Noi--by Alexander (Jo) Turner

[Central Scrutinizer]

Noi

-by Alexander (Jo) Turner

 

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

"Joooooowa"

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

"Jooooooowa. Pert pratuu."

I lay in bed wishing it would stop, but it wasn't going to stop. I tried holding my head under a pillow until it went away.

BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG. BANG.

"Joooooooowa."

This was an apartment building 90% populated by normal hardworking people. It was four in the morning. This was not good. I knew I had to open the door. And it would be the same all over again. Shit.

The stupid thing about this was that I was not trying to hide from debt collecting gangsters or the Creature From the Black Lagoon. I was cowering under bedcovers because of a beautiful madwoman who fucked like an angel trying to get into my room, or trying to get me into hers.

Maybe I should start at the beginning. It might make more sense that way.

Early November 1994. I had been staying on Khao San Road and, to be frank, it was losing some of its appeal for me. When I had left Bangkok a few months before I had been living with a girl called Oy in an apartment building called the AA House. The AA House was clean and quiet and populated with a mix of professional types and expat farang of the organised persuasion. Not thrilling perhaps but a quiet place to rest your head. Bangkok had life enough of its own I didn't want to live around the backpackers any more.

So I went to the AA House and got a good rate on a room for three months. A girl called Amita who worked in the Moonshine Joint helped me move all my stuff in. She was one of three women I was seeing at the time and there was a strange emptiness about her but that's another story. Within a day or so she got her week off and went to see her family in Hua Hin.

I was in the cafeteria on the ground floor of the apartment when I met Alex and Phaa. They had been friends of Oy.

As is normally the case Phaa tried lying about Oy saying that she wanted to see me a lot but she had family troubles. Yada yada yada. Did I miss her? Did I have a new girlfriend? Would I like to see her again?

At some point in the conversation Noi came to the table. Now Noi was incredible looking, but it was four in the afternoon, and she was wearing pink nylon pyjamas. Bad sign. Anyway Noi went to speak to the operator and I continued chatting with Phaa and Alex.

That night, about 2AM, I was just drifting to sleep when the phone rang. It was Noi.

She said she had seen me earlier and thought she'd be able to talk to me about something. I said "Okay" And within about twenty minutes she came to my room. She was still wearing the same pyjamas or they might have been different pyjamas that just looked the same.

What was odd was that she looked like she had just had a hair and make-up job done beauty salon style, and she was doused with a heady perfume. It filled the room as soon as she walked in. She took a look at my room which was almost bare. No bed sheets or anything fancy like that. Then she said "I'll be right back."

I started drifting off to sleep again before she came back into my room with fitted sheets and a quilt. Before you could say Jack Robinson she was fitting the fitted sheets and telling me that she had seen me and thought I looked nice, but sad and lonely. Phaa had told her that my girlfriend had not been waiting for me. She felt I was someone she could talk to. Did I mind?

Noi had the Playboy figure. Large breasts, rounded ass.

In fact everything about her seemed somehow unlikely. She wasn't a katoey. It wasn't that sort of unlikely. But it was all just a little bit too like an old fashioned male chauvinists idea of what a woman should be. Passive and amenable in an almost comic book way with a comic book body to match. But there is something about having a woman in your room at three in the morning wearing lots of make-up, perfume and pink pyjamas that over-rides all that.

She sat on the bed with me and seeing one of my many mosquito bites started applying tiger balm. She said sometimes she would sit alone here and feel quite sad too. She understood how I must feel alone in this room at night. She started putting balm on another bite on my neck and continued talking. I could feel her breath on my face as she talked. It smelled of breath freshener. Job completed she looked at me and smiled. It was a very sweet smile.

We chatted a little while and she asked me if she could sleep there. Nothing funny. Just sleep there.

Now, I'm sorry, I think I have quite a high degree of self restraint but a strange woman comes to your room and wants to sleep in your bed with you. Something funny is bound to occur. I kissed her. She looked at me as though pleasantly surprised. So I kissed her again and she took my head in her hands and kissed me back. I had never been kissed so expertly before in my life. She just took over. Within minutes we were involved in rampant passionate sex. The trouble was that after an hour of this I felt an overwhelming desire to shower and go home. But I was home.

She said her room was much more comfortable than mine. She had TV and everything. Because it took the whole thing away from my room I agreed.

Her room reminded me of the recently deceased English writer Barbara Cartland. It was pink and flowery and smelled like perfume and talcum powder. I imagined that if you inhaled too deeply you might build up a talcum toxicity, and eventually a pink powdery tumour.

