Conversations With Ka
A Vignette About Sex, Religion, and International Forbidden Love
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I’d been curious about what had happened to him for quite awhile. Ka finally decided to answer my questions, in English, in his own words.
I understood enough Thai to have known for several months that something had happened with Oh’s brother that had left him with significant doubts about his ability to perform sexually with a woman. As if this poor guy needed any more strikes against him.
Oh had told me a rather colorful story regarding it last April. My husband said that in a fit of rage and self loathing, following the motorbike accident where the schoolteacher died, Ka had decided that he would never be good enough for anyone, and had castrated himself.
“He cut himself! In jail! Cannot do it again!” I think my husband’s exact words were.
Being Buddhist, perhaps Ka had taken the tenet that desire is the cause of all suffering to its extreme, logical end. Or illogical end, depending on how you look at it.
“No man, anywhere, under any circumstances, ever, would do that," My best friend Jenny messaged me regarding this. “A dude’s cock is like his first priority.”
I messaged her back that Ka had never verified Oh’s version of events. I’d overheard him talking to Kuhn Dam about it one day, and knew Ka had referred to whatever had happened as an accident. Then again, perhaps he was having second thoughts, all these years later, about a choice he’d made at a much younger age.
Ka drunk had tried to show me himself one night at the Pai Yang house.
“Gen! I want you to see!”
I shielded my eyes and looked away.
“That is inappropriate! I’m married to your brother!”
Oh was sitting right there, they’d been talking in Thai language heatedly about the subject matter. Considering my husband could light into a jealous fit of rage over the most innocent or inane comments on my part, I figured checking out his brother’s junk right in front of him might not be in my best long term survival interest. All the excuse Oh needed to put that hit out, and make it stick this time.
I did know that if Oh’s brother was attracted to me, he was doing a great job of hiding it physically at the Pai Yang house. Or maybe he just really had nothing there to hide, as Oh had told me. Call me a gambler.
Ka was sitting on the couch out in front of the one bedroom rental with his one leg propped up. With his loose threadbare shorts on, the distinctive semicircle scar on the inside of his upper thigh was showing.
“What happened?” I questioned softly, nudging his shoulder.
Ka started speaking then, “About two years ago. I drive the motorbike on Airport road back to Pai Yang house.”
“Two years ago?” Oh had to have known about this at the time. He’d never said a word to me.
“Yeah about two years. You and Kuhn Oh stay America.”
I sighed, “I know that was around the time my Grandmother Hawkins died. Me and my mom, we visit her in hospital many times. Kuhn Oh, he never tell me you have accident.”
Ka continued with his story, “I finish the job. Go to local shop, buy one Chang beer, large bottle. I not drunk.”
I nodded my head. Ka is a clear in aural terms. It means he takes on the energetic pattern of whoever he is surrounded by.
I’d noticed that, as soon as we arrived back at the Pai Yang house in February. At that time, all of the beer and whiskey bottles were carefully stacked against the side of the house. It was a large pile, but most of the labels were faded from years in the sun. The majority of the bottles I remembered being there from when Oh and Ka were building the bungalow, three and a half years before.
I have some intimate firsthand knowledge of how quickly a heavy daily drinking habit piles up. My sense was that not only was Ka not an alcoholic, as Joe had assessed, but that, while paired with the energy of his teetolar mother, he wasn’t even a daily drinker. Mar would have disapproved too much.
Ka went on, “I put the Chang beer on the hook at the front of the bike. It dark outside already. A woman, she drive the black motorbike in my area. Opposite way.”
I nodded. Because many main roads have a long distance between center dividers where you can turn around legally, many motorbike drivers decide it’s safer to drive in the far right hand shoulder to a close turnoff, opposite the main traffic. I’m sure this causes many accidents too.
Ka continued, “She don’t have the light on. I don’t see her, we hit. Not too fast speed.”
I had to ask, “Was the woman okay?”
Ka nodded, “She okay. Not problem.”
He got up from the couch and fished a Chang beer out of the trash by the side of the house. It had broken in half on the cement the night before, “But the beer bottle, it break both sides.” He showed me with the broken bottle bottom. “One side, it go in right here. They sew. Sam sip at times.”
It means he needed 31 stitches in his upper thigh. He was incredibly lucky, the broken glass had come insanely close to his femoral artery. He could have bled out.
