The Jasmine Bar

By John Anthony

Unlike others in the genre, The Jasmine Bar is set in both Thailand and the UK and so much more than just another formulaic tale of exploitative men and cheating bar girls. Rejected by co-worker Rose, solitary blue-collar worker Jon Verity finally takes his finger off Life’s snooze button and takes an impulse holiday to Thailand. Pattaya too seems like just another hideous mistake, but in time he becomes smitten by little Ashai, and a second trip sees things developing, along with emotional visits to the river Kwai, and Ayuthaya, former capital of courtly old Siam. Back in the UK once more, the future looks bright until an HIV scare, communication problems, a few home truths from Rose, and warnings from a friend about the avaricious nature of bargirls all combine to make him begin to doubt her. A third trip to Thailand goes badly and when he catches her deceiving him he bitterly ends the relationship. But is she just another cheating bar girl, or is the truth more sinister yet more sweetly poignant than he could ever have imagined? If you liked Suzie Wong or Private Dancer, you will love The Jasmine Bar. Funny, challenging, and shocking in turn, this a story like no other. Contains adult themes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Anthony
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463260463

John Anthony

I love a good psychological thriller with great details and believable characters to keep me excited while I sit back and enjoy. I grew up in New York and now live with my wife in Virginia.  It's funny in a way, my daughter was married then moved back to New York.  It's special when we can get together again. Hopefully you will enjoy reading The Hidden Arrangement as much as I enjoyed writing it.      ~John Anthony

Book preview

The

Jasmine Bar

John Anthony

She was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight;

A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament.

William Worsdsworth, 1803.

CHAPTER ONE

Now he’d finally made it, he couldn’t help wondering just how he’d ended up in a place like that. Maybe it was Rose so disdainfully rejecting him, just like all the others over the years. Maybe that endless nightshift when he got talking to someone about love, life, women, the whole damn thing. Maybe it was just growing sick of the endless years of drift, of waiting for something that was never going to happen. Whatever it was, there could be no backing out now though; a whole lifetime of running away from things, and he’d never forgive himself if he chickened out again now.

It was all a far cry from the wild den of debauchery he’d been steeling himself for though. By now at least one slinky, almond-eyed beauty was supposed to have her hand in his trousers and her tongue in his ear, but apart from that little waitress no one had even really spoken to him properly yet. Flock wallpaper, huge mirror pictures with silhouettes of lyres and cupids, large aquarium near the entrance, and in the diagonally opposite corner a small but well-stocked bar glittering in the flashing lights. Dominating everything and running almost the length of the centre of the room was a dancing platform, freeform in shape and bordered with a bar top, and almost within touching distance of where he sat nervously on his bolted-down stool, a near-perfect female backside giving it’s all for Madonna’s Hung Up. She was one of eight girls dancing at that moment, a couple of them in miniskirts and crop tops, the rest in various kinds of swimwear, and each wore a round plastic number badge. None of them were unattractive, but nor were they the sultry Oriental stunners he’d anticipated. Every time the music changed, two would step down from the platform at one end, the rest move forward, and two more get on at the other end so that it was almost like a conveyor belt of girls passing. Some just held on close to the chrome poles in a kind of slow shuffle, whilst others would suddenly do the splits or slide down the pole, body lithe and rippling extravagantly. As well as those actually dancing there must have been at least twice as many others scattered around the bar, sitting drinking with other customers, clattering around after each other in high heels, or just sharing a quiet smoke and a laugh with friends before the music changed and it was their turn to dance again.

Try as he might, he just couldn’t decide later whether she had been among them that first night. The one not even Mick could ever have warned him about, let alone the havoc she’d so innocently wreak and the shame he’d take to the grave.

‘You just arrival in Thailand?’ the waitress asked. It could have been that he was dressed so differently to the other men in the bar, or more likely just the bewildered look on his face.

‘Er, yes; today,’ he told her. Or was it yesterday?

After a flight lasting forever-and-a-half, and a further 2 hour car transfer to the resort, he’d finally found the Jasmine Bar, Pattaya Beach, Thailand, chosen out of all the others purely because he’d taken a shine to the girl in the advertisement in a free guide book Mick had given him. No sign of her now though, even if she’d ever actually worked there in the first place. Once he’d found it, the bar seemed strangely unprepossessing too amid the McDonald’s and the jewellers shops that seemed to sell nothing but gaudy gold chains. Name in a huge neon sign above a long tiled walkway down to the actual entrance, and a curiously old-fashioned blackboard and easel beside the door boasting Hot Lady & Cold Beer. 

