Stickman Readers' Submissions December 2nd, 2011

My Very First Time

In 2001 I was running the Asian operations of a multi-national based out of Singapore. Out of the blue, we received word of some major financial issues in our Thailand subsidiary, and I was obliged to spend some significant time there. I eventually discovered
that there was financial mismanagement on the part of our Thai manager, which caused his dismissal. I brought in from another country one of our senior managers to replace him.

I had been going to Thailand since 1986, but had never partaken in, nor even once visited, the bar scene. However, the very first night my new manager arrived on the job, he invited me for a beer in a place called “Soi Cowboy”
right around the corner from the hotel I had been staying at for years. I had never been there before.

He Clinic Bangkok

After sampling a few places, we ended up in a bar named “Our Place”, which I don’t believe exists anymore. <It's now called RioStick> Ten years ago, many of the bars on Cowboy had
the girls dance topless, and My Place was one of them. I noticed one girl, older than the others, who always kept her bikini on. I got to talking with her, and when my manager said he wanted to go to another bar, I said I would finish my drink
and go back to the hotel. He left, and shortly after I left with Noot.

It was not an easy decision to make. I was happily married for many years by then, and had always been faithful. I could say I was under a lot of pressure, with my job being on the line if I didn’t quickly sort out the financial mess
our Thai subsidiary was in, causing millions of dollars of losses to date. Or I could blame loneliness, having been on the road for a while by then. Or horniness. Or curiosity. Whatever it was, I agonized in the bar over what to do, but a few
minutes later found myself taking a shower with a very nice lady.

A few weeks later, I was back in Bangkok, continuing to sort out the mess, and once again my manager invited me to a round of drinking one night. We ended up in My Place, and Noot quickly came to my side. I could not get rid of my manager,
and could not be seen to take a girl out in front of him, so I slipped her my room number and she came to see me after we left the bar.
Two years went by in this fashion. I never called her, fearing that she would then have my phone number.
I never took her out for dinner, fearing someone would see us. As CEO and Member of the Board of a publicly listed company, my being caught with a girl would have been grounds for instant dismissal.

CBD bangkok

I have always been someone who spends time researching anything I am involved in. I spent a great deal of time on-line finding out about the bar scene; how much to pay, what to do and what to avoid. I read “Private Dancer” on-line
before it was published as a book, and discovered Stickman’s site in the early days.

Noot and I grew close. She was quite old to be a bar girl, 38 when I met her, but she was unused to any other type of work. She had been married three times, the first to a Thai, the second two times to foreigners. She was a delightful person
to be with and I always looked forward to my Thai trips.

One day, she mentioned that her passport was about to expire, and she wanted to go somewhere and get it stamped. She brought this up several times, and eventually one night mentioned that she had a cousin in Germany, and what would it cost
to fly there? We began planning her trip together, my helping her with her visa application (she could neither read nor write Latin characters).

One day, she proudly showed me her visa and plane ticket, and announced she was leaving in a few days to spend three months in Europe. I wished her well, not wanting to stand in the way of her happiness.

wonderland clinic

After she arrived there, she called me from a German phone number, and we would chat once a week for an hour or so. After a while, she asked me how much a mailman (postman) earned. I said I didn’t know; that it couldn’t be much
but that things like insurance and pension would be included, and lifetime employment.

The three months passed, sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly. I missed her a lot, but also wasn’t going to stay celibate, so found myself spending time with a few other girls, but no one I cared for as much as Noot.

I was in Bangkok the day she returned. Things between us instantly clicked again, as I sat back and heard her views on Europe as a first time visitor. She even showed me videos she had taken “This is my room”, “this is
my garden”, “here’s the pub I hung out at”, “these are my friends”…

“Hold on. Who is that fat man with his arm around you?”

“Just a friend I met in Germany. He says he loves me but I don’t love him.”

“Oh, what does he do?”

“He’s a mailman.”

Things settled back into our old routine. At her age, now over 40, I was pretty certain she had no other boyfriends in Bangkok.
While I never put her on a formal monthly salary, I started giving her more than normal, sometimes 10,000
or 15,000 baht every month.

The months passed.

She was visiting her family one time up country, when I called her to say I would be in Bangkok the next week. She said she wouldn’t be there. I was shocked. Previously, Noot had always come to see me on a moment’s notice. Now
I was giving her one weeks warning, and she wouldn’t see me?

The next week, when I arrived in Bangkok, I called her again. “Sorry, can’t see you, I am still in my village” she repeated.

About an hour later she called “Do you still want to see me?”

“Yes, of course.”

“OK. I will be right there.”

