Ladyboys: The Secret World of Thailand’s Third Gender
By Susan Aldous and Pornchai Sereemongkonpol
Published by Maverick, 2008

The lives, heartaches and breakthroughs of Thai gender benders, shared in a weave of miserable lament and giddy fluff. My review, at the request of the publisher.

I suppose Susan Aldous and Pornchai Sereemongkonpol’s book makes a decent guide for young people pondering gender — and the possibility of changing it — and a warm companion for kathoey who can identify with its many familiar episodes.

Other than that, I don’t see the point.

The argument that not enough is written about transgenders in Thailand is patently false. Who doesn’t already know how surgeons turn a penis inside out to form a vagina? Or that effeminate boys go through hell en route to realising they’re really girls?

The justification that straights reading this book will come to understand and empathise more with kathoey might stand up if it were better written, with answers to more probing questions, rather than being a lazy transcript of nine women’s not-altogether-edifying life stories. Besides, the bigots are never going to read this book.

The authors seem to think they’ve got a closet full of secrets to share with the world about ladyboys following their interviews with the nine disparate individuals.

Unless I’m badly mistaken, these “secrets” are that the ones who still have penises tape them tightly into their crotches to appear more like women, and that breast implants have to be massaged daily following the operation to keep them from assuming unsightly shapes.

This stuff is common knowledge to anyone who’s ever read a magazine feature about the women-trapped-in-men’s-bodies who seek new identities under fresh but misguided labels like sao praphet song (second kind of woman) and phet thi sam (the third sex). Why the authors are so caught up with taep — the Thai word for penis-taping — is beyond me. It’s just “tape”, just as com is the “Thai word” for computer.

And are the authors really “authors”? Each of the kathoey featured tells her own story with no interjections from an interviewer, first person all the way through. Presumably Aldous and Pornchai have stitched together the segments and fixed up the syntax, but in doing so, their approach is exposed for its affectation, because all nine women misspeak the same, and surely that’s not their fault.

Everyone refers to their place of origin, for example, as “the Ubon Ratchathani province” or “the Nakhan Sawan province”. Why “the”?

Finally, while Aldous and Pornchai gush in their introduction about the “willingness, warmth and openness” their subjects displayed, only two of the ladyboys come across as likeable. One of them is Parinya “Nong Toom” Charoenphol, the celebrated former kick-boxer, who KO’s any desire to embrace kathoey wholeheartedly.

“It is very disheartening to find a group of people who you think understand you, only to discover that not one among them is genuine,” she says of the ladyboys she’d sought out as companions.

“I have plenty of friends who want to eat with me in nice restaurants and have fun, but none of them are willing to be there for me when I’m down. I don’t intend to stop socialising with them, though. I think it’s important to be able to acknowledge their flaws and keep them at bay. I just won’t be giving them any further handouts.”

TEXT BITE: From airline hostess Nicky, one of the “success stories” in the book: “The only real difficulty we now face is that some of his friends and family don’t know about my true identity, and he insists that he doesn’t want them to ever find out. His parents are very fond of me and often ask when we plan to marry and how many grandchildren I expect to give them. I feel so flattered by their expectations that I hate the thought of dashing their hopes.”

TIME TO GO: A Bang Kwan inmate is prepared for execution, in this case by lethal injection.
Nation photos

The Last Executioner: Memoirs of Thailand’s Last Prison Executioner
By Chavoret Jaruboon with Nicola Pierce
Published by Maverick House, 2006

Chavoret Jaruboon’s memoir about being licensed to kill has remained a solid seller for three years. Here’s why. My review for The Nation, published in abbreviated form in June.

Chavoret Jaruboon has a big heart, and that shouldn’t be a surprise just because he’s pumped bullets into 55 other people’s hearts.

He won’t like that line. He’s meek about the job he did at Bang Kwan Prison and always abhorred the spotlight that invariably fell on it, whether in admiration or condemnation, it didn’t matter.

It’s been three years since “The Last Executioner” hit the shelves, but the publisher noticed we hadn’t touched it and pointed out the oversight. It’s a serious oversight to miss a book like this in Thailand. The central story is gripping, and it’s also got history, sociology, psychology, good crime-case stuff, insider information on how the government works, and plenty of cautionary advice.

It’s also got a lot of flaws, most of which could presumably have been fixed by Chavoret’s co-author (or is it ghostwriter?), Nicola Pierce.

