the third sex

Early last week I had a call from Dai, who appears on the main site in a couple of sets, and who I have known for about 10 years. In fact she was one of the handful of models I photographed for a test run when I first started taking ladyboy pictures, so that shows you how long I have known her. A year ago Dai had moved back to her home province of Sakorn Nakhorn, in Issan. I had kept up with her by occasional phone call, as she is a good friend and I thoroughly enjoy her company. But I hadn’t seen her in that time.
 
Now, she said, she was going to be in Bangkok for the weekend, following a sad trip she had to make to Chiang Mai for the funeral of a friend. I met up with her on Sunday, and she really hasn’t changed much physically over the years, even though she is nearing 30. I thought I would mention all this because many people ask me what happens to ladyboys as they get older, and it is not that often I can come up with specific cases.
 
Dai had worked for all the time I knew her as a cashier in King’s Castle I, in Patpong. She wasn’t really part of the ladyboy scene, and the bar is of course a girlie go-go bar. Her job was shepherding visitors to their seats, getting in the drinks, taking the money. One of the foot soldiers of Patpong. Although a naturally good looking person, with very fine bone structure and pale skin, and with a good working knowledge of English, she has always been hopelessly lacking in confidence. Just a natural shyness, which actually is one of the reasons I have always liked her so much.


But after 10 years working in the same bar, she had had enough. I think there were other pressures, too, maybe from home. Whatever, Dai had suddenly decided she wanted out from Patpong and she headed back to Sakorn Nakhorn.
 
Meeting up with her on Sunday night, I asked her what she was doing now.
 
“I help my mother. She sell fruit in the market.”
 
What, in the town or the village?
 
“In the town. My family is from the town.”
 
Do you have a boyfriend?
 
“No. Have friends to go out and enjoy myself but no boyfriend. Thai men always trouble.”
 
Are you bored?
 
“No. I always miss my home and my town. Bangkok very big, cannot live well without a lot of money. And in Patpong I work every night, only have two or three nights off each month. Work late, so sleep in the morning. Then go to work about five o’clock. So not really have much time to enjoy.”
 
What about later? What will you do in 10 years time?
 
“I don’t know! But now everything is okay. The market good place to work, have many friends there, my mum is okay she not very old. Maybe later we have shop. But I live at my home, very comfortable, not like small room when I worked in Patpong.”


As Dai talked, I realised that she was simply the home-loving type. She had no need to be in a live-in relationship with anyone, because she is basically a self-contained person who enjoys the company of a few friends and her family. She has never been ambitious, because if she was she would not have worked in the same bar for 10 years. She has never been a flamboyant ladyboy: the only clothes I have ever seen her wear are jeans and T-shirts. She wears very little makeup, because her skin is pale and doesn’t take heavy colouring very well. She is not the over-effeminate, gossiping type of ladyboy. She takes no hormones, as they disagree with her. She had a boob job done a few years ago, but it is a good quality one and has settled in naturally. The lack of hormones means that her dick, one of the most physically beautiful I have ever seen, has retained its shape and potency. 
 
She is the natural melding of boy and girl that I find so attractive. A long time ago, she told me that she knew from the age of eight that she would be a ladyboy, and she has simply grown up with a female mentality.
 
In some ways, Dai is a classic case of what happens to a ladyboy when they decide to leave the scene. Most ladyboys have their roots in the provinces. Returning to the peaceful town or village where they spent their formative years must be very attractive to many, because let’s face it, the Bangkok ladyboy lifestyle must be a mind-bending experience.  The opportunity to be back amongst family and friends, to open a small business, even to sell fruit and flowers in the local market must be like balm to a soul that has been seriously tested for too many years. 

I was in Laos last week. I had gone up into the mountains for a couple of days, where it was pouring with rain, and then I came back to Vientiane, where it was also pouring with rain. Well, it is the rainy season.

Vientiane is a nice place in any kind of weather, a town so small you can get around it on foot, and with very little traffic.  I sploshed about in the streets for a bit, then went back to the hotel. The rain  had  managed to wash out the building’s  internet  system, so I left my laptop in the room and went down to the business centre  in the hope that  it was only the in-room  connection that was suffering.

To my great surprise, the girl on the business centre desk was a ladyboy. To ordinary mortals, she would have appeared a genetic girl, neatly dolled up in a businesslike jacket and skirt and with her hair primly fastened back. But with my super-sensitive ladyboy vision, I knew. And she knew I knew.

No, I didn’t have my evil way with her across the desk. I’m sorry to disappoint you. But this did make me realise how even Laos is changing in its attitude towards the third sex. The country is very gentle, very friendly and very welcoming but it is still, ostensibly at least, Commie. It is not, in theory, big on what it sees as Western decadence.


You can find girls easily enough in Vientiane, and also boys. Ladyboys are more difficult, but a tuk-tuk driver would take you to a bar where you could find a few. But as to ladyboys working in a mainstream business, that is something I have never seen before in Laos.

