No Fool Like An Old Fool, Am I Just Another Stupid John? Part 2

Continued from No Fool Like An Old Fool, Am I Just Another Stupid John? Part 1
I am exhausted. Really drained.

No one ever asked to come here. This poor little girl certainly didn’t.

Video call late this afternoon. She looked terrible. Unrecognisable from the girl in the photo. Didn’t sleep on the bus back, and been crying all day. She has looked into the abyss and didn’t like the view. Neither did I.

Arrives back and dearest Mum informs her that there is no money, the installment on the motorcycle has to be paid in 3 days, a couple of other bills are lying around and rent day is coming up.

Wants to cuddle up with her son, but after 6 weeks absence he prefers the arms of dearest Mum. That must have hurt. Poor girl.

Dear Dad buggered off about 7 years ago, he’s in his early 40’s. But he thinks he can request money from his youngest daughter “Just 1,000 Baht”, “it’s only 2,000 Baht”. Jeeze. WTF is that? He can get his arse out to work.

Dearest older sister has dumped her brat on dearest Mum, but doesn’t consider she should actually pay anything for food or rent. She has been working in the bars for two years, has a boyfriend with a day job and a side gig. And yet he takes the money she earns from  screwing Farangs from her. “Where has all the money gone?”, I asked Mai. “I don’t know”. They live in a one-roomer dump.

Lurch back a month. There was a plan to open yet another urgently needed som tam / khao niow / fried chicken restaurant in Pattaya. So older sister found a house, younger sister paid first month’s rent and the move from Nakhon Pathom, Mum and two kids moved from a cheap dump in Nakhon Pathom a week ago to a more expensive dump in Pattaya. Dearest Mum has a boyfriend, it was planned he would be involved in the restaurant. He came for a day and decided to bugger off back to Isaan. Probably looked like too much hard work. He has some paddies in Isaan, enough income for beer and food, I guess. What more does a man need, apart from a free bonk from his “girlfriend”? Wonder why he still gets that? Weird shit in Thailand.

So where are we? I ask how much is all this going to cost.

She replies via Google Translate.

“I have to pay is the house price 6,500 baht, car fee 3,000 baht, telephone fee 1,500 baht and child support, 4,000 baht childcare and child allowance.”

The car fee is debt repayment on a motorcycle.

So 15,000 month. But that will not be enough, it never is.

There are two kids, 1½ and 3½ years old. Clothes, toys, here comes school fairly soon, mother will need stuff, the house needs painting etc. Let’s say more like 20,000.

Should Captain Save-A-Ho stand to attention, accept a multi-decade financial responsibility for someone else’s kids, debts, a dearest but idle Mum-in-law, idle Father-in-law and presumably below place number 4 in the pecking order of priority? Add in a few regular trips to Pattaya so Mai can visit her son. And then some more for her personal stuff, say at least 5,000 / month, plus food and as I like travelling, just round it up to 20,000 / month. Total at least 40,000 month BEFORE my expenses.

All for the potential affection and shared companionship of an immature, and sometimes irritating, 18-year old mother / bar worker for whom I have developed an affection over just 12 days?

Hmm, that is simply not going to happen. Captain Save-A-Ho is rapidly evaporating.

But it’s good to get all this written down, the picture becomes clearer.

Tomorrow is going to be another very hard day for me. She is going “to look for work”. Here’s the killer. She wants me to remain her boyfriend and love her, but can I accept that she has responsibility for her family and has to earn money? She doesn’t want to ask for my money, because that would not be good and create gossip.

Basically, can I let her fxxx foreigners while I do what?????

Jeeze.

I have enough empathy to realise that having someone steady in the background that she can always come and hold would help her get through the shit. But it would mentally derange me.

I have enough pain already. She is just 18. God. She should be enjoying life like an 18-year old girl. Playing, having fun, dreams for the future. For her it’s all gone.

She has no exit that I can see. Just one year after another year of sex work. I am not even sure that can work. She does not have a huge white welcoming smile, but is very self-conscious about her uneven teeth. Her photo shows that.

I have had at least 30 calls this evening.

Plus messages, “I will kill myself now if Mr Tai call bye-bye honey”. No idea who Mr Tai is.

Should Captain Save-A-Ho return? This is really no longer a joking matter.

I am utterly emotionally drained over this.

My conclusion is to never take a girl out of a bar more than once, don’t look for girls you would like as a wife or girlfriend, never get involved  in the background stories, and always treat them with respect and generosity.

I made three mistakes.

And if you think I am a stupid newbie, then you are very wrong. Two decades in Thailand and I have seen and experienced a lot. There are times like this that I wish I had never come here. There really is a lot of nasty shit going on kept out of sight.

Stick‘s thoughts:

Time to think of self-preservation and your own mental health. Cease all contact with her! You don’t owe her anything and you don’t have enough shared history to warrant staying in touch with her. The bottom line isn’t that she just isn’t good for you, she’s downright bad for you.