The Adventures of Laar

Was this the year of playing musical BYODs or what?

It looks like our collective social skills have bottomed out. Or peaked, I guess, depending on how you look at it. BYODs were being traded and stolen like pro athletes. Ever watch piranahs fight over goldfish? It was kinda like that.

So, we need a new Glossary entry:

BYODT (1/99, LMR) - BYOD-Thief (or BYOXD-Thief, for ex-dancers), someone who steals another ASSCer's BYOD. The BYODT can be male or female, and you can still be considered a BYODT even if you bring your own dancer and then abandon her for someone else's BYOD. For the ASSCon following that at which the BYODTing occurred, the BYODT must wear a blindfold, thick gloves and a diaper to block any stimuli that might indicate the presence of a stealable BYOD. Except for LMR; he gets a general anaesthetic and a chastity belt, while the rest of us gorge ourselves on Viagra and raw oysters.

The precident for this type of social foul was inadvertantly set by yours truly at LV3, where I was smitten by someone else's BYOD, who it turns out was attached to at least three other guys, including a fiancee. My official explanation was that it was an accident; I thought she was just tagging along with Sai's BYOD. This year I really paid the price: I arrived and left with my date, The Kid, though I did indulge in a brief fling with Sick66.

Anyway, if I have it straight, the ASSCon LV4 BYODTing went something like this:

• TallGuy + Rita & Sai + Karen --> Sai + Rita

  DragonFly + Sharon --> DragonFly + Karen --> LMR + Karen --> DragonFly + LMR + Laar + Karen's neck and ears

  J2K + Tristen --> LMR + Tristen

  i.e., LMR + nobody --> LMR + everybody

  Truth + Sydney --> Sydney + various PLs and one babe at Hard Rock

  LLC + Sequoia --> LLC + ? + ? & Sequioa + the babe in red panties who really needed Laar but didn't realize it --> the babe in red panties who really needed Laar but didn't realize it + Karen (OH BABY!) + Rita

And some of these people have called me a slut. Sheesh... It actually got worse than this, but some of the trades are better struck from the record.

Maybe there should also be an entry for ABYOD (Abandoned BYOD) and ABHOD (Abandoned Brought-His-Own-Dancer), for the dudes who get ditched. Or how about BMODBWTFISN - brought my own dancer but where the fuck is she now?

Hey, this could give birth to a whole new social order, with new customs to fit the ASSCulture. Like, for example, if you BYODT accidently, it doesn't count. And the statute of limitations for BYODT penalties is exactly one year. (These two clauses make me exempt from punishment for the '97 indicent. Nyah, nyah.)

Or, if you commit a BYODT and "close the deal" where no deal had previously been closed, you must refund the BYODer half of the cost of getting the BYOD to ASSCon. But, if you fail to close the deal where deals had already been closed by the original BYODer, and thereby deprive the original BYODer of more deals, then you are exempt, but the BYOD must give her BYODer a full refund. Regardless, the BYOD must email an apology to her original BYODer for thinking with her pussy instead of her head. However, if your BYOD disappears with an obscenely wealthy basketball player, she must get pregnant with triplets, sue for a hideous amount of child support, sell the kids for medical experiments, and donate the proceeds to Laar.

Just a thought.

Another episode in the "Incredibly Surreal Trip To..." series.

After you've been around this stuff long enough, you take off the SC-colored glasses, and realize that they weren't really colored after all.

So I pop into CompuServe one night a few months ago and get an instant message asking, "You paying?"

A while before this I had posted a note that I was in the market for a couple of travel partners (and by the way, yes, it works), and now I get a note from two absolutely insane lesbians in Dallas wanting to know if I would take them, at my expense, to of all places, Amsterdam. (And you can all shove your jokes straight up your asses.)

In their sexiest voices, F & L offered me an incentive: to let me watch them fuck, saying that it would be unlike anything I had ever seen before. (Clearly they grossly underestimated my voyeuristic experience.) Yawning, I cockily replied that watching just wasn't going to cut it, and that if I was paying for the trip I would expect to not only participate but to be the very center of their attentions. They balked.

But, we did talk a lot by phone, and ultimately I got invited to one of their famous pool parties. A straight guy at a lesbian pool party. Go figure.

Touchdown in Dallas mid-afternoon, and it's at least 200 degrees outside. In the shade. And I'm told that the bag containing my clothes is in Cincinatti. Probably.

Wonderful.

So we spend the afternoon drinking, watching Blondage (they're big Janine fans), and engaging in various other forms of adult recreation.

My clothes show up some time around 9:00 pm, and we all get dressed to go to a swingers club, the name of which escapes me. Our group of six consisted of a married couple, two lesbians and two single guys, rearranged to make three couples for the sake of meeting club rules. The club was a blast, but against my wishes (I was getting friendly with someone's really cute wife) the group decided to take itself back to F & L's house, where the married couple, F & L and I went skinny dipping and ultimately ended up in a tangled pile on the poolside lounges.

