Trigger warning. I think it’s pretty obvious that this one’s not gonna be for everybody. The next one will be nice and light and fun and will include Miracle. So maybe you’ll want to skip this one and read that instead.
As our tour in Vietnam comes to an end and we turn our sights to Thailand, I’m taking a moment to ruminate, as one inevitably does, on ladyboys. And although I’ve not yet been to Thailand, I am not without any experience of the third sex. Given the hysteria around gender and transitioning and drag queens in the States at this moment, I figure it’s a good time to put my thoughts on the subject out there for my massive following to read and consider. I’m encouraged to do so because I have disabled the comments on the Southeast Asia Escape Plan and so will be spared the fury and vitriol my remarks here are sure to provoke. My theory is that the reason the writing people put out there on social media is so limp and vapid is that everyone is basically writing scared, because of likes and comments, etc., and fear is the death of good writing. And so I proceed fearlessly because fuck it.
But before I begin, I want to be clear that I know that trannies and drag queens are not necessarily the same thing, and ladyboys are another thing altogether that’s pretty specific to Thailand. But for the purposes of this piece I will conflate them because it’s my blog and you’re not the boss of me and I can do what I want. I am also aware that the term tranny is not exactly PC and is a bit inflammatory to some people. Whatever. And, and, I’m also also aware that a lot of what will follow isn’t going to be popular with the Cultural Left and will make some people squirm. Likewise, I am aware that certain conservative-types will think I’m speaking their language, which means they’ve missed what I’m trying to do here. Cuz the fact is that my own cultural politics are pretty hard to pin down and will be pretty surprising to a lot of people. Maybe. Although it should also maybe come as no surprise whatsoever that I’m about as libertarian when it comes to the personal life side of things as they come, which is not to say that I am myself a libertine. It’s maybe also helpful to know right out of the gate that I think ladyboys are just great and everyone should have a ladyboy in their life in some capacity, and if I had a biological child who was born sexed male but who later realized she was a she or a them or a whatever, I would respect that 100% and call them Peaches from then on. Because I think it’s a parent’s right to call their kid whatever they want. But, then again, I also think parents should have the right to abort their children up to age 18 as long as the father eats them. But I realize I’m in the minority here.
The first interaction I ever had with a ladyboy was in Ybor City in the late 90s. This was before they tried to clean it up with that Centro Ybor business and Ybor was a totally different place than it is today, which by comparison is, well, there is no comparison. I was with friends drinking beer at the New World Brewery back when it was in its original location before they moved to behind the old carwash by Florida and Busch. I was definitely underage. But this was before the bartenders at New World found out that I was underage because Donnie and I blew our cover by failing to stick to our SOP of keeping our heads down and drinking our beers quietly, which had been working a treat for fucking years. But then we had to go and get all cocky and bring these high-school chickies we knew to the bar because surely they’d think we were cool because of the whole drinking in a bar thing and they’d want to get it on with us. And these chicks were clearly underage and so the bartender Mike came over and asked for our IDs, which of course we’d left at home, and then proceeded to give us an earful about how not cool that shit is and blah, blah, blah. And so the high school chicks split out of there real quick and clearly didn’t think we were cool and had no designs whatsoever to get it on with us. This was before all that happened.
So I was in Ybor drinking with friends and the scene was pretty lame, which was often the case at New World, come to think of it, and so I wanted to get out of there but I didn’t drive and taking a cab wasn’t really a thing in Tampa at the time and so I had to wait on my friends for a lift home. So I went out to the parking lot which was across the street and down a little ways from New World to wait. And while I was waiting a really incredibly sexy Asian chick comes up to me and asks me what I’m up to.
“Hey, what’re you up to?” she asks.
“Just waiting for my friends who are still at New World, which is pretty lame tonight as usual, and so I’m just waiting out here for them to leave so I can get a ride.” Even then I had a way with words.
“Oh, I’m also waiting for my friends to leave. Want to come wait in my car with me?”