He continued, “The other broken side, it go in here. My dick! Oy!” Ka’s choice of word for penis in English, which was most commonly referred to by Oh as hamm in Thai language, was funny to me. It was my grandfather Richard Hawkins' name. Everybody called him Dick.
I cringed thinking about the accident. I didn’t need to have a penis to know that had to hurt.
“So you go hospital,” I said. Not a question, a statement.
Ka continued, “Yes. Gen I so scared! Many blood. They have to put on me.”
He motioned with his hands, putting a mask over his face. I understood. They’d had to sedate him in the ambulance. How terrifying. Concerns about his manhood might have taken a second tier at that point. He wouldn’t have known if he was ever going to wake up again.
In a New York minute, everything can change. There’s a strange unreality about accidents. One moment you’re driving home after your job, minding your own business. A minute later, and a simple low speed crash has turned into a life altering, life threatening event.
“How long you stay in hospital?” I asked him.
“About one week,” Ka said back. Oh absolutely had to have known about this. All those hours of Skype with his family in Thai language when we stayed in Las Vegas.
“Doctors not sure if can work or not,” He told me later, referring to his penis.
Apparently the stars had to align in the heavens right. Or perhaps Ka had just needed the right incentive. I was out in front of the new rental house, getting drunk with Oh’s brother. I was sure there was something I had meant to do that day, but I’d promptly forgotten what it was. Ka had said he wanted to clear the air with me. With Oh dead there was a lot of clearing to do.
“Gen? What your idea for where you stay? You go back America stay long time? You stay this here? I can go America.” Ka said, eying his mom who was sleeping on a mat in front of the house. “But I think take time a little bit. I have to take care my Mom.”
I sighed. Mama’s boy would revert back to the mean sooner or later, I knew that. One could make a case that before her motorbike accident, Mar took care of Ka at least as much as he took care of her. You couldn’t make that case anymore, she still had almost no use of her leg and couldn’t travel without assistance.
“You have time Ka.”
I’m always some place else, this conversation was nothing new to me. Half my income seemed to go towards travel expenses for me and my family.
I drank a shot of laow khao and M-roy ha sip, and elaborated on my idea for getting Ka to America.
“Okay, I know why Kuhn Oh cannot to make tourist visa to come to America. Two reasons.”
I’d been thinking back about it after Oh’s death. Ka wrote with his finger on the cement one and two.
“The first was, because Oh don’t have a lot in Thailand. Not good job here. Not money in the bank. Have the land and motorbike, but they say not enough. They want to see many many things in Thailand so they sure you come back. Have good job, good business, land, trucks, cars. Everything put in your name.”
Ka took the shot glass and drank himself.
“Okay. Can do.”
I still wasn’t sure how, but we were working on it.
I continued, “The second reason Kuhn Oh cannot to make tourist visa, is because he married to me! They think if you have American husband or wife or boyfriend you stay with them in America 100 percent. No matter what else you say.”
Section 214-b the prospective applicant is presumed to be immigrating to the USA, unless they can prove otherwise. I considered this practice cruel. Mostly it amounted to extortion for money on all sides of the bureaucracy. Thai wives and girlfriends were sometimes left in situations where neither they, nor their children were ever allowed to set foot in their husband’s home country and meet his family. Not everyone could go through the arduous process of making a green card visa. Sometimes the man hadn’t been filing his taxes religiously, had a criminal record, or difficulty proving income and employment in the USA. She might have background problems, a previous marriage, too many children who made the income requirement too high, or other ineligibilities. These problems were frequently not realized until years had passed together, circumstances changed, and one or more children had been born into the mix. These situations could break up families by default, while many in America shrugged their shoulders indifferently, and said, “You should have known better.” I often thought that the barriers being so high to legal migration encouraged the illegal kind.
Ka poured me a shot and handed it to me.
“So I come America on tourist visa? And then can marry?” He was eying me intently.
I fell back a bit, “If you like America. Want green card same Kuhn Oh have. The only easy way to do is marry a US citizen on US soil. Can adjust status later. As long as they think true story, not just marry for make green card, then can,” I drank the shot and handed it back.
Ka seemed placated by my answers. He scratched his chin, thinking about what to say next.
“Gen. I take care my Mom. Stay here Thailand now.” He drank the shot. “So what you do?” He asked me.
Like two fish forming a circle, the sign of Pisces. I still wasn’t sure how that dynamic could work without an outside, galvanizing force rolling the ball in some direction.
