Are you a man?

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.