As ever, I was a meek little lamb, innocently following wherever Bruce might lead her. His knowledge of things 4FoW-ish is unsurpassed, at least amongst our little clique of incipient, unrepentant, recidivist expat alcoholics.
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Aside: I hope that the typical low-life readers of this blog will feel not slighted by this statement of Bruce's stature. I am certain that you believe yourself to be a bigger sleaze-bag than him, and who am I to . In these invidious comparisons I always recite this telling mantra from Max Ehrmann's immensely overrated Desiderata, viz: If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
I generally tend ignore the previous lines of the incorrectly 17th century dated prose poem: viz: Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit, as a) I would have to avoid 90% of my friends - which 90% I'm not saying - and b) no-one would talk to Bruce, which would be a pity as he so much to offer.
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Of course I had been to the 4FoW before, hey I've lived here for many years, but often I was escorting touristically inclined buddies on a shock tour of the seedy side of the Little Red Dot. If, on the odd occasion I did venture in alone, flying solo on a suicide mission, I predominantly felt revolted and sickened by the place; the gut-wrenching music in Ipanema, the alcohol, farts, sweat and the cheap perfume in the air, the dense crowd of local and expat adventurers (where do all these people come from?) and the immensely sad and demeaning exploits the girls and girl/boys had to get up to to amuse them. My friend E@L has written of his similarly emotive experiences (somewhere, I can't find them on his blog!)
Of course, there is also a downside - way expensive!
At first Bruce took us a favorite haunt of his, the infamous Club Romeo. There were only a few lady-boys in the bar this evening/morning. These were the ones least likely to be confused as being girls. Long thick hands, large faces, prominent Adam's apples, small breasts and exaggeratedly feminine gestures - this was more a drag show than anything else. Bruce played the part with the lady-boys of the semi-innocent semi-knowing cheekiness, asking them to flash their tits, such as they were, or to flop out the old fellar... They were laughing at his jokes, as they always did, teasing him and being teased, as the they always were, and the suggestion of an imminent financial transaction was always hovering nearby.
I chatted with SPG about her life in Europe, and with a table of bemused middle-aged Australian and English ladies who were in town for a friend's 50th birthday party. The friend in question, I learned with casual but delving questioning, was a divorcé who had lost her husband to, ironically, a trans-sexual from the 4FoW.
I pointed at that the origin of her other "woman" was probably not this bar as the escorts were still intact, but more likely it was Crazy Horse, up the unmoving escalators on the next level. There, the boys really were girls, thanks to some deft scalpel work in Bumrungrad Hospital.
Bruce eventually tired of his libidinous badinage, or the lady-boys that interested him moved off to other more-likely-to-spend customers. He gestured over to us and gestured that we should follow him away from the entrance. "Let's take the back way," he shouted over the music, smiling. We, nodded to the ladies, made our excuses and took the rear exit after Bruce.
Fyodor
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