the third sex

Ladyboys, as anyone who has spent any time with them will know, tend to exist in a different time zone to the rest of us.

I mention this because a few nights ago I was woken up at 2:30am by a ladyboy friend knocking at my door. She had recently come up from the South of Thailand to take a job with one of the cabaret shows in Bangkok, and was having trouble with sleeping accommodation. There was no phone call first: she suddenly appeared complete with suitcase, serene in the knowledge that I would probably be wide-awake and ready for a meal and gossip.

She got the accommodation but other than that my response was a grumpy one, especially when an hour later she woke me again demanding I help her look for her script.

Some years ago I fulfilled a fantasy by installing a ladyboy friend, for whom I really had the hots, in a small apartment, keeping her as a mistress, as it were. The apartment was in a little soi near the Chinese embassy, a neat bolthole that I planned to use for afternoon trysts when I could get away from the daily routine.

After she had settled in and I had supplied all the necessities like a TV and a mobile phone, I decided to spend my first night with her. I had visions of a comfortable cuddle and the sheer pleasure of a warm body next to mine, wonderful lazy sex in the morning, and then setting off dutifully for a day in the office.

By 1am, I was ready to go to sleep, and turned off the light. As if on cue, the phone rang. It was two of my girl’s ladyboy friends, who turned up a few minutes later. “Is it okay I go with them eating?” she asked me, and off they went for noodles and gossip. She arrived back at about 4am and decided to listen to some music. By 6am she was ready for bed and I was thinking about getting up. Needless to say, there was no wonderful lazy sex.

Thinking that this might have been just an odd night, I tried sleeping over again a couple of nights later. Just as I was settling down, the phone rang. A few minutes later there came a tap-tap at the door. Her friends had actually been downstairs in the lobby. They had brought food with them. A mat was spread on the floor and the food laid out. I retreated under the bedclothes and tried to sleep while they ate and gossiped.

I did try sleeping over several times afterwards and each time it was the same, with variations. Of course, this had a corollary. Because my girl was awake all night, it followed that she was asleep most of the day. I quickly found that calling from the office before lunchtime was pointless. The afternoons were a bit hit and miss, too. Sometimes she would fall asleep while she was on the phone to me, and I’m not that boring.

When I tried to break the cycle by suggesting she go to beauty school, she pouted. It was too far away. Why not get a job working in a beauty salon? “They wouldn’t pay me enough.” I pointed out it didn’t matter because I already gave her an allowance. Why didn’t she go and see her friends during the daytime? “They asleep.”

The relationship eventually soured, much to my disappointment, because I really liked her. She couldn’t understand why. She simply saw nothing odd about staying up all night and sleeping all day. The fact that other people, me for example, worked daytimes was a foreign notion to her, if she ever thought about it.

Earlier, I mentioned my ladyboy friend from the South. She found a room a couple of days later, and I heaved a sigh of relief when she moved out. But that night, at 1:30am, there was a knock on my door. She had left her hair dryer behind. No, she didn’t think it odd to turn up in the middle of the night to retrieve it.

Despite all the years I have been involved in Thailand’s ladyboy scene, every so often it bowls me a googly.

Recently I did a photoshoot of a ladyboy named Bee. I really liked her, as she was cheeky and funny and urchin-like and pretty. She had taken my phone number and a couple of days later rang to suggest I do a shoot of one of her friends. That’s the way it so often works, friends of friends, so I said sure, yes.

The date and time was arranged and Bee rang me a couple more times, full of excitement, to confirm. And as I suggested, she also rang from the taxi on the appointed day, so I could go down and meet them.

The taxi pulled up and out stepped three people: a ladyboy friend named Ann, who often comes along when I’m doing shoots, and the new model, and a small young guy with cropped hair.

“Where’s Bee?” I asked, mystified.

“I’m Bee!” said the young guy.

I looked, and I looked, and my mouth must have hung open in astonishment. I simply did not recognise the Bee I had so eagerly undressed and photographed a few days previously. The face looked different without makeup, only the smile was the same, and the cropped hair of course changed everything.

“Turn round.” I said. Bee was still wearing the same low-cut jeans she (he?!) had arrived in before, and which had so turned me on because I could see the top of her bottom cleft above them. I could see it now. Just to be sure, when we got to the room I pulled Bee’s jeans down and saw the heart tattooed on her (his!) bum.

Bee, who is 20, explained that he had reverted to being a boy for now, because he has gone back to college and it is one of the few that doesn’t allow female dress by its ladyboy students. “Later I be girl again,” he said.

All this reminded me of an experience of a few years back. I had been sitting having an innocent drink in Patpong when I saw a young ladyboy going up the steps to one of the upstairs bars. She had a cute little smile and a ponytail, and she wore a little tennis skirt, white ankle socks and trainers. Just my type. She saw me looking, flipped up her skirt to show her knickers, and then fled up the steps giggling. I went after her.

That was the beginning of an intense relationship. Kwan was a little sex fiend, all the more irresistible because of her Lolita looks and her knock-knee’d schoolgirl stance. I couldn’t get enough of her, and the affair went on for months. But then we drifted, as these things do, and eventually she disappeared.

