It’s a shame Pattaya bar boys don’t have standing in American courts or they’d have one hell of a class action suit against FarmersOnly.com for stealing an idea that has been a major source of income for them for decades. I don’t get the mystique of the ‘fresh off the farm’ bar boy thingy, but suspect it has a lot to do with their assumed naivete, lack of education and/or intelligence, and past history of putting an orgasm in front of all else, evidenced by their years of having sexual relationships with farm animals.

It’s a bar set at such a low level that even the least desirable punter can easily score a win. Provided he can force himself to let loose with the $25 that orgasm would cost him. And okay, so that water buffalo back on the farm might have been a bit tighter, but surely the sight of an elderly sexpat gumming his evening meal is reminiscent of Bossy chewing her cud. And if that doesn’t get an ex-farmer bar boy hot and hard I don’t know what will.

The Buddha said, “I need somebody willing to get up before noon, milk farang, work all day in the internet cafe tending his flock of overseas boyfriends, milk a farang again, eat supper, and then go to Sunee Plaza and stay past midnight at an unofficial meeting of the local NAMBLA chapter.” So The Buddha made a farmer.

While we’re on the subject of litigation to grow rich by, as little television as I watch I’ve recently seen a law firm’s ad seeking members for a suit against the makers of Risperdal, a drug used to treat schizophrenia and symptoms of bipolar disorder that causes its users’ male offspring to grow breasts. And yup, I have to say it: That’s a lawsuit that’s udderly ridiculous. Or would be in Pattaya. Considering the average degree of masculinity of the town’s bar boys, growing breasts without the expense of hormone treatments would probably be considered a win, not something to sue over. One man’s streets paved in gold is another man’s free breast augmentation treatment.

Which may sound like a bit of a digression. Even for me. But we’re talking about the mythical ‘fresh off the farm’ bar boy, the fabled trucks full of new recruits from Issan that roll into town and get all the old queens all aflutter. And while I’m not an expert on life in rural Thailand, I’d think any young man who’d spent his formative years toiling in the fields would have, at a minimum, a slightly toned physique. Instead of the underdeveloped muscle tone that the boys of Sunee exhibit on stage nightly.

“I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a fatted-calf and yet gentle enough to deliver an orgasm to a farang old enough to be his grandfather. Somebody to call hogs – but not call his customers by that name, tame cantankerous machinery – with or without the assistance of a little blue pill, come home hungry, have to wait lunch until his bar mate’s done servicing visiting sexpats and tell the farang to be sure and come back real soon — and sound like he means it.” So The Buddha made a farmer.

In The U.S., despite Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson’s warm memories of black folk happily working in the fields, glad to have employment, and so appreciative of their white overseers that none of them ever sang the blues, farming these days is all done by machinery. Cotton, for example, is planted, grown, and harvested now without any human hands – of any color – ever being involved. Which must be a real bummer for Phil’s band of merry slaves. No wonder so many of the country’s inner-city youth turn to a life of crime; the wholesome life of field work that was so beloved by their forefathers is just not available to them any longer.

But in Thailand, even though the water buffalo has been replaced by tractors and motor driven tillers – which are actually called ‘iron buffalo’ in Thai – to the point the government has established special buffalo banks to encourage their continued use, manual labor still plays a pivotal role in rural village life. And since Pattaya’s punter population all seem to agree that servicing obese, gay octogenarians is an easier life than working the farm back home, you have to wonder just where in the hell all those farm boys who’ve come to in City to strike it rich at $25 a blow job are hiding.

The Buddha said, “I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn love affair with a farang. And watch it die. Then dry his eyes and say, ‘Maybe next year.’ I need somebody who can shape a crack pipe from a persimmon sprout, shoe a local’s foot with a hunk of car tire, who can make a ladyboy’s gown out of sequins, feed sacks and shoe scraps. And who, come high season, will finish his forty-hour week by Tuesday noon, then, pain’n from toilin‘ on his back,’ put in another seventy-two hours.” So The Buddha made a farmer.

