Re-incarnated German Sex Tourist Soi Dog at Soi Cowboy

Reincarnated German Sex Tourist Soi Dog at Soi Cowboy, water color on paper, 18x24 inch

There are many German tourists who come to Bangkok to chase the bargirls. Every night, night after night, they never have enough. Until their two weeks are up and they catch their flight. In Germany, they dream about their Bangkok girls, hoping to find a way to come back and never leave. Some say when the German guys are re-incarnated they come back as soi dogs and wander around Soi Cowboy to their heart's content...........

Upstairs Bar at Patpong

Upstairs Bar at Patpong, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

Patpong is for the tourists who have never been in Bangkok before and who will never come again.  It’s a nightly show put on according to a European script, what they want and are desperate to see, acted out by Ladyboys, the girls shooting the darts and a of ten thousand pimps, bargirls and sellers of counterfeit goods.

Thigh Bar

Thigh Bar, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

Pom is the manager of Thigh Bar at the entrance to Patpong.  In the heart of tourist sleaze, surrounded by drunken Expats, desperate bargirls and wandering ladyboys, she somehow manages to stay friendly and relaxed.  If you have been there once in the last ten years, she will remember your name and what you ordered to drink, even the name of your girl and where she ended up.  If you know enough to show respect, you will be treated well and only hustled a little.  On the other hand, if you act like an asshole, it will never be forgotten.   You will always be an asshole, from the moment you walk in the door until the day you die.

Midnight Patpong

Midnight Patpong, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

By midnight on Friday, Patpong’s full, twenty thousand tourists from Europe, the U.S., Australia, India, the Middle East and Japan, ten thousand girls, hundreds of ladyboys, plenty of beer, whiskey, endless stalls selling counterfeit goods, thirty or forty different disco tracks blasting out of the gogo bars, a world vortex of man woman interaction, a combination sexual theme park, shopping mall and inferno, fiercely consuming an endless stream of humanity and their desire.

Dancer Agogo

Dancer Agogo, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

For a thousand nights, she’s danced in a daze of smoke, sparkling disco balls and the thumping beat from gigantic Bose woofers.  She has seen the faces of a hundred thousand men, their eyes caressing every inch of her flesh.  Tall, short, handsome, ugly, dark, tan, yellow and white, obese and thin, some of them in wheelchairs, others with stutters,  old and young, every kind of man, from every country on earth.  What are they thinking and what do they want, why are they there, in the Bangkok bar where she works and lives and dreams?

Flirting

Flirting, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

She likes the guy so much, she’s like a young girl flirting in school, sticking out her tongue and pushing him away in order to get his attention.  If he’s got any brains and can think after drinking so much beer, he will realize how incredibly sweet she is and how wonderful she can be.  But, surrounded by so many other girls, he will probably break her heart.  That is, if she lets him.

Jackpot

Jackpot, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

Tonight she’s hit the jackpot.  Next month’s rent, school fees for her son and daughter, money to send to her mother, a chance to pay off the Indian loan shark.  Her guy’s from Australia, in Bangkok for the first time, fresh, excited by what he sees.  He’s come to the bar every night for four nights, paid the bar fine and taken her to his room.  He may be an awkward lover but she loves him just the same.

Drink Too Much

Drink Too Much, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

He’s young and handsome but drank too many beers.  The girls are pretty kind, trying to take care of him, and one of them will help him get back to his hotel.  Although it would be easy, the chances are she will leave the money in his wallet intact.  Sometimes they don’t understand why the foreign guys are so lacking in experience, so naïve and unprotected, what kind of world they live in before they come to Bangkok and how they manage to survive.

Lover's Quarrel

Lovers’ Quarrel, water color on paper, 5x7 inch

He’s still young and naïve, learning how to live.  She’s spent the last five years working in a Bangkok bar, at least three lifetimes compared to him.  Both twenty-three, they’re not from different planets but separate solar systems, intersecting in the heat of a Bangkok night

Pom

Pom, water color on paper, 18x24 inch

Pom, the manager of a Patpong bar, has worked the Bangkok Night for 30 years, never as as a dancer but as a cashier and manager.  She has seen every kind of man and every kind of woman, great, good, bad, horrible and in between.  Every situation in the ongoing drama of man woman relations.  All the distortions and variations of human behavior.  A hundred thousand customers a year, three million in all. Each customer, drawn in by the power of the Bangkok Night, to be obliterated or revealed, triumphant or defeated, passing from one lifetime to the next in the endless cycle of their being.