The Greatest Lie, Chapter 15 - East Is East, And West Is West free porn video

This is a work of erotic fiction, which is written for adult readers only. It contains explicit descriptions of illegal drug use, sexual intercourse, and violence, which some readers may find disturbing. Portions of the narrative are inspired by current events in Thai society and an ongoing scientific debate concerning the safety of an over-the-counter microbicide, nonoxynol-9 (N-9). However, with the exception of the identity of the Thai Prime Minister and the protagonist's SRS doctor, whose actual names are used, all characters, business and government entities, and situations depicted in this story, including the specific story lines concerning the Thai drug war and N-9, are fictional. Readers should draw no factual conclusions from this story about the safety and efficacy of N-9 or the conduct of any persons, business or government entities depicted herein. The Greatest Lie -- Chapter 15 East is East and West is West, and Never the Twain Shall Meet (1) by Alexandra Rios I think that if you could get honest answers, a lot of heterosexual guys would probably admit to having had at least a passing desire to be a girl. If they were honest, they would probably admit they thought of it "when I first noticed a girl's breasts" or "when I first felt a girl orgasm with me," but of course, most men would lie and deny it for fear of impugning their masculinity. I think that's the reason why most therapists who treat male-to- female transsexuals believe that their transsexual patients are really gay, and that their claimed transsexuality is really just a defense against powerful feelings of guilt about their homosexuality. Thus, therapists make transsexuals jump through flaming hoops such as the so-called "one-year real-life test," the requirement that a patient live as a woman and undergo intense psychotherapy for at least a year before for sexual reassignment surgery. Therapists have incorporated this dogma into the so-called "Harry Benjamin Standards of Care." But they adopted the real-life test without any empirical evidence, based solely on their supposition that many self-described transsexuals must be liars or delusional, reasoning that: "If anyone ever asked me if I wanted to become a member of the opposite sex, I would lie. Therefore, when this purported transsexual claims to be a girl inside, and wants a sex change, he is probably lying, because that's something all men lie about." This logic is ridiculous: who could endure the expense, pain, humiliation, discrimination, and victimization that transsexuals experience unless she really felt her outward gender was wrong? But just try telling your therapist you're transgendered, and see what he does. The real-life test makes even more intolerable the cruel dilemma that confronts the MtF transsexual: should the transsexual attempt to pass through a life of misery masked in the outward appearance of her birth gender, or should she adapt her outward appearance to her soul's gender, and attempt to "pass" in the eyes of the outside world? It would help an unsympathetic world understand this dilemma, and incidentally reduce the incidence of spousal abuse, divorce, and sexual assault if all guys had to dress and live as girls for a week as a rite of passage: let's call it "GenderWeek." After a "femme initiate" had lived under the sexually interested gazes and intimidating physical presence of males, and learned to live with the expectation that the appropriate response to these pressures are indulgent smiles and responsive flirting, he would learn to moderate the extremes of his subsequent masculine behavior. On the other hand, if you made boys live as girls you would probably increase the incidence of transsexuality in the population, as some guys got addicted the tug of a satin thong catching in the crack of their buttocks. Perhaps a secret, latent tendency found in the male population explains the overwhelming numbers of transsexuals you meet in trans-tolerant climates like Thailand. By some estimates there are three hundred thousand male-to-female transgenders in a population of sixty million. Perhaps more boys become MtF transsexuals in Thailand because it's more easily done in a country where nine-year-olds can buy female hormones over the counter and young adults of eighteen can get their surgeries without first having to justify themselves to two shrinks for at least a year. Or maybe it's a product of the influence of the Thai creation story: a love triangle between Itthi, the first woman, Pullinga, the first man, and Napumsaka, a hermaphrodite. Itthi preferred Pullinga to Napumsaka, who becomes jealous and kills Pullinga, and thereby loses Ithhi's love and dies, leaving Itthi and her children alone, to repeat the love triangle of creation in the next generation. Perhaps these stories explain the Thais' tolerance for, and discrimination against, their transgendered minority. This fascinates me because I am an American post-op MtF. I was on my way to Thailand to investigate Thai transsexuals as I continued my academic research on the behaviors of transsexual sex workers, in the steamy, tawdry cabarets and bars of Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Phuket and Koh Samui. I roused myself from my jet-lagged reverie and turned to my friend Tran. She was just waking from her second nap of the long flight from L.A. to Bangkok, via Singapore. I tried to bounce my ideas off her, but she wasn't in the mood for an intellectual exchange. She tried to rouse herself to full alertness with a start, shook her head dramatically, and then said, "Tell me that it was all just a dream." I replied, "You want to know whether it's a dream that I have a baby girl, you have a transsexual little sister, and that even though we're young, broke and transsexual ourselves, we have to support them?" "Yeah, I dreamed that, right," Tran asked with a sleepy, hopeful smile. "Dream on," I replied. Tran looked confused, so I said in a resolute voice, "No, that's reality, about eight thousand miles east of here." "Oh, Alexandra, how are we going to do it? We could barely afford to get to Thailand to finish our sex-change operations, and now we have to support your baby and my little sister. I don't want to do escorting and make porno movies for the rest of my life! Let's just get our operations, move back to L.A. and find rich guys to support us like your mom did," Tran said sarcastically. "Post-ops don't get paid that well in porn or escorting, and I doubt we'd be highly prized on the West L.A. singles scene. We just have to survive until the church pays off on your priest- abuse lawsuit, and I can get another grant for another transgendered sex-behavior study. Now, no more fantasizing: we need to listen to more of these." I pointed to the tape player in the seat pocket, which was loaded with a Thai language-study tape. Tran sighed wearily and put on her own earphones. We needed to work on our Thai language skills because we were going to doing field research amongst the numerous Thai katoey, as the Thais rudely referred to their male-to-female transsexuals. I had written a well-received research piece on the sexual behaviors of transgendered sex workers in the U.S., and had gotten a stingy five thousand dollar grant to further my research and study the sexual behaviors of Thai katoey sex workers. We would first return to Phuket in southern Thailand for surgery to complete the vaginas our Thai surgeon had fashioned the previous December. Then we would enroll in the summer session at Chiang Mai University, in Northern Thailand. There we would meet our newly post-op Thai friend Nancee, who would help us with the katoey research. Our idyllic return to transgender