We ventured farther away from the safety of Nana Plaza, a few blocks deeper into the neighborhood and around a few corners. The tall Thai ladyboy dragged me at a frantic pace past the freelance prostitutes working the neighborhood. Only hours ago they schemed from every angle for my attention; now, I was invisible — no longer a valuable mark.

The labyrinth of small alleyways called ‘sois’ got narrower and more confusing with each turn we made. My heart raced faster with each step as the streets around us got quieter and more intimate. We made another turn onto the smallest soi yet. Panicking, I looked for anything to denote our location as I got pulled along the narrow sidewalk. The city oftentimes transcribed road signs into English, but I couldn’t locate one, not here. I was well-and-truly lost. 

My companion stopped abruptly at one of the local ‘spirit houses’ constructed atop the already cramped sidewalk. They served as homes for ghosts and spirits native to the area. The marble top was adorned with bottles of red Fanta. Straws were inserted into the bottles’ openings, apparently improving accessibility for the ghosts. An offering to the gods.

She put her palms together. She prayed.

Clearly part of her routine. Did she do this with every customer or was I special? Was I worthy of this prayer? How would her gods view me on such quick investigation? Prostitutes and area residents alike decorated and made offerings at spirit houses like these. I hadn’t ever given them much thought. This night changed that.

I wondered what she prayed for each night. Was it for continued beauty? Success? Perhaps it was for safety from the random, potentially dangerous farangs she dragged past this shrine several dozen times per week? 

I still think about her prayer sometimes. I still don’t know what she prayed for, and I know that I’ll never find out.

After what was both the longest and the shortest walk of my life, we arrived at a small hotel nestled between two other innocuous-looking businesses. It was that special kind of Thai inconspicuous, the kind that screamed ‘don’t look here’. It was dimly lit by harsh white fluorescence.

Upon arrival, there was a quick flurry of Thai between my companion and the tired old man working the front desk. He smiled softly to himself after receiving far too much money. First from me, then from her. It was an arrangement I would come to see more of in the future.

Between the three of us was a clear understanding as we finished settling up. I had paid for the room for only two hours, and nobody in their right mind would choose to sleep here. I was going to fuck this strange ladyboy in his dump before we all parted ways. He went back to whatever he was doing on his phone. I wondered how many times they had met before.

We entered the dirtiest hotel room I had ever seen. It was the type of place you merely rented from the cockroaches — the humans their tolerated guests. She sat down on the edge of the bed and it was right down to business. She used her clumsy English to command me into the shower. 

Worried about certain types of robbery attempts I had read about before I arrived, I insisted that she shower along with me. She refused, further aggravating my anxiety and setting off some alarm bells.

I wasn’t in control of this room, though. She insisted she would shower after me. She turned back to her phone without a flicker of interest. Not even curious about the uncertain dick that would soon enter her body. One of many, I suppose.

I hurried through my shower. I washed the most important parts before stepping out of the shower and back into the room. I grabbed one of the towels and tied it tightly around my waist before returning to check my wallet. 

She wore nothing but a slightly confused face. The silence in the room only broken by the tired air conditioner squealing in the background. The lack of warmth in the room was not a function of the aging machine.

She opened the translator app and typed into her phone quickly. She questioned whether my momentary shower was thorough enough. I brushed off her concern with a simple ‘yes’ before sitting down on the bed beside her, still wearing the off-white towel. Reaching towards me, she put her hand on it and pulled at it. I looked down at her hands before reluctantly helping her. 

The confusion on her face gradually dissipated as we got closer to sex. Why had I been wearing it? Was I embarrassed to be here, in this room, with her? The answer was a resounding ‘yes.’ She typed again into the translator app and turned the phone towards me.

“You like dick?” she asked.

To me the question was the reason I was in the room. I suspect it was a question she was paid to help answer often. The only real questions she had for me this night were purely logistical ones. She needed to know what she would actually be doing for the next twenty or so minutes.

The earlier question had asked what I was. This one asked what I wanted. I had come to Nana Plaza because I did not entirely trust my own answer to either. The bar, the girl, the hotel and the money had formed an elaborate experiment: a way of forcing my body to answer before my mind could interfere.

“…I don’t know,” I replied.

She smiled slightly and reached towards me.

The man finished rifling through my belongings with a slightly bored expression on his face. His black flashlight supplemented the neon bathing the entrance to the complex and provided the much-needed light for his search. It was surprisingly thorough.

“Have fun,” he said in his best English.

He returned my bag and then pointed to a massive sign on an easel beside him. Written first in English, then Chinese, then Korean, and finally, in Thai — “No photography” I nodded, grabbed my belongings off of the airport-style tray and slipped my bag back around my shoulders and continued past him.

“Of course — khop kun krap.”

Long before I ever boarded a plane to Thailand, I had done my research on this place. It’s famous around the world and difficult to miss. It’s not a secret, and there are plenty of accounts from tourists and expats alike. It’s one thing to read those accounts on a screen and another to set about writing your own.

