Persistent gym caller

‘Does your power keep going off? My neighbour Farang C asked in a text message.

‘No...but then we get our power bill, and pay it,’ I replied.

Farang C and I rent places next to each other in the same condo building. He says the owner of his place gets his utility bills, pays them on his behalf, then asks him for a refund later.

However, she's overseas at the moment, so the job has fallen to her boyfriend. He rarely shows his face at farang C's place.

Farang C would rather get the bills and pay them himself. That way he can make sure they are actually paid, and that his utilities won’t get cut off. ‘I haven’t seen a power or water bill in months,’ he grumbled, as he checked his mail slot next to the lift.

He’s not sure if the owner has been paying the bills, as he won’t send them by mail, or bring them around for his inspection.

One day, he could wake up and find his utilities have been cut off because the owner forgot to pay.

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Boyfriend Maiyuu likes to keep our home phone unplugged. I like to keep the jack inserted.

We both fear bad news, it seems, but I can’t see the point in delaying it. What if my family were to need me suddenly?

For the benefit of my Thai boyfriend, I put these things in stark terms.

‘My father is getting old. I have to keep the phone plugged in, in case he dies and my mother needs to call,’ I tell him.

He is unconvinced. Whenever he wants to use the phone, usually to order food from a nearby restaurant, he plugs it in.

As soon as his transaction is finished, he pulls out the plug again.

Maiyuu does it so quickly, and with such deftness of hand, that he thinks I haven’t noticed.

But my trained ear has become good at distinguishing the sound of the handset hitting the cradle (‘thud’) and the ‘click’ of him yanking out the cord at the back.

I just know he’s done it, and I am seldom wrong.

While he was out yesterday, I plugged in the phone, just in case someone wanted to make contact.

A few hours passed, and the thing rang.

‘Hello?’

A Thai answered.

Relief. Dad’s day will come, but this was not it.

‘Gabble, gabble...’

The right side of my brain can’t have been working. When I held the phone to my ear, I couldn’t understand what he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Yes? I thought I may as well sound final about it. He sounded like a salesman, so I harried him off my phone.

I regretted my assertiveness when I heard his parting words.

‘...service charge.’

God, what had I just agreed? Wild thoughts filled my head.

Thai: ‘Oh, this is the power man. Your bill is unpaid. We want to cut off your power. Is that okay?’

Farang: ‘Yes.’

Maiyuu was out most of the day. When I saw him again late last night, I told him about the mysterious caller who wanted his service charge.

‘That will be the gym. I have an outstanding bill of two to three months, going back since I last visited the place more than a year ago,’ said Maiyuu matter-of–factly.

He was cooking. Reluctant as I am to interrupt the master while he is at work, I pressed on.

‘How much is that?’

‘About 4,000-5,000 baht,’ he said.

No wonder they are keen to get it back, I thought. How could Maiyuu leave such a large bill outstanding for so long?

‘I have told them many times that they should deduct the bill from the deposit I left with them when I took out my membership, but they refuse,’ said Maiyuu.

‘They say I have to go in there myself, but if I do that they will try to persuade me to join for another year.’

‘How much was the deposit?’ I asked. Maiyuu used the Thai word for ‘insurance’, but I am sure it amounts to the same thing.

‘The same amount, within a few baht,’ he replied.

Shortly after we moved in to our new place, someone started calling our home number regularly. Maiyuu would mutter a few words, and quickly hang up. Then he would unplug the phone.

Now I know who it was – the same pesky caller from the gym, trying to get Maiyuu to pay his bill and renew his membership.

‘I don’t know how they found our new number, but they have been calling for months, and won’t stop,’ Maiyuu grumbled.

This is one Thai muddle I shall have to let him sort out himself.

Maiyuu stopped visiting the gym more than a year ago - and with fees as steep as those, I am pleased he did. Now I know why he likes to keep the phone unplugged.

If I was Maiyuu, I would still want to visit the gym and clear up the problem. But then I am a tidy farang. Thais don't always think like us.

'Tell them some handsome farang has offered to take you overseas, so you won’t need to renew your membership,’ I suggested.

‘They won’t believe me,’ he said.

Recycled reader reaction

Anon the Shrink sent a message disputing my assertion that according to him, gay blogs should all be set in a sauna. I deleted him.

Another courageous anonymous poster sent me a bitchy message telling me how to write an interesting blog (by implication, this is not it).

1. No cooking. Really.
2. Entertainment news...no more than 10%
3. ...

I can’t remember the last part, but it was something about my not leading an interesting life. I deleted him too ('recycled' his comment, if I am being PC).

Anon, I suspect, assumes that I am writing a gay blog. I am not writing exclusively for this group; if I was, I probably would have to set it in a gay sauna, and make sure at least one Thai guy I meet there licks the back of my ear.

I am also writing for young people who like reading about Thai stars. To their credit, they are not interested in whether this blog has a gay theme; they are prepared to read my entertainment news regardless. This is a large and growing reader ‘cohort’, and many of them are women.

I want more women readers; I want fewer bitchy queens with nothing better to do than complain. Can someone arrange it, please?

As for the tales of domestic life with my boyfriend, including the posts on his sumptuous cooking, they are there to impress upon the jaded gay farang readership that a Thai/farang couple can enjoy each other’s company happily, without the need for sauna or gay bar distractions. They can lead a settled, stable life.

Am I making fun of my readers? Not all of you, because not all of you are nasty, bitchy queens with an axe to grind.

Am I challenging stereotypes of what it means to be a gay foreigner in Thailand? Of course. Why should gay life here be any different from elsewhere?

A gay website which ran my piece on Thai boxing star Worapoj Petchkoom (วรพจน์ เพชรขุ้ม) the other day sent me more than 100 readers yesterday. Most are new visitors, and I am sure couldn’t give a toss whether I run cooking pictures, or what my ‘take’ is on Thai life.