paradise had been clouded over by unforeseen developments in L.A.: I found out that I had probably fathered a beautiful baby daughter by my one and only high-school girlfriend. When she visited her cousins in Long Beach, Tran found out that her little brother, Li, whom her father had taken in when her parents split up, had been cast off by her father into the toils of L.A.'s hideous foster-care system. Their father had thrown Li out like so much garbage as soon as her transgender tendencies made themselves known. Li was now living very precariously, halfway between the cruel streets of L.A., where she survived as a runaway prostitute, and the abusive world of serial foster homes, where she was constantly clocked and targeted for taunts or sexual assault. My own daughter lived with her mom in my mother's boyfriend's guest house, in constant danger from her old boyfriend and my own murderous nemesis, Miguel. Our own desperate circumstances had been further burdened by the even more dire circumstances of our families. "Forget about your romantic fantasies, Tran. We just have to make this study we're doing in Thailand a real blockbuster, and then get some serious grant money for our next project. Professor Finch loves my stuff, and he'll back me once we turn in our results. We just have to get more money in the next grant. It's like Allenina said about making a porn movie: you propose a bigger project, you get a bigger budget." I had proposed a study of one hundred sex workers in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Phuket, and Kho Samui. It had seemed like a manageable project for three field workers: our Thai friend Nancee, Tran and me. Professor Finch had done his utmost, but the foundation that was funding it cut the budget for Tran out and had given me only five thousand dollars to complete the project. I had nothing for the subjects except vouchers they could use to buy hormones at Thai drugstores--a last-minute donation by an American drug company. To fund Tran's trip and our surgeries I had to write two porno movies, which Tran and I had acted in. Until now, Tran and I had tried everything from streetwalking to sociological research to selling everything of value that we owned to finance our survival and transition. Now that we were on the verge of completing our odysseys, we had to reckon with the care of unexpected dependents. Our fathers had washed their hands of us as unworthy successors to their lineages. My mother was a selfish narcissist, and Tran's mother was an impoverished and emotionally defeated immigrant. "Tran, I'll just have to work my way up the ladder to bigger grants. We have to hold out until your priestly sex abuse suit settles, but who knows when that will be? Until then, we are just going to have to work our little tails off." "Just when I was getting ready to fuck my little tail off." "Shhh," I warned her, noticing that the businessman across the aisle had perked up for that comment. Then I whispered, "That too, Tran. Just make sure you get paid well every time. And no volume discounts for Italian soccer teams!" We both giggled at the recollection of a hilarious escapade from our last trip to Thailand. She playfully poked me and complained, "You're no fun any more, Alexandra." Tran and I turned on our tape machines and resumed our last-minute study of conversational Thai. We transferred from Singapore Airlines to Silk Air and bumped down in Phuket with only hours to spare before our appointments with Dr. Sanguan. Our last trip to Thailand had been in December, when the tropical warmth and blue skies had been a pleasant relief from the unrelenting Arctic cold of St. Paul, where I was attending the University of Minnesota. June is the second month of summer monsoon season in southern Thailand: dense humidity mounts over the day, relieved by afternoon downpours that frequently turn to thunderstorms. Even the locals seemed listless beneath the slate- gray skies; the previously vibrant streets of Phuket were sullen and quiet in the early morning rush hour. We dropped our luggage at our hotel and walked in a jet-lagged stupor toward a row of 'tuk-tuks,' the local three-wheel open-air motorbike taxis. We bargained with the drivers over the fare to Dr. Sanguan's Phuket Plastic Surgery Center, made a deal with one, and set off down the waterlogged streets. A crowd of gray-green-uniformed police had gathered on the corner near the Center. As we approached, we saw to our horror that the cloth on the ground they were standing around barely covered a crumpled, bullet-riddled corpse, sprawled on the sidewalk by a dumpling stall in a bloody rain puddle. I had seen plenty of violence during my last trip to Phuket, but I was shocked by the casual brutality of the scene: the cops snacking on the last batch of dumplings the fallen street vendor had just cooked. My disgust escalated to rage when I recognized the dead vendor's stall as that of Mama Meo, an aging ethnic Hmong who had dealt on the side. Her dumplings had been a staple of our diet during our last stay at the Center, but she had also been a lowly foot soldier in a Thai drug-dealing empire. I was horrified at the brutal end that this gap-toothed, smiling elder and kinswoman of Tran's had suffered. Impotent rage boiled within me, and I blurted out to the cops, "Just because she's dead doesn't give you the right to steal her dumplings." One of the cops understood me and replied angrily, "Shut up, farang katoey somsee, or you'll be 'ying ting' yourself." Tran pulled me away from the scene, and whispered, "Remember, they always call this 'the land of smiles,' but they'll cut your throat without a moment's hesitation." Then she turned to the angry cops, smiled and said "I'm so sorry, my friend has very bad jet-lag. I apologize for her." She bowed to them deferentially, and then pushed me through the gate to Dr. Sanguan's office, snarling, "Do that again, and you'll be getting a posthumous sex-change operation. Mind your manners, Alexandra." I nodded obediently. Sanguan's assistant, Pim, greeted me with a smile and a hug as I reintroduced myself. She said, "I remember you by your name, but I would never have recognized you. You are so much more beautiful now." I guessed it was a canned line, but it was a nice one, so I reciprocated. "Thanks so much. I'll never forget the kind treatment that I got from you here." The Thais are unfailingly polite in their social discourse, and to fit in one should reply in the same polite language. And I admired the way that Sanguan's staff invariably supported the emotional well-being of his patients. I said, "We saw the most horrifying thing on the way here: a murdered street vendor, shot in the street outside your gate, and the cops helping themselves to her food. What's happening to this wonderful country?" She shook her head sadly, and replied, "It's the drugs. Prime Minister Thaksin has declared a war on the drug dealers, and many of them are killed and thrown away, 'ying ting.' When I heard the noise, I was afraid to go out. It was Mama Meo, wasn't it?" I nodded my head. "It's horrible; she was just a kindly old lady." "A kindly old drug dealer. Along with dumplings, she sold yaba. She had to be stopped: yaba, the amphetamine pills, are ruining the country, and killing the children. The drug dealers must be ying ting to save the children from the yaba." "You mean these killings are happening regularly?" She replied, "Every day for the last two months, about fifty drug dealers are ying ting. More than twenty five hundred of them are ying ting already, fifty thousand more in jails. It is a national cleansing. Those on the Government's blacklist must either turn themselves in, or else they will become ying ting." "Ying ting: that's what the cop said. Are