Bangkok Knights (5 page)

“Look at those two broads over there,” said Bob. “What do
you think they’re up to? The brunette reminds me of my wife. My ex-wife. Cold
as a fish. What’s she think she’s doing here, anyway? Look at that — they’re
sizing the guy up like he’s a piece of meat on a supermarket shelf.”

The object of their study, after a couple of moments, was
joined by a tiny girl of exquisite proportions, and Bob left off being rankled
by Western women with steady gazes, for a while. He watched as the big man gave
his partner a courtly bow, gathered her to his embrace, and sank to the wooden
platform.

Billboard had finished his routine and was in the corridor
outside the toilets putting his clothes back on. I asked him to accept our
compliments and join us for a drink. Billboard said sure, make his a soda with
a twist of lime. “That’s all,” he said. “I haven’t had a real drink in seven
years.”

Billboard was the proprietor of Badman’s Bar, a quiet sort
of establishment over across town, no sex shows, and a long-term resident of Bangkok. Not only was he a reformed drinker — a teetotaler — but he’d sworn off tobacco six
years before, he told us. Then he’d divorced his wife, vowing never to remarry.
He’d even stopped drinking tea and coffee, this past year or two. He still
liked to eat, though. Eat and perform in bars. All in all, and now that he was
dressed and otherwise composed with his glass of soda, he did have a healthy,
clean-cut sort of appearance about him.

“So do you pay them; do they pay you; or do you just call
it even?” Bob asked.

“We just call it even.” Billboard laughed. “My work permit
doesn’t allow me that kind of income.”

He obviously felt that the intrinsic rewards of his
avocation were sufficient in themselves. It seemed that he provided this
service all over town; well known in a lot of these places, he’d drop in at
three or four of them in the course of a normal week, and lend a hand with the
floor show, free of charge. It was like a hobby, he said. At the same time,
he’d get in a plug for his own bar — maybe just the name and the happy hours,
or, like that night, an ad for the Saturday special.

“Come on along,” he told us. “All the steamed
hoi
you
can eat. With garlic butter and French bread. Drinks are 35
baht
from
5:00 till 7:00.”

That cleared up the question of what kind of
hoi
we
were talking about, anyway.

The dancers were back at it again, I noticed, and I looked
the audience over. This is what I do on those infrequent occasions I find
myself in one of these places, justifying my presence there by telling myself
it’s my duty as a student of human nature. Normally, I would’ve expected
everyone else’s attention to be on the stage of else on their little
companions; this time, however, my gaze ran smack into the stares of those two
Westerners - the blonde and the brunette. I had to suppose they were also
students of the human condition, given the interest they were showing in us.

“I used to have model trains,” Billboard was saying. “Oh,
yeah; I had some dandy set-ups. They kept me pretty busy, when I wasn’t running
businesses or fighting with my wife.

“Then I got divorced; the ‘ex’ took my son upcountry with
her, and I gave him all my trains to take with him. So I don’t play with
trains, anymore.”

Only Eddie had been paying him much attention; I’d been
distracted by my reconnaissance of the crowd, and Bob had other things on his
mind. The girl with the dimples was feeling neglected, and she’d started
yanking on a part of Bob that surprised him and demanded more cola. He said
sure, okay, thereby licensing the arrival of drinks for
three
girls —
the two on his knees plus a new one that had taken to crouching at his feet and
thrusting a winsome grin up at him through the tangle of limbs depending from
his lap.

“What about AIDS?” blurted Bob, making a show of trying to
extricate himself from his fan club, who were showing him much affection in
return for all this cola. Indeed, he was buried under a mass of goose bumps and
dimples, and there were pouting little lips pecking at him from all directions
while six little hands, also sticky with cola, clutched at bits of his person.
It looked as though stardom was starting to wear somewhat thin, though; and now
he’d raised the specter of AIDS. Billboard seemed unconcerned, however.

“AIDS?” he said. “Naw. I got myself checked last week. No
problem. Any way, if I
do
get AIDS, I know what I’m gonna do right away.
You know that model all the papers have been saying tested positive for AIDS?
You know the one; you’ve seen her pictures? Beautiful? Yeah. Well, I’m going
right over to see her and get to know her better, know what I mean? We’d have
nothing to lose, and everything to gain.”

