the third sex

I was in Phuket, staying on my own at a beach resort. It was early evening, and I was sitting in my bungalow working on my laptop. My mobile chirruped with an incoming message. It was from a ladyboy who meant a lot to me. “I in hospital” the message said. I texted straight back asking what was wrong. “Have operation cut cock” she replied.

I rang her immediately. She had had the operation earlier that day and sounded woozy under the drugs. Once I found out that everything appeared to have gone well, all I could do was to sound happy for her. And, if that was what she really wanted, of course I was happy for her.

Then I went outside and stood on the beach in the darkness. I felt thoroughly miserable. Our relationship had been a non-exclusive one but it had been close. I felt a genuine love and protectiveness towards her. She was tiny, and vulnerable, and only 19. She had the sweetest face and the sweetest personality. I had photographed her many times, and she was the most photogenic person I have ever known. I had told her many times she was perfect, and she was.

She had always told me that she didn’t want to have the operation. I hadn’t really believed her at the time, because she was so feminine that she could with relative ease make the transition into girlhood that so many ladyboys crave. But I had never seriously thought she would. I had just gone on enjoying being with her, and enjoying photographing her.

And she hadn’t told me that she was going into the hospital for the operation, hadn’t even mentioned she was thinking of it. She knew I would be unhappy, and so she kept quiet. Which was thoughtful of her, rather than deceitful, when I turned it all over in my mind.

I would never have argued against it. To have that operation is such an intensely personal decision that for someone, an outsider, to try and lay down the law would not be appropriate. But I would have dreaded the whole process, and it’s not just the removal of the penis. It is the fact that her personality was about to change.

I have seen this happen so often. A close ladyboy friend or a lover has the operation, and afterwards she ceases to be a ladyboy and becomes someone who is not quite a genuine girl but who is also not the person she was before. As she moves further into the mainstream, fulfilling her own deepest wishes, she leaves behind the person she once was. In many cases she will want to forget her previous life. She will find new friends, new lovers who may not even suspect she started life in the opposite gender.

I knew all this was about to happen to someone I cared for deeply. For her, it was a new beginning. For me, it was the end of the relationship. And to cap it all, I had lost one of my best models.

Out there on the dark beach, I suddenly felt very lonely.

A member emailed asking why I don’t include more pictures of ladyboy feet. He had a point. I do like pretty feet, but although I usually check out the model’s feet during a shoot, I seldom find anything worth photographing. The fact is that ladyboys seldom have attractive feet. I was talking to Ton about this, and she said, so solemnly I burst out laughing, “Ladyboy have big foot.”

Of course, like the Adam’s apple, the foot is one of the hardest parts of the body for the ladyboy to disguise. During a recent shoot one tiny ladyboy had feet so big and clumpy that I deliberately kept them out of the frame. Luckily she more than made up for it in other departments.

Although many ladyboys pay a lot of attention to their hands, and have beautiful hands as a result (Dew is a prime example – she can bend her hands back like a traditional Thai dancer), not many take real care of their feet, except maybe to experiment with nail polish and glue-on false nails. For the Thais, the feet are the lowest part of the body (never point your foot at a Thai), and this may have something to do with it.

Moving slightly upwards, the lower legs of many Thais, not just ladyboys, are also a problem for a photographer.

Look at the legs of any Thai person, male or female, and you are going to find various markings in common. For a start, on the inside right calf you will frequently find a lozenge-shaped patch of discoloured skin. Falling off motorcycles is part of the job description for being a Thai. That scar is a result of the leg coming into contact with the hot exhaust pipe.

On the front of the thigh you will often find a horizontal scar, caused by the wing mirror as the hapless rider sails past the handlebars. Non-road accident markings include blotches from insect bites and paddy field worms, in the case of upcountry Thais. And given that rubber flip-flops are the standard footwear for casual use, minor cuts, bruises and abrasions are the norm for the toes.

So, yes, I usually check the feet. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. But in the absence of a foot fetish (I’ve got quite enough other fetishes, thank you), sometimes I just plain forget.

A friend just into Bangkok from overseas and raring to get going on the ladyboy scene told me how he called a girl and arranged to meet her in the early afternoon. She turned up in hotpants so brief that he said you could see her pubic hair. She wore strap-up knee-high sandals, a tiny tube-top, and glitter makeup.

Thinking that he might be a trifle conspicuous walking along Sukhumvit Road with this vision at 2 o’clock in the afternoon, he suggested with some urgency that she go straight back to her apartment, which was nearby, and change into something a little less sudden.

Which she did, emerging soon enough in jeans and trainers, and with her face freshly scrubbed. Then she called her brother so that they could all go shopping together. The brother turned out to have bright orange hair, lipstick and long painted fingernails, and to be so overly camp in his behaviour that he made his “sister” look positively restrained.

My friend, who is generally unflappable, said that when they walked through the shopping mall, he began to have some idea of how it feels to live in a zoo. “All I could do,” he told me, “was to smile back at people and try and look as if I did this kind of thing every day.”

I do know what he means. There are times when ladyboys, or some of them, simply do not realise that ordinary folk generally prefer to be considered ordinary.

I remember some while back when I was doing a shoot in Pattaya. I arranged to meet a couple of models on the beachfront at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, and take them to a hotel. They turned up looking as if they had just come off stage at the Crazy Horse: glitter boots, ballerina skirts, and makeup so thick it could have been taken off like a mask. Try walking along the seafront and into a hotel with a couple of girls like that, and you do cause something of a sensation.

