By Jack Morningstar| BANGKOK — At nearly 11 am, the knock echoed. “I think that’s Pop,” my companion Natalie said. She opened the door, and he entered the apartment. He had a bob haircut and smiled widely, as if he was trying to drown me in it.
“Is Pop a name?” I asked him. “Yes,” he said, still smiling and bobbing his head up and down. “It’s short for Popcorn.” Oh, of course. “What do you people want to do now?”
I had spent most of the day touring Bangkok’s churches. “Let’s do something fun. What’s the craziest thing you’ve experienced living around here?”
Pop’s eyes lit up. He glanced at Natalie and muttered something in Thai that made her laugh. “What? What is it? Include me!”
Pop turned to me and said that he had just heard of a queer brothel where all the men were on a stage and you could use a laser to choose which one to pick. “Well, that does sound like a unique experience… Are we allowed to go and really talk to them?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not.” Pop googled the area, but it was closed for the night. “I have another plan. Follow me.”
Moments later, we were cruising the streets of Bangkok, jamming to Pop’s Disney music. “Part of Your World” came on. Pop looked at me inquisitively. “What do you think about the new little mermaid?”
“I haven’t thought much about it,” I said. “Why?”
“I ask because some people are upset about it,” he said. “They don’t think Black people deserve to be mermaids.”
I puckered my lips thoughtfully. The State Department had certainly not given me any information on this subject. “You know what, I think they’ve earned it. If they want to be mermaids, they do deserve it.” Pop smiled and nodded. “I agree.” We high-fived — a small rights triumph!
“Hey, this is the spot,” Pop said. Natalie put on a serious face, handing me one as well. Pop remained unmasked, fostering confidence.
We circled around the block. “Him? Him?” Pop pointed out the window at the cheerful men strolling along the sidewalk.
“I have no preference, whatever you want, Pop.” “Okay, I want him,” pointing at a man wearing basketball attire, which I learned is the typical attire for Thai male sex workers. We circled back, but by the time we arrived, someone else had taken him.
“Noooo!” We all screamed. Pop buried his face in the steering wheel. After a momentary scream, we resumed our search.
“Okay. Him.” Before he got into the car, Pop and I stopped for a brief chat. His name was Mai. Handsome, slender, kind-eyed.
“A Million Dreams” from “The Greatest Showman” blared through the stereo. “I’m also upset that we lost the first guy,” Pop said. “Take it easy, Pop. Does this guy speak English?” “No, we’re good.”
The parking lot was nearly full when we arrived at the campground. The attendant greeted us. “It’s 200 baht ($5.85) per person.”
“Per person?” Natalie asked. “But we’re just interviewing him.” The attendant was not buying the “interview” excuse. “How many pieces of clothing do you want?”
An electric lantern swung awkwardly, illuminating the room. Anxious eyes peered out and, finding the coast not clear, the doors creaked open and then slammed shut.
We got to our room. The mosquito-infested lamps buzzed. The beddings had seen some use, making them look more like a Jackson Pollock painting than a place one could sleep.
Pop, completely unfazed by the room’s condition, hopped on the bed, almost making snow angels in the physical sediment. “Pop, what are you doing?”
“What? They wash them!”
By the bedside were two chairs. If we decided to burn our shorts afterward, Natalie and I looked at each other, trying to remember how much each of our pants was worth.
“You can’t get an STD from them — they’re leather,” Pop groaned. We reluctantly sat at the edge of the chairs, minimizing contact.
Pop started asking Mai questions. I had to lean towards Natalie and Pop’s heads to understand what Mai was saying. Nods, sighs, oohs.
It turns out that a series of tragic events brought Mai into the sex industry.
He sponsored him to obtain a job at a crab drying plant when he moved from Myanmar to Thailand ten years ago. He would work from 8 a.m. until 2 a.m. every day, paid 3 baht for each gram of crab he sorted, about $.09.
Desperate to build a more lucrative career, he borrowed 30,000 baht ($876.95) from a loan shark to start a food stand. Then, working without a permit, he was unable to go home. When his father fell ill and passed away, he couldn’t attend his funeral. Making matters worse, he inherited financial responsibilities for his ailing mother.
His food stall fell apart, and he had no choice but to return to the shrimp-peeling factory. There, he met his current girlfriend. She became pregnant, adding to his financial burdens.
One day after work, he requested to be dropped off at the same location where we picked him up. He hopped into a taxi and asked for the fare. This is his first quarter in the sex trade, and we were his sixth customers.
Mai’s entire family thinks he’s working at a cafe. He shook his head as to what would happen if they found out. “I’d have to say that this was the end of the road for me,” he said. I had no other choice.
I felt, however, a creeping hopefulness from Mai. Since starting sex work, he has been able to make his loan payments, while supporting his family. However, he also goes to bed hungry. “I don’t eat unless I’m too tired to work because I have to save,” he explained. He’s lost 8 kg (17.64 lbs.) in the past few months.
This made Mai’s interaction with his second customer sting even more. After the encounter, Mai went to the bathroom. When he came out, his client was gone. He had just been swindled out of free sex, and he also had to pay for the room and the cab fare up to the curb.
