the third sex

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Ton is a great friend to have, someone you can sit and talk to, and who is always happy to round up a few friends for photoshoots.

I told Ton I was sure her cock had grown bigger since I first met her, which was about five years ago. “No!” she said. “I just taking lot of hormones back then. Now not take any hormones at all.” I said I bet she exercised it every day. “Never play with myself when alone,” she said, rather primly.

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.Sergeant Shameless is still at it. He sent me the following item in response to my Village People story a couple of days ago.

One of my favorite farang indulgences is carting off the mamasan of a go-go bar and giving her the old Shameless shafting. Before I go any further, let me clarify for those that have not yet been to Asia, that the “mamasan” is the lady in charge of the bar dancers and waitresses and who monitors their attendance and who they leave with. A mamasan is in someways similar to a “madame” but without the financial claim on the girl’s earnings. From what I have observed, the mamasan is a big-sister figure to most of the girls who generally look up to her with fondness and respect.

Now, I know what you are thinking… Aren’t mamasans older, fatter, worn-out former bargirls? Yep, most of them are. But not all. And that’s where the ol’ Sarge comes in. Some of the mamasans are actually chosen for the position because of their grace and skill. They may not be 18, but they can be in their mid-20s, early 30s and the Sargeant, being an equal-opportunity fornicator, can fully relish the charm of a more refined, higher status love interest.

Perhaps the other farangs in the bar will be impressed if you leave with the top knock-out dancer teeny-bopper… But chances are the rest of the bargirls will be looking at the two of you knowing that you are her third bar fine that night and you are in for a short time so short, the elevator will still be at your floor when she is back in her skimpy outfit, leaving your room, clutching the overpriced fare you agreed to.

If you want to make an impression, pick a bar with a hot mamasan and barfine her. It is easier than you think. They get paid more than the dancers but end up making less than the girls, because they don’t go with customers that often. Many are just plain bored and, like all women, enjoy a guy’s attention. The only thing is that you cannot treat them on the same level as the girls. For example, I never touch them indiscretely or discuss prices for their company.

The next morning (yes, the Sergeant likes longtime) they all feign surprise at my attempt to give them some money, but I insist and they acquiesce. One time, my mamasan left before I got up and had a chance to pay her, but I made sure to return to the bar that night and gave her a small piece of jewellery. In fact, I always return to the bar, because that’s when all the girls look up to me as the guy who fucked the mamasan. No ordinary farang.

You are probably wondering, “What does all this babbling have to do with ladyboys?” Well, some of them happen to be mamasans. A couple of days ago in this here blog, our good Captain wrote a very insightful piece on Patpong and mentioned that a former ladyboy squeeze of his is now the mamasan of one of the bars. Again, some of the ladyboy mamasans are past their prime, and some are hot as hell. The Sergeant here never misses an opportunity to get (literally) into the latter.

In Pattaya, the new craze is for bars to have ladyboy mamasans (gay bars especially). I like to chat them up and if the chemistry is there, invite them bowling, dancing, to X-cite (the kind of live showplace young Thais love), and then for intense, passionate sex the rest of the night.

One word of caution, however. After taking the mamasan, you have to be careful not to take another lady from the same bar the very next time you go there. If you don’t plan on taking the mamasan again, go back a few times and leave alone. Otherwise it will be extremely awkward for both the mamasan and the girl you take and your stock will fall from conqueror-of-the-mamasan to a low-life-one-notch-below-a-bug. (Having said that, I have actually SHAMELESSLY done it!).

To end this piece, let me just share that I dated for a while a gorgeous ladyboy mamasan in Pattaya, who had a just-as-gorgeous deputy mamasan, who used to hang out with us. I had not seen either of them for a while, but last time I was in Pattaya the deputy mamasan had been promoted to mamasan of a new bar. I had always had the hots for her, and one hour after I learned she was working in a new bar, I was leaving that same bar holding hands with the mamasan to the general applause of the girls. One hour later, I was stuck deep to the hilt in the mamasan’s lower intestine.

Shameless and oh! so proud of it.

The Sergeant

The following is an AFP report released on March 19.

“Thailand’s military will stop branding transsexual conscripts as mentally disturbed, and will list them in a new ‘third category’ as neither male nor female, a senior officer has stated.

Thai men are required to report for the draft once they turn 21. Under the current system, transsexuals are rejected as suffering from ‘a mental disorder.’

Gay rights groups have complained that the label penalises transsexuals for the rest of their lives, because men are required to prove if they have completed their national service when they apply for jobs or bank loans. When transsexuals submit their military rejection forms declaring they have a mental disorder, they are automatically disqualified from many jobs and mortgages.

Lieutenant General Somkiat Suthivaiyakij, head of the defence ministry’s Reserve Command Department, said the military would immediately stop using the mental disorder label. The military is trying to find a new word for a ‘third category’ that is neither male nor female, that would not discriminate against transsexuals, he said.

Until the army decides on the new category, transsexual conscripts will be turned away with a form saying they have an illness that cannot be cured within 30 days.

‘It’s a temporary measure to deal with the problem as the defence and interior ministries work on a permanent solution,” Somkiat told AFP.

To qualify for the third category, transsexuals will have to report for the draft for three years in a row to prove they are really trying to live as women, he added.

The annual draft takes place in April, and transsexuals make up less than one percent of the conscripts each year.

