advertising industry have been comodifying bodies for the purpose of profit (i.e., treating both male and female models as “promiscuous objects” to be traded). At first glance it seems strange that the line should be drawn at what one might call the “cottage industry” of street-level prostitution, especially in Bangkok, where the practitioners are relatively free of exploitation by pimps and can therefore fairly be described as choosing to commodify their bodies on their own account for the purpose of survival. It may be that the answer can be found in a parallel paradox: the obsessive repression of “soft” drugs like marijuana, despite the wealth of data which proves that the “hard” drug alcohol is far more dangerous to health and responsible for almost an infinitely greater number of diseases and deaths. It is not difficult to see what the private trading of marijuana and street-level prostitution have in common: these are industries any private person can develop on their own account without being squeezed out by big business or falling liable to tax. Thus it is in the suppression of prostitution and soft drugs that we see the hypocrisy at the heart of the culture. It is in the interests of government and big business to appear to uphold a “moral code,” the true purpose of which is to ensure that impoverished individuals cannot escape their poverty except by becoming fiscally and commercially useful: read slaves. In other words, it is a “code” driven by exactly the same dynamic as the slave trade. But, as Professor Steiner points out (op. cit.), the peculiar reverence we have for moral codes depends exactly on their being founded on something beyond functionalism. A money-driven morality is no morality at all.
“That’s just amazingly brilliant. You’re a genius,” I say. I do not add: I just hope I’m still sane when you get your Ph. D. In my insecurity I want to ask about the rumors, but in my insecurity I don’t have the courage. She’s basically a very honest girl, and I don’t think I could handle any form of toxic truth right now.
While she’s out, Lek comes with a sizable package, takes one look at me, asks where I keep my skins, rolls me a big one, shakes his head, and leaves. Now Chanya is back, and I’m quite high. At least I’ve got control of the demons. Thanks to the power of cannabis, I’m able to shrink them with my brand-new green demon-shrinking gun, which sort of grew out of my right hand after the third joint. Chanya smells the dope, gives a mildly disapproving glance, shrugs, goes back to her computer. Time passes (it could be a minute or a couple of aeons, this is export- quality stuff).
She comes back over to me. “You sure you’re okay?”
This time the floodgates open. “No, I’m not fucking okay,” I bawl. Now I’m blurting, mostly about the eyeballs I sold that won’t give me any peace, but also about those three anonymous corpses in Phuket.
She raises her eyes to the ceiling. To complicate matters still further, I am horny. I can just about reach her left breast, thanks to the way she’s leaning over, which suddenly seems to offer solace in a cruel world, so with the directness of a monkey I grab it. I wouldn’t call it a lecherous gesture, myself, more like a dash for safety by a threatened psyche.
She sighs. “Oh, Sonchai, it’s always the same.”
“What is?”
“When you smoke too much. You go space traveling for a couple of hours, disdaining the earth and everything on it. Then when you finally get back, you’re like a horny sixteen-year-old.”
I release her breast like a drowning man releasing a straw. “I’m in a state,” I admit. “I’m kind of scared, but it’s not that exactly.” She frowns, because she sees I’ve gone into that mood of meticulous self-analysis that often accompanies a comedown. “It’s more like fear overlaying something fundamental. I mean it is fear, but it’s mixed in with something more general, like what’s happening to the species?”
“What species?”
“Humanity.”
She curses. “It’s Vikorn who’s done this to you. That old bastard. I hate him. I hate having to look at his hypocritical bloody mug on every third lamppost. I hate the way he’s going to win the election and bleed Bangkok white.” She pulls her cell phone out of her jeans pocket and stabs at one of her autodial numbers. “Get me Vikorn,” she snarls at the reception.