The TV was planted firmly at the end of her bed. Underneath were a selection of videos. Only two subjects though. Wildlife films about sharks and pornography. I'll let your imaginations form any connections there.

"I like sharks"

"That's nice."

"I don't know why I like sharks. You like sharks?"

"Yes. Yes. Sharks are just peachy. Of all the man eating brainless fish in the sea sharks are definitely tops."

She looked at me blankly.

"You like to look video X."

"Me. No. They remind me of why I wanted to become a monk."

"I like to look when I'm alone."

"You don't say."

"I do say."

"Well. This is a very nice room. Much nicer than my room. Very...tasteful."

There were about three hundred stuffed animals around the room. I wondered if she thought they were alive.

"You stay here with me."

"Sorry?"

"You stay here with me. Tonight. Today."

"Yes. Okay. I need to get some sleep though."

"You sleep here."

"Yes. Yes. I'll sleep here. All right."

"My bed's very soft."

"Yes. Very."

So I tried to sleep. But after about fifteen minutes I found I couldn't. I could feel these eyes boring into me. I looked at her. She was just looking at me. And there was something about her that was appealing and vulnerable and ... just about the best fuck anyone could ever wish for. Within a few minutes I had succumbed to her lust. I find that when it comes right down to it I'm just too damn easy.

But, and this may sound churlish, it seemed to go on way longer than I wanted it to and she showed no signs of flagging. After losing half a stone in sweat I just lay there as she worked upon me in just about every way it is possible to do so. I realised I had stumbled into one of her porn films. But all I really wanted was to sleep. So I pretended to finish. As I went to shower I heard Jacues Cousteau's fascinated tones. Having finished me off for the third or fourth time she was back to the bloody sharks.

I drifted into a semi-sleep that was screwed up by the arrival of sunlight and the smell of food. Fried chicken, som tam, nam tok, khao niao, chips. All I normally had for breakfast was a cup of coffee. She was smiling at me. "I got you some breakfast."

So I ate. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. I started on the som tam then had some khao niao and fried chicken. She didn't join me. She just took seven different coloured pills. At first I didn't say anything, but after a few moments I said "What are the pills for?"

"The green and white ones are slimming. The red and white for my allergy. The pink ones are to counter the side effects of the green and white ones. The purple ones are to help me feel happy. The blue ones are to stop me from feeling sad. The pink and blue ones help with the side effects of the blue ones." (It went something like this anyway.)

Her entire personality seemed suddenly clear to me. Her poor brain was completely fucked by all these pills.

"What's wrong ?" She said.

"How many pills do you take?"

"Don't worry about it."

"I do worry about it."

"You don't like me taking pills. Then I'll stop for you."

Phaa came to the room. I felt okay about her because she worked at an outside bar in Patpong. This seemed like the real world to me amid all this pink femininity. Phaa helped eat the food.

As Noi was having a shower Phaa said "Now you have a new girlfriend. It's good. Noi's a good girl. She has a good heart."

"Did you tell her what room I was in?"

"No. I don't know what room you're in. She did ask me though. Before you even met her. She must have asked the operator."

When Phaa went Noi had me again. Then she said she wanted to get me some pyjamas. I said I didn't really like pyjamas. But I had to wear pyjamas, only a lunatic would go to bed without pyjamas. I should also move all my stuff down to her room. Why waste my money on keeping another room open. We could stay together forever. I'd never need to leave.

"I think I'll go for a walk." I said.

"No. No. You can't leave now.

I don't want you to go."

"I have things to do and people to see. I can't sit around all day." I lied. Most of my time in Bangkok consisted of sitting around all day.

She threw her arms around me and had me in a tight grip. "Nooo. Stay with me. " And she started kissing me again.

And again I was lost in lust. It seemed, temporarily, like a sexual fantasy pulling me in. I was going to be kept as a sex slave by a pill crazed nymphomaniac.

Later we reached a compromise and I got away as far as the cafeteria. She went to the beauty salon and Alex turned up. Alex chatted about how business was going and how he found himself doig twice the work he would if he was working back home in Canada because Thai employers have a tendancy to take the piss. They know that farang just don't want to go home. He then mentioned that he heard I was involved with Noi. I said "not in any deep sense she just sort of arrived in my flat and gave me loads of bedding." Alex said "Watch out. She takes a lot of pills." Phaa showed up and Alex said no more.

I went back to my room and started thinking about going out, but then Noi turned up.

