You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Stephen Leather <strong>Private</strong> <strong>Dancer</strong><br />
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
I'd been taking Thai lessons at the American University Alumni School and I knew that the<br />
teachers there earned less than Joy, but they all seemed to have quite a high standard of living.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y earned about twelve thousand baht a month and all were well dressed, lived in decent<br />
apartments, and several had cars and mobile telephones.<br />
Joy's salary was about five thousand baht a month. Six thousand including the money I gave<br />
her so she didn't have to dance naked. <strong>The</strong> bar gave her a hundred baht each time I paid her bar<br />
fine, so that was another thousand baht a month, minimum. She normally got five or six drinks a<br />
day, so that was another four thousand baht a month. That meant that from the bar alone she got<br />
eleven thousand baht, almost the same as the teachers earned. But I gave Joy another fifteen<br />
thousand baht a month. Even if no one else paid her bar fine, Joy was earning twenty six<br />
thousand baht a month, more than a nurse, several times more than a policewoman, not much<br />
less than a doctor. So where did the money go?<br />
Asking her just resulted in shrugs and shakes of the head. She didn't know. Bangkok was<br />
expensive. She had to get a taxi to and from work, and each journey cost more than a hundred<br />
baht. Six thousand baht a month in taxi fares? That was crazy, I said. Why didn't she get the bus?<br />
She said a bus would take too long, and it would be dangerous at night. I asked her why she<br />
didn't get a room closer to Nana Plaza and she said that all her friends were in Suphan Kwai, and<br />
so were her sisters. She had to pay for a motorcycle, she said. Five thousand baht every month.<br />
And she had to send money back to Surin to help her family. Discussions about money always<br />
seemed to go around in circles, getting nowhere. One thing was for sure - she never had enough,<br />
no matter how much I gave her.<br />
JOY<br />
I don't know where my money goes, I really don't. It slips through my fingers like water. I tried<br />
explaining to Pete, but he doesn't understand me. How could he? He's a rich farang, he can't<br />
know what it's like to be from a poor family, to have nothing. How much did he have to pay for<br />
his ticket from England? Twenty thousand baht? Thirty thousand? And it costs him a thousand<br />
baht a night to stay at the Dynasty Hotel. That's thirty thousand baht every month. And he spends<br />
money in the bars every night. Hundreds of baht. One night he sat down with a pen and paper<br />
and asked me to tell him how much I earned and how much I spent, like he was an accountant or<br />
something. I was really offended but I didn't say anything, I tried to make a joke of it. He told me<br />
that I'd be better off if I lived closer to Zombie, but that would mean I wouldn't be near my<br />
friends. I think he wants me to sit in a room all on my own, waiting for him. He's crazy. He kept<br />
28
Change language