Lemon Pie

That's what it sounded like Oy said she did with her "friends" when they were finished with customers down in Phuket nearly a decade ago. Since then I have learned it was closer to len pi, which means play cards. One can surely comprehend why casinos do not exist here as gambling seems to be devastating these already poor people.

Having a chunk of gambling experiences, which means losses – the thing all gamblers lie about, when I noticed my regular of the past two years was crashing down that road I decided there would be no further contact. Well, it wasn't immediate as it should have been as things just deteriorated, cash demands and deceitful behavior. When she found a foreigner who threw silly money at her, the pace picked up.

Nearly a week back, she called and I went over to her room. There was no answer at the door, so I phoned and she told me another room number to go to. I went there and knocked. She opened and I could barely recognize her as her face seemed different. I went into the room and she took her seat on the floor between two homely girls and they turned one card each to get the 800 baht pot. They had that sullen, angry look gamblers have, ignoring me and seemingly in full self-contempt. So, N takes me back to her room and gets a bit flirtatious. She then shifts to angry and demands 10,000 baht, for which I get nothing. Oh, I suppose I could have gotten a short-time, but that's not an exchange I will make.

Guys all know the feeling when the thing is ending and we think we will never do that well again, and maybe I won't as she was an incredible physical specimen and had some unique qualities of integrity. But the truth is time heals all those kind of wounds and life gets better. And I know I am not going broke for any woman. And, I sure don't want the rest of the package she offers with all her arrogance, greed, and surliness. Those things eventually counterpoint all the best bedroom qualities.

When we talk with other farangs, the stories are of great losses and suffering with threats to the "losers" when the debt gets too high. Teary confessions from wives begging her already pressured husband into covering her losses.

I guess I am a bad man, but I am not paying gamblers anything as it is insane to do so. My response to her was, "I do not gamble and will not pay those girls to take your money".

The scene in that room was obvious to me, and when I told N she didn't believe me as she thinks those girls are her friends. In my opinion they were cheating her as they had her in between them in the seating position. Maybe some readers know much more than me, but I have seen all of it I want to see. It is just a dead end. And the last truth I told her was, "Losing is the hook in gambling addiction." What sane person would gamble for days smoking yaba?

There are some very rich men who come to Pattaya and some stay. Those men arrive lonely from the impossibly isolated western world and will lavish these better looking girls with huge money. I know they do as I've seen the results. When the girls really look great and start in the bars, it's just a matter of time until they get spoiled by one or more who think they can buy love. They can buy physical company, as we all have.

At my lofty age I will continue to take occasional comfort from service providers, but going down the road to monogamy with these, or any younger women, seems silly.

Pattaya has such ample resources for getting over relationships, everyone who has been here a long time knows that as well as it is nearly impossible to have relationships here.

Keep your money, friends. That's the gauge and way success is interpreted here at paradise by the sea. It sure beats the loneliness back home and, I'm told it is getting worse.

Catch and release.

Stickman's thoughts:

Gambling is a big problem in Thailand, one you don't hear that much about it. Many of these girls are on drugs, but as you have seen with your own eyes, ya-ba fueled gambling over days and days where huge amounts of money is lost are hardly unusual. And at the end of it they will start scrolling through the numbers of foreigners in their mobile and send a message saying something along the lines of "Help me, darling, the buffalo just died!"