Incountry 19

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I had left Princess after a couple of violent episodes and my mates seeing my obvious grief stricken behavior had taken me out for the evening to comfort me.

I was afraid I would go into the Champagne A Gogo and my young naive friend from Issan would join me and my pirate companions and be embarrassed and taunted and lose confidence in me, her savior from Farangland. She spoke no English, being in town only two weeks and I was concerned for her. I was also concerned that my nutter companions would release the inhibitions of some of the other fem fatals in the club who might mention their previous encounters with yours truly.

What is it with Champagne A Gogo? What does it have that other gogos don’t have? Its primary allure for me is that it is not on Walking Street. I don’t go to Walking Street because everyone else goes to Walking Street.

Champagne A Gogo is home to two grown up childless Thai orphans. My holy grail is a Thai woman without parents, or young children.

Champagne A Gogo is also the workplace of one of the nastiest, sexiest and lustful women in Pattaya and has been for the past nine years. She is easy to recognize. She is pierced, tattooed and shaved and always dresses to enhance those attributes.

Champagne is also one of those “first time” gogos for training new upcountry women. As they dragged me in I tried to be inconspicuous. Three of the ladies began to shout, “Come On.”

Is it just me or do Irish people drink a lot? Of course with a name like Kelly I am of Irish descent. My grandfather came from Ireland. County Cork actually. Gramps drank a bit. Not too much really, he just drank till there was no more booze in the house, then he stopped.

As a young man I had visited Ireland and seemed to remember a lot of drinking. Nothing much had changed in the intervening 40 years with the Irishmen in our party.

In America people identify themselves beyond being American and it is common to hear people call themselves Irish although they have never been to Ireland and indeed it may have been four generations since anyone in their family has actually resided in Ireland. Gramps spoke Gaelic and of course I still have a few words in my vocabulary and if pressed can come up with an acceptable brogue to tell jokes.

In our group that night were a couple of Irishmen, a couple of Englishmen and some folks from the Channel islands. Pattaya sometimes solves international problems very well and that night was a prime example. The North and South of Ireland were getting along well.

It turns out that not only had I a relationship with the shy young dancer but she had also fancied one son of the emerald Isle, a Londoner, and a chap from Guernsey. When we all walked into the club together she became overloaded with emotion and jumped off the stage and up the stairs to hide in the toilet.

As she gingerly crept down the stairs to the dance floor four of us stood formally, raised our glasses and toasted her nasty bits in flowery terms of admiration. She got the general idea and launched herself over the bar and onto our waiting laps with visions of having all four of us that evening and herself rolling in piles of baht.

We told her we could not decide who loved her the most and to avoid a brawl we would leave but not to worry we would be back another day. A hundred baht apiece, she was happy and we were off to Soi Diana.

The least experienced member of our group, having only been in Thailand two weeks, asked had anyone ever had a ladyboy. We all told him no. As we walked down Soi Diana a couple of blocks from Soi LK Metro there were shouts from a bar that seemed to indicate that was not really the case.

He asked was the rather tall very attractive woman with no hips and large feet a woman. We assured him she was and she joined our party as we stopped at Papa’s for a beer.

Papa is a nice Thai guy and his beer is cheap and the ladies employed there sometimes include a stunner or at least some highly motivated non stunners. But Papa’s was really too small for our large group and after one drink and some tearful farewells we left.

One eyed Mike arrived with a baht bus and we all piled in. I was soon to find out our destination was Soi 8.

On Soi 8 Princess dances along with her daughter and her best friend. The three women I have lived with for the past six months.

The tension was building. I had a lump in my throat and what looked like a pistol in my pocket although I was not packing a firearm.