Our host at the Rendez Vous in Phuket, Thailand, an old queen attired in a vividly periwinkle muumuu, welcomed Hiro and me in the pensionโs mirrored foyer with cocktails and room keys. โCall me Frannie, my dears, and you simply must join us all for dinner tomorrow. Iโm making my osso buco. Everyone says itโs tres magnifique!โ
Hiro and I had never traveled as a couple before and sought out a low-stakes, relaxing destination.
I smiled at Frannie, delighted with his zaftig mannerisms, and taking note of how well his sequined harlequin eyeglasses framed his moisturized features.
โThere was a listing in the 1994 Damronโs and I thought a gay pension would be more welcoming.โ
Frannie clapped his hands, his jeweled rings catching the light. โIndeed, my dears, and you are truly welcome. You must let me know if you need anything! And December is the perfect time for Phuket. Nary a monsoon in sight!โ
Ready to unwind, Hiro and I spread towels on the beach the next morning, drinking from green coconuts, macheted open as we ordered.
When the warmth of the sun grew too intense, we paid two sweet older women, working as masseuses there on the sand, for relaxing baby powder massages under the palm trees. The soft talcum beneath their gentle fingers soothed skin that sunscreen had just kept from reddening, easing away the warmth that had gathered within it with each calming stroke.
Street food captivated me; rice noodles and citrus and shrimp so fresh I swore I saw it wriggle. Hiro immediately learned how to ask for mild versions with a phrase in Thai. Mรขi pรจt krap!
For dinner, within a formal dining room utterly crammed with rosewood furniture and potted plants, Frannie served the famed osso buco with the creamiest polenta. The meal was almost as delicious as the other guestsโ gossip about boys working at the local bars. Although neither Hiro nor I needed to know who the best tops were in town, I smiled as Hiroโs eyebrows arched at the mention of a shower show.
We rented a Suzuki Samurai the next morning to tour more of the island, searching out locales for pure leisure. After a glance at the map, I aimed the little jeep at a secluded beach to the north in a town called Nai Thon. The clear water urgently tempted us into bathing suits, and when a tout asked if we wanted to snorkel from his boat in the bay, we agreed.
Hiro and I slid into the cerulean Andaman Sea. The fish swam with purples, yellows, and greens amid the bright red and white coral, fluttering in the dappled sunlight. The two of us floated along, happy to be just an armโs reach apart, sharing discoveries with frantically pointed fingers.
When we tired and returned to the boat, where a ladder draped from the boatโs starboard bow to a small platform at the water level, my lack of upper body strength meant that I struggled, neither able to lift myself forward, nor able to shimmy onto the platform backwards. Hiro slipped back into the bay to shove me upward as the boatman extended his hands to give me a pull. With equal volumes of laughter (theirs) and embarrassment (mine), their efforts restored me to the deck.
Later in the afternoon, Hiro sat beside me as I drove to the southern tip of Phuket, stopping at every bend in the road, cameras ready as we marveled at how the hills, robed in a tropical jacquard woven with trees, bushes, and vines dotted with flowers, framed views of an azure sea where fishing boats bobbed. I then turned the jeep northward, back to Patong Beach, along the western coast of the island.
As we entered our room, back at the pension, the searing red on the back of Hiroโs neck raised an alarm. โHoney, take off your shirt. I think youโve been sunburned.โ
His neck, his back, his arms, and even his ears pulsed with heat, my fingers still inches from his skin. And when Hiro asked me to turn and strip, too, he found that I had been equally crisped.
โDidnโt we put sunscreen on?โ
I nodded, my face creasing with concern. โMaybe it wasnโt waterproof? Maybe we should have reapplied it?โ
Hiro ran downstairs and borrowed some aloe from Frannie, and I filled the bath with cold water, both of which strategies offered only momentary relief. Throughout the night, we slathered and re-slathered aloe, sleeping in fits and starts on our stomachs.
After gasping in alarm at the vivid burns the next morning, Frannie directed us to a pharmacy in the next block, jotting down the name of his favorite pain-killer. Each step there had us cringingโevery brush of fabric against our backs stung with the might of a dozen irate hornets. The pharmacist, a uniformed Thai woman with long hair flowing beneath an ivory clasp at her nape, concurred with Frannieโs recommendation, and thank us as we paid for the pills. โKhab kun khฤ.โ
Hiro echoed her, down to the khฤ, a sentence particle denoting a female speaker. He had yet to grasp the difference, despite my whispered corrections, so instead I bowed and enunciated. โKhab kun krap.โ Although the remaining days of our trip had been, like the first few, without a set itineraryโwe had come for an escapeโwe took advantage of the medication to embrace a few days in the shade.
The osso buco gossip prompted Hiro to ask if a visit to the gay bar with the shower show would count as relaxing. I laughed, as unsure of what such a show might entail as he was. I asked Frannie for directions, inspiring a theatrical fit of winks as I laughed off his assumptions. Later that afternoon, Hiro and I entered the barโs twilight during an intermission. We selected a compromise table: near to the stage yet as far from the fumes of the smoking customers as possible, cringing as we sat, the sunburn still painful. After ordering two Cokes, one of the young Thai men working there came to join us.
Conversation proceeded in English, slowly, with careful enunciation. The young man shrugged when he realized that Hiro and I had neither an interest in separate partners for each of us nor for a third person to join us. The young man then shared the list of upcoming performances, and Hiro asked if the shower show was on the playbill. The young man laughed and, at Hiroโs prompting, tried to explain. โDancers shower on stage.โ
The confusion that Hiro and I shared grew deeper.
The young man laughed again. โYou see. Soon.โ
Bar emcees rolled out glass shower stalls, complete with jury-rigged plumbing connected to taps off-stage. Lithe performers, clad in fluffy white towels, entered to applause. The towels fell away, revealing traditional Thai loincloths, before each performer strutted into his own stall and turned on the water.
Each shower included a supply of liquid soap to offer a demonstration of the art of sudsy foam. The performers showcased the intriguing eroticism of soap-clad bodies up against glass shower stalls as the music changed from a heavier, faster rhythm to a gentler, soothing pulse. Additional performers, also clad in traditional loincloths, joined the occupants of the stalls, proving that soapsuds need not be a solitary medium.
Hiro and I needed, however, to avoid each otherโs gaze. As erotic as the show had been designed to be, we both quickly discovered the humor in its surreality, and squeezed each otherโs hand beneath the table to keep from laughing out loud.
After the applause faded, we thanked the young man and settled the tab. Our walk back to the pension brought us past the bay, shimmering in the moonlight, quiet.
The other tourists had abandoned it for bars or restaurants, and with no one to see, Hiro slipped his hand into mine. I impulsively gave it a squeeze.
โI want to marry you, mister.โ I smiled at him, besotted anew.
โSomeday.โ He smiled back, relaxed.
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Author bio: Brian Watson has been a queer leader/mentor for more than 35 years. White Enso selected his essay, Bending Time, for their nonfiction award, and both Cutbank and Columbia Journal named Unfolding, a braided essay, finalists for their nonfiction prizes. His writing mentor is Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased.
