carefully. It is a digital picture of the farang Chanya murdered. I’m not able to control the flash of paranoia that passes across my face. The Muslim notes and records my wild-eyed moment, but there is no opportunity for explanation or discussion because the rest of the girls have begun to arrive, one by one.
7
H omer listed ships. Should I not similarly honor the vessels of our salvation on the wine-dark sea of market forces?
Nat: Most of the girls keep their work clothes in lockers at the back of the bar, but Nat likes to dress up before she arrives. She claims it’s because she needs time to work her way into her role, but Chanya once told me she tries to find customers on the sky train on her way to work. It’s true she calls in sick more than the others, usually just when she would have been on the sky train on her way to us. That’s okay, every girl has her idiosyncrasies, which probably make her unemployable in most professions. Look at Chanya, for example. In the circumstances, what other employer would have been so forgiving?
Marly: At twenty-seven, Marly is one of our smartest practitioners. Like most true professionals, she sees repeat business as the best way of evening out the violent sine curves of the trade, and that means setting her sights on the middle-aged and older. The charms of younger customers are more than offset by gentleness, generosity, fatherly kindness, wealth, and a tendency in the aged to go to sleep early, thus leaving her free for a little moonlighting should she need the dough.
Lalita is in an asymmetrical YSL fake in black with dipping back and plunging cleavage, revealing her beautifully enhanced bosom—tastefully done by a skilled surgeon, nothing too exaggerated. She is very gifted and has already built a fine two-story house with carport on a piece of land in her home village. Last week her earnings permitted her to purchase two more water buffalo for her parents to rent out. Her opening line to all newcomers: “I loved you from the moment I saw you walk through the door.” I still smile to myself at how often it seems to work.
Wan and Pat, close friends, are wearing identical hot pants with tit-hugging tank tops and high heels. They are not from Isaan, which is in the Northeast, but Chiang Mai province in the far Northwest, where the weather is cooler and the opium fresher. They come from a hill village belonging to the Hmong tribe, where they grew up expert in poppy cultivation. When compulsory crop substitution made them redundant, they graciously switched vices to enable their families to make up for the reduced income. They plan to open a beauty salon in Chiang Mai as soon as they’ve scraped the money together.
Om, with a naturally boyish figure, has cut off her denims at the crotch and leaves cotton strings wherever she sits. She is from Phuket, where tourism has made everyone rich. She grew up without want but got bored with the family minimarket and came to Krung Thep in search of adventure. For her, prostitution is mostly a sport in which the huntress uses charm, guile, and the power of sex. The object is for the john to voluntarily transfer the cash in his wallet to her purse without noticing what a sucker he is.
Ay is in a bikini and high heels, revealing the silver insert in her navel at the center of her flat brown stomach, not to mention the leaping swordfish whose sword peaks just above her panty line. She is a true child of Isaan, where she grew up unlettered. As is often the case with the illiterate, she owns a photographic memory and never fails to recall a john’s name, even if she hasn’t seen him for a year: a powerful charm in this line of work.
Here is Bon. She is more global than the others. She uses us as a base but prefers the more lucrative destinations of Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong. She is a visa expert and offers free advice to any of the girls thinking of relocating overseas. Her English is all but perfect, and I’m told her
7
H omer listed ships. Should I not similarly honor the vessels of our salvation on the wine-dark sea of market forces?
Nat: Most of the girls keep their work clothes in lockers at the back of the bar, but Nat likes to dress up before she arrives. She claims it’s because she needs time to work her way into her role, but Chanya once told me she tries to find customers on the sky train on her way to work. It’s true she calls in sick more than the others, usually just when she would have been on the sky train on her way to us. That’s okay, every girl has her idiosyncrasies, which probably make her unemployable in most professions. Look at Chanya, for example. In the circumstances, what other employer would have been so forgiving?
Marly: At twenty-seven, Marly is one of our smartest practitioners. Like most true professionals, she sees repeat business as the best way of evening out the violent sine curves of the trade, and that means setting her sights on the middle-aged and older. The charms of younger customers are more than offset by gentleness, generosity, fatherly kindness, wealth, and a tendency in the aged to go to sleep early, thus leaving her free for a little moonlighting should she need the dough.
Lalita is in an asymmetrical YSL fake in black with dipping back and plunging cleavage, revealing her beautifully enhanced bosom—tastefully done by a skilled surgeon, nothing too exaggerated. She is very gifted and has already built a fine two-story house with carport on a piece of land in her home village. Last week her earnings permitted her to purchase two more water buffalo for her parents to rent out. Her opening line to all newcomers: “I loved you from the moment I saw you walk through the door.” I still smile to myself at how often it seems to work.
Wan and Pat, close friends, are wearing identical hot pants with tit-hugging tank tops and high heels. They are not from Isaan, which is in the Northeast, but Chiang Mai province in the far Northwest, where the weather is cooler and the opium fresher. They come from a hill village belonging to the Hmong tribe, where they grew up expert in poppy cultivation. When compulsory crop substitution made them redundant, they graciously switched vices to enable their families to make up for the reduced income. They plan to open a beauty salon in Chiang Mai as soon as they’ve scraped the money together.
Om, with a naturally boyish figure, has cut off her denims at the crotch and leaves cotton strings wherever she sits. She is from Phuket, where tourism has made everyone rich. She grew up without want but got bored with the family minimarket and came to Krung Thep in search of adventure. For her, prostitution is mostly a sport in which the huntress uses charm, guile, and the power of sex. The object is for the john to voluntarily transfer the cash in his wallet to her purse without noticing what a sucker he is.
Ay is in a bikini and high heels, revealing the silver insert in her navel at the center of her flat brown stomach, not to mention the leaping swordfish whose sword peaks just above her panty line. She is a true child of Isaan, where she grew up unlettered. As is often the case with the illiterate, she owns a photographic memory and never fails to recall a john’s name, even if she hasn’t seen him for a year: a powerful charm in this line of work.
Here is Bon. She is more global than the others. She uses us as a base but prefers the more lucrative destinations of Tokyo, Singapore, and Hong Kong. She is a visa expert and offers free advice to any of the girls thinking of relocating overseas. Her English is all but perfect, and I’m told her
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