RAWBangkok

For all that he hasn’t been able to join us so far, my partner on this blog is Penfold.  He’s been in England for months now, and he’ll be back in Bangkok in about two weeks.  The Big Mango Bar is having their usual month-end party on the 30th of January.  It’s the birthday party for one of the owners of the bar, Daywalker, but such is the power of the Penfold persona that it has at times been co-billed as the “Welcome Back Penfold” party.

Penfold first came to my attention as a commenter on the Bangkok Bad Boy blog, which I read religiously when I first moved to Thailand.  BBB and I arrived in the Land of Smiles as residents at nearly the same time.  He began blogging in an effort to provide a site with useful and up to date information on the Bangkok nightlife.  I enjoyed his blog so much that I decided to start my own, aimed at giving a realistic picture of what it meant to live in Bangkok day-to-day as a sexpat.

Penfold is the online persona of a young Englishman, and his wit and style made him a popular commenter on the BBB site.  He and I were different sorts of people, and I never engaged him in ‘conversation’ on BBB’s blog.   I found him a bit irritating and no doubt if he had thought of me at all back then he would have found me boring.

After BBB stopped writing his blog, a lot  of his readers were at a loss for how to stay in touch with Bangkok and many of them found my Werewolf’s Lair blog as a way to fill the void.  It wasn’t Bangkok Bad Boy, but it had it’s own style and appeal;  readers often became addicted to my daily journal the way women get caught up in the unreal world of soap operas.  Penfold was one of the people who started reading me when BadBoy retired.

And so it happened that around a year ago Penfold contacted me.  I knew who he was already from his frequent comments which had littered the internet for the past year.  I knew a lot about his story from those comments.  He had publicly proclaimed that he was a young, good looking guy who had lived in Bangkok for a while without the need of working.  He explained in his comments that he lived on money from a trust fund, and that his passions in life were tattoos, drinking, women, ladyboys and working out at the gym in no particular order.

His irreverence and apparent lack of familiarity with punctuation made him an entertaining commenter to read.  Via the BBB comments he had openly told a story of his life in Bangkok coming to an abrupt end when he had written a raunchy SMS to a mate describing in detail getting massively drunk and having sex with a lady boy the previous night, then sending the email to his mother in England instead of his mate.  Mommy, who controlled the trust fund, cut off his funds and called him home.

But I, and I think thousands of others, felt sure that Penfold was a put on… a made up persona of a fat and wheelchair-bound nerd living somewhere in Wisconsin.  No one could be what Penfold claimed to be.

So I was surprised a year ago when I received an email from him saying that he was returning to Bangkok, and asking for some advice in setting up some things (specifically enrolling in a Thai language school).  I offered a fair bit of advice in a series of emails, and he, in turn, offered to buy me a beer and pay a barfine for the dancer of my choice as his way of saying ‘thank you’ for the help.

I have to say that by this time I was intrigued.  Could Penfold be for real?

We arranged to meet at the Shadow Bar in Soi Cowboy which, at that time, had just opened.  Penfold’s self-description, which I received by SMS, was that he was “23 but look 19 and I have bad highlights in my hair”.

Walking into the Shadow Bar it was immediately obvious who Penfold was.  There was only one teenager sitting in the bar with bleached hair, and the SMS description was spot on.  I prepared to have one beer and get out of the bar as fast as I could.  This tattooed hooligan was simply not “my kind of people”.

Oddly, though, once we started talking I found that he was entertaining.  Completely outrageous in his comments, he was a bit more normal, albeit funny looking, in person.  He liked football (which is what the English call soccer), pretty girls and beer.  He was back in Thailand to live with his young girlfriend — a university student — and he seemed to be here for the long haul.

I relaxed and we drank several pints.  Talk eventually, and perhaps inevitably at the time, turned to a discussion of Bangkok Bad Boy and his recently defunct blog.  This was  the common bond between Penfold and myself.  We lamented the demise of the blog and Penfold talked about how he hoped to meet BBB now that he was living in Bangkok again.  He asked if I knew him, or how to contact him.

In one of those strange coincidences that seem to be taken straight from the pages of a bad novel, Bangkok Bad Boy walked up and said hello to me.  It seems that he was drinking in the same bar, but he and I had been seated with our backs to each other, so he hadn’t spotted me till he got up to go to the toilet.

Being a high-profile online personality had taught BBB to be cautious about people knowing his real-life identity… he didn’t like people to put his physical self and his online persona together.  With this in mind, I introduced the two of them to each other without any reference to the internet.

BBB stayed with us, and the two Englishmen talked about football while I dozed off.  Eventually the conversation rolled around to go go bars and women which reignited my interest.

