the third sex

There is a girl, a little dumpling of a country girl, who works at a restaurant in my apartment complex. She is, I think, a school leaver, as she is too young to do the waiting at table: she just brings the food out from the kitchen to the serving staff. But she is fascinated by me.

I watch her coming out from the kitchen area carrying a big tray full of Thai food, and I see her eyes light upon me. And she looks, and looks, and looks.

Now, normally I would put this down to my devastating handsomeness and personal magnetism. But even I have to admit there might be a darker reason. I am sure that this little girl – a GG, by the way – has heard that I am a pervert.

This is not fanciful thinking. Within this very large complex there have been a good many ladyboys over the past few years, and I have photographed them all. That kind of story spreads. In addition, of course, I have a revolving door of ladyboys for photography and for fun, and if I were to imagine that the people who work in the building think I just have rather a lot of girlfriends, I would be fooling myself.

In other words, everyone here knows what I do. From this little girl’s restaurant alone I have taken two staff members who went from being rather gauche young boys into fully-fledged, gorgeous ladyboys. So they all certainly know me, and what I am.

The girl isn’t afraid of me. In fact she delivers takeaway food to the apartments and we occasionally share a lift. She beams at me. But anyway, I’m a non-threatening type of person, and my reputation as Mr Nice Guy seems pretty assured around the complex.

I think she simply regards me as a friendly neighbourhood degenerate. The kind of person that she has heard about, and been warned about. And now here is one of them! And he is eating in her restaurant! Who knows what might happen!

Or maybe I’m just being paranoid. Well, you would be paranoid too if everyone was talking about you. But although the local people in my complex might know about me, the people I work with or hang out with donít. There is this fact that I do lead something of a double life, because I necessarily have to keep a low profile, doing what I do. Pornography is not allowed here. So on the one hand Iím a normal outgoing kind of person, but on the other hand there is an enormous depth that I have to keep hidden.

I get invited out to receptions and dinner parties, and I usually go on my own, not from lack of company but from lack of the kind of company that would be acceptable. People must assume Iím a bit of a loner, or even that Iím gay, but Iím neither.

Then again, Iím sure a lot of people wonder why I appear to be so busy. Iím always rushing off somewhere, always spending hours in front of the computer screen, always getting calls on my mobile, always having people to meet. Yet I canít talk about any of it.

I get old friends coming up to me and asking what Iím doing these days, and I just say, oh, the same old thing. Havenít seen you around much recently, they say. And I reply that things have been pretty hectic, a lot of travel, and so on.

This strange double life extends even to outward appearances. To the casual observer, the man sitting in his local Starbucks with a laptop computer and a mug of cappucino is an ordinary businessman, albeit a devilishly handsome one, no doubt working on a new contract or emailing his corporate headquarters. What they donít realise is, that Iím using the coffee shop wi-fi system to transmit pictures to the website, and that a few hundred photographs of ladyboys doing the most disgraceful things are passing through the air around them.

Many years ago, when I was living in England and going through a failing marriage, I started an affair with a married girl living in the neighbourhood. On the surface we were just good friends, but at night I would slip out and under the cover of darkness, away from the prying eyes of the community, approach her house through the back paths. I found all this very nearly as exciting as being in bed with her. Heh, I suppose Iím just naturally duplicitous.

Writing in the last entry about watching a boy morph into a ladyboy, and at which point the feminine clicked in enough for me to cease being an observer and to have my evil way with her, brought to mind another instance, where a ladyboy I knew had a sister, a genetic girl. The two looked very much alike. They both had dark-honey skin and big eyes, and they both had wide cheekbones and the same kind of mouth, the top lip being a mite larger than the bottom lip. Their looks were very sensuous. Both were in fact very lovely people. I became consumed with the idea of taking them both, at separate times, to see how they responded between the sheets and to compare notes, purely for scientific interest, of course.

The ladyboy was first. She hadn’t yet become all that feminine, and still had a lot of boy about her. I found her to be incredibly sexy. She was physically small and light, but she had an enormous wanger. It sprang into life when you as much as looked at it, and she could really shoot a load. She was shy until we started, whereupon she became this little demon, ready for anything and with an explosive quality that left us both drained by the end of the afternoon.

