Number 23
WE LANDED and the first thing they tell me is, “don’t take a shower.” I stink. Each fold of skin on my body is a petri dish of bacteria. I itch and am covered in sweat from the nine-hour flight and tugging at my jumpsuit just to breathe.
“Hey, Jack.” Smith, one of the boys from the crew, yells over to me.
“Yeah?”
“This your first time in Thailand?”
He asks me but everyone already knows. They had been here before, many times, but they were excited all the same – especially since bringing me, a new one, into the fold. And so I play along with boyhood wonder because I know what they want. ‘Girls with Ping-Pong ball tricks and pussies that smoked cigarettes – Banana Shows! Live Sex Shows and more!’
Everything and anything is only a couple hundred dollars away, and the boys are sharpening their teeth. And me too, same as the rest of them, was in a bad streak - no sex in over a year and my old gal, Alexis, was fucking someone else. Out there, in the streets of Thailand, something is waiting for us. Whatever it is. But, right now, I’m sweating and squishing in my seat and all I want to be is clean.
The bus shuttles us from the flight line to the hotel. Everyone looks out the windows – hypnotized by the place. I am no different. The traffic lights don’t work. They swing from power lines that stretch off into spider webs amongst neighboring buildings. The traffic moves in chaos. Pedestrians walk freely through the streets, some dragging children - And the dirt kicks up in their faces as cars and tuk-tuks speed past.
We pull through a tall iron gate with armed guards looking down at us from concrete towers and we drive down the gravel road into a resort-like hotel. Small villas surround a gated swimming pool that has a bar and stools ringing around it. As the bus drops us off and returns to the flight line for the others, we pull our bags out from the pile of other bags tossed into the center of the parkway. Smith comes up to me and gives me my key.
“You got ‘Two’, over there” and he points to a villa right near the front gate. “Just throw your shit inside and get back here. Got me?” I tell him I do and roll my bag to my home away from home. Inside is a living room with a big screen TV, leather couch, and loveseat. The kitchen has a tall fridge and a case of Mekhong on top of it – 90 Proof Thai spirits! Although, you could never really tell how strong it was until it was too late, and there is a stairway by the front door - which I guess led up to the bedroom, but I didn’t have time to see.
“Jack!” Smith yells as he hits the light switch on and off again. “Stop playing with your dick!” He peaks through my front door with a large grin on his face.
“Huh?”
“Cooome on! We got someone to take care of that for ya!”
I follow Smith outside and see a line of tuk-tuk stretching around the front of the hotel’s circled driveway. The tuk-tuks are wooden carriages tied to dirt bikes with rope. The carriages themselves look like colorful wooden eggs. I look down the line of them, all-sweating in the heat of it, when an old hand reaches out of one of the tuk-tuks and waves us over.
“Jack! This your first time?” The hand leans out of the window and I see it’s one of the old timers – the ones that were planning their retirements here, open a juice bar and live like kings.
“Yes sir.” I tell him and the old timer leans out even closer.
“We’re gonna set you up right. Get in.”
The five of us are sweating inside this teapot, sitting on worn out Two by Fours, and the floor is sinking into the center of the carriage. Our tuk-tuk speeds through the crowded streets and the bus ride from earlier feels like a distant fond memory. Exhaust blows in from outside and blackens our skin. We choke on it and sweat so much that a pool of black sludge forms at the bottom of the carriage and sloshes at our feet. I don’t let my weight fully settle on the floorboard because it looks rotted, and so I pull my weight up into my hips. Smith watches me. We exchange a concerned glance and then Smith does the same.
“You know where we’re going?” The older timer asks.
“Can’t say,” I tell him. He leans in again. This time I can feel the heat of his breath and it stinks with Mekhong. This, along with the humid air blowing in from outside, is too much and so I back away – pushing my head into the swollen wooden wall of the carriage until it cracks.
“You may think you know but you have no idea.”
He smiles and nods and so I smile and nod.
