Night

My slide into Bangkok madness began at FoodLoft, on the seventh floor of the Central Department Store, where the chic and wealthy come to dine after a long, hot day of shopping in the six floors of air conditioned starkness. The first tumble began with a glass of red wine and ended with a nipple pinch.

FIrst, dinner at FoodLoft — a clean cavalcade of food, tidy booths of neatly compartmentalized international food. There’s the Italian station, complete with pizza, pasta, salad, and sandwiches. Asia is represented well (represent!) with Indian, Korean, Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, and Thai selections. Rounding out the gourmet choices are a beverage (alcoholic or not) and dessert station.

Sated, we head off to Silom (Sodom?) to begin our night of carousing. Upon entering the club, the emptiness of the place starkly contrasted with the teeming fullness of the streets outside, with vendors and taxi drivers fighting for your attention. Soon, though, the club filled up sneakily, quickly, a Thai magic trick using white people as assistants.

Then the drag show started with a throbbing fanfare of deep bass and pulsing lights. The crowd was a Thai curry, asian food mixed with a little white rice, topped off with a few exotic spices. Still sizzling from dinner, everyone watched expectantly, hopefully, quietly, and intently.

The performers came on stage in successive waves, each better and worse than the last, many indistinguishable from real women; curves were had by most, breasts by some, but all were in glorious drag. Some songs were in Thai, others in English, and the most electric performance was a rendition of “Diamonds are a girls’ best friend.”

Then the dancing began, and as the beat of the music mixed with the alcohol, fermenting with the moist air conditioned air, a gentle Bangkok madness seized the crowd. We moved up to the stage to dance, and the dance possessed us for a space of time, while time owned the dance, beating, crescendoing, pausing, to the staccato of rock, the drums of techno, and rumbles of anonymous bass.

No rave this was, but coke freely flowed through the stage crowd, inhaled quickly and slowly through a straw directly into the nostrils. Afterwards, straw placed jauntily in the ear, barechested dancers moved to an altered beat only visible to them. A tall, older, white man was the mediator of substance, dealer of straws, laughing, smiling, grinding with drag queens, bouncing from one toned body to another, a giver, a voyeur, and a participant.

I danced on to myself, writing both my loneliness and peace in the space around me while watching others write their stories in the air; some with lustful kisses and squeezes, some with cool calm, and others with amused eyes and indifferent moves.

On a trip to the bathroom, eye contact was established with a passerby, slow grins were the dividend, and a nipple squeeze was the deposit. I smiled and kept walking, for this bank was closed today.

Spent, exhausted, some time later, sitting oustide with Jenny I watched the ebb and flow of people leaving and going the club. Frantic and calm with purposeful action, partygoers left with single-minded determination, water bottles in hand and ecstasy in their bodies, and entered with searching gazes and heads raised upright.

After retrieving Adam from the lustful embrace of a besotted Italian, Armani in his eyes and Florence in his touch, we walked home through the emptiness of the streets with the trash keeping us company. The cool clean sheets of the hotel beds were a balm on our alcohol-heated bodies, and conversation drained us of our remaining energy, allowing us to slide into tomorrow with the club only a fevered dream fondly remembered.