Chapter 4:

Lily; Prostitute Granny

My life has definitely been an eventful one. From growing up in a community where people frowned upon my existence, to becoming a fully fledged kathoey in Bangkok, to streetwalking and all the other rather unpleasant things I did in between in order to get by, there really hasn’t been a dull moment. But no matter how hopeless a situation I find myself in, I always persevere with a positive frame of mind and do my best to take each day as it comes.

My father was a Chinese immigrant, or what Thais call a seua puen mon bai (those who come bearing only a mat and a pillow), meaning that he started his life from scratch in Thailand. Tia often recounted the route he had taken to his new life. He had started out in Beijing, and many different overcrowded modes of transport later, his boat stopped along the bank of Thailand on the Khong River. This river runs through China, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. My father knew the river by the name Lancang Jiang but we Thais call it Mae Nam Khong. This river serves as a natural boundary between Thailand and Laos. Tia landed in the Ubon Ratchathani province and it was here that he lay the foundations of his new life. He began to learn the language bit by bit. It wasn’t long before a Thai woman won his heart and the two were married. Their union bore seven children, with me being the youngest of their offspring.

Prayong Ratanasopha was the name given to me at birth but I called myself Lily after I discovered my true self. I made my entrance into this world on 6 May 1948 when I was born under the roof of a poor farming family.

Our wooden house was small and shabby and it creaked loudly with each and every footstep. Like most farmhouses in those days, large stilts supported our house at each of its corners, and there was space beneath it for recreation, cooking and a few hen cages. We also had a buffalo pen nearby the house.

My home was in a remote area where infrastructure was nonexistent and the fertility of the soil suffered at the hands of occasional but severe droughts. I had a hard time growing up in a poverty-stricken household.

My parents always knew that I had kathoey tendencies and, to my earliest recollection, both of them discouraged me from becoming one. As a young boy, I didn’t cross-dress but something about my mannerisms and the way I dressed gave away the fact that I was different to other boys. To my parents, being a kathoey was mai dee and mai aow (bad and undesirable). I attracted ridicule and disrespect from unkind villagers and I cost my family a tremendous degree of face.

At school I was made aware of my differences by the other boys. They tried to get me to play with them but I preferred playing mak kep (jackstones), role-playing and skipping in the company of my female classmates. They wanted me to join their football team but I didn’t want to get sweaty and dirty. They took my refusal as an insult and started bullying me and my female friends, kicking dirt at us as they passed by. I didn’t understand why they had to take my rejection so personally because I really hadn’t been trying to provoke them. I just felt more comfortable around girls as they were more caring and gentle. Still, school was the one place I could be myself. When the teachers organised performances to commemorate a special occasion, I volunteered to participate on the condition that I could play a female role, preferably that of a leading lady.

My femininity became more pronounced as I grew up. I went to school one day carrying a paper bag containing a skirt and lipstick which I had ‘borrowed’ from my sister and mother respectively. I told mae that the bag contained things for my school project. The truth was that I had befriended a boy called Noo, who also harboured a desire to be a girl, and we had been planning in hushed conversations to play a dressing-up game that evening after school. Noo and I couldn’t wait for school to be over. As soon as the bell rang, we flew out the door and skipped all the way to Noo’s house, giggling excitedly in anticipation of being beautified by one another. We both had closely cropped haircuts but with our skirts on and our lipstick-stained lips we were mesmerised by our reflections. I returned home with a mischievous smile playing on my lips, and secretly placed the borrowed articles back where they belonged.

When mae ’s lipstick had done its mysterious disappearing and reappearing act one too many times she became suspicious. Mae and tia realised what I had been up to and they eventually made me confess to my crime.

My parents undertook strong measures to discourage my effeminacy. I was beaten severely and shooed and scorned like a dog. They withheld my food, thinking that they could starve my inner kathoey into retreat. If I returned home with the slightest trace of make-up still glistening on my face they refused to let me through the door. I stayed at Noo’s house whenever things at home became too much. Noo’s parents didn’t punish her for being a kathoey. They loved her enough to let her be herself. They were very kind to me as well.

