Thai Thoughts And Anecdotes Part 101

PROLOGUE

"Like the City of God, the People of God, as the community in which the City consists, is identical with the Church, in so far as that is the people on its pilgrimage–that is, that group of Saints of God who are called from among men."
(Ratzinger)

Holy Bigwords Batman–this dude Ratzinger must really be smart. Not only do I have no idea what he just said, I do not even know what he did not say. Just call me Simple Simon I guess. Anyway, no fear lads–nothing like that today from me.
Just two little stories for fun. A trip down memory lane for me and I hope some entertainment for you.

INTRODUCTION: WEIGHTLESS TEDDY BEAR

Greetings fellow Stickmanites: Dana here–left Boston airspace two minutes ago and expect to be kissing Rio tarmac in 17 minutes. Boston to Rio airspace is already being cleared and I am currently climbing through 55,000 oxygen deprived
feet at 11,000 ripping miles per hour. Noi is sitting on my lap holding the yoke the way she used to hold the waist of the girl in front of her in the conga line at the G-Spot bar during Christmas shows. The cockpit is full of DON'T CALL
ME BABY by Madison Avenue and as we punch through 70,000 feet like a 60's era stubby winged rocket her teddy bear will go weightless and she will squeal with delight.

Oops, the cockpit Klaxon alarm is going off . . . now I have to figure out which switch my little Isaan minx just touched. She can't do too much damage because I took the precaution of putting duct tape over the chute deployment, spoilers,
reverse thrust, fuel pump, and fire fighting switches. There . . . found it–she shut down my wing mounted cannons. No ploblum.

Anyway, we'll take a nice walk tonight on the boardwalk protected by my private army of triangular front teeth katoeys, have a seafood dinner at the base of the Christ the Redeemer statue on the top of Corcovado, and then we will wind
up the evening at one of Rio's high line expensive pleasure palaces where the women could break me like a stick. Noi will take pictures.

Oops, aileron time–Noi has fallen asleep and slumped off to one side.

Alone now with my thoughts in the mythic ether of sub-space I have the time to reflect on the first two days I spent in the Kingdom. Below are my memories of the first day and of the second day in Thailand.

FIRST DAY: A PIECE OF BROCCOLI

It is my first day in Thailand. Actually it is my first night. Arrived at 11:55 p.m. at Don Muang airport outside Bangkok and arrived at the Viengtai hotel in the Banglampu section of western Bangkok around 2:00 a.m. First time to Thailand.
First time to Asia. First time away from the West. I am so green I look like a giant piece of broccoli. Too tired and too sick to sleep. Wired. Heard stories about Thailand and about Bangkok. Think I'll wander around. Khao San Road is one
street over and I find the connecting alley. The street is a giant block party. Lots of hippies (they are called backpackers or trekkers now) that remind me of the 60's. Didn't want to know them then and don't want to know them
know. Just wandering around. Looking. Buy some street food. Spring rolls. Taste great. Then buy some more of them. Then some more. Then some more. Twenty four hours later I am shitting yellow grease. Looking in the open air bars. Staring at some
Thai women. Don't know it but my life is changing. Soon I will hear myself say, "No ass–no breasts–unbelievably sexy".

There is a massage parlor in the connecting alley. I've heard about these places. I go in and make the intercourse sign with my fingers to a sweet thing. She smiles and disappears behind the curtain in back. Out comes a woman who is
old and fat. Who's shitting who? I ain't doin' her! But that isn't it. She's the boss. Remember the broccoli? She takes a folding metal chair and slides it over under a clock on the wall. Climbs up on the rickety chair
and points to the clock. Now we are standing side by side having a conversation about time and she is holding up two fingers. No idea–then it comes–she is telling me to come back in one hour. The two fingers is a mystery. Maybe that
is the price.

One hour later I go back. Everyone has big smiles. I'm smiling like an idiot. The sweet thing disappears behind the curtain and out comes the fat woman with two girls. They are twins. Look about fourteen years old. Remember the two fingers?
I stare.

