the third sex

Regular readers of this blog and the main site will know about my maid. She is a real girl, a middle-aged lady, and has worked for me for years. Although I use the word “maid”, the Thai word more fully describes what she does: the term is “mare bahn”, which translates as mother of the house, or housekeeper. She keeps everything running, does the shopping, makes sure all the bills get paid, and so on. In a life that is frequently tumultuous, she is a reassuring constant.

She is also a colourful character whose adventures I watch with keen interest. She lives not far from me, in the Suan Plu market area, opposite the old immigration department building. Her husband is a chronic boozer who gets plastered every day, which leaves him little time for his job at a local printing company. “Husband no good, dlunk,” is her usual refrain along with “yeh mark!” (totally irresponsible!).

Yet my maid is herself probably the perfect partner for her husband, able to match him in alcohol consumption, quite capable of swinging the occasional right hook (”last night I boxing him!”), and of kicking him in the rear end (”Thai man no good!”). She blacked his eye once, and split his lip on another occasion. A few weeks ago she threw him out of the house, and they were both so miserable that I was really glad when they got back together again.

A ferocious card player who organises illegal neighbourhood card schools, she has seen the inside of the monkey-house on more than one occasion. She narrowly escaped the attention of Bangkok’s Finest recently when she got into a fight with a neighbour: naturally, she won. She lives a sprawling, rumbustious, Dickensian life, but she turns up for work every morning and no matter what her own problems she always has a beaming smile. She is a typical Issan Thai: warm-hearted, humourous, and always ready for the next good time.

She also has a ladyboy son, who a couple of years ago became my assistant. Between them they know every ladyboy in the locality, and this is where many of my models come from. From them I myself gain a lot of insights into the ladyboy way of life. And my maid is interested in the pictures and videos I shoot, frequently standing at my shoulder as I flip through the pictures on the Mac. “Ooh, very big. If she cut off tell hospital give my husband. No good. Always dlunk.”

I mention this because the other day I had yet another ladyboy asking me if I had a “wife house”, and if not could she have the job. I told her that if she was my maid, she would never get any work done as I would be continually dragging her into bed. She laughed, but I could see she was looking for a regular job. But even if I did not already have a maid who was such a vital and happy part of my life, I would not have employed a ladyboy.

The fact is that ladyboys do not have the female house-making instinct. A few do, I suppose, but a house needs a woman, a real one, to make it into a home. Those ladyboys I have observed in domestic situations have generally done all the cleaning and cooking solely because they had to, not because they had the inbuilt instinct.

A friend who lives in America but who rents an apartment in Bangkok for his frequent visits emailed me recently to say that the ladyboy friend he had installed there on the basis she would look after the apartment when he was away had let the place reach such a stage that the landlord was threatening to terminate the lease. I myself, when I installed a ladyboy mistress in an apartment some years back, found that I was doing much of the housework myself, because if I didn’t it would never have got done. When I lived with ladyboy Dew, back in the late 90s in what was a formative period of my life, I was driven out of my mind by her mad attempts to tackle the housework at 1 am in the morning, when I was trying to sleep after a conventional day’s work and she was just coming alive after having spent the day lazing in bed, watching TV, and gossiping with friends. To those people who email me saying that they yearn for a regular ladyboy companion who they can take back to their home country and “marry”, I’m afraid I do not offer much encouragement.

The Thai ladyboy is not a domestic creature. She is a creation that is pure sexuality. She is not a genetic girl, she is not even like one. She is the third sex. She is a fantasy made true, but only under very limited circumstances. Do please bear this in mind. Most men who like ladyboys are heterosexuals who have nothing against women and who simply enjoy the explosive sex of a ladyboy relationship. Do not make the mistake of thinking they really are women.