Lazarus ends the soliloquy
Warning: no sex in this report. This is everything that happened before I found my one true chum. My next report will detail this beauty for you. And this report is long, I know, but in it I provide details about my arrival, my jump from Soi Cowboy to Bangkok Beat and then to Climax, where it all came to a delightful end.
* * * * *.
Earlier this year, David Bowie passed away (obligatory bowing of heads). It didn't affect me the way it affected some of my friends. He wasn't any kind of hero for me, so I didn't get all soppy or anything. But I'd be lying if I said his death had no impact on me. After all, his music was indeed formative. Everyone remembers the more pop-like songs of his, you know, Let's Dance, Modern Love, etc. But when I heard of his death in January, the one song that seeped out of the dank, pungent recesses of my mind was not something from my childhood, but his most recent song, Lazarus. The opening sax, the mesmerizing bass throughout, the classic Bowie vocals, gradually increasing in intensity and tone, all culminating in the near-scream crescendo of his lyrics. And the lyrics, oh boy.
"I'm so high it makes my brain whirl". Need I say more?
Last night was the quintessential Lazarus night for me, described in ball-crunching detail over the next three posts (the usual disclaimers apply). Three years of sexual soliloquy lead up to last night, and it started with a smooth sax, with a palpable bass pulsing behind my eyes throughout the night. It grew in intensity, gradually getting more and more fervent, all culminating in the near-scream freedom of the bluebird. Ain't that just like me?
My flight arrived late, and therefore smack in the middle of crush-hour at arrivals. The masses were determined to slow Kumbu's fluid movement through immigration, seemingly trying their best to constipate the already slow bowels of the Suvarnabhumi arrivals hall. Peristalsis had given way to a kind of bludgeoning movement of a massive constriction, the kind that in this metaphor, would literally rip you a new one. But thankfully I escaped through the customs sphincter and speed-walked like an Olympian down to the taxi stand. In moments, we were whizzing into the Bangkok night, the air thick with humidity and erectile anticipation.
My taxi driver was a gentle, sweet elderly man. He had a goatee, a buzz-cut haircut that had grown slightly long, and thick glasses, lending him the appearance of an old Shaolin master. He spoke with a definite sense of wisdom, and he gently chatted to me the whole way. His tone was almost a murmur, and his speech had a cadence about it that began to mesmerize and relax me. I began to fall asleep in the back of that taxi, and I just could not shake the sleeps. In fact, somewhere after the second toll booth but before we exited the freeway I nodded off, and when I awoke, I nearly screamed with fear that I would not be able to muster the energy to make this night what it needed to be. I cannot allow myself to succumb to the alluring enticements of sleep, not tonight. Before those thoughts could settle, we were at the hotel.
I checked into S Sukhumvit Suites (thoughts on this establishment will appear in the Bangkok Hotels thread upon my departure), did the necessary ablutions and hit the pavement. Fortunately, I had roughly 10,000 baht from the last time I was here. Every time I leave BKK, I deliberately hold on to that amount, knowing that when I return, it will be late at night and the fever to get down to business will be all-consuming. Having that cash in-hand is mighty helpful.
It was just past midnight. Too early for Climax / Mixx, a tad late for Thermae, but perhaps ok timing for Bangkok Beat. But I was in Asoke, and Soi Cowboy was literally 100 paces to my left, so I thought I'd spend an hour or so being the gawker brown-boy at Baccara. I thought I might be able to lay the ground work for a future pull from one of these establishments, since I had no intention to go the gogo route tonight.
As I approach the Baccara curtain and the goon standing guard, I felt trepidation fill my gut. The guy was not looking at me, but as I approached, he spookily lifted his meaty left arm high above his head, like an executioner lifts the ax before the drop to the neck, and his right arm opened in my direction, warding me into the mystery that lay behind the curtain. I was expecting him to stop me, ensconcing me with the meat of his arms, in order to pay the drink fee before entry. But no, he ushered me in, unscathed.
As soon as I got in, I knew why there was no entry fee. There were loads of empty seats, and about 7 girls on stage. The guys were a mix of ethnicities and ages, some looking utterly disinterested, and others looking like this was their first prom and their date was about to offer a hand job (read: high school giddy). But the girls, oh my, the girls, they were a sour bunch. They barely shuffling their feet not even the standard gogo-girl shuffle that I have come to carry affection for. No, they were twiddling their toes a little, kicking a knee out once in a while, all the while chatting amongst themselves. I'm quite sure that if cell phones were allowed on stage they would each be tapping away in solitary bemusement.
And if you put this behavior aside, the girls were nothing to write home about. There was not a good pair of legs between the 7 of them. In LOS, what are the chances of THAT?! Here, if you spit you are likely to hit a set of phenomenal legs, but somehow Baccara had managed to make the lower floor an exception to the rule. As soon as I sat down, I scanned the leg portion of my field of view, and I knew this was a mistake. Not having been asked for a drink, I upped and scampered upstairs.
Upstairs, things were a little better. The first thing I saw was several pairs of really bad boob jobs. Ay, a couple of them looked awfully painful (see below for more on this), and I tried my best to avert my gaze. So I sat, ordered my Singha, and opened The Gaze of Kumbu.
[B]The Gaze of Kumbu[/B]
Once my drink arrived, I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and held it for a moment. I meditated there, in full view of the girls, for a full 2 minutes, gathering my wits. Gogo selection is as much art as it is science, but in the end, it requires some mental acumen and the ability to keep your wits in the midst of great pressure. Given that my mind had not endured this pressure for near 3 years, my agility and reactions to such pressures had wilted, nay atrophied, and they needed to be gently warmed, toned and brought back to full strength.