Early one evening about a year later I was walking up Silom Road to Patpong and as I was passing the bus stop two young guys, obviously gays, got off a bus. One of them, a weedy looking boy with a rabbity grin, approached me and greeted me by name. I was totally mystified until he said, “It’s me – Kwan!”

There was no trace of the Kwan I had known. He told me he had decided to go back to being a boy, and that he was now working in a gay bar in Soi Twilight. He told me the name of the place and invited me to go along later. But the sexual heat had gone along with the ladyboy illusion, and I never did take up the offer.

There is more to someone becoming a ladyboy than simply donning female clothes and putting on makeup. I was photographing a ladyboy the other afternoon and although she was well madeup, and a nice enough person, she still had a distinct masculinity about her. As I worked at the pictures, I tried to analyse it.

She was shapely, and slim, and had almost no body hair. So it wasn’t her size and build that was causing it. She moved well, in a feminine and non-exaggerated way, so it wasn’t that. Her voice was pleasantly pitched, so it wasn’t that.

Somehow she had not managed to shed her masculine aura. I can’t define it. At what point does a person cease to be male and become a member of the third sex?

I have said it here before, that being with a ladyboy, the best of them anyway, is not like being with a guy. It really is almost, but not quite, like being with a genetic girl. Unless you have tried being with a ladyboy, it is very hard to explain.

I remember being at a beach resort in Phuket late last year, sitting at the beachfront bar. There was a ladyboy working there, and also a gay guy. The guy, who was very effeminate, was actually better looking than the ladyboy. But I had no interest in him at all – it was her I couldn’t take my eyes off.

There is an uncanny way that ladyboys have of losing their masculinity. It just somehow slips away. But they can get it back again. I have seen Bee several times since the transformation. Each time, he was becoming more masculine. The first time after the haircut he had still been very effeminate, but inside the space of two months he has become almost like any other young guy, too loud, too pushy, and with a distinctly unfeminine swagger.

Whereas I had found Bee a real turn-on as a girl, as a guy I find him, to be perfectly honest with you, just another guy.

A ladyboy friend was telling me recently how she travels down to Singapore and hustles for business there. Many Thai LBs and GGs do this, Most go overland, because although the cost of an air ticket is not high (the flight takes about two hours) they are trying to make money rather than spend it. So they usually take the bus, travelling down to the Thai border town of Haad Yai, where they then board another bus that will take them through the Malaysian peninsula and over the border to Singapore.

As these are all ASEAN countries entry is easy enough, but the Singapore authorities are fully aware of what the girls are up to and will often issue a visa for only a few days, especially if there are several other Singapore chops in the passport.

Once on the island she heads for Orchard Towers, a shopping mall on Orchard Road, the heart of tourist country. This is one of Singapore’s great pick-up joints, and although the island does have recognised red-light areas, where prostitution is legal, the odd thing about Orchard Towers is that unlike the others it is right in the heart of tourist country and it does not appear to be “official”. However, so well known is the place for pickups that all the taxi drivers know it as the Four Floors of Whores, and the police don’t appear to show any interest in the goings-on there.

I’ve been knocking around Singapore for a good many years, and I can remember both the old Tropicana, a bar-come-disco that was opposite the Hyatt Regency Hotel, and of course Bugis Street; if you wanted a girl you went to the Tropicana, and if you wanted a ladyboy you went to Bugis Street.

Orchard Towers seems to combine the attractions of both these long-gone venues. If you are looking for it on foot, it is at the top end of Orchard Road, right next door to the Thai Embassy. It is a two-block commercial development, with a four-floor shopping mall that is crammed with the usual kind of places such as tailor shops, electronic goods retailers and so on. What you scarcely realise if you visit daytime is that amongst all these outfits is a vast number of pubs, bars and discos. They don’t open until 5pm, which is when the Four Floors of Whores dramatically changes aspect.

Enter any of the entertainment venues and you will find GGs hanging around looking for business, and at a large number of them you will also find ladyboys. And it is not just the Thais, either, for you will also find Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino and even Singaporean ladyboys. More nationalities too, I suspect, if you really start looking: a friend told me he found a Mongolian GG on his last visit, so now I won’t rest until I’ve found a Mongolian ladyboy.

For the girls, of both kinds, the attraction is the money they can make, especially when the fleet is in town, but even during an average period because of the huge number of tourists and business visitors who gravitate to Orchard Road: many of them unaware, until they stumble into the mall for a few drinks, of just what is available there.

My ladyboy friend told me that business can be really good. The going rate for a short-time usually starts at 150 Singapore dollars (US$92 or 3,600 Thai baht) and easily goes up to double that, depending on how attractive and how smart she is. If she gets an all-nighter of course it is even better. Compare this to the 1,000-2,000 baht she can expect for a short-time if she is bought out from a Bangkok bar, and where she is surrounded by intense competition, and you can see that the milkrun down to Orchard Road is well worthwhile.