I had suspected, for months and months, that Ka was a shoot the moon situation with me. I still did. For those who have never played the card game hearts, I’ll explain the terms. In the game each heart is worth one point, for a total of 13 points. Then the queen of spades is worth 13 points alone. The goal of the game is to take as few points as possible. The game ends when someone reaches 100 points, who comes in last place. The lowest score wins.
There’s one exception to the "take as few points as possible" rule in hearts. If you take every heart and the queen of spades, you’ve shot the moon. In this instance you get 0 points, and every other player gets 26 points for the hand. It’s harder to do than it sounds. If other players suspect that’s what you’re trying to do, they’ll hold a high card to take one hand. When I play, I almost always shoot the moon inadvertently, on hands where I think I’m just losing. When Eliza plays hearts on my computer, she is very good at shooting the moon, even though she doesn’t even really understand the game. Pretty cards or something. I guess a five year old's behavior patterns aren’t well understood by the PC.
I’d already considered every side of this. We’d talked about it obliquely over the months. I’d considered, despite talk to the contrary, that I might simply never be able to get Ka to the USA, no matter what I did. Either because he couldn’t make a passport or visa, or because Mar’s caretaking needs were forever too great to be able to leave her. I understood that meant periods away from him, especially in the short term while I made a plan to move to Thailand on a more permanent basis, a decade or two before my original timeline. I’d thought about what this meant for my family, especially Jasmine, and my 75 year old mother, who was in good health for her age, but was one unfortunate event away from needing full time care herself.
I’d very much considered that perhaps Ka would turn out as violent and possessive as his brother was if I entered into any type of physical union with him. Probably even more so if we screwed around, and then I tried to flee. At the end of the day that was the dealbreaker with Oh. It was a dangerous gambit.
“I teach Kuhn Oh everything,” Ka had said to me months before.
“So you taught him to terrorize his wife in front of his kids for money?” I retorted back, “Great Ka. I’ll remember that.”
I’d also thought about what the consequences might be if Ka really was gay. He might be very interested in me, as many gay men are, for the respectability having a wife and children would bring to him. But such a relationship would be a disaster in the long run. He’d quickly lose interest and pursue his deeper desires. I could only see tears for me in such an arrangement.
I’d also thought about whatever had happened to his penis. He might not be able to perform, or at the least could not produce children. I’d been hoping to keep that book open, even though I recognized it was really up to God.
I’d decided I had to take a leap of faith. Every time I made a rational, realistic choice about these matters, it had doubled and tripled the energy for the next round. And my rational choices had long stopped looking that way to any jaded outsider anyways. If he was willing, I was willing. Let’s play the hand.
I sighed, “I still think I go back America at Christmas with Eliza.” My five year old was playing with some Thai children who lived a few doors down. I was happy she seemed to be finally making friends.
Ka poured me another shot of Laow Khao with M roy ha sip, and handed it to me.
“And then what you thinking?”
I’m thinking I want to stay wherever you stay. I didn’t say that.
I sighed, “I talk to my mom about maybe moving to Thailand when she old. And Jasmine is growing up, maybe can stay with me. But I don’t know.”
Ka drank a shot of Thai whiskey himself. I moved closer to where he was sitting.
“You, Eliza my family. I come America. Sure 100 percent,” he said to me, repeating some variation he’d said at least 100 times.
I’d told Jasmine a fable that I called the cow-chicken story when she’d stayed in Thailand the month before that, shortly after Oh died, and the fanfare of his funeral had passed. I thought it summarized my experience with Ka in a nutshell.
“So the cow really wants to get to know the chicken. And the chicken really wants to get to know the cow. So they study each other’s language in secret. And then they meet one day. And the cow says ‘bak bak bak!’ at the same time as the chicken says ‘moo moo!’ And then they both look at each other and say 'Wait a minute? What?’”
My oldest daughter giggled a bit and sighed, “Yeah that sounds about right.”
There would be no screwing around this time. I’d better be serious as a heart attack.
A moment of uncertain silence passed between us. I broke it as Oh’s brother poured me another shot and handed it to me.
“Thank you. Your family, my family also, Ka.”
I drank and handed the glass back to him. We were both getting drunk in painfully short order.
Ka sighed, frustrated. I knew he was thinking about what I’d said before. He drank quickly, getting nervous again. Forming his words. It was killing me how easily I could read his thoughts.
