Monday 20 November 2006

I'm straight, but I like you


On my right sat a guy whom I had always suspected was gay, who pulled out his cellphone to show me pictures of his - er - young son and girlfriend. My friend's name is Chai.

My confirmed gay friends in the area also believe Chai is gay, or that way inclined. However, he smokes, drinks and follows football like every other real man, and now, I learn, he has a family as well.

'Your girlfriend is pretty,' I said.

'Pretty?' he looked at me with disdain. 'I have found a new one now.'

On my left sat another young friend, Khao. He joined the drinking table only reluctantly, he said, as he had to get up early for work.

Freshly showered, his shoulder-length hair was still wet when he turned up, and I could smell soap on him.

I bought him a beer and asked him to join us.

However, hours later, Khao had still not gone home, and I wondered why he was waiting. He had had enough beer, yet still he was content to sit.

I have known Khao only a short time, but last time we met he told me that he, too, had a son by a failed relationship. Seven years ago, his wife took his son away one day, he says, and just disappeared.

The third guy at our table was a law student friend, Kong, who is forever batting off rumours that he is gay.

'We're just friends who like to drink together,' Kong says to me often, as if to reassure himself. He repeated this line last night for Khao's benefit, just in case he should get any ideas that Kong himself might be gay, or that Kong and I were an item.

'People suspect I am gay, because I am good looking,' he joked.

Khao laughed. His own experiences with women had left him jaded.

'They don't want me, because I am poor. If I went past a nightclub down there in a car or a van, the girls would look up. But when I walk past, they ignore me, because they know I have no money,' he said bitterly.

Finally we decided we had drank enough, and it was time for home. When Kong excused himself to go the toilet, Khao took the opportunity to write down his phone number. It seems he had been waiting to do this all night, but Kong's bladder did not work fast enough.

Khao, I suspect, is a straight young man in need of simple affection. I lost the phone number somewhere between the shop and home, but I am sure we will meet again. I love his long hair, and would love to scoop it up into a bun.

I wonder if the straight man in him would let me.

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