Here's looking at you, kid

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He's straight, I'm gay: Get over it

What do we think of straight guys who keep gay males for company?

My new friend Takraw Ball is straight, as far as I can tell. He lives with his Lao girlfriend, and had a string of girlfriends before she came along.

He has a fine, sensitive face, long neck, lithe frame, and beautiful smile, which makes him appealing to women.

Yet when he goes out socialising, he is usually in the company of an older gay man, his takraw teammate Sorn.

I have taken a drink with Ball and Sorn three or four times. Whenever I arrange to meet Ball, Sorn always comes along.

Both gave me their contact numbers, but I don’t bother calling Sorn, as I find him irritating. If we meet alone, as we have done once, he babbles in some strange parlance, and can’t keep his hands to himself.

I call Ball, because he is handsome and a good talker, and I am sure that’s the way it usually goes. Sorn is the drab-looking sidekick to handsome Ball.

Sorn's friends are gays like himself, and young men in the area whose looks he admires, or who he is recruiting.

Ball, not Sorn, is the one who pulls the admiring looks from women and gay men alike.

Is Ball using Sorn as a shield from unwanted advances? They have known each other for years, and are constantly together.

Ball knows I have someone at home, but appears to think I live with a woman.  I have yet to tell him the details.

Sorn suspects otherwise. When two teens turned up at our drinking table the other night, Sorn introduced me as a ‘woman’ (gay, in other words).

Ball, who was sitting next to him, heard his introduction, but we carried on talking as if nothing happened.

Ball’s relationship problems with his Lao girlfriend, Nan, dominate our conversations, as Ball is having trouble with her.

Tired of his nightly carousing, Nan has left him to live with her elder sister. She tore up photographs of herself and Ball before she left, and threw the pieces on the floor.

‘Nan is 22, and still behaves like a child,’ said Ball.

However, her abrupt parting hurt him. ‘When I went home and saw her clothes gone and the pictures torn up, I had to fight back tears,’ he said.

Nan left Ball yesterday, after he stayed out too late the night before. I was drinking with him and Sorn that night, though we didn’t finish late...1.30am perhaps.

‘She refused to talk to me when I returned home. I wasn’t able to sleep that night, and still haven’t slept,’ Ball told me, when I asked him why his eyes looked so red.

As we talk earnestly about Ball’s problems, irritating Sorn makes faces, sings, and plays the fool, as if he has heard it all before.

I wonder how many gay men have fallen for Mr Ball, have sat through lengthy drinking sessions as he frets about his girlfriend, busily offering advice on his straight relationship, as they fall in love with his soft voice, his handsome looks...

It’s all for nothing in the end, as Ball has his own life, as does Mr Sorn.

They play takraw together, live close to one another, and work next to each other, though for different companies. ‘We can’t help but meet every day,’ said Sorn, when I asked why I always saw them together.

The relationship suits them, though they appear to have little in common as friends.

They carry on as if oblivious to each other’s sexual identity. They are mates, so whether one is gay and the other straight is almost beside the point.

It’s a curious relationship, but one which I am starting to enjoy. If I call one, I know now that will always get the other accompanying him as well.

They are a twosome, joined at the hip in a relationship sense. They even get around on the same motorcycle together.

Yet does it have to be like this? Do they not ever venture outdoors alone?

Orange juice saviour

‘Tell her I was caught for riding my motorbike without a helmet,’ urged Takraw Ball.

He was pleading with his friend, Sorn, to call his girlfriend and explain why he’d be home late again.

I met my takraw friends, Ball and Sorn, as I was leaving work. They were passing on their motorbike, and picked me up.

We decided to share a drink at our regular, a shaky roadside hovel just down the road.

Ball, however, was agitated. He had told his Lao girlfriend, Nan, that he would be home by midnight. And yet here we were, having just broken open a bottle of beer, with no apparent end to the evening in sight.

Sorn resisted his entreaties to call on Ball’s behalf, and Ball wasn’t willing to do it himself: 'I am scared of what she will say.’

Ball is 25, Nan just 22. ‘She still thinks like a child...she complains about the smallest thing, gets jealous and possessive easily. Yet I love her with all my heart,’ said Ball.