Sis, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as shy. Physically she was about the same height as her sibling, but was much lighter in weight. Her skin was even softer and warmer and more velvety. She, of course, didn’t have a wanger at all. She had the sweetest little body, almost hairless, and she let me do whatever I wanted.

The big difference for me was, that I found the ladyboy to be sexual dynamite while I found the sister to be warm and loving but ultimately just another girl. However, and I say this with some emphasis, once the business was over with the ladyboy I was happy for her to go home. The genetic girl I could have fallen in love with, and in fact I very nearly did. I could have set up a home with her, had kids, and done all the things that “normal” people do. With the ladyboy, it was pure, total sex.

How does that translate into my everyday life? I think that for me it divides the ladyboy/GG attraction. I would never envisage settling down with one ladyboy. With the right GG, I could. Although, to be perfectly honest, I’ve tried it before a few times and it never worked. Sexually, it was never enough. The melding of boy and girl, the sexual rush you get with a ladyboy, is on a different level to your experience with a GG. Once you experience them they become an important part of your life.

Watching a boy morph into a ladyboy is a fascinating experience. I have seen it happen many times. I can remember one spectacular example of a young boy who worked at a Patpong bar I used to visit. He was clearly effeminate, but was regarded as manly enough to heave the beer crates around and do other work that the GGs didn’t want to do, such as swabbing the floor.

I watched with great interest over the months how he grew his hair and began to wear makeup. He was good looking as a male, but not strikingly so. You would have looked at him as being an everyday sort, about five-eight, strongly built, and pleasant to speak to. The makeup began with a little eyeshadow and lipstick, but was not overwhelming.

The bar was a large open-sided one, and the attraction for me was the band that came on at 8 o’clock and opened up with some classic twangy rock’n'roll instrumentals. I would call in on my way home from the office a few evenings during the week and have a couple of drinks while I listened to the music. But as my young friend transformed I started coming in a little earlier, so that I could watch him.

The makeup became a little more elaborate and the hair became longer, the mannerisms and gestures became more feminine. I decided to switch the relationship from being on smiling terms to a conversational level. It was easier, because the bar operator switched him from doing odd jobs into serving drinks. I asked if he was taking female hormones and he said no, he wasn’t. The change was an inner one. He had wanted to be a ladyboy but while he was at school it wasn’t possible. This was his first job, and his first opportunity to become the person he wanted to be.

Gradually, I found that he was turning from being a person I could watch with an observer’s eye into somebody increasingly desirable.

He had only ever worn the routine uniform of t-shirt and jeans, but one evening she (at this point the sexual orientation seemed to change) arrived wearing a short little black dress. I pounced.

Within 15 minutes we were inside a short-time hotel and it was an explosive experience. Afterwards, she said “you the first farang man for me.” And we continued with an affair that even know makes me hot and bothered when I think about it.

Still the transformation continued. She developed a preference for kinky wear, such as long black boots and black leather. I didn’t mind, although even I found it a little disconcerting to walk through Patpong with her on our way to another evening of frenzy. After all, I do know a lot of people in this town, and a lot of people know me.

In her high heels she was almost six foot. The makeup now had become distinctive, pale with bright lipstick. She wore little dresses with fishnet stockings, or tight leather pants with chains around the waist. After several months she had outgrown the rather homely bar she worked for, and went onto cabaret. I imagine that she did well. She was classic cabaret material. I lost track of her, unfortunately. I would love to know what eventually happened to her.

So, at what point did she cease to be a boy and become a ladyboy? It was the little black dress. I can remember it now. It came to just below the knicker-line. In my mind that was the trigger-point.

At this stage she was still quite boyish. In the hotel room I lifted the dress to see white knickers underneath, and then the dress came off slowly to reveal a taught body with a tight bottom and an enormous erection. She radiated sex, yet the signals were so mixed: the beautifully made-up face and thick black hair, the girlish gestures and the boyish body. She was a boy who wanted to be a girl. A girl with the sexual drive of a boy. A boy with a girl’s face. A girl with something huge and thick and hot that a girl shouldn’t have.

