the third sex

Watching a boy morph into a ladyboy is a fascinating experience. I have seen it happen many times. I can remember one spectacular example of a young boy who worked at a Patpong bar I used to visit. He was clearly effeminate, but was regarded as manly enough to heave the beer crates around and do other work that the GGs didn’t want to do, such as swabbing the floor.

I watched with great interest over the months how he grew his hair and began to wear makeup. He was good looking as a male, but not strikingly so. You would have looked at him as being an everyday sort, about five-eight, strongly built, and pleasant to speak to. The makeup began with a little eyeshadow and lipstick, but was not overwhelming.

The bar was a large open-sided one, and the attraction for me was the band that came on at 8 o’clock and opened up with some classic twangy rock’n'roll instrumentals. I would call in on my way home from the office a few evenings during the week and have a couple of drinks while I listened to the music. But as my young friend transformed I started coming in a little earlier, so that I could watch him.

The makeup became a little more elaborate and the hair became longer, the mannerisms and gestures became more feminine. I decided to switch the relationship from being on smiling terms to a conversational level. It was easier, because the bar operator switched him from doing odd jobs into serving drinks. I asked if he was taking female hormones and he said no, he wasn’t. The change was an inner one. He had wanted to be a ladyboy but while he was at school it wasn’t possible. This was his first job, and his first opportunity to become the person he wanted to be.

Gradually, I found that he was turning from being a person I could watch with an observer’s eye into somebody increasingly desirable.

He had only ever worn the routine uniform of t-shirt and jeans, but one evening she (at this point the sexual orientation seemed to change) arrived wearing a short little black dress. I pounced.

Within 15 minutes we were inside a short-time hotel and it was an explosive experience. Afterwards, she said “you the first farang man for me.” And we continued with an affair that even know makes me hot and bothered when I think about it.

Still the transformation continued. She developed a preference for kinky wear, such as long black boots and black leather. I didn’t mind, although even I found it a little disconcerting to walk through Patpong with her on our way to another evening of frenzy. After all, I do know a lot of people in this town, and a lot of people know me.

In her high heels she was almost six foot. The makeup now had become distinctive, pale with bright lipstick. She wore little dresses with fishnet stockings, or tight leather pants with chains around the waist. After several months she had outgrown the rather homely bar she worked for, and went onto cabaret. I imagine that she did well. She was classic cabaret material. I lost track of her, unfortunately. I would love to know what eventually happened to her.

So, at what point did she cease to be a boy and become a ladyboy? It was the little black dress. I can remember it now. It came to just below the knicker-line. In my mind that was the trigger-point.

At this stage she was still quite boyish. In the hotel room I lifted the dress to see white knickers underneath, and then the dress came off slowly to reveal a taught body with a tight bottom and an enormous erection. She radiated sex, yet the signals were so mixed: the beautifully made-up face and thick black hair, the girlish gestures and the boyish body. She was a boy who wanted to be a girl. A girl with the sexual drive of a boy. A boy with a girl’s face. A girl with something huge and thick and hot that a girl shouldn’t have.

For me, it was lust. Lust is not always a respecter of sexual boundaries. But I suppose it does sometimes need some pretty packaging.

Thailand’s ladyboy shows may have reached epic proportions with places such as Tiffany’s, Alcazar and Golden Dome, but their traditions go way back into history and were always very much a family show. The small travelling cabaret can still be found in Bangkok and many other cities throughout the country.

Shortly before Christmas I had photographed a ladyboy named Jenny. I hadn’t met her before; she just turned up as a friend of a friend. I got talking to Jenny and found out that her father is also a ladyboy, and that she has a 13-year-old ’sister’ who is a ladyboy too. Together they form the nucleus of a travelling ladyboy cabaret show that performs at temple fairs and community parties around Bangkok.

I came to know Jenny better as a friend, as she is a genuinely nice person, and in due course I met 13-year-old Toppi, and also their father, who if seen out in the street would pass for a middle-aged woman. The invitation was always there for me to go and see one of the cabaret shows, but they always seemed to be too far away, either on the other side of the river or at some other impractical location in this sprawling, traffic-choked city.

Then the other afternoon Jenny called to say that there was a show on that very evening, and at a location near to where I live. I had been away travelling for a week and had only just arrived home from the airport, so on the one hand all I wanted to do was get changed and relax. But on the other hand, the chance to see the show so close to home was one I didn’t want to miss. The family called for me at 7pm, and we piled into a taxi and off we went.