the police killing them?" I demanded. "They are killing one another, and the police aren't stopping them: good riddance. Thaksin is strong, and the people support him. The yaba dealers must be dealt with." She smiled politely, but she spoke emphatically. She finished with our paper work, blood tests and vital signs, and then showed us to Sanguan's office. Sanguan met me with his customary polite, somewhat stiff manner, but when he examined my neovagina, he frowned. "You are a most unusual case, Miss Rivers. Most patients I criticize for not dilating enough. You dilate too vigorously. You are overly inflamed inside." "I'm sorry. Am I OK for surgery?" I asked in panic. "Of course, but it is swollen. Do not dilate so roughly after this surgery," he cautioned. I decided not to tell him about the cruel and violent sexual assault I had endured just a few days earlier for fear that he would defer the final step in my sex-change operation. I admitted instead, "I always tend to overdo things." Sanguan advised, "It's OK to dilate, or make love vigorously, later, but not at first. It will be less tender than before, but the new labia will need time to attach, and the tissue where I dissect the ring must heal. No sex for four weeks!" I had endured more than eight weeks of abstinence after my initial surgery, and only anal sex had been bearable thereafter, so four weeks seemed reasonable by comparison. "How long in the hospital?" I asked, remembering the weeks I had spent here in December. "You go home as soon as anesthetic wears off. Operation hurts a little but it's no big deal, more like plastic surgery than last one, which was two difficult abdominal surgeries. Go to prep room now, you'll be done by dinner. Might not be too hungry, though. Tonight, you can stay here or at a nearby hotel." I douched with an antiseptic and lay down on an operating table. Sanguan and his surgical nurse gave me an IV, and the room blurred and faded. I awoke in the recovery room; nearby, Tran dozed under her anesthesia. My groin was bandaged and packed and sent firecracker blasts of pain through me as soon as I moved. I called the nurse and said, "Please help me, the incisions down there are killing me! Can you give me pain medicine?" "Not until I take out your Foley and you pee." She expertly removed the catheter, which made me cry out so loudly that Tran stirred. "Now you go pee," she ordered me. "Then medicine." "But I don't have to go," I protested. "Yes, you do," she ordered. "And no pretending! I'll be listening." I staggered painfully to a toilet behind a plastic curtain, and gingerly sat down. At first, nothing came but more pain, and I sobbed miserably in frustration. By the time I had finished this painful chore, Tran was awake and protesting much as I had. "Look," the recovery room nurse said, "Your friend is finished and she gets her medicine. Tran looked on enviously as I popped a Percocet. She said dopily, "This mean nurse won't give me pain meds. Alexandra, go buy me some on the street." "Remember what you told me about minding our manners, Tran. You don't want me to end up ying ting." "Oh, yeah," she remarked as she limped to the toilet. Sanguan reappeared, dressed in scrubs, examined us and pronounced us fit to leave to convalesce in our hotel. "Sorry about the rough treatment, but it is necessary that we test your urinary function before you leave us." "That's OK, but don't send us off without plenty more of these," I said, brandishing my empty sample pack of Percocet. "Only Vicodin. New drug laws mean no Percocet outside of this facility." "Good God, you would think we were in Singapore, or Alabama." "It has gotten very strict here: very dangerous. Even your friends can turn into enemies." "Thanks for the advice," I said. Tran and I hobbled to a tuk-tuk and rode to our cheap hotel room, where we downed Vicodin and recuperated, listening to Thai language study tapes. We didn't even go out the next night: we didn't feel well enough check out Tiffany or the Alcazar, and we had to wake up early the next day. The next morning we departed on a Thai Air flight to Chiang Mai. As we took off, Tran commented, "Phuket was not like I remembered it. It's really dead: too hot, too few sexy tourists, and too many scary cops." "Not just dead: ying ting," I commented. A couple of bumpy hours later, we landed at Chiang Mai, a quaint provincial capital nestled in the foothills of towering, verdant tropical mountains. The sharp green peaks, seen through layers of cloud and mist, gave the landscape the appearance of a Japanese landcape painting. The mountain air is cool by Thai standards, and the population is more relaxed and rustic than the bustling populations of Bangkok or the frantic sybarites of Phuket and Kho Samui. Instead of the bulldozed, concrete-covered, and despoiled paradise of Phuket, Chiang Mai seemed a place of primitive charm and lush, hilly beauty. Tran and I rode a cab through palmy suburbs, and then through terraced rice fields to the house that our friend Nancee had rented for us as our home base this summer. She had been proud of the bargain price. When we got there, we saw why it had been so inexpensive: it was a two-room wooden shack built on a hillside in the outskirts of town, near Chiang Mai University's science campus, Suansak Two. Chickens scratched nervously in the dirt yard as the taxi driver hauled our bags up the stairs. "Alexandra, Tran, I missed you so much! I'm so happy now." She smiled brightly and hugged us warmly. She had had her sex-change surgery a few months before and her features had softened noticeably. Nancee looked curvier and more feminine; the absence of testosterone from her body had improved her looks as much as it had improved mine after my SRS. She had let her hair return to its natural black, instead of the brassy hue that she had worn when I met her. "Let me show you around," she said. Even by Thai standards, the house was far from luxurious: room for three futons in the bedroom; a table and chairs beside a propane brazier for cooking, and a toilet, sink, and shower tap behind a plastic curtain. "There are no phone lines out here and no cell phone until we get into town. And it's close to the campus we'll be going to." She pointed down to a collection of low buildings at the bottom of a long, steep hill, and three rusty bicycles. "That's Suansak Two, where your faculty advisor, Professor Pranatop, has her office, and there's a little computer center we can use. At least it will be easy getting there," she said. I had been a little worried that I had not been getting enough exercise, but not any more. It would be a ride of at least five kilometers, and a climb of one hundred fifty meters to return to our hilltop home. "It's much cheaper here than in town, and we'll be traveling a lot, won't we?" Nancee asked, looking insecure. "You're right. It's perfect for us. We'll get a lot done here," I said, as Tran rolled her eyes. We relaxed on our sleeping pads and dilated. Six months earlier, Tran and I had sex-change operations which used combinations of penile skin and grafted colon segments. When we healed, the junctions between our dissimilar tissues had formed an impassable ring of scar tissue, which had made vaginal sex horribly painful or outright impossible. Two days ago, Sanguan had surgically "broken" the ring. Now, with proper care, Tran and I looked forward joyfully to the prospect of enjoying pleasurable vaginal sex and orgasms, once this latest procedure healed adequately. When I tested myself with the previously unusable 1.25-inch stent, it passed easily. I still felt a jarring note of pain where the stent glided over the dreaded ring, but at least the stent was getting through. The sensation was now like rubbing a sore spot, rather