He gave us the wolfish leer he’d given the audience before
his act. A natural-born optimist, was old Billboard. Silver linings for
anything you wanted to name, and, it appeared, a fine disregard for medical
opinion. Even here, in Manny’s Market, there were lurid posters in the toilets.
One of them depicted a death’s-head playing a flute and bore the legend: ARE
YOU READY TO PAY THE PIPER?

One of the girls was poking Bob in the belly, now, and all
three of his admirers were giggling in delight

“What are they saying?” he asked us.

“’Men with fat stomachs don’t have AIDS,’” I told him.

Eddie laughed and said he knew where that notion had come
from. He asked if we’d seen that story in the papers a few weeks before — where
somebody had interviewed a bunch of bargirls to find out what they were doing
to protect themselves from this plague. “The best one,” he told us, “was the
lady who said ‘Oh, that’s no problem. I look to see if they have a big bottom
and a fat belly. If they do, there’s no problem. It’s the skinny ones you’ve
got to watch out for.’ When the interviewer asked her how she knew that, she
said an American man had told her what to look out for.”

“Did this American expert have a big bottom and a beer
belly, by any chance?” said Bob.

You could bet the guy spreading this medical wisdom didn’t
look like Michael Jackson. Funny thing, Billboard’s laugh seemed forced to me,
and his native confidence was marred by the merest twinge of evasiveness.

“That would have to be a real bastard, someone who’d do a
thing like that,” I said. “Isn’t that right, Billboard?”

”Heh, heh,” he replied. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Bob looked positively relieved when his groupies got up to
take their turn on the dance floor. His comfort was short-lived, however. “Oh,
no; look at this. The Ride of the Valkyries.”

It was the blonde and the brunette. Their approach was
deliberate, stately even, as if to the strains of “Onward Christian Soldiers”,
as they made their way towards us through the masses of gooseflesh. Now I
already felt like an ass for being in a place like Manny’s, but normally, at
least, you didn’t have to worry about other citizens coming up and articulating
how you felt and asking you to justify yourself. Probably in shrill voices,
asking you to justify yourself. I, for one, was filled with unease.

“Maybe they only want to know what
hoi
means,”
Eddie said, not too hopefully.

“Probably missionaries,” Billboard said. “Just you have a
look at those smiles. And I’ll bet you a beer right now they’re wearing
sensible shoes.” Whatever they were, you could see Billboard wasn’ t about to
allow his artistic integrity to be threatened by the immoderate reactions of a
gang of narrow-minded harpies. “Pshaw!” he said.

Eddie drank off a whole Singha beer as the ladies arrived;
tears in his eyes, he smiled winningly and belched. But the newcomers had no
interest in Eddie. Or in Bob or me.

“Good evening, ladies,” said Billboard.

“You’re William Cockburn,” the blonde pronounced his name
correctly in tones that clearly implied they had the goods on him and, most
likely, the jig was up.

“You can call me Billboard.”

“Yes. Well, then, billboard’ — first of all, let me say
how much we enjoyed your demonstration,” said the brunette.

“Yes,” added the blonde. “Most impressive. Tell me, how do
you prepare your
hoiT

“Urn... do you mean at Badman’s?”

Surely not, I told myself; surely that was not a nonplused
look on his face? It occurred to me that this was dangerous ground — that if
one chink appeared in that mighty self-possession, then the whole edifice might
crumble, and Billboard’s hobby would go the way of his electric trains.

”We steam them. Yeah. And serve them with garlic butter
and bread. They’re good.”

“Have you tried steaming them with aromatic herbs,
Thai-style?” asked the blonde. “I think that’s
so
good.”

“Yes,” agreed her lieutenant, “or you can serve them with
that splendid sauce they make — you know, the one with chili peppers and garlic
in fish sauce with lime juice? Delicious.”

