Halloween Party?

I’m writing this in anticipation of the submission writers “get-together” to be held later this month. I’ll admit, I’m very curious how closely if at all the writers will be to the impression of them I’ve gained over the years reading their submissions. The internet has mostly replaced the front porch for socialization purposes and I’m glad it has, for many years the front porch has been replaced by the television so the internet is an improvement. I remember as a kid many of the houses along my street having front porches and everybody knew their neighbors. Till this day I can visually remember every house on my block, who lived there, their names, cars they drove, family, pets, and much about their lives. We moved when I was eight so these are pretty early memories. What happened? Sometime between the time I was eight and my mom and siblings were forced into an apartment due to divorce induced financial issues.. till the time I was grown up and could afford my own home.. the front porch became a thing of the past and along with it the friendships and socialization skills that naturally came from them. Instead of a front porch there was an RCA 19” television with some pretty worthless shows and everyone would lock themselves inside their “units” and even in the same apartment block didn’t know their neighbors. We went from knowing and helping our neighbors and being part of their lives, to being afraid to look them in the face as we hurry to our front door and try to get inside as fast as we can before anyone notices us. Truly sad, a piece of American culture lost, and I suspect a great part of the western world lost the same.

Welcome to Thailand! The beauty of socializing in Thailand is that it’s done often and done well. Walk down any soi in the evening and everyone is outside talking to their neighbors, drinking, eating, watching the kids play, bonking each others' wives, it’s truly a thing of beauty and brings back many fond memories. Have you noticed that Thais of working age are always “out and about?” They don’t really sit inside, they go out, socialize, eat out, shop, anything to escape the boredom of their relatively smaller homes which I’m sure they’re not eager to pay the bill to air condition. Did I mention the average home in America in the 1960’s was approximately the same square footage as the average Thai home is today? Coincidence? I think not. I grew up in a 1200sqft home with four siblings and my parents and a dog. My last home in America was 3000+sqft for my wife and I and occasionally my son. American’s have taken to building their own comfortable private worlds inside their four walls complete with entertainment centers, computer rooms, offices, closets bigger than the bedroom my brother and I shared as kids, and bathrooms are bigger and nicer as well. We’ve left ourselves little reason to go outside the home for socialization. Thais, bless them, are still very social creatures and it just plain feels “right” and good. Unfortunately big homes are a hard habit to break. When I moved to Bangkok last year we looked for weeks until we found a place with 2000sqft for just my wife and I. Do we need that much room? Not at all. I do enjoy having extra guest rooms though.

The internet. No need to go outside to make friends anymore. We have many types of instant messengers, chat rooms, forums, videos, music, games, and whatever you can dream of you’ll find on the world wide web. I’d rather have the front porches back but I realize that isn’t going to happen, so I’ll settle for the internet for one main reason. The internet encourages folks to socialize with others outside of their family and workplace and this is a good thing. It gets us talking about all sorts of issues, politics and religion are two big ones I could do without, but we have cars, photography, travel, lifestyles, sex, any topic that interests you is probably represented on the web and it’s easy for you to join in the conversation and socialize, learn, and live. I think overall this cuts the rate of depression and suicide (no proof, just an observation) and makes people more mentally healthy than a television and a world of make believe. Is the internet also make believe? This brings us to our writers get-together.

The www.stickmanbangkok.com website has become a regular fixture in many of our lives, almost an icon if you will. More true for the expats who live here and the frequent visitors. It’s the “front porch” for those westerners who love Thailand and what Thailand has to offer, with a big part of what is being offered being relationships and lifestyle. For some this means keeping current on the sex tourism culture and yes it’s really a culture. It has its own slang, buzzwords, currency of sorts, rules, mannerisms, and while the participants do come from a wide demographic sample, the majority of them come from a much smaller sample. Those of us who read the www.stickmanbangkok.com website know the nightlife culture as well as Snoop Dog and 50 Cent know the rap hip hop culture. We might not all participate in it, but we do know it. And then we have the Thai culture itself. Everyone who can type in what I call “Karoke Thai” please raise your hand? Good.. let me count.. uh huh.. it looks like most of you can type “sa-wa-dee krup” (some of you I’m sure use “ka”..:). Hint: It doesn’t make you look “thai savy” to use karoke Thai in your correspondence with immigration, the bank, and other Thai institutions. From comments I’ve heard educated Thais make (those who can read the roman (ok, really Latin) alphabet you use in your karoke Thai) concerning karoke Thai, it’s considered comical and shows a general lack of class and education. These comments have almost motivated me to learn actual Thai.

So, we have the internet, Thailand, like demographics, socialization, sharing information/stories, and the Stickman site. Now, considering the underlying theme of all of this is sex.. yes sex, either with “good girls”, “bar girls”, “uni girls”, “office girls”, “issan girls”, and for a select few “tranny girls”, the pursuit of sex is something almost every one of us has in common who frequent this site. Some of us have normal relationships like we would have in the western world but with a Thai lady, some lift their leg in every bar, and some get downright kinky. When you have a bunch of guys (yes, I’m going to make the leap in logic that the overwhelming majority of www.stickmanbangkok.com readers/writers are male) together in a sex themed culture there is going to be a not small amount of what I call “Penis Exaggeration.” Mine is bigger than yours. A recent series of submissions has me shaking my head wondering who the writer thinks he’s fooling, or that maybe in the final part of the series we’ll find out it’s fiction..

