A Walk On The Wild Side
This is a true story. I had a regular girl that I used to barfine every time I went to Pattaya. This happened for about five years. She used to work in Nui’s on Soi 15. I used to use Nui’s toilet at the same time as her, sometimes because
she was a bit unsteady in handling it by herself after I’d been generous with the lady drinks, sometimes because it was just fun to do it. It was amusing sometimes to see the faces of Thailand newbies as we emerged from the toilet together.
We could also walk out the back door of Nui’s to a hotel, The Firehouse, that was seconds away. That was great.
What attracted me to her? Her face was no better than average but her body was worth paying for, and she enjoyed drinking and I like that. I have a rogue gene in me that makes me like drunken women. I know this, because even when I was a
pre-teen and playing with girls I remember getting one to act like she was drunk. Where does this come from? Did my father or my grandfather have the same gene? Who knows. I offered my first wife her first drink, and she became an alcoholic quite
quickly. I didn’t plan for that to happen of course, but she took to alcohol like a duck to water. Eventually I was wondering why she took such long baths and after we divorced she told me it was because she was hiding vodka in the shampoo
bottle. Her drink problem stemmed from fragile self-esteem, which I couldn’t properly overcome, because she was from a broken home with two brothers who were dysfunctional in different ways. Some can overcome these things more easily than
others. When we married she was still a teenager and I was around 30. She grew up, grew away. A warning, guys.
When Nui’s closed down, the girl who used to stand on Walking Street encouraging people to divert themselves up Soi 15 saw me and told me she saw my friend pass each day and would find out where she worked. The answer was Superbaby.
Nice staff there, good management. We continued to get together, up to a week at a time, once or twice a year. I was loyal even if she wasn't the best looker in Superbaby. She was pleased to see me, I was pleased to see her, we were comfortable
together.
Gradually, she became less eager to drink, and that made her quite boring. The alcohol loosened up her personality and made her talk more. Actually, she said the same things over and over again. Still, that was better than nothing at all.
By the end she stopped drinking completely. There were reasons. The doctor told her to stop, and she told me one of the girls in the bar died after drinking a bottle of tequila a day for I don’t know how long. I was introduced to her once,
and she was older than most of the girls there and tattooed. I don't like tattoos. My girl once drank a bottle of tequila a day for three straight days when she was with me, and once she found her own health breaking down she got scared and
didn’t want to die. Fair enough. The last time I saw her she came back to my room and made the mistake of thinking I would pay her to lay there and watch TV so I asked her to leave.
While things were fading between us a year earlier, she made up the excuse that her mother was staying with her so she couldn’t stay overnight. One night I escorted her out of the hotel, the P72 on Walking Street, at midnight and I
swear that 15 seconds after she had left on the back of a motorcycle I had another girl. She was walking past wearing interesting clothes, I asked her where she was going, she said nowhere, so off we went for a drink. Fifteen seconds, from saying
goodbye to one girl and picking up the next. Where else is this possible? Where else could you even try?
Like many, I like to get rid of the girl in the morning. She belongs to the night, not to the day. I like walking her to the main road,
putting her on a motorcycle, saying 'See you again tonight'. The air is still fresh then, the streets are quiet. Those who think that Thailand is always blazing hot have to get up and go out before nine. It's worth it. After sending
my girl home I enjoy going for breakfast at the Pig and Whistle. One day I was on the baht bus going from Walking Street to Soi 7, and a really pretty girl got on. She was dressed nicely, smart and sexy, and my first thought was she was on her
way home from her nightly activities. She gave me a nice smile, we talked, and I discovered she was on her way to work at a beauty salon. I got her number. It’s just too easy. Wasn’t even on the hunt and pretty ladies are offering
their number. Imagine that happening on the number eight bus in London or the Lexington Avenue Express in New York. Or anywhere else. Somchai Mangus recently wrote of exchanging phone numbers with someone after they began talking as they stood
in a lengthy queue at Emporium. Struth! I sure as hell don’t think that would happen in Harvey Normans or Wal-Mart.
Soi 7 is almost deserted at breakfast time, of course. Most of the dozens of beer bars are empty. But not all. Even at 8, 9 in the morning, there are people there ready to sell you a beer and others willing to drink one. Not just on Soi 7,
but Walking Street too, and other places. Boy, I’m glad I have better things to do than sit with a beer for breakfast. Maybe it's their culture, maybe drinking beer at breakfast is a Euro thing. I’ve seen it at plenty of major
railway stations there.
Another drinking story. I discovered a very pretty girl at Nana, from Fantasia. Did you know that Fantasia used to open in the afternoons, back before the crash of ‘97?. And the Three Roses opposite across the balcony, which has now
been replaced by a neon fantasyland. I was in the Three Roses one afternoon with a girl on my lap, skirt pulled up around her waist, giving her a two-finger massage while she was on the phone pledging her everlasting love to a Dutchman she had
been with the night before. Open your eyes, guys. But back to the Fantasia girl. She spoke good English, the result I discovered later of having lived with a Brit for six months. Why did they split? I can guess. While Superbaby was okay during
and after her drinking, Fantasia was wild. She told me of walking home in the early hours in bare feet after losing her shoes. She enjoyed a drink or six and we started off having a great time. Then we decided to visit Katoey Corner. I’d
often wondered what it was like in there but there was no way was I going in alone. Going in with a girl would be safe, I thought, and it was. They were friendly enough, and my lady even got up and danced on the stage with them, although she didn’t
remember afterwards.
She also didn’t remember suggesting we go on from Soi 4 at Sukhumvit to Soi 4 at Silom, to a bar she said she knew. We arrived, and as soon as we walked in she picked up someone’s drink from the table and drank it. Fortunately
the owner of the drink wasn’t there at the time. Then she went up and started dancing with a complete stranger. We were gone from there in 60 seconds, and caught a taxi to take her home. She told the driver where to go, I thought, and off
we went. After a while I realised we weren’t actually going anywhere, just driving around. The driver told me he didn’t know where to go, and when I tried to find out from her where we were going she was too drunk to say where she
lived. All I could do was take her to a hotel on Soi 19 where I spent the night with her. Not easy, as first she’d threaten to call the police if I touched her, then pose for me in all kinds of ‘nice’ positions, then fall
asleep naked on the bed, then get up and want to go out partying again at 3 AM. I met up with her again the next day and we went to her apartment, but she made the excuse her mother was coming and she had to meet her and she put me on a motorcycle
back to the main road. I knew she was getting rid of me, and just as well. Too much for me to handle, but it could have been a hell of a ride.
Stickman's thoughts:
Fun stories.