The venue was by the river, down a tiny little alley leading off Charoen Krung, the oldest road in Bangkok. We waited on the kerb for the other members of the troupe to arrive, and within a few minutes they turned up carrying their bags of clothes and props. So narrow was the alley that we had to walk along it in single file. Houses and fences hemmed us in, the pathway twisted and turned, and we could hear the sounds of the river only yards away. Then we came to the end of the alley, where there was a little courtyard surrounded by houses. This was to be their stage.

This was a community party arranged for the eve of Songkran, the Thai New Year. The next two days were a public holiday, and after that was the weekend. The community that lives in and around this alley were going to enjoy themselves and they had booked a band that was to play on through until the early hours. The community leaders to add a little extra spice to the evening had booked the family cabaret.

A timber house acted as a changing room for the cast, and as a rather large farang crammed into a 10-foot square room with eight ladyboys and the residents of the house, on a night when the temperature was about 35 degrees centigrade, and with an excited crowd pressing up against the doorway, I did my best to be a fly on the wall, I really did.

The performers were a very mixed bunch. Father no longer dances since he was injured in a road accident. Jenny and a couple of other girls were the glamour. There were a couple of clowns, middle-aged masculine men, although one had silicon breasts. And there was Toppi; the undisputed star of the show, not yet five foot tall and every inch the showgirl.

I watched as the makeup went on and the cast were transformed. Then I moved out into the crowd, who sat on the ground or perched on the river wall. I realised that this is how the now-famous Thai ladyboy cabaret shows must have started. Although Tiffany’s began the modern phenomenon, there have been transvestite performers in Thailand throughout history. They too would have played at temple fairs and village fetes, and so Jenny’s family were simply carrying on an age-old tradition.

There is a formula to ladyboy shows. You have the glamorous dancers performing traditional Siamese dance, and then you have a clown act. Then there is lip-syncing to a couple of popular songs, and another clown act, followed by a grand finale. The audience were in raptures, right from the moment the first dancers appeared with tiny little Toppi in the centre. The clowns of course drew huge laughter and applause with their ribald act. I found myself laughing aloud.

Payment for the cabaret comes out of community funds, but the audience also likes to tip performers, calling them across during their act to hand over banknotes, usually 20 baht (50 cents), or even running onto the stage to hand the money over.

Then the show was over, the performers were back into their street clothes within 10 minutes, and in a final burst of goodwill and cheering we were making our way back down the alley to Charoen Krung, to find taxis. As a family evening out, it had certainly been a little different.

I was telling a friend how once, about ten years ago, I had lived for a few months with a ladyboy in Bangkok, and that the affair hadn’t lasted because she had such a hot temper that we were always fighting. “Didn’t you realise that before you moved in together?” he asked me. I said I had. “So why did you do it?” he asked. Well, I replied, rather lamely: she was so sexy.

He gave a snort of derision. “You were thinking with your dick,” he said.

I couldn’t deny it. But it was more than that. I genuinely cared for her. In fact, in the early days it was as close to the Real Thing that I am probably capable of getting.

Yes, I knew she was mad and bad. But we had also shared some beautiful times together, and I really thought there was a good chance that with a full relationship, plus the fact that she was only 18 and had some maturing to do, we could really make a go of it.

Of course there was the age difference, and the fact that ladyboys change immensely from their late teens onwards. But I just wanted to take the moment, selfishly. Later was later. I also knew I could help her in her ambition to go to university. Her family were dirt-poor, living off the land, and without help she didn’t have a chance.

She was from the Deep South, and Thais from the Central, Northern and Eastern regions are very wary of their Southern cousins. Ethnically they are hard to define: there is a fine cocktail of Malay and Indian mixed in with many Southern Thais, along with Burmese and Chinese blood. And of course, as events are currently illustrating all too well, the South is an uneasy place, prone to exploding into violence.

My ladyboy friend’s beauty was typically Southern, with big wide eyes that had a touch of Indian to them, and skin a perfect milk chocolate colour. But her hot temper was well and truly Southern also, and it was irrational. As for me, I had long gone past the stage where I was going to take nonsense from anyone, least of all an 18-year-old ladyboy. We fought, from the earliest days.

