a firepole was legendary and a smile graced her face through every routine before a devoted audience smitten with a drool factor of 10. The slim brunette was their goddess, but even goddesses feel pain like mermaids with feet.

No one saw her grimace upon getting backstage or heard her mutter, "My feet are killing me.

Not only her feet, but her hands thighs, knees, and back ached from the exertions of the strenuous acrobatics under the spotlight. She swore the worst damage came from wearing high-heels during these shows.

"Barefoot would be better, but it's so no class."

Things haven't changed much since Sharon's retirement, however a safety class opened in the once notorious Patpong district in Bangkok, so that go-go girls can mesh their fluid movement on a fire pole with elegant dance steps destined to prevent injury usually suffered by ballerinas.

"Go-go dancing should be upgraded to an art," stated Empower Foundation director Chantawipa Apisuk during the Patpong go-go contest of 2006. Her non-profit institution has development many courses for go-go girls and bar workers to improve their lot in life. The contest stressed introductory courses in jazz and ballroom dance to prevent injuries to the over 5000 girls employed at the Patpong bars.

Safety regulation for dancers are non-existent other than for their extra-curricular activities outside the nightclubs, but go-go dancing is an art and should be treated as such by the dancers and spectators. Most girls lazily shuffle side to side.

Beautiful? Yes.

Exciting ? No.

Even the best are imitating the moves from pop stars such as Lady Gaga and Beyonce.

Boring, because most real men don?t want to have sex with those pop sluts.

But better the go-go girls of Patpong and Pattaya concentrate on the learning real dance rather than the spinning firepole routines, because then the real stars came become erotic choreographers for future go-go dancers. Most girls haven?t a clue how to dance and it shows. Not that the beer slobs care. They haven?t seen a naked girl in the flesh in years. And it shows by their appreciation of the less than skillful performances.

Applause for sucking on a banana.

I guess so, but real erotic dancing in the style of Salome comes from practice.

And safety always comes first especially when you want to cut off the head of your rivals. The best acrobatic go-go was GG Barnum?s in New York. Transvestite strippers put on a trapeze act, where they would take off their g-strings in mid-flight. 1978 New York New York It was something back then. No place like that now.

COME ALL YE FAITHFUL by Peter Nolan Smith

Pattaya is a city not well known for monogamy. Promises of fidelity last until you leave the room, because this city on Thailand's Eastern Seaboard has temptations by the thousands and those temptations rarely say no.

Bar girls, rent boys, ka-toeys, booze, and drugs added up to damnation according to Reverend Joe Stannis of the Holy Revival Church located down the street from my old soi. He preached in a black suit to passing motorists.

A megaphone in hand.

“You are all going to hell.” Only in English.

The Thais thought he was crazy, because attached to his concrete chapel was a sign pointing the way to the nearest ‘Love Motel’.

The Angel Inn.

The rooms rent by the hour or day for Heaven on Earth testifying to Pattaya's motto.

“Good men go to heaven. Bad men go to Pattaya.”

This quip was borrowed from Mae West’s epithet. “Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go anywhere they want.”

Nevertheless this doesn’t mean everyone in Pattaya is all sinners, because even Sodom had one good man and my friend Richard has never cheated on his wife in Pattaya.

Several years back we were sitting at the Buffalo Bar.

Beers before us.

The DJ was playing HOTEL CALIFORNIA. The Englishman's girlfriend was at his side. Despite working the bars for ten years Lee's undying beauty was a miracle and Richard explained his faithfulness.

“I’m too lazy to be unfaithful and it’s not in my nature.”

Richard was a London contractor working 10-12 hour days, so his lassitude only pertains to matters of the heart.

Thankfully he doesn't know that his Thai wife sleeps with another man. His friends never tell Richard, because the Englishman feels good about himself for being good.

After Richard and Lee left my friend Nick said, "No one is faithful in this town, unless it's to their football team."

Nick was a Tottenham Spurs fan. His girlfriend worked as a service girl at the Buffalo Bar. Fen was too pretty for words and too pretty for just one man. The lanky Brit explained, "Fen has a boyfriend. He pays for her schooling. She only sees me when he leaves down. She considers herself 'faithful' to both of us. Fen never asks me for money, so I'm the only man in Pattaya getting free sex."

"Nothing is free in Pattaya." Everything had a price, even if it was marked 'free'.

Two nights later Richard asked Nick at the Buffalo, "Is Fen your mia noi?”

“No, she not mia noi. She geek.” Richard's girlfriend answered for Nick and waved for another gin-tonic.

“What’s the difference?” Richard's question was directed at his girlfriend. The seeds of suspicion were worming into his trust. Lee stammered for a second, but Nick saved her from having to tell the truth.

“A mia noi you take care of along with having a mia leung or first wife. A geek is someone you have sex with and care about, but only a little. You see her when you see her and it’s no big deal.” Nick obviously had been educated in the difference.

“But your girlfriend doesn’t think she’s your geek?”

“No, Fen is what she is.”

“So you never say the love word?”

“No.” Nick shook his head. “It’s a sex thing.”

“So she’s a geek?” Richard couldn’t fathom why people sleeping together for purely sex.

