Korski on Rahiri on Korski: Further Clarifications   
By Korski

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We’re told by Rahiri that he “won’t accept that the mongers dollars are more valuable than if the government was to invest similarly in education and a fair minimum daily wage.”

But I wasn’t talking about hypotheticals, about what the government might do, and whether or not such an if would be more or less effective than what monger money might do. I was making an empirical, a factual, assertion.  Monger money is helping the poor of Thailand, and is helping the poor more than the government and NGOs combined are helping them today.  Mongers are not doing this because they are altruistic or care about the poor of Thailand. The great majority of mongers probably don’t think about Thailand’s poor anymore than I think about how to knit a sweater using South Island New Zealand wool.  It is rather that mongers are helping Thailand’s poor as a byproduct of going with young women who overwhelming come from the poorest segments of Thai society.  So, to reiterate the point made:  I’m not interested in what the Thai government might do and how effective that effort might be; I am making the point that mongers indirectly, and without forethought, are now, and in the past, and in the future, having  or will have a direct impact on the economic welfare of the poor of Isaan—that great source region for so many Thai hookers that work in Bangkok and Pattaya and Phuket.

Rahiri is confused on another point.  He says that “despite the money they earn in the industry few of the girls seem to achieve the aspirations they went into it with: to buy a house, to buy land, to provide better education for their children.  Some do...”   I have no evidence whatsoever that on entering the P4P scene the girls have “aspirations” to buy a house, or buy land, or provide better education for their children.  My guess is their thinking does not get anywhere near these kinds of “high-end” aspirations on entering the P4P Life.  They are thinking and reasoning, I would bet, at a much more basic level.  How much money can I get by spreading my legs for fat old men compared to what I can earn in a factory job, if I can get one? Can I make enough to support my child or two and also give money to my parents, and also get a decent cell phone and some new shoes—those kinds of things that my cousin and my sister and my best friend have because they spread their legs for ugly and old foreigners and only thought about bahts as they pumped away?

Rahiri is impressed with all the girls who “get caught up in vicious cycles—yaa baa, or gambling.”  Or lose their money in “short-lived consumption.” Well, I don’t doubt that some of the girls are into drugs, and gambling—but does he know how many have gone down these destructive avenues?  I don’t know, and I don’t know anyone who does  know.  Are the girls, and probably most of them--probably the overwhelming majority--into “conspicuous and short-lived consumption?”  I have no doubt that they are.  But I don’t see that anything important or telling can be made of this observation.  Men and women everywhere in the world, and of all socio-economic classes, are caught up in “conspicuous and short-lived consumption.” It is capitalism, it is the influence of the West, it is who we are as cultural animals. What’s at issue with the bargirls is whether or not some of the money is being used to support those kids back home, and help mom and dad and the siblings.  It’s clear that some of the girls are sending money home, and in some instances considerable money.  But even if the sums are not great, the fact that they are sending any at all is, arguably, surprising.  Surprising precisely because they have spent their entire lives living in an environment in which the concerns are not for investing in homes or land or planning for the future, but, on the contrary, an environment in which the concerns are for short-term needs, and pressing needs they are; for food, and for shelter, and for clothing. For tomorrow, the next day, the near as opposed to the distant future.

Rahiri quotes me as noting that all kinds of men have had enough of bad marriages—marriages with lousy or no sex, a wife gone dry and ugly, a wife turned to blubber and screw-you-if-you-don’t-like-it, and a lot more I might’ve pointed to that has seen mongers in two or three marriages and then who said no mas, and now don’t want much more than a good fuck, what a great many couldn’t get for years.  But guys have stayed around for the kids, and because they didn’t want their pockets cleaned out by the courts.  So Rahiri says, astonishingly: “Why did they get married in the first place?”

Well, they got married in the first place for the very obvious reason that  they loved the woman, and were probably having great sex with her (the same kind Rahiri apparently gets with his wife all the time), and maybe they wanted kids, and they, rather literally, expected the sex and the love and the intimacy and everything else about the relationship to continue until the end of their lives.  They most certainly could not see or imagine all the bad turns, and the sexless or less than satisfying sex life that ensured—whether their fault or that of the wife or both together really doesn’t matter. Most assuredly had they been able to see the future with any clarity they would not have gotten married.  So the question Rahiri asks—why did they get married?—is just plain incredible, if not, I must say, dumb.

