the third sex

How many men, I wonder, lead secret lives? This thought occurred to me recently when I met up with an old friend, together with his wife. They made a delightful couple, clearly devoted to each other. Yet I know that as he roams the world on business, he indulges in his deep addiction to ladyboys. “I can’t do without them,” he explains. “I don’t bother with girls anymore. It’s the ladyboys.”

There are plenty of other examples. The friend who on a recent visit to Bangkok managed to leave his girlfriend enjoying the hotel spa while he went for a quickie with a ladyboy. The married man I knew who on a visit to Bangkok went full-blast at the ladyboy scene, explaining to me afterwards that he was perfectly happy with his married life and that he loved his wife, but that ladyboys excited a different part of his personality: “It’s almost like I’m two people,” he said.

I remember the young IT specialist who had contacted me before his first visit to Bangkok, saying he was desperate to meet up with ladyboys but was too shy to do it on his own. “I don’t think I could handle the bar scene,” he said. So I took him to KC3, where in his urgent need to get started before he lost his bottle, he took up with the first ladyboy who spoke to him, bar-fined her, and as he told me later, almost came in his pants when they got into the hotel room. “It was all over in 20 minutes,” he said. I tactfully refrained pointing out that the girl he was with was one of the most ordinary girls in the bar. In his rush, he hadn’t noticed. He told me that I was the first person he had ever confided in. “If they ever heard about this in the pub, I would have to move out of the area,” he explained.

Then there was the university lecturer who asked for a discrete introduction to one of the models on the site so that he could spend time with her when he was out here on an exchange visit. He told me that a couple of his students were also spending their holidays in Bangkok, and that the possibility of meeting them when he was cruising for ladyboys was a mortifying one. “Back at home I’m regarded by my students as a pretty boring bloke, married for 22 years, two kids, no interests apart from my subject, art history,” he said. “But every day I fantasise about ladyboys. I’m not a closet gay, I have a satisfying sex life at home. Ladyboys stir up emotions I never knew I had.”

I myself like to believe that I pass as an ordinary person (albeit a devilishly handsome one), and that going about my daily business no one would possibly guess that the evening before, I had been eagerly exploring the cock and bottom of a young ladyboy eager to help me in every way she could.

In some ways, having a secret life is itself exciting. But while it is fine for me, living here, and able to indulge and then cover my tracks easily enough, it is a lot less easy for those who only visit Thailand or other countries with a sizeable ladyboy population.

When I first started out with ladyboys, it was long before the days of the internet. I didn’t even know what ladyboys were. I had never heard of them. These days, with so much ladyboy porn on the net, it is very easy to become addicted to the images. For most people, they are something entirely new. Something completely exotic that excites because it has never been seen or experienced, and because so many of the ladyboys who are posted on the net are under any criteria, extremely beautiful. In my experience, a lot of men visit Thailand because of the ladyboys.

For those men who are married, or in long-term relationships, does going with a ladyboy constitute being unfaithful? This is something of a conundrum. Having sex with a genetic girl certainly is. Having sex with a member of the third sex is problematical, in ethical terms. Enjoy the moment, is my advice. And, of course, keep quiet about it.

The ladyboy who had just arrived for a photoshoot looked fine to me, except for what she was wearing. She was dressed as the Sugar Plum Fairy. And it was only lunchtime.

I looked at the totally unselfconscious figure standing in front of me. Butterfly-style hairband, sparkly blouse, and a filmy white ballerina skirt. She had travelled on the bus dressed like this, all the way from one of the suburbs to my place.

This was far from being an isolated incident. I had one model turn up at lunchtime dressed in a gold lame dress and fishnet stockings. Another with a short dress made from gauze and with her bra-less tits hanging out. Another in hot pants so small that her bottom cheeks were visible. One in a pink pyjama suit. One in a cocktail dress with sequins and wearing six-inch heels. I could go on.

Why is it that ladyboys spend so much time and effort into making their faces and bodies look so beautiful, and then trash it all by dressing like something out of a pantomime? And aren’t they aware that, while at nighttime maybe this doesn’t look too grotesque, early on a hot Bangkok afternoon, in the merciless glare of the sun, they absolutely do not look sexy.

Ladyboys don’t seem to have an off-switch when it comes to going over the top. Some of them deliberately want to shock, some are pushing the limits of their own creative impulses, some are using it as a kind of body-shield and hiding their own insecurities in plain sight. Others, however, simply don’t have the faintest idea about female fashion or decorum.