I was pretty young and certainly possessed little of the worldliness and sophistication that I’d acquire later on after I was married and so had no use for them, but I knew an offer I couldn’t refuse when I saw it. This chick, whose name I didn’t catch, was hotter than hell and glistening and wearing a tight white mini-dress deal like the one Sharon Stone wore in that scene in Basic Instinct except tighter with black high heels and she was hotter than hell. And so I went back to her car, which it turned out I’d been pretty much standing right in front of on the sidewalk, and she put some “beats” on the stereo because it was the late-90s and we get into a little small talk. Except the small talk doesn’t last very long and she starts to get a little handsy, which I don’t mind because I’m male. And she starts running her hands up and down my stomach under my shirt and starts, I shit you not, purring a little, and she leans over and looks at me with eyes that clearly say, “I’ll do anything you want,” and asks, “What do you want me to do?” And, of course, being male and all, I have some ideas.
Except that I start to get this weird feeling. I mean, here’s this totally hot and glistening Asian chick wearing a totally sexy white mini-dress deal with black high heels, out here in a parking lot in Ybor sexily throwing herself at me, me, and offering to do whatever my depraved mind can come up with. And, believe me, I had some ideas.
And so even if you didn’t already know this is a story about ladyboys, you’d probably see what’s coming. It’s so obvious, you’d probably think. Except I was there and it wasn’t obvious to me, and it took a while for things to become clear. And what eventually became clear was that I had by then been male for a good while and nothing like this had ever come even close to happening to me before. And I’ve got some stories, believe you me. But this was pure fantasy. Pure fantasy. It had to be. Women do not just pick up random guys in parking lots in the nightlife district and invite them into their cars and offer to do anything they want ever. Unless they’re working. It just doesn’t happen. Ever.
Now, I had been invited into girls’ cars before, but they tended to do things like play the soundtrack to Rent and sing along because they know every word and they’re nervous like that Latina chick I dated for a little while whose name escapes me at the moment, although I do remember that chicken soup she’d make with the cream and rosemary, which was pretty much a game changer.
And as I sat there in the leather seat of this sexy Asian chick’s really pretty nice car and she started to undo my pants and reach for the magic stick, which I’ve never called it before but which I think works for this story, something else became clear: Not only has something like this never happened before ever, it wasn’t happening now either. The sexy and glistening Asian hottie in the white mini-dress deal and black heels was a man, baby. Guaranteed. And, no, I didn’t give her the old Mick Dundee to confirm my suspicions. I knew. With every fibre of my stupid little male being, I knew.
And so I split out of there pretty quickly after she gave me a blowjob . . .
Just kidding. I split out of there pretty quickly with my dignity still intact and headed back to New World where the scene was still pretty lame to wait it out because clearly I couldn’t be trusted not to get picked up by a sexy Asian tranny in the parking lot and so needed a chaperone or two.
As we were pulling away after finally leaving after staying at New World for an annoyingly long time, I was able to point out the sexy Asian tranny to my friends because there she was, leading another unsuspecting young man back to her car to hang out while she waited for her friends. Needless to say, I hope they enjoyed each other’s company.
My second encounter with a ladyboy was at a drag show at the bar that Nicole’s dad worked at. As far as gay bars go, this place was pretty extreme. I’m talking about hardcore gay porn on every TV in the joint (and there were a bunch of them: think of your favorite sports bar times ten). And no problem whatsoever about the bathroom gender situation. There was only one bathroom and anything went. This was not the kind of gay bar women enjoy because they just want to have a girls’ night and drink Chardonnay and not be pestered by men who just want to get it on. This place was not for the faint of heart, not by any stretch.
Nicole and I used to go there a lot because we were both waiting tables at ABC Pizza at the time and so we’d go out drinking afterwards together. I was totally smitten with her at the time, and I still don’t get why she wasn’t into me in that way. We hung out all the time after work and she’d spend the night at my apartment pretty regularly but it just never happened. Not even close. I even gave her a box of chocolates for Valentine’s Day which I noticed was still on her dresser months later. “You still have these?” I asked as I popped one into my mouth, and she was super annoyed about it too because she told me she’d never had someone give her something so nice and so she was eating them extremely slowly and taking only the tiniest nibble from a piece every once in a while to really savor them and make them last.
Nicole liked to go to her dad’s bar because he’d hook us up with cheap drinks, which I thought was cute because for the entire time we were hanging out Nicole never paid for a drink. Ever. But her frugalness was really part of her charm for me.
And so we’re at her dad’s bar one night—I’m pretty sure it was a Saturday cuz the place was absolutely jumping—enjoying our cheap drinks and a little pretty extreme hardcore gay porn on the TVs when a drag show starts. I have to say, I’ve been to a number of drag shows that range from the relatively tame sort you get at a drag brunch to, well, to this one, which I’m sure you can imagine was in no way tame and which I definitely, definitely prefer. Hands down.
