Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 1

BANGING BILL’S WIFE Stephen Leather, Thailand

This is the truth, the absolute truth, cross my heart and hope to die, as true as I’m sitting here. I can barely believe it myself, but it happened and it happened to me. The name’s Adrian, better not tell you my surname because it’s a small world. A bloody small world as it happens. I’m a stockbroker; usually I deal in shares, but I dabbled in bonds for a few years. Just on my way to my new job, and the company’s paying, which is why I’m up here in Business Class and not in the back of the plane with the plebs.

I’ve done all right over the last few years, though I have had my share of setbacks, truth be told. I worked for Barings before they went bust, even worked in the same office as Nick Leeson for a while. Nice lad, was Nick, just got a bit out of his depth, that’s all.

I worked for Lehman Brothers for two years, not long before they went out of business, and I was with a subsidiary of RBS in Hong Kong when they had to be bailed out by the British taxpayer. That’s why my mates they call me Jonah. They reckon I’m cursed. They’re joking, because I always make money for my bosses. Lots of money. I’m a rainmaker, that’s why. I bring in the business. When I move, most of my clients move with me. That’s what’s going to happen this time, as sure as night follows day. Most of them, anyway.

I never really liked Singapore, the whole place changed after Barings went under, but I’ll work anywhere providing the money’s good. I was in Hong Kong, working in the bond department of Standard Chartered Bank, when I got headhunted by the Singapore firm. You always know when it’s a headhunter on the phone. ‘Can you talk?’ they ask. Tossers. Of course I can talk. That what I do. I talk and people buy. It’s called selling.

Anyway, I go in to see the headhunter and it turns out the guy doing the hiring used to be my boss at Barings, Chinese high-flyer by the name of Robert Tam. I always got on well with Robert, so I fly over to Singapore and he introduces me to the top guys and, of course, they offer me the job. More money, expat package, they’d even have paid for school fees if I’d had kids.

The one problem was that my bosses in Hong Kong knew that I’d try to take my clients with them, so they had me out of the office as soon as I handed in my notice, and insisted that I couldn’t start work in Singapore until my notice period was over. Three months.

They’d pay me and my bosses in Singapore said they’d pay me, too, so I was getting double salary but effectively I was on gardening leave. But I’ve always lived in flats and never had a garden, so I decided to spend three months in Thailand. I’ve done a few R amp;R runs to the Land of Smiles over the years, but I’d never spent any real time there, so I figured I’d go and blow off some steam. Singapore pays well, but it’s not the most exciting city in the world for a single guy. I think maybe that was why Nick Leeson went off the rails.

Anyway, I booked myself into the Landmark Hotel on Sukhumvit Road, between the red-light areas of Nana Plaza and Soi Cowboy, and started to let rip. Like a bull in a china shop. I did my rounds of the Bangkok bars, night after night in Nana Plaza, Soi Cowboy and Pat Pong. I went through the massage parlours, the short-time hotels, the go-go bars, hung around the freelance joints like Gullivers, the German Bar in Soi 7, the Bed Club and the nightclubs attached to the five-star hotels. I spent weekends in Pattaya, the sex-tourist’s Disneyland-by-the-sea, non-stop sex fuelled by drink and drugs.

In the first month alone, I went with more than a hundred girls. At least. To be honest, I lost count. I’d have breakfast, then a soapy massage, then a nap, then pick up a bargirl and take her to a short-time hotel, then have dinner and then go to a nightclub and pick up a freelancer. And that would be a quiet day.

Sometimes in Pattaya I’d get laid four or five times, often with several girls at the same time.

I slowed down a little during the second month. I guess I was getting bored. Funny, right? Who would ever imagine that you’d get bored with sex?

But that’s what happened. There are only so many positions, only so many variations on a theme, and after a while it all became the same, pretty much.

Drink, shower, sex, shower, sleep. And money always changed hands. I think that’s what started to take the edge off it, the fact that I always paid. The girls smiled and laughed at my jokes and seemed to have a great time, but I was paying them. I began to realize that it was all about the money. No money, no honey.