On a joint trip to Bangkok several years ago, a room mate of mine scored a hot Issan boy at Babylon, fell in lust – which in his case was at least mutual – and spent the majority of his holiday wrapped in the strong arms of the gorgeous, dusky-skinned lad. His paramour was a duck farmer visiting the big city to explore his wild side. That’d be the side of him that liked penis. I’m not exactly sure what being a duck farmer involves. Or why you’d want to be one. Bur the young stud had muscles that no amount of time in the gym could ever replicate, spatulate feet that’d barely squeeze into a EEEE width shoe, and skin so beautifully dark that I briefly considered stealing him away from my friend. Okay, so I spent a lot of time considering how to steal him away. But my failings as a wing man is not the point. That without ever knowing what he did for a living, with just one look you’d know he was a farmer is.

Compare that vision of earthly delight with your typical Pattaya bar boy, who’ll screech in terror at the idea of exposing his milk-white skin to the sun, whose muscle tone only shows how foreign the idea of a gym is to him – unless he made a few baht being photographed for a “before’ picture for the gym’s advertising campaign – and whose only footwear concern is his ability to stay balanced while wearing high heels, and you gotta wonder just what kind of farm it was those boys supposedly came from. Whodathunk indoor gardening was so popular in rural Thailand?

The Buddha had to have somebody willing to ride the ruts that pass for streets in Pattaya on his motocy at double speed to snare a farang “boyfriend” ahead of the rainy season and yet stop in mid-pursuit and race to help when he sees the first sa-moke – and the chance of sharing in the tip – from a bar mate’s loom. So The Buddha made a farmer.

Of course when The Buddha made Pattaya he never intended it to exemplify the typical rural, village life of the Thai people. It was, and is, a city built on fantasies and greed. I’m not sure who it was that decided to spin the fantasy of tying the two together, the farang sexpat or Thai bar boy. But do know that most bar boys in Pattaya don’t know eggs come from chickens. Nonetheless the fabled farm boy/bar boy of Pattaya continues to be a favorite literary device of every gay would-be author stealing the motif of that popular World War I era song, How ‘Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on The Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree), by transplanting Sin City for The City of Lights. And planting the fantasy of the poor, once-a-farmer bar boy in the hearts and minds of Pattaya fans. While there is no doubt many bar boys come from outside of Pattaya, and many come from rural Thailand, that in their early years they worked a farm is highly doubtful. But then as Buddhists, maybe they did in a past life.

The Buddha said, “I need somebody strong enough to clear palm trees and heave bails, yet gentle enough to tame the English and wean the pig-like elderly and tend the pink-skinned pullers, who will stop his dancing for an hour to resurrect the broken middle leg of a farang on holiday. It had to be somebody who’d plow deep and straight and not fake coming. Somebody to seed, feed, breed and rake over and dis and plow into and plant ideas of romance and try to fleece and strain to milk and replenish the self-induced and finish a hard week’s work with a five-minute baht bus ride to Walking Street where the straight gogo bars are and where he’d rather be.

I guess, as fantasies go, the delusion that your boy du hour was until recently a hard working farm boy is an innocuous enough of one. At least that’s preferable to the even more popular fantasy among Sunee regulars that their boy du hour just recently reached puberty. And if it means the funds for buying a new water buffalo are in his future, that’s undoubtedly a fantasy your boy du hour will promote. Even if he’s not quite sure what a water buffalo looks like. The only problem is when the newly arrived sexpat decides to cash it in, move to Issan with his no-longer-a-bar-boy-now-a-boyfriend, and start a farm of their own. ‘Cuz while that ex-bar boy may willingly accept land and a house as part of the dowry due his family, performing agricultural-related tasks is not something he’s gonna be willing to do. He didn’t move to Pattaya to milk farang by milking their seed for a future of milking cows.

“Somebody who’d bale a family together with the soft strong bonds of sharing, who would laugh and then sigh, and then reply, with smiling eyes, when his son says he wants to spend his life ‘doing what dad does.’” So The Buddha made a farmer.

The farmer The Buddha had in mind, was a farmer of men. Preferably, rich, foreign ones who spend but a few weeks in Thailand while willingly sending bushels of baht to their boy special on a monthly basis. Harvest time to a Pattaya bar boy means his monthly trip to the local Western Union shop. Yes, The Buddha made a farmer, even if he’s not quite the image of the farm boy you had in mind. And he let the other gods make the fools whose money is soon to be parted. But that’s Thailand, where the seed of longing and the promise of love unite in fruitful bliss. At least for the farmer.

(“With all due apologies to Paul Harvey, his 1978 “So God Made a Farmer” speech, as well as the 2013 Dodge Ram truck.)

Related Posts You Might Enjoy: