I Remember it Well

Thai Guys promotes a rather interesting little tome called Friendly Siam, Thailand in the 1920's as a Gay guide to Thailand in the 1920s. When I asked for a copy at my friendly Bookazine store the lady serving me asked where I had heard of this book as it was one of their biggest sellers - God, we chase the prurient even of 80 years ago! I can't believe that much interest in 'history'! Fellas, the bottoms whose photos are in that book have been dead for decades! It is like my favourite porn collection of the 1970s. They must be 65 now if they are still with us but captured in their prime - we should be so lucky never to age like those yellowing photos!

Let me, however, take you back just twenty years or so in fabulous Bangkok, a time a lot look back on with great affection and nostalgia. The past always seems better than the present. Then again we were younger but they weren't!

The Suriwongse Hotel, whose coffee shop (with those coffee pots - still doing service today - where the liquid within goes anywhere but in the cup) never closed, was the main Gay hotel. The most peevish reception staff ever to grace a hotel. Mirrors at the head of each bed with a discreet green or pink curtain which could be pulled if you wanted to view yourself in action. A bottom sheet on top of a mattress better not looked at and a chenille bedspread laundered to within an inch of its thread and probably still doing service today. Discreet scraps of paper left in the door at dawn to flutter to the floor as you exited as a sign to the cleaning staff that your room was ready for their daily attention. Some never left the hotel, being constantly entertained in-house - on at least one memorable occasion by a lad on his knees under the table in the coffee shop! The Malaysia Hotel had not come into its own being more a place for back-packers and a somewhat sordid younger crowd more on the look-out for ganja than Gay.

There was a school on the corner of Silom Road and Rama IV where Robinson's Department Store now stands where some of my less salubrious acquaintances cruised. It is said school children used to do their homework in the Suriwongse Hotel coffee shop (as they do in McDonald's and Starbucks today) but I never saw that so it is anecdotal but quite believable!

We ate at The Thai Room (where a beautiful, dark, doe-eyed boy once sent me a note which began "my name is Mud". I wallowed in Mud for a few days thereafter!), Tip Top, Mizu's, The Red Door and, later in the evening, Talad Nam. All still exist but as shadows of their former glory, although Talad Nam seems to have put up its shutters very recently.

"Entertainment" was to be found at Twilight (will it ever fade into night?), Golden Cock (still crowing) Super A, Super Lek (with us still), Lucky (some were, being serviced in the shadows of the public area by eager mouths) and a couple of other 'baby' bars in Soi Anuman Ratchathon which still exist today in various changed identities.

There was another collection of bars in Saphan Kwai which catered more to the Asian crowd. One of my favourite bars was there - Midnight Cowboy. The boys were the gangly Issan youth of varying degrees of loveliness but the highlight was the show. It was not the usual sexual revelry but rather a variety show put on by the boys - 'let's put on a show' type. On one memorable night 20 young boys paraded in silver top hats, silver bow ties, canes and silver lame g-strings tap-dancing 'Top Hat and Tails' - delightful, hilarious, unforgettable!.

In Silom Soi 2, DJ Station had yet to make an appearance. Where Top Man's GoGo Bar now resides was The Garden Bar, a home for the young, quite young in those days before the pedophile witch-hunts. By midnight these boys were like petulant children too tired to behave. Maybe they just wanted to be spanked. They graduated to Harry's Bar when they came of age!

And the much missed Harry's Bar which was where Espresso is now located. Maybe something that outgrew its time but for many fond memories remain. The boys were freelancers but under the umbrella of the management so they felt secure, as did their clients. There was a small dance floor and, as usual, a drag show. When Harry's closed at about 12.30am we wended our way upstairs to Ciros via a tortuous route which never seemed the same twice. This bar never worked as far I as was concerned. The migration somehow took away from the spirit that was Harry's.

Silom Soi 4 was a mecca for the Gay tourist from around the world. Lonely Boy and Apollo Bars were popular GoGo bars which some returning tourists pine for yet.

But the place best known world-wide was THE ROME CLUB. In the middle of Bangkok a disco called The Rome Club, an anachronism at best. Owned by Manuel, a Spaniard who always looked like some-one had blighted his life, and his Thai partner Tirah who never showed much emotion either. If two people deserve the highest pedestal in the Gay annals of Bangkok history it is these two stalwarts who, irrespective of their inglorious demise, were at the top of the Gay heap for close on 20 years. Thank you Manuel and Tirah, wherever you are now, for giving me, and many, many others, some of our most fabulous nights.

If you were a Thai and alone you paid an entrance fee of 50 baht for your first drink. If you had a farang on your arm there was no cover charge. The line-up outside was spectacular - take your pick. On entering this a palace of lights you were confronted with a large replica statue of Michelangelo's David, a then and still Gay icon, of wonderful proportions but more closely identified artistically with the Florentine Renaissance than Ancient Rome. Oh, to have known the soldier who posed for that, as I feel certain Michelangelo did!

There was not the glitter and layout some may remember of its later inglorious past. Those columns were always a feature! At first the second floor was enclosed, a place where one could sit and enjoy company. This was later replaced with the mezzanine floor where you could look down on the action and select from on high. From this level you could also look out into the building opposite where factory fodder slaved into the wee hours of the morning on less money a day than we would have spent on a drink that night - the tragedy of Thailand then as now.

We used to trickle in from 10pm onwards. The lights played languidly on the floor, no-one danced. Some times a tourist tried to liven up the place but it was not time. At about 11pm, Tirah strode across the floor and took his place at the turntable and the place instantly came alive. That is no exaggeration, from nothing on the dance floor to crowded in seconds. This man must be considered to be amongst the world's greatest DJs. From some 45rmp vinyl he created an atmosphere which transported without the use of other substances.

The customers took their cue and danced like dervishes caught up in the wonders of Michael Jackson, The Village People, Boney M, KC and the Sunshine Band, The Bee Gees, Donna Summer - disco at its peak. This all disappeared with the advent of the video clip which distracted from the emotions - the first step in the decline. Tirah giving up his honoured place was the true end of the glory that was Rome - the barbarians of the video-clip had won.

The show was at midnight. Selections had been made, we pushed forward to look at the drag artistes enthrall us with style and grace and a certain simplicity. Hands clasped to the boy we had selected, or discreet touchings as the selection process finalised. The show went for 20 minutes or so, then a little more dancing, cheating on closing time, before we left with the angel of the night maybe to Talad Nam to eat upstairs in the dark dankness while we ourselves were eaten by mosquitoes.

One of the things I most look back on with appreciation that it closed, I seem to remember, at about 12.30am which meant you got the boy, did the damage and still had a good night's sleep and could do some sightseeing the next day. Any of you seen the Grand Palace or Ayutthia recently?

If it was the rainy season it was most likely we would walk knee deep in water (and other possible unmentionables) down the Soi then back to the hotel, through a more civilized, slightly less aggressive, Patpong Market selling much the same stock it carries now - possibly it is the same stock!

The one thing we did not have to search for in those halcyon days were condoms. Oh - the bliss of that time - we were still innocent, so innocent, and blissfully unaware of the future consequence of our own actions.

Ah yes, I remember it well.