We pull into a courtyard that is full of flowers and trees, sectioned off by rows of stone and a fountain with waterworks. The fleet of tuk-tuks pulls to a stop, taking up the entire curved driveway. All the fancy or seemingly fancy, places here have these circled driveways. Easy ins and outs. Everyone gets out of their ride and the lot of us look like toddlers wandering around, not knowing where to go.
“There’s the Mama-san,” says Smith as three old Thai women walk out of the giant spa-like building in front of us.
The old timer walks up to the ‘Mama-San’ in the center and they talk over details. These women look ancient and that’s because they are. These are the hardened ones, the beaten ones - who now did the beating. They look after the girls and deal with the “clientele”.
These women form us into groups and lead us through the front doors of the spa-like building, guiding their own separate line of men into one of three different hallways. We all fall right into order like rows of ants.
The hallways are lined with red silk curtains and swollen wooden doors with brass numbers on them that count us down as we move deeper inside. Our Mama-san brings us to a room with a stage and theatre curtains and the lights above are dim.
We are husbands or boyfriends – the youngest of us, like me, are just initiates, being pulled into an inner circle. The young ones suck their fingers and hide their wedding bands in their wallets, the old ones sweat and laugh and are freer now than they are in their normal lives. They relish it. In this place, we know each other as animals.
I can barely see when a kid, maybe sixteen maybe not, walks up to me. His head is down but he’s holding his hand up to me. I take it and the boy guides me to a leather chair amongst other leather chairs. We line the rows, sitting in them like we’re waiting for a show and in fact we are. The lights go out, except for a spotlight above that focuses on the stage. The curtains draw back and behind them is what we’ve all been waiting for.
There’s a line of them sitting on small wooden stools. Their heads are down and in front of them are cardboard triangle cutouts with numbers printed on them. I’m sick but I’m curious. The shame swallows me almost entirely but then it doesn’t and I become one and the same. My eyes run down the line of women with excitement. They’re in spandex and fishnets. Some are tall and some are the size of dolls. There are fat ones and skinny ones, young ones and old ones. I look down the line of them and see some as single mothers. Some are married with children. Some like the game – or are doing it for a time - and some are making money the only way they can. And, as I look further down the line, I see more than I want, and all the shame comes back again.
“Jack,” someone whispers to me from behind and it’s the old timer. “First pick. On us!”
I feel his hot stinking breath run down the back of my sweat-soaked neck. He’s nodding and grinning with stark white teeth and muted bloodshot eyes looking like a wolf’s eyes in the dark glow of the place. I smell us sweating in these leather chairs – like countless others before, all of us stinking and slobbering with our assholes rubbing into the dead skins of animals. I grow sick with it as I look down the line of women until I see one that looks like Alexis. She has long dark hair with gray streaks like Christmas tinsel. Her cardboard cutout triangle says she is Number 23, in her late thirties, with a C-section scar beneath a pink-laced teddy and she is dusting cigarette ashes off her chest.
Number 23 leads me down a hallway. We pass other men following their own number or numbers of choice being led to their rooms. They are the same doors from before, the ones with the brass numbers on them. We reach our destination when I see Smith trailing behind Number 24, a lady boy, who’s cock is flapping outside her skirt and slapping against her thigh. Smith and I make eye contact and then we look away - a silent agreement in that we’re not even here.
The door opens and Number 23 leads me into a room with high ceilings. The ground is made up of imitation marble slabs and the whole place reeks of chlorine. A bed waits atop a checkered stairway. Below the stairway is an inflatable above ground pool waiting next to the sewage drain in the center of the room.
There is an egg timer resting by the door on a shelf. 23 picks it up and gives the egg timer a half turn before setting it down again and then leaves me behind as she walks over to the inflatable pool and starts filing it up with a hose. The ticking of the timer is all I can hear and I’m sweating. So, I undress and toss my clothes on the floor by the door. I stink. My body is covered in black dirt that is now running down my legs and forming a tiny pond of muck at my feet.
