the third sex

A friend of mine in town for the past week or so and eagerly exploring Nana Plaza was puzzled by the sight of ladyboy clowns, who he saw wandering around the courtyard area. He asked me what they actually did.

I said that they would be putting on a show in one of the bars, and I’m not sure which one but it might be Hollywood. A girlie bar, anyway, because they are crowded: ladyboy bars attract an altogether different audience.

I added that ladyboy clowns, like ladyboys themselves, have a long tradition in Thailand. You can find them at temple fairs, at the nightclub-style cafes and, of course, at ladyboy cabarets. No doubt they go all the way back to the royal court entertainment of the days of Old Siam.

The clowns themselves are not necessarily ladyboys, but in appearance are somewhere between clown and drag queen: blacked-out teeth, big black nostrils, awesome wigs.

I have seen many of these acts over the years, and they can be extremely good. One of the funniest was at a talent show in the Ramkamhaeng district of Bangkok. The clown stood at a microphone, simpering, and started lip-syncing to a pop song. The joke was that something went wrong with the tape player and the music speeded up, and the clown tried to keep up with the pretence that he was miming to the increasingly frenetic song.

Best of all though was a double act that I saw in a ladyboy cabaret booked for a community party in Bangkok a few years ago. As I knew the performers, I was invited into the changing room before the show, where I tried desperately to pretend I wasn’t watching the ladyboys undressing and getting into their costumes. Instead I watched the two clowns putting on their makeup.

These were two middle-aged men, not in the least effeminate, although one had silicon breasts. Made-up, the one with breasts played the part of the woman, although with huge rubber genitalia sticking out the top of his pants. The other was made up as a man.

Out on the stage, the joke was that the man was trying to woo the woman, not seeing the enormous rubber cock that somehow got rammed into his face and his bottom at every opportunity, and on one occasion even using it as a peg to hang his jacket. The crowd fell about laughing, and I laughed so hard that tears came into my eyes. It was a brilliant performance.

So, if you are in Thailand and get the opportunity to catch one of these acts, I urge you to do so. A good one is unforgettable.

My maid told me a funny story yesterday, about one of the ladyboys who appears on the main site. The ladyboy is a close friend of her family and is, my maid says, a very kind and good person. A real lady, she says.

Anyway, the ladyboy has her own small apartment and her Thai boyfriend is living there with her. They are both in their early 20s. The boyfriend does no work, living off the earnings of the ladyboy, who gives him pocket money. This arrangement appears to have been initiated by the ladyboy herself, although the boyfriend does not appear to object.

But he does not enjoy a life of luxury. He does all the housework, and the shopping, and the cooking and the laundry. Further, the agreement is that when the ladyboy wants to bring a john back home for a few hours, the boyfriend has to make himself scarce. Yet the boyfriend is not allowed to bring girls, boys or ladyboys back home and is in fact forbidden any other relationships.

“Everything upside down”, said my maid, who finds the whole thing hilarious. Then for good measure adding her usual refrain: “Thai man no good.”

Now, I have on occasions voiced my own opinion of the average Thai male, and out of respect for your delicate ears I will not repeat it here. But, essentially, my views are along the same lines as those of my maid.

She went on to say that this is a familiar pattern amongst Thai girls who work the bars and, increasingly, amongst ladyboys and also gay boys who work the sex trade. They all lead busy lives and need someone at home to keep the place running. A boyfriend who is happy to be a househusband appears to be the growing norm.

My maid added that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find completely straight young men these days. This is the feedback she gets from her very wide circle of friends. If you see a handsome young guy, she says, he is likely to be either gay or bisexual.

I asked her the old question I have asked on so many occasions: why, why, why are there so many ladyboys in Thailand?

She shrugged. Even she does not know. Many make the choice for commercial reasons, she says, but with many others it is natural and is detected early. A few weeks ago on this blog I mentioned her nephew, who is nine years old and who the family is convinced will grow up to be a ladyboy. The signs are all there, they say. Personally, whenever I have met the lad he seems perfectly nice and polite and normal. But, of course, there is no way I could tell from a casual observation.

I wonder if it is something in the Thai water supply?

I was walking through one of Bangkok’s biggest shopping malls with a ladyboy friend, a very cute little girl who no one would ever in a million years believe was a ladyboy if they saw her out in the street.

I was enjoying the sensation. My girl was wearing a very pretty skirt and she had only the lightest of makeup. If anyone looked at her at all, it was with admiration. Only I knew what was underneath that skirt: an eager little dick that was always ready for action, and the smoothest sweetest little bottom you could wish for.

The more I thought about it as we sauntered through the Saturday afternoon crowds, the more aroused I became. I kept looking at her bare legs and at the way she walked. She was a little doll.

We were on the second floor of the mall, and I needed an ATM. There were a couple of machines outside the door, where you went through to the multi-storey carpark, so we went there and I withdrew some cash. I noticed just a few yards away a recessed area in the wall, and as we reached it I stopped and manoeuvred my girl so that she had her back to the carpark. There was no one to see what we were doing, so ever so discretely I slipped my hand down the front of her panties and pulled her dick out, planning to give her a quick squeeze before we resumed our shopping.

She gave a sigh, placed her hands on my shoulders, murmured “Oh, don’t!”, and promptly shot a load over my trouser leg. My white trousers.

So it was that she and I walked back together through the mall and got into a taxi without even doing any shopping, both acutely aware that on my right thigh and all the way down to my knee was a great, dark, sticky patch. Suddenly, it seemed to me as if the entire world knew that my girl was a ladyboy, and that I had just given her an express hand-job out in the carpark.

Back home, we tumbled into bed and laughed about it. And she had no trouble shooting a second load, then much later that evening, a third. What a girl.

A member emailed me during the week, asking why so few ladyboys on the main site shaved off their pubic hair.

Now personally I like pubic hair, and I usually feel a little disappointed when I do get a model who has shaved hers off. But the lack of shaved models on the site has nothing to do with me: it is simply that few ladyboys actually do this.

The Thais are not hairy people. When it comes to body hair, few Thais – male, female, third sex – have very much of it. Most ladyboys that I see have only a modest covering of pubic hair on the pubis, with very little or none between the legs or on the bottom.

Thais are immensely clean, bathing at least twice a day and using talcum powder rather than deodorants to keep cool and fresh. And as anybody who has bedded any one of the three sexes will know well enough, a thorough shower before getting down to it is the rule.


So, if any extra personal hygiene were needed, I have no doubt that the pubic hair would be shaved off. But clearly, it isn’t. And when I have found a model who has shaved, and I have asked her about it, I have usually had the reply that a customer had asked her to do it.

But having shaved off the hair, it has to be kept shaved, because as it grows back it becomes very itchy, even if left for only a day. And besides, there is nothing very sexy about a ladyboy with pubic stubble.

So, unless there is a very good reason to whisk out the razor (say, 2,000 baht), no ladyboy is going to go to the bother of shaving her pubic hair off in the first place.