When my parents realised that their actions clearly weren’t enough to put an end to my so-called misbehaviour, they turned to my relatives for help. They stepped in and tried a different tack. They asked me how I could defame my family by expressing myself as a girl. I was accused of being shameless. Why couldn’t I be ‘normal’ like my siblings and cousins? It was as though they believed that I was intentionally cross-dressing just to bring shame on my family. With my family putting so much pressure on me, I began to deeply pity myself. I felt like no one understood me. I was gravely disappointed by my parents and I felt utterly alone.

When puberty kicked in I quickly realised I had a fondness for men. I started looking at my classmates differently, and developed a crush on my PE teacher who was handsome, lean and muscular. He was 25 and I was only 13. He lured me with the promise of candy and money into a shower room on the school premises. My heart was beating like a drum in my chest when he took off my school uniform. I didn’t fully understand what was happening until he penetrated me from behind. At the time, the candy and money fooled me into thinking the experience had been a positive one.

Blame it on my naïvety but I was totally oblivious to the fact that he had taken advantage of me. I had childish and underdeveloped feelings for him and he used them to his advantage. He was the adult and he should have known better. It was only when I grew up that I realised what an unspeakably horrible man he was. The thought of one of my nephews or nieces being molested by a paedophile sends shivers up my spine. It’s hard to articulate how this incident affected my life but I don’t think I was ever the same again. I became something of a wild child. It was like an invisible lid had been lifted and all sense of boundaries had evaporated into thin air. I felt completely free to act on my impulses.

Sex education was unheard of in my school so us schoolboys had to educate ourselves. In time, it became difficult to conceal my attraction to other boys. They didn’t like it when I stared at them for too long and I would receive a kick or a punch for my affections.

The combination of bullying, poverty and my consequent poor academic performance, contributed to me quitting school at the age of 15. I didn’t even finish the last year of lower secondary level, a fate I shared with most of my classmates.

After school, I set out for Bangkok, in search of an adventure. Unbeknownst to me, police frequently arrested kathoeys for loitering at night-time and fined them 200 baht, so I hadn’t been in the city long when I ended up in jail. I was put in a cell for seven nights because I had neither money nor identification so I couldn’t contact anyone in my family and ask them to pay the fine. It was an unpleasant few days to say the least. I shared the cramped cell with a drug addict, a thief and several others who had committed assaults.

I tried to stay awake for as long as I could. With my sweet face and feminine mannerisms, I was a sheep amongst ravenous wolves. My biggest fear was that I would be raped if I fell asleep for too long. I couldn’t depend on the policemen on duty to protect me. At night, I would dig my fingernails into my skin to jolt me out of sleep’s spell. I took only short naps during the daytime when the police station was busy with people coming and going. I couldn’t get over how unfair it was to keep me, an innocent minor, in the same cell as a group of hardened criminals. Moreover, I was just a harmless kathoey and they should have moved me to the women’s cell to protect me. But to them I was a male and my true gender went unrecognised.

Nowadays, they keep the second kind of woman in a cell with other women. If you throw a kathoey into the same room as male degenerates there’s a danger she might be raped. This is not to be taken lightly as a lot of kathoeys are so feminine looking that the naked eye can’t tell them apart from natural women. We have the same mind as women, even if we weren’t born with the same body, so we generally get along with them. Aside from the unreasonable fines, I have to give the police credit for at least categorising ladyboys as women these days.

When I was 21, my weary parents finally gave up trying to ‘save’ me. I decided to leave home and make my own way in the world. Once again, I headed for Bangkok. It was 1969 when I took a bus to the Thewet area to start life afresh. I earned 200 baht by diligently working as a cleaner/dishwasher at a well-known noodle shop. I dressed in semi-drag, wearing shorts and a t-shirt with make-up on my face. I came to appreciate the hardship of physically demanding labour for ridiculously little money. I knew I didn’t want to work in jobs like this for the rest of my life, but with no education or skills I couldn’t afford to be choosy.