“No, not geek. Not mia noi. Not friend.” Richard’s girlfriend was exasperated by the his husband’s density, but he only wanted to know where Nick’s girl stood in the scheme of things.

"I like her, but I'm not in love. I'm not faithful to her either. Not like you and Lee."

I got up and left to avoid any examination of my situation.

Jamie Parker was sitting at the other end of the bar.

When I told my friend about the discussion, the New Yorker smiled slyly and said, “This is not a town for the pure of heart. Some women here regard their husbands as faithful if they don’t bring anyone home or are seen with another women by their friends. Other women think you’re cheating if you look at another woman or think of one. Men will believe any story by these bar girls to grant them immunity from a life of sleeping with complete strangers. I call it the Eliza Doolittle syndrome. I can rescue her from this life of sin. Ha, but it’s not the farang boyfriend most men have to worry about. It’s the Thai ex-. They never die, even if the girl says his husband was killed in a motorcycle accident.”

“I’ve heard that story twice.”

“Bet every man in Pattaya has heard it at least once.” Jamie had little use for stories. His girlfriend had been working on Soi 6 three years. Ort liked being a bad girl and so did Jamie. “

Everyone has been unfaithful in either thought or deed and I don’t know what’s worse. Thinking about it and doing it.”

“Doing it.”

“Yeah, but at the end of your life are you going to be sorry about not doing it or doing it?”

"There were twins at the old Blackout a Go-go. I should have taken them home, except I was been faithful to my previous girlfriend. She left me for an Italian."

"Regrets I have a few but then again too few to mention."

“Sinatra the Philosopher.”

“Do-be-do-be-do,” Jamie crooned off-key and several bar girls stared his way, as if he was a dog with his paw stuck in a door. “Are you thinking about going home with someone from here?”

“No way.” I lived two minutes from the Buffalo. Mam was my steady. We had been seeing each other for over a year.

"Are you still faithful to her?"

Yes. Maybe she gave me a love potion."

"Maybe she did, because there's something wrong with being faithful in Pattaya. You're not scared, are you?"

"Of what?"

"Of Mam cutting off your penis and feeding it to the ducks." Castration was a favorite punishment Thai women inflict on philandering males. So much so that Thai doctors had become the world’s premier saviors of amputated penises. Accordingly Thai women cast the severed member to the duck pen, since quackers, unlike pigs, eat anything. Even cock.

“Better to keep your sins in thoughts.” Jamie advised, for Ort was equally vicious as Mam when it came to his roaming eye.

“Deeds we can save for the after-life.”

“Or secrets we never tell anyone else. Is it a sin if no one knows?”

In this town everyone knows sooner or later. Mam also knows that once I’ve had two drinks all I really want is a couple more drinks and I went home to surf through the ennuidom of international TV. Mam was playing cards with her friends. She wasn't answering her phone. The night was still young, but I shut off the TV and went to sleep with dreams of becoming a saint.

At least in deed.

Thought was another story, because anyone in Pattaya is going to hell.

At least according to Reverend Joe Stannis of the Holy Revival Church and a baptist knows Sin when he sees it and so do I.

The Importance Of Size

Judging from the number of spam emails that I have received over the years about adding length and girth to a penis, I would have to assume that the typical porno-surfing male's sense of inadequacy is much greater than their anxiety of hair loss, obsession with obesity, and fear of impotency. Most online XXX films feature male performers possessing truly biblical Staffs of Moses. These seemingly impossible proportions are the goal of many men purchasing pills, pumps, and medical herbals from internet sites to enhance their girth and length.

I'm happy with the size of my penis, but just once I would like to hear a woman say, "Not with that you don't."

Many women say that size doesn't matter.

Last year I was at the Welkom Inn on Soi 3 in Pattaya. The girls there see a lot of action.

When asked if they liked big the most popular girl said, "I like small and fast too. Not hurt. And not take too much time."

Another libertine admitted, "Sometime when really horny. I like big. Good. But can't work later. Small better."

This doesn't prevent them from massaging the male ego.

The fellatio expert says, "Man always love to hear he have big penis. If not big, he believe big you tell him big. Stupid kwai."

My cousin Sherri did over 2000 XXX films, professed, "Size isn't important. Well, if it's a cashew then it's a problem, but otherwise most girls in the industry like a normal penis. Nothing too awe inspiring. And quick too. Guys with bog ones, not many of them know how to use it, plus when a guy with a giant cock gets an erection most of the blood leaves his skull so he grunts like a caveman. Gimme a nice Irish or Jewish guy any day. Cut too."

Of course there's the old joke about the size of President Clinton's penis.

"How do we know that Clinton has a big penis?"

"It had to be big to get beyond Paula Jones' nose."

The presidential mistress had a huge honker, but Clinton was no John Holmes.

So there you have it.

Here is a list of the average male Erect Penis Lengths for 10 species;

1. Humpback whale 10 ft.

2. Elephant 5-6 ft.

3. Bull 3 ft.

4. Stallion 2 ft 6 in.

5. Rhinoceros 2 ft.

6. Pig 18-20 in.

7. Man 6 in.

8. Gorilla 2 in.

9. Cat 3/4 in.

10. Mosquito 1/100 in.

One more thing, an ejaculation is never premature as long as you get it in.