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.
She shows me an SMS from the doctor that proves they didn’t have sex.
The doctor says in the message that he wishes they had made love in the hot tub that night. Next time, he says. But there won’t be a next time for him. I’m taking his next time and the next one too. TL isn’t easy. But you have to hold on to it when you get it. She pulls her other leg over my head and lifts her ass.
I guide her down onto my shaft and moan as I enter her. I am young again and will be inside of her forever.
But the truth is, we are living in a romantic dream that lasts only a few more weeks. Because she can’t turn away from her own damaged search.
And I know every good romance ends in death. It starts with a love potion.
And the potion confuses everything that’s real. The potion makes you do things that just don’t make sense. Then you have a story and the story is full of lies and full of truth and there’s no way to untangle it without a lot of difficulty. True Love. Whitman says, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
Six months have passed, and Goy has what she wants now. She was on Tagged all along and that’s no surprise. She lives in a mansion at Nai Harn Hill just above my favourite beach with a retired millionaire. He’s Dutch.
The owner of a shopping mall. He’s overweight, hideous and shrewd. Goy hates him and gets everything she wants: a monthly salary, cooking school, that awful Honda Jazz and driving lessons. When I swim out to the bay, I can look back at the hill and just see the silver top of her water tower. I float in the bay and look up at it shining.
I’ve seen her a few times since she moved five months ago. We have sex sometimes and she cries after, but won’t tell me why. When I see her, I feel elated, and when we part, I feel relieved.
On my 54th birthday, I get an SMS from her. It says: I will always love only you.
And I will love only her, but she is gone from me and we will never have those beaches again. My madness is wanting her again, but knowing she is all wrong. What have I learned? Whitman was right about everything.
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH THREE MONKEYS
Christopher Mooney-Singh, Singapore