That’s when I discovered Craigslist. It’s brilliant, Craigslist. Craigslist.

org: none of that dot com nonsense for those guys. It’s a website where you can buy or sell stuff, and where you can meet people too. Real people. And if you’re looking for free sex, then Craigslist is the place to go. I found it by accident. I think I was googling ‘Free Porn’ like I often do and it took me to a Craigslist page where a girl called Porn was looking for a date. She was a nurse at a Bangkok hospital and she was looking for a Caucasian guy with a good heart and I figured that two out of three was enough, so I called the mobile number, met her for coffee and an hour later, I was in her bed and between her legs. Sweet girl, and not very experienced despite her name. And she didn’t ask me for money. Not one baht.

It was a one-night stand and the start of many, all courtesy of Craigslist.

It was brilliant: hundreds of Thai birds gagging for it and not a penny to be paid. Most of the girls who posted put up their pictures so you could see what you were getting, and a few minutes on the phone was all it took to check that they were genuine. Then I’d go around to their place. I made that a rule.

They never came to my hotel, I always went to them. That was one of the things that made it fun-you got to spend time in their world. Mind you, most of them lived in tiny studio flats full of stupid stuffed toys with posters of Korean boy bands on their walls, but that’s not the point. I was getting to see real girls in their own homes and I was getting to bang them for free.

I slept with students, teachers, three air hostesses, half a dozen nurses, and even a policewoman; and yes, she wore the uniform and handcuffed me to the bed. I never told any of them my real name and I kept changing SIM cards because I didn’t want then phoning me after the event. Besides, there was no need to make any return visits because there was a constant supply of fresh girls coming on line. Word was spreading that the website was a great way for Thai girls to meet Western guys and new girls were logging on every day.

After a few weeks, though, even the thrill of free sex began to pale because there was just so much of it, and I was actually looking forward to starting work. But the week before I was due to leave Thailand, I found myself browsing through the Craigslist website, looking for something, or someone, to do. I checked the Women Seeking Men page but didn’t see anything there that I fancied, so I went through the Erotica section, but they were all pay-for-play birds. If I wanted to pay for sex I’d rather pick up a dancer from Soi Cowboy.

Then I went to Casual Encounters and, bingo, there it was: ‘Fancy A Gang Bang In Pattaya?’ I wasn’t sure whether the offer was giving or receiving, but I clicked on it anyway. The first thing I saw was a picture of a fit Asian bird, probably Thai, with great tits and hair down to her waist and a black strip across her eyes and nose so you couldn’t see her face, but the body was out of this world. Fit as a butcher’s dog, as my dear old dad used to say.

It was hard to judge her age. She wasn’t a teenager, but she could have been anywhere between twenty and thirty and didn’t look as if she’d had kids.

She was lying on a bed, her back against the headboard and her legs akimbo, her modesty shielded by a small white towel that wasn’t much bigger than a flannel. It was her husband that had placed the advert. He said that his wife had a fantasy about being gang-raped and he wanted to film her being shagged by half a dozen or so blokes and that anyone interested in helping to realize his wife’s dream should get in touch by email.

Alarm bells were ringing because I couldn’t think that any man with a wife like that would want another man going near her, never mind inside her, but I opened up a fake Gmail account and sent him a message saying that I was interested and asking for more information.

He got back to me later that night with another photograph of his wife, fully naked this time, but with another black strip across her face, and a list of questions. Where was I from? What colour was I? How old was I? How much did I weigh? And he wanted a photograph, though I didn’t have to show my face. I did, though, have to show my dick, which seemed a fair enough request considering what I was hoping to do with it.

So, I answered the questions fairly truthfully, though I did knock four years off my age and a couple of kilos off my weight. I took a photograph with the webcam of my laptop and made damn sure that I was holding my breath and attached that to the email. An hour later, he emailed me back with a mobile phone number and asked me to call him.

I went out and bought a new AIS SIM card and tapped out his number.

He was English, quite well spoken, bit of a Hooray Henry, I thought. He said his name was Bill and I said I was Jonah. My private joke; I said I was hoping to have a whale of a time, but he didn’t seem to get my attempt at humour.

He had more questions for me, basically checking that I was who I said I was. I guess he didn’t want a big sweaty African turning up to do the dirty with his nearest and dearest, which I guess under the circumstances was only natural. Eventually, it was my turn to ask a question, and to be honest I only had the one. Why?

It turned out that his wife had a bit of a past. She used to be a go-go dancer in one of the racier Nana Plaza bars and had been working for five years or so before he met her. In his mind, he was a white knight, riding to her rescue. I didn’t see it that way, of course. Five years working in a go-go bar meant she’d probably been with more than a thousand men. Sloppy seconds didn’t even come into it.