This, I would think, is what happens when a young ladyboy from the provinces arrives in Bangkok and suddenly finds an endless supply of inexpensive clothing available at markets, boutiques and department stores. You would look hard to find anywhere else in Asia that is quite so productive, and quite so cheap, in terms of the local garments industry.

Thailand is in fact famous for its fashion and garments shopping – go to Pratunam, which is the centre of the rag trade, and wander around its huge market and its malls, and you will be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity. The same applies to smaller markets such as Klong San and Huay Kwang. The output, and the demand, are phenomenal. Place a ladyboy amongst all this, and perhaps it is not surprising that impulse purchases are made that maybe are regretted later: but with the budget blown, the clothes are worn regardless.

Anyway, I unpeeled my Sugar Plum Fairy. She had a neat little wand. In the end I was quite taken by her. But I did let her find her own way out of the building, without the polite accompaniment I usually offer my models.

The latest must-have accessory for ladyboys appears to be coloured contact lenses. It has reached the stage where a model with standard brown Thai eyes is something of a rarity, and during a shoot I now frequently find myself confronted by bright blue or hazel eyes, or even by a shade of solid brown that gives the wearer a foxy, rather opaque appearance; not particularly a pleasant one.

Although they are far from being a new idea in Thailand, cosmetic contact lenses have recently become much cheaper and are being made in a range of sometimes startling colours. Ladyboys being ladyboys of course have to go right over the top and they choose colours that contrast oddly with their natural skin and hair tones.

In person, they don’t look especially bizarre, but under photographic flash the lenses take on an extra bright quality. Also, there is no getting away from the fact that a lens is a lens, and it has no expression – so I am getting, literally, a glassy-eyed look.

Musing this over, I recall other fashion trends of the past few years. There was the craze for dyeing hair red or blond, or an in-between colour that was a Coca-Cola shade. One model even turned up for a shoot with her pubes dyed blond, which actually was very effective. The hair colouring was good, because it gives a real lift to the photographs

Then there were the talon-like fingernail attachments, often with vibrant colours or strange designs. Again, yes, quite good for photos, and they had the added advantage of hiding chewed nails and fingertips – details that are important in close-up, because scruffy nails and skin is a turn-off. Some years ago, when vampire films were all the rage, I would see ladyboys with vampire tooth-caps. Some of these were good quality, but I did ponder the wisdom of going to a dentist and having a perfectly good incisor tooth filed down to take an enamel fang.

And let us not forget the mania for tattoos, which in Bangkok has been going on for some years and which now must surely have reached its peak. It is at the stage now where, when I find a ladyboy who does not have some kind of tattoo, I involuntarily comment on the fact. The most common is a Buddhist prayer that is tattooed onto the left shoulder blade, but massive illustrations covering almost the entire back are becoming the semi-norm. Ladyboys never do things in moderation. Quite what they will think of these works of art 20 years from now is anyone’s guess.

I had some interesting insights recently as to what prompts the formation of a ladyboy. I was talking to a young gay guy, who was 18 years old and had just landed a job at the makeup department of one of Bangkok’s largest department stores. He was explaining that he is from Roi Et, in Isaan, one of the regions that has more than its fair share of ladyboys.

There were, he said, many young gays growing up in that province. Life in and around Roi Et is not easy for working class Thais, and the temptations for the average young man to take to drugs, booze or petty crime, rather than succumb to the mind-numbing manual work that his father and all those before him had to do in order to survive, are considerable.

He said he found the girls of his neighbourhood to be consistently pushy, eager to get married and have children, anything to get away from their oppressive and poverty-stricken home life. Several of his friends had got girls pregnant when they were in their mid-teens. Some had knuckled down ruefully to mundane lives, while others had simply run away.

When he was an adolescent, my young friend had had no particularly gay inclinations. He and his friends had done the usual things that youngsters do, flashing their cocks around, but there was no sexual frisson between him and any of the members of his group.

At the same time, he was wary of girls. He was excited by them, but had heard so many horror stories of older boys being trapped into marriage, that he began to distrust them. “I was scared of even being in the same room, breathing the same air, in case I made one pregnant!” he said.

When he was 14, he had had a crush on an older boy, who had been working in Bangkok. The boy told him how easy it was to make money in a gay bar, and that there was no need to actually be gay to do it. Then the older boy had shown him a few things, which made my young friend reconsider his attitude towards his sexuality.