I'd left the door unlocked and she just walked in and planted herself in the chair. She started saying that I'd been bad to her because she thought I'd be waiting for her in the cafeteria. "I had some things to do."

She plumped herself on me and started kissing me and then sucking on my neck and telling me how much she loved me and cared about me. We could stay together. She'd do everything for me. All this started working on me. I found myself in her room again before long. Sometime in the middle of the night she woke me.

"Jooowa. Noi Hiw Khao."

"Then order something."

She sat and sulked for a minute.

"Thamay Jo may care Noi. Noi care Jo mak maak. Noi rac Jo."

"I'm very tired."

"Jay dam cing cing."

Black heart true true. Yep. I confess.

"Jooooowa. Noy hiw Khao."

"Then fucking get some khao. I'm tired but you don't hear me going on about it."

"Why you speak to me like this. I only love you. I know you don't love me. You hate me. You black heart. You're evil. Farang jay dam."

"Yes. I'm everything bad in the world but can you let me sleep."

A few moments passed.

"Joooowa. Noi hiw Khao."

"Right. That's it. I've had enough."

I pulled on my trousers.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm putting my trousers on."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a black hearted evil bastard and I need some sleep."

Noi started wailing. Wailing is more than crying. It's what they do at Greek funerals. I put my arm around her and said. "I'm sorry but I really have to sleep."

She pushed me away with surprising force and a look of pure malevolence. I pulled the rest of my clothes on while she sat there. I got up to go. She leapt up and blocked my way to the the door with her arms stretched out. "May hay pay." Not letting you go.

I half laughed. "Come on. Don't be silly."

I walked up to her and tried to open the door, but she was strong. I mean really strong. Her grip was like iron.

"Okay. I'll stay."

I went back and sat on the bed. "I don't want to go. I just want to sleep."

Without getting undressed I lay on the bed. Noi came back with me and sat down. She was silent for a while. Then she started off on a tirade about how good and sweet and kind she was and how low and evil I was.

Thinking I'd catch her off-guard I got up very quickly and ran out the door. She came after me down the corridor and somehow grabbed on to me by the leg.

"Get off."

"No."

"Please get off."

"No. You don't go."

I tried to pull away a but I only ended up dragging her along the floor.

Now I want you to stop for a moment and imagine how this sounds. I have a beautiful, if slightly synthetic, woman attached to my leg who refuses to let go of me. And I'm trying to get away. Realising how stupid the whole thing was I stopped.

"Listen." I said.

"This is stupid. You've only known me a day. All I want is to get some sleep."

"Then come back to my room."

"I would, but you're not going to let me sleep. I need to sleep."

"I will. Just come back to my room. I don't want to be alone."

"Okay. Please. Get up."

She stood up and got a grip on my wrist. Like all of life's most terrible moments it seems quite comical to me in retrospect, but I felt sick inside. I realised that I had allowed myself to get involved with someone who belonged in a mental institution.

"You don't leave me."

"No. Of course not."

So I lay there awake. And she lay there awake. Then she got up and started walking about a bit. then she came back again. Then she got up again and started straightening up the room. Then she came back to the bed again.

With my eyes shut I recognised the rattling of a pill jar. She was taking more drugs. I reasoned that the more drugs she took the crazier she was likely to get. But I lay there until I saw the pink impact of sunlight against her flimsy curtains for the second sleepless day running.

When I admitted to waking up she made me coffee and was as sweet as before. If cupids arrow had ever struck me it might have been worth the madness. We had sex again. After the climax I made some remark about her breasts.

"What are you talking about?"

"Uh nothing. It's just. Well. They aren't real are they? "

"Of course they're real."

"Yes. Of course they're real but."

"Khit waa Noi pen muan khan. Muan phuuying tham nom. Muan galee. Is that what you think I am?"

"Uh. No. You aren't a prostitute. You're one of the nicest people I've ever met."

"Yes. I am. But some people don't care about me."

Then she started going down on me. I have to say that I may be one of the few men alive who don't really like blowjobs that much. The idea is nice but I don't like the feeling. To me its like being tickled in the intestine. It just doesn't work. But Noi was expert and she could make me forget everything. I had to bite my lip to avoid saying shit like "I love you and I will stay with you in this shitty little pink room forever."

In a quiet moment I asked her "What happened to you Noi? How did you come to be living here?"

Without a second's hesitation she opened up her wallet for me to see. A picture of a Japanese man. A picture of him with her. A picture of him with his pleasant looking wife and pleasant looking children.