Anyway, she’d been the perfect wife for going on ten years apparently, a whore in the bedroom and a three-star chef in the kitchen. (Or maybe it was the other way around.) But recently she’d seemed unhappy, and after he’d got her drunk one night, it all came tumbling out. She missed the life, she missed having sex with strangers, and having just turned thirty-five, she was worried that men no longer wanted her. She didn’t look thirty-five in the photographs, I have to say. I mentioned that to the guy and he agreed, saying his wife spent a lot of time in the gym and the beauty parlour.

The news of his wife’s unhappiness hit Bill hard, but she explained that it wasn’t about him, she loved him and never thought about being unfaithful, but she had this ache, this craving, that just wouldn’t go away. He didn’t say who first came up with the idea, but between them, they arrived at a solution. One night, with half a dozen guys. All strangers. For that one night, she could do whatever she wanted, as many times as she wanted, and her husband would video it so that she would always have the pictures to relive the memory.

It was the first time that he had mentioned a video and I said I didn’t want to be filmed, but he said all the men would be wearing masks. He explained that his wife didn’t want to see the faces of the men that she was having sex with, and also it meant that the men wouldn’t be worried about being recognised, which suited me fine. Like I said, it’s a small world. I asked him if our dicks would also be wearing masks, and he said that was up to the guys. Condoms would be optional because everyone would have to email him a medical certificate saying that they were free of all sexually transmitted diseases.

He asked me if I was still interested and I said I was, and that’s when he gave me the details of where and when. It was that coming Friday, which suited me just fine because on the Sunday I was flying to Singapore to start the new job. The next day, I went and paid a doctor five hundred baht for a medical certificate. The doctor didn’t even bother asking for a blood test. I emailed a copy to Bill and he emailed me back to say that he looked forward to meeting me. I couldn’t get over how polite he was, considering that I was going to be banging his wife and all.

Bill said that he’d booked a suite at the Sandy Spring Hotel in Pattaya, not far from the beach. On Friday, I paid a taxi driver one and a half thousand baht to drive me from Bangkok and had him drop me on the beach road. I told him that if he waited for me, he could drive me back in a few hours and he agreed to wait. He gave me a card with his mobile phone number, and I walked up Soi 13.

The event was due to kick off at eight o’clock in the evening and would end whenever Bill’s wife said that she’d had enough. I was early, so I walked across Second Road and had a coffee and a sandwich in Starbucks as I watched elderly overweight sex tourists in vests and shorts waddle by with their bargirls. Pattaya is a funny old place, where every man is handsome and every girl is available-at a price. It’s also one of the suicide capitals of the world, where membership of the Pattaya Flying Club is achieved by taking a dive off a high-rise balcony, usually the result of a broken heart or an empty bank account and probably both.

At five to eight on the dot, I swallowed a Viagra tablet and wandered back down Soi 13 and into the hotel. I don’t normally use chemicals to get an erection, but I was a bit apprehensive about performing in front of an audience. A uniformed busboy smiled and wished me a good evening. The pretty girls at reception nodded and smiled as I headed for the lift.

Riding up to the eighth floor, I took my mask out of my pocket. The first mask I’d bought was a rubber Bin Laden from a stall on Sukhumvit Road, not far from Nana Plaza, but it was bloody uncomfortable and I could hardly see out of it. I ended up buying a cowboy set from the toy department of the Emporium department store that included a small black mask to be worn when robbing stagecoaches. It was small and I had to loosen the elastic, but I figured that so long as it covered my eyes and nose it’d be fine. I slipped on the mask as I walked down the corridor and knocked on the door of Room 807.

The door was opened by a big man wearing a dark blue robe and a stocking over his head. I tried not to laugh as he offered me his hand and introduced himself. It was Bill. I shook his hand and he closed the door behind me. He was holding a clipboard and he ticked off my name. He had a huge beer gut, the pasty white flesh flecked with blue veins like a ripe Stilton, and knobbly knees that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an elderly elephant. The fact that the stocking was squashing his features made it difficult to work out how old he was, but I guess he’d be in his fifties, early sixties maybe.

‘Am I the first?’ I asked, looking around. There was a sofa and a table and a large television but no other guests.

