Old hands and sexpats love nothing more than bitching about the high drinks cost at gogo bars on Soi Twilight. Okay, old hands and sexpats love to bitch period. But a perennial favorite is whining about how much that first drink at a Bangkok gogo bar costs. It’s around ten bucks these days. Which does sound pricey. Until you remember you are not just paying for a drink, you are paying for the treat of watching a bunch of naked dudes cavorting around the stage. Which the old hands and sexpats never seem capable of remembering. Or they wouldn’t whine so much. ‘Cuz getting to watch a bunch of naked guys do those things naked guys tend to do is priceless.

While none of those whiners actually knows what it cost to run a bar that offers hot and cold running boys in Bangkok, they will gladly tell you the exorbitant prices charged for drinks are because bar owners are greedy and care more about profits than they do about their customers. And predicting the downfall of those bars because of that greed is almost as enjoyable as bitching about how much they’re charging. Dreamboys – who tends to lead the price increase in each round – is often cited as an example of owner greed. Yet that bar has been going strong for years, with no sign its popularity is waning. Huh. So are gogo bar owners greedy bastards who deserve the bankruptcy surely headed their way? Or are they just astute businessmen who know what their product is worth?

Yup. Smells like science to me.

It turns out portraying gogo bar owners are uncaring capitalistic pigs is a disservice to the industry. ‘Cuz science says, just like the boys in their stables, bar owners’ real concern is about taking care of you. And considering what they have to work with, that ain’t no easy job. Finding boys to willingly strut their stuff on stage isn’t difficult. Enticing sex tourists into their establishment to drool over those boys isn’t much of a task either. But convincing the boys to spend a night going one-on-one with an ancient, gelatinously obese, smelly, myopic, bald, farang whose cynicism, anger and disillusionment are palpable can be a Herculean task. Unless you get them drunk first. And I don’t mean the boys.

No problemo. Researchers at the University of Bristol have just discovered what Bangkok’s gogo bar owners already knew to be true. Your attractiveness increases greatly after you’ve had a shot of your favorite liquor. In the study, published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism – which wouldn’t be a bad new catch phrase for Pattaya – 40 participants were photographed three times — sober, after one glass of wine, and after two glasses of wine. Then their photos were shown to a new group of people who were asked to rate their attractiveness in side-by-side comparisons. They were either shown a participant’s sober photo nest to his one-drink shot, or his sober photo against the two-drink shot.

Invariably, participants selected the photos of those who had downed a drink as being the most attractive the majority of the time. The researchers are not sure why, but suggest it could be due to pupil dilation – which is a positive trait to viewers – or muscle relation, or rosier cheeks. In any case the results are the same. “It suggests that people are rated as more attractive once they’ve consumed a small amount of alcohol,” said the study’s senior researcher, Marcus Munafò, a professor of biological psychology. “What it means is that alcohol is sort of hijacking that mechanism, or promoting the aspects of facial features that we regard as attractive for other reasons,” he says.

The conclusion of the study was that in addition to perceiving others as more attractive, a mildly intoxicated alcohol consumer may also be perceived as more attractive by others. Which in turn may play a role in the relationship between alcohol consumption and risky sexual behavior. “You consume a drink, so you see other people as more attractive,” Munafò said. “But you also become more attractive yourself because you’ve consumed a drink.” And that’s a win-win in anyone’s book.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that there is a limit to how attractive booze can make you. A quick glance in the mirror should clue you into that fact. ‘Cuz while study participants found a single shot upped the attractiveness level of drinkers, drink #2 made that rating head south. After two drinks, participants found their sober photos more attractive than the high-alcohol head shots. And that’s a sobering bit of news.
The researchers did not test the attractiveness of subjects who had drank more than two shots. ‘Cuz even scientists wouldn’t attempt to float the hypothesis that anyone finds a falling-down drunk attractive. Even one with a fat wallet. Or at last call.

So despite all those nasty things you’ve been saying about Bangkok’s gogo bar owners, the truth is they know their business, they know their boys, and they care about you. Demanding that you buy a drink – which is considered a cover charge everywhere else in the world – is ‘cuz they know it will help you appear just a bit more attractive to the boys. And by pricing their drinks high, they discourage you from drinking the amount that will allow the boys to remember just how disgusting you really are. That those prices add to their bottom line is just a happy coincidence. Because what they really care about is your happy ending.

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