On several occasions my wife has left town to ‘supposedly’ take care of her ‘sick’ sister. Her return date always overlaps an extra weekend. I could suspect the worse, but I never minded being in the house alone. No one, but me and my dog. Could have been a sad situation, except I don’t reside in a hopeless American suburb where the only light at night is the glow of television in the bedroom window.

I live in Pattaya.

It’s Saturday night.

Watching TV is for the near-dead.

It’s party time, even for old gits like me.

There’s a bar at the end of my road. The Buffalo Bar is two minutes away by bike and Walking Street fires off from 9pm to dawn. My friend Derrick calls from the COYOTE A GO-GO. He’s with his girlfriend and she’s with two friends. I shower, shave, and splash on a little cologne. One glance in the mirror tells the truth. My physique might have been the Acropolis once, but now I’m in ruins. No that it matters, because every man is king for a night in Pattaya as long as his ATM card is flush.

I get to Soi Diamond in less than ten minutes. I park my bike under a massage parlor. Walking Street is packed with Chinese bus tourists, western males, backpackers slumming from Koh Samet, Russian families on a cheap holiday, Thai police, dancing girls, bar touts, transvestites, and marines on R&R from a training mission. Thankfully I recognize no one on the way to the Coyote. Especially none of my wife’s friends, who tell her my every move.

Derrick is sitting at a round table. Nung is on his right. Her friends are drinking B-52s. The three of them are under 22. All of them would stop traffic in Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois and any other state beginning with I. ie the state in Illin’.

I order a vodka and cranberry. Nung’s friend smiles at me. When I was back in the States last month not one woman smiled at me. Can’t blame them. I’m nearly a hundred years old to a 20 year-old New York female.

I turn to the stage. The five naked dancers are painted with day-glo flowers. Collectively they weigh as much as two western women fattened by Frankenfood from Mickie D. I come from New York and always thought about taking over Governor’s Island and turning the abandoned Coast Guard station into a version of Pattaya. Better than any casino project. Traffic would be backed up to the Delaware Bridge by men desperate to have a real good time rather than a $20 lap dancer by a gold-digging American go-go girls. The City of New York would be able to pay for new schools. It’s all too good to be true, because the USA is too puritan to allow prurient behavior on the scale of Pattaya.

The girls on stage are dancing to an insipid boy band hit. At least it isn’t HOTEL CALIFORNIA. The bar is dead. It’s the height of the low season. Derrick suggests we vacate the premise to HEAVEN ABOVE. Nung used to work there and has plenty of friends working the firepole. We pay the bill and walk through the back alleys to Soi Diamond.

HEAVEN ABOVE is upstairs from the other go gos. The welcoming staff bow in greeting, their hands pressed together in a wai. We climb the stairs and enter the bar. The music is techno. The girls like it. Derrick orders more drinks. The owner comes over and says hello. He used to own a pimp bar in East St. Louis during the 70s. We speak about surfing in Ventura. “I miss the waves, but this is better.”

Two girls come up to him with kisses. They wear flimsy nighties with nothing on underneath. His eyes roll in his sockets. The devil has a good grip on his soul. Mine too for sin in thought. Derrick is chatting to his girlfriend. He seems happy, although I hope she doesn’t notice his looking over her should at a new dancer fit as the butcher’s dog.

Vittorio enters the go-go. He is trying to start a magazine about Pattaya go-go. It’s a good idea and his photos are much better than mine. He sits down.

“You’ve been here a long time. ” I say and then ask, even if it’s none of my business. “You have a girlfriend here?”

“Yeah, she works here. It’s supposed to be a secret, because she has a sponsor who’s sending her money and is also a friend of the owner.” His eyes betray the object of his desire to me and anyone else. Plus I figure it’s only a secret to the guy sending her cash. She’s a show girl and would stop a car chase on an LA Freeway.

“Trouble is her middle name. We used to be so romantic, but now it’s only sex.”

“She can only give what she can give.”

“I know but I want more.”

“What you want her to be a virgin.”

“No.”

“You want her to retire from the bar.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

She’s on stage miming to a Thai love song.

“So relax and just have a good time. That’s all she wants from and you and that’s all you can give her.”

I hate giving advice at a bar, especially after I’ve been drinking and when it’s advice I myself wouldn’t follow. I order another drink. I’m over the limit and signaled Derrick that I’m leaving before the Hypocrite Police shoot me for sounding stupid.

“Are you taking someone home?”

“Me?” I was so drunk I didn’t want to go home with myself. “I’m faithful to my wife.”

“Only because you’re drunk.”

It was the truth.

Somehow it’s already 2am. The street is packed with drinkers, bar girls, more TVs, more police, more go-go girls. I could go to Marine Disco to see what’s happening. It’s full this time of night. Instead I decided to drive home.

If I were in the States the cops would stop me for DWI. Here I cruise home without any trouble. The streets beyond 2nd Road are empty. So is my house. Not really. My dog is wagging its tail. I fall on the sofa. I turn on the TV, knowing full well it’s too loud, but then it doesn’t keep me from sleeping. Nothing would, because I’m really passing out.

At least I had the smarts to put Tylenol and a glass of water on the coffee table.

The breakfast of drunks.