The party continued inside, while Ron, the other single guy (huge, hairy, tatoo-covered biker type) is on-line pretending to be a 21-year-old girl. (Makes ya think, huh?) Apparently being the wuss of the group, I find a bed and collapse somewhere around 5:00 a.m. Four short hours later, I'm violently awakened by F, L, and a large strap-on dildo, which, despite their stated intentions and best efforts, never actually invaded any cavity of my body.

For the life of me I can't remember what happened between then and the time the "official" pool party started, but I think it involved a 7-Eleven, an ATM, a shower and possibly some more sleep.

Around 2:00, it occurred to me that I was in the pool, the sole straight guy in a backyard full of lesbians. There were two other guys there, one wearing a dress and floral sun hat (an awesome sight to the acid-tripping women), and his friend. This turned out to be more frustrating than exciting. Ashley, one of the few bi-babes there (and gorgeous), was being carefully guarded by her decidedly masculine girlfriend, who bared her teeth and claws whenever I came too close. The butch-gaurdian was wearing a red tank-top sporting the words "Ray's Babes" (I forget what it meant), but she lacked the sense of humor necessary to appreciate the obvious hilarity of my joking about it.

Well, by about 6:00, my lesbian pool party adventure had deteriorated to the point that I was resigned to eating my Chinese food, getting thoroughly inebriated, and giving the girls agonizingly detailed commentary on the escort ads in the back of a sex paper they were kind enough to give me. They were thoroughly entertained by my analysis and my feigned "as-if" attitude toward the ads, when in reality the "Hot and Horny Coeds at Your Place Tonight" were looking pretty damn good right about now.

Then M showed up. I later found out F & L, noting my predicament, invited her. M was stunning. A petite Vietnamese girl, 26, silky black hair down to her ass. I noticed her, thinking to myself, "yeah, right, like that'll happen" and went back to the ads. Well, M walks over, slides into my lap, draping herself around me like, well, in a really cool way. Actually gave me chills.

"Hi, I'm Laar," I slurred. "My life is a cartoon."

"Hi, I'm M. My life is a Jerry Springer show. We'll get along just fine."

Within minutes, we're in the pool, wrapped around each other like high-school kids on a first date. She suggests we go to a club (Babydolls) where she used to dance (strippers, strippers everywhere!), and pick up a girl for us to play with. All my "yeah, right" warning lights are going off, but she's dead serious. "Don't worry," she says, "I'm still going to do you too."

"There's no WAY I'm drunk enough to hallucinate THIS," I thought. Within an hour, we're in the shower at her place getting ready to go, I still in utter disbelief, she acting like this kind of thing happens to her every day. At some point while we're getting dressed she casually mentions that she's bi-polar and off her meds, the significance of which I fail to grasp until later. Then she changes the subject.

We get to Babydolls, and she hits her groove. She's almost embarrasingly affectionate, something that is damn near impossible to do with me, and I'm getting "the look" from every guy in the place. We grab a stage-side seat, with her wriggling in my lap, as she falls completely in love with a Blonde Barbie-type goddess on stage. When M got up to get drinks, leaving me alone at the stage, the guy on my right says, "She's HOT! Where did you ever meet a girl like that??" Naturally, wanting to milk the moment for all it was worth, I replied, "Just met her. She picked me up at a lesbian pool party an hour ago." His utterly expressionless face was a Kodak moment.

Well, M got a handful of dances from her new girlfriend, and invited her back to party with us. Close, but ultimately didn't happen. Fuck.

It's around midnight, and M wants to go clubbing. She won't go to straight clubs, so our first stop is The Village on Cedar Springs. For the uninitiated, the Cedar Springs area is one of the most screamingly gay areas of any city, SF included, and The Village is a gay mens dance club. And for the second time in the last 12 hours, I'm the only straight guy anywhere in sight. I consented to clubbing here on the condition that she not go off and abandon me.

Which, of course, she did. Twice.

The first time, she had some "situation" to straighten out with a previous girlfriend. This lasted about 20 minutes, leaving me in The Village to fend for myself. After countless "No, really, I'm straight" replies to various invitations, she comes to rescue me, and rescue me she does. Grabs me by the back of the head, kisses me deeply, wraps one leg around me and runs her foot all the way up to my neck. (Did I mention how flexible she was?) This is enough to convince the guys that we're there as a couple, but not enough to keep them from playfully grabbing my ass.

The second time, she says she's going to pop into this restaurant to get us some food. "It's okay, the food is free. My boyfriend owns the place."

"Your what? Oh, okay. I'll just wait out here."

Here we go again. This time it's Brian, the guy selling roses on the street, asking, "You're straight? No way. Why are you here?"

I'm deep in what-the-fuck mode now, so I tell him, "You know that girl that just went into the restaurant? I'm going to fuck her senseless tonight."

"Aren't you at least bi?"

Fuck it, Brian. I give up. Besides, now another guy on my other side is singing to us, while two other guys come up and have a catty spat over whether Brian is a slut for flirting with me while his boyfriend is away.

M finally comes out to rescue me again, just as I turn down some anatomically-challenging offers from a carload of four transvestites.