than like trying to puncture unyielding flesh. "Tran," I said excitedly, "I think this operation really worked." Tran nodded in agreement, as she admired herself with a hand mirror. "Do you like my new labia?" she asked Nancee proudly, displaying her still bruised flesh and angry red scars. [ "You are both going to look perfect," Nancee replied. "I can't wait to get my secondary labiaplasty done. Would you like to see me?" Tran and I nodded excitedly, and she shyly slid down her panties. Her own vagina was lovely, but lacked interior labia and had the same unfinished look that Tran's and my own had before our secondary operation. "Have you been able to have sex?" "Yeah, Eddie Liang broke me in, and then sent me an Australian who paid fifty thousand baht to be my first lover. I wasn't really ready, but it was OK." "Can you orgasm?" I asked. "No. I have some feelings, but I am so nervous, and my feelings are all mixed up," Nancee replied sadly. Tran and I smiled conspiratorially, and I said, "Maybe we could help you. It took us a while, but we worked it out." "I thought you couldn't have sex until this new operation heals," Nancee said, confused. "Not with guys, you silly girl. With each other." Tran snuggled up behind her, and began fondling Nancee's breasts, as I approached, embraced her, and stifled her protest with a gentle kiss. "Now I understand," Nancee said. "I'll learn from the experts." "Mm hmm," I responded, gently guiding her down to our futons. Tran and I undressed her and ourselves, and lavished kisses on her beautiful face, breasts, and belly. Then I slipped my tongue between her labia and trilled it against her clitoris and the exterior of her vagina before slipping it inside. Nancee's cock had been larger than mine or Tran's, so Sanguan had successfully fashioned Nancee's neovagina entirely from inverted penile skin and scrotal skin. It was lovely to the touch and taste: smooth, slightly salty flesh, without the internal juices that exude from the interior of a G-girl, or the natural lubricants that still flow from the disconnected colon tissue inside Tran and me. Nancee's body stirred and her hips began to roll as I licked and puffed and sucked at her. She giggled, "Mm, that tingles," and began to moan a bit. I concentrated on the exterior of her vagina, where I knew Sanguan concentrated the bundles of salvaged nerves, but her nerves had not fully healed and rejoined her nervous system, and seemed to be sending disorganized, confusing signals to Nancee's pleasure centers. Then Tran gently tapped my shoulder and said, "Don't be a greedy girl, Alexandra! It's my turn." I protested mildly but yielded to my friend. As Tran nuzzled her pussy, I kissed Nancee's lips with a mouth drenched by her own mild, but delicious inner essences, and she kissed back with passionate interest. "You're yummy," she said. I replied, "You're the yummy one," and she yielded her lips to another kiss. Then I said, "Nancee, kneel on top of Tran, and then lean forward over her." Tran and Nancee hastily rearranged themselves, and I reminded Nancee that our pussies were not ready for cunnilingus. "Not fair," she protested, as I began fondling her cheeks: smooth, round, firm curves that flanked a tight, perfect, hole. Nancee had, she had admitted to me, been penetrated anally countless times in her years of katoey whoring, but her resilient little ass had remained a perfect jewel. I parted her buttocks, and tweaked the pinhole center with the tip of my tongue, and her body trembled in instantaneous response. "Oh, no, that's too much at once," she cried, but I circled my arms around her thighs and press her ass to my lips, and thrust my tongue into the tiny space at the center of the hairless, tan ring of her anus. As I did so, Nancee's hips began flailing, and Tran and I held her torso tight and firm against our relentless mouths. Nancee's bottom skittered between my attentions to her sexually experienced ass and Tran's suckling of her nearly virginal vagina, and this rhythm resolved into a primal undulation of her flesh, as sensation surged from her new erogenous zones to her old, and back again. Nancee, the unflappable lover who could handle anything with a stoic smile, gleefully discovered the sinful angel of passion which Tran and I had released. Nancee's hips began heaving, and she thrashed against Tran's and my insistent lips. Trapped between our Scylla and Charybdis, Nancee's nervous system valiantly struggled against the insurgency of her neurons, which were joining in a vast conspiracy of pleasure. At last, her sensations connected into a great spasm of pleasure, and she throbbed her way to her first female orgasm. Tran and I continued relentlessly, and she spasmed again and again, squealing with ever mounting pleasure, until she was exhausted and begged us to stop. Her forehead and hair were damp with sweat and saliva, and my lips and tongue were tired and achy. "That was incredible," she said. "The energy just kept building inside me. When you rimmed me while Tran was kissing my pussy, the feelings all just connected and exploded." "That's how it was with me too, the first time Tran made me cum. Now, it just keeps getting better," I said, and Tran nodded enthusiastically. "Alexandra made me cum the first time, but now I practically cum when I touch myself accidentally. I have to be careful," she whined in a mock complaint. "Let me try you," Nancee implored, but I warned her that Sanguan had forbidden it. "We're on the disabled list," I said, and when both Tran and Nancee looked puzzled, I added, "No baseball for four weeks." "Can I at least see?" she begged, and we quickly agreed, as we needed to inspect the condition of our dressings. I was wearing a Polysporin-soaked maxipad, and I had a Betadine- soaked tampon inside. When it emerged a vivid orange, Nancee shrieked, but quieted down once I assured her it was only an antibacterial. On closer inspection, my tampon had only a few dark blotches where blood had seeped from the individual sutures. The maxipad was only slightly spotted, too. After we wiped away the traces of blood, Nancee could see the foundations of genitals that would be indistinguishable from a G-girl's: an introitus with fully formed labia majora and minora and a properly-hooded clitoris. "They're going to be perfect, like my little sister's," Nancee said admiringly. Nancee and I joined in three-way kiss; we all tasted pure pleasure. "Thank you," Nancee whispered. "I'm so glad you came back." "It's great to be back with you," I said, and Tran added, "It's great to see you again--and we really need you for threesomes!" Nancee asked, "Does Eddie Liang know you're back?" "Good God, no. I mean, I didn't tell him. Did you?" Nancee smiled guiltily. "He asks about you and Tran every time he visits me." "You're still seeing him? Isn't that dangerous, with the drug war on?" I replied. "Eddie's not on the blacklist. He's much too important a bigshot," Nancee remarked. "You'd better call him, or you'll hurt his feelings. He likes to be first with us, when we are post-op." I rolled my eyes. "How romantic," I said sarcastically. "How was he?" Nancee nodded enthusiastically. "He's really good. And really generous." As a new mom, I had resolved to get beyond my adolescent peccadilloes, but someone had to be first, and I had fond memories of a sexy interlude with Eddie on my first trip to Phuket. "How do I even get a hold of him?" I asked with mock reluctance. Nancee handed me her cell. "He's programmed, but you'll have to wait to call until we're in town. No signal up here," she told me. "When are you going to show us around Chiang Mai?" I asked. Nancee looked at her watch and said, "If we shower and dress quickly, we can still make it to Rosepaper's cabaret show." I