‘You’re the fifth; the others are in the bedroom,’ he said, nodding at a door. ‘This is where I meet and greet, and check that you’re who you say you are. I have to be careful,’ he said, in his plummy voice that made me think of afternoon cream teas and croquet on the lawn. ‘I wouldn’t want the wrong sort of person turning up.’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, though frankly I wasn’t sure who the wrong sort of person would be when one was talking about gang-banging one’s nearest and dearest.

He opened a door and took me through to the bedroom, where four men were standing around a cupboard laden with drinks. There was a short, stocky guy in a fake Lacoste shirt and baggy blue jeans wearing a black ski mask; a tall thin guy in a Chang Beer T-shirt and shorts wearing a rubber wolfman mask; a youngish guy in a tracksuit wearing a cardboard mask with a dog’s face; and a guy in a Spiderman mask who had taken off his shirt to reveal the hairiest chest I’d ever seen. He looked like an ape, and his bow legs and close-cropped hair added to the effect. They all nodded at me.

They moved aside and Wolfman waved at the bottles of booze. ‘Free drinks,’ he said, nodding at Bill. ‘Courtesy of our host.’ I picked up a bottle of Tiger beer. Next to the booze there was a bowl filled with blue Viagra tablets, another filled with small white tablets that I guessed were Ecstasy, and several smaller bowls which could only have been cocaine. By the bed was a large bowl of condoms and two tubes of KY Jelly.

‘We’re waiting for one more, but I think we can get started,’ said Bill, looking at his clipboard. ‘Why don’t you guys get ready.’

The guy in the ski mask took off his shirt and jeans. He wasn’t wearing underwear and he already had a huge erection, which I figured was probably chemically-induced. The Hairy Guy took off his trousers to reveal legs that were just as hairy as his chest.

‘I don’t see your wife,’ I said, popping the cap off my bottle of beer.

‘She’s in the bathroom,’ he said.

‘She bloody well better be,’ said the guy in the ski mask. He had a Scottish accent. Glasgow maybe. As he turned to look at the bathroom door, I saw that he had a blue and white cross of St Andrew tattooed on his arse.

There was a knock on the door and Bill went through to the other room with his clipboard. I took off my shirt and trousers and hung them up in the wardrobe. I was wearing my Union Jack underwear, flying the flag. The Scotsman grinned and raised his beer bottle in salute. ‘Nice,’ he said. I hoped that he was talking about my boxer shorts and not my growing erection. I sipped my beer and tried to look as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be in a hotel bedroom with four naked men.

Bill returned with a short man in a linen suit and a pink shirt, his face hidden behind a fancy black mask that was studded with fake diamonds.

‘Bon soir, so sorry I am late,’ he said. He had a French accent and a large square chin with a dimple in the centre.

‘Aye, better late than never,’ growled the Scotsman, scratching his backside. ‘Can we get started? Let the dogs see the rabbit?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Bill, putting his clipboard onto the cupboard. ‘Just to recap the rules, gentlemen. Basically, everything goes unless my wife objects. Her word is final. If she wants to stop, you stop. If she doesn’t want to do anything, you don’t do it. She has a safe word. Two words, actually.

High Heels. If she says “High Heels”, then you know she’s serious. I hope that’s clear. If she says “Stop!” or “No”, then you can ignore it, but if she follows it with “High Heels”, then you have to stop. Are we all clear on that?’

He picked up a small video recorder. It was a Sony, an HD version that stored its video on memory cards.

We all nodded. The Frenchman took off his clothes and then helped himself to a glass of wine. He was overweight and his skin was peppered with small brown moles, but he seemed totally at ease. I couldn’t help but compare dicks. I’d have to say that I was about average, and that Dog Mask was the biggest by far. His member would have looked more at home on a medium-sized Shetland pony. The Scotsman’s was the smallest, about the size, shape and colour of a small carrot. Not that size is important, right? I’m joking. Of course, size is important, and any girl who tells you different is lying.

Bill pointed at the bowl of condoms by the bed. ‘I got all your medical certificates and I can assure you that my wife is clean, so it’s up to you whether or not you use condoms.’

‘Hate the things,’ growled the Scotsman.

‘Right,’ said Bill, ‘let’s get the show on the road.’ He went over to the bathroom, knocked on the door and opened it. ‘We’re ready for you now, honey,’ he said.

