Gay Boy Thailand

- Are you police? asked a waiter in a bar in a “joking” manner.
Even in the atmosphere of spies, raids and rumours in Pattaya this was an unusual question.

- Not police, I said.
- If you police people boxing you up, said the waiter still “jokingly” and demonstrated by hammering his fists in the air.

This was not the first time I had felt suspicious looks in gay bars in Pattaya, or experienced other signs of distrust such as conversations stopping when I have sat down next to someone. But it was the first time I had been challenged directly about it.

It was an open beer bar with only a handful of retirement age farangs sitting around. No obvious crimes were underway. But for all I knew they could have their reasons to be paranoid.

Why would they think I was foreign police? Well, I have problems with my appearance. I have been told on three continents that I look wholesome. Mr. Wholesome, that’s me. Farang N once said I looked too wholesome for Silom soi 4 and in that case I must stand out even more in Sunee Plaza.

Strange. I don’t feel particularly wholesome or upright.

My age is suspicious too. I am younger than average for Pattaya but I am the right age for an agent from the FBI or the Australian Federal Police who is sent to Thailand to spy on people.

They say you become your job after a while. Maybe I still carry the air of officialdom from my work in the civil service back in Farangland? Or can they sniff that I have been to law school?

I returned the waiter’s “joke” by pretending to take handcuffs out of my pocket, put them on his wrists and declare him arrested. He thought this was funny.