“You sure? Can marry me in America?” He asked, looking down quickly, almost scared of my response.
I was pretty sure he wasn’t talking about a visa. I smiled. I knew that had to be getting to him.
“Yes can. Just take a little time.”
The neighboring house began playing Thai music in the background. I hadn’t heard the song before, and wasn’t sure what they were saying. Ka exhaled loudly, seeming to think deeply about what I had said. Or perhaps something in the music was getting to him.
At the end of the day, that was what attracted me so intensely to Thailand. The way coincidences and synchronicities piled up to cosmic levels in my life. Some days it just seemed like the universe moved in concert with me, pushing me this way or that. And Thais, having as a rule much greater spiritual awareness than scientific-minded westerners, seemed to accept the magic and mystery that surrounded me without looking for reasonable explanations for it. It was what it was. If the Gods say move, you move.
I’d realized, after I’d been with Oh for a little while, another aspect of what my fascination was; on a practical level, in a marriage that I was hoping would last a lifetime, my 170 IQ was going to bite me in the ass. In short, after years, or perhaps a decade or two tops, I was going to get bored with one man, doubly or triply so if he was raised in a language, culture, and circumstances similar to my own. I had managed to avoid this for years with Joe due to his storied life, and him being 22 years my senior. He simply had so much more life experience than me. But ultimately, when I pushed for marriage he had to justify all of the reasons I wasn’t good enough for it and things went south. Perhaps I’d learned all I could learn from that situation.
Being with someone from a radically different culture and circumstances, as Oh had been, gave me what I thought was a lifetime of things to learn. I’d arranged my family into one big social experiment. It was enough to keep my mind active just doing the day to day normal. My whole life was becoming one grand adventure.
Eliza ran up to us from a few doors down, followed closely by a Thai boy a little younger than her.
“Loon Ka! Loon Ka! I made a friend!” My five year old said excitedly, trying to tickle her uncle’s belly.
“What your friend’s name? Chir aray?” Ka asked the boy in Thai. The boy looked down and answered softly.
“This Kuhn Fet.” Oh’s brother smiled at me suggestively. Those eyes. He was interested. Sometimes you only need one shot.
“Family hug!” My five year old said excitedly. Me, her, and Ka hugged each other. He nuzzled my neck softly, sending my hormones into the stratosphere. Oh my.
“Can kiss?” Ka asked Eliza, using his finger to point to a spot on his cheek. My daughter did so dutifully, and he returned the favor on her cheek.
“I love you, you my family for me.” He said.
“Loon Ka strongman! Loon Ka handsome! Loon Ka never die!” Eliza said to him. He tried to sit her on his lap, but my daughter was having none of it.
“Can I play with my friend?” She asked him.
Ka nodded, “Okay can.”
She ran a few doors down with the boy. Mar was still sleeping on the mat out front.
I drank another shot to all of this.
“You very good with her,” I said simply.
Oh’s brother smiled at me. As handsome to me as ever.
“Yes. She my family. You my family too,” He continued. “Gen. I have idea! About she learn Thai. Study for school. Be number one in her class.”
He tried to show me, motioning with his hands writing in Thai language characters. Ka seemed excited just thinking about it.
The Thai music in the background changed tracks to a song in English. I recognized it as soon as the music started. It was Ellie Goulding’s “Love me like you do.” From the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy.
Ka exhaled intently and looked down almost as soon as I did. He knew the song, I already knew that. I’d shared it on Facebook more than once in the past, especially when I was reading the trilogy. Some months before at the Pai Yang house that song had inexplicably started playing on a Thai language radio station. I was less interested in that than in Ka’s reaction to it. He got up nervously and turned the radio off immediately. It meant something to him.
He couldn’t turn the radio off this time, another house was playing it. Any thoughts that he might not have been paying attention to my music choices all these years was vanished once again. I was getting the strong feeling that a celibate loner probably had a lot of time on his hands to check in on one of the very few women who even showed up in his neck of the woods.
We both sat in silence for a few moments. I wasn’t sure what to say. Ka broke it, taking my hand into his.
“Gen,” there was a husky, urgent tone in his voice. My head’s spinning around I can’t think clear no more. He placed my hand on his lap, “I want. With you.”