My ladyboy friend called me back a couple of nights ago, sounding very happy. She was back in Bangkok. “Many, many customers!” she bubbled with excitement. Then she told me she was in hospital in Bangkok, and had just had the operation. She had been saving a long time for this, but the money she made in Singapore had doubled her savings, and having made provisional arrangements with the doctor before she went away she had been able to check in as soon as she got back.

“Now I really lady” she told me over the phone, sounding so content that although I preferred her the way she was, I felt delighted for her. I only hope that she doesn’t feel let down after, when she realises that guys prefer their ladyboys to be fully equipped.

But then, when you look at it, a ladyboy has only a limited shelf life. This girl is already 26. She is attractive, but not sensationally so – her real attraction is her lovely bubbly personality and her fondness for jokes. So, unless she attempts to move into the female mainstream now, what is she going to be doing by the time she is 30?

This is the conundrum facing ladyboys. We see only the gorgeous, alluring third-sex creature. They see a whole lifetime fraught with potential difficulties and rejection.

Anyway, just in case you thought Singapore was boring, it isn’t.

Seldom do you find any kind of rational and unbiased discussion about ladyboys in the mainstream media, so I was particularly interested to see a brief item in a recent issue of Thailand Timeout, written by their Agony Uncle, Dr Feelgood.

A reader had written in to say that during a visit to a Bangkok bar, he had been fooled into thinking that a ladyboy was a GG. The problem was, said the reader, he actually felt attracted to her.

I don’t know who Dr Feelgood is, but he is a very perceptive writer. I’m quoting directly from his answer.

“Thai kathoeys can be split usefully into three groups. The first, probably the most numerous, consists of those who are readily identifiable as male. Now I suppose if you were attracted to this type, you would have to be at least bisexual – but then it’s unlikely you would be unaware of this before arriving in Thailand.

“The second group, also quite numerous, are kathoeys who don’t appear masculine exactly, but have that distinctive ‘ladyboy look’ about them. Kathoeys of this type give some real meaning to the notion of the ‘third sex’.There’s no doubt that some of them can be very beautiful, but I don’t think too many people would readily confuse them with girls. I have no idea how sexual attraction to them should be categorised – it’s a species that doesn’t really exist in the West, and I don’t think Western languages and ideas about sexuality are adequate to deal with it.

“The third group is probably the smallest – ladyboys who really do look like girls. Some of these are quite astonishingly convincing. They can be very beautiful and very sexy.

“Now I would define attraction to this third group as wholly heterosexual in nature. You think you are dealing with a gorgeous young female and you respond accordingly. Matters become a little more complicated if you then discover that ’she’ is really ‘he’ but remain attracted. But lust is a primitive mental function, one that has absolutely nothing to do with the cognitive faculties.

“I’m amazed that so many foreign men get their knickers in such a terrible twist about this. Almost any straight Thai guy, fooled by a kathoey, will just laugh and treat the matter as of no consequence whatever.

“You are not gay. And from what you say, you are not ‘bi’ in any meaningful sense either. This just isn’t worth all the angst.”

The other day I was in a five-star hotel in Bangkok, attending a function, when I realised that two of the hotel girls taking care of the guests in the meeting room were in fact ladyboys.

Most of the guests were from overseas and quite possibly unaware of the ladyboy phenomenon, and I amused myself for a while trying to picture their reaction if they discovered what was under those neat hotel uniforms.

The two ladyboys themselves were behaving in a very demure manner, and it was only my enhanced ladyboy vision that picked them out. I watched them, and they knew that I knew, but nothing apart from some inviting sideways glances came out of the encounter.

But I did get to thinking how ladyboys are moving more and more into the mainstream. Pictured on the main site are many students, and they are not all studying beauty and fashion, two of the traditional industries in which mainstream ladyboys make a living. Some are studying marketing, travel and hospitality, accounting, business administration, and other subjects that for want of a better word can be described as totally straight.

1This means that when they leave college or university, they will be well qualified to find mainstream jobs, and embark upon the kind of well-paid, well-respected career that is increasingly open to young Thais, as the country’s economy develops.

The other day I was in the back office of another five-star hotel, and found a ladyboy holding a job of considerable responsibility in the management team. I went into a bank a week or so ago, and one of the tellers was a ladyboy.

I recently saw a ladyboy as a sales agent in a real estate company, and I have seen ladyboy tour guides and travel agent counter staff. I have a ladyboy friend who teaches dance and drama at a junior school, and another who is greatly enjoying her career with one of the big IT distributors. She was offered the job when she left uni, and her employers obviously think well of her, because they fly her around Thailand to deal with corporate customers on a face-to-face basis.

In other words, the acceptance is growing. A few years ago, the idea of a ladyboy holding a job in which she dealt with the public on a regular basis would have been a bit far-fetched.

This is all very heartening. Of course, there is no reason at all why a person of the third sex should not have a satisfying and well respected career. Only prejudice. But with the increasing number of ladyboys in Thailand, and the fact that so many of them are opting for further education, perhaps it is inevitable.