In the holiday season, many people are excited going home to celebrate with their families. How excited you are to see a lot of people: your parents, relatives and grandkids, in a big family’s party? But you know, I really dislike going home on holidays. And that the reason I don’t want to celebrate anything!

It happens for a long time and still happens today. Family and relatives often ask personal questions such as ‘when you are going to get marry?’—this is the most popular question which I believe that many single men and women are normally asked. The question begins from your parent(s) first asking you then other family members, including your grandkids, will swarm in. They have a strong power over you to make you feel very-very small when they are in group. Moreover, they can make you feel even more embarrassed, especially in front of your grandkids, when the marriage story goes further, intruding your personal ‘sex life’—when the reason to delay marriage convinces everyone to think in their minds that you are hiding your kinky sexual fantasy or unusual sex partner?! And that is the reason I don’t want seeing my family when they are in group. What I often do is that I will volunteer to work during holidays or call home to tell them that I can’t go to celebrate holidays because I am very busy, or want to avoid lousy traffic, or airplane ticket isn’t available, etc. If you choose to visit your parents other times, you will see only your parents. They would not have much power to make you feel very small as when they form a group. On the other hand, if you are parents now, you must know that when your kid(s) choose to go to school far away from home and don’t want to come home often, or don’t want to live with family, your kid(s) may have some personal problems, perhaps involving in the sex life / genders which they don’t want their parents know.

However, if you can’t volunteer to work during holidays, yet you have no reason to tell your parents to avoid going home, you, as a single adult, must prepare answering your family members to understand the reality of love when being asked—‘when you are going to get marry?’ The reality which everyone must understand you is that...

‘Marriage is not the thing available in a supermarket. To have a good partner to marry with is not the thing you can buy in a store so that you can tell them when you will go to buy your partner / marriage. Love and a perfect partner are a God-sent gift for your life so the only thing you can do is to pray day and night. That’s all you can do. If you have no chance to get marry in your life, that would be God’s will and you, yourself, will accept your fate. It isn’t anyone’s business at all to worry about your marriage.’

This story happened long time ago. A man (let call him in this story—‘H’) lived in Bangkok. H was an openly single gay man (and still virgin). One day, there was a new graduated, young and handsome straight man applied for a job then worked with him in the office. H fell in love to the young man at first sight. The young man was poor but he had a generous man like H financially supported him: spending thousands of his income to buy him new clothes, drove a car to send him home everyday so the young man didn’t need to pay for transportation, etc. H’s friends suggested him that he should keep the money he spent on the young man to spend at go-go bar. However, H said that he wanted a real love, not just having sex. The reason he financially supported the young man was because he hoped that the young man will find him a good person then finally fell in love him. After a few years, H began to mutter to his friends that he had spent enough on the young man; every time H asked the young man for sex, the young man always denied but whenever the young man needed to buy something, he always called him. And finally, the young man planed to get marry with a girl; he called H to help finance his wedding party. H, eventually, gave up his love. He decided going with his gay friends at a go-go bar one night and hiring his first male prostitute. In the next morning, he told his friends happily that spending time at the go-go bar made him very happy. The guy he hired that night treated him well. Moreover, he realized spending a lot of money for real love to the young man in the office went to waste because they never had sex together but spending a lot less at the go-go bar he could have sex. “If I know I will be very happy like this, I would go to the go-go bar for a long time. I should not waste time for long and money for the real love,”—he said when he understood the reality.

Here is another story. A man said that his younger brother found out one day that he often hired an escort. His younger brother suggested him that instead of hiring an escort, he should go to a nightclub and hook up with someone for long term relationship. However, the man said that he was now 70 years old; if he hooked up someone, he should get a 70 years old woman same his age. “70 and 70, what a hell we gonna do together,” —he said.

