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iPhone Friday # 16
20 Friday Apr 2012
Posted iPhone Fridays, It's A Gay World
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20 Friday Apr 2012
Posted iPhone Fridays, It's A Gay World
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19 Thursday Apr 2012
Posted Absolutely Thursdays, It's A Gay World
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19 Thursday Apr 2012
Bangkok is a shopper’s paradise. Even if you are not into shopping, it’s hard not to do while in The Big Mango. This guide is intended for first time visitors, a multiple post series that will help you get the most out of your shopping experience while in Thailand. Of course, that is assuming you’ve already read my First Times Guide To Bangkok Gay Gogo Bars series of posts. Which is about shopping of an entirely different kind.
Your shopping experience in Bangkok can begin the minute you get off the plane. So can your ‘I Got Scammed in Bangkok’ experience. You’ll have ample opportunity to participate in both later, for now, show a bit of restraint, pass by the duty free shops – which means they make a larger profit, not that you get a cheaper price – meet the only Thais in the country who don’t smile (after you’ve waited an hour to get through immigration), get your first scam experience from the taxi driver outside the airport doors, and check in to your hotel. Phew. Now the shopping can begin.
Not to beat a dead horse (because the mamasan would charge you an extra 500 baht if that’s your kink), but your first shopping experience will probably be at one of the gay gogo bars. That’s as it should be. If you opt for a long-time off and keep your boy for the next day, he’ll be a great guide for your initial foray into Bangkok’s shopping extravaganza. This will also allow you to take part in the Thai tradition of buying someone you just met gold jewelry or a cell phone. Make that gold jewelry and a cell phone. And while there are plenty of places all over town your boy can take you to make that purchase, more than likely he’ll lead you to Mah Boon Krong (MBK), Bangkok’s most famous shopping mall. Even if you decide to make your first shopping trip without a bar boy, MBK is a great place to start. The place is humongous, fairly inexpensive, and serves as a good introduction to what shopping in Bangkok is all about.
I’ll walk you through the mall, which will be much less tiring than an actual visit to MBK, in a minute. First, as a newbie to shopping in Bangkok there are a few rules you need to learn. They all apply to your MBK experience; most will also be useful for anywhere else you shop while in the Kingdom. Except for street markets. And I’ll cover those in a subsequent post. But let’s start with the basics:
1. Haggling. The old rule of thumb was that if a store priced their merchandise, those were fixed prices and you paid whatever the asking price was. Everywhere else, you haggled. Not so any more. The world’s economy sucks and times are hard so almost all stores now will allow you to haggle over prices. This can be troublesome for the newbie. Not wanting to look cheap, many just pay the ticket price when with just a bit of effort they could have instead walked away with a great deal. So when should you haggle in a shopping mall in Thailand?
At MBK the only place where an attempt at getting the price lowered will be fruitless is the larger department stores. Which is pretty much Tokyo, the Japanese multi-floor retailer than anchors MBK at the Skytrain end of the mall. Everything there has a price tag on it (kinda, sorta). The clerks there do not have the authority to lower prices. The clerks there do not have the intelligence level necessary to make that kind of difficult mathematical computation. The fact that it takes six of them to conclude a single item purchase should tip you off. The fact it takes three of those six to figure out how to put your purchase in a bag should make it obvious. But their incompetency does provide you with a general rule regarding when to haggle and when not to: In a larger store where most things are priced and there are at least half a dozen clerks standing around looking like they just had a group lobotomy, haggling is not the norm. Everywhere else, go for it.
Oh, and by the way, this is Thailand, so everything is for sale. And you really need to learn English. Stores in Thailand do not have sales. They have promotions. Where everything for sale is on sale, or at a discount. Which they pronounce ‘dick count’. Not to be confused with the dick count you made at the gogo bar the night before.
2. Sizing. Even guys who don’t like to shop for clothes end up buying some at MBK. The selection is immense and the prices are cheap. Even though Thailand, like the rest of the world, mistakenly uses the metric system, for menswear they use U.S. sizes. Not that those sizes correspond to those used in the U.S. Because that would be . . . oh, never mind.