"He pays for me to stay here. Once he cared about me. But now he doesn't care any more."

"If he doesn't care why does he pay for you."

"Maybe soon. He won't pay any more."

"I'm no good for you Noi. I'm not like him. I haven't got money."

"I can get money. I can take care of you Jo. Anything you want I can get it for you."

"Why?"

"Because you need me."

"Look. I can't stay in Thailand. I'm just here for a while. Like a tourist."

"You can stay. I can take care."

"I can't stay. And even if I could I wouldn't"

"You lie to me."

"When. When did I lie to you?"

"You just fucking Noi. You use me. You..."

"Stop. Stop. Listen. Yes. I'm no good and this is why ...."

And I told her a story, partly true, partly romanticised, about how I had fallen in love with this one woman in Thailand, but she had married a German man, and now I came back every year hoping beyond hope that she would finish with him and come back to me. I told her that it was my own venal pursuit of other women that had destroyed the one true love of my life. I even managed a few tears in my eyes. As Thais are suckers for such melodrama I thought this would work. She took me in her arms and said "I understand you Jo. I understand you everything."

We made love again. Passionately as if there was any other way. I was covered in red, purple, brown and yellow love bites. I looked like the victim of some vampire with bad eating habits. My arms, my neck, my shoulders, my chest. Maybe she was trying to make me look like an AIDS victim. But after making love I went out.

I hightailed back to Khao San Road to tell my friend Johnny about my latest sexual disaster. Johnny was young and quite new to the scene. He soon became totally immersed in it all. In fact he became an old Bangkok hand in rapid time. His legend is that he was the last man out of the old Thermae on it's final day. True or not, it's a fine tale, and I like to believe it as it was me that first took him to the Thermae.

Anyway. All that would be years in the future. His response to what I told him was "You're fucking crazy. You're going to get AIDS one of these days if you keep screwing these mad tarts. Where's your self control man?"

We walked uptown. That's a long walk but in high traffic walking is quicker than bus or tuk tuk. I told him the story in even greater detail than I tell it here. As I told it I realised that it sounded great. It sounded that I was complaining of the sort of situation that men dream of.

We had a couple of drinks on the Soi Cowboy and met a lesser spotted Soi Cowboy Bullshitter. You know the type, often a hitman, or a key member of the IRA, the Soi Cowboy Bullshitter is always immensely important or dangerous, yet rarely has enough money to buy himself a drink.

For me these Soi Cowboy Bullshitters are an endless source of entertainment and by the time I went back home I was in a much cheerier frame of mind.

I went straight up to my room and locked the door. I went to sleep. Then the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line was sobbing.

"Where did you go. I've been waiting for you. I didn't know what had happened to you."

"Sorry. I really can't talk now. I need to sleep."

"You find some other woman? You go with another woman on Soi Cowboy. I know you go to Soi Cowboy."

"Okay. Goodnight."

I hung up the phone and then unplugged it from the wall.

This is when the banging started.

"Joooowa. Jooowa."

Eventually, because the noise was getting to me, I opened the door and let her in. She looked around the room and then threw her arms around me.

"Why you make no good to me?"

"Noi. I have to say something. There is nothing between you and me. Stop calling me. Stop banging on my door. Find someone else. You're beautiful and sexy. You can have any man you want."

"I don't want any man. I want you."

"Please leave me. You have to understand. I don't take pills. I need to sleep."

She started kissing me. I thought "Self control. Self control. I'm in control. I don't ....Have to....Self control....I have absolutely no self control....Ah what harm can it do?"

And I was lost in it again.

And again....Just as I thought she was going to let me sleep.

"Hong ti nii may saduak." This room's not comfortable.

"Jooowa. Yaak pay hong Noi. Noi yaak pay hong noi." Noi wants to go to Noi's room.

"Then go."

"Jo tong pay duay."

"I don't want to go anywhere. I just want to sleep."

"Pay noon ti hong Noi ko daay. Noi may tham aray. Noi hay jo noon lap."

Let me sleep. Let me sleep. That was a joke. This was like some Jap torture. Don't let them sleep. You'll soon break their spririts.

"Jooowa."

"Okay. Okay. Come on then. Let's go." and I frogmarched her to her room. I thought this was how men died.

She didn't let me sleep. I got up and left. She got me by the leg again. I was dragging her around again. And she was screaming and wailing and crying and I thought this has got to be pissing off the neighbours. I was virtually fighting with her but being very careful not to actually fight. I was really just disentangling her from me.