I looked down immediately, exhaling myself. What the Hell was that? Ka watched me intently. “Can do?” He asked me again. I looked around. Mar still sleeping out front, Eliza off playing with friends. A lazy Thursday afternoon.
What are you waiting for? The song asked me on cue. I nodded quickly.
“Yes can,” I said as we both got up, heading towards the bedroom.
“You think Kuhn Ka love you or something?” Oh had asked me months before. My husband sneered contemptuously and continued, “Opposite. He don’t like you too much. He hate you before, after we together at the Siam Bar. He tell me he think you’re ladyboy. He don’t believe we really do together. He think you drunk too much. ‘Why you want her come back to Thailand?’ My brother ask me all the time. ‘She crazy.’”
“You think he jealous?” I asked Oh back.
He sneered again. “Only because I want the wife! Kuhn Ka don’t like when somebody take me from him!”
“The opposite of love is not hate,” My high school sweetheart Steve used to often say, “it’s indifference.” I was pretty sure Oh was telling me a true story about Ka’s words and actions. A little before I left the Siam Bar in December 2011, finally back to America for Christmas, Oh had bought a small used laptop from a friend on the island. I showed him how to set up a Skype account, email, and facebook.
“I call you every day,” Oh had said to me at the time, right before I headed out for my flight. Yeah. Sure you will. I figured me and Oh had a beautiful short lived fling on a gorgeous tropical island. We had the most beautiful beach view from the bar that I had ever seen in my life. It was just perfect. But I assumed that Oh would get involved in his own things after I left, and I’d have to face the music in my family. I didn’t know how he’d come up with the money for the Internet needed to call me on Skype.
Oh surprised me and kept very close to his promise. He video Skyped with me almost every morning. The fling became a long distance relationship within a few short weeks of my arrival back in the USA. At first he called from the Siam Bar, until the Thai mafia ran him and Ron out of the place, replacing them with their own lackeys. After that, Oh video Skyped from the Pai Yang house. I learned much, much later that Mar was giving Oh the money for the satellite internet connection he had to use. She was pushing it, despite her other son’s objections.
“I have the job Coconut Island then,” Ka told me later. That might have been true, but that wasn’t far away. He would have still been going back to the Pai Yang house.
I would frequently turn the video camera on my computer towards things in Las Vegas, showing Oh my parent’s house, my parents, the backyard swimming pool, the cats, asking Jasmine to wave hello if she was around. Oh did likewise, showing me the corrugated tin shack called the Pai Yang house. He showed me Mar, once or twice she smiled and waved likewise. I remembered her vaguely from seeing her sell vegetables down the hill. Sometimes Oh would have friends over, usually Thai men, though one had a girlfriend that also showed up. My future husband was frequently working on tattoos for his friends. “He same same my brother,” Oh would often tell me, after video introducing me to this or that person. The slight difference in wording wasn’t noticed by me for years. What I remember thinking at the time is this guy is clearly single and interested in me only, and has nothing to hide. Exactly what I was looking for.
Oh had one friend who wanted to Skype with me himself. “Kuhn Chef he want to talk to you. He stay Singapore now,” He told me. I accepted Kachen Boonchat’s request immediately. Chef video skyped with me several times in the USA. He spoke good English, and was easy for me to understand. He wanted to know what my true intentions were with Oh, where I was going with this. I liked him immediately. He told me much later his birthday was 11/11 same as Mar’s. Maybe he was bullshitting me, but he still struck me as a Scorpio. I thought of him as a good friend of the family who was genuinely concerned about Oh.
One person who never showed up on camera, over the course of perhaps 100+ video Skype sessions before I returned to Thailand in April 2012, was the guy who Oh had called his brother all those months before when I was courting in Phuket. The shy, handsome one was long forgotten. I don’t think he would have smiled and made a happy face if he had seen me then.
Ka’s words and actions might have been consistent with a man who was jealous of his brother’s good fortune in love. But they also struck me as consistent with a man who had a big thing for me before, who was working through his anger and disappointment at me for sleeping with Oh. Unbeknownst to me at the time, of course.
“I remember the first time I see you,” Ka told me one night. “I go see Kuhn Noom, I needed help to fix my black motorbike. I see you out front. You have this small bottle of laow khaow in your hands, you walking along drinking. Many Thai they asking you money for beer! Money for cigarette! You just give them, but you holding the laow khao for you. And I see you smoke bijaak and yasin. Then you eating larb loi. Very strange farang!”