23 lights another cigarette and drops the hose into the inflatable pool as she grabs a bottle of soap and squeezes it in large circles above the rushing water and the pool fills up with bubbles. The whole time she doesn’t look at me, treating me like a chore, which is fine – no different than doing the dishes - and she is in a pink bathrobe with bleach stains on it and I imagine there are many more like her – all with their own bleach stains. But she wears it well, testing the water for warmth before finally making eye contact with me and then she drops her pink bleach-stained bathrobe to the floor.
“Come.” And she waves me over.
She squeezes soap over her chest, rubbing it into her breasts and down her legs. She cups her hand under her pussy and slaps it with hot soapy water. The black mass of dirt surrounding my cock is in the worst condition it has ever been. It sticks to the side of my leg and I make oily squishing noises as I get inside.
23 tells me, “Down.” And so, I lay down until the bubbles are at my neck.
23 gets on top of me and rubs her soapy body up and down mine and I feel good all over. She grinds across my knee as she pulls her breasts around my arms and cleans me with her body. The pool around us is filling up with black slush but none of that matters because I remember who she looks like and it’s Alexis all over again. I remember how Alexis used to look when she was on top of me. And now, she was on top of someone else.
BUZZZZ!!! The egg timer goes off.
Number 23 gets up and grabs the hose.
“Stand up.” She tells me and so I do.
She works me down the assembly line, hosing my head and body down to my feet but the water feels warm and good. The black dirt is all but gone around my ankles, the ripples look like waves in a storm. I am washed but I still am not clean – who knows if I’ll ever be. Then she towels me off and moves me up the checkered stairway leading to the bed.
“Down.” She tells me and I lay down again and I look up at the ceiling as 23 walks over to the egg timer by the door and gives it a full turn. Like clockwork, there comes a series of three knocks from outside the door.
“Is everythi~”
“It’s okay,” she says. “Tick-Tock” and then she sets the egg timer back onto the shelf.
I try to relax but my body is stiff, so I just let whatever happens happen. She sucks her lips around her teeth and bobs up and down on me but it’s too loose, so I just stare up at the ceiling and imagine Alexis going down on me – I remember the time in the car when she went faster after I told her ‘Someone was watching!’ That’s how we were in the beginning. Before it was like a chore… Like doing dishes.
23 stops and asks, “soft?”
I don’t know what to say so I just make a dumb face.
“No like?”
I say, “no.” And I wave her on. She grabs the head of my cock and tugs on it like a root and then she flicks the tip and I’m hard again somehow, but I can’t feel anything. 23 lifts my legs against my chest and squats over me before putting me inside of her and I find it hard to breathe. Harder still, as she thrusts her hips into me – fucking me the way a man fucks. I look down and see neither of us enjoying this, both of us waiting on the egg timer to tell us when we’re done. I slip out of her and she gets frustrated and fishes me back inside.
“You don’t know how to fuk,” she tells me.
“What?” I ask but I hear every word.
She doesn’t let up and this time she yells at me. “You don’t know HOW TO FUKK!”
My cock shrivels up another two or three inches and I slip out again. Number 23 scoffs as she drops my legs and they bounce on the bed. She drops below again and does the whole tug-job. I look up at the ceiling and at the top of Number 23’s head as she bobs up and down on me and her hair reminds of Alexis’s hair – and it all comes back again.
We’re in our first place together. There are hardwood floors, a patchy couch, and a dinner table made of dark wood covered with cigarette ashes and empty beer bottles. The TV is on and loud as Alexis is going down on me. I’m playing with her pussy and her ass is bare and beautiful. I smell her and she smells good.
Number 23 yanks and pulls on me in what looks unnatural but I’m hard again and so she resumes fucking me as the egg timer keeps us company.
We get on with it.
“Are you going to come?” She asks.
“Huh?”
“Come for me.”
“Okay.”
And so she rides me, her body rocking and grinding into my hips. Her pubic hair is full and coarse. It feels like sandpaper scrapping up and down my balls and each thrust is a tearing agony.
“Careful, you’re gonna rip them off!” I tell her but she only rides harder, picking up speed.
“Come, you come.” She tells me.
“Okay.”
“You hear me? Come means you come! Now come!”
