the third sex

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I couldn’t resist it.

I have just had out-of-town friends staying here in Bangkok. These are a lady in late middle age, and her 30-year-old daughter. Both thoroughly nice, respectable British people who know nothing much about Bangkok’s seamier side, never having been here before. I took them round some of the usual tourist places, and then a couple of evenings ago suggested a dinner in Patpong, a tour of the night market, and a couple of drinks at a music bar.

During our stroll through the night market, they glimpsed through open doorways some of the action going on in a couple of girlie go-go bars. During the visit to the music bar, they voiced an interest in a closer look at the go-go, so I took them into King’s Castle 1 and we sat down and they were gobsmacked at the beauty of the girls and at, as I carefully explained to them, the fact that any punter could take any of the girls he wanted. But they were far from horrified, and they enjoyed the visit.

As we sat there, I weighed up in my mind the likely consequences of what I planned to do next. Either they would be disgusted, or they would be intrigued. Either way, it would make a good story for them when they got back home.

So without any explanation beyond saying there was somewhere else I thought they should see, I took them across the way and into KC3, Patpong’s premier ladyboy bar. We sat down and ordered drinks. “What do you think of the girls in this place?” I asked casually.

The two ladies looked. “Beautiful, the same as in the other bar,” they said.

“Well,” I said, savouring the moment. “There isn’t a single girl here. These are all boys. Or, to be more precise, ladyboys.”

For a moment, I really was afraid they would topple off their bar stools, as they craned their heads upwards at the girls dancing on the little stage that is in the centre of the bar. There were about a dozen ladyboys dancing, with of course many more around the bar. The place was pretty full with customers. It was a good night in KC3.

“Goodness me!” they chorused. And from then on, the two ladies were utterly fascinated. It certainly is going to be a story they will be telling for a long time after they return to England.

But they were intrigued, and not at all put out by the experience. “How do you tell them apart from real girls?” they asked.

“That’s easy,” I replied. “The ladyboys are the most beautiful. The others are just girls.”

Of course, they never did find out my preference for ladyboys. I was afraid that some of the girls in KC3 might make it obvious that they knew me, as I have seen a good many of them with their pants down, but they behaved almost demurely. For a change.

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There are several students on this site who have been photographed in their own college uniforms, because they have cut classes to come along for the photoshoot. Whenever this happens, and a young ladyboy turns up wearing female school uniform, I think to myself, where else in the world does this happen other than Thailand?

Most of the colleges now allow ladyboy students to dress as girls. In truth, I think the education authorities have had little choice in the matter. The enormous volume of teenage ladyboys means that every educational establishment has a significant number of ladyboy students, and to allow them to dress in female uniform probably works to the advantage of teacher-student relations and consequently of scholastic achievements.

As to the increase in young people opting for the ladyboy lifestyle, I have written about this before and although I can put forward a number of theories, each of which is probably valid in certain circumstances, I still can’t quite grasp the real underlying factor.

I refuse to believe there are such a large number of transgendered people in one country, and so the reasons must be social, political and economic. Yet Thailand’s problems are not restricted to Thailand, and similar can be found in other Asian countries.

There are other countries in the region that have a ladyboy culture, notably the Philippines, Indonesia and even Japan, but nowhere is it as prevalent as in Thailand, where it could now be considered endemic.

I often ask the younger Thai ladyboys why they became ladyboys, and many of them say they made the choice before puberty. I met 13-year-olds who were taking female hormones. But as to pinpointing exactly why they have made the decision, I am probably as far away from understanding it all as I ever was.

As to the schools, they have a genuine dilemma. While the colleges and universities usually provide separate facilities for their ladyboy students, such as toilets and changing rooms, the pre-college level schools – particularly the city schools – tend to have less space to do this. The ladyboys often therefore find themselves joining in with the girls, and generally having to make their own arrangements to avoid mutual embarrassment.

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She was on her hands and knees, with her bare bottom in the air. “What you want me to do now?” she asked. I scratched my head. There had to be an answer, but I simply put the camera down and told her to take a five-minute break.

“Don’t you want me?” she asked slyly, a delicate hand snaking out for my zipper. I withdrew modestly. She was attractive, but not my type. A bit too pushy, a bit too big and noisy. She came after me, tugging at my zip. But I really didn’t feel any attraction. I didn’t actually want to do anything but finish the photoshoot.

She pouted. “You don’t like me.”

You are a very nice model, I told her. Your photos look good. Here … And I grabbed the camera and quickly wheeled through the shots we had taken. That did the job. She became enchanted by her own image, and I wriggled out of a situation that I did not want to be in.

When I tell people that I don’t have sex with the models during a shoot, they look at me as if I’m slightly bonkers. Well, I wouldn’t deny that. But the fact is, I don’t. If I like a model, I arrange to see her later. But getting halfway through a photoshoot and then giving up and hopping into the sack is not what I’m there for. I need to get photo sets. I would never get any pictures done if I behaved like that.

Nor is it a case of making myself, or part of myself, into an element of the pictures. When I look at photos from other sites, if I see a big penis extending from the lower part of the frame and into my fantasy, I switch right off. I’m very happy to see as many ladyboy cocks as I can, but a photographer pushing his dick and his beer belly into the shot is an instant turnoff.

The funny thing is, that when I’m taking the photos, I’m very single minded. I don’t actually want to have sex, I want to get the job done. Although this might surprise a lot of people, I do have a lot of self-discipline. Besides, I certainly don’t lead a sex-starved existence. I am surrounded by ladyboys, and a phone call will have one of them in my apartment within the hour. So, I’m alright, Jack.

Years ago, when I was a student, I studied art at night school. One of the biggest attractions about this for me was the figure drawing classes, when a model would be hired for the evening and come in and disrobe for us. At the age of 18 or 19, and bursting with hormones, I used to go hot with desire if the model was a young and attractive one. Even if she was not that attractive, quite frankly.

I also used to disbelieve the stories that I read about photographers who specialised in glamour work, and how they primly kept their hands off the models when they were doing the shoots. But now I can understand. I have also in my career done food photography. You don’t eat what is on the table, no matter how hungry you may be: you take the photographs.

Ladyboy photography is like sex, in a way. You get the model to undress, you flatter her, coax her to get a hard-on, then you photograph her having an orgasm. After she has done that, she doesn’t feel the need for sex. Maybe I do. So, as I say, I reach for my phone and an hour later….