What I’d been eating hadn’t been remembered even by me. The raw beef larb was one of my favorite foods in Thailand at the time. Being raw beef, it was adventurist even for farang who were open to more unusual Thai fare. The version served to Westerners was always cooked.
Ka continued, “I think you very beautiful. You have good heart. I love you then. Many years.”
Boy it didn’t take much for him to get intrigued by a woman. I felt like Oh’s brother had been talking to me in riddles the whole time, trying to tell his version of events. I could almost hear him mooning on about me to Oh at the Pai Yang house all those years ago. What I’d been wearing, the way I looked at him.
And my only direct comment to him that rainy night was, “Jesus Christ Num I don’t think this guy speaks any English.”
Oh’s insane, epic jealousy towards any man who was near me had been baked into the cake. “I always steal Ka’s women!” My husband had said to me one night in March. I’d had to ask myself then, was I Ka’s woman? I hadn’t given it a thought at the time. I never even touched him. But I had met him first, and it was directly because of Ka that Oh even learned about the existence of the crazy farang who seemed to like Thai men. My husband’s guilt would have only compounded with each passing year.
“The moral of the story may well be, that you shouldn’t marry a woman that your brother had a really, really big thing for,” I told my Mom on the telephone regarding this. Me and my morals.
Ka wanted to know though, “When you know you love me?”
I sighed. It wasn’t love at first sight with him or anything that hopelessly romantic. It was strange to me how many years had passed where I never gave it a single conscious thought. Most men who ended up in my friend zone over the years, I had reasons I told myself for why.
“I don’t know exactly. But I do know that I remembered meeting you right away,” This was odd for me, there were quite a few Thai men whose names and faces were more of a haze. Oh himself had had to jog my memory about details of our first meeting.
I continued, “And I think you handsome right away. That very strange for me.”
It was very odd for me to find a man physically attractive on a first meeting. Usually it wasn’t until I got to know him that I found something charming and special that made him handsome to me.
I had to apologize, in my own way, “Things couldn’t have happened any other way, but the way they happened Ka,” I told him. “I’m sorry about Kuhn Oh. But when I leave in 2011, I finished Thailand.”
I hadn’t said that directly at the time I had a rental house in Phuket that I had prepaid a few extra months on. But after I left, Num had brought his truck over, told the landlord I’d gone back to the USA permanently, and had stripped everything down. My British neighbor, Geoff, informed me of this over email. I never saw Num or his family again after that. Meanwhile Ron had squared with me on my Siam Bar investment before I left Thailand, paying me back exactly the 34,000 baht I had put in. Once the Thai mafia had run him and Oh off Racha Island, I really had nothing to go back to Thailand for, save a persistent, crooked-toothed bartender.
“If it hadn’t been for your brother calling me on Skype every day, and coming up with a plan for us building a life together, I wouldn’t have come back. So sorry.”
All those years he’d had to watch us.
Ka smiled at me then, “Mai pen rai. No worries.”
It wasn’t until after I returned to Phuket in 2012, after staying a few weeks at his sister Pla’s house with Oh, that my soon to be husband said anything about brother Ka again. He’d talked about another brother on Skype that I hadn’t met before then. “Kuhn Tee he stay not far Bangkok. He drive the truck, have wife and son already.” I assumed that was Oh’s real brother, or why would he bother mentioning him?
After we had been staying at Pla’s house in Phuket Town a few weeks, Oh told me that Mar and his brother were coming to visit us.
“You remember Kuhn Ka?” He asked me, “You meet him before.”
Uh, no, not really. Oh had introduced me to so many friends with odd Thai names who were same same his brother on Skype, that I didn’t know which one he was talking about. It wasn’t until Ka showed up with Mar at his sister’s house in Phuket Town that it came back to me. That shy, handsome guy really is your brother? I didn’t think they looked alike.
Ka was polite and deferent towards me that day. “He same same my twin!” Oh told me excitedly, as they talked in Thai language about this or that. I wasn’t seeing it. Oh seemed more nervous and insecure than usual that afternoon. Perhaps he had something to get off his chest.
Pla’s husband took a family picture that I posted immediately on Facebook. It was one of the very few pictures of the family that exist. Tee was out of the picture, of course, up north of Bangkok. I didn’t meet him until weeks later. Eliza didn’t exist either, though it was right around that time that I became pregnant with her.