“I’m trying,” I tell her but already I feel myself slipping out when-
Buuuuzzzzzz!!!
The egg timer goes off again.
“I want you to come. Now come for me baby. Come for me.” she yells and grits her teeth.
I look up at her, seeing her strain. ‘Goddamn!’ I think. ‘She’s giving me all she’s got!’. Her body is a tight fist, and her hair is dark with white streaks, like Christmas tinsel. It bounces up and down with every punch of her hips and ass.
“Come! You come!”
Her sandpaper cunt is dragging across my flaccid cock. My balls feel like they’re burning. I look down and I wish I hadn’t. I see that I’m covered in red bumps and sores from my thighs to my stomach and she is still riding me, even though the egg timer is telling us our time is done.
BUUUUUZZZZZZZ!!!
There’s a pounding at the door and immediately it opens before either of us can do anything. The Mama-san looks ancient because she is. We make eye contact and I feel like a little boy caught jerking off by his grandmother. The Mama-San looks away like a cat does and yells something I can’t understand to Number 23 – who is still fucking me the way a man fucks. 23 yells back at the Mama-san - the two of them holding a conversation, as I ping pong between them - my own personal daytime TV drama. The Mama-san grabs the egg timer and is swinging it above her head and pointing at me so 23 hops off and my flaccid cock slaps against my stomach.
They’re at the door and now they’re pointing and yelling. Both of them are picking up the egg timer and twirling it around as if proving a point and I feel like a broken dish that needs explaining.
The Mama-san turns to me and asks, “Man?”
“Yes?” I answer but I mean to say ‘what?’ and the two of them let out a collective and judgmental sigh I can only understand as a shared ‘Ugh’. The Mama-san shouts something down the hallway as 23 puts her pink and bleach-stained bathrobe back on. All at once I fell relief. ‘It’s over’ I think. It’s time to head back to the hotel and sleep this off. The lights had ‘turned on’, in a way, and 23 looked more like my mother than any fantasy of Alexis.
23 lights another cigarette as she wraps up. She’s still yelling back and forth with the Mama-san when, all of a sudden, the Mama-san slaps 23. The sound is loud like a snap and 23 stares at the floor in silence. The Mama-san turns her attention to me and I felt dirty all over again. But who the hell is she? Why should I feel ashamed? Then I think, ‘because I’m a man and this is what men do. I just couldn’t do it this time around.’ And, as if she is reading my mind, perhaps she is, women of this profession can’t survive without this supernatural ability, she yells, “Man?” And, without thought, I jump up on the bed and yell back.
“YES! I’M A GODDAMN MAN!”
They are unfazed, looking their usual unsatisfied way. And I’m naked with my business swinging limp and loose below me, all covered in red sores like a disorienting bull’s-eye emanating from my cock and balls out to across my stomach and thighs.
They turn away towards the door as footsteps approach, it’s the kid from the theatre room – he’s maybe sixteen, maybe not. The boy’s head is down and he’s naked and his business is also swinging limp and loose below him.
“Man!” Says the Mama-san once more and at once I understand why they brought the kid here and I make a dash for the door.
I reach for my clothes as I push past the kid and his swinging business, Number 23, and the Mama-san. Number 23 hits me as I go, and I go down hard. I am running and my momentum is at full panic and so I slip and crash through the doorway and slam against the neighboring door across the hall. It’s Number 24 and the door breaks open as I fall inside – my naked body glides across the cold but soap slick imitation marble floor.
“What the fuck?” Smith shouts.
He is bent over the bed. Below is the same checkered stairway and the same inflatable pool – all-full of bubbles and black sludge. And Number 24 is fucking Smith the way a man fucks as the egg timer ticks on top of the counter by the door.
My clothes are on the ground, sprawled and loose like Smith bent over the bed. From behind me comes the maybe sixteen-year-old, maybe not, naked boy with his cock hanging above my head as he makes his way towards me – like a giant he enters. I stare up at him and then at Smith and we exchange a glance of different understandings as to what the hell is going on. Smith smiles at me while Number 24 keeps fucking him until-
BUZZZZZZZZZ! And the egg timer tells Smith and Number 24 to cum.