Well, I may be a basket case and on the verge of terminal catatonia, but Chanya going for Vikorn in a toe-to- toe standoff is too good to miss. I perk up a bit. Unfortunately, our cell phones don’t work so well in the hovel, so she has to go out into the yard. I see her walking up and down, her left hand flaying while she yells at the phone. I have no idea what she’s saying, but I’m sure of the psychology: she and Vikorn own me jointly, and there are clear demarcation lines. He has trespassed on her turf, and the she-wolf is in a rage. She comes back into the house fuming and shaking.
“What did you say?”
“I let him have it,” she says in the tone of one who might have gone a tad too far.
“What did he say?”
“He just asked where you were.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you were stoned out of your brain on the bed killing demons with a big green demon-killing gun.”
I scratch my head. “How did you know about the gun?”
“Have you any idea how stoned you were half an hour ago? You kept telling me about it, over and over.” She pats my head, then cuddles me a bit the way she did in the old days. After a while, she says, “D’you want to hear about Dorothy?”
“Yes,” I gulp.
“Well, the man she went off with that night, this Jimmy Clipp, she’s crazy about him. Totally gaga. I checked him out with the girls at your mother’s bar. He’s a regular there. Very popular. He’s generous, considerate, never hurts anyone, and they say he’s quite the finger artist. His cock isn’t too big, and it’s not crooked. You know how superstitious the girls are and how they think a crooked one is seriously bad juju. Best of all, he’s funny. He doesn’t take sex seriously at all and makes jokes in the middle of boom-boom that crack everybody up.
“But he’s a total jao choo — a butterfly. Even when he’s got the hots for a girl one weekend, he dumps her next time he’s in town, because he’s got curious about another, or he decides to go back to one of his old lusts. And he likes to do two at a time. He’s an engineer on some road they’re building to Laos. It’s China-driven-you know how they want trucks to run from Beijing to the Gulf of Thailand within the decade?”
For the record, DFR, my darling does not normally describe life in quite such mannish terms; she’s doing it to amuse me and somewhat succeeding. I’ve managed a wan smile or two already.
“I haven’t told Dorothy this-she’s in blind lust at the moment. She sort of confided in me she’s never really had good sex in her life before. A few gropes here and there, a night now and then with an incompetent or, even worse, an alcoholic. She tried to be a lesbian like all the other female sociologists in her circle, but it just doesn’t work for her. Most of the men in her life have been male feminists, and everyone knows what cockless wonders they are-now this new guy of hers is a world-class player. For her he’s like nirvana itself. She can’t believe sex can be such fun. That’s why she decided that brothels can be good for women too. He’s back up north working on his road, and she e-mails and SMS’s him all the time.” She pauses for breath. “See, so long as she’s in this state, she agrees with my whole point about prostitution, and she’s going to pass my thesis with full recommendations. That’s why I’m working my buns off to get it finished. You understand, darling?”
“You mean when he dumps her, she’ll change her mind, and brothels will be wicked engines of exploitation all over again?”
“Right. And she’ll start giving me a hard time with my thesis all over again.”
We are discussing how bad it’s going to be when Jimmy Clipp forgets to contact Dorothy next time he’s in town and what we can do to cushion the blow (find Dorothy another john in another brothel?), when we hear a police siren in the distance. We exchange a glance, and Chanya goes pale. This is District 8, after all, and in normal circumstances only one cop in D. 8 is allowed to use his siren. Sure enough, the siren gets louder, and Chanya gets paler. Now the siren is at the beginning of our soi and quite deafening.
Chanya has gone to the window and pulled back the curtain. “Sonchai, where’s your gun?” she asks softly.
“Don’t be silly. You can’t kill a cop, especially not a colonel, especially not Vikorn.”
“Not to kill him. For myself. I don’t think I can stand it. Oh, Buddha, it is him!”
I’m still in bed, so I have to imagine Vikorn in his fatigues getting out of the car and prowling to our front door. There is a knock. It is neither loud and arrogant nor soft and humble. Nor is it anything in between. It is a Vikorn knock, the kind no one ignores.
“Can you go, darling?” Chanya says. “I don’t feel so good.”