An opportunity that was to change my life came knocking on the noodle shop’s door. Every night, the same group of kathoeys came to eat at the shop. They chatted away in high-pitched voices, their flamboyant gestures sending their hands fluttering into the air like butterflies. I was intrigued by these kathoeys. They were nicely dressed and seemed to have money and come from good backgrounds. I made friends with them quite easily. They asked me about my background and when I told them how poor I was one of them insisted that I come and live with her.

Pim was ridiculously wealthy. She told me she ran a company by day and was a cross-dresser by night. She was naturally feminine even without an operation, but an operation would have enhanced her beauty even more. Sadly, such procedures were unheard of back then.

In addition to a room of my own and plenty of food, Pim also gave me 500 baht a month to cover any other expenses that may have arisen. In return, I was her houseboy, carrying out household chores and buying food for her. Pim didn’t treat me like a servant though. In fact, she thought of me as her adopted little sister or an apprentice. At nights, we had such fun cross-dressing together, like Noo and I back home. But this time it was like being a child in a candy shop. I didn’t know which wig to wear because there were simply too many to choose from. I swam in an ocean of female clothes and accessories all day long. I learned a lot from Pim about the art of becoming a woman. I diligently practised walking in heels and applying make-up. Stuffing sponges underneath my top became a daily routine. I couldn’t have been happier. I was getting paid twice as much as in my previous job and I got to wear beautiful things. Pim mentored my transformation into a fully fledged kathoey.

Some nights we drove around in her car looking for men to seduce. The Empire cinema near Saphan Phut Bridge was our usual starting point. From there we would walk around the area in search of men. There were only a few farangs in Bangkok at the time, and they were mostly concentrated in provinces which had American air bases. Back then, I saw farangs as peculiar creatures; they were tall, with light skin, curly hair and eyelashes that were so long they could catch flies when they blinked. I was too scared to even talk to them and I would never have predicted that I would spend most of my adult life offering my services to them. Looking back, it strikes me that the beginning of my life-long career in prostitution coincided with the influx of farangs into Thailand and its neighbouring countries. I wonder if it is fate or mere coincidence that I became embroiled in this vice.

I had been living with Pim for a while when one day she announced that her relatives, who had been living abroad, would be coming to live with her for an indefinite period of time. She didn’t want them to know about her secret life and so any evidence that could betray it had to be removed—me included. However, she was kind enough to contact her friends in Pattaya and ask them to take care of me.

When I arrived in Pattaya, you could still count the number of hotels there on two hands, but there was no shortage of working girls and kathoeys charming the American soldiers who had been drafted into Asia for the Vietnam War. These servicemen came to Pattaya for rest and relaxation and provided a supplementary boost to the prostitution industry.

I stayed with Pim’s friend for the first few days and she then entrusted me to the care of some kathoey streetwalkers she knew. These women talked about nothing else but how much money they earned and I was intrigued. They told me they made about 200-400 baht for pleasuring an American soldier with their hands or mouths. They taught me a few essential phrases for propositioning a soldier:

‘You come with me? You cock me? How much you pay me? You pay room I go with you?’

My English was far from perfect but the men seemed to get the message and that was all that mattered. When it came to negotiating a fee, I resorted to signing with my hands for the first few times.

I was paid 10-20 dollars for a job. I hadn’t a clue about currency rates so I entrusted Yui, a senior kathoey in the group, to change the dollars into baht for me. She came back to me one day and very matter of factly informed me that my 20-dollar banknote had yielded only 100 baht because the Thai currency was particularly strong on that day. I was perplexed at how dynamic the currency exchange business seemed to be but another senior kathoey took me aside and told me that I was being made a fool of. It turned out Yui was stealing three-quarters of my money because 20 dollars could be exchanged for over 400 baht back then. After that revelation, I never trusted another senior again. I didn’t ask Yui to give me back my money as I was staying with her and her friends and I didn’t want to cause any problems.

