the third sex

On Sunday morning I was walking outside the commercial complex in which I live, and the maintenance crew were busy hosing down the public areas and cleaning them with buffer machines. This is done every week, because the complex is well-managed, and the water and soap and the cheery bunch of cleaners, always ready with a smile, are all part of the pleasant weekend ambience of the place.

Looking over at the work gang, I saw a familiar figure. She looked up from her mop and smiled at me. A few years ago she had arrived at my apartment, taken down her pants, and showed me a whopping big dick. I had happily photographed it, and she had gone away again. But in leaving she had made enquiries with the management office about any job vacancies there might be in the building, and had been offered the job of cleaner.

This she has carried out ever since, and I find it heartening that she has shown such a sense of responsibility and kept the job, rather than succumbing to the kind of lethargy into which so many ladyboys sink.

It is all too easy, I’m afraid, for a ladyboy to think that because she is making easy money she can relax and simply rely on turning the next trick to keep the revenue coming in. I had better point out that I am talking about about a certain class of ladyboy: many of them are career minded, responsible people. But you do get a lot who will sell themselves as often as they can, become totally oriented to night-time working and consequently hopeless in the daylight hours, start taking drugs and gambling, and before very long find themselves in the kind of bind that they cannot escape. Reduced energy, no money, fading looks…it doesn’t take long.

So my young friend outside the building is to be respected. No doubt she has her own personal reasons for working in a lowly job such as a cleaner: poor education, impoverished background, the need to support siblings at school, and so on. But I admired her initiative when she first asked about the job, and got it, and I hope she is managing to save some money for herself.


I had to smile, though, when I thought what a contradiction this young upcountry girl represents. On the surface she is a diligent, hardworking, female cleaner. But that afternoon when she came upstairs to my apartment and pulled out an impressive cock, and then lay down on the sofa and wanked off while I stood over her with a camera, is really only the kind of bizarre double life that lovers of ladyboys can understand and appreciate.

I watched her now, as she returned to work, still glancing up at me through her eyelashes. Then she turned round, mop in hand, and presented me with a view of her tight little bottom: clad in overalls, admittedly, but cute for all that, and it brought back memories of how, on my sofa, she had knelt down and parted those tight little cheeks so that I could get a nice close-up of her crack.

I have no doubt that the women she works with know all about her, and her secret. I’ve no doubt too that they all know about me. Secrets cannot be kept it Thailand, and indeed they seem to fly telepathically. But do I care? No! Not me. I enjoy myself.

I was outside my apartment complex one evening last week, using the cashpoint machine. It delivered my cash, and as I turned round to leave I realised with a start that a ladyboy friend, who lives near me, was standing right behind me. She had been passing the building, and came over to say hello.

It was one of those rainy season evenings that I always enjoy. The rain had fallen during the afternoon, and there was a freshness in the air. There was a fragrance too from the river, a few yards away. The sun had just gone down, and there was still a lurid pink glow in the sky. I looked at my ladyboy friend, and felt not exactly romance, but lust, stirring.

Next to the apartment is a derelict site, an ill-judged market venture that never got off the ground. Most of the buildings have been demolished, but there are still some standing in a state of ruin. Grass grows out of the cracks in the concrete walkway. No one goes there, and the place is lit only by the lights from the main road. I steered my friend into this melancholy area, and into the shadow of one of the remaining buildings.

I unzipped her pants, and felt a hot and throbbing something filling the palm of my hand. At the same time, I felt her warm little hand exploring me. There must have been something in the air that evening, because rather than prolonging the encounter for some other moves that I had in mind, I was unable to resist her warm fingers and smooth wrist motion and there was an unexpectedly fast finish. At the same time I felt a hot, wet sensation in the palm of my hand and a warm spurt that landed on my wrist. We stood for a while clinging to each other.

Then we moved apart, and I raised my hand to my face. Her cum had the aroma of coconut juice. She kissed me quickly on the cheek, and we emerged into the street, where she jumped into a taxi-meter and was gone. It was a sweet encounter, and I went off for dinner feeling on top of the world.

A little while ago I was in the Deep South of Thailand, at Pattani, which is near the Malaysia border. I was with a local ladyboy friend, and she wanted to go and see a friend of hers, who lived in a village way out in the countryside.

I had hired a pickup for the visit, so that was no problem. We headed out of town and soon found ourselves in the rural area. We drove on for a while, and then pulled off the road onto a dirt track that wound past orchards and pineapple plantations, around a small pond and past woodland, until at last a small village hove into view.

Actually, it was a hamlet. There was a village shop that sold essentials, but not much else. The locals tended the fruit farms and the plantations, and grew much of their own food. If they wanted to go anywhere else and didn’t have their own transport, they had to make their way back along the track and wait for a minibus or a passing pickup.

The houses were made of timber, traditional in style with railed platforms that constituted the main living area, tall trees providing shade, and flowers everywhere. It was a picture of rural peace and quiet.

My ladyboy friend led the way between a couple of houses up to a little timber house that backed onto woodland. As we approached the building, a vision appeared on the platform. A most beautiful ladyboy. Dressed casually in short shorts and a T-shirt, and without too much makeup, she was unbelievably exotic in these tranquil surroundings.