One Size Fits All means it won’t. Assume that you need to buy one size up in casual shirts. So if you usually wear a medium T shirt, you’ll need to start with large in Thailand. And will probably actually need to go to XL. Anywhere in the world if the garment is 100% cotton, it will shrink. If it was made in Thailand, it will shrink at least one full size. All cotton is not the same. And if you scored some of those 99 baht T shirts, they’re seconds and were probably mismarked to begin with.
Ditto for casual pants. Yes they do say they are size 32. That’s Thai for 28. Unlike T-shirts which you can eyeball, you’ll need to try pants on. In one of the small stalls this can be tricky. The dressing room is a small corner with a curtain hung in front of it that a normal sized Thai man would not be able to fit into. Your initial reaction would be to just drop trou out in the open, but that is considered rude. Unless the stall is too small to even have a curtain. Then it is expected. So you better not be shy. Or be wearing a thong.
You need to try anything and everything you are considering buying on. Every piece. Just because the shirt you tried fits does not mean the same exact shirt in a different color will too. In fact that usually means it won’t. Bit it’s worth the pain of trying the stuff on, the clothes you buy will be at a great bargain. And they will still fit better than anything you have made at one of the custom tailor shops run by Indians in town.
3. Security. If you enter MBK from the ground floor or off of the Skytrain system you will pass through a metal detector manned by a few locals wearing vaguely militaristic uniforms. They are security guards and are just as brain dead as security guards are anywhere in the world. The metal detectors are not tuned as finely as those at the airport, but if you are carrying metal, such as a camera, they will go off. Ignore them. Focus your eyes on some undefined point far off in the distance and just keep walking. The guards will not come after you. To do so would be rude in Thailand. And if you do stop for your bags to be searched the horde of people waiting behind you will get quite pissed. They know the guard and detector are just for looks and will not tolerate your stupidity for long.
Of course if you really did intend on blowing up the mall, then you should know the entrances from the parking lot do not have metal detectors and the duty of the security guards on those doors is to hold them open for you. So that you can easily carry your bomb inside. If it is a heavy bomb, ask. They will carry it in for you.
4. Traffic Flow. You may have already noticed that in Thailand they drive on the wrong side of the street. If you are familiar with screwed up countries that do the same then you probably have figured out they also tend to walk on the wrong side of a pathway. Except in Thailand. In Thailand they follow their street traffic patterns which boils down to the ever popular ‘every man for himself’. Just like your taxi driver who will drive down the wrong side of the street because he spotted an open lane (which would look like the right side of the street to an American), in shopping malls your fellow shoppers will follow the path of least resistance. Especially if that means walking directly into you.
You will need to use the escalators to traverse from one floor to the next. There are a few sets of elevators at MBK, but they are well-hidden from touri. And if you stumble into one, your brief ride packed in like a sardine will teach you what claustrophobia is all about. You’ll also learn what a small space packed with Thais smells like.
Your parents probably taught you to be polite. And as a Westerner you have learned how to use lines (or queues for those of you from those countries where they drive on the wrong side of the street). Thais have not learned either of these tricks. This is nowhere more evident than at an escalator at a shopping mall. If you get into line with the other falang, you will still be waiting your turn an hour later. Instead, come in at an angle and cut to the front. Or just follow any Thai in front of you.
That politeness thingy also probably taught you to be considerate of the elderly. So even when cutting to the front of the line, your natural inclination would be to allow an elderly Thai to board the escalator in front of you. Big mistake. As soon as those magic stairs quit moving she will come to an abrupt and complete stop. And will begin reminiscing about her day, planning her television viewing schedule for the next two weeks, and reconsidering the major life choices she has made over the last eighty years. And if you were lucky enough to catch yourself from running over her, you’ll then be stuck behind her, squeezed in by the crowd, until she decides to move. This is what being polite gets you in Thailand.