‘Another?' the waitress suggested with a glance at his almost empty glass.

'Oh, yes please.'

Watching him carefully from the corner of her eye, she slowly poured about half the bottle of Singha beer, then folded the chit into the bamboo beaker in front of him and perched herself neatly on the next stool. Even with the long, modest uniform and the ladylike posture on the stool, she was quite pleasantly petite and attractive in her own way, with a cute button nose and an appealing shy smile.

‘I think your first time in Thailand, sha-ma ?’

He just nodded cautiously.

'Tonight, you will take a lady?'

'Oh... I don't know.'

Now he had a few drinks inside him he was starting to relax just a little, but with the place noticeably emptier than when he arrived, he was growing more than a little concerned that he was still sitting there alone like a bloody wallflower. Jon Verity; couldn’t score in a... Well whatever it was, it wasn’t what he’d expected.

'You come from England?'

‘That's right.'

For a moment she seemed to feel a little awkward, then told him, 'I want to learn English. For business in Bangkok I must speak good English. And good writing,' she added, imitating it on the tiled bar top in front of them. 'So now I just start to work here to make money for college in Chonburi; half of the way from Pattaya to Bangkok.' A nervous glance at him then, hesitantly, almost as if she thought he might try to keep it, she put out her hand; 'Kob.’

'Pleased to meet you, Kob; he said, and her face lit up like a revelation as he shook her hand.

‘Can I ask something about English, please?’

‘Of course.’

‘OK; been, went and gone ; when to use?’

'Er, well let's see... When I get back to England I could say I have been to Thailand-'

'Or you have went to Thailand?'

'No, no; I could say I have been to Thailand, but I couldn’t say I have went  to Thailand.'

'You cannot say you went to Thailand?! Why?'

He’d almost have thought she was just teasing him, but for the deliciously earnest look on her face.

'And, and… on BBC Food last week,’ she went on, as though she just couldn’t keep it all bottled up any longer, 'someone said Fish and chips are not everyone's cup of tea. I watch it three times on I-player and check every word in my English to Thai dictionary. I know BBC is English, and I know English chips and American chips and casino chips are not the same, but I still don't understand. Just doesn't make sensible.'

He so enjoyed trying to answer her questions about English that he quickly forgot he was supposed to be nervous, and as she left temporarily to serve a new arrival he turned around and saw a girl sitting on the stool the other side of him. A short while ago she'd been dancing just inches from him, miming breathlessly to Kylie’s Can’t Get you Out Of My Head, when without warning three other girls fell upon her and quickly divested her of both parts of her bikini. From somewhere in the middle of a glorious tangle of laughter and bare, grappling limbs he heard a resigned 'Aaw...' suggesting it was far from the first time, then watched as she scurried doubled-up from the room, cheered on by all the other girls and waitresses. Now, mouth pursed and eyes blazing with fun, she squirmed in the agony of her own determination not to laugh as the same trio treated him to a very passable impression of her hurried exit. 'Babba-bo-bo !' she suddenly called out, shaking her head in despair, and saw him grinning at her. 

'Crazy. Stupid,' she explained, and twirled a finger beside her head. 'All ladies here; mad!'

'All  the ladies?'

'Yes. No... NO!’ she corrected herself, laughing and slapping him playfully on the arm. She said something else, which he didn't catch, and after merely nodding vaguely he only realised his mistake when the hovering waitress went off to fetch a Champagne glass of cola and ice, along with yet another chit to put in his beaker. The girl was given some kind of coupon which she folded and tucked inside her top, momentarily and perhaps deliberately exposing a further dash of tender young décolletage. Certainly one of the prettier ones, quite pert and petite with that urchin haircut.

‘Thank you,' she nodded, genteelly raising her lady drink in a toast. ‘What is your name, please?'

'Jon,' he told her;  ‘And you?'

'Accuse me?' Her manners, her appearance, her voice, everything about her was so sweet, so neat and precise. He really couldn’t get over how different everything was to what he’d expected.

'Your name?’ he nodded gently towards her.