To their credit, these kathoeys taught me all the tricks of the prostitution trade, including the most important one; how to keep my penis hidden between my legs. After I got a handle on things and became more confident at dealing with clients, I moved into a rented house at a cost of 700 baht a month. I couldn’t believe the amount of money I was making. What a dishwasher would earn in a month, I was earning in a day. I was in my early twenties by now and no longer a child. I quickly shed my shyness and began honing my interpersonal skills. I advertised myself as a woman and clients couldn’t tell that I was actually a man.

When I had been in Pattaya for almost a year, I decided that I needed a change of scenery. I travelled back and forth between Nongkhai and Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I had caught wind that even though the country was no longer a French colony, a lot of French men still lived there. Adopting the same technique I had used in Pattaya, I approached the Frenchmen full of confidence and enthusiasm. I stood on the sidewalk and almost chased down any potential customer who passed, loudly proclaiming, ‘You want happy with me? You want make love? Make love good to me in the room?’

At the end of a trial period of one month, I had amassed bags full of kips (Laos’s basic monetary unit) but when I went to exchange them for baht, I got very little in return. Earning kips wasn’t as profitable as I had projected, so I decided to return to my American clients.

I looked to U-tapao in the Rayong province for my next potential gold mine. The bomber B52 planes were stationed there. The airbase had been in existence for several years by the time I paid my first visit. The Americans used this base to drop bombs on Vietnam. There were plenty of houses, bungalows and huts for rent around the base, and they were taken over by the high numbers of working girls and ladyboys who hung around the bars and makeshift liquor shacks. If I recall correctly, one side of the base faced onto the beach and the other side faced a dense cassava field which provided us working people with cover whenever there was a police crackdown on streetwalking.

In those days, it was common enough for American soldiers to take Thai women, or mia chao (rented wives) as they were called locally, to their rented bungalows outside the airbase. Although I bagged many GIs during my time in Pattaya and Rayong, none of them offered to take me as their rented wife. They seemed to like oral sex too much. After the Vietnam War ended, and all of the GIs went home, the European holidaymakers took their place.

I lived in Pattaya on and off for the next ten years. I used it as my base from which I travelled to foreign countries to work. I’d like to think that I’m quite brave and savvy in this regard. I couldn’t fill in any form in English or even speak the language properly but it didn’t prevent me from travelling. I never shied away from asking people for help using the little English I had. Whenever I was asked to fill in immigration forms, I just showed my passport to a passenger standing next to me and asked them to fill in the form for me. They usually looked at me in bewilderment because I looked, dressed and spoke like a woman yet I was a nai (a Mr) on my passport. I usually got similar reactions from the immigrations officers.

I met the most horrible client of my life while working as a streetwalker in Denmark. I should have known better than to go out with such a fierce-looking man. He wore an eye patch, rode a big black motorcycle and his muscular body was covered in tattoos. As soon as I walked into his room, he locked the door behind me. I began to quiver with fear when he put on a leather mask and produced a whip. I tried to make a run for the door but he was faster than I had anticipated, and he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me back. He forced me to bend over, one of his hands encasing my neck, as he started whipping my back mercilessly until I was covered in blood. I begged him to stop but my pleas fell on deaf ears. With each lash, he grunted maniacally, until he eventually tired himself out. He then proceeded to penetrate me from behind. I was sure he would kill me if I tried to resist or fight back and I doubted that I’d be leaving his room alive. But when he had finished, he handed me a wad of notes as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. This wasn’t the last time I laid eyes on this man. He actually had the audacity to come looking for me a second time at my usual trading spot but I hid myself from view.

In every country I travelled to, I found work as a masseuse and/or a prostitute. I had farang boyfriends who helped me with visas and flights to their respective countries. With some, I worked and split the rent, water and electricity bills, in addition to having sex with them. They didn’t act as pimps though. They all knew that I was working as a prostitute while I stayed with them but they didn’t seem to mind. Before returning home, I always bought them little gifts to thank them for letting me stay.