As he grew up, he began to seek the company of older boys, and to find comfort in going to bed with them. He said there was no feeling of involvement, it simply became a sexual adventure. He began to move in Roi Et’s gay circles, and this of course brought him into the world of ladyboys. He told me that he was very much aware, in the early years of adolescence, that there were kids of his age experimenting with dressing as girls. None of his friends seemed to find this strange, but he was also aware that these fledgling ladyboys were causing considerable upset to the conservative adults of the community.

It was understandable that their families were upset, he explained, but also he could see that their rebellion – for that is partly what it was – was upsetting the established order.

“There was a lot of tolerance for them, but at the same time people were angry at them because they were rejecting their community standards. They were upsetting everything. But this only drove them on to be even more flamboyant and outrageous.”

The girls were also upset, he said. The young ladyboys found regular companionship with older boys and with men, even married men. They always seemed to have money, because their men friends gave them gifts. Nobody expected a ladyboy to work in the fields or the factories. Not the attractive ones, anyway.

What made them experiment in the first place, I asked him.

“Some were naturally effeminate. Some did it simply because their friends did it. Some did it because it meant belonging to an exclusive group. Some identified closely with their mothers, because their fathers were drunk or violent, or both. Some saw a theatrical career ahead of them.

“You must remember that we Thais do not condemn people for their sexuality,” he said. “We also do not think it strange that someone prefers to dress as a girl, and to behave like a girl. There is no shame for a man to have a relationship with a ladyboy.”

He added that an attractive ladyboy can always find men who will support her. If she stays in her home village or town, she will be taken care of and probably be able to save enough money to open a small business – maybe just a food stall, or a stall in the market selling flowers or clothes. But enough to get out of the dreadful dead-end of labouring jobs.

Had he ever had any desire to become a ladyboy himself? No, he said, although he had joined in sessions with ladyboys, putting on makeup and even dressing up. “They were fun times, but I just didn’t feel I could go that extra step and become a ladyboy,” he said. “I am a man. I have a cock. I look like a man.”

Being gay seems to have released his creative abilities. He enjoys doing makeup, and has an ambition to study interior design or landscape design. “I understand ladyboys,” he told me. “I understand gays. I understand straight guys. From where I am, I think I have a pretty good understanding of people.”

Noi, who is pictured here, is from Vientiane in Laos, one of my favourite towns in Asia. She came to Bangkok to earn some money, and is working in Nana. When I photograph a girl as gobsmackingly gorgeous as Noi, I always think to myself that in a straight comparison between ladyboys and genetic girls, the genetic girls often don’t stand a chance.

Noi has all the aura of a female, and if you saw her in the street you would assume she was a girl. She is slightly built with a firm body, yet has the softening and cushioning of the skin that hormones induce. Her skin is almost completely blemish-free, and is soft and hairless. Her bottom is one of the most beautiful I have seen this year, being soft, smooth and creamy in texture.

Her cock is firm and has a cute little curve to one side. Despite the hormones it sprung into action immediately, and a glistening little dewdrop appeared on the end. It took her a while to cum, but she is a horny little minx. The kind of overt sexuality that sends hot shivers up and down your spine, and elsewhere. “You suck my cock now, and I cum very quick, sure.” Yes, well, we have all heard that one before, haven’t we. She got there in the end. What a lovely mess she made.

I had just returned from an overseas trip when I shot her pictures, and had been starved of ladyboy company for ten days. At that moment, if someone had put Noi in front of me together with an identical female Noi, I would without hesitation have chosen the ladyboy Noi. And that is from someone who has no problems whatsoever with women.

Of course, this is not the first time I have given thought to this, and have mentioned it before on this site. It is just that every now and again I find a ladyboy who is so utterly gorgeous, that I realise GGs so often trail a poor second.

I was talking over the weekend to a friend, and he casually mentioned his new girlfriend. “Female?” I asked, knowing his liking for ladyboys.

“No,” he replied. “Ladyboy. GGs just don’t do it for me anymore. I’ve finished with them.” I have a couple of other friends who say more or less the same. And the theme of any conversation with them is, that they have no interest in the gay scene or in males: it is only the ladyboys.

As for myself, even after all this time, I find ladyboys to be a continuous adventure. Many of them I photograph are brought to me, sight unseen, and I often never know quite who is going to walk through the door. On occasions I am disappointed. On other occasions, I am unmoved. But the Nois of this world, the Annabelles, the Pinkies, the Yings – all recent discoveries – leave me almost breathless with excitement. The same sort of feeling I had when I was a teenager. In those days, girls were almost untouchable. But ladyboys…well, they come looking for you.