'Oh! Your name ...Dhaow...' It sounded so intriguing the way she pronounced it, long and deep and rolling, almost with a hint of admonishment, that he couldn't resist asking her to repeat it. Three times. Perhaps suspecting something, she traced it out with a finger on the bar top, each letter accompanied by a tiny jerk of the shoulders as if for emphasis; '-D! -O! -W! ...Dhaow…'

'Nickname,' the waitress explained, leaning on the bar the other side of him. ‘Speaking in English, it means Star.'

A pause, punctuated by a brief exchange between them in Thai, and Kob leaned towards him. 'She wants to go with you,' she said simply. Automatically he swung round to the girl, and an almost imperceptible nod of the head confirmed she was his for the taking. Well, for some kind of consideration, at least. Now or never.

He turned back to the waitress, and to his horror began to stammer; 'How-'

'Four hundred Baht,' she told him, adding significantly, 'Bar fine only. You must also give her something. Understand? You want short-time or long-time?'

'Oh, er, short.' It seemed the safest bet. No risk of not being able to find his wallet in the morning.

'OK, short time, I think 1,500 Baht. If you like her you can give her a tip; up to you. Good lady, I think.'

He was too tired and tipsy to even recall the exchange rate, never mind work it all out, but 1,500 of anything seemed rather a lot. Once again the waitress seemed to know what he was thinking.

‘You tell me this is your first time in Thailand, so now you think maybe someone is cheating you. OK, no problem.’ she smiled; ‘Maybe I would feel same-same. Outside, you can take a lady from a beer bar for maybe 100 Baht bar fine, and maybe 800 Baht short-time. But I think all go-go bars are the same as the Jasmine Bar; 400 Baht bar fine and 1,000-up for lady; up to you, how good she is, and if you like her. I do not give you a lie. I know you will go to other bars, and if you find we give you a lie now you will not come back here.’

He pondered a moment, and then took a careful look in his wallet. The receipt said he’d drawn the equivalent of £100, and having spent virtually nothing in Thailand so far, there still seemed a lot of those blue 500 Baht notes in there. What the hell.

Ten minutes later, at the waitress’s suggestion sitting a little more comfortably now in the plush seats away from the harshest of the flashing, sweeping lights, he didn't at first recognise the diminutive figure that approached, smiling just a little pensively. Now, in skinny jeans, tee shirt and trainers, clutching her bag and occasionally calling softly in Thai to the dancers, all he could think was how much younger and smaller she seemed. He had to ask.

'Twenty,' she quickly replied, as though she’d been expecting it. 'And you? How old please?'

‘Too old’ he said with what he hoped was a suitably wry smile. ‘Listen, maybe I should come back tomorrow or something.’

‘OK, mai pen rai ; we can go now. Are you already?’

‘As already as I’ll ever be…’

As they left, he noticed that strange lad watching him again, the one with the weird unblinking eyes, almost as if they were made of glass.

‘Call himself Micky, like English,’ the girl told him. ‘I don’t like. Has a lady in the bar, but sells she for money, like he is her mang dar.’

Out again under the bright lights of Walking Street, he was surprised to realise how warm and humid it still was, though nothing like that monstrous heat of the morning. Everywhere he looked there were girls going to and from bars, talking, laughing, shopping. Invariably small and pretty and now and again an absolute heartbreaker, glimpsed for a second before disappearing forever among the crowds like a fragment of some tantalising dream. Outside a 7-11 convenience store they paused a moment on the edge of a group watching a tiny bar girl, five foot nothing in a black mini dress, effortlessly outstripping an increasingly bewildered sawn-off Schwarzenegger at some weird contest to hammer nails into a huge lump of wood. Strangely, no one else seemed to even notice the sickly, fetid stench from the nearby drain that somehow made its presence felt in a heaving of the stomach a split second before the smell itself actually hit.

Still holding his hand, she led him like a wide-eyed little boy through Soi Diamond, the epicentre of South Pattaya with its wall to wall bars and clashing music, and out onto the Second Road. 'Take taxi?' she asked, nodding to a row of Songthaew Baht Buses, converted dark blue Isuzu pickups with a cover and sideways-facing seats in the back, all ready and waiting for new couples eager to consummate their acquaintanceship. Whilst most of the larger, upmarket go-go bars were in Soi Diamond or along Walking Street, it was actually when the Baht Bus got past the shops and restaurants of the Second Road that he realised the full extent of Pattaya’s sex industry. Whole swathes of open-air beer bars like the waitress had just told him about, each one stuffed with girls and ringed by foreign men, the whole thing strangely nightmarish yet compelling in the glow of a million lurid pink neon tubes.