I looked the picture over again some months ago. I didn’t think you needed to read body language all that well to see some really strange things going on in it. Besides the obvious fact that I essentially towered over Oh’s whole family, which is the rarest marriage statistically speaking, one in which the woman is more than one inch taller than the man. It only accounts for about 1 in 1000 marital unions, according to Elizabeth Allgeier’s book Sexual Relations.
It was the one thing Oh had not to be jealous of his brother over. He was a hair taller, though both were three or four inches or so under my frame. “He cannot serve military! He too short!” Oh had told me that story too. Then my husband lightened up a bit. “Kuhn Ka, he know he almost too short. He make sure he don’t have to do. He stand bow down a little. No can do.” Oddly the idea that a man couldn’t serve in the military didn’t displease me. I’d have been a conscientious objector in all circumstances, if I hadn’t been a woman. I still would be.
In the first family photo with me in it, Oh had his hand draped over my shoulder. I was beaming, but clearly leaning away from him, as the whole family swayed with me. Ka was at the farthest end, giving his four year old niece, Nondear, a toy, probably urging her to look nice for the picture. “Love Me” Pla’s shirt blares, right in front of his hands.
Strange proddings from the subconscious indeed. So back to the Summer of 2006-2009.
I’d never known if anything was going to happen with me and Ka, ever or not at all. I’d thought about it 1000 times. He locked the door to the bedroom behind us before he leaned in and kissed me. Awkward, probably drunk, insistent, and needy. I returned the favor with full force as he stripped off my shirt. Within a few seconds we were both standing exposed.
I arched my eyebrow in surprise.
“You very big,” I said to him. I’d felt as much out front. His size didn’t even look right on his slight five foot four frame. So much for that stereotype about Asian men.
The accident had had an unusual effect. Nothing had been cut off as Oh had implied about his brother’s penis. Instead there had been a lot of swelling and some dislocation. But everything appeared to be very much working. All the chips were on the table.
Somewhere in the universe, the Gods were rolling on the floor laughing their fucking asses off about this whole mess. Ka was indeed a statistical anomaly, in a very big way. And as everyone knows, most women who start on a mission from God to find an Asian husband are Size Queens. Sure they are.
“Let’s talk about penis size.” Dr. Elizabeth Allgeier, my favorite college professor, began one of her lectures on Sexual Relations with. “The average size is about 5 ½ inches. Most men are within pretty tight bounds of that range. With an even bigger effect based on how aroused they are. And this is based on open communication with your sexual partner, more than anything else.” Professor Allgeier’s course always packed a 300 seat lecture hall to the brim. I switched my major from Art to Psychology almost strictly because of her. I liked to sit outside before and after the course, smoke cigarettes, and hear stories from the much older woman. She was one of very few professors who smoked.
I read her Sexual Relations textbook cover to cover within a few weeks of starting the class. But her personal stories outside the lecture halls of Bowling Green State University made the biggest impact to me. On the heels of a second divorce, with her two young daughters in tow, Dr. Allgeier had gone to live with the So African tribe in Uganda to study sexual relations there. And had turned her observations about sex in this radically different culture into her Doctoral thesis. Talk about turning lemons into lemonade.
The idea that you could get married twice, have children, get divorced, still go to graduate school, and take your young children to live with you in the midst of a remote African village turned every notion I had about having children on its head. In my working class Ohio upbringing, everyone knew what getting pregnant at a young age, or before you were established meant professionally. That your life and your personal ambitions were effectively over. You’d have to drop out of school to take care of the baby, stay in whatever shithole town you were from to be close to your family, and take whatever low wage job you could get.
If the boy who knocked you up was a respectable type who took responsibility, then you needed to stay with him. Most of the teenage girls I knew that this happened to were with assholes who basically called her a whore, claimed to anyone who would listen that it was not their baby, and ran off in order to dodge DNA testing and child support payments. Some were even worse, and pressured the woman in every way they could to have an abortion. And if you didn’t, then you were stuck as a poor single mother, your prospects for finding a respectable man ever severely diminished by your prior baggage. That’s what I’d been taught in Ohio.
Elizabeth Allgeier was in short, my heroine. She sometimes talked about her husband Bob outside of class, though I never met him. According to her obituary in 2016, her third husband was the love of her life. They had one son together after her two daughters from previous marriages.
