Finding Pattaya Shangri-La Episode 4 by Jack Corbett

“This must be how the Brits or the French must have felt back in colonial days,” I thought while getting an exquisite foot massage from my beautiful Thai masseuse.   For the next hour and a half my masseuse would be paying attention only to me as she started with my feet, first my left which she must have spent better than ten minutes on before moving to the right.  She would spend her sweet time slowly moving up my legs finally finishing with body crunches against my thighs.  This entailed pulling my thighs up tightly against her chest while she bored down as hard as her little body would allow her.  Only 300 baht, which was just $7.50 for an hour and a half, I needed the massage badly. Over the last several days of sleeping with a different bed partner each night, I had gotten very sore.  By the time my pretty masseuse got done massaging my feet to my thighs I would be able to walk four miles with ease without feeling a hint of pain.  "I deserve this." I thought almost out loud.  "What I get here is fit for a maharajah, a king, or a feudal lord.  And tonight---ahhh--succulent Thai food and afterwards, the women, with it all ending with the babe of my choice--whomever she might be, my little present to myself for tonight just for breathing, and because I can. This is what all real men deserve, but most are not real men.  But what the hell, the others, those who should have been created as eunichs, are all back in the U.S. whereas me and my pals, are here.   

Six weeks earlier I had moved to a new apartment. The apartment was perfect. It was even in the same complex, in the building next door to where I had been living for five years. But the new place not only had a two car garage—the garage was heated and it was an extraordinarily wide two car garage. It had its own private deck which no one could trespass on without entering my apartment or scurrying up a tree which rose right up against the side of the deck. The new place had two bedrooms, one of which was much larger than any other bedroom in the complex. Twenty feet long but just nine feet wide it had a large window facing the East through which the rising sun would cast its rays each morning. Tall trees rose in front of this window, their foliage bright green and luxuriant. I could hardly imagine a more inspiring place from which I could write my stories. The owner of the complex had built my apartment for a very close friend who had never moved in, and since this had been a very close friend, its floor plan was completely different from all the other two bedrooms in the complex. But I had paid a heavy price moving into this place. On the first day moving I had wrenched my back.

I had continued to move which took another three or four days, having a lot of stuff I had accumulated through the years, and each day my back had gotten worse. I would lie on the couch having to urinate while asking myself:  "Now just how badly do I have to go.” as I contemplated walking the fifteen feet to the bathroom. Finally I would grab my crutches which I had gotten years ago after injuring a foot, hobbled to the bathroom, and stood  in excruciating pain, as while  urinating into the toilet bowl.

I finally saw a doctor, but my doctor from the family practice center was  covered up and no one else in the office could see me. So much for the fabulous American Health Care System for which I had been paying over three hundred dollars a month for health insurance with its $5,000 deductible. “Should I go to the hospital emergency room?” I kept asking myself. But I figured that would cost at least $1000, and that would be just the beginning. It would probably all end up with my getting operated on and spending $5,000 to get my back screwed up for life.  But I had to do something.

I wound up going to a clinic at the advice of the receptionist at the doctor’s office. But I was in so much pain that I could not drive myself. So I called for a cab which took me to the clinic. I hobbled in on my crutches.

It was beyond painful sitting there waiting to be called in to see the doctor. Finally I was admitted into a little room where the doctor, a pretty Oriental woman, soon joined me. No ex rays were taken. After examining me she told me she was prescribing a muscle relaxant called Skelaxin. Then she asked me: “Unless there is something else you have taken that you might prefer. I might give you that instead.”

“How about something with codeine in it?” I replied thinking about Tylenol Three which had worked on an infected tooth after a dentist had performed a root canal. There is nothing as painful as an infected tooth. The Dentist had enclosed the root canal with a crown, and down in the cavernous hole he had carved with his tools, it had all gotten infected. It must have swelled up inside and there was no way for the swelling to go let alone any gases wanting to escape. The Tylenol Three simply killed the infection and both the swelling and pain had gone away and that had been that. And after injuring my lower back, a guy who worked for apartment maintenance said that he had once had a similar back injury and that Tylenol Three had really helped.

“No. I won’t give you that!” the doctor exclaimed as she gave me an exasperated look. I don’t prescribe anything with Codeine in it and Tylenol Three is not a good anti inflammatory for something like you’ve got.”

“What did this woman think I am?” I thought. “A drug addict?” I had even quit smoking nearly a year ago. The last thing I needed was to get addicted to something else.

The Skelaxin wound up costing me $53.00 for a six day supply. And it did nothing to alleviate the pain. I was still living on that couch where I could lie in a reclined position. I could not sit up for long. Luckily I still had plenty of food in the apartment so at least I didn’t have to go out to a restaurant or go off to get groceries. An ex stripper friend had convinced me to try the Atkins diet so I had plenty of eggs around, bacon, ham, ground sirloin and other things.

It was Tiger Wayne who had convinced me to see a chiropractor. Tiger Wayne lives down at the Lake of the Ozarks when he’s not on the road that is. He has access to literally over a hundred large jungle cats. I had met Tiger down at Big Daddys while the Lumberyard and Big Daddys Cabaret were having their first S.P.E.W. wrestling match which pitted Iowa’s Dirty Heather against Big Daddy’s Killer Chloe’ with former Miss Nude of Illinois, Leah Layne, presiding over as referee. It must have been well after 2 a.m. when I found out that a man had a Bengal Tiger cub upstairs, and that he was charging the dancers to have their pictures taken with the baby tiger.

