Online Dating – Can It ‘Work’…? – Part 19

Part-1 outlined my basic reasons for investigating ThaiLoveLinks.

Part-2 detailed my first two meetings with tender Thai damsels.

Part-3 covers two further meetings with less tender lasses.

Part-4, in which I investigate a ‘company girl’, and take a break.

Part-5, where the ‘company girl’ gets another break.

Part-6, and I meet with two bored, and boring, ladies.

Part-7 wherein we limber up to meet three ladies in two days.

Part-8 where I fail to meet two out of three ladies, and check The Plaza.

Part-9 and I fail to meet the third lady.

Part-10 continues the search, closer to home.

Part-11 and the first actual audition in the home.

Part-12, and the local talent comes home to roost.

Part-13, and another multiple trip to Bangkok.

Part-14 My lost life to the end of 2013.

Part-15 A little success ends in tragedy.

Part-16 wherein two ladies arrive for a few days, and leave within 48 hours.

Part-17 and the first potential success arrives in Hua Hin.

Part-18 and the next one is turned back at the eleventh hour.

Friday dawns bright and sunny. I pick up Bam at Market Village and tell her we won’t be coming back this way before Monday (weekends are always hell in Hua Hin as the surrounding areas arrive, to shop and have lunch…) and she needs to say what she wants to eat. She says she’s fine with the things I have but agrees on a bag of assorted Mama…

As soon as we reach home Bam insists we shower (now together), followed by her incredible massage (which cannot be more ‘together’…) and, when she comes up for air, looking like the cat that got the cream, we snooze until seven-thirty.
After dinner, and a movie, Bam soon nods off, and I finish the film on my own – I’m not used to being in bed before ten o’clock.

Saturday

In the morning Bam quietly potters about while I shower. At the sound of running water Bam becomes Pavlovian and rushes to join me – her conversation leaves a little to be desired but, in the shower, her communication skills are incredible.

Bam starts clearing the garden, while I have breakfast alone… and then feel really tired… I tell Bam I’m just going to lie down, but she says it’s eleven o’clock, and time for a massage, for an hour, and then we nod off again…
until one o’clock… and it seems time to have lunch…

Bam oddly lacks initiative and asks what she can do, so I make a couple of suggestions… At 47, and a housewife for many years, she seems to have little idea what ‘housework’ involves… Bam shows me photos of her garden at home, which looks lovely… but… I tell her, I am not going to live there…!

Bam gets a call and chats so loudly (on her speaker-phone…!) it sounds like she’s having a row with the people in the house opposite…! Afterwards I ask why she wants me to be involved in her private conversations… and she takes a shower…
and then insists on another massage… There is no way I’ll not be dead in a year if this happens for the next 365 days…! and falls asleep herself.

At six-thirty Bam asks where we’re eating, this evening. I tell her, “In the lounge…!” She says she wants som-tum, and I remind her I explained yesterday (which she said she understood…) Saturday nights are too busy and crowded and, she’d be better off coming here on weekdays… and laugh politely. Perhaps the lesson has been learned… It’s a bit tough, because it’s not her custom, but still needs to be learned, when she’s here… as I would expect to compromise, if I was staying in her home… I offer cold roast chicken, potatoes, peas and beans… which brings a little smile to her chops.

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Sunday

I wake at seven-fifteen… I had a wonderfully complex dream, with so many sub-plots… I wish I could remember it… Bam later asks why I look sad and I tell her:

“I had a ‘big’ dream, but cannot remember it…” — “Why not…?”

After a brief pause, and without waiting for an answer, she adds…

“I think is sad dream…” — “It was neither sad nor happy…” I retort. “Why should you think it was sad…!?”

“Because you sad…” — “I am ‘sad’ because I can’t remember it…!”

After another pause she concludes:

“I think you dream about your daughter…”

What on earth is she talking about…!? What sort of arrogance allows her to have such an opinion, and to believe it to be a true fact…? Like so many people of limited ability, but who are unaware of their limitations, Bam considers herself to be something of a sage. Whatever nonsense comes into her head she will regard as derived from the pillars of wisdom, and I can never have a discussion with anyone on this basis…!