After 20 minutes or so, Penfold headed off to the bathroom.

During this interval, I mentioned to BBB that the guy in the toilet was one of his loyal readers and fans, who had expressed to me that he’d really like to meet the Bangkok Bad Boy.  I asked him if he’d be interested in having the connection made.

BBB spoke: “The only reader I’d be interested in meeting would be Penfold”

Werewolf spoke:  “Then you’re in luck, ’cause that’s Penfold in the toilet”

BBB:  “You’re joking!”

WW:  “I’m serious”

When Penfold’s bladder was empty and he returned to the table, I wasted no time.  I quickly let him know that the fellow on his left with the beer glass in his hand was none other than the legendary Bangkok Bad Boy.

Penfold: “You’re joking!”

WW: “I’m serious”

And so there was much smiling, shaking or hands and general all around back slapping to follow.  The night out turned into a threesome and by the time we all staggered home around 2 a.m. friendships had been formed or deepened.

In the weeks to follow I saw Penfold a few times.  He was, in fact, everything that he had always said he was. In his early twenties, he had a trust fund that came from a father who had died young.  Tattooed, pierced, hair bleached and fit, he looked like a gay punk rocker.  And the constant refrain from people who don’t know him — that he is gay — is a bit of a joke.  Penfold loves girls — or at least lusts after them.  He has a bit of fun with ladyboys, which he openly talks about, but he is definitely into girls.

I met his uni-student girlfriend.  They made a nice couple, being about the same age. She was a beautiful Thai girl with a demure personality who somehow seemed to be the perfect foil for Penfold since nothing he said or did seemed to ruffle her.

I remember the first time I met her.  Penfold suggested that the three of us meet in a go go bar on Soi Cowboy, saying that his girl liked to see beautiful girls.  As soon as we were all seated he looked at the stage at Rawhide, which was full of topless beauties, he turned to his girlfriend and called out over the blaring music, “So sweetheart, which one do you think has the best tits?”

His girlfriend wasn’t put off in the slightest.  She surveyed the ten girls and twenty tits on display and then raised her delicate hand to point at the fourth girl in line.  “I think those are the best” she said, smiling.

You’d have to meet the girl to understand the level of dissonance this created.  She had the youthful innocent look of  a flight attendant on her first day at work.  A fresh beauty that screamed that she wouldn’t know that go go bars existed, much less that she could be comfortable in one talking about the finest mammories on display.

And that is what Penfold is like.  A bit edgy, but a guy who is fun to be around.

I had too brief a time to get to be friends with him.  About 90 days after meeting him for the first time I had to travel up to Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai for 6 weeks of work.  My last night in Bangkok before heading out I went to Mojos with a group of people; Penfold among them.

Penfold and I agreed that the female guitar player was sexy in a special way that words can’t describe.  It was Penfold’s first time at Mojos, but I was a regular there.  I decided to do us both a favor and invited the guitarist (her name was Sangdow) over for a drink, thinking that Penfold probably had enough game to interest her.

It turned out that he was drunk beyond the ability to be coherent, and I ended up carrying the conversation.  Worse still, his girlfriend called about that time, and he bounced up and down from his seat taking her calls and making arrangements to see her at home in a little while.

The last time I saw Penfold he was muttering his apologies to me and Sangdow, saying he had to go.

I left for Chiang Mai the next morning.

Six weeks later I returned to Bangkok and Penfold was gone.

All the while he lived in Bangkok with his girlfriend he had enjoyed all the delights that the city offers, hitting the soapies every afternoon, as well as beer bars, go go bars and g-clubs.  He had sex with every woman and ladyboy that took his fancy.

Honestly, all of this might have been okay.  Thai girlfriends don’t really expect much better from their boyfriends.

But Penfold wrote about his adventures on the internet.  As a commenter, he never hid his activities.

And unlike Bangkok Bad Boy, he did nothing to separate his real life from cyberspace.  Everyone who met him knew right away or soon found out that Penfold was … well… Penfold.

His girlfriend wasn’t stupid.  It was a bit too much ‘in her face’ and soon after I arrived in Chiang Mai she confronted him and dumped him.

I wasn’t around to see it, but apparently Penfold lost it.  His own reports, along with BBB and others say that he began to drink non-stop and he was depressed.  He brooded over the girl and thought of nothing except how to get her back.  He became self-destructive and his life quickly unraveled.

The answer was to go back to England to home and hearth.  To normalize his life.  He went to work, cut back on the drinking, fucked a few English girls and let the sting of losing his Thai girlfriend wear off.