Eddie gave me a wide-eyed look; I also wondered if these
charming ladies had merely come over to swap recipes with Billboard and maybe
invite him to the next session of their Homes and Gardens Club. Billboard,
himself, appeared distinctly apprehensive, by now, if not totally disconcerted.
Probably he was afraid they’ d find out he didn’ t know anything at all about
cooking.

Visibly collecting his resources, he sought to
re-establish that presence he’d displayed on the stage only a short time
before, and moved to take control of the situation. “And so, ladies, what can I
do for you?”

“Why don’t you use condoms?” said the petite brunette.

“Ah.
What?

“You don’t use condoms.” The blonde said this in the flat
tones you’d use to report any incontrovertible fact. And they did have the
goods on him; he could not have denied the allegation.

“Ah, yes. No, that is: I don’t wear condoms.” From his
manner, you had to understand he didn’t use condoms for reasons akin to those
Nijinsky might have given you for not wearing army boots.

“What about AIDS?”

“He got checked only last week,” said Bob, and then clearly
wished he’d shut up.

“Last week,” said the blonde.

“Last week,” corroborated the brunette. “Last week, then, I
assume you didn’t have AIDS.”

“Congratulations for that—for not having had a fatal
illness last week,” continued the blonde, still smiling. You had to think she
must
be a missionary, since only missionaries are capable of such relentless
smiling under any and all circumstances. “But what about
this
week? Do
you have AIDS
this
week? And what about your partners — these little
girls: do
they
have AIDS? Or are
you
going to
give
them
AIDS?”

I reckoned Billboard would have just as soon gone back to
swapping recipes.

He ordered drinks, and asked the ladies if they’d like
something. Sure, they said: the blonde opted for a cognac, and her friend went
for Chivas. A double. Were these two customers reformed new-drinkers, then, or
what? All of us keen students of the human condition, we four men experimented
with various expressions of wild speculation.

“And why don’ t you get some colas for these poor girls;
they must need them after all that dancing,” said the brunette, smiling at Bob’s
fan club, which had just returned to join the other thirsty maidens who’d
gathered around to listen, prurience aroused by this talk of AIDS.

Billboard did not even protest; he ordered enough cola to
get three visitors from Pittsburgh buried under gooseflesh. Appeasement, is
what it looked like to me. But it did no good.

“We have a proposition for you,” said the blonde. “Do you
take commissions? I mean, do you rent out space — on your billboard, that is?”

We men all boggled together at this. Aside from KICK ME,
or some such thing, what conceivable message for the public would these types
want to stick on Billboard’s butt?

“Well, I hadn’t thought about that too much, to tell the
truth. What did you have in mind?” he replied warily.

“We’re with a local women’s group, and we’re working with
‘service girls’ all over town, trying to educate them, organize them, get them
interested in trying to improve their own working conditions. We’re the ones
who put up those AIDS posters in the toilets. Did you see them? But better
health precautions are only part of it. They need more protection from
exploitative employers — more holidays, sick benefits, things like that...”

“I give my girls a day off every two weeks,” Billboard
protested, “and a two-day weekend every second month.”

“We know, and that’s why we like you, Billboard,” said the
brunette, smiling some more.

Billboard’s discomfiture was painful to witness; I believe
he even blushed. “And I don’t dock their wages if they can get a sick-note from
my doctor...”

”Yes, yes, Billboard. You are an exemplary employer; we
know that” She raised her glass high and we all joined in a toast to this
pillar of the community. “And we’re sure your sense of responsibility will
extend to the public at large.”

Obviously, they were about to get to the point. Billboard
braced himself, taking a big swig of soda and composing his features.

“We want you to start using condoms.”

⁽
¥to? Oh, no. No way.”

“We want you to wear condoms,” she reiterated, “and we
would like to rent your backside to display a message:

USE A CONDOM

“No way. You’ve got to be kidding.”

“We will provide your bar with a condom dispenser and
stock it for free as long as you display our message.”

“I can’t.”

“If you do, we will grant Badman’s Bar ‘exempt status’.”

“Exempt status?”

“Exemption from direct action by the Bangkok Service Girls
Protective Association.”

“What ‘action’?” Billboard attempted a sneer.