I say to someone once—‘love is expensive. If you love having sex and you realize you pay for sex too much, it is like your house is robbed. But that isn’t too bad because a good thing is that at least you still have a bed left to sleep, you still have a kitchen and bathroom and a place to live. However, if you are addicted to love, it is like your house caught fire; what you have left is ground zero’. When I am young, I often hear people say ‘love is mighty’. In the reality, love is not mighty but costly; sex is a lot cheaper. People are confused all the time what they actually want between love and sex. A simple way to know is that, imagine, if you are a lucky single man because you have hundreds of beautiful and sexy girls your type knock on your door every day and ask you to have sex with them for free, do you still want to get marry?—And that the answer for you to know actually you want love or sex. Don’t make a big mistake!

One day I went to buy something at a store. While I was paying for my stuffs at the cashier, there were around 4-5 women who were watching TV, in the same time working at the cashier. At that time on the TV, there were celebrity news : a celebrity couple broke up their relationship and the husband had to pay tens of millions of dollars to his wife for only a short marriage. One of the women who were watching the TV immediately slip out her mouth making a comment by saying—“Stupid”. This wasn’t my comment, but what I thought was that this amount of money, tens of millions of dollars, could you imagine, was enough to hire escorts for the rest of his life. He could also hire different girls everyday if he wanted. However, he chose to pay for one partner, including an extravagant wedding party, and especially in an unbelievable short marriage.

It is very funny that when men hire escorts and their escorts want to spend short time with their clients so they try to kick them out of their apartments quickly, clients always get angry and call their escorts rip them off but to pay millions of dollars for a short marriage and for only one woman they seem to have no comment. In Thailand, there is a slang word to call ‘prostitute’ as ‘rental wife’. It seems to be stupid, doesn’t it, to pay millions of dollars for a short time wife while he can rent one at a very cheaper cost. If you don’t want to pay each time for the service because you want to feel like you have a real love partner, every escort also has an option—pay per year contract, then she will move into your house and take good care of you every day 24/7. Even better than getting a real marriage is that you have more control over your partner. For example, if you tell your wife how you want to be treated at night and she must treat you well, she can yell at you and dictate you to help yourself. But you tell an escort how you want to be treated; she must do the best she can because she is looking forward for the next year contract.

Hiring an escort is a smart choice for a hard-working person because you don’t have family issues follow you to your work. Imagine, you are just about to get better in your job then you have a family problem : in the marriage, you expect to have a fight in the family sometimes: wife wants this and kids want that. You are a hard-working person but instead you can 100% focus on your job, now you are moody and upset about your life. The family problems cause you to have hot temper at work: you may get angry at your customers and co-workers and have to spend some times while working to think about family problems. These family problems can ruin your life and job. In contrast to hiring an escort, soon after you step out of her apartment, you don’t have anything to think about. In case, your job requires you not to be home often, you have no one to worry. Moreover, when you are broke or get laid off, to save money you don’t mind to eat less and drink more water. However, you can’t see your wife and kids be left hungry. You want to volunteer working on holidays to make more money but your kids keep saying—‘daddy, you must come home with gifts’. Many men try to search for love and be upset when they don’t get it. This is because they do the wrong way. The right way is that, don’t look for love but look to be a successful person and financial stability by working hard then love will come right to your door. However, when you are a successful person so you can afford hiring escorts every week, you may not want love relationship anymore. A man said that he knew how to hire escorts after he got marry; “if I know before that, I will never get marry. But it is too late.” When asking him—‘who does he have sex with before marriage?’ He said—“my girlfriend.” “Only one?” He replied—“Yes, only one. You can’t have sex with many people because they will talk all over and my girlfriend will find out about. If we break up, I have to find a new girlfriend to have sex with.”

A woman said that her parents really wanted her to marry but she was really afraid to get marry. Her boyfriend seemed to be very polite to her in public but not at all when they were together in privacy. He punched her in the stomach. Sometimes when he couldn’t meet her, he will call and tell her to do phone sex with him. Sometimes he told her to invite her girlfriends home to make a group sex together. Her parents didn’t understand why she was so afraid to get marry. This was very embarrassed for her to tell her parents and other people.