I rented a small apartment for us in a suburb of Bangkok, near a canal that leads into the city centre, so I was able to commute by boat every day. The building was a new one, nicely managed. I felt we had a pleasant home.

Her beauty was such that she could pass for a girl, without even wearing any makeup. I took her on holiday to a five-star hotel in Chiang Mai, and she attracted only awe-struck admiration. In fact at the airport, waiting for our luggage, a young guy tried to give her his phone number while I was collecting a trolley, but she regally ignored him. I took her to smart restaurants, and I carefully introduced her to friends. At least two of them fell for her, and one of them still asks me from time to time, “Do you still see that gorgeous Southern girl?”

But she was all mine. Back in the apartment she would strip slowly and parade in front of me completely nude, one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever seen, a slight figure with little hormonal breasts, a pert bottom, and something long and heavy that swung languorously between her legs as she walked. And of course those big, dreamy eyes, innocent yet lascivious.

Still, we fought. I discovered that she was the most selfish person on the planet. Any remonstration on my part, such as when she ran up a phone bill equal to our monthly rent, or used my cellphone until the battery ran down, or spent an entire allowance on makeup, would be met by an explosion of rage. This was followed by a period of sweetness, but soon the cycle became so predictable it was wearing.

Her temper went beyond words. I quickly learned to hide the paperknife. I developed a pattern of bruises on my arms from fending off heavy objects. After one argument I went and sat outside on the balcony only to find that she had locked the balcony door and gone out. Luckily there were window slats that I could remove and reach the key to let myself in, and I treasured her expression when she came back and found me inside again, nonchalantly reading a book.

But, as I say, it was all going too far. Once she threw a vase at me, and it bounced off my head. I’m not particularly into spanking, but I thought that’s what she might need, so I threw her face down on the bed and reddened her bare bottom. She went out of the room hissing with rage, and came back a bit later to throw my shoes out of the window (we were nine floors up). So it wasn’t that.

I think we lasted five months. By the end of that time we were becoming dangerous. The neighbours had complained, and the manager of the building was beginning to become considerably less friendly towards me than he had been.

I cursed myself for getting into the situation in the first place, but this was the time of the Asian financial crash and it was a bleak period in my life. So I ended the relationship and we moved out, and curiously my luck changed for the better immediately.

As for the girl, we became good friends, and remain so to this day. I kept my promise and put her through university: she kept her promise and got a good degree, and she now has a satisfying career. I’m happy I went through the experience, but I wouldn’t want to do it again.

I’ve written before on this page about my maid’s son. I’ve known him since he was in his early teens. I hadn’t realised before then that she had a son: she has two lovely little daughters but the boy was from an earlier relationship and he had been living upcountry. He had arrived with his mother one day to help her out with the housework, and I couldn’t help but notice he was good at ironing and dusting. He sang to himself in a high-pitched voice as he worked and he did tend to sashay around the apartment somewhat. I might have put it down to the oddities of being 14 years old, but my maid rolled her eyes and told me he wanted to be a ladyboy.

Since then however he has always stayed in that half-way zone, looking and speaking like a boy but wearing makeup and growing his hair long. He went into the jewellery business when he left school but is now studying tourism and hotel management, and is learning English to help him in what he hopes will be a career in the tourism industry. He is a thoroughly nice kid, and I’m always happy to see him turn up with his mother.

He is twenty-one now, and had to go back to his home province in the northeast of Thailand to undergo the medical for possible military draft. All young Thai males face this. The draft takes about ten percent of young Thai men each year and is done by a kind of lottery. If you are proved medically fit your name goes forward. You then draw a card: a black card releases you from any further obligation, but a red card means you’re a soldier now. And if you are selected there is almost no way out. No matter who you are, or whose son you are.

I have always believed that many young Thais become ladyboys simply to avoid being registered for the draft, because aside from the physical fitness aspect or lunacy one of the very few ways to avoid having your name put forward is to demonstrate extreme effeminacy. And it is no good a young guy putting on makeup and wiggling and pouting in front of the selection board: they’ve seen it all before. So the taking of female hormones begins, and once you have interrupted nature in this way in your mid-teens you have unleashed something you cannot always control.

Even this is not always a guarantee. Much depends on the needs of the Ministry of Defence at that time, for the numbers required are throttled up and down depending on political and economic policies. But an entertaining ritual for the media every year, and for the potential conscripts queuing up at the selection board centres, is the parade of ladyboys desperately trying to prove how utterly unfit they are to be trained killers.