When I returned to Bangkok I found Penfold on-line, via a chat function.  We started ‘talking’ late in the evening (for me) after he got home from work.  For the past five months or so we’ve carried on this conversation about three nights per week.

He’s coming back to Bangkok.  Third time’s the charm?

I’ll leave it to Penfold to talk about his motivations and expectations.  He seems less brash now, or maybe I just know him better.  Bangkok has defeated him twice, and he seems to be a bit wary now… like a boxer who has been knocked out by the same opponent twice and is climbing back in the ring for a third attempt.  He seems to have a respect for his opponent born of hard earned lessons.  Bangkok — a paradise to some — may turn out to be Penfold’s recurring nightmare.

But we’ll find out soon enough.

I chatted with him again last night.   Our chats are usually pretty far-ranging and last night was no different.  It’s often easy because the things I might have told him he frequently has already read in the blog.

In last night’s conversation we used the word “edgy” and for a few minutes it became the focus of our discussion.  I commented to Penfold that I thought he was the ‘edgiest’ person I knew, and that, given my preference for stable, sedate people, it was odd that we were friends.

He replied that he thought he was a few tattoos and several piercings short of being “edgy”.

Well, it’s all a matter of perspective I guess.  He talked about the kind of girl he thinks he needs to keep him interested and excited… tattoos, piercings, funky haircut and the like.  A far cry from the innocent good girl uni student that sent him into a suicidal depression by leaving him.

His description of what he wants in a girl is so dramatically different from my own ideal that I have a hard time understanding it.  The girl he described as his idea of perfection is the type that would send me running in the opposite direction.  My Venus is one who would seemingly bore him to tears.

At least I never have to worry about him stealing my girlfriend.

But I can easily imagine him fucking her while I am at work one afternoon, then guiltily apologizing when I get home that night.

Penfold is so unique in his presentation of himself that a few months ago, while he was in England but actively commenting on some Bangkok blogs, some other readers began to question whether he was real.  They were convinced that he was simply an alter-ego of some other commenter who used the Penfold name to write outrageous shit and then laugh up his sleeve about it.

Bur Penfold is very real.

It occurred to me recently that he reminds me of someone else I know.  As a kid growing up, my best friend in the neighborhood was a kid named Jeff.  Jeff and I were as different as two people could be on the surface.  I was a good student, always at the top of my class.  Jeff struggled to get D’s instead of F’s.  Jeff was great with his hands… he could build or repair anything.  If I tried to use a wrench or a screwdriver I was likely to cut myself.

I was a nerdy looking kid with heavy glasses and a bad haircut.  Jeff was a blond and blue eyed kid who made all the girls come in their jeans when they saw him.  I was a serious and rule-abiding guy.  Jeff was a truant who laughed at rules.

Jeff looked up to me as an intelligent and disciplined person that he could never become.  I admired him as a handy guy who could attract any girl he wanted.  We were inseparable.

When I went off to university, Jeff went to work.  I came home one summer to find that he was planning to get married.  His girlfriend — fiancee –was named Debbie.  She was beautiful but a stone cold bitch.  I told not to do it.  I told him if he did, I wouldn’t come to his wedding.

I think I really hurt his feelings.

I went back to university, and the next time I came home Debbie was gone.  I don’t particularly think it was because of me — I think Jeff wised up on his own — but I was pleased.

He started spending time with a different girl that he’d known for a long time.  Her name was Teresa, and she was an angel.  Teresa wasn’t beautiful, but she was nice looking in a country-girl sort of way.  But she had a good heart and most importantly, none of Jeff’s impish behavior ever ruffled her feathers.  She just smiled indulgently or scolded him gently and kept on going.  I told him to marry her, but that was a decision he had made without the benefit of my advice.

Now, nearly twenty five years later, I get Christmas cards with photos of Jeff, Teresa and their son Jack.  Like me, Jeff is approaching 50 years old, but he still has the impish smile and light in his eyes, and Teresa still has that motherly look.

It occurred to me last week that Penfold reminds me of Jeff.  He is what I can never be — the unruly leprechaun who laughs at convention and authority.  The fun loving truant who will always be the naughty boy the girls love.  He’s Mr. Edgy to me.

Now, Mr. Edgy is on his way back to Bangkok. I’m looking forward to seeing him.  I think that spending time with Penfold takes me back to the days of my youth — the time when my best friend was the kid who always got in trouble while I never did.

Penfold is my partner on this blog.  Hopefully we’ll be able to really pump some life into RAW;  it’s an idea that can work I think.  Sort of like sweet & sour sauce. Put in Werewolf and Penfold, add water and stir.

Seventeen days and counting.