the third sex

When I wrote on the main site recently that there were no ladyboy massage parlours in Thailand I knew of, a member emailed me straight away to say that there was in fact one in Phuket. It is called Tootsie Massage and is located on the middle road at Patong Beach, he said, going on to give specific directions:

“It is toward the south end of the road on the side farthest away from the beach. As you travel south along the middle road you will see on your left an orangy coloured building with Loma Massage written on it, take the next left after that and Tootsie Massage is tucked away in this cul-de sac. They usually have five or six girls to choose from.”

It’s been a couple of years since I was last in Phuket, so I’m a bit out of touch with the ladyboy scene there. But I googled the name, and found that Tootsie has its own website . They feature pictures of some of their girls, and they really have some lookers. Time for a visit, methinks.

Maybe Tootsie is the vanguard of a coming wave of ladyboy massage parlours. In my previous post I went on a bit about the economics of such a place, and while it might be a costly concept in Bangkok, it might well be more feasible in Phuket or Pattaya, where the rents will be cheaper if you are away slightly from the beaten track.

For a massage parlour to make money, you need volume. The massage process takes, say, an hour. It also takes up a sizeable room, so you need a largish building. The system works with GGs, and on a smaller scale with gays. But as to having a ladyboy massage parlour, maybe the economics simply does not stack up. Maybe there are just not enough customers. Yet.

A massage from an energetic ladyboy is certainly a thrilling experience, if organised at home or in the hotel. Not that long ago I had a regular ladyboy visitor who liked to join me in the bath, and rub her soapy little body and hard cock all over me. Another liked to give me a dry body massage, using her own body, which was exhilarating but didn’t last long because I would soon feel a hot damp patch spread over my stomach or back, at which point she would collapse upon me with a giggle and a sigh. True, I didn’t get much muscle relaxation, but she did point out, as she rubbed her cum into me, that it is good for the skin.

Yet another had a very neat line in sitting, carefully, on a very sensitive part of me, with her back to me, and giving me a massage with her bottom. Those sessions were quickly over too, although I was the one who was first to cause the damp patch.

And yet another would walk along my spine while I lay face down on a mat. She was an expert masseur, having gone through a course in her home town, and she was so light and well balanced that what might sound like a worrying experience was in fact a restful one, with her feet warm on me and her toes kneading my back. The first time she did it, I rolled over after she hopped off, just in time to see her with an evil grin take hold of her cock and spurt hot cum over my face and chest. Little minx.

So when you think about it, a massage from a ladyboy has more possibilities than a massage from a genetic girl. The only drawback is, that one ladyboy would only be able to service a limited number of customers in one night. So, if you are going to visit Tootsie, I would recommend an early start.

A member emailed a few days ago to say how much he had enjoyed the set of a certain model named A in gallery 26 on the main site. I had to go scrambling back through the galleries, because that was quite a while back, and I had forgotten the model. Seeing the pictures however brought the shoot back to me, because A was actually a boy. He had told me his parents and his college disapproved of ladyboys and so he was compelled to remain a male until he reached independence. Consequently, the young man before me had seemed an average type, trim build, quite good looking, just a smidgeon of makeup, but undeniably male. There had been no female aura.

I had done my best with the pictures. A had been wearing neat little cut-off shorts and white pants, so we got some good shots there. His cock had been fully active (no hormones, of course) and so we had reached the orgasmic part very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that he had shot a load while standing up, which had deprived me of the puddle-on-tummy shots that I like. 

Although I had a reasonable set of pictures, I had been unsure of posting them on the site. This is, after all, all about ladyboys rather than young men in makeup. But I went ahead, and eventually forgot about it. I never met A again, unfortunately, so I never knew how things turned out. The enormous, churning community of ladyboys in Bangkok makes keeping in touch very difficult.

I do remember how I felt during that shoot, however, and it has been the same whenever I have photographed other models who have been male rather than ladyboy. I had felt a kind of detached interest. Rather like a doctor, I suppose, asking someone to strip off and produce their willy to show me that it’s in working order. The intense excitement of photographing a ladyboy has not been there. Instead, there has been an academic interest, the interest of the photographer intent only on getting good shots.

I had at one time contemplated opening up a gay site, as a commercial venture rather than for my own interest. I shot several gay-type sets of pictures, but the only feeling I had was a mixture of curiousity and mild embarrassment. 

The reaction between model and photographer is very different when it is male-male, rather than male-ladyboy.

With the ladyboy model, I treat her exactly as if she was female. Opening doors, offering a glass of water, asking if she is comfortable, getting her to talk about her home and anything else that will make her feel relaxed. Complimenting her on her makeup, hair, clothes, anything that I think looks especially good. All the sessions are relaxed, and when the model finally leaves it is almost invariably with mutual friendliness. I don’t remember ever having one bad session.

