Planting the Seeds for Thailand

Please bear with me, as I tell you a little about myself. I’m a 55 year old New Yorker, very happily married to a gorgeous Thai “good girl” for about 10 years. I have been traveling to the Kingdom once a year now for about 14 years. When I first arrived back in 1995, I thought I had died and landed in heaven. You’ve all read submissions from newbies who fall in love with go-go girls and karaoke girls and massage girls, and believe me I was no different. And oh, this was the first time in my life that I dabbled in the P4P arena.

However, this story is not about Thailand, but about the very first time I ever encountered a woman of the evening. And it is important because by comparison, Thailand, I will prove to you all, IS heaven on earth.

My story begins in Manhattan when I was going to college, back in 1975. It wasn’t really a college, but a music conservatory called the Juilliard School. I was 19 years old, studying to be a concert violinist, which I had been doing since I was about 6. And as concert violinists do almost every night, I was performing, this time at Lincoln Center with the Juilliard Orchestra. After the concert, 3 of my buddies asked me to go with them to have a bite to eat. So in black tie, carrying our beautiful fiddles, we all walked across the street to our favorite eatery, a very lively little Italian restaurant. After some good food, and a couple of Heinekens, one of my friends, a Finnish violinist named Yako said he wanted to go to Times Square to get a girl, and asked us if we wanted to go with him, suggesting that we could enjoy ourselves too. My good friend Jon, a brilliant kid with a pedigree a mile long, and my buddy Calin, a Hungarian gypsy violinist very educated in the ways of the world, if you get my meaning, and I, locked eyes, and told Yako that we’d be happy to accompany him, but that was it. Yako beamed with happiness, and at god's speed or the devil's speed as it turned out, we were in a taxi heading for Times Square.

Now if any of you Stickmanites have been to Times Square recently, you know that it’s like Disneyland, with a Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum and other touristy shops. But, that’s not what it was like back in the 70’s. If you take the seediest soi in Bangkok and multiply it by a thousand, you’d just about scratch the surface of what was called at that time “Hell’s Kitchen”— the corner of 7th avenue and 42nd street. A place where murderers, thieves, pimps, hookers, con men, drug addicts, and young concert violinists hung out. And as fate would have it, that’s just where the taxi stopped to let us out. Well, actually the driver was too scared to stop, so we kinda had to jump out of the taxi, which was no problem for a bunch of naïve idiots in good shape. There we were, 4 young gentlemen in tuxedos, a kind of Great Gatsby Quartet, walking down 7th avenue fearing for our lives.

No more than 8 seconds later, or 3 ½ paces, a tall and slim dark skinned woman approached us to offer an oral experience for only 15 dollars. And as Yako was pondering this offer, it wasn’t until she opened her mouth to reveal her totally toothless orifice, that cemented the deal for him. 6 ½ seconds later I remember climbing up a very steep and narrow stairwell, almost shoulder width. And when we finally reached the top of the World Trade Center, and I do mean “trade”, a very large man whose day job was a sumo wrestler, led us through another narrow door made out of psychedelic beads. I actually can’t remember how he managed to part the beads, but thinking back, he probably just redistributed some of his rolls of tofu to squeeze through.

Well, here was the moment of truth. Think of a deer in the headlights, or a nun walking into a Nevada cathouse, and you’ll get the picture of my reaction to the apocalypse in front of me. Along three walls, one in front, one left and one right, were about 30 young ladies sitting or slouching in very basic upright chairs. Not at all different from a body massage parlor in Thailand but without the window and without some other intricacies. Blue and green and frosted hair, like displaying peacocks; purple and orange and mosaic leather boots perhaps Byzantine but more likely Woodstock, 27 ¾ inch high heels, that would most certainly help a window washer on the 44th floor of the Chrysler Building, mini skirts that couldn't breathe and rows and rows of various tooth decay lay before me, and I do mean “lay”.

And as we watched our friend Yako disappear though another set of barbed-wire beads in the back, Calin and Jon took a seat on a black sofa on the 4th wall facing the “tit for tat” tribunal, and I just stood next to the sofa fearing some microbe on that sofa might make my cuff links decay.

I remember thinking what a highly developed sense of curiosity these girls had because, they kept on asking us questions. “Try me?” “Take me?” “Do me?” Deep philosophical questions that would drive Freud nuts, and horny I might add.

Then one of these streamlined jet setters looked at me and shouted in short, staccato (musical term) breaths “Honey, I bet you neva’ seen so many wors’’’ in all your life.” Raising in pitch and dynamics the word Wors’’’ Kind of like the words wars, or whoa, or wow. To put it frankly, I don’t know what the fxxx she said. So I delicately, with a tinge of English aristocracy, replied “Pardon Me, so many what?” Again she screamed, “Honey, I bet you neva’ seen so many wors’’’’ in all your life.” And again, I replied “Excuse me. So many what”? And not 1/10th of a second passed as my friend Jon looked at me and with crystal clarity shouted “WHORES, YOU IDIOT!!!” At which I politely replied to this young lady, “Yes Maam, I have never seen so many.”

Another charming incident I recall in that first 15 minutes was when another debutante shouted “Honey if you come with me, I give you the best ‘um um’ you evah had.” And just as clearly as the Ode to Joy theme in Beethoven’s ninth symphony, this little ballerina pumped and ground her hips twice to co-inside with the descriptive adjective “um um”. And as that was delightful, all of a sudden, Ms. Toothless comes out of the bamboo beads from hell without Yako. Just before we had a chance to question this fair maiden to the whereabouts of our good friend, she offered up her delicate hand and said “Yako needs 10 dollars more”. I think Jon gave 3 dollars, I gave 4 dollars, and Calin gave the rest in quarters. Off she went. 10 minutes later Yako staggered through Medusa’s beads, and the 4 of us catapulted down the steps towards the street. My shoulders still have bruises from that departure.

With a pace that matched the trials at the Indy 500, we flew uptown away from the ‘kitchen’, and to a safer environment where there were only 3 murders a week. And as we caught our breath, we all asked Yako how it was, and he replied in his baritone splendor, “greaaaat!!!” And also, “Hey Yako, what was that extra 10 bucks for?” And as smoothly as a Finnish skier down a powdery fiord, he said “Oh, just as I was about to cum, she stopped and said ‘If you want me to continue, that’ll be 10 dollars more!!"

My first introduction to the ways of the world and the reason why I’ll always love Thailand.