We went into her bedroom, where she sprawled out on the bed as she and my friend chatted. I was suddenly aware that under those shorts she wasn’t wearing any panties, for I could glimpse something soft and brown along with a fringe of pubic hair. My friend saw me staring. “She have very big one!” she laughed. I said that I would love to see it. And the interest that we were showing was already having an effect, for the girl’s dick was swelling up and the head of it was protruding from the leg of her shorts.


She gave a sweet smile, and raised her bottom off the bed as she pulled down her shorts. There, arching almost back to her tummy button, was a long banana-shaped cock that had me almost speechless with admiration.

My friend laughed, and said something in the local dialect. The girl seized her dick and with her eyes half-closed and a dreamy expression on her face, pulled it for less than a minute before a great spurt of cum splattered on the pillow beside her face. Then she laughed and jumped off the bed, pulling off her soaked T-shirt to reveal a lithe brown body, and disappeared to sluice herself down from the earthen jar outside.

The show was over. My friend and I went back to our hotel, where we managed to relieve the intense and urgent erotic sensation that had overcome me. I haven’t yet been back the village.

Musing about Thai names in the last blog entry, and the problems Thais have with the English language, brought me onto the related subject of communicating with ladyboys.

Although all Thai kids are taught English at school, few of them have the opportunity to use and improve on the language once they have left. Plus, of course, and I know this sounds patronising but it has to be said, the level of tuition is not necessarily that great. I once knew a Thai girl who had a qualification to teach English and she could not speak the language. She could read it and write it, but could not string a verbal sentence together.

Poor English language skills is one of the problems that holds Thais back when it comes to obtaining overseas work, even (or especially) the lower-level agency work that Filipinos more or less monopolise in places such as Hong Kong, Singapore and other prosperous parts of Asia.

This is also a problem you are going to encounter when exploring the ladyboy community.

A member of the site came to Bangkok recently, and contacted me to see if he could meet one of the models I had photographed. I knew that the girl in question was open to any offers that brought in revenue, so I gave him her number. The only problem was, she doesn’t speak a word of English. Not a word. He tried phoning her to suggest a get-together, and  in the end he gave up because of the language problem.

I can speak enough Thai to get me through most situations, although I have to admit I would find it difficult to sit and have an intelligent conversation in Thai (I find that hard enough in English!). So when I’m taking photographs the conversation is in Thai,  and I don’t always know if  the model can speak English or not. I do test them out before we begin, but as the response to “Do you speak English?” is inevitably an embarrassed “nit noi” (a little bit), I tend to let it rest at that and plough on in Thai.

In the bars, although the  girls in places like Obsession and KC3 do generally have some English basics, often picked up from customers,  it can still be difficult to make yourself understood.

I had to laugh the other evening. I was in Nana Plaza, standing at one of the outdoor bars with a ladyboy friend, who was on her way to start work. Her English is nil. We were talking in Thai, when at a distance she spotted a foreign man who she knew and who had clearly upset her at some recent point.

“Motherfucker” she said, very distinctly.

I creased up laughing. “That’s the only English word you know, and it’s a bad one!” I told her.

She saw the funny side of that, and went off to her bar with a huge smile on her face.

A ladyboy arrived for a photoshoot a while back and proudly told me her name was Cake. I thought for a moment she was saying Kaek, which is the Thai word for Indian, and she was dusky-skinned, but no, she spelled it out. C-A-K-E.

You can’t go around calling yourself Cake! I protested. She looked at me, wide-eyed. “Why not?”

Because nobody is called Cake. She still looked at me, dumbfounded. In the end I gave up, and changed it to something a little more within the bounds of reason. Kate, I think. But I never did manage to find out why she had chosen that name.

Not long after, a ladyboy turned up and announced her name was Ballroom. Do you mean Balloon or Ballon, I asked, which is a name you sometimes find.

“No. Ballroom. Dance.”

Why Ballroom, I asked, helplessly.

“I like.”

There was no answer, so I took the pictures and changed her name to something with a little more allure.

As I have said on this page before, ladyboys often choose the oddest names for themselves. Sometimes they take the name from a famous model or singer or actress, but sometimes I think they simply like the sound of a name. I used to know a ladyboy who called herself Pop, simply because she liked the sound of the word.

But then a few weeks back I had a ladyboy turn up and announce that her name was Arse. I buried my head in my hands. Nobody on this planet is called Arse, I said.

“Wos?” she replied. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get anywhere here. I changed it to Art.

A couple of years ago I met a Dung. “It’s a real name!” she protested when I laughed. “I not make up!” How do you write it, I asked. D-O-N-G, she wrote. I changed it to Donna.

Poo is a Thai name you hear from time to time. It means crab, and is a nickname given at babyhood. The pronunciation is actually closer to “bool” but it’s not quite a b and the l sound is only just there. The word is impossible to render in written English, so it usually ends up as Poo, and whenever I find a Poo I change the name.

You will occasionally find the names Pong and Porn, both abbreviations for names such as Jurapong and Nataporn, and these I change. I once met a Lung, a name that made me feel quite queasy, and I changed the name to Lorne. Prik I changed to Pik, and Dik to Tik. Bum to Bom. Tit to Tip. Wee Wee to Weena. And so on.

It is all part and parcel of the Thai inability to absorb the English language. And it does have a certain charm, when you think about it.