With the young guys, the gay sets, the atmosphere has however always been completely different. I quite simply don’t have that interest. Beyond normal courtesy, I’m not particularly concerned about how he looks and feels. I tend to think he is probably as embarrassed about the whole thing as I am, and that we both want to get it over and done with quickly. I’m wary about touching, and always ask before I do so. As to the posing, it presents a few problems. The model often feels compelled to puff up his torso so that he looks beefcake. The elbows-and-knees up-the-bottom shots that I so like doing with ladyboys just don’t happen with guys. The wanking-off sequence has often been a bit of a disaster. Usually the model has not been gay, and I am not gay, and consequently there is no sexual frisson in the room. If a ladyboy has a problem getting off, I am ready to lend a helping hand, or whatever. With boys, that doesn’t happen. So I gave up the idea of a gay site. My heart simply wasn’t in it.

I’m perfectly happy taking pictures of youngsters in the transition phase from boy to ladyboy, such as the pictures that illustrate this entry. It’s simply that there is a turning point,  a point where the male vanishes and the ladyboy comes into being. I have watched and watched over the years,and tried to figure it out. How it happens, when it happens, why it happens. I still don’t know.

Regular readers of this blog and the main site will know about my maid. She is a real girl, a middle-aged lady, and has worked for me for years. Although I use the word “maid”, the Thai word more fully describes what she does: the term is “mare bahn”, which translates as mother of the house, or housekeeper. She keeps everything running, does the shopping, makes sure all the bills get paid, and so on. In a life that is frequently tumultuous, she is a reassuring constant.

She is also a colourful character whose adventures I watch with keen interest. She lives not far from me, in the Suan Plu market area, opposite the old immigration department building. Her husband is a chronic boozer who gets plastered every day, which leaves him little time for his job at a local printing company. “Husband no good, dlunk,” is her usual refrain along with “yeh mark!” (totally irresponsible!).

Yet my maid is herself probably the perfect partner for her husband, able to match him in alcohol consumption, quite capable of swinging the occasional right hook (”last night I boxing him!”), and of kicking him in the rear end (”Thai man no good!”). She blacked his eye once, and split his lip on another occasion. A few weeks ago she threw him out of the house, and they were both so miserable that I was really glad when they got back together again.

A ferocious card player who organises illegal neighbourhood card schools, she has seen the inside of the monkey-house on more than one occasion. She narrowly escaped the attention of Bangkok’s Finest recently when she got into a fight with a neighbour: naturally, she won. She lives a sprawling, rumbustious, Dickensian life, but she turns up for work every morning and no matter what her own problems she always has a beaming smile. She is a typical Issan Thai: warm-hearted, humourous, and always ready for the next good time.

She also has a ladyboy son, who a couple of years ago became my assistant. Between them they know every ladyboy in the locality, and this is where many of my models come from. From them I myself gain a lot of insights into the ladyboy way of life. And my maid is interested in the pictures and videos I shoot, frequently standing at my shoulder as I flip through the pictures on the Mac. “Ooh, very big. If she cut off tell hospital give my husband. No good. Always dlunk.”

I mention this because the other day I had yet another ladyboy asking me if I had a “wife house”, and if not could she have the job. I told her that if she was my maid, she would never get any work done as I would be continually dragging her into bed. She laughed, but I could see she was looking for a regular job. But even if I did not already have a maid who was such a vital and happy part of my life, I would not have employed a ladyboy.

The fact is that ladyboys do not have the female house-making instinct. A few do, I suppose, but a house needs a woman, a real one, to make it into a home. Those ladyboys I have observed in domestic situations have generally done all the cleaning and cooking solely because they had to, not because they had the inbuilt instinct.

A friend who lives in America but who rents an apartment in Bangkok for his frequent visits emailed me recently to say that the ladyboy friend he had installed there on the basis she would look after the apartment when he was away had let the place reach such a stage that the landlord was threatening to terminate the lease. I myself, when I installed a ladyboy mistress in an apartment some years back, found that I was doing much of the housework myself, because if I didn’t it would never have got done. When I lived with ladyboy Dew, back in the late 90s in what was a formative period of my life, I was driven out of my mind by her mad attempts to tackle the housework at 1 am in the morning, when I was trying to sleep after a conventional day’s work and she was just coming alive after having spent the day lazing in bed, watching TV, and gossiping with friends. To those people who email me saying that they yearn for a regular ladyboy companion who they can take back to their home country and “marry”, I’m afraid I do not offer much encouragement.

The Thai ladyboy is not a domestic creature. She is a creation that is pure sexuality. She is not a genetic girl, she is not even like one. She is the third sex. She is a fantasy made true, but only under very limited circumstances. Do please bear this in mind. Most men who like ladyboys are heterosexuals who have nothing against women and who simply enjoy the explosive sex of a ladyboy relationship. Do not make the mistake of thinking they really are women.

A member of the main site emailed me a few days ago, saying that a large number of models I photograph have foreskins that have not retracted even though they have an erection. Did I find, he asked, that in general the Thai penis has a tight foreskin?

It was a good question, and I know there are a lot of people out there who find this subject fascinating.

When I’m taking photographs and the model’s pants come down for the first time, a substantial number of them immediately have an erection. It’s an automatic response when exposing your cock for sexual action. More often than not, I find the foreskin does not roll back on its own. Sometimes the model will do it herself, but very often I take hold of her cock and see if I can ease it back myself.