However, this is why sex workers are very important. If her boyfriend chooses to hire a sex worker, he doesn’t need to hurt his girlfriend. One thing that normally people who never work as a sex worker don’t know is that many men who have this type of sexual fantasy can be in both dominated and submissive positions. If her boyfriend asks her to dominate him, she may have negative feeling toward him as perversity and call for breaking up the relationship. Or he doesn't say anything about his sexual fantasy because he may not understand it that why he likes to do that every time he wants to have sex. Therefore, without asking her to dominate him, he chooses to be the first person to dominate her by punching her in her stomach to rile her anger then he expects her to react to him the same way; however, she doesn’t understand his intension. This type of men when they meet an escort, they are comfortable to discuss about their sexual fantasy because every escort understands this type of sexual fantasy and most clients prefer to be in submissive position.

However, don’t think that hiring escorts is for only men but women as well. Imagine, you hire a matchmaker to help you find someone for date. Then matchmaker sets up a party. In the party, there will be twenty men and twenty women. Normally, each person will select someone (or be selected by someone) based upon the same (or similar) status. However, if an old lady chooses to hire a handsome male escort, she can make a selection regardless to her age; she gets a young, good looking man. This is because she is a successful person so she has a power to select (rather than being selected) whoever she prefers to date with and the young man must treat her well. This is the prize of being success. Focus on your job, entertainers are easy to find.

I have a question for you—‘who is right and who is wrong in this story?’ An old American man dates a younger and good looking Asian gay man. The old man works in a very high paying job and lives in a luxurious house and lifestyle, but the Asian guy lives in a low income family. One day the old man asks the young Asian guy to have sex with him. The young Asian guy says to the old man—“why don’t you buy me a gift?” The old man yells angrily at the young Asian guy—“You lie to me. You don’t love me but you love my money.” The Asian guy says—“You work in a good job and live in a luxurious house, only a little gift you never buy for me. You also lie to me. Actually, you love your money more than me.”

Is it fair? When your kids ask you that daddy I want this and I want that, you never complain that your kids love you because they want something from you. When you file for a divorce, doesn’t your wife (or husband) ask you to pay her (or him) until you become financial broke? When you eat out at a restaurant, you never say that your waitress is nice to you because she hopes you pay her a good tip. When a celebrity guy has sex discreetly with a woman, then the woman comes forward and demands him to pay her millions of dollars, he never calls her a prostitute but respects her as a mistress. Doesn’t a mistress have sex for money too? However, only prostitutes are blamed from doing the same thing, yet they get paid the least for being blamed the most.

A story happened long time ago. Two sisters worked as prostitutes in Bangkok. Let call them in this story—‘O’ and ‘D’. D was a younger sister. She was very beautiful and sexy. One night, they didn’t go to work as usual but hurry up packing their suitcases in their apartment. They will fly on the next day to go to work as prostitutes in Japan so that they could make more money to save for their retirements. A young man, who was D’s regular client, sat on her bed, begging her not to go to Japan. The young man came from a wealthy family; he asked her to marry him and offered her a comfortable life—only staying home, taking care of the house, with no need to work a day in her marriage. I asked D as we lived in the same building—‘why didn’t she take this opportunity to marry the young wealthy man?’ However, D said— “he will not love me for long,” and explained, “now, he still loves me so he can say anything. Most of my clients are married guys; I know them well. After marriage, he will find me boring then he will search for other girls. He knows well where he can find other girls; he meets me at the bar then he will go back to the bar again.”

Another story was different from D's story. A woman named ‘G’ (in this story). She lived and studied in a high school in a small city in Thailand. She didn’t graduate yet but had a boyfriend who was one of her classmate. G was a very beautiful woman, unbelievable how beautiful she was. Her beauty was notorious all over the city. Although, her family was extremely poor, people who didn’t know her will make a wrong guess that she would come from a millionaire’s family because she looked very elegant, calm and conservative and having very beautiful skin. In contrast to her boyfriend, he looked unattractive but his family, a middle class family, was wealthier than her.

