I was heading to work the other day when I stopped by her street stall.
I have bought from this woman once before. Her shop is usually surrounded by Esan types, as they like to stick close to food from their region.
The first time, I bought laab moo (spicy minced salad), but the other day when I called by, she had run out. ‘Why don’t you try nam tok neua [pictured], dear – it’s the same, only sliced, not minced,’ she said.
I agreed.
As we spoke, I noticed she was wringing her hands, and wearing a strange, forced smile, like a grimace.
I looked at her again and realised that the woman was trying to imitate my behaviour. She thinks I look girly, I thought, stealing a quick look at my wrists.
Was I holding them normally? Yes. Well, okay...perhaps one of them looked a little limp.
And why the forced smile? Do I look too sweet for her taste?
She asked me about myself as she worked...Where do I come from? Where do I live?
I answered her politely. I wanted to ask if I really looked that gay, or if she behaves like that with all the westerners she meets.
She doesn't do it to be cruel, but simply because she thinks I look odd. In fact, I suspect she is not even aware she is doing it.
As I left, she gave me a mincy gay wave.
I didn't know I looked that gay. I dress normally. I even wear a serious black backpack.
I returned her wave. I have a new member of my gay fan club. And here I was, thinking I look relatively straight.
2 comments:
ReplyDeleteAnonymous29 March 2011 at 07:29
um, that's "neua nam tag", not "neua nam tok". "waterfall" ends in ก gor-gai, the chicken character, not kor-kwai, the buffalo character.
:-P
-d
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Bkkdreamer29 March 2011 at 08:41
Tag? Goodness me, you seem to have no phonetic sense of the language at all. 'Nam tag' looks ridiculous, as does 'nam tog' unless accompanied by a chart which tells us how we are representing the Thai in English. Even then, the reader's eye may object.
There are no hard and fast rules for transliterating Thai, and no one system can faithfully represent in English the spelling or sound in Thai. One is usually sacrificed at the expense of the other.
I try to avoid transliteration for that reason. But if I used the Thai spelling without any visual aid in English, my readers who do not have Thai wouldn't know what I was saying.
I would rather adopt a spelling which bares some semblance to the sound in Thai, rather than attemptng to represent the spelling for its own sake, even if inconsistencies result. This is a blog, after all, not a dictionary.
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