looked back at her inquiringly, and Nancee clarified, "It's Chiang Mai University's ladyboy sorority." I remembered the haughty sorority bitches that our friends Rick and Randy complained about at the University of Minnesota, rolled my eyes and said, "I don't really want to get into any ladyboy competitions or catfights tonight." She socked me playfully and said, "You two are just worried about not being the most beautiful T-girls. Come on, you have to see Chiang Mai's girls. Not only are the women here the most beautiful in Thailand and the rest of the world, so are our 'sao praphet song.'" Tran and I hadn't learned that word, so Nancee translated: "women of the third sex." We showered, dressed and put on the university uniforms that Nancee had gotten for us: black skirts, and simple white shirts. We looked fresh and innocent as we coasted down into town on our bikes. Chiang Mai looked like something out of a fairy tale in the misty, soft-focus light of the mountain sunset. The air was pleasantly cool after the torpor of Phuket, and the police presence seemed less intimidating than Phuket's paranoid streets. As we pedaled through the meaner streets of the city, I noticed that drug dealers still touted their wares, interspersed among the knots of streetwalkers, or somsee, but Tran and I weren't even tempted to use anymore. After all, now that we had Alyssa and Li to think of, we were learning to be responsible adults. Nancee lead us to a bar near the campus named Fascination. It was festooned with signs announcing a cabaret given by the ladies of Rosepaper. Nancee was greeted warmly by one of the blue-and-white uniformed T-girls. Nancee, in turn, introduced us to the T-girl who had greeted her, Chris. Chris said a few incomprehensible words in rapid-fire Thai. Nancee translated into English, "This is Chris, and she would like to extend to you the privileges of membership in Rosepaper during your enrollment at Chiang Mai." Boldly venturing with my newly learned Thai phrases, I said haltingly, "Thank you so much, we are happy to meet our katoey sisters." I could see that Chris looked hurt and offended. "What's wrong?" I asked Nancee, bewildered. "That is a term that rude people use to describe us. The proper term is 'sao praphet song,'" she replied. I repeated the term, and pointed to myself and Tran, and Chris clasped her hands together and said, "Sawat-dee ka." "That is how we sao praphet song greet one another," Nancee added, and Tran and I quickly followed suit. Now Chris smiled at us warmly, and I smiled back. Nancee went on, "You would never know it from the behavior that we see in Pattapong, Phuket, and Koh Samui, but we Thais are very conservative and courteous. Let me do the talking in Thai until you pick up some more vocabulary." "We have a lot to learn," I said, feeling daunted at the prospect of such rebuffs by offended interview subjects. We sat in the audience at a table near the front to which Chris had guided us. Behind us sat a polite audience of Thais, some Asian tourists, and CMU students, including some Rosepaper sisters who sat in a cluster behind us. They cheered their compatriots heartily when they took the stage to lip-synch, or, in some cases, actually sing their songs and do their dances. Mostly, they played the international hits of the variety that really bore me: "I Will Always Love You," "My Heart Will Go On," etc. This sort of music is not all interesting to me, even when performed by a gorgeous katoey: oops, I mean, sao praphet song. But the costumes looked fabulous and the delivery was well-polished. The crowd was courteous during each performance and enthusiastic at the end. And some of the girls got into racier material: the Rosepaper girls' versions of Madonna's "Vogue" and "Material Girl" were brilliant; at the end of each song, I joined the audience in leaping to our feet in praise of their perfect emulation of Madonna's sinuous dance moves. As I took my seat I wondered, is this the prototype for a gender- equal society? Or would this society turn on its transsexuals with the same ruthlessness that it was employing towards the drug culture should the gender-political climate suddenly change? After Chris sang a terrific version of "Nowadays," from "All That Jazz" in harmony with the actual soundtrack, she approached our table and stopped before us. Speaking through Nancee, she offered Rosepaper's honored guests from America a chance to perform on- stage right now. Tran had been doing karaoke for years as PR for her bar-girling at the Townhouse in Minneapolis, so I wasn't surprised when she leapt up immediately and began pulling playfully at my arm. I don't have stage fright, but lip-synch is not my thing and my singing voice is only OK. I would have resisted, but Nancee shot me a look and warned me, "It would greatly honor your hostesses if you perform." I said, "OK," as the applause mounted, and asked, "Do you have "Reflection" by Christina Aguilera?" "I think so. She is still very popular," Nancee responded. She consulted with Fascination's MC, and then announced triumphantly "Yes, in English, but only with Thai script." "You still remember the words to this one, don't you?" I asked Tran. I knew she did: we had listened to many times. It had been one of the turning points in my life when I first heard transsexual aspirations voiced the context of, ironically enough, a G-rated, animated kids' movie. Tran, too, had identified strongly with the gender-disguised Asian heroine, Mulan. Tran and I swayed side by side through the instrumental opening, and I got so caught up I could not resist harmonizing with Aguilera's soaring, perfectly-nuanced vocals: Look at me You may think you see Who I really am But you'll never know me Every day It's as if I play a part Now I see If I wear a mask I can fool the world But I cannot fool my heart Who is that girl I see Staring straight back at me? When will my reflection show? Who I am inside? I am now In a world where I Have to hide my heart And what I believe in But somehow I will show the world What's inside my heart? And be loved for who I am Who is that girl I see Staring straight back at me? Why is my reflection Someone I don't know? Must I pretend that I'm? Someone else for all time? When will my reflection show? Who I am inside? There's a heart that must be Free to fly That burns with a need to know The reason why Why must we all conceal What we think, how we feel? Must there be a secret me I'm forced to hide? I won't pretend that I'm Someone else for all time When will my reflection show? Who I am inside? When will my reflection show? Who I am inside? As we finished, we each pressed our palms together in the gesture Nancee had shown us, the 'wai,' and whispered, "Sawat-dee ka," into the microphone. The crowd's reaction was stupendous, and many of the sao praphet song performers who had preceded us surged onto the stage and hugged us in loving solidarity. Chris made an announcement, and the entire performance group of Rosepaper joined us in a reprise. We were joined in the chorus by most of the crowd, and tears started to stream down my face as the emotion of the crowd and the Rosepaper girls surged over me. The mistress of ceremonies got the microphone, and said something in Thai, followed by, in heavily accented English, "Thank you and good night, and come back and sing for us again." I hugged Tran and said, "Wow, that worked out awesomely." "I always said you are a genius, even when you don't know what you are doing." Chris and the other Rosepaper girls invited us to their dormitory for a post-concert party. We met about a hundred sao praphet song whose names I couldn't keep straight--and I was only learning their nicknames: it seemed full Thai names could run to twenty syllables. But