Serenading the Ladies of the Night

Serenading the Ladies of the Night

I didn't know what to expect from Pattaya, I had heard it was the bad boy of Thai cities. The place people go to sin. It seemed like a place without grace or any redeeming features for me, until I saw that there was a kind of beach walk where people strolled up and down at night. This was the place where poor girls who had resorted to making money from sex displayed themselves, waiting for a customer to come along and make an offer. They just stood there, spaced apart every 5 meters or so, lifeless and expressionless like mannequins waiting to come to life, while waiting for the fish to bite. Mostly their faces were fixed in a kind of sneer devoid of any personality, the kind that models put on.
Anytime I see a boardwalk or pedestrian way with many people, I think of just one thing, street music. You might say I am a street music addict. It's exciting and relaxing at the same time. Exciting because I don't know what will happen, especially in those few first moments. Maybe the police will come and tell me to get lost. Or maybe there will be a big cheer for me. Relaxing because once I establish myself, I can just play and watch the world go by, while waiting for something to happen or not. I wondered how the "workers" would react to my presence. Maybe they would welcome a change. They could listen while they waited. Or maybe it would draw a crowd and make it easier for shy guys to break the ice, "Hey, he's pretty good isn't he? Where do you think he's from? By the way, how much for a blow-job?"
After getting mentally prepared, I walked out with my sax and background music. It wasn't easy to find a place that was right, not too much noise from a club across the street and a place to sit. Finally I found one. There were a few "workers" nearby. Following established protocol, I asked the one nearest me, "Music ok?". She was quite unattractive. It was hard to tell though if she was a he or a she. Sometimes the most gorgeous delicate looking ones were boys, or ladybugs as the refer to them in Thailand. Interestingly enough, they aren't looked down on in Thailand. In fact they seem to be almost celebrated.They say you can look for an Adams apple or the scar of one. Of course you can ask, they will usually tell you the truth. Ladyboys are usually very nice people, and are happy if you mistake them for a woman. They seem to thrive on that. This one I'm pretty sure was a woman, because she was not nice. She looked at me like I was a bug and turned away. I caught the eye of another one. "Music ok, here?," I pidgeon-Englished out. She kind of smiled and nodded, then looked bored and turned back to her scanning of the crowd. These women and girls were all business. Well I had my permission. I didn't need to get it from everyone, just one was enough, then if someone hassled me I could point to her and say, "She said it was ok." Little did she know that by nodding she was agreeing to be my protector.
I took out my horn and got my amp ready and hesitated. What the hell was I doing? I guess I'd played in weirder places but I couldn't remember when. If someone had taken a panoramic picture of the beach walk it would have showed 200 women posing, and me playing the saxophone. I hope no one thought I was a new breed of hooker. You know, do strange things to me and my horn, or I will play while you defile me. I thought about putting it away, but then I thought, "Ahhh what the hell, I've come this far" and made a deal with myself to play just one song and then I could leave if I wanted to. Carefully I pulled the mouthpiece up to my mouth, felt the woodiness of the reed on my tongue and blew a long sensual note. It was a note in which I tried to express all the different desires and emotions I was seeing around me. It reminded one of the sound you sometimes hear cats in heat make late at night, as if there has been a crack in hell and some screams of that dark place wafted up. For a moment, the briefest of moments, it seemed like everything stopped. The hookers stopped being hookers, and the marks stopped being marks, the tourists stopped looking at the hookers and marks, like someone had hit the pause button on the the great DVD player of life. This lasted for the briefest of moments, perhaps one millionth of a second, or maybe it was just my imagination. In that brief time, the general consensus was being taken and voted on and tallied, and the result was.......this was nothing to pay any attention to. The play button was pushed, and if anything, things seemed to go a little faster than before. So it was just this weird "farang" (foreigner) playing jazz standards while hundreds of prostitutes posed and thousands of people strolled by, some shopping, some gawking. Most people walked by without gIving a hint that they heard me or even saw me. It seemed strange to me. Like if you saw a lion juggling on the sidewalk, would you just walk by without noticing? I wondered if anyone even noticed the song selection that I was playing. I tried to be relevant by playing songs with titles like "All of Me", "My Funny Valentine", or " Ain't Misbehaving". Maybe it was to much to expect that someone would "get" my humor. A few people slowed down and listened with confused expressions. What is that? Is he a musician or a performance artist or just a weird guy? One of the "workers" smiled at me and gave me a thumbs up. I felt the atmosphere warm up a little. I was creating my own little space, my own little happening. One jazz fan walked by and told me the name of the song I was playing, "hey isn't that 'Besame Mucho' you're playing?" It was. I hi-5ed him in between notes. He snorted and sat down and listened. Pretty soon an older Italian man whose name was (you guessed it) Tony, and who was a dead ringer for Tony Bennett sat down and started tapping away. I was tempted to ask him to sing one with me. He had as much class as his namesake I'm sure. After one song he gave me 500 baht (about 16 dollars) then waved it off. After the next song he asked if I wanted a beer. I preferred a coffee. Then he clapped his hands and two of the prostitutes walked over and he ordered a beer and a coffee and "whatever you 2 want". I admired him for his confidence and generosity. He gave the woman 500 baht, and when I warned him they might not come back, because that was the amount it cost to hire them for 2 hours (I was told), again he sloughed it off. "It's nothing." before I knew it there were about 6 older jazz fans, all guys, sitting nearby enjoying listening to me play jazz standards. Maybe they had left their hotels without the idea to return shortly with a woman, but on the way to the beach, lost the urge. So business went on as usual with the long gauntlet of professionals and a short intermission of five seconds of jazz. Somehow it all seemed very natural, like I had been absorbed and diluted by the universal mixer. Whatever, the reason, it was a strange evening of street music , one that won't easily be remembered by anyone but me and perhaps Tony and a few other middle-aged guys. I remember when i was young and we would go to a restaurant, and while waiting for our food we would play this game with the songs on the jukebox. Whatever the song title was, we would add, "under the table" to it. It always seemed to be funny, like "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah, Under the Table". Guess you had to be there. Funny how the songs in Pattaya also took on a new, but sinister meaning in this context; "the Best is Yet to Come", "Black and Blue", or " Blame It on My Youth". There's a weird wonderful meaning and deep symbolic significance in what I did that night, but I can't for the life of me figure it out. If you can, please give me a hint.