They just want to see the boxer take off his clothes. Blogs cater to many diverse groups of readers; not all are foreigners who rarely step outside the sauna or gay bar.

And even if they are that type, so what? Most visitors read this blog without complaint, and if they do get sick of it, act as any sensible, discriminating person would: they leave.

Thai boxer Sirimongkol takes it all off

Sirimongkol

Worapoj Petchkoom (วรพจน์ เพชรขุ้ม) is not the only Thai boxing star to have posed for a gay magazine.

Remember the saga of former Thai boxing champion Sirimongkol Singwancha (ศิริมงคล สิงห์วังชา)?  

In 2005 he was convicted of producing pornography after naked images of him appeared in a gay magazine, Heat.

The images were taken 10 years before, and the naked ones were not supposed to go public. He posed without clothes in fun for the photographers’ private viewing, he said.

Heat published them in 2003, but they did not become widely known until two years later, after police raided a newsstand selling naughty mags at Chatuchak market.

About the same time, he posed for a swimsuit spread in Lips, a magazine popular with women and gays.

Read more about the saga at the Fridae website, here (link harvested: it died).  I loved this excerpt, which I suspect comes from one of Bangkok’s English-language dailies:

'Sopon Petsawang, an MP from the government ruling party Thai Rak Thai and a former boxer himself, was quoted as saying that as far as he was aware, only transvestites or transgenders read the magazines, and expressed sadness that an increasing number of divorced women and older women are viewing them as well.'

See the images, here.

Boxer Worapoj Petchkoom: Duped by a gay magazine

Worapoj, from his mag shoot

More from Worapoj's mag shoot

Former Olympics Thai boxing star Worapoj Petchkoom (วรพจน์ เพชรขุ้ม) agreed to pose in skimpy outfits for a men’s magazine – only to find out that it sells to the gay market.

The Amateur Boxing Association of Thailand is upset, and has set up a panel to investigate Worapoj’s conduct. It believes his cover shoot for this month’s Stage magazine may have brought the association into disrepute.

The 2004 Olympics silver medal winner (bantam class) did not seek the association’s consent before agreeing to the spread.

Worapoj, who has gone to the media with his complaints, says he agreed to the shoot after a dentist friend who knows people at the magazine invited him to do the cover, to mark the magazine’s third anniversary.

'I thought they were doing me an honour by asking me to pose for their birthday issue,’ he said, insisting he did not know at the time that the magazine was aimed at the gay market.

Worapoj denies he has squandered his B10m prize money and has ended up broke and desperate, like other Olympics Thai boxing champions before him.

'I still have enough to live on. In any event, the magazine paid a miserly amount – just B15,000 for two days’ work,' he told the Joh Jai show on Channel 5, in an interview taped yesterday for air on Aug 6.

‘I posed for the shoot last month. On the first day I started to have my doubts, when they brought out a pair of underwear for me to wear.

'I thought I would just be wearing a swimming costume. I refused, but they coaxed me into it, saying they wanted to see my six-pack.

‘That night I called my girlfriend, who told me it was probably a gay magazine, and the shoot would probably have repercussions for the boxing society if I carried on.

'The next day my girlfriend accompanied me to the shoot. She asked the organisers if I could pull out, but they said I had signed a contract. If I cancelled, I would have to pay compensation,’ he said.

Pressed on his finances, he added: ‘I still have the motorcycle and car I was given by sponsors. I am building a resort, the Worapoj Resort and Gym, on Khao Sok in Surat Thani.

'I do not have a problem with money,’ he insisted.

'I did not know the magazine would turn out this way...I thought it would be an ordinary fashion shoot. I am straight, with a girlfriend, but the news has upset my family.

‘Since the magazine appeared, another two gay titles have offered me work, but I turned them down. I meant to show my six pack – not my private parts.’

Worapoj says the boxing association’s rules stipulate that members get permission before accepting modelling or advertising work. He did not ask, as he thought it was just an ordinary fashion job.

He is waiting to hear from the association, and in the meantime keeping up his training regimen, at Bonanza Khao Yai in Nakhon Ratchasima.

Worapoj again hopes to compete for the country, at the 2012 Olympics in London, but if the association hands down a 12-month suspension to penalise him – one possibility he fears – he would have to hang up his gloves, as he is now getting too old for the game.

'I regret what happened and would like to apologise to boxing fans. It is one of those life lessons – next time I shall have to be more careful,’ he said.

PS: I haven’t seen the magazine. Although Thai media reports refer to him having posed in the nude, readers at the Pantip webboard, where these images appeared, disagree. 'It looks just like a spread in any other Thai gay magazine with a focus on fashion,’ say several posters who have seen it.

Lowering the drawbridge

Regular reader Tahmnong wants to know why it is harder to leave messages these days.

Readers now need to be registered to leave comments. Raising the comments bar has led to a drop in the average number of comments for every post.

Where once posts drew an average of eight comments or more, now we are down to just a couple. That's a shame for a blog which attracts 900 unique readers a day, as it does at present.

I have taken the step to avoid criticism by fool male farang who think all Thai blogs with a gay theme should be set in a gay sauna.

As I have said before, readers who want that kind of dismal, uninspired fare should go elsewhere.

The anonymous posting option is no longer. Anon the Psychic and his bitter kin will have to find their kicks somewhere else.

Anon the Psychic, for those who don't know, liked to leave personal criticism of me, but more often the boyfriend.

I enjoyed getting reader feedback on this blog, but in this case the antics of a bitter, misguided few have ended up ruining the experience for everyone else.

Update: Comments bar is now permanently lifted. I changed my mind.