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.Taking out-of-town friends around Patpong last week, and seeing the place through the eyes of visitors, I suddenly realised how little it has changed since I first went there, when I was a schoolboy in short trousers (nearly).

The most obvious change since those far off days has been the coming of the street market. I can remember when, before the market, the street was open all night to taxis and tuk-tuks, which would cruise through looking for customers to come out of the bars with their girls.

Looking through the market the other evening, I realised that it probably earns as much for the Patpong family as the bars themselves, because I don’t think you could physically fit any more stalls into the area.

But although bars may come and bars may go, overall there never really seems to be a major change. Safari has not changed one bit in 25 years, and it has always had the best music of any of the Patpong go-go bars. I can remember back to the days when there was only one King’s Castle, rather than the three there are now.

The present-day King’s Castle 3, which of course is now ladyboys-only, was actually the first King’s Castle and was a girlie go-go bar. I used to go in there for happy hour, when I would be almost the only customer present, and I would watch the girls come in and get changed, which because of lack of space most of them had to do in the bar. It was the best free show in town.

Interestingly, the mamasan of the present-day King’s Castle 1 girlie go-go bar, just across the street from the original, is herself a ladyboy and I can remember when she was just a cashier working in the bar. I took her home and had my evil way with her and her deliciously hairy little bottom.

That was a quarter-century ago, and she has never forgotten it. Well, she wouldn’t, would she? But I always get a big smile and a wai when I see her, and although she has transformed over the years from a shy little ladyboy into a ferocious mamasan who scares all the GGs working in the bar, I’m sure she still has a heart of gold.

I’m not exactly certain when KC3 was changed from being a girlie bar into a ladyboy bar, but it would have been some time in the early 1990s. I’m also not sure if it was the first ladyboy bar, because there was another named Limelight, not far away and on the same side of the strip, which flourished during the same period. Limelite started with go-go girls but quickly ladyboy go-go dancers took over. Limelite however disappeared while KC3 flourished.

Elsewhere, many of the restaurants remain unchanged. Mizo, the Japanese-American outlet that was the first ever restaurant to open in Patpong way back in the 1950s, probably hasn’t even been decorated since that time. Tip-Top, the Thai restaurant where the go-go dancers and bar workers often go for a late meal, has recently had its interior changed but still serves good Thai food at very cheap prices.

The Derby King no longer serves the meatloaf that was my mainstay when I used to eat there regularly, but a couple of the staff are there from the early days and they remember me. Likewise at the Thai Room, where I always order Mexican Meal D, and the staff don’t even bother to ask me what I want because I have never had anything else there.

The Patpong Bookshop disappeared a decade ago and has become a music bar, which changed the appearance of that corner of the strip, but otherwise there have been no big changes on that side except for another music bar on the corner of the alley that cuts through to the multi-storey carpark.

On the other side, the pesky luggage shops have taken over some of the bars, notably the Blue Sky Boxing Bar of fond repute. But otherwise, really, it is all still recognisable. There are still a number of smaller bars, one of which offers a small short-time room just above the bar, and which I used to use frequently. You could actually look out into the street while you were on top of the lady of your choice, and see if any of your friends were walking past.

On Patpong 2, there have been very little changes. A slight rejigging of the restaurants where Bobby used to have the monopoly, but that is about all. King’s Garden, which used to be a great unofficial ladyboy venue, has become a rather more sedate music bar.

Foodland, one of Bangkok’s first ever Western-style supermarkets, is completely unchanged in appearance and layout since I first knew it. The Chinese manager has been there ever since I can remember, and greets me cordially whenever he sees me.

This is one of the great things about Patpong. To so many people, it is a big, throbbing red-light district. But underneath all the razzmatazz, it is just a village, and a friendly one at that.

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I wrote on this page recently about ladyboys who seem to have no sense of embarrassment about what clothes they wear during the daytime, and who will happily turn up at my apartment or at a hotel where I am going to photograph them looking as if they have just come off stage at the Crazy Horse.

A few days ago, a girl turned up for a shoot at 1pm in the afternoon. She was wearing a white dress with a see-through top, and no bra. You could see her nipples from 50 yards away. Bearing in mind that this is a commercial complex with crowds of office workers milling around during their lunchbreak, not to mention mothers walking their young kids around, and yours truly felt just a tad conspicuous when he went down to meet her.

This however is far from abnormal. I once met a ladyboy at a Bangkok Skytrain station, and she was bulging bra-less out of her T-shirt and wearing hotpants that advertised the fact she had a permanent hard-on. I recently walked through a hotel lobby during the early afternoon with a ladyboy whose dress hem was not long enough to cover her knickers and whose bottom cheeks were greedily observed by the bellboy right up to the moment the lift doors closed.

The other morning, an apparition materialised in the lobby of my building at noon, wearing a gold lame dress and fishnet tights. She had come straight from a successful cruise of Sukhumvit Road the previous evening and a subsequent spell in the hotel room of a Dutchman. I have driven through Pattaya in a jeep with three ladyboys who have been bra-less beneath their T-shirts and only too happy to prove it to the local lads gawping in from their pickups and motorcycles.

It doesn’t matter if I have the opportunity to issue a warning first about dressing inconspicuously. They don’t listen. The chance to have their photograph taken in seductive poses goes to their heads. There is no answer.

All I can do is adopt an expressionless expression that I hope conveys the impression that there is NOTHING ABNORMAL ABOUT THIS SITUATION, and hope that people will ignore me. As in fact they probably do, as my companion will be grabbing all the attention.