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.

Sargent Shameless and I were talking during the week about a ladyboy we had both known a few years ago who worked at Hi!Boss in Pattaya. She was not only one of the cutest ladyboys I have ever seen, with real star quality, but she was also a smart little cookie. I remember going with her once when she wanted to draw money out of her bank account, and peeping over her shoulder at the ATM screen I saw she had almost a quarter of a million baht in her account. And she was still only 19. 

She had always refused to have her photograph taken, by me or anybody else, which was a great pity because she really was a girl, and nature, as a joke, had stuck a willy on her. She would have been fabulous to photograph. 

Talking to the Sargent about this natural beauty she had, I mentioned that she had told me she began taking hormones at about the age of 12. She said that at her school in Pitsanulok there had been as many as a third of the boys in her year who were experimenting with becoming ladyboys. The Sargent was shocked (he is hard to shock, believe me). If that is the case, he said, then there really is a third sex emerging in Thailand.

We went on to speculate about the effect that adolescent ladyboys have on the other male members of a school.

We all remember what it was like to enter adolescence and to suddenly become aware of girls, and the obsession one develops about them. But how would we have reacted if some of our schoolmates had begun to develop into a third sex?

Okay, for those of us from the West the idea is derisory. The nasty, stinky little kids in my school were already grotesque enough as males. And when I go back to London these days and see the feral youth that the country is breeding I doubt even their own mothers find them attractive.

But transfer this prospect to Thailand where ladyboys are, and have long been, part of the culture. Where ladyboys can be far more beautiful than genetic girls. Where a boy taking female hormones and wearing girls’ clothing can look like a little doll. The memory of my little friend from Hi!Boss comes before me as I write this.

So, what does that do to your emerging masculinity, if you are a straight kid, given that ladyboys are by their nature sexually provocative and not demure like genetic girls? When you are literally bursting for sex, but the girls in your school and neighbourhood are off limits? When the fledgling ladyboys are taking female hormones and looking for boyfriends?

I’m sorry, but I don’t really know.

The Sargent told me of a ladyboy friend of his who, so she told him, would regularly entertain the local lads after school, and that she would often find an easy way of earning some cash when she was walking home through the fields. A lot of Thai men enjoy going with ladyboys. Many keep a ladyboy mistress. There is no stigma about having sex with ladyboys. All I can think is, they learned this at an early age.

A sure sign that the hot weather has arrived: out of the past half dozen ladyboys I have photographed, three of them had shaved off their pubic hair. I asked each of them if a customer had asked them to do it, and they all said, no, I did it myself.

For those of you who haven’t experienced Thailand’s summer heat, it is not just the sun but the humidity. This is especially the case in Bangkok, which is as flat as a pancake and only a little over 4ft above sea level. During these months you do all you can to keep cool, and if your occupation happens to be in the sexual services industry, personal hygiene is doubly important.

The visual effects of shaving off the pubes vary immensely. A good, big, strong cock will look even more impressive, but a little underpowered one will look even more mournful. Good skin and a close and careful use of the razor will leave an attractive and smooth pubis, but poor skin will look spotty and blotchy, and let’s face it, pubic stubble is not attractive. So on balance I tend to prefer a good strong growth of pubic hair and I do find myself enthralled by some of the more spectacular bushes I see.

Pubic hair growth is one of those rather neglected areas of interest, left to the genuine connoisseur to appreciate. The growth varies tremendously, from a tiny V-shaped patch through to a light and fluffy sprinkling with no real form, to a fetching heart-shaped tangle of tight curls, all the way through to a great fragrant black mass of hair that marches up towards the tummy button.

Looking through some of my earlier sets recently, when I was doing some long overdue filing, I was struck by the immense difference in types I have seen over the years. I had at the time been compos mentis enough to linger over photographing the hair, often getting up really close with a macro lens if the growth was remarkable, and even amongst the tangle with a particularly impressive model, and as a consequence I had a large collection of pictures showing pubic hair in all its glorious forms.