In minutes he was nervously collecting his key from the hotel reception, distantly wondering if it were still possible to back out with any semblance of dignity. Thankfully there was no suggestion of embarrassment or disapproval from the receptionist, and in fact he felt something of a buzz as Dow drew an admiring glance from a young waiter in the adjoining coffee shop. The security man merely asked her for her ID card, and with a warm smile the girl on the desk wished them both good night. She looked barely older than Dow herself.

'Mayglove?' she enquired tentatively, once they'd settled into the room. It was only then that he noticed the way she seemed to hold her head slightly lowered, and those shy glances up at him as though constantly seeking his approval. 'Mayglove?' she repeated, gesturing first to herself, and then more cautiously as though she thought it might be rude, to him. The penny only dropped when she put two pairs of closed fingers together, one pair pressing on top of the other.

'Oh. Make love?'

'You want?'

'Oh, yes. Yes please,' he said, smiling at his own Englishness, almost as if he were in some Olde Creame Tea Shoppe back home and they'd asked if he wanted scones.

She hesitated a moment, then seemed to content herself with the evident fact he was happy, whatever the reason. 'I take shower,' she told him, slipping round the bathroom door and quietly locking it.

As he emerged from his own shower and settled down beside her on the bed, it all began to seem hopelessly unreal again. The girl just smiled easily and laid her head in his lap as though she'd known him all her life.

At first he'd felt a little disconcerted by the way she'd turned the TV on almost before he'd closed the door, but now he realised it might give him a chance to conquer those nerves and enjoy it all like he knew he should. A Thai game show, it was all unintelligible to him anyway. One of the contestants murmured some little aside and she suddenly squealed gleefully, pumping coltish legs up and down on the bed and hugging him as tightly as if he'd said it himself. Then, with a big contented sigh, she settled herself down upon him again and slowly began making big wet kiss shapes all over his chest and neck. A little glance up at him, eyes wide and appealing now, and she turned her attention to his nipples, slurping noisily on each one in turn then charming it to life with the tiniest, flickering tip of her tongue till he felt like he had metal studs in his chest. 'Aaw!' she teased, looking up aghast at him and imitating his response with her finger; 'Lady!' Then, licking her lips, head to one side and conspiratorial eyes searching him out, she gently ran a small, soft hand up his leg and inside his bath towel. 'Ahh...' she sighed, as though she'd found a missing pet in there; 'Not lady.'

Heart pounding, he rose to fetch the necessary from the bathroom, the room suddenly and ominously silent as she turned the TV off and readied herself. Awkwardly, he reached for the knot in her towel, and with a little shimmy she was at last naked before him.

He'd barely got started, when the long flight, the time difference, the booze, the thumping music of all those bars and the whole unbelievable bloody thing simply overwhelmed him, and it was suddenly all over, almost before either of them realised what had happened. Or maybe it was just that it was his first real sexual encounter since that equally disastrous visit to a massage parlour behind King’s Cross about a million years ago. As he paused a moment to collect himself, he wasn't sure he’d even felt anything.

‘Mai pen rai ? Never mind?' she asked with a curious mixture of surprise, relief, and apprehension, the whole thing vaguely absurd now in view of the way they were still coupled.

'Oh dear; short-time,’ he said lamely, limply, and rolled off her. For a long moment he just didn’t know what to do. Sensing her watching him, he tried to smile, failed, and it all just felt even more ridiculous. Grateful for any reason to get away, he went to the bathroom, rolled the condom in toilet paper and tucked it carefully away under the rubbish already in the bin in the hope the room maid wouldn’t see it.

He got back into the room to find the girl hunched tightly at the very top of the bed with a strangely hostile yet defensive look on her face. Suddenly he felt very alone in a country he knew virtually nothing about, though he couldn’t for the life of him see how she could hope to make any kind of trouble for him. After all, what did she think she’d come to his room for; to watch telly? Whatever had happened between them was plainly consensual, though whether it technically qualified as sex, he wasn’t quite sure, but before he could ask or ponder further she’d rushed past him to the bathroom, locking it quickly behind her. When she finally re-emerged ten long minutes later, dressed now but with the same strange look on her face, he plucked up his courage and asked her what was wrong.