We walk down to an outdoor lesbian bar. M can't get in; apparently she was recently banned for punching a security guard. So we stand at the fence, arms around each other, as she points out the girls she's slept with. Her brazenly bringing a guy to this place wasn't very popular, and immediately the teeth and claws are showing. We're outahere...

Now it's 4:00 a.m., and we're both sobering up. We collapse in a booth in an arcade somewhere, where she treats me to a full-blown bi-polar crash. Pretty horrifying to watch. During her hysterical bouts of sobbing, I'm scrambling to steer the conversation away from self-loathing, the futility of life, and suicide. She shows me the scars on her wrists and gives me graphic details of an unwanted abortion her parents coerced her into.

This is all a bit much for one night. Talk about extremes.

We ended up getting her under control, getting her home, showered, and to bed. She apologized for putting me through al this. "No problem," I said.

The next morning felt like beautiful, calm, clear blue skies after a devastating storm. We lingered in bed until noon, ate breakfast and talked. If it wasn't for the previous night's crash, I could fall hard for this girl, which considering my recent past, is saying a lot. She talks about me meeting her parents. I extend my trip two extra days.

When I got back to LA, we talk a few times by phone, then that was it.

I'll be back in Dallas in two weeks. Stay tuned for the next episode, AFTSD '99.

The past few years of ASSCing have ruined me.

In the years before ASSC, clubbing gave me a lot bigger rush than it does now. It was geniunely a blast. Now, it's all just so "normal". The ability to sleep through SF stage shows is a hint that you've had enough. The ET (entertainment threshold) has just been raised too high. I'm shock proof. Or so I thought.

So I'm there in Virginia again. The job kicked my ass, but now it's over. Charged the client an obscene amount, too. Time to cash in some FF miles and take a badly needed vacation.

The year before last I made a way-too-brief stop in Amsterdam, just long enough to get a feel for the place. Long enough to know I had to get back. This trip was the perfect chance: I'm already on the east coast with six days to kill before starting another project in Hartford, Conneticut.

6:45 a.m. - Wake up, shower, ditch the rental car at Washington National, and take the quick flight up to LaGuardia for a layover en route to paradise. I land just before noon, devour a greasy airport pizza from Pizza Hut, and go shopping for some magazines to kill the next three-and-a-half hours before boarding the non-stop seven-hour hop to Schipol Airport in The Netherlands.

3:45 p.m. - Stretched out across five seats with my head resting uncomfortably on my laptop, I hear, "... preboarding for Medallion Members only." Cool. I'm outahere.

4:15 p.m. - Liftoff.

5:30 a.m. - Touchdown. I don't sleep on planes without tranquilizing myself into oblivion, so I'm drugged, half-rested, starving and have to piss like a geyser. Take care of the necessary business, then catch the train to Centraal Station. Think of catching a cab, but my hotel is only a half-hour walk, so I decide to hoof it. Bad idea. I'm really tired. Stop at Hooters on Damrak to rest. It's not open yet, but I grab a plastic CP-like chair, relax, and stare right into the RLD. Seemed like I was just there yesterday.

Then it hits me. I'm totally indifferent to being here. What was I so excited about? It's just more of the same shit all over again. Maybe I'll just do normal tourist stuff instead.

Yeah, right.

I check into my hotel next to the Rijksmuseum, and sleep the day away. At least jet lag is great for nightlife.

8:20 p.m. - Get up, shower, hike back toward the city center. Think of stealing one of the many piece-of-shit bikes that litter the canal-lined streets, but then decide the walk won't kill me. Stroll back up Damrak and grab a quick dinner at Hooters. In Virginia, Hooters is the seediest "public" thing around; in Amsterdam, it's the tamest. And the girls... :-)

Fuck, I'm still having a mood. I'm totally apathetic about being here. WTFP?

Waitress with some non-Dutch Euro-accent brings the food, and since it's still slow, we chat a while: Where you from?/What are you doing here (pretending she can't tell)?/What's your name?

"Laar," I said.

"Laar? You don't sound Dutch," she says. "Are you Canadian?"

I notice her wedding ring. "It's a long story," I reply. I'm outahere.

10:30 p.m. - The RLD is coming to life. Walk down Stoofstraat, hoping to find the French 19-year-old (20 or 21 by now) with kinky blonde hair. She's nowhere to be found. Damn. Why did I come here? Did some more window shopping, met a suitable companion around midnight, and spent about two hours tongue jousting. And stuff. Her night's as good as over, so we talk for about another hour, then she asks, "Are you hungry?" Not bad. Maybe things are looking up.

We eat a leisurly breakfast until it's starting to get light. She's nice company, but it's clear that I'm not getting any freebies, so I give her a kiss on the cheek and tell her maybe I'll stop in to see her that night.

4:00 p.m. - Wake to a buzzing alarm and lie there staring at the clock, wondering how to amuse myself today. Maybe I'll just get really stoned.

