“Phou-si, not Pu-ssy!”

Oy vey. I shoulda known better. I’d cracked a dumb joke to get a chuckle out of Noom – my bar boy friend and current love of my life – never thinking it’d become his rallying cry throughout the rest of our holiday in Laos. The Thai sense of humor is not exactly what you would call refined. Think Three Stooges. Only ratchet it down a few degrees. It’s not juvenile, more like infantile. Physical comedy and slapstick is good, especially if well-telegraphed. And Thais appreciate a play on words too. As long as the play is a bawdy one.

We’d been strolling through the narrow aisles of the night market in Luang Prabang one evening. It wasn’t very crowded, but still was cramped. Noom was sauntering along, swinging his arms, busy checking out all of the stuff he could buy with my money when he accidently swung a muscled arm into the crotch of a woman coming from the opposite direction. Embarrassment and apologies all around. When she’d staggered off out of ear shot I made the error of quipping, “Noom! You hit that lady in the pussy. Right here by Mount Phousi!”

It took him a minute to connect the two words. And then a few more to quit rolling around the ground, crackling with glee. It took another three days before I quit hearing the pussy/Phousi thingy. You could set your watch by its use. And each time I did it was accompanied by Noom’s uproarious laughter. There’s nothing a Thai enjoys more than a good joke. Especially when they’ve already heard it, or told it, a million times before.

In the earlier days of our friendship I often cracked jokes that relied on sarcasm and/or irony. My brand of humor. Noom never found them funny, seldom recognized them as a joke, never laughed, and instead always asked, “What you mean?”

There are few jokes that will survive an explanation. If you don’t get it the first time, having it explained to you is not going to result in the joke being funny. So I put my inner clown back where most people wish it’d stay, and switched over to what I knew Noom would find humorous. That usually means laughing at the misfortune of others. Which I too appreciate.

The first tip off of what he found funny was during a night out at Future Boys, a gay gogo bar in Bangkok where he used to work. Now it’s called Ocean Boys and though they dumped a lot of money into the place, they kept everything else the same. Except the name. So their business sucks as badly as it did before the change. Which is kinda humorous in its own right. But this was in the days of old, and on that night they allowed a drag queen wannabe to practice her art as one of the acts in the show. With hilarious results.

She was bad enough to make you laugh to begin with, but that she’d not taped her candy down, and instead displayed a prodigious bulge every time she swirled about allowing her short skirt to rise, raised the humor level nicely. Noom laughed so hard he cried. And every time her un-ladyboy looking crotch was displayed, he’d loudly cackle out some rude comment in Thai and laugh even harder. I love seeing my boy enjoy himself.

Watch any Thai television comedy and you’ll immediately grasp the fundamentals of Thai humor. Physical comedy is tops. Horns honking and other loud odd noises to signal the joke are de rigueur. Repeating the exact same bit over and over guarantees even more mirth. It’s as though the Thai collective consciousness requires a warning that the time to laugh is near. And when it hits, they bray loudly. On cue.

You’ll also notice quite quickly Thais prefer to know who it is they are supposed to laugh at. Way before any jokes are thrown. And nothing says funny to a Thai like a blackened tooth. Which, since so many of them are missing teeth, is funny in itself. Any TV show or movie that has a comedic relief signals that fact with a fake gaping hole in at least one of the actor’s smile. I have to assume Thai dentists spend much of their days laughing uproariously at patients in need of dental implants. Not their fault, they are Thai. And have been raised to find toothlessness hilarious.

I’m sure there is no falang who has ever found the comedy act in a gogo bar’s show the least bit funny. That’s partially due to those acts always being in Thai. But even if you understand the language, the humor in those acts is worth a slight smile at best. Thais, on the other hand, will bring down the house with their laughter. Everyone of them. And every time.

The acts always differ a bit. But basically are all the same: A guy dressed as an ugly woman, missing a few teeth thanks to some blackening, usually with udder-like breasts, lip syncs a tale of woe. That’s it. I’ll pause for a minute so you can get control of yourselves . . .

I’m not sure who decided a comedy act was the way to go in a show that pulls its audience in by promising live sex acts. Maybe I’m not giving the Thai sense of humor the credit it deserves. The old Twilight bar, whose reputation for pure sleaze was second to none, had an act toward the end of its run that went with the standard comedy routine, but with a new twist. Sure the start of the act was an ugly ladyboy with appropriately blackened teeth, but her speciality was blowing a horn – one of those party favor kind that unrolls as it blares – by passing gas. And it was funny. Not the act itself, but the seriousness the bar took in its presentation.

While loud music played, the ugly ladyboy would bounce around the stage trying to work up the necessary gas. Then she’d drop to her back – a signal to cut the music. Horn in place, she’d let it rip. Or try to. She wasn’t always successful (it’s difficult to fart on cue). I laughed at the misses. The Thais in the audience waited for the real payoff before peeing themselves in laughter. Over and over and over again.

Not being Thai, with some degree of caution, I can get away with making fun of members of the royal family. Though since I have done so in this blog, the next time I visit they might not let me in. Or may throw my ass in jail instead. Ha. Ha. Ha. See? Thais do have a sense of humor. Anyway, Noom never found my jokes about calling the princess who is a dyke a dyke to be funny. But that’s more because he likes dykes than it is displeasure over a joke being made about a royal. When I commented that the skinny one’s lips were bigger than Noom’s ass, he started laughing with glee. And then quickly stopped when he realized who it was he was laughing about. Now when she comes on TV, he gives me a quick look of warning. But then snickers anyway without me having to say anything.

Besides an exceptionally bad joke, like the pussy/Phousi thingy, I can always get Noom to laugh by tickling him. Though he is quite ticklish, following traditional Thai humor practices it’s the idea that he about to be tickled that really gets him going. He’s already a bowl of blubbering jelly before I ever get my hands on one of his ticklish spots. The only one I can pull off without advance warning is the standard knee squeeze. That one gets a higher pitched giggle than his other tickle spots, he lets loose with a girlish giggle instead of his normal manly guffaw. Which is appropriate because if I get a good hold and apply it a few times in a row he laughs so hard he pees himself. Just like a woman. Um, TMI?

Being the gregarious fellow he is, Noom like to share his amusement with others. Jokes, no matter how bad they are, need to be retold. At the top of his voice. So I shouldn’t have been surprised as we flew away, bidding Laos a fond good-bye, that he’d get one last go in. No one on the plane missed the joke. Or thought it funny. Noom thought it was hilarious. Guess that joke was on me.

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