I opened my eyes, emotionless and not expecting anything. This was the gaze of an analytic machine (or so I told myself). I started on one end of the floor and methodically assessed each potential. I looked at face first, legs second, ass third, overall proportions fourth, and then the peripherals (hair, boobs, etc.). I did a binary categorization on the first pass: yay or nay? Crucial in this process is to deal with the inquiring glances in the correct manner.
When the girl looks at you, you need to react immediately in the correct manner. It's really hard, and something I always feel I flub to some degree or the other. So the girl looks at you, and you need to figure out whether to meet that gaze or not. If you do so for less than some threshold of time (say, 500 milliseconds), then you have indicated a lack of interest, and she will take it as such, with no offense. If you hold the gaze for a certain length of time, say 800-1350 milliseconds, then this indicates some interest, and she will check back in a few moments for corroboration. And of course, if you hold gaze for a lengthy period of time (1500 milliseconds), then this is an invitation for her to smile, or do the drink-to-mouth action, and then you have a decision to make.
But here's the problem: while doing the Gaze of Kumbu, and as you scan the room, you randomly meet gaze with girls all the time. That's what humans do: we seek out eye contact. And so what to do when you meet gaze with some random girl? If you've had the opportunity to caste the Gaze of Kumbu, then no problem, you have her all categorized, and you can set the length of eye contact down to the millisecond, and all goes smoothly.
But what if you have not had the chance to calculate her Kumbu-worthiness? And you meet her eye gaze? And you have to make that flash decision on whether to hold eye gaze or to break it off immediately. Oh, the travails of mongerdom, how will I cope?
So I met the gaze of this girl in exactly this way: by random chance. She had two mammoth artificial mounds on her chest. It looked like she had pulled up to an Arco full service gas station, Cletus, the attendant, pulled out a hose and pumped a random amount of some random organic polymeric material into a random spot on her front side. And then did it again in a second spot, and then momentarily passed out while filling the second, resulting in the very obvious and very sad imbalance in the breasts. Add to that, Cletus had not even tried to hide the scar, which was emblazoned across her entire chest as if to say: "yeah, that's right motherfucker".
To my utter horror, I realized that as I had been working that image in and out of my mind, my eyes had been in constant contact with her eyes for well over 3 seconds now. Ugh. It had been so long that her lips had spread to reveal the most snazzy, metal-filled mouth I have seen in years. And as she smiled, yet another polymeric substance in her nose was pushed upwards, distorting her nose into a shark-fin of sorts. Ugh. And she was now working her hands to indicate 'buy me drink kaa?' 'buy me drink kaa?' 'buy me drink kaa?
Ordinarily, I will bite the bullet and buy the drink. No harm in having some polite conversation, and I think of it as good karma. You give something to the well of forgotten souls, and something will always come back. But tonight, I could not do that. I was tired, I was sleepy, and I needed to get my dirty on. So I did the unthinkable in Kumbu land: I shook my head and moved on (gasps of shock). It sounds like I am ragging on this poor girl, and I am. But that is what happened, and I have to say, it's a fairly common kind of occurrence at gogo bars.
On went the Gaze of Kumbu, and at the end of this process, I did spy two very do-able spinner jobs. One of them had one heck of a cute face, with a slightly stocky body type. But she was too busy dancing 6 inches from the mirror to notice me. Meanwhile, another girl who was with a Japanese dude kept looking over to me, and from what my leg-sensor could tell me, even from the vantage point I was in, she had a set of legs well worthy of prime Kumbu time. So I met her gaze several times, and after a while, she walked over to me.
Her name is Plaa, #23, and yes, a super set of thick, shapely legs. Perhaps a tad thick, even for old Kumbu, but very, very nice indeed. Her ass was large, and as far as I could guess, probably slightly on the soft, squishy side. But me likey some squishy bum-bum, so no problem for me. But the killer, sadly, was her face. How do I put this without sounding mean? Ah, yes: she was ugly. She too had major iron works in her mouth (did Baccara get a group discount from some two-bit dental hustler? But that wasn't the problem. It was, well, her face. It was just, well, ugly. I really can't find another way to put it, sadly. But here's the hilarious thing about how our opening conversation went:
#23: Hello kaa, where you flom?
K: America.
#23: Hmm? Amelikaa, you no look like Amelikaa.
K: . . .
#23: you buy me dink kaa?
K: sure.
(drink gets ordered, arrives, she sips it, there goes 200 baht).
#23: how long you stay Thailaaand?
K: About a month (I lied, yeah).
#23: bisi-ness?
K: Yes, business.
(pregnant pause).
K: (blurting) you're very pretty.
#23: I know!
So three things. Why did I say she is very pretty? What kind of dumb move was that? (1) Every horny man says that. You're better than that Kumbu, you're better than that. (2) She was plainly NOT pretty, why would I feel the need to lie like that? Ugh. (3) How could she say 'I know! Very odd.
So anyway, the next thing she says is that she is very popular with the men from the land of the rising sun, and I said:
K: check bin!
Damage: 180 (my drink) + 200 (LD) + 20 (tip), total=400 baht.
As I left, the mirror-girl was casting her gaze my way. I stopped on my way out, smiled at her, and walked out. I'll be back, Pretentious Pudgy Girl, oh yes, I will be back.
Next post: Bangkok Beat.
Next to Next Post: Climax.