When I turn, the boy’s swinging cock is right on top of me. ‘To hell with the clothes!’ I think to myself, and I pop up and run out the door.
It’s dark. Without the Mama-san or Number 23 guiding me through, I’m lost in the twists of hallways - all lined with red silk curtains, uniformed with the sounds of grunts and egg timers buzzing off as people shout out in bliss. The brass numbers on the doors, ’25, 27, 29’, and so on. On the opposite side of the hall, ‘26’, 28’, 30’ and 32’! The numbers climb and I’m either working my way out or even deeper but there’s no way of knowing so I push on anyway until seeing a faint red light poking out from around a corner. I go to it and I find what looks like an exit. The doors open from the center - grand and tall with the red curtain alongside them give the doorway a sense of elegance. I look down at my exposed bumpy cock with sores and I pull on the red curtain. It comes down and falls onto the ground in a heavy heap. I pick up as much as I can and wrap it around my body as I open the door.
As the door swings open, I don’t see the garden with rows of stone or the fountain with water works. Behind the grand door is an alleyway and the breeze of the night sky of the city. There are the sounds of horns and the chattering of languages I don’t understand but I push forward into an alleyway. The air feels wet and humid. I cough out the last of steam and chlorine from inside my lungs and inhale the rotting taste of the alleyway trash. The door slams shut behind me. There is no handle on the other side and so I’m locked out.
Good riddance.
Here I am, naked with only the long tails of the red curtain dragging behind me in the muck of the street. It pulls with the weight of wetness behind me as I make my way to the main road. Tuk-tuks, buses, and cars scream past as they honk at each other. I look to the sidewalk and see a mother waving off exhaust from her face as she holds her child’s hand. Whatever world I had inhabited before was gone. In the hot humid night of the Thailand sky, reality rolled over me in beads of sweat and dirt again. The mother sees me and pulls her child in behind her. The kid points but she slaps his hand down and mutters something to him that I can’t understand and then pulls him down the sidewalk away from me.I feel like a foul fool. As they go, the kid turns back and looks at me. He’s confused and so am I. Then there’s laughter from around the bend of the spa-like building. I turn to find it and see it’s coming from another line of tuk-tuks turning into the front of the spa-like building, dropping off more men from the hotel. They spill out of the tuk-tuk with wonder in their eyes as they see the prospects of the night, just like we did.
I work my way around the bend to find the front entrance with its magical fountain with waterworks and stone surroundings. As I walk toward the tuk-tuks the other men see me and laugh harder.
“Who is that” someone asks.
“Jack!” answers another one. “First timer.”
I look at the ground and make my way to the tuk-tuk. Without the fleet of on-coming tuk-tuks I’d never reach home.
“Looks like you had a hell of a time,” one of them yells at me.
“Not for me,” I tell them and push my way onto the tuk-tuk, sliding through them as they pile out, some of them trip over the tail of the red curtain hanging from around my waist. As they do, the young ones suck their fingers and pull off their wedding bands, the old timers are already pulling at their cocks from underneath their dirty pants, and the three ancient Mama-sans are walking out the front doors of the spa-like building to greet them.
“You!” one of the Mama-san shouts as she sees me.
I keep my head down and pull the red curtain tighter around my waist as I stuff myself inside the tuk-tuk.
“Hey, you come back!” she continues to shout and now they are running toward me.
“Take me back!” I yell at the driver, but he yells and points at Mama-san yelling and running towards us. He’s trying to explain something to me but I can’t understand it. I feel for my wallet but I’m naked under the red curtain.
“Quick, give me some money,” I shout at the men who are still laughing at me and pulling at their cocks.
“I think she wants something from you,” one of them answers back and they laugh some more.
“Cut the shit!” and I grab the closest one by the collar and pull him in through the window of the tuk-tuk.
“Jesus Christ!” he screams.
“Now!”