Of course I knew that these two girls could not possibly be underage because my research prior to coming to the Kingdom had told me that the Thais never do or say anything inappropriate and that when there are social misbehaviors between
foreigners and Thai women that it is always the farang's fault. This was part of a larger and popular social idea that when you are in a foreign land that whatever the natives do is proper and probably too complicated and exotic for you to
understand so it is just best to go along. For instance: if you were in South Africa in the 50's it would be proper to treat the native blacks like sub-humanoids or animals. If you were in Germany in the late 30's it would be proper
to participate in Jew baiting and book burning. If you were in Salem, Mass in the 17th century it would be proper to burn your neighbors at the stake based on the testimony of hysterical teenage girls. If you were on Pitcairn Island in the late
20th century it would be proper to engage in rape and abuse of female children and call it culture. The list is endless.

This wacky notion that all morals are local and that all local morals are absolutes is a politically correct idea with such staying power that you simply can not drive a stake into the heart of the beast.

However, opinions can differ. To quote my soulmate George Carlin–"I don't think there's really such a thing as morality. I think it's a human construct designed to facilitate the control of people. Values, ethics, legal
standards–all these things are human-generated, and they're lumped under some vague idea called morality. But suppose humans got it wrong? Suppose there's no actual, objective morality? Suppose there's just a natural, worldly,
secular, common-sense standard of behavior whose purpose is what's best for getting along and what's best for survival. That would be a good system. Why should a system like that be overlaid with a sense of spooky, mystical, judgmental
oversight?"

If someone would like to exert their will and their intelligence on this subject there is a 600 page social anthropology treatise lurking here somewhere; to wit: where and how in the development of human intelligence and civilization did
we go so far off the track. If I am vacationing in Tierra del Feugo and one tribe of More-Moral-Than-Thou Tierra del Feugians wants to go to war with another tribe of More-Moral-Than-Thou Tierra del Feugians over whose mussel shell midden pile
is higher I'm afraid I'll be looking for the exit. Sorry. This is just crap thinking and crap behavior from crap people. Too often morals is just an excuse to put a bullet in somebody's head. There is no straighter line than ideas
on morals leading to violence. Where's the airport? I'm flying my insensitive politically incorrect ass out of here. You can stay behind and have sex with the hairy legged French backpacker lady who is sitting by their campfires and
writing down everything they are saying and calling it a PhD thesis. I've got other fish to fry. Where's my cesspit Pattaya red-light district where nobody believes anything and nobody cares and everyone is smiling? More and more I am
starting to develop the notion that these are the intelligent people leading worthy lives. Maybe the only cosmic counter that matters is the laugh counter. That's right: maybe when you get to Heaven's gate and meet Saint Peter (looking
remarkably like the door to the G-Spot Bar and Boss Hogg) the only question is–"How many times did you laugh during your sojourn on Earth?" The subject of morals does not even come up in your entry interview to Heaven. After all, wouldn't
that be the definition of Heaven–lots of laughs and no judging?

Still where there is smoke there is sometimes fire so it might behoove you to check the ID cards of some of these little smilers before engaging in adult behavior. You might be astonished to find that they are underage. Don't know how
to do it because they use the Buddhist calendar? Worried? Then get a Thai to check the ID. Because if these smilers are underage and something goes wrong I guarantee you that the Thai police will be able to read the ID card.

I used to take vacations on schooners in Maine and on motorbikes in Bermuda and on white water rafting trips in the American West. This ain't no white water rafting trip. The two girls hold hands and smile at me. They look like two pieces
of candy. I haven't even dreamed a dream like this. More staring. Then I bail. Turn and leave.

Now I know the emails I am going to receive on this so I will save you the time. They will go something like this:

"Hello Dana Dude–Manny from Georgia and the guys from Iraq here to tell you that we really enjoy your rockin' whacked out locked and loaded shit on the Stickman site. It gives us the laughs we need here in the asshole of the world.
But we think in Thai Thoughts and Anekdottes Part 101–FIRST DAY: A PIECE OF BROCCOLI that you really fucked up man. Listen dude, those two girls that looked fourteen years old were probably eighteen or nineteen or twenty or even twenty-one or
twenty-two years old. Women just look younger in Asia. You really fucked up and missed out on scoring two sweet morsels. All the guys here agree that we would have reamed them like cleaning cannon barrels. But we forgive you. It was your first
day in the Fuckdom and you were green. Keep'em coming and please don't stop writing until we get out of this sandhole called Iraq.

Manny and all the guys . . .

P.S. You should do to your dick what we do to mortar shells. Write the words 'Them or Us' on it.