I grab some food at a street stand and stop in a bar for couple of genevers. Hmm... feeling kinda fun now, and it's just getting dark. I wander into the Grasshopper, a hash cafe outside the RLD. After another drink, I'm feeling less antisocial than usual, so I strike up meaningless conversations with a few people, and end up killing a couple of hours with a group of local guys. Conversation turns to ASSCing. One of the guys, named Jan, knows about the newsgroup, but since strip clubs in the American sense don't really exist in Amsterdam, he says there's not much interest in the subject. What is cool is that he recognizes some of the "old" names - Z, Bubba, Doug, Siren. Says he lurked through the whole Siren-PL shitstorm. He didn't recognize the name "Laar". Bastard.

Well, by now we've all had a few more drinks and an herb-enhanced buzz, and I'm up for just about anything. Two of the guys aren't interested in the RLD (kinda like Angelenos going to Disneyland), but Jan says he'll hang with me. I'm in a happy but not-too-horny mood, so I suggest catching a show at Casa Rosso. Jan reluctantly agrees, and we're escorted upstairs to the balcony/bar to wait for a seat. The shows are fun, but with my modified brain chemistry they seem to go on forever. We finally get a seat, right in the damn front row.

A few more acts go by, solo-girl, guy-girl, girl-girl, solo-guy-for-the-women-in-the-audience, etc. Every few acts, they pull members from the audience onto the stage for humorous stunts, totally at the expense of the volunteers' dignity. Of course, I'm laughing my ass off. What's different about the "volunteer" shows from my last trip is the degree of interaction; guys are getting stick-shifted, shirts torn off, pants undone, etc. Last time the performer-volunteer contact was a lot more tame, but not tonight, and the audience is going fucking crazy. A few more acts go by, then a guy and two girls come out. They all get naked, do a little foreplay, then start hunting for a willing victim. The redhead hops off the stage and grabs my hand. Oh, shit...

The naked redhead is feeling me up and rubbing herself all over me, the blonde girl is undoing my pants, and the guy is standing behind the blonde girl rubbing her ass and back. She gets my zipper open enough to see my brightly-colored silk boxers, moves aside to show them to the audience, then -- WHOOSH! -- pulls my pants down to my ankles. Needless to say, I'm having a full-on HARD attack, and it's in front of about 200 people.

The blonde whispers in my ear, "Are you shy?"

"No, not really," I laugh back, thinking things will get a little racier, and that will be that.

"Good," she says.

WHOOSH! Boxers down to my ankles. I don't fucking believe this is happening. The audience is in hysterics, and I'm still laughing my ass off, naked from the waist down, for the world to see. Redhead produces a bright, fluorescent-orange condom from somewhere, and hold it up for the audience to see. They're screaming like hell. Yep, the condom was for me, and four little hands unrolled it onto me. "This isn't really happening," I'm thinking. By now I'm laughing so hard my eyes are all squinted up and so full of tears and I can barely see anything.

OOOOHHHHHMIGOD! Two tongues run up my thighs and they start a full-on, honest-to-goodness, double-non-mock-003. Now I'm not laughing, I'm panting, trying to keep my balance. The guy, who was eating the blonde, crawls out from under her, and the redhead takes his place with her face buried between the blonde's legs. The guy kisses and licks his way up the blonde's body, bites her nipples, and, uh, waitaminute... he's heading for her mouth, where Little Laar is happily playing.

Now before I go on, understand two things: First, Amsterdam is a very, very tolerant city. Extremely tolerant. The only thing they don't tolerate is intolerance. Second, I was still buzzing pretty hard.

Well, to my absolute shock, the guy joins the blonde in her oral activities on me while fondling her. Doesn't give me the chance to give him the go-ahead or not; he just does it. I'm trying to concentrate and think of the best non-phobic way to get him to stop (without stopping the blonde), but my head is a little cloudy, so all I can get out is, "Uh... Uhhh...."

The blonde starts squeezing my ass cheeks, digging her nails into them. That's all it took. BOOM! I'm done, wobbling knees and all.

As I'm regaining my composure, and a little of my sobriety, they help me get my pants back on. I tell the guy, "I can't fucking believe you did that." He just replied, "You were a good sport."

"Yeah, whatever," I said. The audience was screaming too loudly to hear this exchange, and I was too weirded out to do anything but stagger back to my seat, to the applause of everyone.

The trio finished their act, and left the stage.

"That didn't really happen, did it?" I asked Jan.

He just said, "Sorry, man, you did it."

"Fuuuuuck."

After the next act, we got up and left.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was comparitively normal. No more visits to Casa Rosso, thank you. Spent another evening with my date from two nights before, then did the typical tourist stuff.

On the flight home, I kept replaying the whole Casa Rosso thing in my mind, then finally decided that I don't really care enough to worry about it.

So much for being shock-proof.

It's been many months since I've posted anything really meaningful to this group (maybe longer, depending on whom you ask), so in honor of the failure of things to suck, I decided to rise above myself and contribute something worthwhile. Couldn't just sit here and suck, could I?