I do this very, very gently. The last thing I want to do is to hurt anybody. And it does seem to me that, in general, the Thai cock does have a tight foreskin. Maybe it’s not too tight: just tight enough to prevent automatic retraction. Often however the skin simply cannot retract, and the glans peeps out with varying degrees of prominence.

Experts in this field aver that in general East Asian penises have tight foreskins, a condition known as phimosis, where the foreskin opening is too narrow to retract when erect. Any expertise I can claim to have on penises is related to the Thai version, and all I can say, having seen well over 1,000 ladyboy cocks up close and intimate, observing them in all their natural states from flaccid to erect to ejaculating to subsiding, is that probably there is no thing as an “average” Thai penis.


I would say that most of those I see have a small to medium-size glans and a fairly tight foreskin. There are more fully retractable foreskins than non-retractable, but the number of non-retractables is substantial.
I have seen a few cases where the condition is so pronounced that the glans is entirely non-visible, the foreskin forming a bobble even when the cock is fully erect, with the glans a visible bulge beneath the skin. In some instances the opening is angled away from the line of the penis by 45 degrees, giving an odd periscope effect. Interesting though this is, it is not to my mind attractive. If I owned one of those myself, I would certainly have opted for a snip.

Circumcision is almost never practiced in Thailand, except amongst the Moslem community, which forms about three or four percent of the total population. When I see a circumcised cock, it is enough of a rarity to make me pause for a close look, to see how expertly the job was done and to admire the novelty. So for those who have a degree of phimosis, it does not appear to be an issue.

I do not see cocks that appear to be suffering any hardship from having a non-retractable foreskin. No signs of puffiness or redness, no signs of discomfort or pain when the model is masturbating. No difficulty in reaching an orgasm, if one discounts the effect of hormones. Very few problems in the hygiene field, too. If someone does have difficulty (or can’t be bothered) in keeping clean, this becomes very apparent during the course of wanking, as little particles of smegma will get squeezed up from under the foreskin. But this very seldom happens.

So I can only assume that foreskin tightness is simply an accepted fact. Presumably Thai parents are the same as any other parents in watching out for the health of their offspring, and that a decision to circumcise would be taken by them during the childhood or adolescent stage, when a tight foreskin becomes apparent, rather than by the owner of the penis during early adulthood.

In ending, I would like to point out that when we say “Thai”, we are in fact talking about more than 30 different ethnic groupings. The largest are the Tai, usually regarded as the true Siamese and who originated from the southern Chinese region, the ethnic Chinese, and the Lao. There is also a large assimilation of Mon, Shan and Khmer, and there is the cocktail of influences from the South including Malay, Indian and Burmese. This has ensured a wide variety of cock shapes, sizes and colours, which helps to make this subject a fascinating one.

A lady friend (yes,  a real one!) who hails from Buri Ram was telling me at the weekend how youngsters in her home province are becoming drawn into the ladyboy lifestyle. She says she knows of nippers of six or seven years old who are trying on girls’ clothing, and of those a couple of years older who are putting on makeup and wiggling around like proper little madames. By the time they are in their teens they are already veterans.

Why, why, why, I asked, repeating the question I have posed countless times. Why are so many Thai youngsters so eager to change their sex?

My friend pulled a face. “I don’t know,” she said.

Is it something in the water supply? A genetic fault running through the Thai nation? The Thai equivalent to becoming a footballer or rock star, and leaving your impoverished background behind you? 

What happens to them when they leave school, I asked. Do they come to Bangkok and attempt to work in the cabaret or the bars? For it has to be born in mind that Buri Ram, which is in the northeast and adjoining the Cambodia border, is one of the most impoverished provinces in Thailand.

“No,” she said. “A lot of them stay in Buri Ram. Get jobs as waitress or in beauty salon or department store. Many want man to look after them.”

I thought that one over. Buri Ram is an agricultural province, a region where the living is sometimes hard, and although you can never quantify these things I would not have thought it an obvious place to have a large gay population. The people there are of course mainly Thai but there is a significant population of Khmer descent, and a lot of mixed blood. In fact my friend herself is part Khmer. Not the kind of people you would imagine who are given to liberal viewpoints or decadent ways of living. This is country where every able pair of hands is needed, and where the male side of the family is regarded very much in the traditional peasant way.

So why are all these husky young farmhands and potential farmhands giving up their very traditional way of life to start putting on makeup and sashaying around in their sisters’ dresses long before they have even reached puberty?


“No work in Buri Ram,” said my friend. “Only hard work on farm, or easy work in restaurant or beauty salon. Young boy not want to be like father, work hard, drink too much, fight, never have any money. So become ladyboy instead.”

We in the West are familiar with teenage rebellion. In the East it is far less common. But although we grew our hair long in the 60s, and dressed in odd ways, and tried in as many ways as we could to upset our parents and the established order, we never did get around to changing our sex. In Thailand, it is a rebellion. You can even compare it to the rise of the Red Shirt movement. A rebellion against the established order. But what a strange one it is.