5. Information. Large malls in Bangkok like MBK have Information Counters for falang to use to more easily find what they are looking for. And they are excellent for this purpose provided all you are looking for is the Information Counter you are standing at. This is one of the few positions at the mall that the HR department demands skilled labor to fill. To land one of these sought after positions you need to demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge of anything to do with the mall. Having a total lack of knowledge about Bangkok means a management position is waiting for you.
Thais, however, will never admit they don’t know something. So the helpful clerk at the Information Counter will give you explicit directions to wherever it is you are looking for. And that information will be helpful. Do exactly opposite of whatever she tells you and you stand an 80% chance of being right.
The Information Counter can be fun though. If you are with other falang who keep asking you where stuff is, direct them to the closest Information Counter. It’s a great prank and you’ll have hours of entertainment laughing at them as the wander about completely lost while following the directions they received.
It’s also fun to eyeball the name of the nearest store and then stop and ask the girl at the Information Counter how to get to that place. She’ll get her fellow Information Clerks to help out, a long discussion will follow, and then she’ll point you in the opposite direction.
6. Toilet. Fortunately MBK has a large falang customer base and the locals have figured out Westerners are not intelligent enough to know how to use a hole in the floor as a toilet. So you will find familiar porcelain at the public restrooms at MBK. Locals using the facilities may not be as familiar with those contraptions, so don’t be surprise to pass by several of them squatting on top of a toilet seat. If nothing else, this leaves the urinals free for your use. And you’ll need that space. Because while you are relieving yourself an eighty-year -old local woman will start mopping the floor between your legs.
Like any other entertainment venue in Thailand, admission to the toilets at MBK is not free. I think it is now 2 baht. There is a guard at the door who will collect your fare, and she will be much more diligent about her job than the security guards who didn’t stop you from walking into the mall with a loaded AK-47. You will not get a free pass from her no matter how badly you need to go. And she does not have change (which would amaze anyone not Thai since she is siting there with a bag full of one baht coins). So be prepared. Or head out to the parking lot and pee against a pillar like the locals do.
7. Money Matters. This may come as a newsflah to you, but you are shopping and that involves money. Since you are in Thailand, that involves baht. This seems to be incompressible to the many Russians you’ll see causing a ruckus because their rubles are not being accepted, but most falang know enough to exchange their currency for the local’s version that looks like it came from your old Monopoly game. If you are smart you’ll do so before you hit the mall. The rate you get will be worse here, it’s a convenience. Meaning it is convenient for them to rip you off with low exchange rates.
You may try to beat the system by using plastic. In attempting to do so you’ll find, just like in those Visa commercials, they don’t take American Express. They also don’t take Visa. Or MatserCard. PowerBuy, the large electronics store, will. So will Tokyo. But as the size of the stores grows smaller so is the likelihood that they will accept plastic. It’s not that they are unable to, they just don’t like to. If you insist, expect to pay a 3% fee for using your credit cards (and they still don’t accept American Express).
8. Lay Out. I’d warn you that MBK is so huge that you can easily get lost, but you won’t listen to me so I won’t bother. Besides, if you do get lost you can always stop at an Information Counter for assistance. Let’s instead talk about basic layout. Of MBK and any shopping district in Thailand. Think of each floor as a village. Traditionally in Thailand, every village specialized in producing one type of product. This has carried over into malls and shopping areas.
This phenomenon will be most noticeable when you hit the fourth floor. There are 2.8 million stalls selling cell phones on the fourth floor. Okay, that may be an exaggeration. I’m probably overstating by a few dozen. And not only do they all carry cell phones, they all carry the same brands and models too. Don’t worry, your boy du jour will know which one will give you the best deal. And will give him the best commission for bringing your wallet to them.
But this layout scheme make shopping for specific items easy. If you want the 99 baht T-shirts, they are at the opposite end of where the Skytrain station is on the sixth floor. There are around 200 stalls, all selling the same shirts and all gathered in one big clump for you to shop from. See, it does make sense.
