Джерри Хопкинс - Thailand Confidential

Did everybody follow that? Mai pen rai .

It all has to do with Oriental thought, and most specifically the Buddhist vision of constant and cosmic flow. That thing about the wheel that keeps turning without any real beginning and end. I don’t know for sure, but this may be one of the reasons the Thai language doesn’t have any tenses, and for that alone I’m grateful. While English speakers have the audacity to include such things as “past perfect” and “future perfect” but no “present perfect” in the way they speak. If you ask me, it’s not a matter of Thai time making no sense, it’s the other way around.

As for my friend Nittaya, she’d just run into some friends with whom she caught a bus to Bang Saen for a day at the beach. So her return to my flat two days late merely meant we had dinner on Tuesday instead of Sunday. No problem.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG!

It’s nine o’clock at night at the Hog’s Breath Saloon when suddenly there’s a horrific pounding, as if a carpenter has been sent to remodel the place just as the first of the leggy darlings are climbing onto the stage to dance.

No. It’s only the nightly phlad kikh ceremony, which begins the evening’s fun. In Thailand, the phlad kikh (translation: “honorable surrogate penis”) is a phallic symbol usually carved from wood that is believed to bring the owner—or even someone who touches it—luck. It may be small enough to hide in a pocket or wear on a chain around the neck, as big around as a man’s arm or leg, or even several meters in length.

The one in play at the Hog’s Breath is about thirty centimeters/twelve-inches long and eight centimeters/three inches in diameter, and it’s being banged against the bar’s open front door frame, top, bottom, and sides. The scantily clad young lady holding the object now dunks the head into a glass of Thai whisky, draws a series of circles on the floor, then bangs the floor and door frame again.

As she does this, a dozen other dancers line up behind her, extending into the bar, their legs spread wide. Now the lead bar girl bends forward at the waist, removes the glass, and slides the big wooden dick along the floor between all the high heels behind her. All the girls scream in mock ecstacy.

The phlad kikh is returned to the young woman in charge of the ceremony, and she now makes a circuit of the bar, touching its rounded head to the loins of each girl in the bar, an act that brings more squeals. And from the male customers in attendance laughter and encouragement.

This is no joke, or at least not entirely. In Thailand, the phallic symbol and its worship is regarded seriously, by bar girls and millions more. However it may seem to an outsider, especially in the Christian world, the phlad kikh’s origins are as legitimate as they are worldwide, going back to cave drawings of Paleolithic times, embracing the cult of Priapus in classical times, through witchcraft and paganism in early Europe, to the sensual religions of the East, as epitomized today by the Shiva lingam in India, found in every Hindu temple and in many city squares—most often as a symbol of fertility. Though Christian moralism almost totally banished phallic worship, Joshua and Solomon paid homage to a stone in the Bible (1 Kings, 3,4) and there is a similar report of Jacob’s prayers to a pillar in Genesis 28. Not everyone would agree, but the architecture of Islamic mosques bears more than a passing resemblance to phalluses.

For a long time it was thought that it was from India that Thailand got its phallic worship, but archeologists have since discovered similar images painted on pots dating from about 1000 BC, long before Indian influence had any real impact on Southeast Asia. Again as a symbol of fertility.

Unknown to most of its guests, on the grounds of the Nai Lert Park Hotel (formerly the Bangkok Hilton) there is a small shrine dedicated to phallic offerings, at the north end of the property beside the Saen Saep Canal behind the parking structure. Here, about a hundred phlad kikh crafted from various materials are displayed, ranging up to three meters in length and arranged around a spirit house built by millionaire businessman Nai Lert to honor Jao Mae Thapthim, a female deity thought to reside in the old banyan tree nearby. It’s believed that a woman who made an offering soon got pregnant, thus the shrine is mainly visited by childless women who offer incense, flowers, food and cigarettes.

Of course, pregnancy is not what the girls at the Hog’s Breath want. (May all the animist gods forbid!) There, if you’re pregnant, you’re out of work.

Nor do they want the protection from evil and snake bites that the amulet was thought to bring small boys who, once upon a time, carried the amulets in their pockets before setting off for school, or worn on a waist string under their clothing, off-center from the real penis in the belief they would attract and absorb any injury directed toward the generative organs.

Early styles of phlad kikh bear inscribed invocations, entreaties and praises to Shiva; later ones combine these with appeals and prayers to Buddha; modern ones bear uniformly Buddhist inscriptions written in an ancient script that cannot be read by contemporary Thais. Amulets carved from wood, bone and horn once were made by monks who specialized in their manufacture and the respect given an amulet was connected to the charisma and reputation of its creator.

Today, the greatest number are mass produced for the tourist trade, in wood, bronze, pewter and plastic. Some depict Hanuman, the Monkey God of the Hindus, crouched upon an erect penis, his tail arched over his back. Tigers are given human shafts double the length of the animal. Demons that look like something from a horror movie from Hollywood threaten to commit fellatio with pointy teeth. On others, women straddle an out-sized penis, wearing a smile and a polka-dotted bikini.

Amulet markets in Bangkok and elsewhere still offer the real thing, but at most street stalls the charms are now as laughable as they are divorced from authenticity, and the titillation factor has led to most being hugely overpriced.

For the bar girls and for most Thais today, the phlad kikh is used to summon good luck and, in places of business, a rich and generous customer. Today all over Thailand, they may be seen in places of commerce, next to the cash register in a mom and pop store or nestled in a pile of knockoff designer gear at a street vendor’s stall, in the still unswerving belief that its presence will be good for business, or at the very least cannot hurt. I once saw one the size of a grown man’s thigh mounted between the front seats of a Bangkok taxi.

“How’s business?” I asked. He said it was terrible.

I was walking along Sukhumvit Road to my bank when a motorcycle gave me a bump as it passed. I was on the sidewalk when this happened and I wasn’t pleased, and inasmuch as it was the second time in a week that a motorcyclist had run into me on what Thais call a “footpath,” I decided to take action. Motor-cylists had been using the sidewalks as if they were another lane in the road for a while and I figured it was time to do something about it.

I ran behind the bike, catching up in about half a block when the driver parked next to the bank. I reached him just as he placed his helmet on one of his handle grips. He saw me and looked somewhat chagrined.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said.

“Not good enough!” I yelled, and I grabbed his helmet and threw it into the street just as a bus passed, running over it. Then, realizing what a stupid mistake I’d made, I turned about and ran, anxious to get away before he beat the hell out of me or pulled a gun and shot me dead. If that had happened—and, happily, it didn’t—a dozen witnesses would’ve told police, “This farang came out of nowhere and attacked him…”