“And contrary to what you might have heard, no statistically significant differences in penis size have been found among men of different races.” Dr. Allgeier finished her lecture with, to nervous giggles from the mostly college freshmen. I’d always taken her words on the subject matter as my personal gospel. If I was attracted to a guy things seemed to work there. I’d never exactly lined up all nine of the men I’d slept with and measured one by one, but they all did seem to be within a pretty tight range. And thus I didn’t give it much thought.
I was finding out the hard way that you ignore the effect penis size has on men, across individuals, families and cultures, at your own peril. I remembered my first, my high school sweetheart Steve, wanting me to measure him. Geniuses that we were, I was happy to oblige. Steve measured just a hair over five inches, he thought the average was around six. He was absolutely mortified by this slight inability to add up to his fullest potential. For days I had to console him about how unconcerned I was. It annoyed me that it annoyed him so much.
In Thailand, of course, it’s a well known stereotype that Thai women who end up with Western men are size queens. The opposite is true too; I sometimes faced questions or outright ridicule for how things could fit together sexually, me being a Western woman and obviously loose, him being Thai, and therefore small. Dear Lord it could get obnoxious after some drinks you’d think he was going to fall in. I think Westerners would be mortified at the frankness Thais often have towards sex. It’s open season on gossip and speculation
My husband Oh was on the lower side of the tight bound range on penis size. I’m not sure how he measured up, and nor did I care. Smaller than John or Mike? Around there. But Oh had compensated for his supposed lack in an unusual way, by inserting glass beads under his foreskin. At any rate, our sex life was not something I had a complaint about. Oh’s insane violent outbursts, and tendency to point guns at me were what I had a problem with. Now, whether he understood that or not is a different story entirely.
I’m sure he knew though. Oh had an extreme insecurity in the USA about it. He seemed to think that every man who was not Asian was probably bigger. The stereotype cuts in Thailand long and deep. One day me and Ka and Eliza were walking into Phuket’s Department of Motor Vehicles to register the Honda Accord. A balding white man with a pot belly, perhaps in his 50s or 60s, swaggered past us. He was accompanied by a younger and rather tall Thai woman, or a person identifying as a woman anyways, with a bad boob job, bling, and far too much makeup. Me and Ka were holding hands, between that and Eliza’s presence, the farang man was able to put together that we were a couple. He regarded us with equal parts contempt and curiosity. “My (board) Is Bigger Than Yours,” his T shirt blared, showing a man smiling and holding up a very large surfboard next to a sad man holding a very small surfboard. It was an advertisement for Phuket’s Cabana Club, and an obvious reference to penis size.
I looked down and laughed as the farang walked past. Think you have the bigger size? I sincerely doubt that, was my first thought regarding his shirt. And I might have looked like a freak to him, but to me, he was a living, breathing stereotype. And not in a good way.
Between the brothers, I was also sure that Ka was the bigger man, probably by a decent amount, even before whatever strange misfortune had befallen him. Oh had to have known that. Of all the things that had caused my husband to be jealous of his better-looking, healthier, older brother with the family name, I’m sure this one took the cake.
On the day of September 6, 2018, we were both exposed with all the bets on the table. I had no idea how Ka felt as he stood naked before me. “Gen?” He said. “I love you. You my wife for me.” He came to where I lay, searching my eyes intently.
Shoot the moon. A royal flush in hearts. I bet my life on you sir.
Perhaps I was drunk. But I knew what I was going to say. “Ka? When I give, I give all. My body, my soul, my life. I love you. You my husband.”
His eyes pooled dark and intense as he moved in. This wasn’t a guy interested in a fling with me.
Now kiss me you damned fool.
We were interrupted, appropriately, a few minutes later. “Where’s Mommy and Loon Ka?” I heard Eliza asking Mar out front. It didn’t take my five year more than a few more seconds to be knocking at the bedroom door. She’d already tested the lock, I was thankful Ka had remembered to use it at least.
“Mommy! I need you!” Eliza yelled from behind the door, loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear.
“Maybe she go away.” Ka whispered to me. I chuckled. I knew he’d just opened a Pandora’s box.
“Loon Ka?” Eliza had heard his voice in the room with me. She wasn’t going anywhere now. There is no force greater on Earth than a curious five year old.
“What are you doing with my Mommy?”
About the Creator
Genevieve Hawkins
My life is lots of love stories...
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