‘Why don’t you tell her the truth – that you met me as I was leaving work?’

'I can’t tell her that. When you called the other day, she asked about you. I told her we had just met. She reckons you are gay, and we are seeing each other on the sly,’ Ball told me.

I have never met Ball’s girlfriend Nan. How can she know so much about me, I thought?

Sorn chipped in.

‘You can’t tell her you were caught by police for riding without a helmet. She’ll worry, and won’t be able to sleep,’ he said.

I took out two bottles of orange juice from my bag, which I had intended to take home for Maiyuu.

‘Here...give her these. Say you bought them as a present. She’ll forgive you if she sees that you are still thinking about her,’ I suggested.

Ball, who looked grateful to have found a way out of his dilemma, took the juice.

Ball, I thought, looked as handsome as ever. I saw him most recently before the Songkran festival, which he spent with family in Lop Buri.

As he contemplated the fate which lay ahead of him – ‘she’ll criticise me, for sure’ – his face clouded over.

‘She has threatened to leave me if I do not cut down on my drinking,’ he said.

I have another drinker in my life already...a young man who happens to share the same nickname, in fact.

‘I stay out late every night with Sorn,’ he said. ‘Nan says she can’t take it any more, and is willing to walk out of my life.’

Ball lives with Nan at an apartment nearby. He sees his mother and father, who live 5min away, once a week.

Ball is an only child. His mother comes from Lop Buri, his father from Surin.

He is sensitive and passionate, but will have to cut down on his nighttime carousing habits if he wants a stable home life.

As I watched him pour himself one glass after another, knocking the beer back with barely a thought for what it was doing to his body, I was reminded of another Ball who lives not 15 minutes away.

While I am enjoying the company of my takraw friends, I do not want to enter their lives as an 'enabler'.

Ball asked me for a loan of B200, to help him with expenses through to the end of the month.

I put him off until today, when we are likely to meet again. If I help with his spending – he makes just B8,000 a month from his job at a medical equipment company – I have to be sure it is going on useful things, rather than beer, which will only succeed in driving him and his girlfriend further apart.

Jiggle, jiggle, Songkran ghosts

Boyfriend Maiyuu and I emerged from the Songkran experience without any wear and tear, despite the odds.

Normally we could expect to get doused during our travels about town during the water festival. But not this year, mercifully.

I took motorcycles to work every day, avoiding knots of young revellers by the side of the road.

You know the ones. As musical accompaniment blares, soaked young ones wearing white powdered faces jiggle about in a trance-like state, armed with buckets of water – and in some cases, large water guns, and hoses - as they wait for innocent passersby.

As for Maiyuu, he wears such a miserable face as a matter of course – frowning is his specialty - that young ones do not dare approach. Year after year, he manages to stay dry.

In the past, Maiyuu would go out with friends to celebrate, but now can't be bothered. I feel the same way, and in fact have never joined in the celebrations, as they look rough, and childish.

I do not fancy getting caught in a 10,000-reveller crush in Silom, struggling to move, never mind mind competing for a taxi home when I am dirty, hungry and wet.

For us, Songkran is a passing distraction.

Maiyuu says that a pack of about 10 youths were giving him the evil eye last night in Silom.

Teens appear to rule the streets during Songkran. Was this an angry festival leftover?

He had biked down to buy groceries when he came across a bunch of angry young ones, grumbling and gesturing in his direction as if they wanted to do him harm.

I imagine they had designs on his bike rather than plans to douse him with water as part of the Songkran festivities, which in any event were winding down.

‘Did you say anything?’ I asked him on his return.

‘No...I don’t want trouble. If I had made some smart remark, I doubt I would have made it home,’ he replied.

True. Best not to tempt fate.

The analogy between Songkran and crime is not completely without foundation.

At its worst, the Songkran festival is but a form of state-licensed hooliganism: witness kids by the side of the road tossing bucketfuls of water at passing motorbikes, which struggle to stay upright on a slippery road; or through the window of passing buses, where anyone - old people, parents, young children – is fair game.

And they say Songkran is a time of paying respect to elders?