we were instant celebrities, and everyone wanted to be part of us, so I just reveled in it. Being popular can be so handy. Few of the Chiang Mai students spoke English well enough to really communicate with us. Many were studying the language, but they were all about my age and hailed primarily from local provinces, which are poor and secluded compared to Bangkok and Phuket. Chris made a point of introducing us to a girl named Gift. She spoke only a few words of English: she was 'rap nong,' or a freshman still undergoing initiation into Rosepaper. Through Nancee, she told us that she had heard about our project, and that her older sister, who was also sao praphet song, had worked on a similar project. I was ecstatic: my protocols from Minneapolis were totally alien in this environment, and I was worried about finding any interview subjects except Nancee's friends from the bars of Koh Samui and Phuket. "Is she here?" I inquired. Gift gave me a sad frown, and replied, "No, she is very sick with the skinny disease." I had not heard the term before, but didn't need Nancee's explanation to make the connection with AIDS. "Can we visit her?" I asked. "Yes, that would make her very happy. But you should do it soon. She hasn't long." Tran, Nancee, Gift and I said our good-byes and went to visit Gift's sister, Lin, who was at the Baan Pewan Cheewit AIDS hospice. It was located behind a Buddhist monastery. It took in those who had been abandoned by their families in the terminal stages of the disease. Care of AIDS in Thailand, while advanced by the standards of the Third World, is far removed from the advanced drug therapies of America, which keep the afflicted living independently for decades. Only eighteen months after diagnosis, Lin was dying in the company of strangers, lying on a narrow cot. It was one of a hundred in long, neat rows in this whitewashed ward: in lieu of plumbing, there was a bucket between each pair of beds. Lin greeted us weakly, but in English. "It is strange that you have a grant to study our transgendered sex workers. I administered a huge study for some Americans and a Thai company." "Who funded the study?" I asked, panicking. "A huge condom maker called Spartan. Everyone uses Spartan's condoms. They are made in Chiang Rai Province," Lin added. "We Thais use many condoms, and we make much rubber. So we have both supply and demand." She laughed weakly. "What were the results?" I inquired innocently. My review of the peer-reviewed literature indicated that there had been nothing done similar to my work, but this seemed too close. Lin replied, "Nothing, just a big waste of time. Part of the way through the study, they just stopped it: shut it down, and told us to forward all of the data to America. We got paid a final, double paycheck, and told to stop work. The sex worker subjects all got the same: they were very correct about it, but then again, the company is partly Thai." That was a relief. I hadn't come all of the way here to replicate a larger study than I could afford. But perhaps she could help me. "How many subjects did you have?" I asked Lin responded, "About six hundred, split into four branches. It was a double-blind study of some kind." "Good thing," I mused. "I'm not covering someone else's study, and I could hardly surpass this one. Tran, Nancee and I could never hope to have identified and interviewed six hundred subjects in the course of a summer." And then I had a flash. Now I could equal it, at least! I asked Lin, "Did you send the names and addresses of the subjects back to Spartan?" "Of course, but I saved my address list, and some other materials. I thought maybe Spartan would come back to restart the study, and be angry with me if I didn't have it. But it's too late for me now; I won't be staying here much longer." Her gesture seemed to mean the world, not the hospice. "It would really help us we could use your list." She nodded weakly. "My computer was named with ID number PS408CMU, at the science faculty, and my username was 'Lin36' and my profile's password was 'ladyboy999.' If the data is still there you can use it. If they don't like it, it's too late for Spartan to punish me. But I don't think Spartan will care. After all, it gave up the study. "I should warn you, Spartan paid the girls to participate in the study. Spartan also gave them free condoms and lubricant, which they had to promise to use and a 'Hello Kitty Diary' to keep track of their sex activity. These sex workers will not let you study them for nothing," she cautioned us. "We have these," I said, producing vouchers usable for my corporate sponsor's pharmaceuticals, including their popular brand of Estrace transdermal estrogen patches. Professor Finch had arranged for a donation of two hundred thousand baht worth of vouchers that I would use as currency for recruitment to the Thai study. "The T-girls can use them to buy their hormones. Will that do?" "Or AIDS drugs," Lin said miserably. I gave her a thick wad of the precious vouchers, and said, "Thanks so much, and good luck." I clasped my hands in a wai and exchanged sawat-dee ka's with her as I left. Gift was in tears. "She did sex work to pay my school tuition, after my parents kicked us out," she said bitterly. Nancee's translation could not capture her frustration and anger, and didn't need to. I touched Gift's arm. She was about my age, but seemed childlike in her unsophistication. "If she were well, I would want her to help me on my work, and to have her as my friend," I volunteered. Gift hugged me. When she finished, my cheeks were wet with her tears. We went to a cafe for a bowl of "khao soi," a local curry noodle soup, before bedtime. I called Eddie from the cafe, which was still within the cellular network. He answered brusquely, and I reintroduced myself shyly. "Hi, this is Nancee's friend Alexandra. Do you remember me?" "Remember you? Of course! I have thought about you every day. Sorry I couldn't visit you in the hospital after your surgery," he apologized. "Thanks for the beautiful ring. I wore it every day," I lied. Actually, Tran and I had sold it and the necklace he had given me long ago, during our days of direst poverty the previous winter. "I'd love to see them on you. Where have you been?" he asked. "We were in Phuket, and now we are with Nancee in Chiang Mai," I admitted. "Damn, why didn't you call me?" Eddie demanded. "We were just there for some follow-up surgery, and we were in a hurry to get to school up here. But we'll be back in a few weeks," I promised. "I have business in Chiang Mai. I'll be up there later this month. I must see you. And Tran." "We are still, like, recovering from some surgery. I can't do anything yet." "Good," he said. "Save yourselves for me," he demanded. I was offended by his presumptuousness, but he was an awesome lover, and very generous and powerful. But I wanted to play hard- to-get. "I'm not sure that I want to. You know, with this drug war going on, and I'm doing research here with the permission of the Thai authorities. I'm not sure it's OK to see a character like you." I didn't want to use the words "a drug lord like you" on the phone. "It's OK. I am not on the blacklist. My family does not trade in yaba. I am friends with the police chief in Chiang Mai. I will tell him to look after you and Tran." I said nothing, baiting him. "Alexandra, you want me as a friend, don't you?" he asked ominously. "Oh yes. And as a lover," I affirmed ingratiatingly. "I'll call you when I get to Chiang Mai," he promised. "He certainly was insistent," I observed to Tran. "He wants to break you in, too." "That's OK with me. I like Eddie. He's got an American face and cock, and Asian skin and hair. The perfect man," Tran giggled. "You Asians are such bigots." "You Anglos