Penis Exaggeration: The clinical and almost natural tendency to exaggerate ones sexual exploits, male organ size, sexual frequency, looks, and everything normally related/used to earn/win sexual favors from the opposite sex. Penis Exaggeration is suspected as the primary reason many very typical western men adopt an on-line personality that portrays them as a modern Don Juan. Penis Exaggeration is also responsible for making men hallucinate their 5 inch penises are really 10 inch penises, even though it is common knowledge that Thai women only see 3 inch penises which creates confusion on the part of the Penis Exaggerator. Pee-nis (not to be confused with “pee-sao”), also called a cock, rod, firestick, gun, tool, ding-dong, and other silly names. See movie: “My Penis and I” on Utube.

Can you now see why I titled this submission “Halloween Party?” Will any of the writers actually be the same as they’ve led others to believe? (besides myself of course) Or will they come in costumes pretending to be their on-line persona? I don’t really care, I understand why and how this happens (see Penis Exaggeration syndrome in Webster’s) and I think it’s an “ok affliction”, much like nose picking, farting, and premature ejaculation. But it will be interesting..:) Will Dr. Earnshawe really be the naïve rotund English gentlemen, or will it be a 7 foot tall bone thin black women with a penchant for Earl Grey? Will Dana really show up in thigh high purple 4” heels wearing a green miniskirt and matching halter, or will he look a bit like Wolf Blitzer on CNN? Will “Hip Hop” really be the handsome black man he portrays himself, or will he really look like Re-run with bad teeth? The possibilities are endless when you start thinking about it.

Perhaps most interesting would be if this was also a “bring your girl” event. Actually, I’m not sure if wives, girlfriends, and housekeepers are invited or not. No matter, we can use our imaginations. Will every writer really be married to a stunner that could grace the pages of Playboy? Or will they be married to your average cross section of Isaan ladies? Will they really speak and write English at the “college level”, or will they barely be able to read their green cards? Perhaps a mix? I made a comment in a forum the other day saying I recently photographed the “hottest girl in Thailand” in the nude and not a single reaction. Why? Because everyone else is aware of “Penis Exaggeration” even if they didn’t know what to officially call it and they think that perhaps the girl is cute and I’ve never seen a cute girl before and just naturally exaggerated her cuteness. I didn’t. I’ve photographed 700+ nude women from house wives to college football cheerleaders to skin mag models, I know my women. She might not really be the hottest girl in Thailand, but she is definitely in the top ten and could easily grace the pages of Playboy with a style that hasn’t been seen since Sung-Hi Lee stunned the world with her appearance. I dated Sung-hi Lee for a while but I don’t expect you to believe it. That’s ok, she looked like my ex-wife anyway. Still, adding the writer’s women to the event would add a very interesting dimension indeed.

This is all harmless right? I think so. But I do have once concern. Let me explain. Not knowing Stick but having read his weeklies I have a mental picture of him in my mind that makes his writing more enjoyable to me. I see him as a bit under 6 feet tall, dark but not black hair, a slender build, and bad posture. He also needs to get his teeth cleaned and lose the belt holster that he keeps his mobile phone in. Get a damn clue guys, those sideways belt holsters for your mobiles might be all the rage with “stylish” Thai men in the business world, but they really look ridiculous. Instead, pick up a new slim-line phone like the Motorola L7 SLVR, this one you can drop in your back pocket with no bulges, sit on it, even washed mine once. But HELL NO, no holsters. What about Chiang Mai Kelly? I’ve got him pegged as a “Bosley” from Charlie’s Angles (the TV series, not the movie), Korski as a Don Knotts type, Casanundra looks like the gay guy from “Will and Grace” and Felix like Col. Klink. Does Frank Viskay really look like Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck)? Marc Holt like Higgens? Will all of them really have 12 inch penises 7 inches around and be able to stay hard from M-F?

These are my fears. I’ve got everyone all mentally and neatly catalogued with the appropriate mental picture to match their writing style and stories. It works for me. I enjoy www.stickmanbangkok.com so I have to ask myself do I really want to go to this get-together and risk destroying something that entertains me? Perhaps I’m looking at this wrong. Perhaps having an accurate mental picture of the writers will add a new dimension to how I enjoy their work? Either way I wouldn’t miss it for the world..:) Will they drop kick me out the front door if I bring my portable portrait studio? Or just regulate me to the outdoor tables the one-time submitters are going to be stuck at? Just kidding, I’ve no idea what out of the way place the one-timers will be stuck in. I assume, perhaps wrongly, that there will be a seat of honor and Dana will sit at the throne <Actually, he will be brought in on a king sized gold Egyptian bed, but that is another story – Stick>. And I do hope we have bomb sniffing dogs on duty, armed guards, and cement barriers to stop any potential car bombs to discourage those women you’ve all wronged who will look at the get-together as a prime target of opportunity to take out the main troublemakers of Bangkok. And please, let’s pay off the boys in brown so we don’t get raided and have to pee in cups and get our passports annotated with special symbols.

Halloween party or front porch? I’m hoping for the front porch. I can’t think of a better opportunity to meet like minded and like experienced individuals as an expat in Thailand, and I really look forward to the new perspective having met them in person will lend to their submissions. I can see a lot of good coming from this meeting. Me? I’ll be the broken bodied overweight middle aged man with the limp and the REAL 12 inch penis. No need for me to exaggerate anything, I’ve been there and done all that stuff and for some reason age and broken parts hasn’t yielded me any less opportunities. Why? Perhaps it’s the 12 inch penis. Granted, it’s only 6 inches in circumference and is only good for M-T.. but it’s mine and the girls seem to like it.

Until next time…

Stickman's thoughts:

The get-together is going to be great. Details about it will go out on Monday 6 November and the event itself will be held on 20 November.