Günter expected the blast of heat that greeted him when he stepped out the door of the Phuket International terminal. It reminded him of the beginning of the end of his second marriage three years before. Hilda muttered obscenities under her breath when she encountered the intense humidity that would shroud their vacation in Thailand; a destination she had agreed to under protest. In an odd way, she welcomed the discomfort, because it gave her more to bitch about and kept alive an argument that began in Frankfort the week before. Hilda was a beautiful woman, far too beautiful for Günter's round and common face; or so he (and everyone else) thought. No one would have predicted that Günter and Hilda's flash affair would course its way to marriage, but, after they married, everyone predicted it would end in divorce. It did.
But now, Günter, at sixty-two, was a free man, moderately wealthy, after the sale of his business and his share of the divorce settlement, and eager to realize repressed sexual fantasies that had steamed his dreams. Phuket was the logical Eden to head for - brimming with young, eager, beautiful brown-skinned Eve's to help him explore Paradise. He was out to have the time of his life and he didn't intend to fall in love in the process (or ever again), but that's exactly what happened.
He met Nok his second night on the island at an outdoor bar on Soi Eric, the infamous hooker alley that runs perpendicular to Bangla Road in Patong. He and Hilda walked Bangla Road out of curiosity during their calamitous vacation and Hilda snorted and steamed their way speedily past the endless bars filled with Thai prostitutes and laughing men. The scene fascinated Günter and, although he could not picture himself sitting at one of the noisy bars, the memory of them stayed with him and niggled and titillated a desire that he was not exactly proud of. But now, without a cajoling angel sitting on his shoulder and no one back home to account to, he decided to take a frightening plunge and chat with the hookers in Soi Eric and spice up his humdrum life. He found himself in a situation much more complex than what he had expected.
He walked past the beckoning girls at the various bars on Soi Eric, timidly looking them over, smiling, waving and shaking off their winsome invitations. It was an odd sensation to know that he could have sex with any one of these exotic ladies and it was also a bit scary. He was overwhelmed by the cacophony of disco music overlapping from bar to bar, like the waves of many oceans combating one another to reach only one shore, but most of all, he was confused by the sudden availability of so much flesh. He sat down on a bar stool midway down the alley to catch his breath and take stock of the craziness of it all. Three young Australian guys in their cups were hooting and laughing with four girls at a table to his left. He ordered a Heineken from the barmaid. Two girls approached him.
"Where you from?" one of them asked in heavily accented English.
"Germany," he answered.
"Oh, German man very powerful – much power with lady," she said.
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
"How long you stay Thailand?" – "You handsome man." – "You like dance?" – "You like Thai ladies?" A long litany of rehearsed, banal remarks followed.
Günter decided he wasn't liking this. It was too superficial on the one hand and much too real on the other. A daunting moat surrounded his fantasized Eden. It was filled with a culture and communication gap and big, brown eyes brimming with pathetic pleadings. A thousand baht (about twenty-five dollars) for a one-night stand would give one of these girls half a week's wages and there were far more girls than potential customers, so that meant that many of them would not score at all - not that they would go hungry - no one in Thailand starves - food is plentiful, cheap and given away freely when necessary.
He stopped thinking about the bizarre carnival he had bought a ticket for, determinedly got off his stool and walked over to a moderately attractive girl who was sitting alone at a table. She was preoccupied with her cell phone and looked up with surprise when Günter said, "I want boom-boom. Do you have a place?" He was surprised to hear her reply, in pretty decent English, "Yes, I have a place, but I don’t know your name, or who you are. Sit, talk and buy me a drink please."
And so Günter met Nok (whose name means 'bird' in Thai). They talked, they went to her room and they made boom-boom together. He paid her a thousand baht and they talked some more. They talked all night and told each other their life's stories. They had breakfast together at a small restaurant called Sabai, Sabai (which translates to 'feel good, feel good'), and then they went back to her room and made boom-boom again, but this time Nok would not take the thousand baht and a new element had entered their sex act - they were making love and not boom-boom. And so Günter fell in love. And, even more surprisingly, so did Nok, and her love for him was genuine.
Pros are trained actors and actresses. How well they perform on the stage of pretended love determines their success and livelihood. Nok explained all of this to Günter and pleaded with him to believe that she was truly in love with him and he was the first man she had ever met that she genuinely loved. There could be little doubt that the chemistry between them was real. The waitresses at Sabai, Sabai, who watched dozens of boom-boom breakfast couples every week, saw the difference too and assured Günter that Nok was truly in love with him. They read it in Nok's eyes, they said.
A marvelous romance followed. Günter rented a house and Nok said goodbye to the bargirls on Soi Eric. There was a twenty-three year difference in their ages, but the gap was invisible because of their shared interests in nature and music, love of life and love for one another. Günter asked Nok to marry him. She was ecstatic, but said that they must first get permission from her father. Nok was a country girl and her poor farming family lived in the jungle near Suratani. They traveled to Suratani and made their way to the meager, thatch-roofed house on stilts that Nok had grown up in to ask her father for his blessings.
Nok's father was obviously pleased to learn that his daughter had made such a good catch and he charmed Günter with toothless smiles, folk tales (interpreted by Nok) and Thai whiskey. The third day of their visit, he took them on a tour of his little farm, showing off a stand of rubber trees, his pigs, his chickens and his cabbages. They were standing on top of a hill when he pointed to the south.
"See that wonderful house over there?" (Nok interpreted.) "A Swedish man built that house for his father-in-law and put two million baht (fifty thousand dollars) in his bank account." Then he pointed to the east. "See that wonderful house? An Australian man built it for his father-in-law and put two million baht in his bank account." Then he pointed to a nearby knoll and said, "That's where I want my house."
This development made Günter angry as hell. Nok's father's demands turned the woman he loved into a piece of property. The father was ransoming his daughter. Günter could easily afford it, but there was a strong principal involved that went against all that was right. He loved Nok for the person she was, intelligent, loving, warm and nobody's fool. To his mind, buying her from her father would be the most demeaning and insulting thing he could do. It insulted her and it insulted him by making him a party to a chauvinist deal. He refused to do it, despite Nok's pleading attempts to tell him that it was the only way – the way of some Thai poor people with attractive daughters. The cultural moat came into Günter's view again and circled the Eden that had suddenly become his lover's prison.
He left Suratani alone. Nok's father refused to let her leave with Günter and forbade her to ever see him again. Two months later, Günter received a written message from Nok on his cell phone.
"I am sorry. My father told me to go back to Soi Eric and stay there until I find a man who will build him a house. I must do what he wishes. I know you don't understand. Please believe that I will love only you always."
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