The Susie Wong Story

Thailand, Pattaya,
24-03-2010.

I wake up well after ten o'clock morning, the taste of several cans of Cheers beer foremost in my mouth, instantly making me feel like puking...the slight head ache in the front lobe of my cerebral cortex reminding me of my vow never to drink Cheers again...but then I made that vow in the tourist district of Bangkok, in Khao Sarn Road, in the Gecko Bar, after drinking tons of this stuff together with a crazy German who had all these weird world views and outlandish solutions to global plaques pestering the world population... I guess after last night's sushi dinner and subsequent boozing party, drinking pegs of Cheers I must have forgotten all of my good intentions....

Or maybe it was the sight of Tuk leaving me in the hands - or should I call them claws? - of our nighttime party's participants, all of them beautiful ladies of the night who were convinced I would attain world fame - or maybe notoirity - as a painter of Thai prost*t*tes, convinced they too would co-celebrate - no doubt financial as well - in my new-found carreer...no doubt countless bottles of Cheers and a cheerful communal mood had much to do with that, big female dreams of being in the spotlight of the world art scene, interviews with art reporters from international newspapers and maybe a few American TV stations thrown in for good measure....

Poor Tuk didn't think so, feminine jealousy eating away her Thai Phi, her soul being devoured by the sight of her friends rolling around on the beach with me, pinching my suntanned skin, taking off my T-shirt and rubbing my shoulders, massaging my arms and hands, some of them even sucking sensually on my finger tips which they probably thought of as containing magic, the farang fingers that hold the pensils that produced these stupid paintings and drawings that brought in the Thai money that financed last night's little party...

So, here I am back in my room, pas de Baht - sh*t, I will have to use my ATM card today to pay for this week's rent - a Cheer beer induced head ache that is tearing my braincells apart and no new-found Thai love to massage my scalp, make it all go away, alone in my bed, needing to go to the toilet as my bladder is urgently telling me but the Cheers in my belly wanna come out the wrong way...is this really the sort of life I wanna live, the eccentric life of an artist in foreign lands painting exotic local females, always surrounded by female attention, knocking on my door at the most unusual hours - that is talking from a Dutch point of view - taking off their leopart-skin skirts, their s*xy tank tops without restrictions, posing for me on my bed without inhibitions........

When I was a mere lad, somewhere in my teenage years, I read the story of Susie Wong in Hong Kong, an english ametuer artist just like me who took a sabatical year in Hong Kong, checking into a prost*t*te-rife hotel in the more sleazy part of the city to improve his artwork, maybe get famous and world notoirity thrown in for good measure...several years later I saw the movie Susie Wong which brought world fame to the Chinese actress Nancy Kwan, the first Asian actress ever to make it to LA's version of the Indian Bollywood....however much of an impression the book and subsequent movie might have made on me, never expected to get into the same situation myself...alas with the booze thrown into at a - probably - heavy cost to my life insurance policy later on I fear....