She walked out of the bathroom. I’d been worried that perhaps the photographs I’d seen had been Photoshopped, but if anything she was even sexier than in the pictures. She was tall for a Thai, but the stiletto heels made her look taller, with very white skin and long black hair that could have been used in a shampoo commercial, made even blacker by the contrast of the white towel robe she was wearing.

She had amazing cheekbones and as she slid off the robe I could see that her skin was totally unblemished, smooth and soft and white with absolutely no stretch marks or tramp stamps. She’d definitely never had kids, but I suspected that she’d had a bit of work on her face because her nose was bigger than you find on a Thai, even a Thai-Chinese, which she obviously was. She smiled at us and then bowed her head and waied us, putting her hands together as if in prayer. God, that was sexy, seeing as how she was totally naked, except for the shoes.

Her breasts were magnificent, large and full and proud and her stomach was as flat as a washboard. Bill hadn’t lied about his wife regularly visiting the gym-you didn’t get a body like that by accident.

She lay down on the bed, a sly smile on her face. The Scotsman made a whooping noise and jumped onto bed and thrust his groin at her face. She opened her mouth and took him straight away, clawing at his chest with her long nails, her eyes wide open. I swear her eyes were sparkling with pleasure as she worked on him, moaning softly.

The Frenchman growled like a dog and threw himself on the bed and pawed at her breasts. Bill had his video camera on and was filming away. I moved forward but the Hairy Guy stepped forward at the same time and we banged into each other. We both laughed nervously, I guess neither of us were used to touching another naked man.

‘Age before beauty,’ I said, waving for him to go first.

‘Pearls before swine,’ he said, stepping back. He had a Man-chester accent and sounded a bit like Noel Gallagher from Oasis.

I grinned and got onto the bed. Bill’s wife grinned and moved over to suck me, still holding on to the Scotsman’s dick with her right hand. Her nails were long and painted blood red. I gasped as she took me into her mouth. She was good. My God, she was good.

It went on for hours. Hours and hours. Thank God for the Viagra. She was insatiable and so were we. She took us one at a time, two at a time, three at a time, and at one point she was on top of me while the Scotsman was in her arse, she was pleasuring Wolfman with her mouth while she had a hand on two other guys as if she was using ski poles. I don’t know where the sixth guy was, but I know where Bill was, standing on the bed with his video camera, capturing it all for posterity.

There wasn’t a single thing that she refused to do. Guys came inside her, over her, in her hair, up her arse, in her mouth. She begged for more, she wanted it harder, faster, longer. She mewed like a cat, yelped like a puppy in pain, and bellowed like an angry bull.

Pretty much every hour, Bill would stop and change the memory card in his camera and by midnight, there were four cards on the cupboard by the door.

We started taking breaks. The Scotsman kept going out on the balcony for a cigarette, the Frenchman kept taking showers, Wolfman did a line of cocaine once every thirty minutes, as regular as clockwork. I took another Viagra and four lines of coke and drank half a dozen beers. One of the guys, the one in the dog mask, gave up before midnight. He was having trouble breathing and said he was having chest pains. He’d taken two Viagra and it was a laugh seeing him trying to pull his trousers on over an erection the size of a policeman’s truncheon. I don’t remember him leaving because by then, I was doing Bill’s wife from behind, pounding into her and grunting like a pig while the Scotsman slapped her backside and called her a whore and the Hairy Guy was thrusting in and out of her soft, wet mouth.

There was a lot of name-calling going on, I remember that. We were bastards, we were shits, we were rapists, we were swine. She was a bitch and a cow, a whore and worse.

She was bathed in sweat like a racehorse that had been ridden too hard, and by midnight her eyes were glazed and her mouth wide open, but she wouldn’t stop, she wanted more and more and more and wouldn’t let us stop even if we’d wanted to.

At one point, just after midnight, she went out onto the balcony and stood looking out over the sea as we took it in turns to screw her from behind.

She wailed like a banshee all the time and I was sure that anyone walking down Beach Road must have been able to hear her. When the last guy had finished, I thought that would be the end of it, but she went back into the room and gave her husband a long, slow, blow job while he filmed her and then she lay on the bed again and started swearing at us, telling us all that we were babies and that if we were real men we’d rape her and make her beg for us to stop. We took her at her word and for the next hour, she was raped in every way that a man can rape a woman.

I left about two o’clock in the morning. I was exhausted, I was drained, and I was sore. By then it was just the Scotsman, the Frenchman and the Hairy Guy still at it, and she was taking everything they could throw at her.