For me, it was lust. Lust is not always a respecter of sexual boundaries. But I suppose it does sometimes need some pretty packaging.

Thailand’s ladyboy shows may have reached epic proportions with places such as Tiffany’s, Alcazar and Golden Dome, but their traditions go way back into history and were always very much a family show. The small travelling cabaret can still be found in Bangkok and many other cities throughout the country.

Shortly before Christmas I had photographed a ladyboy named Jenny. I hadn’t met her before; she just turned up as a friend of a friend. I got talking to Jenny and found out that her father is also a ladyboy, and that she has a 13-year-old ’sister’ who is a ladyboy too. Together they form the nucleus of a travelling ladyboy cabaret show that performs at temple fairs and community parties around Bangkok.

I came to know Jenny better as a friend, as she is a genuinely nice person, and in due course I met 13-year-old Toppi, and also their father, who if seen out in the street would pass for a middle-aged woman. The invitation was always there for me to go and see one of the cabaret shows, but they always seemed to be too far away, either on the other side of the river or at some other impractical location in this sprawling, traffic-choked city.

Then the other afternoon Jenny called to say that there was a show on that very evening, and at a location near to where I live. I had been away travelling for a week and had only just arrived home from the airport, so on the one hand all I wanted to do was get changed and relax. But on the other hand, the chance to see the show so close to home was one I didn’t want to miss. The family called for me at 7pm, and we piled into a taxi and off we went.

The venue was by the river, down a tiny little alley leading off Charoen Krung, the oldest road in Bangkok. We waited on the kerb for the other members of the troupe to arrive, and within a few minutes they turned up carrying their bags of clothes and props. So narrow was the alley that we had to walk along it in single file. Houses and fences hemmed us in, the pathway twisted and turned, and we could hear the sounds of the river only yards away. Then we came to the end of the alley, where there was a little courtyard surrounded by houses. This was to be their stage.

This was a community party arranged for the eve of Songkran, the Thai New Year. The next two days were a public holiday, and after that was the weekend. The community that lives in and around this alley were going to enjoy themselves and they had booked a band that was to play on through until the early hours. The community leaders to add a little extra spice to the evening had booked the family cabaret.

A timber house acted as a changing room for the cast, and as a rather large farang crammed into a 10-foot square room with eight ladyboys and the residents of the house, on a night when the temperature was about 35 degrees centigrade, and with an excited crowd pressing up against the doorway, I did my best to be a fly on the wall, I really did.

The performers were a very mixed bunch. Father no longer dances since he was injured in a road accident. Jenny and a couple of other girls were the glamour. There were a couple of clowns, middle-aged masculine men, although one had silicon breasts. And there was Toppi; the undisputed star of the show, not yet five foot tall and every inch the showgirl.

I watched as the makeup went on and the cast were transformed. Then I moved out into the crowd, who sat on the ground or perched on the river wall. I realised that this is how the now-famous Thai ladyboy cabaret shows must have started. Although Tiffany’s began the modern phenomenon, there have been transvestite performers in Thailand throughout history. They too would have played at temple fairs and village fetes, and so Jenny’s family were simply carrying on an age-old tradition.

There is a formula to ladyboy shows. You have the glamorous dancers performing traditional Siamese dance, and then you have a clown act. Then there is lip-syncing to a couple of popular songs, and another clown act, followed by a grand finale. The audience were in raptures, right from the moment the first dancers appeared with tiny little Toppi in the centre. The clowns of course drew huge laughter and applause with their ribald act. I found myself laughing aloud.

Payment for the cabaret comes out of community funds, but the audience also likes to tip performers, calling them across during their act to hand over banknotes, usually 20 baht (50 cents), or even running onto the stage to hand the money over.

Then the show was over, the performers were back into their street clothes within 10 minutes, and in a final burst of goodwill and cheering we were making our way back down the alley to Charoen Krung, to find taxis. As a family evening out, it had certainly been a little different.