are such hairy apes," Tran teased, and Nancee joined her in gales of laughter. "Except you, of course. You're perfect, like one of us." The next morning, Nancee gave us a tour of the facilities at the Population Sciences faculty of CMU, and introduced us to our faculty advisor, Dr. Pranatop. Dr. Pranatop was very friendly but apologetic, as she was leaving for a guest lecturing post in Australia and would only be able to keep in touch via e-mail. That suited my interests. I didn't want close supervision over the project, which I was expanding and changing based on Lin's disclosure of the list of subjects from Spartan's study. Dr. Pranatop showed us to the aging computers and wished us the best of luck. As soon as Pranatop left, I began trolling through CMU's local network for Lin's old computer. I found it in minutes: it was being used as the server for the Population Science Faculty's own subnet. It was an old Pentium 1 with a thirteen-inch screen and a grimy keyboard that was stashed in a closet-sized service room down the hall from our own crowded workspace. I typed in Lin's profile and password, and immediately accessed her user files. I searched and found an Excel spreadsheet entitled "Spartanstudymstrlist," and opened it. As clicked through the tabs, I let out a low whistle. The spreadsheet listed, in neatly arrayed and alphabetized columns, about six hundred names, together with nicknames, addresses, phone numbers, ethnic/language group, and study category. Study category was designated rather cryptically by a single letter; the column appeared to be a random assortment of A's, B's C's and D's. All I could see when I examined the column was that each letter seemed to appear no more often than any other--each letter category appeared beside about one hundred fifty names. I clicked on a name: Apple, of Pattapong. When I clicked on a link, the screen showed Apple's own Excel spreadsheet, which stated the date of her enrollment in the study, her age, place of origin, dates of gender transformation and hormone therapy, surgical status, HIV status, self-reported sexual practices and preferences, such as frequency of oral and anal sex and penetration, and condom use or non-use, and then the same data for a follow-up visit three months later. I noted with chagrin that Apple showed a positive HIV test at the follow-up. Nevertheless, it was obvious that we had both stumbled onto an incredible resource, although it was also a possible source of bias in our study. "This is going to make our lives a lot easier," Tran exulted. "No more walk-ups and rejections at the cabarets. We can just use this data. It's like we have already done half of the work." I cautioned, "Not a good idea. The data was collected using unknown methods. We have to approach our work as a new study. But I don't see what would be wrong with using the subjects from this study. It would just save us a lot of busywork building our own sample, and let us go directly to interviews. I'm going to save all of this data to my iBook, but we are only going to use the contact information page in the study." Thais tend to be conformist and respectful of authority. Nancee said, "I don't think we are exactly following the rules you set up with Pranatop for our study. Are you sure this is OK? I don't want to get in trouble about this." "Look, these girls all agreed to participate in this study, and if they don't want to help us, fine, we'll leave them out. If we don't use the old data, it's not like we are plagiarizing: whoever did this study dropped it. After all, this file hasn't been accessed for almost two years. "I'll send an e-mail to Pranatop asking her to confirm that it's OK with her to use the contact information. She'll be so preoccupied in Australia that she'll agree in a heartbeat." From my father's dismissive comments about his own students, I knew how little professors cared about undergraduate research and undergraduate researchers. I printed three copies of the contact list. Then, we went to work on dividing up the list. Tran had done enough interviews in Minneapolis to work on her own. As we reviewed the list she said, "A lot of the names on this list look like they are Hmong. I learned Hmong from my mom and dad." "I thought you were Vietnamese," Nancee said with surprise. "I was, but I am Hmong. After the Vietnam War, all of the Hmong had to leave Vietnam because the Hmong had helped the Americans fight the communists. That's why my family moved to Minnesota." Nancee replied, "I, too, come from a hill tribe: the Karen. There are many Karen and Hmong in this part of Thailand, living in these hills." She pointed to the mountains of the Thanon Thongchai Range that stretched north from Chiang Mai. "Many Hmong become sao praphet song, and move to Chiang Mai or even to the south of Thailand, Bangkok or Phuket. There are also many sao praphet song from among the Karen. They say that the Karen and the Hmong make the most beautiful sao praphet song." "What about Chilean/Swedish mongrels like me?" I complained. Tran and Nancee laughed, and Tran said, "We were only talking about Asians." "I know," I replied with mock misery. "You're all prettier than us horse-faced honkies." "Then why do all the Asian guys choose you first?" Nancee challenged. "My wit and charm," I replied. "Or perhaps I'm just a novelty in Thailand." We had planned to work together for the first few weeks of the study, until Tran and I had mastered enough Thai to work independently of Nancee. Faced with the opportunity to dramatically expand the study, and with the inadequacy of my hastily-acquired Thai phrases to meet the demands of interviewing, I rethought this strategy. "I'm going to need help with my language on these interviews, at least until I pick up enough Thai. Tran, how many Vietnamese and Hmong names do you see on the list?" "At least seventy-five, mostly in and around Chiang Mai." I mapped out and announced our new strategy: "OK, for the first three weeks, we'll all stay here in Chiang Mai. Nancee and I will work together to get her interviewing procedure down, and I hope I'll pick up enough Thai from her to function on my own. For the second three weeks, you two will work together and if Tran picks up enough Thai to work independently, then we'll split up for the last four weeks of our visas. "If we average four interviews per day while we're working in teams we'll do about fifty interviews per week, or about three hundred interviews, total. When we split up, we potentially increase that to seventy-five per week, or another three hundred. So we can interview everyone on this whole list if we keep to that schedule, but it's going to be hard. We'll have to be really efficient on travel time. "I'll sort these names by language group and location, pick up some throwaway cell phones so we can call ahead if our subjects have phones, and let's get started knocking on doors right away." "We're not going to wait to hear back from Pranatop?" "I'm not waiting all summer for her. My e-mail was just to cover my ass." Nancee looked worried, but Tran shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "Alexandra never lets rules get in the way of ambition." Although I joined Nancee's laughter at Tran's comments deprecating the urgency of my ambitions, I felt something quite different growing inside me: a surge of energy like nothing I had felt since I first conceived of the Transsexual Sex Worker project. The dramatic expansion of the Thai leg of the project would surely propel me to the first rank of sex researchers: to an academic nirvana of rich grants and fellowships. I pictured myself seated, looking dazzling in a fresh lab coat and faux glasses, on the dais of an international science conference: with luck, I would be the youngest