And when the sexiest performer had finished her bit and I’d gone on for a good while to Nicole about how sexy she was and how I might now be permanently confused sexually because of, well, how confusingly sexy she was, Nicole went ahead and called her over. And so we get to chatting and I definitely asked her about her tits.
“Are those puppies real?”
“They sure are, sweetie,” says the confusingly sexy drag queen with the fake tits.
“Can we let ‘em breathe?”
Okay, I didn’t really use those words, but I think they’re funny now. My point is that I learned right then and there how you can tell when a woman’s “really” a man without performing the Mick Dundee test: Just ask her if you can take a look at them titties. Go ahead. Do it. If she whips ‘em out of her tube top just like that, in public, and lets you give ‘em a good squeeze and doesn’t even flinch when you pinch her nipples, well, let’s just say there’s a good chance that peeing standing up is an option for her. There is, of course, the rare exception of the “real” woman who’s recently gotten breast implants and is proud of them and feeling pretty saucy at the moment. She’s likely to take ‘em out and let you cop a feel too, often while her husband who paid for the implants sort of shakes his head sadly, the poor bastard. Then there’s the even rarer situation that’s exactly the same as what I described above except that the husband who paid for the implants is totally into it and keeps urging you to “go ahead, give ‘em a good squeeze,” which is pretty weird but which you go along with anyway because when does this shit ever happen? and you gotta carpe diem. But like I said, these are the exceptions. Women who do not know you and who aren’t working girls will almost never just take their tits out on demand just cuz you wanna have a look and maybe give ’em a good squeeze and pinch. It just doesn’t happen.
I realize of course that drags queens aren’t necessarily ladyboys, but seeing as how this guy went through all the trouble of getting a pair of really very nice man-mades installed, I think ladyboy works here reference-wise for this rant.
“So what’s your point, Kampff?”
My point is that I’ve heard similar stories like the first one from lots of other men. Lots. And I can appreciate, given this, why the whole ball of wax is a cause for concern among the more conservative types.
Take George, for example. George nearly killed a ladyboy he’d had nonconsensual drunken sex with in Mexico while he was in the military. With a machete. She escaped with her life only because he couldn’t find her, and he’s grateful for that because he was pretty fucking crazed and would surely have hacked her to pieces had he been able to. Find her, that is. I have no doubt. And I think George is still definitely not just a little bit crazed because he told me at my brother’s wedding to George’s sister Jen that he was going to fuck me non-consensually because my brother had fucked both of his sisters and there needed to be some justice in the world. Right? He meant it, too. So I pretty much steered clear of George from then on.
Gina argues that George did in fact drunkenly consent to have sex with this chick, but I’m all like, “Babe, I don’t think you understand what the kids mean by consent these days, and also there’s a huge difference between drunkenly consenting to sex with a chick you picked up in a seedy Mexican border town bar and actually having sex with a tranny who you didn’t know was a tranny until you saw her big fat cock just laying there stuck to the mattress when you woke up in the morning and so now you have to kill her with a machete. Huge difference.”
And maybe there will come a day when people’s ladyboy stories aren’t like this. Maybe they’ll reflect fondly on that time a drag queen read stories to them in the local library. I have no doubt that this will happen. And I hope it’s soon. But in the meantime I think it’s a little disingenuous of the Left to nonchalantly act as though the whole trans and drag and gender situation that’s a big issue in the States right now is just perfectly normal and nothing at all to get into a tizzy about, and I think the Right sort of has a point when they’re all like “Hey, let’s just slow down a second here,” when it comes to their kids becoming trannies maybe and chicks with dicks using the same bathrooms as their sisters and wives and daughters and moms and grandmas, for fuck’s sake, and everyone being meant to just nod and blink as if this is perfectly normal stuff and the Right’s just completely bigoted and racist against trannies and are basically Nazis and should be dragged out into the street and pilloried and made to watch drag shows in the public park until they get in line ideologically.
