Time to get honest

Idle taxi-driver Lort escorted me back to my condo the other night, as Ball himself wasn’t up to the job.

Ball had been drinking at the ya dong stand since 7pm. By the time I arrived, after 11pm, he needed rest.

My young friend invited me back to his place in the slums nearby, where I met his mother, Lort, and Mum’s elder sister.

Ball's aunt pumped me with the usual questions – where do you come from, where do you work – which became more specific after Ball’s Mum whispered something in her ear, presumably to explain why Ball and I had arrived together.

Ball was playful, and fun. I massaged his back and shoulders. He asked for a leg massage. I told him to lie on the floor with his legs facing me.

When he sat up again, I hugged him from behind. It felt so good, I wanted to hold him like that some more, but pesky questions from Ball’s aunt were dragging me back...

‘Do you have a lover?’ she asked.

‘I live with someone, yes,’ I said.

She asked how we met. I told her.

‘Where is your lover?’ she asked.

‘Waiting at home,’ I said.

I felt I had better explain my interest in Ball, whom I had barely stopped touching since I walked in the place.

‘I want someone to care for. My lover isn’t interested in physical contact,’ I said.

Thai language allows us to speak in gender-neutral terms, so I was still not sure if this woman understood that I live with a man. Or maybe she just chose not to acknowledge it.

‘Why have you never had kids?’ she asked.

‘Ball is like a son to me,’ I said.

Actually, Ball is more than that, as regular reader Tao has pointed out.

If I wasn’t also attracted to him in other ways, I wouldn’t be sitting in his home.

Ball’s Mum nodded. I expect she doesn't care; if her son is happy - even with some middle-aged farang guy - that’s great.

I noticed skin flakes falling from Ball’s scalp, and spent the next half hour brushing them out of his hair.

‘I have an allergy,’ said Ball. ‘Is it ugly?’

‘It’s not ugly, it’s natural,’ I told him.

Ball asked if he could take me home. He wanted to talk to me in privacy about his girlfriend Jay.

He also wanted to meet my boyfriend, as he was worried Maiyuu might be deceiving me and taking my money.

Ball was unhappy to hear that I was living with someone. ‘You have some kid in your condo?’ he asked.

‘He’s not a kid – he’s 31,’ I said, holding Ball's chin in the cup of my hand, as he bobbed his head up and down drunkenly.

Ball, who was tired and emotional, did not look capable of taking me home, but he insisted he should do it for my own protection. I said my goodbyes to his Mum and the prying aunt.

As we staggered across the vacant lot between his place and mine, I realised we would never get there. Ball could barely walk, and stray dogs were barking at us.

I spun Ball around and took him back to his place.

He wanted to carry on drinking, but Mum, standing at the narrow entrance of their place in the slum alleyway, told him to stop.

'It's time for bed,' she said.

‘Let’s carry on somewhere else,’ he slurred.

‘You have work tomorrow...you must sleep,' I told him.

Ball still refused to enter.

He could not stand. I held up his body in my arms, leaning against the wall of the alleyway for support.

‘The farang won’t let me go,’ he joked with Mum.

Mum and I pulled his body through the narrow doorway, while Ball struggled.

His pants came adrift. I pulled them up, and told him I would buy him a belt.

I said goodbye.

The next day, I bought a bottle of lotion for tackling scalp ailments. I dropped it in to his place while Ball was at work.

‘If that fails to do the trick, I know of another brand, as I have had the same problem myself,’ I told Mum.

She was sitting in the main room with Ball’s elder brother Boy, and his girlfriend.

Lort turned up, and thanked me.

The night before, after I had dragged Ball back home, Lort had swapped duties with his son.

‘I will take the farang home,' he said.

Lort and I walked back across the vacant lot, hand-in-hand.

'You are such a caring person,' he said, referring to the hair episode with Ball.

When we arrived by the side of the condo, he insisted on taking me further – right up to the front door, in fact.

Why did he want to see where I lived?

Ball insists he is not jealous of Maiyuu, but I doubt that's true, as he enjoys the attention I show him.

As a headstrong young man not yet into his 20s, I doubt he would want anyone else laying claim to it.

That said, Ball’s needy side only appears to come out when he has had too much to drink.

Normally, he tells himself he is straight, and carries on life with his girlfriend, who lives at his place, as if nothing has happened on those nights when he forgets himself, and decides he likes male company more.

PS: I wrote the other day that Maiyuu does not know about Ball.

He hasn’t met Ball or anyone else from the ya dong stand -  but he has noticed changes in my behaviour.

‘You have someone over there. You can’t see the change, but I can,’ he said.