I change the subject and ask what she plans to do today. She says she wants to finish clearing the garden, if the bin-boys have taken yesterday’s lot, but they haven’t… She says she’ll just have to snooze and watch TV… so I ask
when she’s going home… and she says she isn’t…! and only now bothers to reveal, she’s sold the farm, her son is taken care of, and she’s here to take care of me… My concerns about taking care of
her son have been disregarded – not answered, just ignored… but she again mentions how nice it will be when I visit her home… and I simply, but firmly say:

“I live here. This is my home. I like it here. And I don’t intend to move…!”

I repeat my requirements, which she hasn’t bothered to acknowledge in her head, but gives me a speech about how she has opened her heart to me, which is the only reason she’s here, and expected I would do the same… because… (and here we go again…!) she’s not a bar-girl, etc., etc…! Nevertheless, of all these ladies I’ve met online, Bam is the only one I am convinced has been a bar-girl…! It’s a volatile impasse…

Regardless of all my explanations, on ThaiFriendly, in my messages, phonecalls, and conversations, it finally comes down to this: She knows what she wants, and will deceitfully manipulate the situation to suit herself. I know (I think) what I want and
have endeavoured to be open and honest about it. Without the same attitude from her I am left to surmise what she really wants… Without the same attitude as me she is left to assume everyone is as devious as herself… and
she goes off, to make a call, and then to pack, eventually returning to announce:

“OK. I go now…”

Three minutes ago she was never leaving – ever…!

I get dressed, but she says she has a ‘friend’ in Hua Hin who is coming to collect her… This I very definitely do not like… Who is this person, who has never been mentioned before, who has been summoned…? Does Bam want others to think I’m a bad person and she needs rescuing…? (Certainly my ex. did the same, when she left – in fact these two women have a lot in common…) Or is she unable to return home yet, having told everyone in Prachuap that she’s off to take care of some farang, and therefore cannot go back quickly without losing face…?

Whatever, by now I really don’t care. I was always doubtful about Bam’s real desires and intentions and my suspicions have been founded. However, I don’t need her ‘friend’ to come here, nor do I want to meet her, but
Bam is insistent… However, after nearly half an hour the friend calls again to say she’ll be here in fifteen minutes, which we all know will probably be another hour… so I get dressed and now I insist what will
happen, adding that few people will know where we are…

I quietly and gently carry her bags to the car, close up the house, and urge Bam towards the car, telling her it will be easier for me, and her, and her friend, to take her there… but she requests Market Village, so that’s where I take her.

Bam says she thinks I don’t want to open my heart to her, or am even unable to open it at all. More homespun psychiatry. I tell her she’s right on the first count. She asserts I opened my heart to another lady and am afraid to open it again…
I want to say, ‘No, it’s just you…!’ but… remember, when ladies are spurned, don’t expect logical reasoning. However… where is it written
that women are entitled to have their own desires reciprocated… and, if it doesn’t happen, it must be the guy’s fault, some failing in his psyche, tied to his mummy’s apron-strings, ‘unable
to commit’… Bull-shit, say I…!

Knowing she won’t understand, but unwilling to meekly bite my tongue, I politely tell her she thinks she knows everything… but actually understands nothing…! and thus will never learn anything. I’m pretty sure it gets Lost in Translation…

Many times Bam has said: “You know everything…” meaning I know a lot about Thais, i.e. too much… which they think (because of a guilty conscience) leaves them vulnerable… I of course
realise I will never know ‘everything’, which means I’m open to learning. But Bam also knows (or thinks she knows) everything about farang… and has many ‘friends’ with
farang boyfriends… She may not be a bar-girl (any more…) as my ex. always claimed, but it is amusing how non-, or ‘lapsed’, bar-girls always reckon themselves to be superior in some way…
whereas my ex. was even more devious and dishonest than most of the bar-girls I have ever met.

As Bam gets out of the car I slip her the same ‘fee’… I’ll not give her reason to complain about me to her friends – though she will anyway, if she wants to. There is no polite refusal as Bam repeats that, when I need her, I can call and, as I politely say farewell, she says, she will see me again… whenever I want… i.e. whenever I come to my senses, and want what she wants.

But, obviously, I do not want.

It occurs to me that Bam has twice stated she has been tidying up her home during the past week or two, so that it’s nice for when I visit… It occurs to me that if her own house is such a mess, compared with the way I am currently living on my own, she’s hardly the person to be my housemaid…! But that was never what she intended to be…

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That’s all for now folks… Pip, Pip.

Hua Hin Harry

to be continued…