No one said goodbye or God bless; in fact, no one even looked at me, they were too busy banging Bill’s wife. On the way out, I helped myself to one of the memory cards. I know it was wrong, I know it was stealing, but I figured what the hell: I was one of the stars, so I deserved a memento. And I figured that Bill had more than enough video to look at over the coming years.

I took the mask off as I went into the lift, dropped it into a garbage bin on the street, and five minutes later, I was back in my taxi heading towards Bangkok, barely able to keep my eyes open.

The following week, I started my new job in Singapore. I worked long hours and put everything into the job, knowing that it’s vital to give a good impression from day one. Other than the occasional visit to Orchard Towers-known locally as the Four Floors Of Whores-to pick up some paid-for company, I was practically a born-again virgin. After a week, I found myself checking Craigslist to see if Bill would tout his wife again. I used to watch the video, too, and it was almost as exciting as being there. In fact, it became a regular thing-I’d get home at midnight, after the London Stock Exchange had closed, open a bottle of beer, lie on the sofa and watch it on my big screen TV. I have to admit that I tried calling Bill’s mobile number, but it had been disconnected and I sent him an email asking if he’d thought of arranging a rematch, but it went unanswered.

To be honest, and like I said, everything I’m telling you is God’s own truth, I couldn’t get that night out of my head. It was the best sex I’ve ever had, bar none. I don’t know if it was the masks, the cocaine, the fact that I was there with strangers, or because Bill’s wife was so enthusiastic, but nothing I’d ever done before or after came close. The memory, and the video, began to torment me, reminding me of what I’d never be able to have again. I realized that no matter what I did in the future, nothing would come close to the sexual experience that I’d had with Bill’s wife. And then, two months after I’d started work in Singapore, they came back into my life, Bill and his wife, in a way that I’d never have expected.

The company arranged to fly over its top clients for a two-day presentation in Singapore-putting them up at the five-star Fullerton Hotel by the mouth of the Singapore River and taking them to the city’s best bars and restaurants while promoting what we thought were the best investments in the region. We’d arranged company visits and interviews with government officials and economists and had several presentations and demonstrations.

It’s something most brokers do; the clients get an all expenses-paid holiday and we get to pitch sales to them face to face.

The presentation started on Thursday which gave our guests the option of extending their holidays over the weekend if they so wished-at our company’s expense, of course. The guests arrived during the day and our first official get-together was in the evening in a suite at the Fullerton. Elegant waiters glided around with trays of canapes and vintage champagne flowed.

I was munching on a piece of smoked salmon on a miniature bagel when I saw them.

I didn’t recognise Bill at first because the last time I’d met him, he’d been wearing a stocking over his face, but there was no mistaking his drop-dead gorgeous wife. She was wearing a black dress, low cut to show off her amazing breasts and cut several inches above the knees to accentuate her fabulous legs. She had on stiletto heels and was carrying a tiny gold handbag; around her neck was a thin gold chain with a very large diamond and on her wrist was a diamond-studded Rolex. Pretty much every man turned to look at her as she walked into the room on Bill’s arm. Bill was wearing a matching Rolex and a black Hugo Boss suit. He was in his late fifties and without the stocking, he was a good-looking guy in an Alec Baldwin sort of way, though with more grey at his temples.

He strode over to one of our company’s top executives and shook his hand, then introduced his wife. She shook his hand, too, and smiled with her soft, warm mouth. I felt myself grow hard as the memories flooded back. Her standing on the balcony, moaning into the wind as we pounded into her from behind. I shivered.

‘She’s something, isn’t she?’

I turned to see Robert Tam smiling at me. ‘Bloody lovely,’ I said. ‘Who’s the guy?’

‘Bill Mayweather,’ he said. ‘He’s based in Dubai. Runs an investment fund for one of the sheiks. He’s on a percentage, and he’s worth millions. Do you want an introduction?’

‘You know him?’

‘Known him for years,’ said Robert. He sipped his champagne and smacked his lips. ‘We don’t do much business with him though. He has his favourites and it’s bloody difficult to get into his inner circle.’

‘I might be able to work some magic on him though,’ I said. I could feel my heart pounding. Handled the right way, the memory card that I’d taken from the Sandy Spring Hotel could be just the magic I’d need to persuade good old Bill to let me into his inner circle.