This post is about a recent multi-country trip that, with a little help from Air Brokers International, landed me in two of the world's reddest red-light cities, Amsterdam and Bangkok. Now, first of all, this is more a travel report than real ASS-C news, so if you're anticipating graphic accounts of carnal knowledge with Dutch bombshells and Thai goddesses, take a few deep breaths and hop on over to alt.sex.stories. (Sorry to disappoint all you alt.sex.prostitution lurkers.) Just think of this as Laar's version of Siren's "Incredibly Surreal Trip to..."

Amsterdam was my third stop on this round-the-world adventure. (The first two were in England and therefore were not worth reporting on.) My scary little plane out of Gatwick was an hour late, getting me into Amsterdam's Schipol airport around midnight. (BTW, Schipol is about the most efficient airport I've ever seen.)

I didn't have to wait long for the entertainment to begin. I got on an almost empty train to Central Station; the only other people in my train car were two 20-ish girls getting stoned. Make that getting more stoned. When I got on the train they giggled, pointed at me, said something in Dutch, and cracked up. (What, are my pants unzipped or something?) During 25-minute ride to Central Station, they began to flirt with each other, kissing each others hands and necks, occasionally looking at me and giggling.

Ahh, Amsterdam...

Driving through the city on a rainy Sunday night about 1:00 am, it looked virtually deserted, so I decided to sleep off some jet lag and check out the city early the next morning. My hotel room was maybe 7 x 10 feet, with a narrow bed along one wall.

The guy at reception took me to my room, and as we walked down the corridor, he asked, "Do you smell that?" and smiled.

Ahh, Amsterdam...

I got up early Monday morning, ate and took off on a walking tour of the city. It's a very cool place. I could live there. Nearly everyone, it seems, rides bikes, and there are bikes everywhere. Of course, these aren't just any bikes, they are the most beat-up, rusted-out, piece-of-shit bikes available. Nobody has a nice bike, probably because having your bike stolen is a normal part of the daily routine.

Around mid-afternoon I wandered toward Amsterdam's legendary institution of adult entertainment. It consists mainly of two main streets with unpronounceable names and the adjoining side streets. The streets are lined with sex shops, live show theaters, and "window shopping" - women ranging from scary to drop-dead, fall-in-love-right-now goddesses. Two in particular were worth mentioning. A beautiful Dutch girl named Priscilla caught my eye. Unlike the other women, who were uniformly attired in lingerie or bikinis, Priscilla was wearing a black business suit. A very sexy, low-cut black business suit, with some very sexy lingerie underneath. (See Mona, I told you suits get me going!)

Walking around the other side, I met another girl, whose name I can't remember, but she was 19, French, with kinky bleached-blonde hair. This one was definitely of the "drop-dead-fall-in-love-right-now-here's-all-my-money-oh-my-god-I-can't-believe-you're -talking-to-me-let-alone-willing-to..." Well, you get the idea. She's on Stoofstraat, a tiny little side street, easy to miss. If bought-and-paid-for love was my entertainment of choice, I would have gone flat-ass broke with her.

Technically, prostitution on the street isn't supposed to exist, but I did get propositioned a few times while just walking around.

I suppose this place could get fun when crowded, but being the second of the first two and only people in that night, I found it really dead. Probably worth trying around midnight. Interesting stuff on the "menu" though, including eating a banana straight from places only Tiki would put it.

Couldn't go to Amsterdam without seeing one of its famous live sex shows, and The Casa Rosso Theater was reported to be the best. Bottom line: Don't miss this place. The atmosphere is classy and festive, and the shows are polished, entertaining for both men and women. (Women made up a good third of the audience.) For anyone who has seen SF-style shows, it won't be the least bit surprising, but even the most jaded should find it entertaining. Especially if they get dragged from the audience to join the on-stage antics. (No, you don't get to fuck on stage with them, just some erotic humor, completely at your expense.)

It was just getting light outside when my flight began its approach into the Bangkok airport. (For what it's worth, Thai Airways now tops my list as the best airline I've ever flown.) We came in from the north, missing the city altogether, so all I could see below was fields still partially flooded from the rainy season, which was just ending. I was expecting the worst: hot, rainy weather, choking pollution, unbearable traffic.

Well, the weather wasn't too bad, considering how I've heard it gets. It was warm (mid-80's), with daily rain keeping the humidity between 90 and 100%. Everything you've heard about the traffic is true, but it truly has to be experienced to be believed. It took more than two hours to travel the nine miles from the airport to my hotel off Sukhumvit Road, on the "expressway" nonetheless, one whole hour of it in one spot. I spent much of the trip to the hotel trying to convince the driver that I really wasn't interested in going down to Pattaya, a beach resort south of the city.

The trip back to the airport (at 1:00 am) was even worse, though, since the light traffic allowed my driver to prove that the rickety taxi could break 100 mph, slowing only when it was absolutely necessary, like cars being parked in front of us. If it wasn't dark I would have been frantically searching my phrase book for the Thai equivalent of, "SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!" I'd prefer the traffic any day.

Another rule of driving in Bangkok: Never, ever, under any circumstances, drive the wrong way on a one-way street. Unless of course, it will save you time or you think people won't mind. The sidewalks are also fair game for tuk tuk drivers. Crossing Sukhumvit or Rama IV in the middle of the afternoon qualifies as a near-death experience. If you get caught standing in the middle lane when the light turns green, you can count on pieces of your traffic-mangled body being heavily spiced, skewered, and sold for 40 cents by street vendors.