Cautiously, never taking her eyes off him and yet clearly conscious of where exactly the door was, she once again sat as far away from him on the bed as she could.

‘You are angry?’ she ventured in a strange, tremulous voice.

‘Angry? God, no. Why?’

‘Mai pen rai ? Never mind?' she said again, and as he began to relax just a shade he saw the relief mirrored on her face too. ‘I had the problem with a falang man like you before,’ she explained. ‘Finish… not long time; cannot do again and get angry. Try to boxing me.’

‘Honestly, there’s no problem here; not for you anyway.’

‘Sure?’

‘Sure. Only thing you did wrong was maybe being a bit too sexy for an old man like me.’

'OK, thank you.'

Awkwardly, he counted out 1,500 Baht, and as he saw her to the door she paused and looked enquiringly at him. It must have been all too clear how deflated he felt.  

‘Comeback?’ she asked a little warily.

‘Sorry?’

‘You will comeback my bar?’

‘Oh, maybe.’

They smiled politely at each other as she left, and as he closed the door he was suddenly suffused with a depressing feeling that the whole trip was already as good as over: that apart from the tan and the souvenirs, he'd already done what he came to Thailand for. The thing he’d looked forward to and planned so hard for had ended in farce, and yet a part of him was just relieved it was all over.

*

On the evening of his first full day in Pattaya he explored Walking Street more thoroughly and soon found himself in a real dive in the narrow section of Soi Diamond, the raucous heart of Pattaya’s night life. With a curiously small door, poor lighting, low ceilings, and a name even the staff couldn't pronounce, the whole thing seemed rather edgy and intimidating. After one preposterously over-priced and watered-down drink he was on the very point of leaving when she sashayed past his table in nothing but stilettos and skin-tight denim hot pants. Quite possibly the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, even allowing for the tiny Liverpool FC  tattoo at the base of her spine. Perfect, pointy boobs that just wouldn't take their eyes off him, and an expression on her face that said she might just die right there and then unless he took her. Her eyes flickered and flashed. Her body came close like a dream, smooth skin and hot perfume intoxicating his senses like a drug. He asked for her name and in a dark brown voice she said 'Lola.'

'You like she?' the waitress asked. 'In Thailand,' she told him, eyes, nose and mouth all twitching in an intriguing conspiratorial gesture, 'A man who don't want to be a man, he can go to Bangkok or Phuket, you know?’

'Oh, I see.'

'Yes, doctors there, very good,' she went on, voice becoming more wispy and stealthy with each word, till he could barely hear her. 'Very good there. Cut off his pin and make the skin inside-of-out to make him -like a lady!' She appeared genuinely shocked, like she was only just hearing it herself for the first time. 'I think maybe very good for you,' she suggested, apparently recovering a little of her composure. ‘You want to take she?'

Perched on the very the edge of his table now, soulful eyes gazing longingly at him from under huge lashes, Lola was beginning to look catastrophically beautiful. Reality was a distant planet to which he might never return.

'Have chimp...' Lola smiled softly, reassuringly, as if to say she knew he'd been too shy to ask.

'You.. you have a chimp?'

'SURE! TOO MUCH! WHAT CAN I DO?!!' For a second she looked like she was about to burst into tears, but at that moment a party of regulars crash-landed inside the doorway and caught her eye. 'Two minutes only,' she whispered hot and husky in his ear; 'I come back, OK?'

Even tanked up on Singha beer and dubious local spirits, he was in no mood to argue with fate. 'Oh, do you have to leave us already, Sir?' the dwarf on the door asked in pixel-perfect English.

'Er yeah, I- I think I ought to go and eat,' he said, gratefully remembering the polite get-out he'd heard somewhere.

'Ah, the old falang's dilemma again; fish or duck.’

Further down Walking Street there were even more bars, and growing weary of the crowds and the endless exhortations from the touts on the doors, he didn’t put up much resistance when a tall girl in a saucy nurse’s outfit began to entice him inside Sweethearts Go-Go. More crowded and noisier than he’d have liked, but the whole place, and not least the girls, seemed livelier and more exciting than last night. Much bigger too, with three platforms of dancers and another hosting almost continuous shows. Perhaps the most common one began inexplicably with a girl lying face down and slapping her pelvis three times on the stage before getting up to dance and draw yard after yard of luminous tape from between her legs, whilst another flitted around