Bungee Love

Each time I saw Noona, there was some new twist to learn. These eventually became so numerous and ironclad that I called them Noona’s Rules. Here they are. Rule #1: “I never kiss  . . . ever.” Noona was adamant that she did not know where other people’s mouths had been, and she did not want to take any chances catching anything, so don’t even put your mouth close to her mouth. Rule #2: “Always use condom for sex and smoke (blow job).” No exceptions. Actually, this was a relief to me too, because I didn’t want to catch anything from Noona, and I wasn’t sure where her mouth had been. Rule #3: “Don’t even think about putting anything in my asshole.” Enough said. Rule # 4: “All men are liars. I don’t believe anything they say.” In her entire life, Noona had only experienced negative relationships with men. She did not know when someone was being nice, so she interpreted acts of kindness suspiciously as potential exploitation or lies. It gave me an idea about what her adolescence was like, but when you think about it, a whore in Thailand probably hears more lies and promises than anyone in the world. Rule #5: “You cannot know the future, so don’t worry about it. You cannot undo the past, so don’t talk about what happened.” This rule was a mix of Thai Buddhism and Noona’s nihilism, but it was a simple way of keeping a focus on the present and avoiding feelings of regret or hope. Rule #6: “I don’t want a boyfriend or husband ever.” This kept everyone at arm’s length and made it clear that selling sex was a job, and it was for money, not feelings. Rule #7: “Don’t use vibrators or sex toys. Why I need toy when you got tongue and cock?” I had no answer to that question, and many others that she posed, so our conversations often ended abruptly with my mouth half-open. Rule #8: “People are killing the earth and we all going to die, so what is the point of anything?” This was the fatalism that Noona used to further conceal her emotions and prevent her from caring about anyone or anything. It was behind every scowling “What the fuck?” comment that she made. Maybe there were more rules, but these seemed to be the main axioms, and they covered the corollaries, such as “Money first,” “It’s only business,” “Eat, sleep, fuck,” “Nobody ever know me,” and “All men same-same.” You could analyze it many ways. Maybe it was Noona’s defense, a passive aggression against men and things that happened to her and the things she could not control. She was sexually compliant with almost anything yet rarely indicated she enjoyed sex. “It my job,” she said. “I must do.” Her rules gave her power and some protection against emotional involvement, as well as HIV and STDs. They also gave her simple direct rules for behaving in her role that differentiated that role from the rest of her life. Indeed, she was perfectly schizophrenic about life as a whore and her other life. The former was a temporary bad girl, and the latter was an enduring good Thai girl. Noona could never figure out which one she really was, and she seemed resigned to flip-flop from one to the other. It made her unpredictable, and it drove us both crazy.