Aside from Denmark, I travelled to Sweden, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and Australia. All in all, I was quite the globetrotter. One of the best things about staying in European countries was that I got to experiment with all kinds of winter clothing and accessories. I felt super dressy wearing scarves, gloves and jackets, in contrast to my usual sarong and sleeveless blouse in Thailand. Having said that, I sometimes found the weather too severe. The other thing I liked about European countries was that ladyboys could live there comfortably with their penises intact. The men, or as least the ones I met, didn’t seem to mind if a woman had a penis.

In Thailand, peer pressure practically forces you into completing your physical transformation. These are all just my observations, though, and are far from established facts because, at the end of the day, nana chittang (different folks, different strokes). Some men like their ladyboys to have cocks while others prefer them to have surgical vaginas.

I’ve also been to Singapore and Hong Kong—two places that have become hotspots for Thai ladyboys. In those days, I visited strictly as a tourist. Today, a lot of Thai ladyboys go to Singapore as tourists only to take to the streets. Many end up being arrested by the police. They don’t know how to be discreet. Walking the streets isn’t safe there because the police use sting operations to capture them. Some are wise enough to operate from their hotels. They approach tourists eating in the downstairs restaurant promising to show them a good time. Asian men prefer their women to be very feminine so ladyboys who are fully female can command a higher fee.

In my younger days, I had long-term relationships with several clients. The best part of securing a long-term client was that I didn’t have to go looking for another man in the meantime. It was nice to know that a man thought of me as more than just a prostitute. I felt like his wife, doing nothing and living off his money. I could make anything in the region of 100,000 to 300,000 baht for spending a few months with them. Even by today’s standards, that’s a huge amount of money. White-collars might make roughly the same over the course of a year or so.

My most memorable client was a man from America called John. He had kids but had long since been divorced from his wife when he came to Thailand and met me. He liked the fact that I had a penis and he showered me with money and gifts. He even gave me money to send home to mae and tia. He set up a factory in Thailand because of the low labour costs. He rented a nice house for me in Bangkok. He liked me a lot and took me to fancy restaurants that I would never have been able to afford myself. We vacationed in a few European countries, as well visiting Singapore and Hong Kong. To onlookers, I was a young Thai girlfriend accompanying her older farang man, a sight that has become quite commonplace in Bangkok today.

Over the six years we were together, he could easily have given me several million baht. He made trips back and forth from Bangkok to Chicago, spending about six months on either side of the hemisphere each year. During his absences, we wrote each other letters to keep in touch. He died of old age during one of these visits home, and that was how our relationship ended. His daughter wrote to me to tell me that he had passed away. She must have found my letters amongst his personal effects. I was inconsolable when I found out he had died because he had been so kind to me and my family.

Wherever I was, or whomever I was with, I never failed to meet my parents’ demands for money. The constant flow of money probably had a lot to do with them eventually accepting me. I used to have millions in my bank account. Most of this money went towards my family, buying more buffalo, settling gambling debts or investing in failed businesses. Whenever I returned from foreign countries, there was always a queue of new requests awaiting me. They clearly thought I had an endless supply of money. Out of nowhere, extended family and in-laws whom I had never known, started crawling out of the woodwork and looking for handouts. And I couldn’t say no because they were ‘family’.

One of my sisters, who worked as a teacher, owed me the most. She borrowed a lot of money from me, telling me she had incurred huge gambling debts at the teachers’ club. But apparently after clearing her debts, she used the rest of the money to start up her own money-lending business. She was later shot dead by a policeman who owed her about 100,000 baht. She had badgered him to repay her and had been quite disrespectful so I guess he decided to take matters into his own hands. I was saddened by her death but I was also distraught over all the money she owed me. I tried to talk to her husband about it but he brushed me aside, saying that if I wanted my money back I would have to take the matter to court. I didn’t want to risk spending a lot of money on a lawyer for fear that I might lose the case. I don’t hold a grudge against my sister though. I believe it’s her karma that brought about her tragic ending.

The fact that I haven’t had surgery on my body made my work more difficult. I have had my small, slanted eyes operated on—my Chinese inheritance—to make them look bigger and I also had my Adam’s apple shaved, but from the neck down, I’m all man.

