Thai girls

My name is Ratana and at 18 I'm seen as old hand, past my use by date.  The men here don't care about me much anymore but then they never did.  When I was 13 my parents put me to work on Walking Street so that I could make money to support my poor farming family.  Some girls are younger than that when sent off to work.

I had known for a long time I would end up on Walking Street.  All the girls in my village know that.  We all see the city men come to our village again and again, pay money to a family and leave with the daughter (and sometimes boys go too).  One by one the girls disappear, sent off to work as prostitutes, in strip clubs or child brothels.  To be raped and mistreated by rich white men who saw us only as objects to use and discard.  To be the sexual entertainment of perverse men who find it entertaining to watch Thai girls smoke cigarets with their vaginas and all the other cheap thrill things they liked to see us do.  These gross and careless men made me sick.
I was with a man when I turned 18.  He was a fat repulsive white man who was loosing his hair and he smelt bad.  When he met me he paid me lots of money to come and live with him in his hotel room.  He paid me to be his girlfriend.  He purchased outfits he wanted me to wear that revealed a lot of my body.  Sometimes he took me out to dinner, other times I cooked for him and was his personal slave.  Most of the time we had sex, rough and awful.  When ever he was in the mood.  He would just grab me and do his thing and I would pretend he was great and that I liked it.  I was very good at pretending.
I didn't enjoy any of the things he made me do but some were worse than others and they made me feel unhappy about my life.  Like trying to force me to go down on him while he had company just to prove he was the man and always threatening to get some other girlfriend if I didn't do what he wanted.  On my 18 birthday he kicked me out because I was too old to be his girlfriend now.
It depressed me that this was my life and that white men didn't care that this was my life.  They were getting something from me and that's all that mattered.
If only my family weren't poor and daughters didn't have a duty to support their family by selling their bodies to filthy white men.  If only we were wealthy.  If only I could save enough money to leave this place and support my family.  If only my government would take care of it's people better.  I would day dream about meeting a nice man who had money and would take me away from this life.  Maybe take me to his country and I could bring my family there too and we'd all be happy and away from this place.  I would also dream that one day my country was better and I could be what ever I wanted to be.  But there was no better and there was no other way for me to support my family.

The men thought I was stupid but I knew a thing or two about the world.  I knew they weren't treating women in their country this way.  They weren't allowed.  They came to my country because my government allowed it because they wanted to get rich off white man's money.  Many of the men who came to my country were married and many of them had daughters, girls they cared about and would never want mistreated.  When the men were doing things to me I would think about girls in their country and how these men wouldn't want this done to their daughters.  Often they would lie to themselves and say they wanted to give us a better life by giving us money for sex.  They would lie to themselves and say us girls want to be there because it's important for us to support our families.  If they really cared about our wellbeing or thought they were saving us from poverty they would  give us money without using us for their own sexual gratification.

No one really wants this life.  No young girl or boys wants their first time to be with some gross ugly white man.  We don't really enjoy the rough and horrible sex or being treated this way.  It's not what we dream for ourselves when were young.  We want to meet a boy and a fall in love.  We want to raise a family and be happy.  The same as what everyone else wants.