Thai sex workers qualify for free STD testing, but Mai doesn’t qualify since he’s here with an invalid permit. He said that one of his biggest fears was getting bitten by mosquitoes while standing around in a long line of other sex workers. He gestured to the numerous large bruises on his shoulders.
Hearing this made my legs start to ache. A swarm of buzzing mosquitoes hovered above. Looking over at Natalie, I saw that she also had the same horrified look. She looked up if one could get diseases from mosquitoes and confirmed that one cannot. We reassured Mai that the mosquitoes were, in fact, the least of his worries.
Moving forward, Mai hopes to save enough to take care of his family before eventually moving into the food business. “My community always had good raw food. My mother
lives off boiled noodles and is very thin. I hope to eventually take her to Thailand so I can take her out for a nice meal.”
The return to the sidewalk was somber. Pop, with sad eyes, exclaimed, “It’s just so unfair!” He turned the Disney music back on — “He Mele No Lilo” from “Lilo and Stitch” — to boost morale. At the curb, Mai waved goodnight and disappeared into the night.
Pop, devastated by Mai’s story, still thought that we should meet someone else to get a more nuanced perspective on Bangkok’s sex industry.
The next day, we took a cab to V-Club. What an odd name for a queer sexual establishment. Perhaps it’s a play on words, or maybe they’re trying to be ironic. From the outside, it looked like any old office building. A statue of a large penis was planted in the ground in the courtyard, giving you a sense of what was inside.
The building housed the infamous stage where a hundred or so naked men stood, winking and waving. Occasionally, a light would be shone across the room. Like a false siren, the escort would peel off the stage.
“This is crazy,” I murmured to Pop. We persuaded the manager to let us enter the room after some pleading. “No funny business!” We promised. We chose Bon: Sculpted, polite, and colorful.
Unlike the sex workers on the street, we didn’t have to go to a motel. This was a full-service stop. The place was clean but hot as hell, like someone had just taken a shower. I winced. “Ahhh! What’s happening?” “Sorry,” Bon said. He turned on the mini-split, and the stuffiness started to slowly dissipate.
We involuntarily prepared ourselves for something terrible after talking with Mai. Bon explained to us how if customers complain to management, for any reason, they’re never paid. Pop and I gasped and pleaded with our eyes.
Has anyone ever gotten angry with you? I asked. His face turned serious.
“No. Don’t be silly!” He flopped back onto the bed and had a good long laugh. Pop and I both glanced at each other, embarrassed by our earlier sympathy.
Bon leads a very lavish life. He has a college degree, as do most of the V-Club members. He had previously worked at his family’s veterinary business, but it couldn’t support his lifestyle. As a sex worker, he makes far more than his pharmacist father.
Around 80% of his clients are Taiwanese, and they specifically come to V-Club while in Bangkok. According to Bon, the clientele is usually attractive. “It’s definitely us who pick the client, not the other way around. We sit down when someone old or fat comes in, but they can’t choose us.”
What people ask for in their sessions is quite normal, aside from one client who had an unusual fetish. The client asked Bon to urinate in his mouth in a fit of frustration because things were taking longer than they should have. “I said fine, get over it.” Bon gestured towards the ceiling. “He came so hard.” Bon recounted this absurd memory with glee.
He typically sees between two and five clients per day (he only finishes with his last client), depending on the season, each paying upwards of 1500 baht ($43.85), plus tips. Some of his clients give him gifts, and some even hire him to accompany them on extravagant vacations abroad.
One client paid him 40,000 baht ($1,169.27) per month for a year for exclusive access. He was given business class tickets to places like Macau, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He said that he thought about doing OnlyFans but was concerned about his family finding out. They are accepting of his sexuality, but sex work might push them over the edge.
Throughout our conversation, he would show us pictures of his most handsome clients. “Wait, are these photos posted on your Instagram account?” I asked. “Yes, look at this Chinese model. This is him with my entire family,” he showed me proudly. “You brought your client to meet your family, the one that can’t find out you’re a sex worker?” “Yes, I couldn’t resist. He was just so adorable!” He told his family that they were just friends, but in one of the pictures, I could see Bon’s brother staring disapprovingly at Bon, dressed in Versace, holding this Chinese model, mentally calculating how any of this made sense. “Yeah, my brother probably figured it out. But he doesn’t say anything.”
I kept thinking about how much this contrasted with Mai’s experience. He had expressed a desire to work at a higher-end establishment — safer, better pay. Initially, I thought that placing Mai in a club would be the best course of action. But was that essentially sex trafficking?
I asked Bon to take a look at a photo of Mai and see if he would fit in. Obviously, looks weren’t the biggest concern; it was mindset. Mai’s limited English would be an issue, and he would need to pay off the officials since he no longer had a work permit. It wasn’t going to happen.
“Okay, I’m gonna yield the rest of my time to Pop.” Pop shook his head and said he would take me with him. We hummed “How Far I’ll Go” as we walked out of the building.
The second night, I went to explore Khao San Road, one of Bangkok’s busiest streets, filled with rowdy westerners. A man on his bicycle was weaving through the crowd, smiling and filming the scene. “Mai!” I shouted. It was him! I ran over, and he smiled. I took a picture to show Natalie and Pop. I smiled too, knowing that at least on his night out, he seemed content.
