the third sex

When I wrote on the main site recently that there were no ladyboy massage parlours in Thailand I knew of, a member emailed me straight away to say that there was in fact one in Phuket. It is called Tootsie Massage and is located on the middle road at Patong Beach, he said, going on to give specific directions:

“It is toward the south end of the road on the side farthest away from the beach. As you travel south along the middle road you will see on your left an orangy coloured building with Loma Massage written on it, take the next left after that and Tootsie Massage is tucked away in this cul-de sac. They usually have five or six girls to choose from.”

It’s been a couple of years since I was last in Phuket, so I’m a bit out of touch with the ladyboy scene there. But I googled the name, and found that Tootsie has its own website . They feature pictures of some of their girls, and they really have some lookers. Time for a visit, methinks.

Maybe Tootsie is the vanguard of a coming wave of ladyboy massage parlours. In my previous post I went on a bit about the economics of such a place, and while it might be a costly concept in Bangkok, it might well be more feasible in Phuket or Pattaya, where the rents will be cheaper if you are away slightly from the beaten track.

For a massage parlour to make money, you need volume. The massage process takes, say, an hour. It also takes up a sizeable room, so you need a largish building. The system works with GGs, and on a smaller scale with gays. But as to having a ladyboy massage parlour, maybe the economics simply does not stack up. Maybe there are just not enough customers. Yet.

A massage from an energetic ladyboy is certainly a thrilling experience, if organised at home or in the hotel. Not that long ago I had a regular ladyboy visitor who liked to join me in the bath, and rub her soapy little body and hard cock all over me. Another liked to give me a dry body massage, using her own body, which was exhilarating but didn’t last long because I would soon feel a hot damp patch spread over my stomach or back, at which point she would collapse upon me with a giggle and a sigh. True, I didn’t get much muscle relaxation, but she did point out, as she rubbed her cum into me, that it is good for the skin.

Yet another had a very neat line in sitting, carefully, on a very sensitive part of me, with her back to me, and giving me a massage with her bottom. Those sessions were quickly over too, although I was the one who was first to cause the damp patch.

And yet another would walk along my spine while I lay face down on a mat. She was an expert masseur, having gone through a course in her home town, and she was so light and well balanced that what might sound like a worrying experience was in fact a restful one, with her feet warm on me and her toes kneading my back. The first time she did it, I rolled over after she hopped off, just in time to see her with an evil grin take hold of her cock and spurt hot cum over my face and chest. Little minx.

So when you think about it, a massage from a ladyboy has more possibilities than a massage from a genetic girl. The only drawback is, that one ladyboy would only be able to service a limited number of customers in one night. So, if you are going to visit Tootsie, I would recommend an early start.

Early on Friday evening, Sukhumvit Road being jammed solid with traffic, I decided to take the Skytrain to Siam Square. Getting on at the same station as me was a ladyboy. She was very much the in-your-face type: as tall as me in her high heels, and wearing a bright red little cocktail dress that had no back and which was open at the front so that her silicon boobs were almost popping out. She stood a few feet away from me in the packed carriage. She was not at all my type, so I simply stood strap-hanging, wearing the absent-minded expression that I use when I’m watching people.

The train was full of office workers, there were a few school kids, and even a handful of girl scouts. Nobody paid any attention at all to our fellow traveller, who stood demurely minding her own business next to the door. As unobtrusively as I could, I looked at all the surrounding faces, and there was not one sly look, not one giggle, not one whisper. Our friend disembarked, as I thought she would, at Nana, no doubt bound for one of the ladyboy bars in Nana Plaza. As she stepped out of the carriage, there were no embarrassed grins, no rolled eyes…nothing. She had simply been another passenger.

This I think says a lot about the Thai character, and about the tolerance of ladyboys in Thai society. I would not have given much for the chances of our friend if she had been travelling on the London Tube. But to the Thais, a ladyboy is a ladyboy. End of story.

Of course we are all aware, those of us who follow Thailand’s third sex, of how there has been an enormous increase in the ladyboy population in recent years. Of how there are now so many ladyboys in schools throughout the country that separate changing rooms and toilets are provided for them. Of how if you visit a beautician or hairdresser, or pass through the beauty section of one of the big department stores, you are going to find a number of ladyboys and femboys working there.