There was not the opportunity to find out more from the lady behind the desk. Another staff member was in the room, and there were a couple of guests. And I was checking out that evening. So I’ll just have to go back next time I’m there, probably within the next two months, and see if she is still around.

A cute young model arrived for a video shoot last weekend wearing her college uniform, having come straight from Saturday morning classes.

“You want me to get changed?” she asked, showing me a small bag into which she had packed a brightly coloured top and some shorts.

No! I said. You look perfect the way you are!

But I did give her uniform the once-over before we started, to make sure there were no distinguishing badges or other marks. The buttons had a school logo, but that wouldn’t be visible in a movie. I also reassured her that I have long ago blocked the site from being accessed within Thailand, so none of her teachers or schoolmates would see it.

Anyway, she was happy enough, although very shy and nervous, and we did the shoot.

Ladyboys turning up in their school uniform happens with surprising frequency. As I have written before on this site, there are now so many ladyboys attending schools and colleges throughout Thailand that the educational system makes allowances for them, providing them their own toilets and changing rooms and letting them wear the female uniform.

Often they cut classes to come and see me, or they come straight from school, tempted in by the chance to earn some easy money and to have their photograph taken.

There is a standard university uniform in Thailand, that only deviates in its detail. Girls wear white tops and black skirts, boys white shirts and black trousers. Badges and buttons distinguish the various institutes, and sometimes a necktie. I do have hanging in my props cupboard a number of uniforms, including uni uniforms, but very often the model you see on the main site is actually wearing her own uniform.

In the streets I frequently see ladyboys dressed in the female uniform. I have only ever seen them behaving demurely, and in fact in many instances it is only my super-rated ladyboy-detector vision that has picked them out as being ladyboys rather than genetic girls. Of course, they are under obligation not to let their school down, but the impression they give is that they have simply chosen the lifestyle because it seems natural to them, rather than being a revenue earner.

I had a heap of emails following my comments a couple of weeks ago on the youthful ladyboys of Buri Ram, and elsewhere upcountry, and of course very young ladyboys are also to be found in Bangkok. Eight-year-old fledgling ladyboys are not a great rarity. The fact that these youngsters are going through primary school, secondary school, and on to college or university in full ladyboy mode must surely be giving the educational authorities cause for much thought and perplexity.

Or maybe not. This is, after all, Thailand

A member emailed me during the week to say that he had recently been in Thailand and had his first experience with a ladyboy. That had led on to several more experiences during his visit, and now he was back home in the United States and missing ladyboys so much that he was going cold turkey.

He said that visiting the local mall had shocked him, because he suddenly realised how big, loud and unattractive the women were. No longer in any kind of relationship, he says he now has no enthusiasm at all for finding a local girl. At the same time, he had found the prospect of the local gay community repugnant to him. He simply was not interested in men.

He said that, at the age of 65, he no longer knows what to do. He has found a sexual fulfilment with ladyboys that he had not felt for many, many years. They had made him feel youthful again, they had reawakened instincts that he had almost forgotten he had. What on earth was he to do, he asked me. Should he move to Thailand full time?

This is a position in which many people find themselves. The sexual explosion that typifies an encounter with a ladyboy  has an intensity  that  takes us right  back to the times when sexual experience was new.  Consequently, it is addictive.

Then there is the beauty of the ladyboy. Small build, fine skin, polite manners, natural charm. There is the vulnerability, which arouses our protective instincts. And there is the fact that ladyboys will do all they can to please you, because they want to prove that they are better than genetic girls.

There is of course no easy answer. Yes, if you can afford to leave your own country and move here, go for it. Alternatively, spend several months here during the course of the year. Or even several weeks. It would be expensive, certainly, but it all depends on what you want to do with your life, and what your present circumstances are.

I tell you: if Thailand was to suddenly start exporting its ladyboys en masse, the women of the US and Europe would find themselves with a major problem.

An old friend of mine is in town right now. I caught up with him for a coffee at his hotel yesterday. This is a man who from youth has been one of the most prolific cocksmen I have known.  And as he travels frequently throughout North and South America, and in Europe and Asia, he gets the opportunity to do what he likes with as many women as he can handle.

He also likes ladyboys, and when we met up he had a confession. On the first night he arrived in town, he said, he had gone straight to a ladyboy bar, taken a ladyboy back to his hotel, and had, as he put it, “the most gorgeous sex with this most gorgeous ladyboy.”

The next night, he had decided on a genetic girl. He found a very attractive one, but although she was more than willing to go on as long as he liked, he said that he ploughed miserably through the business and then couldn’t wait to get rid of her.

“The fact is,” he told me, dropping his voice as the waitress bustled around with more coffee, “these days I would much rather have a ladyboy than a GG. Girls just don’t do it for me anymore. But a ladyboy…that’s the most erotic, mind-blowing sex. I can’t exist without them.”


He went on to tell me how on his visits to New York  he has seen the transsexual escort services  increase hugely in the number of  girls available, and in France too, where they appear even more popular than in New York. How in Argentina there are now transvestis brothels where you sit and a number of the girls line up for you to take your pick.

“The world is changing,” he said. “If I was a GG, I would be worried.”