Immediately, every sense was completely overwhelmed.

Nana Plaza took the place of what was once a shopping mall. I took only a few steps further forward before pausing briefly. My mouth slightly agape, I looked upwards and scanned the various storefronts spread out across multiple floors. The flashing, colorful signs advertised provocative but nevertheless vague names. With so much choice in “The world’s biggest adult playground,” each establishment had spent a lot of time and money to stand out in the crowd.

It took me a moment to regain my bearings. After correcting my jaw, I decided the best course of action was to take a seat at the large central bar to people-watch first. I ordered a drink and continued to scan slowly as if investigating a bomb I was soon to defuse.

My waitress returned shortly with my disgustingly overpriced Leo. She was Thai, had long black hair and had probably pretty at some point in the past. She was clearly female, and in her mid-to-late forties.

This disappointed me.

I had hoped the waitress might be a ladyboy—someone I could approach more slowly, someone I could study under the guise of casual conversation before committing myself to anything. Selling sex directly in this space was strictly prohibited which would have provided a useful boundary. 

Instead, I found myself trying my best to make small talk with the woman serving me. Not because I had anything to say, but because speaking kept me from sitting in silence with my thoughts about what I had come there to do.

Whistling in the dark.

I scrutinized some of the other customers. A mixture of Chinese, Koreans and Germans populated the tables around me. A surprising number of female tourists, mostly European, sat in groups and kept to themselves. They giggled amongst themselves about the situation they found themselves in, I imagined.

My attention, strained by the loud music played in every direction, eventually turned back toward the dozens of storefronts. Beside one of the escalators, a large sign proudly proclaimed “Real Girls Only!” — it sat directly beside the ladyboy bar positioned next door. Walking past that each day must have hurt a little.

From a distance, I watched as the girls of Thailand’s third gender danced half-heartedly near the entryway while talking amongst themselves, looking slightly bored. I had made a decision about where I was going this night. So I kept looking; I kept watching, but perhaps not seeing. I finished beer number four before standing up and paying the bill.

I was determined to have my first sexual experience with a Thai ladyboy. I finally made my move. It was now or never. I walked directly into the ladyboy bar in the back of the first floor. I passed the group I had spent the better part of two hours watching.

The girls fought with each other as much for my attention as for the physical space around me. I took the seat nearest the door. It seemed wise to have a quick and easy exit if things went wrong. Four of them encircled me before I understood what was happening. I dismissed one while two of the others took the seats on either side of me. They assumed what must have been very practiced positions, pressing their hips and thighs directly against mine.

The intimacy arrived all at once. We had gone from strangers to a simulation of sexual familiarity before I had even adjusted to being touched. I had come expecting to watch, choose and remain in control. Instead, I was briefly stunned by how quickly I had become the thing being handled.

They tried talking to me and I tried to listen. 

“Where you come from?”

“How long you stay?”

“When you come?”

I couldn’t keep up with any of it. I tried to parse the broken English of the three ladyboys all while struggling to hear them over the loud music in the club. My questions echoed theirs. Why I bothered, I don’t know. Maybe it was polite to pretend to care. I juggled this chaos for a few minutes before one of them asked:

“Are you a man?” The question lodged itself somewhere inside me and has been quietly working ever since.

There was so much contained in those four words. It might have been a joke, a deeply personal question about gender, or a simple misunderstanding arising from the language barrier. The Thai language doesn’t distinguish ‘he’ from ‘she’ in the same way English does. The most unsettling possibility was also the most mundane: perhaps she was only asking what body parts I possessed.

She repeated it as it was part of her routine. A question from a script, asked several times each night. Was she asking because something about me was unclear? Was it simply a checklist item she had learned to ask every potential customer? Had I presented myself in a way that suggested another answer?

What answer did she want? And was my straightforward “Yes” just as strange as the question?

I picked one based on some criteria I still cannot quite articulate. The others gave me a disappointed, dirty look before scattering back to their posts, trying again for the next nervous farang. We pretended to make real conversation for another two or three minutes. 

Sensing her urgency, I asked, “Where can we go?”

Without really answering my question and with very little hesitation, she replied, “We go now.”

I stood up from the red pleather bench seat. The mamasan rushed over and put her hand out, demanding her fee. The girl’s bar fine. Five hundred baht, if I remember correctly. I reached into my wallet, foolishly exposing the bundle of money in my pocket, and handed over the fee. 

Tonight’s ‘date’ grabbed my upper arm and turned on her five-inch heel. As we set about exiting the establishment together, the other girls, those I had shooed away put their hands out towards me. They openly, and shamelessly demanded a tip as we walked past – serving as a kind of toll. I was a fool then for flashing so much money so openly. I tipped them each one hundred baht on my way out the door. The easiest money they would earn that night.

We exited Nana Plaza together, hand in hand. I looked desperately toward the security guard from earlier, hoping for some sign of reassurance. His attention was elsewhere, occupied by the overly queues.