Debauching

It took close to an hour to find Soi Cowboy. We set out without maps or other references, assuming it would be hard to miss a global mecca of debauchery under a city's lights during a Friday-night full moon. I guess I'm not one to talk, but who would've thought that a place with such mythic weight would be half the size of the small-town backstreet in the middle of a comparative wilderness and downright forest where I grew up? And who would've imagined that enough neon to completely plaster the relative enormity of a Vegas casino could be concentrated into a street too inconspicuous to attract the attention of any conscientious cartographer.

To Soi Cowboy

But here we are, in the manic day-glow of Soi Cowboy on a Friday night, long after the full moon dropped behind the skyline. It is my companions' last night in country, mine in the city, and we're looking for something wild; this is Soi Cowboy, after all. And it seemed a good sign when a tout sitting with the mototaxi and tuktuk drivers held up a card advertising pussy shows: writing, pingpong, eel and worse.

“Tuktuk, three minute” he said, and got worked up when we said we'd be staying here. “No show, no show here. I take you, three minute. No show here!”

That was three bars ago.

In the meantime, we've found some of the most disinterested, preoccupied, distracted and half-assed displays of Snoopy dancing imaginable. So far, the girls we've seen have, without exception, been standing on stage with one hand negligently draped on the pole and their legs making stepping motions with the intensity of a freshmen's pen sliding across the page as he falls asleep in class. And around us sits a pack of pilgrims staring and cajoling with the enthusiasm I wish I felt. But I can't get past the girls' blank stares, the deadpan faces reflecting utter disinterest in the gyrating nethers, that they all sneak glances at the soccer game on the TV, or that a couple of them simply stood watching TV.

My best guess is that while we grew up hearing stories about Soi Cowboy from our parents and their contemporaries, many of the earnest faces with wide eyes staring from amid nests of crows' feet under anything-but-natural hair could've been here to make the initial reputation, or were at least old enough to cement the mythologizing as it trickled back stateside.

What's worse: watching a girl a decade your younger sharing a stage with a woman old enough to be your mother, neither of whom displays any awareness of standing topless on a stage while upstanding members of Generation Viagra lust and leer at... midlife crisis second wives? Daughters that never were? Animate means to prove something else entirely? Or realizing that those guys are looking at you as competition or a measure or somehow interested in the same goods and needing to prove it. Gag.

Our last stop pushed past the fringes of pathetic. We were the only customers and sat drinking Diet Coke while a surprisingly fleshy lady climbed into a shower stall to soap and gyrate herself for our benefit.

Had she not been behind plastic or immediately ducked out after the show, I would've handed her a sizable tip. As happened, it seemed best to leave the tab and tip on the table and duck out while the barkeep's head was turned.