I vacationed in Chiang Mai with one particular client of mine for a month. When we had sex, he thought he was penetrating my vagina but in reality he didn’t know where he was putting his penis. When he wanted to get into bed, I always dimmed the lights, saying it would be sexier in the dark. I left only the nightstand lamps and bathroom lights on. Unbeknownst to him, I secretly applied lubricant around my anus and placed a towel over my penis, holding it in place at my navel. I lay on my side with my back to him and lifted one leg up in the air, then I grabbed a hold of his penis and put it into my anus. He mistook my lubricated anus for a moist vagina. This trick worked with most of my clients, of which there have been many.

Most men had no idea they’d had anal sex with me. I had sex with this particular client lots of times, and often more than once in a night, yet he had absolutely no clue that there was a penis where my vagina should have been. It was only when we returned to Pattaya that a snooty woman asked him what it was like to be with a ladyboy. He confronted me about this immediately. He was completely taken aback when I confessed the truth and lifted up my sarong. He packed up his belongings and left. If that woman hadn’t poked her nose into my business it would have allowed me more time to extract as much money as possible from him.

I could offer most services except for allowing people to go down on me. One client insisted on leaving the light on and wanted to give me fellatio. I claimed that as a Thai woman, I couldn’t allow him to do such a thing. In Thai culture, the head is considered a sacred body part and it shouldn’t be associated with the vagina which is the source of the unpleasant menstrual cycle. He seemed to accept my excuse and I started to relax. Then all of a sudden he forced my legs apart, causing my penis to rise up from its hiding place between my legs. He scrambled to his feet, pulled his clothes on and ran like he had just seen a monster.

It was hurtful when clients ran away from me like this, but I had to remind myself that I was the least innocent party in the whole scenario. I was a liar. Had I been a real woman, no man would have ran away from me like that.

The fact that I have a penis makes me less marketable because men generally want women with vaginas. It is the saddest aspect of my existence that this large and awkward penis is such an obstacle for me. Prostitution for a kathoey like me is never a matter of pure negotiation; it always involves a degree of pretence and deception. Whenever I had sleepovers with farangs I would get up before them the next morning so I could pluck my facial hair and avoid them wrapping their arms around me in bed and discovering my morning shadow.

In contrast, some farangs prefer women with a penis. I met one really handsome young Swedish man, with rosy pink lips and honey blonde hair. The first time we got intimate, he caressed my face and neck, and my penis began to get hard. He grabbed a hold of it and reassured me that he didn’t mind. We ended up giving each other a helping hand. He became a regular customer for some time but sadly our relationship was never anything more than that of prostitute and client. I didn’t even get a chance to tell him I was leaving Sweden because my visa was about to expire. I liked him a lot because he was very handsome but the best part was that I didn’t have to pretend when I was with him.

I have lived in Bangkok for eight years now. I rent a room in a guesthouse hidden away in a tiny soi off Khao San Road. The room is hot and derelict, and doesn’t even have enough room to swing a cat, but the 3,000-baht rent and its central location suit me just fine. I try to keep the room as tidy as I can. I have an angelfish in the drink cooler to bring me good luck—fish and water are auspicious symbols of wealth in Thai culture. I share the floor with Burmese tenants and illegal alien workers. The upstairs rooms are in better condition and mainly used by tourists with a limited budget. We share a dark and grimy bathroom downstairs.

To the front of the guesthouse there is a food vendor that sells simple Thai food. The owner is an acquaintance of mine and I try to help her out by enticing passers-by to come and eat at her shop. Years of prostitution have equipped me with the necessary enthusiasm, and my less-than-mediocre English is not a problem: ‘Hello. Welcome inside. Please sit down. Good food. Fried rice pork or fried rice chicken?’ If I have my eye on a client, I will wait for him to finish his food, and then approach him asking, ‘You want massage from me? One hour, 200 baht.’

