Who's your daddy?

Every so often here in Bangkok I encounter a situation that is so bizarre by Australian standards that it’s difficult to take it seriously. So let be warn you that some details (and definitely some implications) of the following story are weird at best and disturbing at worst.

My friend Lee recently told me that he needed to speak with me privately. I assumed he had some deep personal issue with which he was struggling and wanted to seek my professional counsel on the matter. However, he in fact told me that he had been approached by the security guard in our apartment building, who told him about a situation he was hoping Lee could assist with. The situation is that a local Thai woman who lives in our street has been married for 4 years and has been having sex with her husband all this time (Lee assures me there were some graphic hand gestures to emphasise this point), but so far there is no baby. It would appear that she lays all the blame for this lack of offspring on her husband, so she asked our security guard if there might be any English men in our building who would be interested in a little casual sex with her in order to get her pregnant. The plan would then be that she moves up to the country to have the baby and that would be that – no problem.

The security guard obviously took this matter very seriously and had taken the time to carefully assess each of the males in our building (8 in total). Three were ruled out because they weren’t white (including Lee, who is of Taiwanese background – I secretly think he was rather disappointed about this) and another one because he already has a girlfriend. Two others were eliminated because they had been seen bringing women back to their apartments; on the surface this would seem an illogical reason to deem them unsuitable for such a purpose, but the security guard insisted that the correct candidate must be a “good man”. This only left one other teacher (who happens to be 60) and me. So the security guard had asked Lee to approach the two of us with this enticing offer.

Needless to say I was flattered beyond words. In the ensuing days I started getting a bit of pressure from the security guard to take up the woman’s offer. Whenever I saw him he assured me that he could phone her there and then and she could come down straight away – no problem. While I can only assume that somewhere in this world there might be men who would jump at such an opportunity, I am certainly not one of them. As a result, I was initially in a bit of a dilemma because I knew that saying a blunt no to someone can be interpreted as quite rude in Thai culture, and the last thing I wanted to do was insult someone over such an important matter. So despite the security guard trying to convince me with compliments about my high IQ (clearly a sought-after pre-requisite for sperm donors in Bangna), I have politely declined his request. The only price I’ve had to pay for my negative response was a few days of the security guard insinuating that I must have some difficulties keeping my end up, so to speak.

So after such an existentially stressful experience, I figure I have earned a short holiday. I may have mentioned to some of you in passing that I had arranged a diving trip to the Maldives. Well, I am happy to report that I leave for this on Saturday. I really do feel incredibly lucky to have this opportunity. By any standard, this is going to be a pretty special trip – a week living on a chartered yacht with 12 other staff from school, sailing around the Maldives and diving at will with manta rays, sharks and if we’re really lucky, whale sharks. Rest assured I will write all about it upon my return. Cheers.