I got away and left the building.

I walked up and around Sukhumvit thinking how much I loved the place and how much I wanted to be alone in it without any guilt or madness. When I returned to my room she was camped outside like a kid without a key. My heart sunk. I let her in and told her I thought it would be better if we didn't see each other any more. She wept and then left. I felt like a real bastard but at least it was over. I locked the door, went to bed and went to sleep.

Then the banging started again.

"Jooowa. Jooowa."

This was never going to end. I endured about twenty minutes of this before she went away. Then the phone rang. I disconnected it.

The next day I got up and left my room. Noi was sitting on the stairs in her pyjamas.

I sat beside her and said I was sorry but I couldn't carry on with this. She said okay but she would still love me and still be my friend. I said "It isn't you. It's the pills. The pills are making you like this. If you stop taking so many pills you'll feel better."

She nodded.

I got up and was about to go.

"Jo. Come to my room."

"No. No. I don't think so."

The next day or so was almost life back to normal. I met up with Johnny and a friend of his. Johnny had been telling of my experiences to some other expats and English teachers and I had become something of a cause celebre. I went along with it thinking "If only you knew."

On the morning of my Thirty Second birthday Noi called my room again. She asked if I wanted to see her. Time had put a distance between me and the horror of not being able to sleep. I went down and had a cup of coffee. But it didn't stop there. I just couldn't resist her. We had sex and then she started going on about what a terrible black heart I had to leave a woman who loved me so much.

She said that if I wouldn't stay with her she was going to start working as a prostitute at a place called the ** Club. She had never done anything like this until a man named Jo broke her heart. My attitude was by now "Yeah whatever." She was mythologising our three day affair beyond belief.

I got up and said that if she was going to carry on like this I wouldn't stay. She grabbed me again. I felt her fingertips bruising my flesh and pushed her away. She lost her footing and went crashing to the floor. She wept and said that I had beaten her.

I couldn't believe it. She wept and wept and wept and eventually I picked her up and took her into my arms saying I was sorry. I hadn't beaten her, I'd just pushed her away. She looked at me with fiery eyes filled with tears and for a moment I fell in love with her.

We made love again. When we were finished I said I had to go. The woman who ran the guest house I'd stayed in a lot was throwing me a birthday party.

She said everything would be all right if I just told her I loved her.

I said "I'm sorry. But I don't love you."

She wept some more.

I left.

That was pretty much the end of it.

But there was a kind of epilogue.

Johnny, who I had told about the affair, went to see her saying he was a friend of mine and that he knew I really cared about her but that I was involved with someone else. She took him in much as she had taken me in. She took him out and paid all the way. She even gave him some money so he wouldn't have to go to work. But the break came when he took just one of her pills. He said after taking the pill the world went completely upside down and eventually he lost about twelve hours. He ended up trying to get away from her while dragging her around the halls of the AA House. When she said he hit her and threatened to call the police he tore her telephone out the wall. All very strange stuff.

Once Duan, the woman I ended up marrying, moved in she sent one of the security guards over to get her bedclothes back. She told Duan that I had been bad to her, while she had been good to me.

The last time I saw her was early one morning at the tables just by one of the doors. She was dressed in normal clothes and wore no makeup. She was feeding some kittens milk. I looked at her and she smiled at me and she looked just about the most beautiful creature on Earth.

I believe she still works in the ** Club.

Alexander Turner

 

[Guest]

Very engrossing and dark . Too bad so many Thai's take pills these days . But everyone has there own course to follow .

[Guest]

Sounds like a few girls I know. Don't you just love the way they refer to their pills as "medicine"

[jagoturner]

This story took place in late 94. I should really put a date on these things.

The pharmacies in Thailand seem to have a huge variety of weird pills on offer. I think Noi had most of them in her small cabinet. I actually believe that she did think they were medicine. Knowing some of the quacks operating in Bangkok I wouldn't be surprised if they were all proscribed.

[Central Scrutinizer]

57/1

7/16/03

[chilli13]

oh thanks for resurfacing this story. great stuff, but kinda weird everyone seems so afraid of that nice girl

[Central Scrutinizer]

ib,

 

Hahahaha! Yeah, actually she sounds like my type! :-) What's to be afraid of? :-)

 

Cent

[chilli13]

exactly - so do you where this xx club is to be found?

[Central Scrutinizer]

ib,

 

Hahahaha! Nope. Dunno. You'll have to ask Jo Turner that one.

 

Cent

[chilli13]

but it was more than 10 years ago right? ::