Of course massages aren’t the only service I provide. Sometimes a customer might want fellatio or a ‘helping hand’ and I’ll do this for 500 baht. Some clients will let me keep the change from 1,000 or 1,500 baht. I think they give me extra because they pity me. I don’t have any savings and I don’t get customers every day, but I manage to get by because I have only myself to feed. At 61 years of age, I’m doing quite well for myself as a ladyboy prostitute who hasn’t had an operation. I make money every day and I usually have a little left over. I’m not ashamed of being a prostitute. I don’t steal from anyone. I earn my money fair and square.

I don’t look like a prostitute; I look more like a kind old Chinese grandmother. This disarms some of my clients and I can tell that they feel sorry for me. I usually massage them to get them going after which they usually allow me to finish the job with my tongue and mouth. My more regular ‘catch-of-the-day’ clients are young Japanese and Korean backpackers.

I have a lot of kind customers, most of whom are married men, who ask me why I have to work as a prostitute at my age. I tell them that I’m old and have no education. I’ve been working as either a masseuse or a prostitute all my life and this has made me unfit to pursue any other kind of job. To be honest, what other work could I do that would provide me with this kind of income? I want to keep working for as long as I can. I’m doing okay for someone my age. Factory workers only earn a little over 200 baht a day.

The streetwalkers in Khoa San like to tease me about how many men I’ve been with each day. I’ve known some of them since they were boys, and now they’ve grown into gorgeous women. Many of them address me as their granny or mother. I’m the oldest kathoey around here and most of my contemporaries have left the industry and this world years ago.

I like to make small talk with the young kathoeys but I’ve gotten snared in the past during police crackdowns. I know I’m a prostitute but I haven’t walked the street in years, so they shouldn’t arrest me. I think the last time I was fined along with these ladyboys was a month after I had moved to the Khoa San area. Today, the police generally just politely tell me to go home. But some comment that my coffin is already half open and that I shouldn’t be selling a decrepit body anymore. They still think I’m there looking for customers like these children do.

I don’t dare stand in the same crowd as the younger kathoeys , it would only highlight the fact that I look like an old hag in comparison to them. A good-spirited farang once asked me how old I was. I told him I was 60 and he replied that I was older than his mother. These guys like the younger models. Economically speaking, I don’t need to streetwalk because half of these kathoeys don’t even make as much as I do on account of all the competition. The worst case I’ve heard of is a girl who barely makes enough money to pay the rent on her 1,500-baht room. I’d say there are about 50-60 streetwalkers in their twenties in this area alone, fighting over the farangs and Asian tourists.

Patpong and Nana are well known for ladyboy prostitutes. These go-go kathoeys use big plasters so their penises are extra secure when they put on their bikini bottoms—they could do the splits and their penises wouldn’t peek out. I also hide my penis when I’m working but I just put on a body stocking after I’ve pulled it back and hidden it between my legs. It’s just as painful putting it in place as it is undoing it to go to the bathroom. It’s especially painful when you sit down because you’re basically crushing your testicles with your own weight. These modern-day kathoeys seem to be much more determined than in the old days—they’ll do anything and endure excruciating pain to be suay and womanly. I have to admire them for it. In any case, being old isn’t good in the world of prostitution. Mamasans turn you down before you even enter their premises. And by old, I mean your thirties. For this reason, I’m proud of the fact that I’m still working as a prostitute in my sixties.

Overall, I think Thailand is quite accepting of transgender and homosexual people. I think this acceptance is largely due to a combination of surgically enhanced or hormonally induced beauty, higher levels of education and the ladyboy reputation as being emblematic of Thailand. Many ladyboys represent Thailand in international contests for transgender beauty pageants and we’re usually amongst the top finalists. Women of the third gender are not only beautiful but they also come from a good background in terms of education and social status. Although ladyboys still have a limited career choice, things are a lot better now than they were in my day. I think people are finally beginning to realise that ladyboys are just as competent as anyone else.