Combine that with the horrific road toll every year – 188 dead, and 2,786 injured so far over the ‘seven dangerous days’ of this year's festival – and it is amazing Songkran persists in its present unruly form. That's many sad Songkran spirits dancing about.

On the plus side, the roads in Bangkok are virtually free of traffic, as many Thais celebrate the festival in the provinces. On the minus side, many food outlets and other regular suppliers of our needs close as well.

Roll on normality, I say. It’s drier, and we can at least pretend we enjoy being civilised in each other’s company.

Serve me your takraw

‘Hello, there!’ said Ball, extending his hand.

Mr Ball (not my friend from the slums, but another one), accompanied by two mates, squeezed into a small drinking place by the side of the road close to where I work.

A farang colleague and I had dropped in for a quick beer when Ball and his friends – all takraw players, he informed me – arrived.

I moved my plastic chair to give them space at their own table, but Ball, the chattiest of the three, was having none of it.

‘Please join us!’ he said, ordering a bottle of beer.

Ball and his friends Sorn and Boom, who live and work locally, had been entertaining themselves elsewhere, and all were under the influence when they turned up.

Farang T and I were belly-aching about work and watching trucks roaring past, so didn’t mind the company.

Ball, 23, has a bright smile, terrific body, and engaging personality.

We spent the next three or four hours together, talking about politics, girlfriends, and life in the provinces.

As the Songkran festival nears, the thoughts of these young men are turning toward home. Thais traditionally go home during Songkran to pay their respects to family elders (if they abide by tradition) and throw water at each other on the streets (if they celebrate the modern way).

I didn’t spend much time talking to the other two, as they were too far past it. Sorn, who is gay, asked me the same question over and over again in English.

‘Will you be my lover?’ he slurred.

When I answered, he asked it again, so I gave up. He and Boom, who had dyed his hair gold, had a strange habit of wanting to kiss my hand, and that of farang T.

Boom, despite his hand-kissing habit, is probably straight, I decided...he just gets carried away.

Sorn was more persistent, asking me to sit next to him whenever Ball left us to relieve himself.

‘Are you this thick?’ he asked, holding up one finger.

‘No...average,’ I said.

How about this thick?’ he asked, holding up two fingers joined together.

‘My size is average,’ I insisted.

'I don’t believe it...I am told farang are huge,’ he said, placing my hand in his lap.

Most entertaining, however, was Ball, who speaks passionately about politics – he’s a Thaksin fan, and wants to deal to his successor Abhisit - goes out with a Lao woman, and works at a company making medical equipment.

'I come from Lop Buri, and would love to take you on a tour of my home province,’ he said proudly.

'My parents live in Bangkok because they have jobs here. I am an only child and I live with my girlfriend.

‘Actually, I call her my wife because we have known each other so long. We met five years ago, and have lived with each other two years.

‘Our parents want us to get to know each other before we get too serious, but eventually I hope to visit her parents in Laos and ask if I can marry her,’ he said.

Golden-haired Boom left us an hour before we finished.

When the rest of us had emptied our bottle, we headed for home.

Ball wanted to drive me home, so Sorn and I piled on the back of his motorbike. I don’t know how it managed to take our combined weight for the wobbly trek to my condo, but it did.

Ball took me to my front door, while Sorn waited outside.

Ball’s father, it turns out, lives two minutes away, and Ball not much further from him.

‘I want to carry on drinking,’ he said.

‘I have to be a grown-up sometimes...I can’t give you that money, because your girlfriend is waiting, and has called you twice asking you to come home,’ I said, looking concerned.

‘Well, can I have B100 to spend at work? I have run out,’ he said, his lips hovering just centimetres from mine.

I gave him his money. When I mentioned the need to act like an adult, Ball gave me a hug.

We have swapped phone numbers, so are bound to meet again.

One day later, Ball has yet to make contact, or any of his other friends. That is nothing unusual for Thais.

I am not part of their daily lives, so they have no reason to call. Once the effect of the booze has worn off, they might also lose some of their courage.

But if I was to call suggesting more night-time entertainment – especially if I am offering to pay – I am sure they won’t say no.