“Okay, okay!” and he pulls a wad out of his pocket and holds it in the air. I snag it from him and toss it at the driver.
“Move!” I yell at him, but Mama-san is already at the door and shouting at us. I let go of the man and he falls into Mama-san and the two of them crash to the ground. The driver looks down at them, his mouth gaping open, and then he looks at me. “Move, I said!” and the driver throttles the bike and away we go. As we do, Mama-san reaches up and grabs the tail of the red curtain hanging out of the door and skips three times on the gravel road before letting go and rolling behind against the stone pathway along the fountain with waterworks.
As we speed away the driver is yelling, his head is on a swivel as he checks behind but, thank fuck, he keeps going and we pull out into the main road.
When we get to the hotel, we pass through a tall iron gate with the armed guards in the concrete towers. Instead of looking at us they’re looking at their phones. The driver of the tuk-tuk is still yelling at me and I still can’t understand him, so I tell him, “thank you” and get out, wrapping the red curtain around my waist as I do. He pulls off angry only to be stopped a few feet later as more men from the hotel howl at him for a ride to the whore house, and the cycle continues to run its rounds.
It’s nighttime now and the pool with the bar is all-full of lights. There’s bad music playing out of busted speakers, the high treble notes of cheap electric guitars and the beating of tropical drums accompany the sounds of laughter from around the pool. Everyone is having a good time so why not me? I walk down with the red curtain still yanked around my waist when I see the old timer from the ride over. He spots me and raises a glass of Mekhong with rocks. The others around him notice his gaze and bring their bottles up high to join him and they cheer.
“First timer! First timer!” they shout in drunken unison. “Hey girls, we got a first timer over here!”
I don’t pay them any attention as a flock of tiny Thai women race over toward me. They’re naked with tight hard bodies and fake smiles with crooked teeth. All at once, their hands are all over me, pinching my bare nipples and yanking at the red curtain around my waist. And they’re laughing if only to keep the muse of a good time from spoiling. The red curtain comes undone from all their pulling and there is a cheer from the onlookers. I stop caring and let it drop, standing naked in front of everyone, with my beaten up and red bulls-eye exposed. One of the girls goes, “oooo” and reaches for it but I brush her off and continue to head towards the pool.
“Jack?” the old timer asks and a little of life and laughter drops out of his voice, “you alright?” and at that moment I saw behind the facade a broken old man holding a mirror.
I don’t answer. I don’t acknowledge the scoffs of the girls either as I pass them by. I want to be clean. So, I walk up to the edge of the pool and fall face first. The water comes with a loud hard crack, a splash, and then the world of laughter and good times goes muffled all around me. I float as the soapsuds pop and crinkle at the tops of the surface. Below, I look at the pool lights. They sparkle little flecks of white and silver, like Christmas tinsel. I watch the ripples of motion dance with the light, and I think of Alexis. I think of how she looked when we were young and running down the streets ourselves, of how much life there was behind her special laugh and smile and how infectious it was. I think of how she cared for me and how I cared for her as each of us played house in our youth. Outside of sex, or money, or anything above the surface, how while inside each other we felt whole and full of potential. The future was still far off from us. And that was enough, for a while. Then it wasn’t.
The water. The chlorine stings all open wounds but it’s quiet, so I keep quiet and float here and stare at the flecks of light dance their own dance. At the bottom I see the black dirt from all of us scraping along the floor of the pool in wavy patterns and it looks the way the ocean floor might look, all sand and Earth and filth below. And just the same up above. There’s the sounds of whooshing water as the people around the pool all start jumping in to join, splashing and playing and laughing, inebriated or not.
‘Oh, what a good time we’re all having, aren’t we?’ I think and my eyes catch a loose condom with the tip holding a breath of air breaking the surface of the water and bobbing up and down as it floats past – something that must have slipped off when the others jumped in. As it bobs by, I see what looks like strings of white thread tendrils hang and drift below like that of a jellyfish. And, here I am - floating in the water as one and the same. But at least now I’m clean, as much as I’ll ever be.
COMING SOON - Audio Narrative of Number 23
