WEARING a tight white singlet and shorts, he starts dancing, giving each movement a feminine twist. Clients watch him, entertained and seduced. And sometimes, if not most times, they do more than just watch.
It was 7:30pm. Tim, 20, sat in a hair salon; his basil chicken rice was getting stale.
"They call it 'dancing' but we're just alluring ourselves to clients," said Tim, a first-year computer business undergraduate. His voice was strangely soft and muddy, like he was speaking through a cushion.
Tim has been a go-go boy for two months to self-finance his university education, which he attends during the day. He is half Japanese and his family has suffered severely from the recent tsunami catastrophe in Japan. The waves have drowned the family in a deep financial hole.
His Thai mother moved to Japan to help the family recover. And while his elder siblings have scattered to different places, Tim is now alone in Bangkok.
"I needed a job that pays big," he said.
Tim's university friends do not know what his job is. Neither do his parents.
"It would be embarrassing to tell them. I only tell people I do 'nightshifts'," he said, frowning at his food as if it were a dead mouse on the plate in front of him.
Tim doesn't worry about his friends finding out eventually.
"If they really love me for who I am, then it shouldn't matter," he said, and paused to think before continuing.
"It's the income I earn for myself. I did it all on my own, with my own effort. At least I didn't go ask anyone for money," he asserted.
Tim earns 50,000 baht a month at a minimum _ an amount just sufficient to sponsor his education and to basically keep himself alive.
"For survival, it's probably the best and fastest way to get money. But you also have to be careful not to fall too deep into it, like drugs and gambling. If you're not careful, you will certainly end up in a place where you shouldn't be."
While most go-go boys in the Twilight hood are homosexuals, Tim remains straight _ like a black sheep in a white herd.
''I don't find it particularly difficult. I have made a lot of friends here, and several of them I've become very close to. I don't think it's essentially different to men-men or women-women working relationships. It's more to do with your attitude on the matter,'' he said.
Outside the salon, go-go boys gathered in small groups to queue up for a styling. They were chatty, playful and always on the look out. They blatantly peeked into the salon from time to time as if they could hear our conversation. The ones inside the salon, of course, were already listening.
''I personally think of it as a job, and that way I can keep it apart. Whatever happens during the job will not affect the person I am inside. My real identity remains,'' he said, assured.
Tim picked up the spoon on his plate for the first time, fiddled with it, and put it back down. The basil chicken rice remained untouched.
Tim has had more than 50 clients whom he's had sexual relations with _ a figure completely unimaginable two months ago when he first arrived at Soi Twilight as an inexperienced young man looking for a job. His first memory remains eternal.
One evening, a 20-year-old boy makes his way into Soi Twilight. Faces he has never seen turn to look at him. He is nervous and scared but he is determined. He keeps walking deeper into the Soi.
Later, he finds himself wearing a tight white outfit: a singlet and shorts, waiting to hear his queue number, waiting to be called out on stage. The air around him is suffocating. And he finds his legs have stiffened up.
The boy is called on stage. It's so quick that he has no time to react. He feels like a fish being released into a new tank _ exposed and vulnerable. He wants to get away.
But there is no going back.
''The client looked at me intently but I couldn't make eye contact. I didn't want to,'' he said, reflecting on his first stage experience.
Tim spent the first few days in depression. ''There were intense periods where I just felt so bad. But then I thought of it as a job I have to do, a risk I decided to take. Then I'd refocus and think differently. It comes back to self-support,'' he said.
Most of Tim's consistent clients are mid-thirties foreign women, residents and tourists. His slender, polite, boyish looks seem to do the trick. They would firstly ask him what he could offer, and whether he was straight. Then they would go from there.
''Before I go with a client, I'd have to tell them what I can and cannot do. For a male client, I would always go and be a 'king'. There was a customer who wanted me to be a 'queen', but I just couldn't deliver,'' he said.
Some clients can be demanding, sometimes forceful. Working as a go-go boy has opened a new window in Tim's life. And through it, he has seen what kind of people exist in this world.
''He was a teacher from an international school in Pattaya. And he was a sadist,'' he began. His face reacted as if he had been hit with a foul smell.
''I don't know if he was repressed with being a teacher or not but he certainly had an issue. He paid my two friends and I to come to a hotel and acted as if it was a classroom. He instructed us through his 'game' he called 'lucky draw'. And he had all this equipment lined up, a stick, a duster and so on,'' he said, relaying the details of the event.
''Then he got us to read whatever was written on the cards we drew out, loud and clear. And the cards would specify how many times he would spank us. If it said, 'gets thrashed five times with a stick' then there goes.''
His friend drew out '100 times hand-spank' and had to suffer his luck. Tim witnessed the whole scene in extreme awe like a child watching a sick porn video for the first time. He felt fortunate that his draw was minor and proceeded through the night without any vigorous spanking.
''I witnessed the whole thing. It was gruesome. It was like he was possessed,'' said Tim, referring to the international schoolteacher.
To be on the safe side, Tim carries condoms and lubricants with him, but no sharp weapons for self-defence. For now that is.
''I hope I don't have to go as far as carrying a knife,'' he said, smiling faintly for the first time.
The salon was getting busy now. It was rush hour. The blow-dryers kept droning away and the amalgam of sounds came together like a plane was taking off from inside the place. Old ladies hopped from head to head sporting wigs and make-up. The place was strangely energetic, with a kind of discreet enthusiasm to it.
''I think without this night community, I'd feel that those who aren't straight would have nothing to hold on to, no place they could relate to, no outlet for their desire. Most people who work here aren't forced. And clients who come here are voluntary. They all choose to be here,'' said Tim.
''For me, I've never really thought of doing it forever. I'd just like to collect a sum of money so I can survive on my own, and perhaps open my own internet cafe in the future. That would be enough for me really.
''Everyone has a reason to be here,'' he added.
As I walked out of the salon, bright fluorescent neon signs engulfed my sight. Most of them featured alluring images of well-toned men. One in particular showed two flexible men entwining underwater, like some dolphin show at the zoo.
Everyone has a reason to be here.
That may be true for the whole world.
Chet Chetchotisak and Steve Avram are fourth-year students at the Faculty of Communication Arts (international programme), Chulalongkorn University; Adrian Tse is an Australian graduate working at Wall Street Institute's School of English.
