Pai

[MrX]

Time ago, July 2003 for aficionados, Carousel was closed for refurbishment and the dancers had moved over temporarily to Cascade, all on the top floor of Nanaplaza. Those weeks too were the last of the daring there before the social crusade fully Christianized the zone. Watching her and others still moving around naked even off stage and the shows were penetrating.

 

In that mêlée why does anyone ever notice a girl? Night after night maybe you even don?t, jiggling to the music any could be taken home. The noise and tipsiness distracting, there are so many inside the bar, amorphous but not always.

 

Pai had caught my eye on the stage perhaps because her hair wasn?t straight and her stomach pouted charmingly through a slightly flawed geometry of hip and vertebrae. There was too a definiteness about her face behind a vaguer uncertainty, though pussy and nipples jutting out beyond her nudity weren?t much important.

 

She sat with me hesitantly as a few girls still will do and I liked her immediately though was not yet one much for buying sex. Would she just like the money for short time, barfine thrown in, fucking optional, I wondered, musing too she probably hadn?t been long enough in the scene to have evaluated this before. My motives were a little fun and a quiet life, fairly sure she would go home, but after thinking for what seemed an age she elected sex.

 

Meetings became about monthly and our erotics unspectacularly took off. She was from Buriram, mother of an infant boy and a few months into the scene, couldn?t yet completely disguise the shame and occasional distaste for what she had chosen to do. An older friend dancing there in the same bar was inductress.

 

Though my love had settled in the Cowboy that autumn there was a fine delicate shadow in seeing her, such that one night, IP in hospital, with Nit not yet off my horizon and Pai lamenting ?no customers? I did this: cross town to barfine Nit, now accomplice, we returned to Carousel to fine Pai and as a three, went to the Bar, propelling the one to look for work. As all this was explained to Pai she said ? OK , I no believe you come bar with lady two day before you take me? though I fancied Nit smiling bitterly, knowing worse.

 

At the Bar we sat together and the lady boss came over to kindly offer employment.

They were easier days those and Pai said an almost curt ?no? while noting her beauty enough in her own esteem; ?many lady dancing have baby already,? she too of course though only a doctor would have noticed. ?No have friend? was the real stumbling block. We gracefully rewound that evening but there were few others, ,I saw her less and less after that without sulking, rather secretly glad, at not having to face her and IP working the same bar. It had been a fool?s errand.

 

Another was months later shortly before Pai went home. When Tik, IP and I were in the Plaza looking for a beautiful fugitive dancer, there was a lull. We slipped upstairs to salute Pai in a mute crossfire of inchoate rivalries I could have anticipated just thinking on what she said before about accompanying women. How badly my practices from the West transposed.

 

She was away a long while nurturing her son. Her friend from the bar kept me in news and made sure I always had her number but what was the use?

 

 

Even so, when she came back I was able to be unkind while sitting in the Robin Hood pub. She had rung, newly exiled in the city asking for money. My re-calibrated radar to genuine bar girl distress did not register until after I had rung off with a parched ?chok dee.? May the powers forgive me though I was able to make it lukewarm up two nights later when visiting Carousel. She hadn?t yet been fucked and accepted my tiring familiar offer as a soft landing near prostitute hangar. We did so under the sky of friendship which was good in the wider sense

 

 

She lasted there 3 weeks, and summoned me one more time when I only left a 100 baht tip.

 

 

 

Yesterday our SMS:

 

?I cannot stay Bangkok. Tomorrow I go home take care baby?

 

?Chok dee?

 

She texted last; ?I hope to see you again?

[Encore]

So that's what happened before we inadvertendly met ..................... You seemed to look a bit wistful, and I couldn't place it.

 

I think I've known a few Pais. Some of them better off at home with baby I think... Certainly better for the babies.

 

Nice writing, thanks for sharing.