Never trust a lady
Jeremy Clarke The estate agent was hopelessly late — stuck in traffic, she said — so I gave the couple the tour of our home instead. It was clear that they had no intention of buying: they lived nearby and were just being nosy. What's more, I caught them exchanging superior glances, first at the framed portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, and again at the stuffed cuckoo at the top of the stairs. He was embarrassed at being caught out; she was shameless and haughty. I whipped them around in record time.
On their way out, they paused in the conservatory to pass a patronising comment on the bougainvillea and the view of the bay. As we looked, two young coastal-path walkers came along the road, which runs along the front of the house. It was difficult to tell whether they were male and female, two females, or two males, until they drew level, when it became clear that they were two crop-haired young women whose aim was perhaps to appear as masculine as possible. They smiled at us as they went by. 'One hardly knows these days which is which,' said the woman.
The asperity brooked no reply or qualification and drew a neat line under the visit. She began to lead the way back outside to their all-terrain juggernaut. But, in spite of my gladness at seeing the back of this pair, I decided to detain them both with my ladyboy story.
Everyone's got one. Mine goes like this. When I first became a journalist, I was sent to Kuala Lumpur to cover a trade delegation. On the afternoon of our arrival, what I thought was a woman approached me outside the hotel and offered to give me a massage and I readily agreed.
We went up to my room. She said that first she'd like to fa us both a drink from the minibar. I readily agreed to this, too. It being my first day in south-east Asia, I was ready to agree to just about anything anyone cared to suggest. I knocked back the drink she handed me and laid back on the king-size bed. Above the bed, on the ceiling, was a small golden arrow indicating which way I should face when praying to Mecca. Looking up at this arrow was the last thing I remembered.
I woke up 24 hours later with the curtains still drawn. My phone was gone. Also my money, my laptop and my shirts.
At a lavish welcome reception the following evening, I told the mayor of Manchester why he hadn't seen me around for a while. He listened with grave sympathy. The British High Commissioner and his wife on the other hand seemed to find it amusing. He'd often heard of it happening to British businessmen, said the High Commissioner, but never to a gentleman of the press. 'How much did you pay her?' said the taxi-driver on the way back from the reception. I told him 'That was no woman, that was a ladyboy,' he said.
Ladyboys are cheaper than women. Much cheaper. You can have six ladyboys for the price of one complete woman, he said. And he ought to know, he said, because before settling down and becoming a taxi-driver he'd been a full-time pimp.
What that ladyboy had done had dishonoured both him and his country, he said. He was ashamed. To make amends, he proposed to pick me up from my hotel at the end of his shift and drive me to the ladyboy brothel district where we'd search until we'd found her. Then we'd slap her around until she gave me my money back. He looked both very tough and genuinely aggrieved. And he said he wouldn't charge me a cent.
From midnight to five o'clock in the morning, with just a half-hour break for refreshment, we systematically searched every brothel in the ladyboy quarter. The taxi-driver walked around like he owned the place. The system was that he'd grab a ladyboy by the arm to detain her, I'd shake my head, and we'd move on. Some were absolute peaches. As the night wore on, it dawned on me that I'd been drugged and robbed by what was possibly the plainest ladyboy in the whole of Kuala Lumpur. It was this aspect of the story that most excited the mayor of Manchester's sympathy when I told him about it the next day. 'What were you thinking of, lad, goin' wi' an ugly one?' he said.
Puzzlement and contempt contended for mastery of Mrs Nosey-Parker's demeanour. 'So, no, you're right,' I agreed. 'Sometimes you just can't tell, can you?' 'And did you find — this person?' she said. 'As a matter of fact we did,' I said. 'Goodbye.'
Bloody cheek.
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