The smog was really bad, especially on the main roads like Silom, Sukhumvit and Rama IV, so bad that buildings a half mile away fade into the haze. But out on the side streets, it's nothing an Angelino with calloused lungs can't handle.

My hotel was about a ten-minute walk to Nana Plaza, which is a rather small, three-floor, U-shaped entertainment center with bars on all three floors and a few open-air bars on the ground level. The infamous Nana Hotel is directly opposite on the other side of the soi, less than 100 feet from the festivities.

Toward the back of Nana Plaza on the right side is Hollywood Royale, the bar where I met Sue, who became my friend and tour guide for my three days. She was 27 (verified by her passport), looked 16, and moved to Bangkok 12 years ago from the rural north near Laos.

With something of a preference for Asian women, I was surprised that I found very few of the women heartstoppingly attractive. (Hey, my specific fetish is for East Asian women, not Southeast Asian.) But Sue was cute, spoke decent English, and (what really caught my attention) SHE COULD DANCE! Most of the girls simply stood there in their bikinis and gyrated in a bored sort of way. But Sue had moves. And she smiled a lot.

With what I had read about Bangkok's nightlife and what I saw when I got there, I found the scene more saddening than entertaining. Sue said that some girls actually enjoy bar work, but like her, most don't. Many come to Bangkok from the poor, rural areas of northern Thailand to help support their families, but some come looking for fun, money, or a farang man to marry. I had a hard time getting past knowing that their motives for being there ranged from love to poverty to slavery. This shit rips snaggy hearts out.

Sue and I talked and danced for a while, until she finally popped the inevitable question: "You want go short time?" "Hmm, no," I said, "but do you want to get something to eat?" Her face lit up.

We ate (several times actually) in the coffee shop of the Nana Hotel, which has very good Thai food at very low prices. I fell totally in love with Thai food, even ate at a few places I probably shouldn't have. Thai food in Thailand tends to be hotter than hell, and Sue helped me out with these useful terms:

• mai phed ("not hot") = a little hot

  nit noy phed ("a little hot") = as hot as this white boy could eat

  phed ("hot") - really fucking hot, Novocaine required

  laan ("very hot") - used to kill farangs, so hot that Novocaine wouldn't help

Sue and I looked through the pictures in my travel book, and she pointed to pictures of what her home in the North was like (a small hut with a grass roof), and the work she used to do on her family's farm. She showed me scars on her tiny hands where some "crazy farang" went after her with a knife. She was baffled by such things as chewing gum (which she liked but quickly swallowed), hair gel, and aerosol deodorant. She also had a really hard time grasping the concept of divorce, which she became preoccupied with, repeatedly saying, "I don't understand..." I also tried to explain email to her, but fax was as close a concept as she could understand.

As we walked around the city, Sue helped me develop the skill of differentiating real females from Katoeys (ladyboys). The first night we met, after we finished eating, with a perfectly straight face she claimed to be a ladyboy, just to see how I would react. (Did I mention that Thais are almost annoyingly playful?) She did this on several other occasions: stop in the middle of a happy conversation, get very serious, tell me some outrageous fib, and wait to see if I caught on. Then she laughed her ass off when, time after time, I fell for it.

Back to the TV's. If you go to Bangkok thinking, "Ahh, no problem, I can tell 'em apart," think again. Some of these guys are amazingly feminine. Even some of the "girls" who dance nude aren't girls. With their breasts enhanced, penises removed, and just enough hair to cover the area of interest, you'd have to do a pelvic exam to tell the he's from the she's. In the club, Sue was extremely careful about pointing out which dancers were male, as she once had the crap beaten out of her by a ladyboy for revealing to a customer what he/she really was.

By the third day, things with Sue started to get a little intense. She started telling me how she wanted to marry a farang, how good she would be as a wife, how she wanted to have farang babies, how she wanted to come to America with me. Later that night, she said three words I had been bracing myself for, but was still unprepared to hear.

Later she asked me, "Are you good man?" How do you respond to a question like that? I just answered, "Maybe a little good, a little not so good." The truth was that I was felt like a total asshole. She said, "No. I think you very good man. I think you be very good to me." When I explained that tomorrow I would have to leave on my way home to California, and that we may not see each other again, her eyes filled with tears. Heartbreaking for both of us, but for completely different reasons.

I couldn't help but wonder how many white knights have ended up bringing home a Thai wife just to rescue her from Bangkok's nightlife.

There are several things you can see in Bangkok bars that you will see nowhere else: dogs and cats that look like they're going to die any minute, dancers picking their nose (picking is okay, blowing is a no-no), and five-year-old kids selling flowers. Dancers and customers use the same restrooms (yes, at the same time), though many had private stalls. In the public men's room in the Ambassador Plaza there were women from a local restaurant washing dishes in the sink alongside men using the urinals.

