by David Bonnie | Apr 14, 2014 | Home, Other Writing |
Home I am Soldier X. I am the backbone, the spine upon which the flabby meat of civilisation hangs. There absolutely is evil in the world and soldiers stand at the border where civilisation meets savagery Because I do this, you don’t have to. I do it because I am orphaned from a thousand homes I do it for adventure and to confront the place where I end and darkness begins I was saying goodbye to my Father. He was standing on the doorstep as I was leaving, going home after a visit. My sisters and stepmother were watching through the lounge window like a tragic chorus. The pressure was immense. He was about to have surgery to remove a cancer. The operation could kill him. If he survived that the cancer was going to kill him anyway, everyone knew that. He was 86. He and I, we both knew that this moment could be it for us, until the next world. Suddenly on that very ordinary porch I was drowning in the memories that swam up and swallowed me whole and I wanted to tell him that I forgave him for making me cry when he was carrying me past the shops and I leaned out towards the window and he was rough and angry and that I forgave him for calling me a ‘big girl’s blouse’ in front of my friends. I wanted to tell him how much I would miss his belief in me and I remembered how he always sat with me on every childhood hospital visit....
by David Bonnie | Apr 25, 2013 | Home, Ladyboy Stories |
I look at her one last time before leaving. Her smooth skin, provocative neo-amazonian jaw-line and her bottom, stealing from beneath the covers like my favourite little moon. A glimpse of pubic hair on a round little olive belly as the music begins playing through my earphones and I close the door on the best girl I have ever known. Pearl Jam suck me back in time and give me cause to compare my first effort at love in Bangkok to today’s ease of heart. Their words hold no pain now, their blowtorch flame burnt out by a brighter but gentler light. Sheets of empty canvas Untouched sheets of clay Lay spread out before me As her body once did In the West, the girl wrapped in my sheets would be referred to as enigmatic because she could not be understood. But she is complicated only as Rubik’s famous cube is complicated. Her complications and contradictions do not come from within and while she may be a puzzle to others she is not to herself. A woman is exercising alone in the entrance to a food court. Her moves are part thai-chi, part step aerobic. She is someone’s grandmother. A monk is begging for alms from a tiger skin clad woman in dark glasses sitting at a bus stop. She is politely refusing his appeals. Thailand is never what it seems. The guide-book Thailand is just a ‘rule of thumb’, a kindergarten sum of its parts. All five horizons Revolved around her soul As the earth to the sun Now the air I taste and I breathe Has...
by David Bonnie | Apr 3, 2013 | Home, Ladyboy Stories |
The lights of Pattaya reflect off the water and add colour to the velvet blackness of the night. It’s 1 am and the rooftop pool is a languid green. It’s a tiny lagoon about 12 metres square trapped between the thrusting towers of the surrounding hotels clawing their way toward the sky. The Pattaya city lights are changing colour and glowing, flashing in the darkness, sending out sparks. We catch the tiny elevator downstairs still in our swim wear. The door opens and we are caught snogging by a fat, rural Russian and his fatter wife. This gives me great pleasure and amusement and for the first time in Pattaya we make a Russian look away. England 2, Russia 0. Get in there! Back on 2nd road another Russian steps so close to me that I say, ‘ what do you want?’ He lurches and looks surprised. There are so many of them and they are everywhere. This is no longer ‘our’ place. The Western star is waning. The Slavs all stare and stare with no sense of grace or warmth or even sentience. They stare at Annie because they have never seen anything like her and they stare at me because in their own hideous country anyone different is likely to be hunted down and attacked. Physically handicapped people, gays and people of colour stay indoors. Neo-Nazi skinhead groups roam the streets of Moscow looking for someone to vent their anger, frustration and dissolution on. It is however a country of great contradictions. The Russian soul is indeed a beautiful thing, sad and yearning for a lost age...
by David Bonnie | Apr 2, 2013 | Home, Ladyboy Stories |
Prologue The sound of a farang shouting at a bar girl who has poured too much coke in his drink makes you look to your left and the Big Dog bar. The girl speaks no English so perhaps this is among her first weeks in Bangkok. Music is playing very loudly in the bar, ‘I met a gin soaked barroom queen in Memphis, she tried to take me upstairs for a ride’. The girl looks frightened. The smoke of the barbecue’s mixes with the stink of the rotting garbage, stale sweat and piss. Decay, degradation and the faces of the Thai vendors and motorcycle taxi drivers are etched into the grey concrete at the entrance to Soi 4 like an ancient economic truth. Their look is not envious, nor jealous and not full of hate; but the look of those trapped in the waking dream world of constant and chronic poverty. They are the faces of the drowned and drowning. ‘It’s the ho, o, o, nky tonk women, give me, give, give me the honky tonk blues’. This is Bangkok. This is Nana. But you are looking past the messy third-world order of cracked and dirty tarmac and paving slabs that border the car park. You have lived long enough to know that under the surface of things lays the dream reality that you seek. Bangkok; full of men and women with plans to escape back to Surin, Korat, Leeds or Texas; just as soon as they have enough money or less desire. But what you see is something tender in the way Bangkok holds its residents. In...
by David Bonnie | Feb 11, 2013 | Home, Ladyboy Articles |
If you are visiting Bangkok you will need to travel around the confines of the city. It’s easier than you probably imagine for such a bustling city. This little guide may save you time, money and help you remain sublimely ‘sabai’ (relaxed, happy, comfortable) while you travel, see the sights or go to meet a little honey in some place you have never heard of before! 1. Airport Links/BTS (Skytrain)/MRT (Underground, Metro, Subway) Useful when arriving or departing Bangkok The map below shows The Airport Link, which is kinda part of the Bangkok Transport System anyway but usually referred to as a distinct entity from the BTS (Sky-train), the BTS proper and the MRT (Metropolitan Rail Transit) or the underground train and the way it can link you to various parts/districts of the city. Suvarnabhumi Airport, pronounced A.I.R.P.O.R.T (sorry!) Soovan-a-boom is to the east of the city and you will see that the line is made up of 3 lines; one yellow, one red and one blue. Check out the map as there are two express lines and one city (regular, slower) line.The express runs about every 15 minutes or so and the city line every 5 minutes or therabouts. Anyway, you will be on Thai time by now and taking life a little slower if you take my advice. Most folks are advised to catch the airport link to Makkasan where the light blue line intersects and you can transfer to the MRT from there or get a cab to your hotel as Makkasan is close to the area of lower Sukhumvit road where most travelers choose to...
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