My neighbourhood 7-Eleven has three ladyboys on the staff, out of a total payroll of no more than ten. During a stroll through the nearest supermarket the other evening I noted a ladyboy on the fresh foods counter, another in the drinks section, and a third helping take deliveries of a stack of groceries. A 19-year-old student who turned up for a photoshoot at the weekend, and who is studying art at one of the big universities, ran out of fingers when she tried to count how many of her fellow students are ladyboys. (Good potential for new models there!)

One wonders how far it is all going to go. As far as work in the mainstream is concerned, then there is plenty more capacity to absorb more ladyboys. Given the increasing tolerance, there is no reason at all why a well-educated ladyboy should not enjoy a long and fruitful career in the public or the private sector doing the kind of job that we do not necessarily equate with the third sex. During the course of photography I have met ladyboy students on business administration, computer studies and marketing courses, to name a few that come to mind. A few years back I discovered a whole ladyboy community on a local government administration course at one of the Bangkok universities, and they must all be well on their chosen career paths by now. Thai society itself is changing, as anyone who follows the political situation will know, and there is a growing class of people who are coming out of the working class and moving into the middle class. Ladyboys, it would appear, are part of the movement.

My ladyboy model produced from below her dress what appeared to be a rather disappointing cock, a small and floppy one, and began pulling on it. I really didn’t hold out much hope that it would do anything. But then to my great surprise it suddenly stood out long and straight, a very impressive and beautiful tool indeed. The best I’ve seen in the past few weeks.

Next ladyboy into the room (I often do two shoots back-to-back) also produced a fairly unimpressive specimen. Until she began wanking, when it came up big and hard and the head of it turned a bright red. A lovely sight.

The beauty of the penis is something I have gone on about many times (many times!) before on this blog, and even now after seeing heaven knows how many in all their various shapes, colours, sizes and stages of arousal, I still wait with breathless excitement to see the next one. Yet these are all ladyboy cocks. Not guys. It takes the aura of a girl coupled with a cock to do it for me. Not the male aura.

Something very funny happened during the week. I was with a genetic girl, a very good friend, and we had met up during the early evening to have some food. She arrived looking very indignant. She explained that on her way, she had walked past a bus stop where there was a solitary male, a company messenger, who was sitting on the bench giving himself a hand-job. Completely alone, cock out, oblivious to the rest of the world, and obviously enjoying himself, as my friend dryly put it.

I asked if he looked a bit simple-minded. You do find a number of disturbed individuals wandering around Bangkok, sleeping in bus shelters, under footbridges and in doorways, and occasionally doing some distinctly unsavoury things.

No, she said, he was dressed in a smart messenger uniform with the company logo on the back. She had been so indignant she had walked over to a nearby motorcycle taxi rank and told one of the drivers, who had gone to sort out the happy wanker at the bus stop.

As she was telling me the story, I was checking out my own reactions. I found the story genuinely funny, my friend’s own purse-lipped reactions being part of the comic effect. Then there was the word she had used for masturbation when she spoke to the motorcycle taxi driver: “chuk wow”, Thai slang for wank, and which actually means “fly a kite.” She said she didn’t think the driver would understand anything else.

But, even though I came close to tears of laughter, my own underlying feeling was one of repugnance. No, I would not have been in the slightest bit interested in catching a glimpse of the messenger’s cock, or of watching him come to a satisfactory conclusion and spurting all over his nice uniform trousers. No, I would not have felt the slightest inclination to go and give him a hand. The very thought gave me a queasy feeling.

How very different when I go into a bar like Casanova or Pinocchio, where there is decent seating, and admire the cock that one of the more obliging ladyboys will produce while I sit there. How very different when a ladyboy lays on my bed or sofa and gives herself a hand job. How very different when I myself take hold of her dick. Is it just the makeup that does it for me? The female clothing? No, it’s more than that. It’s putting a cock onto a girl. One of the ultimate fantasies.

“Hi, remember me!”

It’s a phrase I hear fairly often on my travels amongst the ladyboy community. The fact is, I didn’t. The girl standing in front of me was mid-twenties, and clearly had an awful lot of silicon in her face. Her eyes glittered deep down amongst plastic cheeks and forehead, and her nose could have opened a bottle of beer.

Yes, I replied politely. But I haven’t seen you for a long time…

“Two year,” she replied. “You photo me two year ago!”

Two years is a long time in ladyboyland. For me, it means a lot of people being photographed, and a lot of personal encounters. For the ladyboy in question, a lot of adventures I would rather not know about, and several changes in appearance so that she will bear little resemblance to the girl I photographed all that time ago.