My Thai acquaintances are always looking for money from me so I try to avoid them now. They ask me for 50 baht here and 100 baht there and it eventually all adds up and they never repay me. All they want from me is money, money, money. I’m done trying to buy people’s acceptance and respect. I prefer to live alone than be bled dry by my so-called friends. All my life I’ve felt like all people ever want from me is money. Today, I’m a loner by choice. I love to go dancing and drink one or two bottles of beer, and an evening spent doing these things could be the happiest of my life. Sitting on the back of a tuk-tuk after a night of dancing, and watching the beautiful night-time Bangkok whiz by me as the breeze plays with my hair, is a pleasant way to pass the time. The way I see it, more money, more people, more problems. If I have too many friends, my wallet grows painfully thin. And when I’m in need none of my so-called friends offer to help me.

I take great comfort from my sister and life-long friend Noo. Although she moved to Germany many years ago, Noo makes a habit of visiting me once a year. We don’t have any way of communicating so she usually asks her contemporaries to tell her my whereabouts and she tries to track me down before her stay ends. She is a very dear friend of mine. We love reminiscing about how we used to dress up when we were boys and how awkward we looked back then. She has a good life and had the operation to become a full woman. But I’m still working day in, day out, just to get by. I have been with many farangs , probably more than she has, but none of the relationships developed into anything serious. Death robbed me of John, but the rest of them dumped me for younger kathoeys.

It’s not that I don’t realise how degrading my way of life is. But just consider for a moment that I had to quit school because of poverty, and the fact that I’m a kathoey —what self-respecting boss in his/her right mind would choose me over other candidates? I couldn’t care less anyway about working in a low-paid job just to save my dignity because dignity doesn’t fill my stomach at the end of the day. I’m just doing my best to get by, and in my defence, my family have had a better life because of my contributions. I don’t have much time left in this world so I don’t want to spend it trying to eke out an existence on just a few baht a month. Who knows, tomorrow could be my very last day.

I don’t expect much from life now. If I die alone and there’s no one there to offer me a proper funeral then so be it. Most of my friends in Pattaya died in their thirties, forties or fifties from HIV, alcoholism or suicide. I guess working as a prostitute comes with a high emotional toll, regardless of who you are. One of my friends hung herself just because she hadn’t had a farang customer in a few weeks and had no money to pay the rent.

Although I admit that prostitution is the most financially sound choice considering my circumstances, it has definitely changed me over the years. It has become second nature for me to evaluate everything in terms of money. It’s a good thing that I have the ability not to dwell on the negative side of my existence too much.

Even when I had money in the past, I never knew how to save or invest it—it just fell through my hands like grains of sand. Nowadays, I’m always on the lookout for an opportunity. I eat when I can and I work when I work. I’m fortunate in that I’m quite healthy. I’ve never been hospitalised nor taken as much as a handful of medicine in my life. These days, I’m mindful of my diet and I try to eats lots of vegetables. The only meat I eat is chicken.

In my younger days, I could saunter around a swimming pool, wearing a one-piece swimming suit and a pair of sunglasses, and no one would have suspected I had a penis. I’m more daring than the average Thai and I know how to have fun. As old as I am, I still feel young inside and I want to enjoy what’s left of my life. I make a habit of getting tested for STDs every month or so, and I’m given a clean bill of health every time. I can still perform sexually and I get aroused when I see hot, young men.

In my heart, I feel like a woman, though I guess I have to admit I’m not a modest one. I may not have been surgically enhanced but I still feel very feminine. I’m not ashamed to admit that I still dream about finding a husband and being a good housewife. I want to cook and clean for him like a good Thai wife. I would love to be a mae ban . I don’t mind whether my husband is Thai or farang . His nationality doesn’t matter so long as he’s a good man. If I had a husband, I’d dedicate myself to being a good and modest woman for him.

Sadly, my reality is nothing like my dreams. I can’t seem to find someone willing to love me. Even though I know this dream may never materialise, it’s still hard to let it go. In the deepest caverns of my hearts, all I want is to have a family and live my life as a normal woman. I guess I’m not the most unfortunate person in the world though, so I shouldn’t complain so much.

As a kathoey , I haven’t had many choices in life but I’ve done my best to get by. As long as I’m still breathing, I’ll keep trying. I would be delighted if people remember me as a patient and hardworking person, who did her best with the little she had in spite of the many obstacles hindering her path.