But I’m definitely not saying the Right is right, either. If you know anything about me, you know that I’m a card-carrying pragmatist who finds the idea of right and wrong in anything even remotely resembling an absolute, ahistorical sense to be just not very interesting and, frankly, pretty naive. I’m merely making the modest proposal that maybe the Right is not completely wrong to suggest that drag queens who, I get it, are not necessarily trannies, maybe shouldn’t be reading stories to the kids in the library and performing in public parks because they’ve seen drag shows, the Right has, they’ve enjoyed them, even, and they call total bullshit on the Left’s ridiculous claim that there’s nothing confusing and unusual and certainly nothing sexual about drag shows because of course there is: confusion and novelty and innuendo are the fucking point of drag shows. It’s their bread and butter. And maybe normalizing the whole transitioning thing is a bit daft because the whole trans thing is pretty much not normal by definition.
“Wow, Joseph. I’m a fan. I admit it. I even tolerated your posts about eating non-fluffy dogs. But this whole anti-trans screed is a bit beyond the pale, isn’t it?”
Maybe you’re right, imaginary reader. Maybe it is beyond the pale. But you’re not right, and I’ll tell you why: This is not an anti-trans screed. Not by any stretch. I love the third sex. Love ‘em. And I’m not alone, apparently. According to my internet research on Google with SafeSearch disabled, lots of blokes love the ladyboys. Love ’em. And they sometimes like getting it on with them when they’re in Thailand more than regular chicks because the ladyboys are more, how should we say, adventurous than the real ladies sexually and will have anal sex no problem and are by all accounts way sexier than your average Thai party girl, which I find hard to believe, if I’m honest, and so more research is needed. Obviously.
But the point is that this is really a post about understanding and tolerance. I think the pro-trans-and-drag-queens-reading-stories-in-the-park-or-library crowd should try to understand the positions of the people who maybe were, shall we say, misled by trannies and so are maybe a little skeptical. Not of course that these stories give any indication of how trannies behave across the board. Of course they don’t. But I think it’s worth keeping in mind that not everyone has had casual anal sex with a sexy and glistening Thai ladyboy in a tuk tuk and so maybe they don’t have the sorts of fond memories of ladyboys to base their opinions on with regard to the whole gender transitioning and drag hysteria situation going on Stateside. Maybe it really is difficult to get past having been misled by a tranny in a parking lot in Ybor or in a seedy hotel in a Mexican border town or to look past the fact that transitioning is so not normal—which is not a moral judgement by any stretch—that nobody anywhere ever except the apparently super well-adjusted people of Thailand has ever thought it was normal, ever, except that we’re all supposed to be good postmodern liberals all of a sudden and sort of nod our heads and blink when we hear that someone’s 12-year-old is now taking hormone blockers because she doesn’t want to be a girl and have tits which for the entire history of humanity has been pretty much the only thing a 12-year-old girl has ever wanted. Because this is pretty much unimaginable to some people’s unenlightened minds.
I think this is a position worth understanding and being tolerant of while the Right catches up with the rest of us more liberal-minded folks who enjoy trannies and ladyboys and drag queens, love ’em, even.
Because I think that rather than our society’s ideas about these types of things taking far too long to change acceptance-wise, the opposite is really true. Ideas and mores change at a faster rate today than ever before. And the speed of this freaks some people out, which I think is pretty reasonable really, because some shit strikes some people as pretty freaking crazy. And so they say “Hey wait a minute” and all of a sudden these issues of ladyboys and trannies and drag queens and bathrooms and pronouns, which are really minority issues that affect relatively very few people, are at the center of the national conversation in the States culture-wise. You’d think Occupy Wall Street’d never happened or that we were all pretty happy with the healthcare situation. And I, for one, call smoke and mirrors on this, by the way. And the national conversation is decidedly not a conversation at all, is it? It’s more like two people who have no interest whatsoever in understanding the other’s perspective shouting down and shaming each other, and the Left is no better than the Right in this regard despite the fact that they like to think of themselves as the liberal and tolerant and open-to-ideas side of the equation. And like I’ve said before, just not yet in this blog, I’m not worried one bit about the Right because they’re pretty much doing what they’ve always done. I’m worried about the Left who I think has completely lost the plot.
“Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, Kampff?”
Fine. I really feel pretty strongly that everyone should just relax about the whole thing and go to Thailand and take some body shots of Hennessy of off some really sexy and glistening ladyboys, that way they’ll see that the whole business really is perfectly fine and normal and not at all scary and that ladyboys are fun and enjoyable for the whole family.