A breast augmentation job is something that most ladyboys yearn for. When someone tells me she is about to have silicon implants, I do however have mixed feelings.

Thailand is one of the world’s great centres of sexual reorientation surgery, but there are still far too many slash-for-cash merchants about. I have seen so many tit jobs that leave one nipple pointing up and one down, or with a Jean-Paul Sartre stare, or with the breast as hard and about as sexually exciting as a water melon. I have known artificial breasts to begin leaking, an extremely dangerous condition.

I’m not really a breast man, not even when it comes to GGs. But with ladyboys, after a couple of years of pumping themselves up with hormones, they might well have neat, small breasts but the hormones will have had a depressing effect a little lower down. So, all in all, it is better to accept the new surgical job and be full of praise when she comes round proudly flashing off her new acquisitions.

Whenever I see a breast job, I ask where it was done and how much it cost. Places of course vary, but the going rate at a decent clinic is 40,000-45,000 baht (around US$1,000 depending on exchange rate).

However, and I have this from a post-op friend who is particularly up on the subject, the surgeon in town with the best reputation is Dr Suporn, at Sriracha Hospital. The charge there is 70,000 baht.

When you convert this to US dollars, the cost is still relatively modest: certainly when you are getting a Rolls-Royce job with the breast soft and supple, a proper fullness underneath, and the nipples both pointing in the right direction.

A few times over the years I have paid up for breast jobs, or contributed to the cost, because even the standard operation is expensive in Thai terms. I’ve done this for a couple of reasons. Sometimes simply because I care for the person herself. Other times because she is about to go through the ritual that all young male Thais face, that of registering for the national draft. Once the name is accepted on the roll, there is a 1-in-10 chance that a two-year military service will be required. It is very difficult to avoid the draft, even for the rich kids: the only sure-fire way out is to display extreme effeminacy. And the army isn’t big on troops with tits.

Beautiful Boxer, a film based on transsexual kickboxer Nong Toom, has been a huge success in its native Thailand and is now being released in the United Kingdom on 2 September, with release in Europe and the USA around the same time.

Nong Toom, the nickname (all Thais have a nickname) of Parinya Charoenphol, was born into a poor family and spent his early life in Chiang Mai.

Developing a talent for muay Thai, the highest form of the art of kickboxing, he saw an opportunity like so many young Thais of fighting his way out of poverty. He became one of Thailand’s best known boxers, and certainly the most controversial, wearing makeup in the ring and expressing a desire to become female.

Nong Toom had gender reassignment surgery, paid for by prize money, in 1999 at the young age of 17. Forbidden to return to the ring, for Thai women are not allowed in professional boxing rings, she now lives as an actress and model in Bangkok.

During his time as a boxer, many people despised Nong Toom because they felt he tarnished the noble and very traditional art of muay Thai. But subsequently the story has achieved a moral quality. If you want something badly enough, you will fight for it. And Nong Toom has become one of the most famous Thais in the world.

When film producer and director Ekachai Uekrongtham was looking for an actor to play the part of Nong Toom, he held nation-wide auditions across Thailand over several months. More than 300 people from 40 provinces were short-listed. Eventually, it was Asanee Suwan (nicknamed Art), a 22-year-old professional kickboxer from Chiang Mai who clinched the role.

One of the country’s top kickboxers, Art has fought in more than 180 matches in Thailand and Denmark, and has won in most of them. Ranked No 5 by the World Muay Thai Council in the 118-pound category, he was also named the Best Boxer by the Association of Muay Thai for the Northern Region in 2001.

Art spent more than a year preparing for the role. He attended acting classes conducted by Ekachai, learnt ballet, studied the intricate likay (traditional Thai street opera) movements under the tutelage of Thailand’s National Artist Boonlert Najpanich, and went through a personality enhancement course designed to groom beauty queens. He was also required to adhere to strict skin and body care regimes, and had to lose a substantial amount of weight and muscles before filming commenced.

Oddly enough, Nong Toom and Art have similar backgrounds. Both grew up in Chiang Mai, and both started boxing at the age of 12 to help earn money for their family. They were also born just about a year apart under the same Gemini sign.

Thai-born Ekachai is an award-winning theatre director and founding artistic director of Action Theatre, a Singapore-based professional theatre company. Best known for conceptualising, directing and producing Chang & Eng, the stage musical based upon the true story of the original Siamese Twins, Ekachai has directed and produced numerous productions of plays and musicals in Singapore, China, America, Malaysia and Thailand. Beautiful Boxer is however his feature film debut.

Beautiful Boxer was named winner of the Grand Prix 2004 in Brussels late last year. It won Thailand’s Academy Awards early this year for best actor (Asanee Suwan) and best makeup. Best feature film awards have come from international film festivals in Torino and Milan. A few months ago, the film won the Jury Prize at the Skieve Filmer International Film Festival in Norway.

Distributors worldwide have seized upon the film. Earlier it broke box office records in Singapore and gathered rave reviews in Malaysia. It is now scheduled to hit more than 200 cities in Europe, Asia, Australia and the US during the autumn months.

Beautiful Boxer was made at GMM Pictures, the film arm of Thailand’s largest entertainment conglomerate GMM Grammy Public Company Limited. Arclight Films handle the worldwide sales and have sold the film to nearly 20 countries.