What exactly her role here was is not at all clear, but the flaws are of the sort that her command of English surely ought to have overcome.

Chavoret says he learned English by listening to his dad’s “Frank Sinatra and Eddie Williams” records. It’s doubtful he meant either of the jazz musicians by the latter name, so who’s he talking about, the very obscure Eddie Williams and the Crusaders? If you Google “Sinatra Eddie Williams”, the search turns up Google’s online version of this very book! Surely a ghostwriter-editor-assistant writer should have sorted this out.

A good editor-helper could have also goosed up the drab passages, although, arguably, they might feel they have to let the author speak in his “own voice” and tell the story in his own words. Chavoret is certainly capable of spinning a good yarn, but the book, overall, sags against amateurish template. Letting it rest there just seems lazy.

Not to worry — what a story he’s got to share, once you get past the humdrum chapters on his youth, enlivened in part only by his stints as a teen doorman in Patpong and as a rock guitarist in the cheesy cafes around US military bases. These episodes merely serve as an excuse to natter on rather pointlessly about prostitution, the Vietnam War and the music business, but finally, about 100 pages in, we get to attend an execution.

There’s more!

I was, of course, a close personal friend of both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, who also died in LA this week, almost in lockstep with Ed McMahon. (Ed at the Pearly Gates: “Heeeeere’s Jacko!”)

Michael and Farrah and I all remained good friends even after I told them both in the early ’80s that I couldn’t stand their work. I think they came to trust in my honesty.

In Michael’s case, he followed my advice. Unfortunately, it was possibly the worst advice I ever gave anyone: I told him to hook up with Paul McCartney and cut a record. The best they could come up with was that stupid “Ebony and Ivory” thing.

I suppose I should have recommended David Bowie instead, but Bowie didn’t do much better collaborating with John Lennon, so who knows?

I advised Farrah to go back to “Charlie’s Angels”. Even though she wasn’t the best-looking Angel, she was the most popular, I said. She ignored me and drifted off into dorm-room-poster oblivion. I could have at least got her on “Dukes of Hazzard”, I think.

The 1980s were awful anyway, for everyone. Surviving that decade was an accomplishment in itself. Christ, I even had a mullet.

I was, of course, a close personal friend of Ed McMahon, who died on Tuesday in LA. In fact, he was my sidekick long before Johnny Carson came along, and we had quite a row when he decided to abandon my side in favour of Carson’s.

I always enjoyed “The Tonight Show”, though, and years later Ed and I reconciled and I wangled my erstwhile sidekick a side-job as a presenter for Publishers Clearing House, even though Ed never read a book in his life.

Ian Hunter turned 70 this week. Happy birthday and don’t ever stop writing. This is “When the World was Round” from his last album, “Shrunken Heads”. He’s got the follow-up coming out this month. Wonderful animation here by Andy Doran of Menagerie.

Remember the kids in the playground, avoiding the bullies each day
Timing your life to the monsters, the monsters that won’t go away
And you win some, you lose some, you ain’t got much choice
so you choose one (what have you done)

Everybody lies ‘n’ we’re stuck in the middle
I think I liked it better when the world was round
There’s too much information but not enough to go on
I think I liked it better when the world was round

Now that we’re older and wiser
Now we got kids of our own
Timing their lives to the monsters
But the monsters won’t leave them alone
You win some, you lose some, you ain’t got much choice
But it’s gotta be done, yeah it’s gotta be done

‘Cause everybody lies ‘n’ we’re stuck in the middle
I think I liked it better when the world was round
There’s too much information but not enough to go on
I think I liked it better when the world was round
I don’t wanna put you off it
I don’t wanna put you off it
But I think I liked it better when the world was round
And I wish that I could change it
Yes I wish that I could change it
I think I liked it better when the world was round

Is it my imagination
When I look back thru the ages
Is it my imagination

You win some, you lose some
You only got two shots, so you take one
(what have you done)

‘Cause everybody lies ‘n’ we’re stuck in the middle
I think I liked it better when the world was round
There’s too much information but not enough to go on
I think I liked it better when the world was round
And I don’t think we deserve this
No I don’t think we deserve this
I think I liked it better when the world was round
Give me a reason to believe in
Give me a reason to believe in
I think I liked it better when the world was round
Maybe we can make it better
Maybe we can make it better
I think I liked it better when the world was round.