Of course, silicon breasts are a help. For one thing, they get in the way when you are firing a rifle. The army is not big on troops with tits. I have known many a young ladyboy in a panic to save enough money for a breast job before going for the draft registration.

One in particular was Yo (pictured), who appears a few times on the main site. Yo was unable to take hormones as they made her ill, and as she was slim, agile and obviously in the peak of physical condition she worried herself sick over the strong possibility of being passed A-OK. She had saved for a breast op job but she didn’t have enough money. She contacted me and asked if I could help. I was travelling at the time but I was due back the day she had booked herself into the clinic. I met her outside the Nana Hotel and I’ll never forget how wan she looked, partly through worry, and partly because she was unable to eat or drink anything for 24 hours before the operation. When I handed the cash over, she almost flew to the clinic.

Although I have no intention of undermining Thailand’s defence efforts, I have on a few occasions helped other ladyboys in a similar situation. One or two would actually have made magnificent troopers, the great Talisha especially, who could have shagged an entire enemy regiment to death. But on each occasion I have helped out because I cared about the person involved. Conscription in England ended long before I would have been eligible but being patholigically unable to accept orders from anyone I would have myself been a dismal failure as a squaddie.

Anyway, my maid’s son returned from his home province a few days ago, beaming broadly. He had been turned down because he is so small and skinny he is under the required height-weight ratio. In more desperate times he would have been put forward, but this is a time of cutbacks and reduced military numbers, and so he was spared. Plus he is obviously as gay as a blade. He got to work doing my ironing, singing happily to himself. I did have to smile, I really did.

O is one of my all-time favourite people as well as being one of the best models I have ever photographed. She appears on the main site in the Schoolgirl O series, and one of the best sets in my opinion is when I dressed O as a girl scout and took her out into woodland with another ladyboy named Trish for a twosome. The set is not a nudie one, but there is an eroticism to it that derives from the uniforms and the outdoor setting, in addition of course to the beauty of O.

But what a difficulty it is shooting outdoors!

I had taken O to Pattaya, where we met up with Aum, who lives there and whom I had photographed before, and Aum’s friend Trish. I hired a jeep so that we could get out of the city and into the surrounding countryside. We packed the scout costumes into a bag and off we went.

Now, driving through Pattaya in a jeep with three ladyboys is an experience in itself, but the girls were very demure and well behaved, and as they looked very feminine we didn’t attract much attention. I only mention this because I have driven in a jeep through the city with other ladyboys in the past and such has been the attention they have generated that all I could do was sit behind the wheel with what I hoped was a “there is nothing odd about this at all, I do it all the time” _expression and hope the tomato-red of my face would be taken as sun-tan.

But I digress.

With O sitting next to me and Aum and Trish in the back, we left the city limits on the main highway and began to explore the countryside, looking for somewhere quiet. This proved to be extremely difficult. Far more so than I thought it would. Each time we turned into a quiet lane we found ourselves cruising through a village, or pulling up in a farmyard, or entering a building site. On and on we drove, and I was getting uneasy. A photoshoot is not going to work if the models are tired and fed-up, and besides that the jeep was an old one, fine for rattling around Pattaya City but not a vehicle to rely on too much in remote countryside.

Eventually we found a quiet dirt track with no houses anywhere near, and with some decent woodland. Beyond were deserted fields. I pulled the jeep off the road. O and Trish began to get changed into their scout uniforms, with Aum acting as wardrobe mistress and makeup artist. The girls looked fantastic. Aum stayed in the jeep as lookout while I went with O and Trish into the woodland.

We began the shoot and it was working well. I had it mapped out in my mind what to do, and I was getting what I wanted. But we were all uneasy. The countryside seemed full of eyes. Labourers going past in a truck, a couple of motorcycles, somebody calling in the distance. Another car went past, and we stopped shooting for a while. Then we started again. The girls had dropped their pants and were getting into the sticky part. I was holding my breath, hoping that nothing would go wrong in these last critical moments. Then Trish let out a big sigh, and more, and I had my set.

At that moment a pickup truck hove into view. There was only one point in the lane from which we could be seen and it parked there, watching us. The girls were fully clothed but clearly this wasn’t a scout camp, and I am no scoutmaster. We got back into the jeep with as much dignity as we could muster, I revved the old engine and we rolled away in a cloud of dust.