A few other things: Wearing shorts is tolerated but generally not appreciated. Nobody will say anything, but the looks you get will say enough. Most Thai men wear long pants and sandals, a fashion concept I couldn't understand until Sue took me to "see Buddha."

A farang man doing tourist stuff with a Thai woman also seemed to attract brief but disapproving glances.

I came away from Bangkok with the impression that it is one of the world's worst cities, in one of the world's poorest countries, with some of the world's best people. Would I go again? Probably not unless I had to. But it was an experience I wouldn't trade for anything.

From: laar@zbone.me (laar)

Newsgroups: alt.arts.origami

Subject: Move out, ASS-C is taking over!

Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996

to: Readers of alt.arts.origami

from: The owners of alt.sex.strip-clubs (ASSC)

re: YOU'RE OUTAHERE!

Listen up, you paper-folding dorks!

This is a stickup. We don't want your jewelry or money (well, maybe your money). We want your newsgroup.

We understand the following, so don't even bother posting or emailing us about it:

1. We have no right to do this. It violates all aspects of proper net behavior. This is morally wrong. Blah, blah, blah... Yeah, we thought of that.
2.  
3. Our topics of discussion are often unimportant and usually offensive. But honestly, so is origami.
4.  
5. We should stick to our own newsgroup. Sorry, we've chosen not to. We like yours better.
6.  
7. Some material may be inappropriate for children. And quite a bit of it is inappropriate for adults. Viewer discretion is advised.

Alt.arts.origami was selected for invasion as a sort of mercy killing -- we don't necessarily want to kill you, but we feel we owe it to you. It's for your own good.

You have two choices: (1) leave peacefully and move into a vacant group; (2) resist us and witness the most gratuitous display of violence you've ever seen; (3) stick around and observe, but don't speak. NOTE: Any future discussion of origami is prohibited!

Should you choose to stay, some introductions are in order:

I'm Laar, the Glossarist. "Dr. Laar" to you. I've organized this little takeover, but I'm the least of your worries.

The bony-assed Italio-Chinese-Sanfranciscan on my left is Pope ALS. He can have you killed with a snap of his fingers. Yes, he knows his pants are unzipped.

To his left is Edie, whom you will address as "The Goddess." Her specialty is torture-by-strapon. It isn't pretty. She also has a wicked tongue and isn't afraid to use it.

The bony-but-worn-out-assed Chinese-Sanfranciscan on my right is Prince Doug. He'll kill you slowly without provocation when he's bored. Stock up on tic-tacs. Screw not with the dark side.

On Doug's right is Molli, a goddess in her own right, who will be nowhere as merciful to you as she might first appear. Appease her with chocolate shakes and strawberries. Yes, at your own expense.

The pit bull at Molli's side is Bubba. He's totally unpredictable. Chaos follows wherever he goes. Just look at us wrong and we'll unhook his leash. He wields the "secret weapon." Don't make him use it.

ZBone is our intelligence specialist. He knows what you think before you think it. He can predict your every move. And he keeps us constantly informed of developments on the front lines.

DrD heads up our special forces team, a highly-trained unit from the east flown in just for the occasion.

Smoking will not be tolerated in this group. Anyone lighting up will be extinguished promptly by RJ.

We're not totally without mercy. Earandil will attend to your wounded.

The remaining members will introduce themselves as they come ashore. Watch especially for Kat, who doesn't care whether you live or die, and Jade, who likes the sight of blood. Stand in their presence. Speak only when spoken to. Obey without question. There is no complaint department.

Ok, where were we...?

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - I'd heard rumors of outrageousness in Mexican clubs, so I did my 'net homework and generously donated a few hours of my time to ASSC research.

Executive Summary: The stripping is awful. Chia pet maintenance is badly neglected. BUT, your ET (entertainment threshold) is likely to be raised. A lot. The line between strip club and brothel is blurry or non-existant. TUSCL, Grimace and Paranoia are mostly out of date. The city is incredibly smoggy and traffic is bad, as is the citizens' driving.

Tip: Change money at your hotel, at the airport, or anywhere other than a club. Pesos were 7.40/US$ at the airport, 7.25/$, and 5/$ at Bar Vas. Read on.

Typical club: Three-song sets by bored, unmotivated (stage tipping simply isn't done) "dancers"; who basically stay clothed until the middle of the third song. As a matter of personal taste, I appreciate grooming. At least some grooming. Most of the ladies had been slacking on chia pet maintenance since, well, puberty.

The Zona Rosa, which coincidentally happened to start across the street from my hotel, is a semi-triangular area roughly bordered by Paseo de la Reforma, Insurgantes and Chapultapec. Quite a few clubs, not all of which are easily recognizable as such. There are lots of touts on the street, kind of like Vegas but much more persistent.

Stop #1 - Play Girls, near the intersection of Reforma & Insurgantes: Couldn't believe this one. A little room, about 1/4 the size of CP, with a little runway stage about the size of a bathtub. Only three girls working, none dancing. At the back of the little room is a door leading to a hall, which leads to a few tiny rooms where, according to the touts, anything is available for a price. The place sucked. One beer. I'm gone.