9. Transportation. You may have noticed I’ve mentioned the Skytrain a few times already. It’s also known as the BTS, just to avoid confusion. It’s the best way to get to and away from MBK. You can also take a taxi or tuk tuk, but the traffic around MBK – and the dozen of other malls that spread out along both sides of it – is notoriously jammed. It looks a lot like MBK’s parking lot, except the traffic doesn’t move quite as quickly as it does in the parking structure. To help alleviate the traffic congestion, taxis and tuk tuks are not allowed to let off or pick up customers along the two fronts of the mall. So, of course, if you take a taxi or tuk tuk to the mall, this is where you will be let you off.
When you are ready to leave, to catch a taxi or tuk tuk you need to find the rear entrance to the mall. This is the official public transportation hub for the mall. There are no signs directing you to this area. So you can take your chances and step out front instead where, unless there is a Boy in Brown collecting tea money, you’ll be able to catch your ride.
If you use the BTS, your disembarkation point is National Stadium. This is the terminus for the Silom Line. Most of the crowd you ride in with will get off one stop before at Siam. Don’t. That stop is for two other malls. And you haven’t been trained to shop at those malls yet.
If you have not yet used the BTS, your excursion to MBK will be an excellent opportunity to practice your crowd survival skills. At your boarding station you’ll notice everyone politely lines up on the arrows provided and patiently waits for the next train. When it arrives, thirty doors chuff open down the line. Then the nicely formed lines dissolve into a feeding frenzy; those passengers exiting engage in a head-down, grunting, shoving and pushing match with those who want in. No voices are raised, no punches are thrown, but if you have personal-space issues, a ride on the BTS will be a trial by frottage for you.
The worse part of the MBK shopping experience is that the mall is so huge and there is so much to look at you can easily become shopped out without ever having bought something. Sad to say, but it happens to the best of us. It’s kinda like if you’d read this post this far to get information about what you can buy at MBK and were to discover that after running you through the shopping basics the post has run on too long and needs to stop now.
Ah well, consider this a lesson learned. In Thailand you will always get exactly what you pay for.
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18 Wednesday Apr 2012
Posted It's A Gay World, Wednesday Wetness
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18 Wednesday Apr 2012
Posted Bali, Travel Photography
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Adding the ‘related posts’ links to my blog recently forced me to go through some of my older, original posts. Among those were the first batch of Bonus Shot postings, short little snippets of text added to highlight a photograph that I liked. I originally used that category to add a favorite shot that didn’t fit into a lengthier posts, or for a photograph that I liked too much to use it for nothing more than a visual graphic elsewhere. More recently I’ve been using it for a post with a half dozen or so pictures, additional shots of some place I visited which I already covered in a main post.
That works, and I’ll probably still use the Bonus Shot category for that purpose. But those original posts reminded me of the large number of shots I have, pictures I’m quite fond of, that will never fit into a post. Not unless I get so desperate as to start running posts about tropical flowers, for example. Still, I do have a lot of odd-ball photographs I’d enjoy sharing here so I’m going to start running shorter, photographic posts under that category again.
I take a lot of pictures when I travel. I enjoy the photographic opportunity as much as I do visiting new locales. That can be problematic when I’m with someone else; I can spend several hours at a wat, for example, immersed in lining up shots. Whomever I’m with is usually ready to go after a half hour. So it’s always nice to travel with a fellow amateur photographer. My friend Noom tolerates the inordinate amount of time I want to spend at specific places, but then he too enjoys taking pictures. Well, he enjoys handing me his camera and having me take a picture of him in front of wherever it is we are visiting. And he enjoys walking around with his pricey digital camera hanging from his hip so that everyone can see that he owns one. We all find our own brand of enjoyment out of any activity, photographical or not.
Noom does occasionally like to take a shot that he is not in. And he pays attention to what I’m shooting, it might pass muster and be worthy of him duplicating my efforts. More often his forehead scrunches up while he tries to figure out why in the hell I’m shooting something so stupid. I take a lot of those type of photographs. And a lot of them are the ones that will never really fit into a post here. Nonetheless, they are shots I enjoy. And they just provided me with an opportunity to use the word nonetheless.