scientist ever to be invited to present to the National Institute of Sciences. From the audience, handsome, brilliant, sensitive young scientists would goggle at me adoringly, and then throng around me at the cocktail receptions like an academic femme fatale. In my imagined glory, I saw my father eyeing me enviously from the corner of the room. I mentally practiced my gracious acceptance speech for the academic honors to be heaped upon me, and folded in an impassioned and utterly convincing plea for recognition of the sexual rights of the transgendered community. Tran would land a scholarship and she and I would be able to rent a house for Marta, Alyssa, and Li. Nancee would get a student visa to study with us, and we would take turns baby-sitting and partying. A sweet new Miata, a great condo on the beach in Venice, and the respect of my peers all beckoned to me. The prospect of recognition for my intelligence and achievement, goals that I had seemingly forsaken when I took the path toward my sex change, again beckoned and seduced me. I would complete and improve on the massive study that the largest condom maker in the world had botched and abandoned, and in the process I would also achieve renown and success for myself and my friends. I sorted the names by language group and location and drew up the interviewee lists. Tran went to a Hmong community in the Mai Ai district and Nancee and I went to an Ahka community in the Prao. Nancee and I were looking for Bootook and Phousi, both fifteen, both Akha from Sipsongpanna, in Southern China. "Be careful," Nancee cautioned. "Mai Ai is very dangerous, and Prao is event worse. "Children from all over South Asia arrive here every day, to get hormones, make money in the sex trade. At least most of the sao praphet song come to the city on their own, as I did, because my family objected to my taking hormones and living like a girl. "Many girls and even young boys are tricked and made into debt slaves, working for years in brothels to earn their freedom from their debt cards. Some are even kidnapped and brought and kept here by force." I shuddered at the horrifying image: child slave-whores in the Land of Smiles. We walked down a muddy, congested tanon, or side street, under the continuous gaze of the grimy, working-class Thai men. Nancee snarled rejections at their frequent propositions, and they moved on to more vulnerable prey. At the end of another dingy, fetid tanon, we came to the Rung Ruing Cafe. The cafe was a front for a brothel: about fifteen pale-faced young girls and katoey, wearing T-shirts, sat like so much human merchandise displayed under blue and red fluorescent lights, on a tiered platform covered in worn red carpet. The atmosphere of tawdry commercialism was accentuated pink theater curtain, worn to shininess by years of exposure to the moist mountain air. The look of tawdry faux gaiety was completed by the outdated sign overhead, wishing everybody a happy New Year in English, Japanese and Thai. The signs had not been taken down even though Songkran, Thai New Year, had been on the fifteenth of April. We watched as a few Thai men paid 110 baht to a cashier. Periodically, one of the men selected one of the young girl or katoey, and they departed to one of twenty wooden rooms at the back of the house. We went to the cashier and asked for Bootook. "She go home to her village, long time ago," the cashier said. "Is Phousi here?" Nancee asked. "She gone home, too. Why you ladies want katoey? You ladies wanna get fucked by ladyboy?" The cashier laughed coarsely. "We have a gift for them," I replied. "Bootook and Phousi don't need a gift. They a doctor, or a funeral." He laughed mirthlessly at his cruel joke, stopping short when he noticed our stony-faced response. Now, the cashier said ingratiatingly "We have another katoey somsee who was friendly with them. Come here, Aom." Nancee pulled me aside and asked, "Do you know what he means when he says they went home?" I shook my head. "They got the skinny disease, what you call AIDS," Nancee whispered. Nancee asked Aom to come with us, and I paid forty baht as a cafe fine to procure her temporary release. We took Aom to another cafe and we shared Thai coffees. Aom was a nineteen-year old sao praphet song from a small village in Chiang Rai Province, in the so-called Golden Triangle, far north of Chiang Mai. She had begun taking hormones at fourteen, with her mother's but not her father's consent. She had had a relationship with one of the Buddhist monks in her village, and when they were caught in bed together, the monk rejected her and claimed she had corrupted him, and her father had expelled her from her family's opium farm. She ran away with a soldier from the Shan Revolutionary Army and lived with him for a year at his unit's camp high in the Thanon Thongchai mountains, until he disappeared while on an opium smuggling operation. Then she went to Chiang Mai to try to make her living in the cabarets. All she had managed to get was a job at the Rung Ruing Cafe, where she served beer wearing a T-shirt that also advertised her and her price. To keep her job, she was obliged to have sex with the customers of the cafe for the price printed on her shirt. If she lost her job, she would have to work from the street, where it was even more dangerous, and where the customers were even coarser than the riffraff that patronized Rung Ruing. Working at Rung Ruing, Aom at least had the protection offered by the thin walls of the wooden house; the walls were thick enough to keep out intruders, but thin enough to permit the management to overhear and intervene in an encounter that was turning violent. She required that her customers use condoms when they penetrated her anally, "rok ayd," but would perform oral sex, "faen poo-chai" without condoms if the customer appeared healthy, and for an extra price, she would, let them orgasm "toong cum." She worked every day, and usually had six to eight customers per day. She split her take with management. Her room was on the third floor of the rickety structure. There was only a single, filthy bathroom for all fifteen girls, and it consisted of a hole in a tile floor over a slow-running flow of water. For washing, Aom had only a bucket in her room. She took hormones every day, and was enthusiastic about the vouchers that we gave her. She remembered Bootook and Phousi: they were the top two ladyboys at the Rung Ruing when Aom arrived. They had lots of cash, and always had extra condoms and lubricant to give to the other girls: they were getting more than they needed free, from a very proper lady who came from the University. They also got regular medical treatment and tests. Then their special status stopped, the proper lady from the University stopped coming, and then they got sick and went away. They had too much pride, and their pride had destroyed their karma, Aom thought. We thanked her, gave her some vouchers, and parted ways with her with a sawat-dee ka. We interviewed three other sao praphet song that made their livings at the Rung Ruing Cafe, paying cafe fines for the privilege of talking to each, and getting variations on Aom's story. Each of the young sao praphet song working girls remembered friends who had enjoyed the status and financial benefits of working with the scientists from Chiang Mai, but who had gotten sick and disappeared. Presumably, they went back to their home villages to die. As we rode in our songtaew jitney back to the farm hut we called home, Nancee read me the names of the unfortunate sao praphet song somsee as I marked them off our master list. The results were frustrating: although the list was little more than eighteen months old, it seemed that nearly everyone on it had disappeared. "God! I knew AIDS was ra