Thai Hooker

3:00 A.M.

In the lobby of the hotel

In Bangkok,

(Where, they say

What happens there must stay)

Stood a bone skinny woman in an ugly purple dress

With no back and hardly any skirt.

Dressed to flirt

Hair a mess,

Tangled, matted, she talked hurriedly,

Chattered worriedly,

Seeking reassurance from a cell phone,

A cell phone half hidden from view by tangled hair.

Tangled hair that also hid as it tumbled down,

Her skinny, angular cheek bone, no longer brown

But as purple as her dress from its encounter with the fist

Of the man with the upper body

Sculpted like an African god.

The drunk man who looks like a god

The sullen man who wonders why we’re making such a fuss

Too drunk even to see the necessity of paying her off

With 5,000 baht.

Whatever.

She was never

That hot.

A bundle of bones in a purple bag

And an ugly temper.

From a well-used position of vulnerability

Reaching out for the only strength available to her,

The strength of the cell-phone,

The strength of wheels and deals made with cops and pimps

And aggrieved solidarity from other working girls

She limps

Through the dark narrow streets of Bangkok.

Limping from one man to another,

One wallet after the other,

As they fly in and out,

In and out,

On business trips,

And pleasure trips.

Lying, standing, kneeling

No longer feeling

Their gnawing lips,

On her face,

Her neck,

Her bone skinny breasts,

And their hands only when they are fists.

Even the body sculpted like an African god turns her on

No more or less than the dirty old European retirees

With their saggy speedos on the beach.

What difference does that make to the whores?

Their money is as good as yours

And they can’t hit as hard.

And I, looking into her lean, angular face

As cunning and furtive as a fox

As she stands

In the lobby and demands

5,000 Baht,

I realize I have nothing to say.

We just need to get this taken care of and catch our flight.

I am coherent because I slept that night

A couple of hours anyway.

And I am sober. I could go get 5,000 Baht

From an ATM but I will not

Insult her like that by trying to pay

For her flesh, now purple, or covering up

For the man who should have been a god;

Who looks like an archangel and sullenly counts her price in slips of paper.

The injury is not bad

The bruise will fade

And after all she has made

A life (as much of a life as can be had)

From selling her flesh to men with the bodies of gods

And men with the bodies of slugs.

Men kind and men savage,

Drunk and sober,

Long or short

Large or small.

Purple flesh just costs more. That’s all.

She is already pained

There is nothing to be gained

In beating senseless the man sculpted like a god

For that will not

Better her life,

Erase the bruise

Or pay his dues,

Or make amends to his wife

Pregnant with their first child and home alone

Who will never know or understand

What stayed in Thailand

And what perhaps came home.

Far away

In America the next day,

In the heart of a woman who knows what love is

I tell the hooker’s story

And offer up my prayers

And tears

For they are all I have to give

And no one else lives

Who will give

Even that.