I came down yesterday morning to find Shrimp, Crab and Golf all a twitter, two of golf’s teenage pals who had left with their family had returned, shacked up at the Karaoke cum brothel and begun what is sure to be an illustrious career of selling sex.

This was shocking and twitter-inducing to the assembled gossipers because of their age, of only sixteen and their previous friendship with golf. Shrimp was I-told-you-so-ing with grave authority: he had warned Crab months ago against Golf playing with the older girl, her nail varnish, lip gloss and cheeky smile clearly spelled trouble. And here he was proved right. Happy at having saved his niece from an almost inevitable descent into prostitution and drugs, he got on with his chores for the day.

I am confused to say the least. Everybody seems to be frowning and tut-tutting, heaping shame upon the two girls. Yet the girl’s mother was also a bar girl until she took up with Shrimp’s brother in law, at which point everyone decided to forget that fact, as it was better for Shrimp’s neice and nephew that they got a new mother (the old one ran off with a salesman, she was also first cousin of the husband she left).

Now when her daughter joins the profession she learned at her mother’s knee, she is shunned and reviled. It’s not really fair is it? Particularly as Shrimp’s other sister-in-law-cum-pimp runs the karaoke in question. Here the fickle Thai pragmatism-cum-hypocrisy comes into play: it’s okay for sister-in-law to run the Karaoke, it’s okay for Crab to frequent the karaoke and enjoy singing and giving sister-in-law her money, it’s okay for the girl’s mother to have been a prostitute, the only person who is heaped with disapproval is the poor child who has been raised in this environment, shown this example, and made use of the only skills she is aware she might possess.

When she left last year she was a bright, bubbly, trendy looking teenager, with a cheeky smile and a twinkle in her eye. She always greeted me in the street with a friendly hello, and she and Golf were inseparable BFFs for a while, always hanging out on the moped, chewing gum and talking ten to a dozen into their phones.

Today I see the girl strolling down the road. She has the disheveled appearance of someone who has been up all night, and the defensive strut of a girl who is trying to pretend she doesn’t give a dam what the world thinks of her. As she passes her former pals they don’t say a word, afraid perhaps of the dark acts they have been told she has been performing. She feels the air heavy with their judgment and snarls something at them in Thai. They studiously ignore her; her alienation complete.

As I pass her I see her face flicker with recognition, normally she would have called out a boisterous Nataleeee. Now she hesitates searching my face, preparing herself for the rejection that she will surely find writ large upon it. I give her a big smile and a bright hello and relief flashes across her face before she gives me a guarded smile.

Before she had the air of a child bouncing into life with gusto, now something world-weary and hard lurks behind her eyes. From now onwards she will always carry this with her and her life will be shaped accordingly to her new attitude of calculated self-preservation.

I really feel nothing but sadness for this girl, I hope that she can at least find a farang man with some money to make her life comfortable, that she does not succumb to the brutal merry-go-round of yabba-fuelled late nights and abuse at the hands of cheap perverts in the seedy alleys of patpong. Hope she has the nous to keep herself healthy and alive.

This horny thorny issue of prostitution raises its ugly head fairly frequently in Thailand. On a global stage it is perhaps the top bill this country is renowned for. This beautiful nation is utterly synonymous with the seedy underbelly of the world’s oldest profession.

In reality there is of course good reason for this stereotype, like many sterotypes it is based on fact. Here prostitution is an accepted part of life, a necessary evil, part of human nature. It is treated with a fairly honest and pragmatic approach, rather than with the kid gloved delicacy or (denial) of the west.

The sexpat phenomenon I will examine in more detail later, which is an entirely different kettle of fish. But in terms of Thai culture, prostitution is as commonplace as affairs, adultery and divorce are in ours. It is pretty much accepted that men have needs that they naturally desire to fulfill and that is only to be expected.

I think there are possibly two explanations for this acceptance: one an innate pragmatism, two an acceptance of the non-sexuality of the role of mother, my friend P would add a third reason: that Thai men are the most virile on earth.

It’s not surprising that a shattered young mother would find herself too exhausted for sex, many a western mother could certainly sympathise. And in Thailand the man is expected to turn to a prostitute for his fulfillment. Add to that the belief that you cannot have sex with your wife when she is pregnant, and then consider that some women are pregnant, nursing, or childbearing for over a decade. Factor in the respect for motherhood, the role of matriarch, and the absolute respect for their own mothers that is absolutely concrete in this culture of familial strength and you have a heady concoction for sure.

So men use prostitutes. Wives aren’t delighted but it’s okay as it relieves them from the drudgery of their sexual duty and the possibility, god forbid, of more children. But the openness of Thai culture doesn’t stop there, the nuances of the sexual partnerships continue on into realms western men can only dream of.

There are names for all the roles that women play in a man’s life, whether as prostitute, or literally translated “woman sell sex”, or the slightly sweeter “woman have good service”. Gig, a girl that you see regularly outside your marriage, like a mistress, and finally the mier noi, or small wife, whom you literally support as a second wife.

Of these, the mier noi is certainly the most feared by mier luang, “major wives”, as she is given a status second only to herself, including usually a house, children and a chunk of whatever riches the wealthy man is able to provide. Women in these scenarios cannot really kick up a fuss with their husbands, he being the person holding the omnipotent purse strings, so they often declare war on each other and each other’s offspring.

Stories abound of miers one and two attacking and even murdering each other. It’s not uncommon for wives to be sisters, even occasionally a mother and her daughter from a previous marriage. Which goes a long way to explain the explosive popularity of the soap opera as a genre in Thailand.

On the other side of the mier noi controversy, an English friend of ours relates this tale of an English friend who married a thai woman. After her third, difficult, and dangerous pregnancy the wife informed the husband that she’d had enough, of the sex, the pregnancies, the lot. It was, she informed him, time for him to take a mier noi, they could afford it after all, and she would gladly be relieved of this side of her wifely duties. Her appalled, and utterly devoted husband didn’t take this pronouncement too well and it created a fair bit of strife in the marriage. But it is a funny anecdote that accurately describes the commonplace nature of these arrangements.

Related posts:

1. My niece Golf loses her toe
2. Fishy beginnings….
3. Wedding Wednesday