I noted how the growth was often thicker at the sides and relatively sparse over the cock. Sometimes the delta-shape grew crookedly, so that one corner was higher then the other. On some models the hair grew outward to form a rather attractive covering for the first inch or two of the dick. Some had hairy bottoms but a not particularly hairy pubis, while others had a mass of hair over their cock but a completely hair-free bottom. Few had any hair on their balls. And very few had hair on their legs, I’m happy to say, although I did find one instance of this in which it was actually quite attractive, the model being only just 18 and with an otherwise very feminine appearance.

With some of the girls that I had photographed on several occasions I had managed to record their own changing needs and tastes. Some had shaved the hair off at certain times, or had trimmed it right back, or simply let it grow wild so that it became shaggier and shaggier over a period of a couple of years. One of the models, Jenny, had died her pubes blond, which was distinctly original. Ton had a naturally heart-shaped growth when she was younger, but in more recent sets that seemed to have grown out. Cherie, tiny and neat in body, also has a naturally tiny, neat growth of pubic hair. The great Talisha, whose pubic hair was unremarkable, had taken to shaving it off to make her cock look even bigger than it already did. Bea, with her cute little Chinese willy, had fluffy hair so light that she had at various times shaved it off without my noticing.

On some the hair is soft and on others, wiry. Some hair is coarse and frizzy. Ice, for example, who I have been photographing for years, has a rough little pubic patch above her sweet little cock. Honey, also a long-time model, has long, silken pubic hair that is not unlike the hair on her head in terms of texture. Golf has an untamed jungle of fine hair growing up towards her tummy. Apple, who is very light-skinned and almost European in appearance (to me she always looks French) has pubes that are light brown. As I worked my way through the sets, I decided that unshaved in general made for a far better set of pictures, especially when there was a puddle of creamy white cum on the hair. But then I have to admit I like just about everything.

There is something like 36 different ethnic groupings in Thailand, so when we talk about “the Thais” we are in fact talking about a very diverse people. Cutting a long dissertation short (I have just deleted a large chunk of text I had written that may have been interesting to me but would have bored anybody else witless), this means a variety of body types and skin colours, all of which are reflected interestingly in the penis. Or, to be a little more precise, the ladyboy cock.

I see and photograph ladyboys from many different parts of the country during the course of a year. Those from Issan, the northeast of Thailand, outnumber the rest. The folk of Issan are essentially Thai-Lao, but in the provinces close to the border with Cambodia, such as Surin and Buri Ram, you do find a considerable number of the population that is part Khmer, and consequently of darker skin tone than the Lao.

So from Issan alone you have quite a spectrum. Many are very light-skinned. They pull their pants down for me and I watch with great interest as a pale-skinned cock appears, and a pink glans emerges shyly. Sometimes, with a bit of encouragement, this will turn a strawberry colour. Very fetching indeed, particularly if the glans is nice and big, and the foreskin can retract completely. With a macro lens, the effect can be quite dramatic. Sometimes the skin on the glans stretches so tightly that you can see the reflection of the camera lights upon it, and even a faint reflection of myself making a Hitchcock-like appearance. 

Many ladyboys come from the northern provinces, from Chiang Mai in particular. These tend to be even lighter-skinned, and there is a considerable amount of Chinese blood in the population there. Many of the Chinese have ivory-white skin, and with their pants down you have the attractive contrast of very black pubic hair and a white cock. I have seen many Chinese ladyboys whose skin is so delicate that the glans is candy-pink and almost translucent. At erection, with the glans moist, this can make a wonderful picture.

With the southern ladyboys comes darker skin. The ethnic mix down there includes Malay, Burmese and sometimes even Indian. Consequently, this region provides real variety in cock colours, with all shades of pink and occasionally one where the glans is exactly the same colour as the shaft.  I recently saw a southern ladyboy whose cock was almost black, with a glans that was purple. With a hard-on, the head of her dick glowed. It was a magnificent sight. In the south too you find many Moslem ladyboys, and of course they are circumcised. This is almost unknown anywhere else in Thailand, and so there is the novelty value, and a good strong cock with a fully exposed head can be very pleasing indeed.

Just think…there is all this aesthetic beauty out there, and most people miss it entirely.

