Have Gun, Will Travel: Bangkok

text:   Zip Livingston

art:     Jonah Schulz

Deplaning in Bangkok, I found myself with a young sidekick named Johnny. Johnny was a 19 year-old Asian missionary bound for the Lord Jesus’ work in Singapore and had a nine-hour layover to kill. At a good 20 yards, anyone could see how green the boy was, what was harder to tell was exactly how far and fast he would go down the feverish rabbit hole that is Bangkok.

Just nine hours. This short time between connecting flights would be Johnny’s first and perhaps last time out from under the watchful eyes of his religious betters for the next three years. There aren’t many cities that one can truly dirty their hands in such little time. The boy had chosen wisely. He told me how close he had been watched in the states, that for the most part, he lived out his days in a near constant fear coma, daydreaming of smoking cigarettes and finger fucking girls. Neither of which had he accomplished at this point.

How I ended up being Johnny’s unofficial guardian in Bangkok was pretty simple. He had sat beside me on the plane and after 13 hours of my frothing at the mouth with ideas and excitement, ranting on and on about the “in’s and out’s” of the South Asian sex trade, he opened up and stuttered out his grim secret. He was a virgin. I told him in no uncertain terms that to let that be true for another single day of his life was a sucker move. I had been drinking, and when drinking I take delight at fixing problems, if the “fixing” promises some adventure. I offered to try my hand at getting the kid laid. It was agreed that for my trouble, the night as a whole would be on him. Done and done.

With the first smile I’d seen on him as of yet, he bought a carton of Marlboro’s to celebrate our agreement. I laughed as he choked down 4 jacks just to get the courage to leave the terminal overhang. We got into a taxi and I told the driver, “Girls, please.”

We were at a “girl” bar in eight minutes. It was a complete disaster from minute nine. Charging fifteen dollars American per cocktail was enough of an affront, but once I took a good look at the offered company, I knew we had been had. Two middle-aged women in shimmering evening gowns condescendingly began petting Johnny’s arm, choosing him before he could think to choose another. As they sat him down at the bar, the twin succubi made a subtle motion of their hands, ordering themselves a pair of doubles.


















As a knee jerk reaction to what I was seeing, I started getting loud, not wanting to let the situation get too advanced with drink orders and other wallet-draining fuckery. I screamed to the taxi driver, who had entered with us and was at the other end of the bar getting loaded with kickback drinks in tall glasses. I’m sure that was only part of the compensation for bringing us “fresh of the boat” Americans with our fat wallets to this den of third-rate iniquity. As I retrieved Johnny, still too turned around to argue, I howled at the driver, “Yeah, we’re done here! Next stop!”

I lambasted the cabbie all the way out of that bar and right into the parking lot of the next. Why we didn’t attack the cabbie and leave him rolled and penniless on the side of the parking lot is beyond me. Looking back, I have to assume we were frugal cowards and perhaps even hopeful, that all the shouting had been enough to right the rudder and put us due north yet again.

The second “girl” bar was nothing more than a poorly lit lobby with a thick curtain hung across the far wall. There were cheap, stackable chairs lining the carpeted room, which was sparsely lit with three black lights. One of the purple bulbs hovered above us, still standing inside the entrance, just taking it all in, another lit the wet bar island in the corner opposite the curtain. The curtain itself was ominously lit with the third and final light. All at once it felt like an abandoned conference room at a Holiday Inn, evacuated during hurricane season down in the southern tip of the continental U.S. It seemed hollow and wrong to have anyone or anything here, most especially a business. It was an intriguing feeling.  

I walked directly to the curtain; refusing to buy drinks from the wet bar on the opposite side of the room. I wasn’t remotely interested in the playing of the game, in becoming blood brothers and long lost friends with the staff through overpriced drinks and high society tipping. I still had the taste of cheap paper acid in my mouth, which lingers when I’m in a bad spot, losing ground fast, and about to get taken for a fool.

There were six men in the room, two on either side of the curtain, one lazily manning the bar behind us and one short guy who just watched everyone, not saying a word. Clearly, he was the pimp. To be short and in the pimp game, it was a safe bet that he was violent. To be in the pimp game at all, the odds are with you when betting on violent, but to be short as well meant you were also most likely insane. Things were looking bad. Chances were slim that this near empty brothel would have anything inside it worth spending a little time and money on, and without the comfort of other customers that the last bar provided, I felt that we may have bitten off more than we could chew.

Upon my request, the gentleman to the right of the curtains drew them back and opened the “display case”. Sitting on the red velvet steps inside of this bizarre human aquarium was the most mediocre and well-worn collection of 30-year-old, bikini-clad, Asian hookers American money could buy.

I turned my head to apologize to my compatriot, and saw Johnny smiling with the beginnings of tears in his eyes. Perhaps it was the effect of seeing so many able bodied and willing women kept “under glass”, all trying to make eye contact with focused desperation as if they had lost their daughter in a mall, but it was all too much for him. The fact that they had the bingo numbers over their right breasts, labeled 1 through 25 with some number bearers hop-scotched out, was undeniably captivating, the oddity of it all so apparent, the spectacle was hypnotic.


















Suddenly the rubbery, ugly reality and immediacy of the situation came when Johnny looked to me and said without a touch of sarcasm, “Dude. Score.”

The room grew very small suddenly, as my heart sank, beating with a newfound arrhythmia. I realized that not only was I going to have to explain to Johnny why this was not a “Score” but also I would have to do it very cautiously. The staff, violent whoremaster included, were all staring at us, the only customers in the room. I would have to choose my words carefully, these girls looked like cancer-eyed goldfish, those cheap mutated carp that live in the front of gilded Chinese food restaurants, but of course, I couldn’t say that. It was a difficult situation to handle tactfully. I did my best.

“Johnny, these women are fucking disgusting. We’re out of here.” I whispered loudly.

to be continued in the next issue...

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