‘He’s immune,’ said Robert. ‘Always cuts a deal in his favour, takes no prisoners, that’s why the Arabs love him.’

I swirled my champagne around as I stared at Bill’s wife’s legs and her cute backside. I wanted to tell Robert what I’d done to her and what she’d done to me, but that was a secret best kept between me, her, and Bill. ‘I think I might have some leverage,’ I said.

‘Leverage?’ Robert chuckled. He gestured with his glass. ‘Bill’s wife, you mean?’

‘What?’ I turned to look at him, my mouth open.

‘Forget about it, everybody knows about her,’ said Robert.

‘They do?’

Robert nodded. ‘Everybody knows, but nobody says anything. It’s up to him, right? You make your own bed and you lie in it.’

I nodded, but my mind was whirling. How the hell did everyone know what had happened at the Sandy Spring Hotel? ‘I guess so,’ I said.

‘Beautiful. Sexy as hell.’

‘Thai,’ I said. ‘Thai-Chinese, probably.’

‘All the best ones are,’ he said, and I frowned, not understanding what he meant. He didn’t notice my confusion and carried on talking as he looked her up and down. ‘She used to work at Casanova’s, the bar in Nana Plaza,’he said. ‘One of the star turns, apparently.’

I almost choked. I knew the Casanova Bar. Knew of it, but had never been outside. The aggressive ladyboys with too much make-up and enormous silicon breasts meant that I tended to hurry by with my eyes averted. I’d never been a fan of ladyboys.

‘Bill met her about ten years ago, before she’d had anything done.

Basically, she was a guy with long hair back then.’ Robert chuckled and looked around to make sure that no one else could hear him. ‘He paid for the lot. Hormones for the skin, new breasts, plastic surgery on the face, collagen in the lips, and then finally…’ He made a snipping gesture with his right hand. ‘She had the chop. Or he had the chop. Had it done in Switzerland by one of the top surgeons in the world. Apparently it’s as good as the real thing, except for the old-lubrication problem.’

Lubrication? That’s right; that would explain the KY Jelly by the bed.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Robert, gripping my shoulder. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

‘Anyway, there’s no leverage there. Everybody knows. It’s the secret that everyone knows and no one mentions. You make your own choices in life, don’t you?’

I nodded. Yes, that’s absolutely what we do. We make choices and we live with them.

‘She’s fit though, isn’t she?’ I nodded. Yes, she was fit.

‘I’m not sure I could ever give her one, though,’ said Robert, slapping me on the back. ‘Not knowing that she used to be a guy. What about you?

Could you give her one?’

‘Nah,’ I said.‘Never happen.’

‘There are those that say no one screws like a ladyboy,’ said Robert, gripping my shoulder. ‘They say no one knows what a guy wants better than another guy. What do you think? Think that’s true?’

‘Nah, I like girls,’ I said, but I was finding it difficult to speak. My mouth had gone bone dry. I drained my glass, but my throat was still dry.

‘Don’t we all?’ said Robert. ‘Still, each to his own. If Bill’s happy, that’s all that matters. Whatever rocks your boat, right?’

‘Right.’ And with that, Robert slapped me on the back again and went over to talk to Bill and his wife.

So, that was that. Any thoughts of using the memory card as leverage against Bill went straight out of the window. I was confused, though. Damn confused. The only thing that I could think about just then was that the most intense sexual experience of my life had been in a room with eight other men.

And here’s the thing, the thing that worries me most: I didn’t care. I really didn’t care. The fact that Bill’s wife was a transsexual didn’t worry me one little bit. I still watched and rewatched the video. I still visited the Craigslist website hoping that Bill would arrange a rematch. I still relived that night in the Sandy Spring Hotel-every moment, every position, every orgasm.

I spent so much time daydreaming that my work went downhill and Robert had me in for a chat to say that unless things turned around, he’d have to let me go. I didn’t give him the chance. I applied for a job with a broker in Bangkok and got it. It was half the salary and no accommodation allowance, but that didn’t matter. I just wanted to be in Bangkok, just in case Bill’s wife ever wanted to relive the experience.

And that’s why I’m here, sitting in Business Class and drinking this very reasonable champagne, heading back to the Land Of Smiles. I’m sure that one day, sooner or later, Bill’s wife is going to want to do it again, and when she does, I want to be there. And if she doesn’t…well, maybe I’ll swing by Casanova’s and see what’s on offer there.