There is no place I can hide them in the house. She knows every spot. I walk around with my fingers in my pocket and dream.
On the night before the trip, she asks me when we have to leave. I say 7 a.m. She says she needs to go to the market before we take off, about 6. I ask her what she needs to buy. She says I don’t know. Doesn’t sound right at all. So in the morning, she’s getting dressed and so am I. What are you doing, she asks. Going to the market, I say. She has a fit right there. Throws a coffee cup against the wall. Coffee splatters all over my art books. Glass on the floor. I think love is going to kill me. She goes alone and I just know what it is. I know.
When she’s gone, I check my mail and the Internet saves me. She doesn’t flush her cache from the night before because we were packing and eating and talking and I see where she was browsing: on this hook-up site called Tagged. Her profile just pops right up. She’s got pictures I took of her in that damn bikini at the pool in the clubhouse. Says she likes a man who knows what he wants and hip-hop music. She’s got friends. Lots of young European dudes with crew cuts. They look like football stars.
When you’re 53, you know what’s good for your soul. I’ve got a long history of great failure and great success. Western Digital paid me buckets to run the marketing. And I had a network of clients that locked me in. Took eleven years to go from copy writer to Big Dick. And when I got to the top, I didn’t want to be there. I couldn’t stop thinking about teaching music to kids or learning to sail, diving the reefs off the Catalina Islands. The trend went all the way back to Little League baseball. Best player on the team and then my mind turned to reefer and sci-fi novels which turned into a stint of guitar playing and modal jazz. I’m good for ten seconds at everything, and then it’s over.
So I have my life-size epiphany in Stowe, Vermont, at this big marketing dinner paid for by Compaq with too much wine. I raise my hands to silence the table, then throw the question out. What’s the absolute best thing in life?
Everyone quickly agrees: true love.
It was all the proof I needed. Proof that the one thing I really wanted was TL. A deep, serious, honest connection with a fantastic woman was the one consistent theme of my life. And I admit Thai women had a certain appeal, a promise of youth and good odds. But I wasn’t taking the exploitation angle seriously. Have you ever known one thing to be the way you hear it on the news or in the hallways at work? For me, never. I have to see things for myself.
But I’m not angry with Goy. What’s the point? I just want to get rid of her now with as little conflict as possible and get on with my quest. I do love her, but I can’t live with her. She’s a devil. You know what I mean. We go to Phi Phi and I have the best three days of my life. Snorkeling in the glassy water. She takes me into the bushes behind the beach. Not a soul around except us and she fucks me as I sit on a pile of sand. She sucks my cock right there and her mouth is wet and shiny. She looks up at me with those tender eyes. And I lift her into my lap. Her cheeks feel damp on my fingers. I spread them and pull her close to my bulge. She groans and puts her hands on my shoulders. My cock juts out to find her hole. I feel her muscles squeeze in on me.
When she pulls my head down to suck her nipples, I see two Thai girls behind a coconut tree watching us. Goy looks, too, and she twitches somewhere deep inside. She looks back at me with a lewd smile on her face as I explode to the rhythm of a frantic popping sound coming from her groin.
This is one woman it will be hard to forget.
On the last day, we’re sitting in the restaurant. I’m drinking from a coconut.
She’s nibbling at sour mango. ‘Goy,’ I say, ‘I will never be a rich man. You deserve a rich man who can take care of you and your family. I’ll help you find this man. I can help you decide.’ That’s when I did become a wingman, but for a woman.
She confesses to wanting more on the financial end. It isn’t her exactly, but her family that demands she marry someone wealthy to take care of them back in Isaan. An American woman just wouldn’t think this way, but Thai women do. It’s a different culture and you can’t fight it. I wouldn’t fight. I would use it.
When we get back, I look over her profile on Tagged. She shows me her friends, which ones she likes. We feel closer than ever now that the truth is out between us. I even read her messages from hundreds and hundreds of men. We’re a desperate bunch. When I look at those messages to Goy I see us as conniving, weak, blathering wimps. It’s just as ugly to me as it is to Goy and I imagine any other woman who reads such junk. First, I change her pictures. Not so sexy, more Bambi-esque. She really can hook you with those big eyes and smile. I re-write her profile. She wants a little danger in her life and she can’t afford it on her own. She wants sunset cruises and a candy-apple red Honda Jazz. Are you the man for her?