I didn’t say anything. Over dinner, she asked me several times if I still had her German phone number. The next morning, she asked me again, and handed me a slip of paper with the number on it, “just in case”.

A few days later I called her, and got a recording in Thai. I hung up and called her German number, and she answered. Yes, she was back in Germany, the mailman had sent her a plane ticket.

I continued to call her every week, and slowly the story emerged. She had met Hans, he had fallen in love with her. She decided to move in with him, although “I don’t love him, I love only you.” But he had a house and
a “Benz car”.

I was talking to her one day, when a man’s voice came on. “I don’t want you calling Noot anymore. We are going to get married.” And he hung up.

She called me back a few hours later. “Don’t worry about that” she said gaily. “I will marry him but he will die soon. I will get his money and come back and stay with you.”

It seems Hans was a severe alcoholic and was given only a few months to live if he continued drinking. Noot was sure he could not stop. Her plan was to marry him, wait for him to die, sell his house and car, get his government pension, and
return to
Thailand, sadder but wealthier.

The months passed, and one day I got a phone call from her.

"I have to marry gay guy! I have to marry gay guy!"

Noot was practically screaming. I tried to both calm her down as well as understand what the hell she was talking about.

"But Noot, you are already married."

"I have to marry gay guy!"

Noot's syntax, not the best when she was relaxed, was now almost impossible to understand. When I finally got her calmed down, I was able to figure out her concern.

Hans, it turned out to both her and my surprise, was gay. He had had a long term secret lover in Germany in another village. Now in his 40's, Hans was getting a lot of questions from his family and friends as to why he was not married.
When he met Noot, he decided to marry her, as what could be better proof against gayness than a Thai wife? The truth had come out at last, to Noot's relief. She had been wondering why they never had sex, and worried that it was because she
was no longer desirable. All Hans had ever wanted to do was to get a hand job from her while he watched porn. I was never able to determine what type of porn a gay German man watched while getting jerked off by an ex-bargirl.

Now that Noot's worries were assuaged, she moved into the next door bedroom, and life in the German village with her new husband settled into a routine, as she waited for him to die. He was hospitalized for 2 weeks and she slept on the
floor next to him, nursing him back to health when he was released. I could feel over the phone her sense of conflict as she eagerly awaited her inheritance while her Buddhist upbringing caused her to be nurse, wife, and mother to the man who
was financially taking care of her. Despite her protestations to me, I sensed that, in her own way, she truly loved him.

Hans died a few months later. I never met him, and so I couldn’t feel any emotion but I could sense the sadness in Noot's voice.
Shortly after, she was back in Bangkok. It was now several years since we had last seen each
other, but we instantly felt comfortable. We went back to my room where she asked if I wanted to see a video of Hans’s funeral. She popped in a CD and gave me a running commentary

"Here I am walking behind the box with Han’s body. Look how nice my hair is. I had to wake up at 5am to have my hair done."
There was footage of her weeping and wailing and throwing her body on the coffin. The pastor
began a sermon, which she translated for me from German. "Now the priest is talking about what a good man Hans was. Now he is talking about how we met in Bangkok, and he brought me back to Germany…"

"What? You met in Bangkok? You told me you met in Germany!"

"No. He came to my bar in Soi Cowboy. We went out for a while and then he offered to buy me a ticket to Germany. Remember when you helped me get the visa?"

The next morning at breakfast she told me she wanted to restart our relationship. She would buy a house in her village and live there, but whenever I came to Bangkok she would come to see me. I did not have to give her any money as she was
financially secure.

By now, I had started a relationship with the woman who would eventually become my mia noi. (see “Mia Nois
14/11/2011) I had to choose between her and Noot. Noot was warm, kind and giving, we had always had great sex, but she was lazy, preferring to sit around all day long and watch TV. She was getting on in years, and as they say, once a bar girl,
always a bar girl. But as she didn't want money, she was definitely good value.

My new girl was much younger and infinitely prettier, was ambitious and hard working. She would soon go to university where she would graduate in 3 years. Sex with her was good, but not outstanding. She was always honest. But she was much
more expensive than Noot.

In the end, there wasn’t much to think about. The biggest negative against Noot was her lack of honesty with me, which tipped the scales.

She accepted my decision calmly, and said she was going back to Germany to settle affairs. Six months later she called me from Bangkok to say all was done. She had sold the house and car and now had a million Euros. She had bought her house
in her village and moved her things. The pension was secure and she wanted to ask me again, would I drop my current girl and take up with her. No money required, she repeated.

Once more, I said no.

I never heard from her again.

Stickman's thoughts:

Very nicely put together. I wonder what ever came up of Noot? Maybe another Stickman reader shacked up with her!

nana plaza