One day G was pregnant so both her and her boyfriend had to quit school before a high school graduation. Then she had to move into her boyfriend’s house. Her boyfriend’s parents were Chinese immigrant. They opened a small family restaurant. Many old traditional Chinese families in Thailand treated their daughters-in-law as a maid. In general, when a son brought his girlfriend to meet his parents, his mother will treat her nicely because she wanted her son to get marry quickly and had kids. However, after marriage, the mother-in-law will treat her daughter-in-law differently. G then worked as a maid for the family. Until G realized what was love, she had to wash clothes for the entire family by hand-washing until her hands’ skin was dried and peeled off. Also she had to work in the kitchen all day, seven days a week with no holiday and vacation. Moreover, her mother-in-law didn’t allow her to walk out from the kitchen because she was worried that G will hook up with other guys and run away. Her husband was a submissive person so he never argued with his mother on her behalf. Now, G looked like a different person because she looked a lot older than her actual age and not beautiful at all. Ironic, somehow love was like a fairy tale for a young girl—Cinderella, but only some parts of it. This was because G had a low ambition; if she waited until graduated from high school and moved into a big city like Bangkok, she definitely could be a movie star and had a better future. It didn’t mean that everyone had to marry for money but at least love should give that person a life in a dream, not a life in prison. I didn’t know, was there any woman dream of hand-washing clothes until her hands’ skin was peeled off?

However, this doesn’t mean that I anti-marriage; I don’t anti-marriage. Unlike most people think, I don’t think that marriage is important for life. Many people decide to marry because they think that marriage is a part of life, or parents tell them that it is time to marry. They don’t marry because they really want to. When you have someone loves you and you want to live with that person, you can live together without marriage. If some days in the relationship, your partner is broke or gets laid off, you don’t mind to pay for food, utility bills, vacation, etc. for your partner, it doesn’t hurt you because you pay for your happiness. When you want to break up the relationship someday, without marriage you can do anytime. But if one day in your marriage, you have to file for a divorce, it hurts you real bad, especially when you work hard for all your life until you become stable, you don’t want to (or can’t) go back to start your life all over again. This doesn’t mean that the decision not to marry, you are selfish to your partner but everyone has the right to protect themselves and what they have earned. Today, women also can be financial stability like men so I believe that my article is fair to every gender. You may think that in case you get sick, who will take care of you if you don’t marry. Marriage doesn’t guarantee that your partner will take good care of you when you are sick. If you live with someone who really loves you, s/he will not leave you when you really need help, no matter whether you have a marriage certificate or not. Or the decision not to marry may help you save enough money to hire assistances. However, it doesn’t mean that if you choose not to marry someone, you can’t have sex. Don’t stop hooking up someone for sex. Or hiring escort(s) can be the best way and why is that. Imagine—you eat out at a restaurant, the restaurant tells you every dish how much it costs so you know when you finish eating how much you have to pay—that’s escort service. Another restaurant, however, doesn’t tell you how much it costs so you thought all the time that food is free. When you finish eating, they leave you a $10,000 check. You say angrily that you eat only little but how you can pay this bill. All you have right now is only ten bucks. However, the restaurant owner says that if you don’t pay, the restaurant will bring you to court—that’s the marriage. You want to know the cost before you eat or after, it’s your choice.

A transgender, I called her in this story ‘K’, lived in Thailand. After graduated from a university, she had tried very hard in applying for a job for years but she never got one. In Thailand, even though there were many transgenders, Thai societies seemed to accept transgender lifestyle, however indeed they didn’t (this I mean, in decades ago, now Thai societies are more accepted transgender lifestyle). For example, universities accepted their transformation but when graduated, they had to dress as a man in order to apply for a job; they were unable to have an official female name, even though some may already had a sex-changed operation, etc. Except, some kinds of job accepted transgenders to work as a woman such as designer and artist but that wasn’t her major. K refused to dress as a man. Some of her friends suggested her to work as a transgender prostitute like them but K insisted that she will search for a job and keep her virginity for the man she loved. Years past, she still couldn’t find a job (including a man who loved her), yet being really broke. Finally, she gave up her attempt to find a job. She, then, took a bus to go to Pattaya (a tourist city) to work as a prostitute. She told her friends happily one day that her first client, she remembered him well, was a young, good-looking Italian guy. He gave her 2,000 baht. Only first client, the long suffering of her financial broke began to be healed. What worth to keep the virginity for the man she loved. I ask you the truth—‘if you date a beautiful transgender, in your mind do you think that she is virgin?’ If K wanted to protest the Government to change law to accept transgender lifestyle and asked society to sympathy her, she may have to fight for her right until her black hair turned grey but still it didn’t guarantee they will accept her. Now, K was happier about her life after she understood the reality—‘ love can’t fill her stomach.’ Not only K understood the reality, she also accepted it. She knew that she couldn’t change the reality but what she could do was to change her idea and adjust her life according to the reality.