Thanks Guys: Oh I know that Asian females can look young for their age. But there are different realms of reasonableness for this argument. Thirty two but looks twenty four. OK. Thirty nine but looks twenty seven. OK. But if they look fourteen
years old they might only be fourteen years old. Time to do the right thing. Run. Run like a tourist rabbit. That is what I did. Ran for my tourist rabbit hotel hole. The interesting/goofy/hard-to-believe thing about this experience is that it
was an anomaly. In the years and years of red light and night life adventures that were to follow in my farang tourist life in Thailand this is the only time that I was faced with Thai females that looked underage. But it left an impression. Adult
behavior should only be between adults.

Anyway. I'm in shock. Too much. Too fast. Too green. I ain't man enough for this yet. Back to the hotel. First night in Thailand. Holy fuckwad–what have I done? Where am I? What am I doing? A piece of broccoli. Innocent.
Green. Oh so green! But I learned.

SECOND DAY: THREE REASONS

It is my second day in Thailand and I am in a meeting room of the Viengtai Hotel one block over from Khao San Road in the Banglampu section of Bangkok. I have come to Thailand this first time to take a trekking tour and the meeting is our
orientation session. Cheri from Melbourne, the big hipped politically correct young woman who is to be our guide runs us through the paperwork and insurance requirements and itinerary and scheduling and the little bits and pieces of obligatory
charm and cultural ‘need to know' stuff. Then she gets serious and tells us that prostitution is illegal in the Kingdom and that the tour company does not condone soliciting by clients in any form and that if she even suspects that
some client has been misbehaving they will be thrown off the tour. There are three reasons for this:

1. The first reason is that prostitution is illegal and we must respect the laws of the nation that we are guests in. Thailand is not an amusement park but a sovereign nation of proud people who take offence at foreigners misbehaving.

2. The second reason is that if Thailand thought the tour company was condoning clients soliciting then the tour company would lose its license to operate in the Kingdom. This would mean loss of jobs and loss of revenue and loss of face.

3. The third reason, according to feminist Cheri; was that engaging in prostitution was actually an act of gender violence in which men demean innocent women and corrupt their souls. I sat there and listened to every word and believed every
word. Boy was I green.

About 5 days later we were in some 'no name' place and Cheri had found a 'no name' house/restaurant that had a woman cooking out front and some little tables and chairs. Lunch. If you could ignore the heart stopping stench
of the squat toilet and the flies and the dirt and the squalor it was charming. Like I said, I was new to Thailand. There was a waitress. She was about 18. She was the toxic combination of rural innocence and dripping sex candy. Every order had
to be cooked one at a time by the woman out front. There were about 11 of us. Lunch was interminable. Time for some harmless flirting. One thing led to another and the waitress came over to me. She dawdled and she smiled. I made the intercourse
motion with the fingers of my hands. The waitress nodded ‘Yes' and then went over to talk to the cook. In a flash I suddenly realized that the cook was also the mother. Oh Jesus, I've done it now. I'm scared shitless and
my asshole is so puckered you couldn't drive in a greased toothpick with a ballpeen hammer. I'm going to have to fight off a knife wielding fat mother, the girl will cry on a policeman's shoulder, the other tour people will look
at me with disgust, and Cheri the politically correct tour guide will put her hand on her big Greenpeace hip and tell me I am going to prison. I'm fucked. But it turns out I was wrong. I was wrong about everything. Remember, it was only my
5th day in Thailand. The real reason the daughter had gone over to the sweaty fat hard working mom was to tell her that she would be taking a farang upstairs for a few minutes and fucking him for money. Which is what we did. Upstairs, into a room
with no bed and no furniture–just a soiled straw floor mat surrounded by the filthy bric-a-brac and domestic detrius of the poor and stupid. Down goes the waitress on all fours–well, you get the picture. I wasn't very good and she
wasn't very good and I overpaid. Somewhere in this crossroads village is a nice Thai boyfriend who thinks this waitress is a virgin. What a joke.

No more than fifteen minutes later, the waitress and I come back down stairs. Cheri the feminist guide looks up and makes eye contact with me as I am going to my seat. You could not have written what I just did in bigger letters if you wrote
it in the sky. She probably saw the whole thing– starting with the flirting and the libido inspired hammer handle in my baggy pants.

She never said a thing! Not a thing. Not one thing. Not one politically correct feministically fueled judgemental thing. Didn't make a move.

Welcome to Thailand.

Stickman's thoughts:

He's back!