Stickman Readers' Submissions July 30th, 2007

I Never Pay For It


I never pay for it. You hear that a lot in Thailand. Mostly from tattooed football hooligans but also from English teachers and missionaries to name a few.

He Clinic Bangkok

You never hear it from rich guys. You never hear it from sophisticated, educated and well travelled or divorced men.

I lost my virginity when I was 12 years old. I didn’t pay for it unless you count my family being a little upset with me. I did not pay cash for it until I was 16 unless you count chocolates, roses, and cheap jewellery.

Why would you not count chocolates, roses and cheap jewellery? I guess there is something romantic about those things that cold hard cash does not possess.

CBD bangkok

When I was a young man and graduate student in Anthropology I lived with an Eskimo tribe for a while. Because of the scarcity of men outside the local gene pool they encouraged men to sleep with their wives. At least that’s what the wives told
me. The ladies would grease themselves up with some kind of fishy smelling oil and we would have sex under seal skin blankets. It was fun and physically demanding because it was never one at a time.

Did I pay? I had what they wanted. They had what I wanted and an exchange was made.

The first time I paid for a hooker was in downtown Detroit. I later lived in a bordello in the same area. It was a 16 year old's lark. The bordellos also were places where underage people could drink and gamble. I became a whorehouse mascot. Several
of the ladies offered to support me. One even took me to New York because I wanted to catch the Beat scene in the Village before it turned into the Hippie scene.

In college I didn’t pay for it much. There was just too heavy a demand for kids who drove expensive sport cars, vacationed in exotic locations and whose parents lived at the right address. It isn’t that I didn’t want to pay for it
but there were 30,000 women at the university I went to and there was only so much time in a day.

wonderland clinic

At 23 I was in Vietnam and the first time I paid for it there was at the barber's. I got a haircut and BJ once a week for a very small amount of cash. They didn’t even ask me the first time if I wanted one. As the barber trimmed my hair one
of the girls disappeared under the smock covering my uniform. The second time I paid for it in Vietnam was at the Dragon Ladies massage parlor and steam bath. They didn’t ask me either. There was a girl walking on my back and the whole
place smelled like ginger and then all of a sudden she was off my back and between my legs.

In Thailand back then I guess I paid for it although the amount was so small I don’t remember. In Taiwan I do remember paying for it. I remember kicking the first girl out because all she wanted to do was go out dancing. The second girl I paid
all I had and then she supported me when I ran out of money.

But I didn’t really pay for it till I got back to the States

All the money I had sent my wife, all my flight pay, all my hazardous duty pay, all of her allotment pay was gone. All she had to show for it was an expensive closet of clothes purchased in Paris and Rome while I was in South East Asia. When I went back
to school to complete my masters I had to work 8 hours a day in addition to the GI bill just to make ends meet. Working 8 hours a day and going to college full time is not an easy job especially when I found out about my wife’s 17 year
old boyfriend. She was a school teacher.

The above experience is really paying for it. I became further educated in paying for it when the lady judge at my second divorce turned to my soon to be second ex-wife and said, “Honey, are you sure there’s nothing else you want.”

Not being a quick learner I listened to the lady judge in my third divorce tell me I really had no need for my red pick up truck and half of the proceeds of the sale of my home.

When I got back to Thailand a couple of years ago one of the first women I dated had a BA in English and an MA in French literature. After knowing each other for a few months she asked me for a 10,000 baht loan.

Bar girls were looking better and better all the time. I know it is a cliché but honestly, I have paid Princess as much to leave me alone as I ever paid her for sex.

Still, I hear this refrain from Farang in Thailand, I have never paid for it.

What would motivate a man to say that? I can understand a teenager saying that, what with all of the issues about sexual insecurity that are prevalent at that age. In fact I have heard a lot of teenagers say that. My friends when I was a teenager would
laugh. They knew I was running a college girl escort service and probably employed the kid’s girlfriend as a worker. I even got kicked out of college for a term because one of my waitress / hooker gigs got busted by the campus police. I
had the food service contract for a fraternity house but not enough of the brothers were eating in the house. So I dressed up some campus cuties in brief costumes as waitresses and they served the food and serviced the fraternity members after
dinner. I was making enough money for a new Jag until the dean of men thought ill of my entrepreneurial endeavors.

Why would an adult male make such an outlandish claim of never paying for it? Consider the handicapped men one sees in Pattaya. Would an able bodied man choose to make light of their plight? Consider the guys in wheelchairs that the girls here treat with
such deference. Would a walking man say he never pays for it to make them feel disadvantaged? Consider the men here who have been disfigured by accident or war or other causes. Would a good looking guy say he gets it for free to make them feel
ugly?

Remember Karma, gentlemen. One day the young good looking guy who thinks he has never paid for it will be old and ugly. And the girl he got for free will also be old, ugly and in possession of all of his worldly goods.

If that is not enough for you, take the immortal words of Lou Holtz, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”

Stickman's thoughts:

People don't want to admit they pay for it because in the West that most definitely still carries a certain stigma. But for anyone who has lived in Asia for a while, that stigma is quicky forgotten.

chiangmaikelly@yahoo.com.
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