No Thanks, Just Looking

The girl they offered me, for 1,200 baht, was exquisite and just 14 years old, so they said. It was her first day on the job, and she was special, they said. But when our eyes met, the only possible form of communication, since neither one of us spoke a single word that the other understood; I could see that she was badly frightened.

The perceptive madam pointed her long red fingernail toward another girl gyrating naked on the elevated bar who looked a few years older. Perhaps I’d prefer somebody with a little more experience for the same price, she suggested.

Behind us on a flood-lit stage, a naked couple, looking bored and distracted, went through the motions of sex like a pair of trained animals. A drunken crowd of eager voyeurs milled about and cheered the more exotic positions. Blunt negotiations were taking place all around me.

When it became clear I wasn’t a customer, a group of muscular bouncers moved in and extorted 50 times the going rate for the beer I’d ordered. I swiftly found myself back in the river of degradation that flows through Patpong Road.