Alcohol

[CTO]

You'd hope so! Things you have to do when there's no floor above 2 or a balcony!

[YimSiam]

I've known a few unbelieveable drinking girls in LOS, freelancers -- they could put away booze as fast as I (and I was drinking pretty good at the time) and had the same terrible self-destructive inclinations. I loved to find these girls, since they were great for the crazy long nights out with bottles at afterhours spots, nights I liked to finish with a morning's worth of (sloppy) sex and booze back at my place. However, I can only imagine the bad situations some of them must have gotten into on a regular basis -- simply getting picked up on soi 13 at 5 am by some unknown punter, blind drunk and barely able to walk, let alone defend herself or demand payment. Ms. Fall-off-the-bed (who fell out of bed, unassisted, on two separate occasions, each resulting in a big bump on her head and a broken glass), Long-Hair Noi (name changed), Ms. Nakhon Sawan who keeps a knife in her bra, my first wild Buriram honey, and the only Thai woman ever to pay ME for taking HER to a hotel... All hardcore drinkers, repeat companions, and all currently whereabouts unknown.

 

There are plenty of jobs to drive a person to drink to excess, but not many in which you can get away with it, too: being a bargirl's right up there with President of Russia. As a way to dull shame, boredom, fear, revulsion, physical pain and the other job hazards, alcohol's pretty effective. Costs are severe - physical deterioration, higher-risk behaviour, less employer or cop protection when things go wrong, money problems.

 

If I see a farang friend developing a problem, it's easy to tell him to go easy, to be aware of what he might lose -- but what do you say to a FL with no money, no family support, and no education, past the prime years for selling her body but with no hope or plans for the future? Just say no / Jesus won't want you for a sunbeam / It'll cause liver damage, don't do it? Rightly or wrongly, I've usually just said 'cheers' and ordered another round...

 

YimSiam

[USVirgin]

I don't know what happens to them either, but I agree it's a dangerous profession on so many levels, not the least of which is the story of the murder on Soi 4.

 

The only hardcore ones I've slept with actually rescued me, when I was passing out in the wee hours along Suk. And they took good care of me.

 

I guess I haven't met an evil bargirl yet, and I do also wonder that happens to them as victims of the lifestyle.

 

The bargirls that I've become close with have all been able to put a few drinks away, otherwise I wouldn't have been hanging out with them. But all of them are survivors, and warned me about my own drinking, as soon as they knew me well enough to express their dissaproval.

[YimSiam]

Indeed - more than once I've woken up in a strange room, no idea how I got there, with a sweet FL watching the thai soaps and making sure I'm okay -- always comes with a gentle "YimSiam, not drink too much! have to take care your life!" etc, etc. i recall waking up one time in the PB or PH, late afternoon on a weekday, splitting headache - and this girl Lek is sitting on the bed with an Isan feast spread out in front of her, listening to Khmer-style luk tung on a CD player and watching TV in shorts and a t-shirt. CD player come with the room, food on YimSiam's tab? Nope - once she got me in bed she went home, picked up her CD player and CDs, changed into more comfortable clothes, stopped by the carts for a collection of 20 baht dishes on her dime, and came back before I even thought about opening my eyes... Another nursed me through two days of burning fever that came in on a brutal hangover - not a word about money or going back to work, just cool paa yen on my forehead, cold drinks from the 7, and a gentle presence while I practiced my sweaty bed karate... Love 'em.

 

(The CD girl's apartment on soi 1 was eventually destroyed in a fire, CDs and all... It was consensus of her crew that my current girl of the moment was obliged to take in Lek until she could find a new place - some sort of "Yim's Girls" code of honour, the current bearing obligations to the former. The one who nursed me is now in dire need of care herself, a textbook story of chemicals getting the better of a great girl.)

 

YimSiam

[drogon]

Sad that genuinely compassionate people like these girls end up destroying their lifes....

 

[gobbledonk]

The one who nursed me is now in dire need of care herself, a textbook story of chemicals getting the better of a great girl.

 

This is where I know I'm still not tough enough for the LOS - that puts a lump in my throat, YS. I can see this happening to so many of the girls around me : we all make our choices, but the concept of life being in any way 'fair' is completely alien to the Thais - they seem to take better care of the Soi dogs than they do of one another (family members excepted, although in some cases ...).

 

Cheers,

 

Gobble

[..]

Not exactly true mate. But I understand your perspective from the crowd you hang with.

 

If you want a different perspective, it is easy. As an example, just get up at 0600, sober. And wander streets (prolly best away from soi Nana). You'll see many Thais up early to feed the monks. Monks do not eat unless someone *gives* them food -- unsolicited. They cannot ask for it, even if they are starving...

 

Think about that in our Western context.

 

Cheers,

SD

[YimSiam]

Ah, gobble, the way you're going now, pretty soon you're going to have a whole beer bar's worth of friends with the absolutely saddest stories on earth, you'd better brace yourself - doomed girls who just march on through the days with their bright resigned-but-not-bitter smiles, without much of a thought given to the fact that the world has fucked them over every possible way for no knowable reason, and that they can pretty much expect the same for their remaining time in this incarnation...

 

One of my dearest, most tragic friends in Thailand is a girl I call Dao in my Trip Reports, an orphan, a life of exploitation after exploitation, hopelessness, violence, poverty - all augmented by addictions that are ostensibly efforts to dull or avoid the crap she lives with, but end up just multiplying the suffering. This Dao, the life she lives is unthinkable to me, it's marked by so many unbelieveable painful experiences -- and yet! You have got to see this girl's smile when she's happy, hear her laugh, watch her roll around on the bed giggling when she's in a good mood - I'd put her on a pedestal, but angels don't need pedestals...

 

At one point this Dao, she came down to Pattaya while I was there because she wanted an abortion, and with the help of the woman I was with at the time, every effort was made to find a way for her to get rid of the pregnancy she didn't want and by any objective measure, couldn't handle.

 

But in the end, no one would do it for any reasonable price, since she was actually much further along than she would admit, and even Pattaya has some rules (there's a whole trip report on this, you might like to check it out, as you may well soon find yourself in the kind of shoes I've worn in Thailand).

 

Finally I had to just call it quits, tell her to go back to Bangkok, stick a wad of bills in her hand and push her off towards the bus station. And when she kind of summed things up, said her thank yous and goodbyes and accepted the situation, she gave a smile that I've thought of at least once every few weeks over the past year -- this kind of open, knowing smile that acknowledged how screwed things had become (five/six months pregnant, don't want the baby but too late now, junkie, no money, over the hill, no boyfriend, no family, etc), and yet still had in it a kind of light and life that you just will never see in my own smile, nor those of so many of my friends, no matter the occasion...

[cavanami]

At some point, the ladies smile because that is all they have to offer you...

[YimSiam]

But what smiles they have to offer!