Stickman Readers' Submissions January 12th, 2005

God News Story

Good New Story

By Boris Stroganoff


Last month Billy Budd asked for good news stories regarding bar-girls, I have one.

I had several bargirl girlfriends in the past, but as I'm here to tell a good news story I will speak only about the last one.

He Clinic Bangkok

When I met her in a bar more than 2 years ago, I was enjoying my freedom and had no intention at all to have a girlfriend. I was thinking that the best way to be happy was to be single, free and to change girl often. One year after that I was married
with her, and 1 year after we had a baby. So what happened?

Basically during these 2 years I always enjoyed staying with her, with almost no bad moments. Since the beginning she was honest, caring and easy-to-live-with, and with time she got more loving, less shy and opened her heart more. And I love her a bit
more every day.

How can a bargirl be honest some may ask. Maybe it's because she worked less than 1 month in the bar and didn't have time to learn how to survive there, or maybe because she was more looking for a long term relationship rather than quick money.
She still has contact with 2-3 girls working in this bar, and what I hear from them is that all bargirls don't have the same goals in life. Some are already married and work to bring money back to their family, some try to get as much money
as possible from farangs to lose it playing cards, others hope they will get a rich farang to marry them. Even if there are common patterns in many of them (quite well documented on this forum from a farang point of view), don't forget that
each of these girls is unique. Of course knowing who the girl in front of you really is, is the difficult part, and unfortunately I have no reliable method to do that.

CBD bangkok

Now concerning the difficulties that are usually pointed out:

Communication:
She is not fluent in English at all, neither am I. But we can still communicate and say everything we want to say, even if it takes a long time. We also developed our own language, a variant of Thaiglish, which facilitates quick
communication. It can also be noted that understanding someone is not only about speaking, empathy is more useful sometime. Focusing on words can make you forget other communication vectors. Anyway, in 2 years we progressed a lot in English, and
she began to speak my native language. I'm still not good with Thai, but that may change when we go back to living in Thailand.

Culture difference:
I think she speaks too little about her feelings, like when she is angry or when she don’t like something, and she thinks I speak too much. This is one of the classical problems we have, but I reckon these cultural
differences are not something negative, but something I can learn from. And I'm not speaking about theory here, I'm not trying to sell some philosophical idea, it's very practical and I did learn quite a few things already. Taking
advantage of the cultural differences instead of getting upset by them is not always easy, you probably need a positive and adaptive mind, and to be in a good mood.

Well, even in a very good mood I still have some difficulties finding any benefit supporting her family, so I don't really do this part and she's ok with that. I think here I'm lucky that she doesn't care a lot about the image she
has in her village. Unlike many of her bargirl friends, she doesn't want to impress everybody by having a car or by building a house in the village where she'll never live, or by covering her mother with gold. She did however ask me
to comply with the custom of giving money to the family before marrying, and I gave enough for everybody to be happy (100,000 baht) because this part seemed important to her, probably because she didn’t want her family to lose face in the
village. This doesn’t prevent the people in the village to speak badly about "the farang who can’t afford to build a house", but we don't care.

wonderland clinic

Education difference:
She was born in a little village near the Laos border, and went only to primary school. I was born in a city and went to university. Our very different backgrounds are not a problem at all, it only means that we have
a lot to learn from each other. I make this statement because I believe that knowledge is not only found in schools, and that you can learn more from someone who has different life experience to you. It has also to be noted that she is intelligent,
and even without education she managed to have qualified jobs (obviously I don’t count bargirl as a qualified job). My experience with her is that she learns very quickly, and that she knows many things I don't.

The bar:
Easy money was not her goal in life, she was more into building a family, so for now she doesn’t miss her bar life at all. I am probably the one who misses the bar life the most, and this may be the biggest difficulty in fact.

This story shouldn't be read alone, at least one bargirl horror story should be read as well to temper it. I could write one of these but there are plenty of them already. Some may argue that the fact that I'm now married with a baby make this
very story a horror story, and I would have agreed 2 years ago. Things can change quickly.

Stickman's thoughts:

I hope things continue to be positive for you.


nana plaza