To be honest, I did not remember her at all. There is a certain ladyboy “look” that so many acquire through going to the same clinics and undergoing the same operations. I remember seeing recently a picture of Hugh Hefner with three of his current bunny loves, and the girls all looked exactly the same. Like clones, or blow-up dolls. Sometimes, with ladyboys, it is just the same.

So we started the shoot. Plastic boobs, no, they didn’t seem familiar, and quite frankly I find plastic boobs as exciting as party balloons. But then down came her pants. Her cock, despite all the hormones, stood out straight, with a bit of encouragement. As her foreskin slid back, I remembered. There was a small freckle on her glans. Nothing odd, nothing freakish: just a tiny brown patch. And yes, I remembered that from the previous shoot, because it was unusual, and I’m always fascinated by the shape, size and colouring of cocks.

Whatever you do to your face, you cannot change your cock. Unless you opt for a circumcision, or you have the thing cut off entirely.

I even remembered that she was able to cum. I simply remembered that freckle jigging about, and then a nice covering of sticky white semen. I do like to watch ladyboy cocks in all their glorious forms, and as so many are standard-issue, those that are a little different, even in having a small freckle, do tend to stay in my mind.

So this time I watched, and after much tugging, gasping and grimacing, she came. It was pretty good: despite the hormones, she still managed a neat little spurt and a sticky puddle in the palm of her hand.

Later, I went back and found that original set. My memories of her cock and its freckle were pretty accurate. In fact, there were some good shots there. But as to her face, I could see very little resemblance.

She sat on the end of the bed, cock in hand, and within a couple of minutes the room was filled with the pungent aroma of hot cum, that odd mixture of fresh coconut juice and household cleaner.

I watched as she sat there gasping. She had splattered up under her chin, all the way down her front and into her tummy button, there was a long trail over her left hip, her pubic hair was glistening, and the sheet had little wet patches extending outwards for a couple of feet.

Well, that was pretty impressive, I said. But you don’t normally do that well. What have you been up to?

“I not take hormones long time,” she said. “Before, cock not strong. Only cum little bit. Very difficult too, sometimes not cum at all. Customer at bar not interested me. Friend tell me stop take hormones. So I stop and about one month after I feel very strong again. Now have many customer, many come back take me again.”

Clearly her friend had given wise counsel. I have known my ladyboy friend for a long time, ever since she was a shy 18-year-old, creeping into my bed and laying with her dick in the air, putting her hands across her face in sheer embarrassment. It had not been a big one in those days, and I took it now in my hand, feeling the strength in it, the weight, the fast response of a cock in its prime.

It was never this big before, I said. You must have done something to make it bigger.

She giggled. “I exercise! Chuk wow every day!”

Chuk wow is slang for wank and it translates as “fly a kite”. Thai slang can be very colourful.

I really don’t know if repeated masturbation when you are in your teens causes your dick to grow bigger. If it did I would need to have special trousers with three legs. But the size of my friend here had certainly increased noticeably.

I was very pleased she was off the hormones. They do not suit all ladyboys. It had been about six months since I saw her last, and I had straight away seen that she had a glow about her, a little more confidence in the way she carried herself. That, I think, was down to the resumption of normal bodily functions. No matter how feminine a ladyboy may feel, there is the undeniable fact that she is biologically male and that having a fully working cock is part of the male package.

I have seen what hormones can do over the years. They can produce a very feminine ladyboy, able to pass anywhere as female, and good luck to those lucky ones. But on others, the effect, even taking out the dick factor, is not so good. Sometimes you find a kind of over-egged effect, in which too much fat builds up in the face and body, resulting in a lack of tone. Sometimes you find mental instability, as the hormones and nature clash. It seems to be a kind of lottery.

There is the undeniable fact, however, that for a man going with a ladyboy, the ideal is a feminine person with a strong cock. To my mind, femininity (in ladyboy terms) comes down to good makeup and grooming, polite manners, soft speaking voice, and decent clothing. Once you have these qualities, and add in the final alchemy of making the male aura disappear, then you have your ladyboy.

I am of course speaking in entirely selfish terms, because generally speaking, this only holds good for the young ones. Someone intent on entering the female mainstream might consider selling herself to be only a short-term way of earning enough money to become independent and to open up a small business; the dream of many ladyboys. She might think hormones are essential for her objective, and hope that by the time the hormones have done their deadly work on her dick, she will be home and dry in terms of savings.