For a while I’m going to run a pair of photographs in these posts. As I’ve been going through my old shots they seem to shuffle out that way. At some point, I need to get back to posting about Bali. For the time being, including for today’s post, I’ll just stick with some photographs from that little slice of tropical paradise. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have.
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17 Tuesday Apr 2012
Posted It's A Gay World, Tighty Whitey Tuesday
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17 Tuesday Apr 2012
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“Show Now, Show now!” the barkers cry as you try to walk down Soi Twilight, your progress constantly threatened by the reaching hands of bar touts, who like their not-to-distant cousin the leech, grab hold and begin sucking the blood from your very soul. The timid, newbies, and small groups of Japanese touri all fall prey to the aggressive touts and are whisked into a bar whether they wanted to go in or not. The more brave may hold out. They want to see the good stuff. So they’ll ask one of the touts when the show starts. The answer is always the same. With a disinterested look at his watch, the barker falls back on his initial cry, “Show Now!”
The show is always just starting. Even if it is only 8:00 and the soi’s shows are not scheduled to start until 10:00. Even the, old-timers know that means the curtain will actually rise some twenty minutes after that.
But then the barker’s job is not to schedule your evening for you. It’s to get you into his bar. Whether or not you hang around for two hours waiting for the show to begin is not his concern. If you are a first time visitor to Bangkok’s notorious soi of nude male dancing bars, and if you wait to catch a show, you’re in for a surprise. If you’ve been to the bars before and know what to expect, chatting up the soi’s touts may be as entertaining as the show. Sometimes, that can even be a better form of entertainment.
A patron of Bangkok’s gay gogo bars for close to three decades now, the display of hard flesh in action no longer titillates as it once did. But then the shows no longer rely on titillation, they’ve progressed to full on sex. Guys fucking each other leaves no room to doubt that their efforts might be simulated sex. The X-Boys and X-Size bars need to add another two Xs to their name if you want truth in advertising. And their shows are not even the raunchiest on the soi.
I try not to mourn for the good old days in any aspect of my life. You can’t not come off as an old fart when you start whining about how things once were. For me, watching a show now is more about checking out a potential guy for an off than it is to be either entertained or aroused. That’s not a bad thing, there is no guessing about what he’s packing or how nice of an ass he has. By the end of a show you’ll even know where his talents lay. I’m sure newbies to the world of Bangkok’s gay gogo bars get just as hard today as I did decades ago. And today they have a lot more reason to do so. Still, I miss those more genteel times when the sex wasn’t as in your face as it is today. At the same time, there are memorable acts of days gone by, seared into my consciousness, that I am just as glad no longer qualify for inclusion in shows today. Once was more than enough. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Especially when it is exceptionally bad.
With a dozen or so bars on Soi Twilight alone, all running their shows at the same time, competition for customers is fierce. Once the old Twilight bar started offering fucking acts, it wasn’t long before the other bars followed suit. Full nudity was the predecessor to the fucking acts, and again Twilight blazed the way. Soon all the bars had acts that left nothing to the imagination. And tried to out do each other in how that hard flesh was presented. There are innumerable ways to strip a guy down on stage, countless ways to show off the goods once he is naked. Thank the gods for innovation. Every bar had its moment in the spotlight having come up with the newest or sexiest act to showcase their stable of boys. Once you’ve hit insertion though, there are not that many different ways of presenting the act. There’s a reason no one has ever published a sequel to The Kama Sutra.
When I first started visiting the bars in Bangkok, nudity was seldom on the menu. The guys wore skimpy underwear, danced around a lot, and if the bar was feeling particularly brave they might even simulate having sex. But cocks were kept tucked in. At best you might get a quick glimpse of a hottie’s ass. Still, it was quite exciting. In the know patrons of Barbiery, before it became Dream Boy and moved across Suriwong to its present home, staked out the bar stools just to the right of the entrance upstairs. It was a great spot for prime viewing after the show’s finale. The guys would strip down and be totally nude just as the lights went dark. You didn’t get to see anything on stage, but the guys coming off stage would often offer you a peak of their goods as they passed by.