Stop #2 - Crazy Bodies, next door to the above: This place is more of an actual club, with a large elevated stage, tables on the floor, and booths around the walls. About eight girls working, two cute, the rest best viewed through thick beer goggles. "Table Dances" are available for 60 pesos (about $9), but they're far from Americano table dances: They're both topless AND nude; i.e., she's nude, you're topless. (She'll take your shirt off!) These dances, which take place in a not-too-dark corner, attract more gawking than the stage dancing. Might not be your cup of tea if you don't have an exhibitionist streak. I do, so I did. Diana was the only one doing table dances, and she had 'em lined up and waiting. (La Edie de la Zona Rosa.) Enthusiastic and fun, but she understood very little English, and spoke even less. That, combined with my mangled Spanish, led to some fascinating attempts at conversation, most of which left looks of utter bewilderment on her face. It was fun anyway. Once I pointed to her lips, and she responded by biting my finger and giving me a sly smile.

Stop #3 - Bar Elegance, somewhere just off Insurgantes below Reforma. Decent club, but boring. It was the only club that night that was actually full of customers, so I left in search of a more attentive environment.

Stop #4 - Bar Vas, right next door to above: Positively a dive, but with serious potential for fun. About six or seven girls, most sub-balsa, except two, one of whom looked enough like Sayla's pictures to make me do a double-take. (No, it wasn't her, but...!) The other beauty was the one on stage when I walked in, a strangely familier sight: An attractive, rather petite girl, about 5'3", with short black hair, shaved up the back, with black fingernail polish, hanging upsidedown from the pole by just her legs. Am I seeing this? Jade de la Zona Rosa, sans piercings? No, not by a long shot, but the similarities were a bit much. I later learned her name - Arlita.

While Arlita was on stage, the bar guy approached and asked what I'd like to drink. If you answer with something other than "beer" in a Mexican club, expect a conversation something like this (I'd already had three by now):

• Bar Guy: "Que quieres beber?" [What do you want to drink?]

  me: "Coke."

  Bar Guy: "Que?"

  me: "Coke."

  Bar Guy: "Coke?"

  me: "Si, Coca Cola."

  Bar Guy: "Coca Cola?"

  me: "Si."

  Bar Guy: "Soda?"

  me: "Si."

  Bar Guy: <as if I didn't know what I was asking for> "Well, okay..."

For that much trouble I should have just had another beer.

Anyway, Arlita is still dancing, rather well actually, on the slightly elevated stage, which is surrounded by yellow and green balloons. Interesting. One of the scary dancers, whom I'll refer to affectionately as The Vulture, made her attack:

• Vulture: <really fast Spanish words>

  me: "Que?" [What?]

  Vulture: <more really fast Spanish words + rubbing my shoulders + breathing in my ear>

  me: "Sorry. No comprendo." [I don't understand.]

  Vulture: "Ahh, lickie mi pussy?" [Wanna go upstairs?]

  me: <wide-eyed stare>

  Vulture: "Si! Tu comprendes!" [You understand!]

  me: "No." [No.]

  Vulture: <grabbing my jewelry> "Fuckie-Fuckie? Comprendes!"

  me: "Si, comprendo, pero no." [Yes, I understand, but no thank you miss. You're a frog.]

  Vulture: "Ooh, porque no?" [Why not?]

  me: "No. Gracias, pero no." [Go away, froggie. You're a nightmare.]

  Vulture: <doing her very best stripper shit> "Ooh, por favor. Necicito (sp?)" [Please, I need it!]

  me: "No. Por favor, no mas! Yo no quiero." [I wouldn't even let Doug do you.]

When this scene finally ended, the Vulture went off and sulked. I just looked down at my drink and shivered a little and made a gag face, which I didn't think anyone would notice. Arlita, who just got off stage, was sitting with her cousin, another dancer; both noticed me and cracked up with laughter. I just smiled at them and laughed at the situation, and waved Arlita over to my table. She spoke English fairly well, but was somewhat distant at first. Over the course of a couple of drinks and about an hour and a half of entertaining conversation (zero pressure, the place was dead), she gradually became very friendly and affectionate, and eventually asked if I would like a table dance. Two for sixty pesos. "Sure!" She left and took a shower, then came back, fresh and beautiful.

Picture the most enthusiastic Mons dance you've ever fantasized about, plus MB, plus CP, intensified by a factor of 10. In the course of four dances ($27), the once-distant Arlita became passionately (and convincingly) aroused, even grabbing me by the hair and kissing me so hard I ended up with a fat, blue lip. No details, but I get the idea that almost nothing is disallowed during the "dances." This is Mexico. Tampa isn't.

We walked back to "our" table, and she snuggled up to me and purred, "I want to go upstairs with you." Earlier she had told me that she didn't offer that service (she volunteered it; I didn't ask). In a remarkable display of self-control, I politely declined. (Gotta draw the line somewhere.) "Next time?" she asked.

About 3:00 am I walked back to my hotel, exhaused, enjoying the warm rain, just a little curious about what a "next time" would be like.