Another ‘tweener and a good girl

I don’t particularly want to revisit a topic that I just spent a full blog on last week, but there’s not much happening in my life this week besides work.

On Monday this week I started a new contract with a government agency in a place I’d never worked before, and with a group of people I’d never met before. My work usually has me involved with middle and upper management, but this week I’m working with lower level employees — staff, if you will.

I only mention this because the age of the people I’m involved with is noticeably lower than I am accustomed to. As a result, I have met some women in the workplace this week who are attractive. There are three in particular that are appealing to me; one is very cute, one is attractive and outgoing, and the third one borders on beautiful. It also happens that the most beautiful is also the most intelligent and charming, which means that my mate-seeking radar has been on full blast with this girl all week.

I’m not gonna talk about the cute girl today, but I want to talk about the other two, so let’s give them names. I already mentioned the second girl in an earlier blog, so we’ll keep her name, Simmee. Let’s call the beauty by the name of Cat.

When I first saw Cat I thought she looked to be around 24 years old. Using my automatic Thai-girl rule of thumb, I added 4 years and assumed she was probably really 28 or 29.

Yesterday I asked her directly how old she is. I was flabbergasted when she told me that she is 37 years old. Given that I am 48, dating this girl wouldn’t even draw much attention back in farangland. Here in Thailand it would fit neatly in the ‘normal’ range. I had occasion to ask about her home life. She lives with her mother, whom she looks after. She is unmarried, doesn’t have a boyfriend, husband or children.

And so, stupidly maybe, I ask myself one question: is she a lesbian?

I don’t know.

But it’s hard to imagine a Thai woman who is smart, beautiful, fully employed and hardworking being single at age 37 for any other reason.

And it’s a legitimate concern, because I’m very interested in asking her out, but I’d feel silly to ask if I should have known from all the evidence that she bats for the other team.

But this is a minor issue. I’m not going to hesitate over it.

What is more likely to slow me down is that she is, in effect, a client. Normally I’m pretty meticulous about not expressing any personal interest in clients, since it seems as though it can lead to complications.

But I like Cat. She’s not extremely outgoing, so it’s hard to make casual conversation with her and it’s been tough to make much headway, but I’ve got a couple more days working with her so I plan to make a run at her before the end of the week.

By contrast, Simmee is a shameless flirt. The first day we met (on Monday) she asked me if I was married. When I said no, she immediately perked up. After identifying that I didn’t have a girlfriend, didn’t have children and that I wasn’t gay (yes, she actually asked) she volunteered to go out with me.

I was non-committal.

Simmee has made it a point to try to talk to me whenever possible. She generally seeks me out at lunchtime, and the conversations have revealed a lot about her.

I described her in the previous blog as being 30-ish. I would have guessed 33 years old if I had to pick a number. In fact, she told me she is 39 years old and has a 14 year old daughter.

In a series of conversations she made reference to ‘friends’ in Canada, Italy, Australia and other countries. In every case the friend was a man.

I finally asked her if she met these guys online and she said that she had met all of them here in Bangkok, but kept in touch via chatting and email. She actually gave me schedules — dates this month and next month when two of the guys would be arriving from overseas to visit. She had them committed to memory, and it seemed to be just part of a regular series of farang visitors.

She told me that the Italian guy had complained to her that he was in a loveless marriage, but when she asked him why he didn’t get a divorce, he answered that it wasn’t easy in his culture.

She told me that the Australian guy wants her and her daughter to come move to Australia to be with him, offering to support her and saying that her daughter can attend school for free. She said she isn’t really attracted to the guy because he is shorter than she is. She likes men 180 cm and taller. I happen to be 187.

She also asked me why foreigners enjoy massage so much. It turned out that she ‘loves to give massage’ and treats all these men to her special skill. I think there was more than just a little bit of suggestion in this information.

You get the idea. I think she realized yesterday that she had told me a few too many stories about these guys. She started trying to distance herself. She explained to me that when these men visit from overseas she lets them stay at her house, but that they have their own bed… that she, the guy and her daughter all sleep in three separate beds in the same room. The mind boggles….

Simmee is a true ‘tweener. I am working with her, so I know she is fully employed in a government job, but she dreams of, and actively pursues, a new life with a foreigner. She has made a string of connections, at least one of whom seems to be trying to bring her to farangland, but I get the feeling that none of the guys in her stable is exactly what she is looking for. At thirty nine years of age I think she probably knows her options are getting pretty narrow. She seems realistic enough to settle for whatever she can get.

Her desperation is a little too apparent to me, and scares me into avoiding entanglements with this girl, whom I might otherwise have tried to turn into a casual shag. She was bright enough to tell me that she ‘never talks about love’.

She reminds me a lot of Lek, the other ‘tweener I described last week; the kind of girl you do better to steer clear of. In both cases they are attractive enough on the surface to seem inviting, but as you get to know them you realize that that they each have a single-minded purpose — to be ‘rescued’ by a farang who will take them away to an easier and better life.

Which brings us back to Cat who is appealing for precisely the opposite reasons. She seems perfectly normal. She works hard in a low-level but demanding government job, she takes care of her mother and herself. She speaks English, but not because she is chasing a foreign husband — hell, I don’t even know if she likes farang (or any men for that matter) — but because it seems a good idea.

I asked her earlier this week why she had learned to speak such good English and she answered that she wanted to be able to travel to foreign countries. Then I asked what countries she had visited. She looked slightly embarrassed and said that she’d never been outside of Thailand.

This is a girl with real dreams that are probably limited by the realities of her life in Thailand. Unlike the ‘tweeners who seek a farang as the ticket to a different life, the ‘good’ girls… the normal girls… like Cat live a life more content, or perhaps just more resigned.

What was it the man said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation”? I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that this description fits Cat well.

There’s not much happening in my life this week. Quiet nights at home watching TV and long days working. I spend about two hours a day traveling between work and home at the moment. I guess that’s why I’m writing about other people, but I hope it’s also somewhat illuminating for readers. I think most men who visit Thailand as occasional visitors never have the opportunity to get beyond the pay-for-play girls, and I suspect that most of them wouldn’t want to even if they could. I hope that these peeks at some real girls who are not directly connected to the P4P scene provides some added understanding or Thai people or some insight to life here in the Land of Smiles, but perhaps it falls short.

Ah! Cat just walked back into the office… I’d better go.