It wasn’t long before erect cocks were on view, though often hidden behind gauzy fabrics or moulded by wet underwear. Flashing became the norm and once that barrier was broken, hard cocks took center stage. Twilight again set the pace and introduced the Big Cock Show, which is still a staple at many bars. Chorographers competed for new ways of getting the guys naked and presenting their bodies on stage. But sex, if there was any, was still simulated.
Never to be outdone by the competition, toward the end of its run Twilight used to have the guys rotate on the stage totally naked around 10:00 each night. And the place was always packed. I don’t know why that little feature never caught on. Perhaps the boys were not as thrilled with it as the customers were. Shuffling across the stage in their underwear was the norm when I started hitting the bars, and except for that brief excursion into naked dancing by Twilight, it’s the same today during the boys’ rotation. The bars all compete now to see who can come up with the most unusual fucking act. I think if any of the bars served up a naked rotation of guys like Twilight once did they’d have a packed house. Regardless of who was fucking who elsewhere on the soi.
Dream Boy has one of the classiest shows these days, the numbers all have some thought put into them. It has always been one of the more popular bars on the soi. While others have taken their turn at being the hot bar for brief periods of time, Dream Boy has always relied on its steady trade allowing its competitors to vie for top honors. And they still, nightly, run the giant puppet cock act which is a hold over from the Barbiery days. But even the tired old and way too familiar is better than some of their attempts to excite. It’s been a while since I’ve visited Dream Boy, so maybe they came to their senses, but at one time part of their ladyboy act included a trannie parade with hard cocks on display. Ladyboys exhibiting meat that put the nation’s elephant population to shame is not erotic. It’s scary.
Not quite as grotesque, but definitely a ‘what in the hell were they thinking’ was the act they ran for a while under blacklight that had a bevy of ladyboys crisscrossing the stage as they pulled incredibly long dayglow streamers out of their asses. Sure, it was different. It was colorful. That the performers had already made their way down the stage and back again a dozen times and the ribbons seemed to have no end was a bit worrying. As the novelty of the act wore off you couldn’t help but contemplate the preparations that act required. And that thought alone was enough to rid you of any hardness your best buddy may have been considering.
Future Boys, where Ocean Boys is now, had its own rep for sleaze and in its day was one of the more popular bars on the soi. For a while they had a ladyboy working their shows who actually looked like a woman. She wasn’t one of the typical statuesque katoey who dazzle. The banality of her appearance lent an unexpected air of realism to her act. It wasn’t until she started servicing a few studs on stage that the illusion was shattered. No real woman has ever learned how to suck cock like that.
Toward the end of that bar’s run at popularity they offered an act for a season or so that started off with a saffron robed monk coming on stage. The skit featured a progression of young men joining the monk on stage, bowing in reverence offering a suitable honoring wai. Who knows what the plot entailed, the chatter in Thai brought on guffaws from locals in the audience and silent bewilderment from the farang. The storyline was quickly discarded though, along with everyone’s clothes, and the monk ended up bottoming for half the cast. Considering the respect afforded to monks in Thailand, that act surprised, and appalled me. Though to be honest, if they’d gone with a hunk as the monk I probably would have enjoyed it much more.
The first fucking act I saw was, surprisingly, not at Twilight. It was a bar, now defunct, that was upstairs probably where dream Boys is now. The bar wasn’t there for long, but had semicircular booths for seating and a large stage. Their acts all had a story, little plays that ended up with the guys on stage naked. The night that one of the guys started fucking another started as most of their acts did. This one revolved around a few guys meeting up on a basketball court. There was a bit of shoving, a faked argument, and soon the cast was armed with those black rubber clubs all the bars like to use to simulate a bit of SM. I think.
I don’t expect Thai bar boys really understand the SM thingy, but they do like the loud whap that piece of hose makes when it strikes flesh. With several pairs of guys on stage whacking each other I missed the fact that one of the couples had switched over to using flesh. When I did notice, it was so unexpected that I might have failed to grasp that the pair had begun to fuck. I think it was the sudden silence in the bar that tipped me off to something unusual going on. The other two pair of guys continued to slap each other around but every eye in the place was riveted on the copulating couple. No one could believe what they were seeing. It was truly a moment in gay gogo bar history. Now, all shows end with fucking and if you consider the other acts foreplay, there’s barely enough time given to get the audience wet.