And then their gone-wrong marriages, and knowledge of the cheap sex in Asia, led them to Asia.  No surprise here; all that’s a surprise is that a hell of a lot more men in the West don’t find themselves mongering in Asia.  Anyone who thinks that sex in marriage is cheaper than sex with a hooker is living one grand illusion.  And anyone who thinks they “know” the mind of the person they are living with—even if with her for say twenty years—is living an even bigger illusion.  What Rahiri gets from his greatly satisfying love and sex and intimacy with his wife  is exactly what he has convinced himself he is getting.  And this is neither more nor less than any monger tells himself he is getting from a girl he met ten minutes before he got her to lie down, and ten minutes after she left his hotel room and he can’t remember her name.

Surely Rahiri is aware that the divorce rate in the West is between fifty and sixty percent, depending on the country.  And my guess is that were one to look at the other forty to fifty percent one would find a hell of a lot of marriages in which both parties are just “hanging in there,” for the kids, and, for the man, because of the great expense of getting out.  The percentage of “happy” marriages with unbelievable sex of the sort that Rahiiri apparently gets in his life, and wants for others?  Maybe eighty percent in the first six months or year of marriage—and then it starts to go downhill, and a decade or two into a marriage the really “happily married couples” probably don’t exceed fifteen to twenty percent.   Maybe the figure doesn’t exceed five percent.

I’m not cynical, just realistic about what the vast majority of marriages turn out to be, and what marriage contracts should look like.  In my world, they should be one-year renewal contracts, duly notarized with the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.  And when things go wrong, there’s no renewal.  Then it’s time for a splitting of jointly earned assets, and a sharing of time with the kids, and...and then either another try with someone else on a one-year renewal contract, or off to Asia and the land of sweet one-night pussy stands, or two-week GFEs, or the start of another one-year renewal contract with a Thai woman.  Or a Filipina.  Or an Indonesia woman.  Or a Lao woman.

Rahiri tells us that the GFE is “a pale imitation of genuine intimacy.”  How does he know this?  I know scores of men who have had a GFEs and would never think of describing them as “a pale imitation of genuine intimacy.” More projection by Rahiri—as I noted again and again in the first critique. To reiterate a point I’ve already made more than once: intimacy, sadness, a great or a lousy fuck—all are in the eye of the beholder.

So Rahiri knows poor women who chose not to become prostitutes.  This is not at all surprising.  It speaks, if nothing else, to the great variability in human behavior, a point I made repeatedly in the initial critique.  Doesn’t it go without saying that all of us weigh the costs and benefits of everything we do according to our own perceptions and unique histories? Some men go to Thailand and want to do little more than drink and stare at all the young and available women—pure voyeurs.  Some men go to Thailand and don’t want to drink and take as many girls to their room as they can—they just love fucking anything they can afford to pay for.  And some men go to Thailand and visit temples and eat at Subway and have lonely nights with five-finger Mary Jane because they are scared to death to even kiss an Asian woman—probably any woman--for fear that they would get a deadly STD.

Rahiri is “sad” for all those who don’t have the amazing intimacy and sex and love he has with his partner.   Why be sad?  Everyone’s life is filled with various kinds of sadness, and Rahiri’s too—or it most certainly will be, as it will be at some point for all of us as we approach the day when the Grim Reaper comes knocking.   So what’s there to be so sad about when a poor girl from Isaan is making a pile of money and feeding her kids and giving a lot to mom and dad, and, oh yeah, is also into gambling and ya-ba, and all the while regretting almost nothing she has been doing as a greedy and nasty and scheming hooker? It’s how she feels that matters, not how Rahiri or me or the great judgmental crowd feel all around all of us feel.  Let others feel sad about their own lives, and moralize about their own behavior, and worry about their own hypocrisy. Just allow everyone else to lead their lives in ways that best suit their needs—as long as they’re not harming others.  What about whether some Big Omniscient, Omnipotent Guy in the Sky thinks this or that Christian or hooker or drug-addled life is wholesome, okay, despicable, or sad?  I say: Fuck that Big Omniscient, Omnipotent Guy in the Sky.  Let him worry about getting his own game together, because it ain’t a pretty game if you remember what happened on December 26, 2004 in Indonesia and Sri Lanka and Thailand, or what happened on January 12, 2010 in Haiti.

Stickman's thoughts:

Rather than comment any more on all of the morality discussion submissions, I think I am going to have to write my own piece on it in the next column.

The author can be contacted at korski1@cox.net.
 The publisher of this website, NOT this article, can be contacted at: stickmanbangkok@gmail.com.