Many men who love transgenders often complain that why transgenders they hook up with work in escort service. Before answering this question, let me tell you a Thai trannies' tale, which in this article, it’s different from the collection of transgender stories in my book—‘Thai Tranny Tales’.

A beautiful and sexy transgender named ‘TM’ in this story. She opened a barber shop in a small town, two hours drive from Bangkok. She lived alone. Her business, although it didn’t make her become a wealthy person, was considered stable and gave her just enough to pay all the bills. One day a good-looking man, the same her age, walked into her shop to have a haircut. They fell in love to each other. The man was very poor but like many men thought, to love with a transgender could give him an opportunity to live like a wealthy man. He immediately moved into her house.

Normally, in the traditional heterosexual couple, men earned income for family. However, Thai transgenders' love life was opposite; it was that transgender women had to earn income to take care of their men--this I mean, for decades ago. In this generation, this lifestyle begins to change. This was because all Thai transgender women, in the past generations, were told that men chose to have sex with them for substitution whenever they were unable to find a biological woman. They were told that men didn't like them because they had a penis so ironically if a transgender wanted to have a boyfriend, she had to buy one. (And this was the history of why transgenders had to hide their penises.) TM’s boyfriend didn't need to work but just stayed home, not even needed to help her taking care of her house. His job was only having sex with her, being monogamous, and helping her spent her money. Once her boyfriend asked her that he wanted to have a motorcycle, she immediately bought it for him because she was worried he will stop loving her. Moreover, not only TM had to take care of her boyfriend, she also had to take care of her boyfriend’s parents when he asked for. Transgenders in the past generations were tortured by love from men for a long time. Some of them committed suicide when they were broken heart; they supported their boyfriends for a long time, gave everything to men to worship love but what they got back from their men was—“now I have to marry (with a real woman). I want to have kids.” Or “I am embarrassed; my friends and family tease me all the time that I have a transgender girlfriend.” And many of many reasons men excused to leave their transgender partners when they had enough sex with them.

Like I say before, you can’t change the reality but you can change your idea and adjust your lifestyle according to the reality. Transgenders in this generation have learned from the past. And now they know the reality that men don’t have sex with a transgender for substitution so why transgenders have to be the bread winners.

Another reason that many transgenders work in escort service is because of the high costs of the transformation (from male to female). For many transgenders who don’t have high education and don’t work in high paying jobs, escort service is only one job that can pay for all surgeries. Even if a transgender graduates from a good university and gets good job, without help from family she still needs a lot of time to collect her savings enough to pay for her transformation, while the best result for the transformation should begin at the young age. If you don’t have any idea how high the costs are: breast implants are between $8,000-$12,000, female hormone may cost $200 per week, and other kinds of surgery such as nose surgery, eyelid lift surgery, hair removal, cosmetics, female clothes,… these are not covered by health insurance. Moreover, when you do surgery such as breast implants, you may not be able to find a good doctor in your area so you need more money to pay for airplane ticket, hotel, etc. During the recovery, which may take a month, you can’t work so you need to have money to pay for food, apartment rent, etc. Even adult male still finds it difficult to earn this money, many transgender women may have to pay for these bills until they almost file for a bankruptcy.