Sargent Shameless must be getting old and sentimental.  Apparently my last posting, about the ladyboys who hoped for a relationship with me, has inspired the Sargent to share his own views.  It seems he can have post-ravaging feelings for his ladyboy conquests.   Who would have thought?  But it also seems he is even worse than we thought: not only he breaks their asses, he also breaks their hearts…
 
 
Anyone who thinks the Captain and I first met in a ladyboy orgy or anything wild like that is dead wrong.  The way it happened was that after coming across the bar scene in the Captain Outrageous site, I was so impressed with the Captain’s insights that I felt compelled to ask him for advice on how to deal with a  ladyboy who had fallen madly in love with me and I could not bring myself to let down. This particular ladyboy was arguably the most beautiful ladyboy in all of Thailand at the time and her pics are still all over the internet (although incredibly not on Captain O!).  When she told me that she loved me like she had never loved any other man, I could not but accept to be her boyfriend (or something like that).  To delay the inevitable breakup, I stopped playing around in Bangkok (where she was based) and would go to Pattaya, Phuket, etc without her knowing.
 
While often ladyboys (and ladies) have faked such passion for me with a view to material reward, a few times it happened for real as they, for whatever reasons, put all their hopes of redemption and womanly acceptance in me.  Although I don’t seek to trick them into loving me, it feels rewarding for my ego and greatly intensifies the ladyboy experience I seek both in and out of the sack.
 
Unlike the Captain I don’t live in Thailand so usually the separation takes care of the infatuation. I have gotten used to lovestruck ladyboys crying while making love to me on our last night together, but then they go back to their realities and I to mine.  But a few ladyboys do wait for me to come back, which makes separating again even harder.  This is what happened with that internet superstar who claimed she had all kinds of suitors ready to take her as a wife and could not accept that I would not.  She did wait for me for about two years of sporadic visits, but eventually she realised I was not the prince charming she wanted me to be and let go. By then she was no longer the same sweetie who fell for me and started doing all kinds of hardcore shoots for the most tasteless ladyboy sites, perhaps to get back at me.
 
I had another case with a really special Phuket ladyboy who I was crazy about, but who initially did not particularly care about me.  We hooked up again three years later and spent a week together and afterward she decided to quit the bar life and called me and, in what was one of the most heartbreaking conversations I ever had, said I was the nicest man she ever met in her life and that she loved me.  She said she was contemplating suicide and wanted me to know that.  I tried to cheer her up and said I would visit her again in a few months (which I did!).  Eventually she came to accept her life and is now back in Issan helping with the farm.
 
I also hooked up for a while with a ladyboy who was very passionate and so understanding of my need for sexual variety that she would help me set up threesomes with other ladyboys as long as I only slept alone with her  (The Captain says: That’s the Sargent we know!).  I never realised she really loved me until the day she caught me alone having breakfast with another ladyboy.  That night she asked for some glamour photos back, told me I had broken her heart and left my life. I never felt like such a lowlife.
 
There was also this ladyboy who when she first came on the Cascade scene at 18 was the toast of Bangkok.  But she had one of those exotic looks that does not age well and at 22 when I finally hooked up with her she was no longer top choice.  She turned out to be a very considerate and energetic lover and I definitely felt good with her.  Although she did not fall in love with me, she told me that nothing came of all the love promises from the other men she was ready to give her heart to.  She said many told her they loved her but never even called once afterwards. She said this in a sad, accepting way that was disconcerting to hear.
More recently, I met this quite special ladyboy in Pattaya who (at 22) is madly in love with me, wants to talk to me everyday and says that, because of me, she left Pattaya and is now working as a clerk at a bank in BKK. I have decided that on my next trip to Thailand I will seek her and stay with her the whole time. The end result will likely be the same, but at least I will have given her a little more time to grow up.
 
I could go on and on with so many of the ladyboys I have met, especially the Filipinas who have a Latin passion to them and have even less social acceptance and income opportunities than the Thais and thus are prone to fall big and fast for the first decent guy they meet. I guess, like everybody, ladyboys want to be loved for who they are and the fact that they are a cross-gender makes finding such accepting love even harder than for the rest of us.
 
So what did the Captain advise me to do when I wrote to him to ask about having my cake and eating it too?  “Keep spreading yourself” he said “like you have been doing.”  I remember thinking of the guy in Casablanca saying “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship…”