The replies flood in. The liars are easy to spot. As we read the messages, she sits on my lap and I put my hands on her breasts and pull her big nipples.
I get hard every time we do this. She tells me I have the biggest cock she’s ever sucked. She can be so nasty. We read messages from doctors who can’t spell simple words. CEOs who offer to send money right away. They offer plane tickets to Ireland, Norway, California, Geneva.
It’s the moderate replies that I read with interest. The guys who want to know more and don’t tout money. If you have it, you usually keep quiet about it or at least don’t think about it too much.
I steer Goy to a retired, South African internist. Fifty-six. Says his wife died six years ago from cancer. He’s retired to Phuket. Been living on the island one year. Knows just enough to want a cute Thai girl haunting his condominium hallways and bedrooms. Looks to be in good shape. Gray hair, but lots of it. A wedge-shaped haircut full of expensive gel. Big shoulders.
Deck shoes. An honest smile. It is the smile that gets Goy. Says he looks kind. Whatever.
Goy agrees to meet him at the Natural Restaurant in Phuket Town. I drive her there and drop her off at the corner. She wobbles on her white heels up the sidewalk and I feel a terrible pain at the thought I’m making a crucial mistake I can’t fix. Too many of these crucial mistakes and life kills you for sure or gives you psoriasis.
I’m up all night staring at the guy’s profile on Tagged. I click the pictures over and over, looking for something and I don’t know what. I walk up and down the living room floor with a hard-on and keep looking at my cellphone to see if I’ve missed a message. An hour is like five thousand years.
We didn’t talk about sex. We didn’t agree on any rules. It’s about her.
About her finding the right guy. Two-thirty, there’s a little knock on the door.
I’m wide awake. Savage in the eyes. She walks straight past me. I smell wine on her dress, the ocean at midnight. I call to her. I want the story. I want the details, but she shakes her head no and goes to the bedroom, shuts the door and locks it.
I go back to the computer right then. I know all of the buttons on Tagged and whip up my own profile. I post the picture from Phi Phi when I looked away from Goy in disgust as she happily snapped pics with the digital camera I bought for her. You can see the beach and the waves as a reflection in my Ray-Bans. I have my hands clenched in an expression of ultimate confidence.
I find three more pics and load them up. Nothing sweet. They are manly, active pictures of the beach, a sailboat and me feeding rice to a neighbourhood stray dog. I have one pic with a Toyota 4x4 behind me and the door open. It looks like mine, but it isn’t. I load that too.
Then I write a message. I cut and paste it and send it to almost fifty women who live on the island and grade at least a seven out of ten. It’s a theory. The Wild 7. The tens are too beautiful and in Thailand, their beauty is a major asset. Perhaps all they have. And a lot of the other important qualities may not be there: humility, wit, sincerity. It’s the slightly under-appreciated woman who has long-term possibilities. I want a girl who isn’t a slave to her family. Who swims. Who doesn’t worry if her skin gets too dark.
Then Goy appears from the bedroom. She sits in my lap and stares at my new Tagged profile on the computer screen. A wounded look appears in her little-girl eyes. I feel her satin panties against my thighs. She slides her arms around me. She lifts her brown nipple to my mouth. Her skin is soft and sends pulses of light through my body. I take her nipple in my mouth and it swells. I love the brown color, the rubbery feel of it in my teeth. Every part of her touches a part of me. She kisses me deeply and I regret it all as her hand pulls my throbbing cock out. I love her. She has it all. She pulls at it and I feel her long fingers curling around my head. We finally agree to stop torturing each other. She says she won’t meet any more men on Tagged and I won’t meet any women. She takes her soft fingers away just before I come.
She’ll get a job at one of the hotels and save money. I promise to help her more when I can.