If you are an unattractive guy, you don’t mind to get marry or have sex with an unattractive woman the same as you because she is a woman anyway. But when it comes to having sex with a transgender, no matter you are attractive or unattractive, every man wants to have sex with only attractive or passable transgender. But I can’t blame men for that because the desire of having sex with women, for straight men, is nature’s creation, however having sex with a transgender is individual’s fantasy. Imagine, if a man asks you that even though now he still looks like a man but he is really confident that after transformation, he will look like a passable and sexy woman, can you help him by investing on his transformation cost? I believe that every man will say— “no, but you can come back to see me when you are ready.” I understand that no one wants to invest for something they aren't sure. So, do you think is there any man will help a transgender pay for these transformation costs? This is the real life which transgenders have learned and find a way to help themselves, and escort service is one way they can do to help themselves, good for both transgenders and their clients, so we don’t need to waste time to complain each other anymore—‘what is fair or not fair for them.’

When I was young, there were many transgenders lived in my neighbor. They worked in nightclubs so in late afternoon, they will dress very sexy to go to work. In the same area, there was a small restaurant. The owner of the restaurant often chased transgenders when they walked past his restaurant because he really wanted to have sex with transgenders. He was a father; his son saw father did that everyday. One day his son revealed his secret to dad that he also wanted to be a transgender. Dad, the owner of the restaurant, was really mad and abused him until he had to run away from home to live with his friend for two months without telling his family where he went to. However, because he was a teenager, he couldn’t survive on his own. Finally, he came home. He told his dad that he saw his dad chased transgenders everyday so he believed that dad accepted transgender lifestyle. Now he understood that actually dad didn’t accept transgender lifestyle, but he, like many men, evaluated transgenders only for a good sex partner. So what’s a problem if transgenders will work in sex business?

However, some men understand the reality. “Don’t stop working in escort service,” a man said as he was a married man with kids. He said that it was impossible for him to file for a divorce then to re-marry with a transgender; his family, especially his kids, friends and job may not understand about this so hiring a transgender escort discreetly was the best way to maintain his social life, family, job and sexual fantasy at the same time.

Another man said that—“if you don’t work as an escort, we would never have a chance to know each other.”

Many people may think that the reason someone chooses to hire escorts is because he is unattractive so he can’t hook up with somebody. However, it isn’t true. Many people who are on casual encounter are not good-looking people. Many good-looking men also hire escorts. A young, good-looking man said that if he had to spend time for months to hook up someone, waited indefinitely to reply endless emails, yet most emails were fake, why didn't he spend this valuable time to focus on his job, he will make money more than escort fee. He said that he worked in a good job and his job required him to ‘sleep on time’ and ‘wake up on time’. “No time for girlfriend,” he said.

However, it doesn’t mean that escorts never have love. I believe that most escorts have someone (or more than one) falls in love to them. But the reason they choose not to quit the escort job to have a long term relationship with someone is because their escort job now helps them survive and become independent. Moreover, although they never get marry, they understand the reality of love, perhaps even better than many people who never work in escort service; this comes from their real life experiences, and clients. Love in escort service is unlike the love you know or often see in romantic movies. It is unlike the traditional marriage propose—no one knees down in front of an escort (but it doesn’t mean she can’t have a real love).

This is one example of how real love can be created, (it isn’t my experience but someone). An old man hires an escort regularly. At the beginning, both the escort and the client don’t have love relationship together. The client thinks only having someone who treats him well to spend time with. The escort also thinks only it’s good to have a repeated client like him to help supporting her business. Many people look for love at the beginning of their relationship. However, this can be a good way to start—think only having fun first.

Then like everyone’s life, sometimes in your life, you must have troubles. Most escorts take care of themselves. When troubles happen, who they think in their minds is friends or ‘a client’. From hundreds of clients, only tens of them she believes can help her, a few of them are willing to help, but only one she is comfortable to ask for. Unlike H, the gay man, who offers financial support the good-looking straight man when he doesn’t ask for, in this case the escort asks the old man when she really needs help. Love doesn’t happen by itself but under circumstance.

Love doesn’t happen easily like in a romantic dream or fairy tales for a young girl. The decision to love or not to love someone should be made by the best of her knowledge and what she has learned in her real life experience, like when D decides not to marry the young wealthy man but choose to go to Japan to work as a prostitute.