Most of the fucking acts in the early days involved slow build-ups to the act. While some used doggy style, most were face to face, missionary positioning that portrayed two guys in love. It was soft porn with hard dicks, a hazy, lazy, romantic sex act accompanied by love songs. But evidently love didn’t sell as well as sex. It wasn’t long before the guys got to it as soon as they took the stage, and acrobatics reigned supreme. Today it is extreme fucking, never sensual, and barely erotic.
Bar managers keep trying to think up new ways to present the act. Their efforts are seldom successful, even to the most generous of minds. When X-Size opened they had a designated fucker in their stable. One of the ugliest guys you’ve ever seen. His body was nothing to get excited about, and while he may have had an extra inch or two in length over his bar mates, his total lack of a chin ruined the overall affect. His act was never enjoyable to watch. The epitome of bad sex was watching him hop across the stage like a bunny with a little fem boy playing the role of the carrot. It’s the only show I’ve ever walked out on. Not in disgust mind you but rather I was laughing uncontrollably and finally decided I really should leave. Fortunately Mr. Ugly is no longer the designated dick at X-Size, though he is still employed by the bar. But they’ve moved him outside and he keeps his clothes on, now he is a barker.
I’ve never been attracted to any guy I saw getting fucked in a show. They almost always are fems and they screech a lot. Still, if that’s your thing I’ve often wondered how in the hell you’d compete back in your hotel room with no ropes, swings, or ladders to use. When they are used to having their partner making 360 degree turns while bouncing atop them, wouldn’t your efforts just come off a bit mundane?
I’m not sure which bar started the fucking in customers laps act, but for me once they hit that point the thrill was gone. The first time I saw a pair of boys circulate through the audience offering a close up and personal view of their fucking my response was OMG! Then it became an opportunity to laugh at the discomfort of those chosen to be a landing strip. Now it’s the signal to call it a night and head back to the hotel. Even Tawan has added that little act to their show. It’s the finale at most bars. You’d think someone involved in running the bars would notice they mass exodus of customers when the guys hop off stage.
Maybe it’s just me but the constant drive to out weird the next bar has been taken too far to the extreme. Two guys kissing, hugging, slowly stripping off their clothes, progressing to oral and then anal sex – not unlike you might back in your room – is erotic and arousing. The guys who play pee wee golf with their humongous cocks just don’t have the same effect. I’m not saying the old days when you barely caught a glimpse of dick was better. It just seems to me there is room somewhere in the middle for a show that is both erotic and enticing.
There was an upstairs bar kinda by Dick’s Cafe for a while that tried to go the soft porn route while the rest of the bars were putting their money into trapezes. They made a big deal out of their choreographed dance numbers, but their chorographer/star was a diva and the stage could barely hold his ego much less the back-up dancers. And all they ever did was dance. They held true to their ideal, never pandered to those wanting to see some real action, and instead of hitting a happy medium went out of business. Maybe the other bars took that as a warning.
Many pundits on the gay Thai message boards revel in the decline and near-death of Soi Twilight. But then those same fools have been predicting the soi’s demise for years. Yet, the bars are still busy, they still are making money, and are still pulling in customers. There may be slow nights without hardly a customer in the house, but across the street at the Patpong night market the once overflowing lanes are empty too. There are fewer visitors at the girl bars too, it’s the state of the world economy, not disillusionment with the shows ( or prices) on Soi Twilight. But the bars have taken their acts about as far as they can go. And I hate to see what some strange Thai mind may still come up with next to out do the competition. The bars are not going away, but it may be time for a few to try a different approach to set themselves apart not by getting even weirder but instead taking a step backward.
Or am I just getting to be an old fart?
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16 Monday Apr 2012
Posted It's A Gay World, Monday Muscle
inTags
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