I was telling a friend how once, about ten years ago, I had lived for a few months with a ladyboy in Bangkok, and that the affair hadn’t lasted because she had such a hot temper that we were always fighting. “Didn’t you realise that before you moved in together?” he asked me. I said I had. “So why did you do it?” he asked. Well, I replied, rather lamely: she was so sexy.

He gave a snort of derision. “You were thinking with your dick,” he said.

I couldn’t deny it. But it was more than that. I genuinely cared for her. In fact, in the early days it was as close to the Real Thing that I am probably capable of getting.

Yes, I knew she was mad and bad. But we had also shared some beautiful times together, and I really thought there was a good chance that with a full relationship, plus the fact that she was only 18 and had some maturing to do, we could really make a go of it.

Of course there was the age difference, and the fact that ladyboys change immensely from their late teens onwards. But I just wanted to take the moment, selfishly. Later was later. I also knew I could help her in her ambition to go to university. Her family were dirt-poor, living off the land, and without help she didn’t have a chance.

She was from the Deep South, and Thais from the Central, Northern and Eastern regions are very wary of their Southern cousins. Ethnically they are hard to define: there is a fine cocktail of Malay and Indian mixed in with many Southern Thais, along with Burmese and Chinese blood. And of course, as events are currently illustrating all too well, the South is an uneasy place, prone to exploding into violence.

My ladyboy friend’s beauty was typically Southern, with big wide eyes that had a touch of Indian to them, and skin a perfect milk chocolate colour. But her hot temper was well and truly Southern also, and it was irrational. As for me, I had long gone past the stage where I was going to take nonsense from anyone, least of all an 18-year-old ladyboy. We fought, from the earliest days.

I rented a small apartment for us in a suburb of Bangkok, near a canal that leads into the city centre, so I was able to commute by boat every day. The building was a new one, nicely managed. I felt we had a pleasant home.

Her beauty was such that she could pass for a girl, without even wearing any makeup. I took her on holiday to a five-star hotel in Chiang Mai, and she attracted only awe-struck admiration. In fact at the airport, waiting for our luggage, a young guy tried to give her his phone number while I was collecting a trolley, but she regally ignored him. I took her to smart restaurants, and I carefully introduced her to friends. At least two of them fell for her, and one of them still asks me from time to time, “Do you still see that gorgeous Southern girl?”

But she was all mine. Back in the apartment she would strip slowly and parade in front of me completely nude, one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever seen, a slight figure with little hormonal breasts, a pert bottom, and something long and heavy that swung languorously between her legs as she walked. And of course those big, dreamy eyes, innocent yet lascivious.

Still, we fought. I discovered that she was the most selfish person on the planet. Any remonstration on my part, such as when she ran up a phone bill equal to our monthly rent, or used my cellphone until the battery ran down, or spent an entire allowance on makeup, would be met by an explosion of rage. This was followed by a period of sweetness, but soon the cycle became so predictable it was wearing.

Her temper went beyond words. I quickly learned to hide the paperknife. I developed a pattern of bruises on my arms from fending off heavy objects. After one argument I went and sat outside on the balcony only to find that she had locked the balcony door and gone out. Luckily there were window slats that I could remove and reach the key to let myself in, and I treasured her expression when she came back and found me inside again, nonchalantly reading a book.

But, as I say, it was all going too far. Once she threw a vase at me, and it bounced off my head. I’m not particularly into spanking, but I thought that’s what she might need, so I threw her face down on the bed and reddened her bare bottom. She went out of the room hissing with rage, and came back a bit later to throw my shoes out of the window (we were nine floors up). So it wasn’t that.

I think we lasted five months. By the end of that time we were becoming dangerous. The neighbours had complained, and the manager of the building was beginning to become considerably less friendly towards me than he had been.

I cursed myself for getting into the situation in the first place, but this was the time of the Asian financial crash and it was a bleak period in my life. So I ended the relationship and we moved out, and curiously my luck changed for the better immediately.

As for the girl, we became good friends, and remain so to this day. I kept my promise and put her through university: she kept her promise and got a good degree, and she now has a satisfying career. I’m happy I went through the experience, but I wouldn’t want to do it again.