I had offered Tiger all the free magazine publicity I could get him and had then taken pictures of Leah Layne and some of the other entertainers with the tiger cub. A few weeks later when Kiara was visiting me from Iowa having me do her promo pictures I had gotten Tiger Wayne a motel suite near my apartment. I shot lots of pictures of Kiara in the suite along with two other girls with Smokey, the thirty pound white tiger Wayne had brought with him. I would take still more pictures of the white Tiger with Kiara and other entertainers down at Mustang Sallys (Now Club 64) in East St. Louis. A few weeks later Wayne brought Smokey, now fifty pounds up to the Lumberyard in Des Moines for one of the S.P.E.W. wrestling matches.

“”Chiropractors are kings of the spine,” Tiger Wayne had told me on the phone. “You will feel much better even after your first visit.”

Tiger Wayne then explained how he had to periodically go see a chiropractor since he took so much abuse from cats that weighed up to five or six hundred pounds. And from what I had seen of the playful Smoky, I could just see a five hundred pound jungle cat playfully knocking Wayne, who was now over fifty, around as if it were an overly exuberant German Shepherd.

The next day I found a chiropractor whose office was within a mile and a half of my apartment. I had looked up chiropractor’s in the yellow pages. The chiropractor I wound up seeing shared an office with a young guy who’s picture was displayed in the yellow pages. The doctor’s face looked too young for my tastes. But the ad was by far the largest, and it was the most impressive. Another chiropractor’s ad, a much smaller ad, stated, “It is experience that counts.” But when I called the number I was greeted by a recording. The chiropractor never called me back that day. His office must have been closed.

So I wound up hobbling into the Chiropractic clinic that had the largest ad. There were two doctors working there, the one whose face had appeared in the ad, and Dr. Jeremy Clark, who would wind up treating me. And if I had been put off by the youth of the other doctor, when I first saw Jeremy Clark I thought he couldn’t be over two years fresh out of chiropractory school.

I couldn’t stand sitting up so when I walked into the clinic, I had asked the receptionist if they had a place where I could lie down. I was immediately led into a small room where I could lie down on a small padded bench the chiropractor’s used for their patients to lie down on as they adjusted their spines. I was soon having my ex rays taken after which Dr. Clark assured me he would look at them that evening. He then explained his fees, which were one hundred dollars for the ex rays and $600 for up to three months treatment. He assured me he could probably help me but that he wouldn’t be sure until after he examined the x rays and seen me the next morning.

The next day, I was placed on a narrow bed that was surrounded by over a half dozen beds just like it. My attendant then placed two electrodes up against the skin of my lower back. I then reclined on the narrow bed while looking at the ceiling as my attendant asked while applying some low voltage: “Can you feel it? It should not pinch or grab your skin or hurt. Just let me know when it’s about right.”

After receiving  ten minutes worth of low voltage I was admitted to a small room like I had been admitted to the day before. Doctor Clark soon joined me there.

“I can definitely help you. You have what is sometimes referred to as a slipped disk. I can realign it and that’s going to take up to three months but I think you will be much better close after the first month. Believe it or not, I’ve done this to hundreds of people.”

Dr. Clark then had me lie face down on the narrow padded bench as he cracked my spine with his hands. He then had me lie on first my left side, then my right as he performed similar adjustments. He then told me, “You can throw away your crutches. You won’t be needing them anymore.”

And he was right. I walked out of the clinic feeling much better. I had felt like Lazerus after Christ had told the dead man: “Get up and walk.” I kept seeing Dr. Clark every day and each day I felt much better. Finally the weekend approached when I was to once again take pictures of the female wrestlers in Des Moines at the Lumberyard.

Big Mike was the general manager of the Lumberyard which is probably the largest nude club in the Midwest. Big Mike had put a deposit on the Man Tour which would be leaving for Thailand in two weeks for both himself and his wife, Suzanne, but he had bought a house instead and now felt that going to Thailand was just a little too much too soon.

“No..Don’t even think about it, Jack. You don’t need to be up here taking pictures because that would be jeopardizing your trip to Thailand.”

In the last week before flying to Thailand Dr. Clark had doubled up on his treatments having me return to the clinic twice a day. And up to several days before getting on my first flight, I doubted I would ever go. I wound up spending more than twenty-four hours on planes or waiting at airports for my next departing flight, leaving St Louis for San Francisco, then San Francisco for Taipei, and finally Taipei for Bangkok. Although I expected to find myself in excruciating pain from being confined in small passenger seats on crowded planes I actually managed to sleep something like five hours on the flight from San Francisco to Taiwan.

Talk about a difference between stewardesses. The Chinese stewardesses on Eva Airlines, which was a Taiwanese outfit were slender, tallish dark haired beauties. If the babes in Thailand would be anything like these girls we could all die there in Thailand with smiles on all of our faces. These stewardesses were all from Hard ON City. By contrast, our stewardesses on the flight from St Louis to San Francisco were all Middle Aged matrons having about as much sex appeal as my computer keyboard. In fact, I hadn’t seen a good looking American stewardess in years. Just leave it to all of us Americans to allow the lawyers to even control how good looking or unappealing our flight attendants were. I could just hear one of them crying out: “Replacing me with a younger and prettier woman, why that’s discrimination. Why I’m suing the airline.”

Which is one of the reasons why our health care system is so unaffordable in the first place. It’s those damn lawyers raising all those malpractice suits against the doctors which causes the doctors to prescribe treatments and drugs they really don’t think are necessary but which they prescribe anyway just to cover their asses when someone decides to sue them.

But all these lawyers would be out of business if it weren’t for such loyal Americans as Lori. Now Lori goes to the doctor or the hospital whenever she wants to. As far as assets she doesn’t have a pot to piss in. She’s a titty dancer who works as little as possible, probably not even working an average of one night a week in the club near me. But the health care professionals use my medical insurance payments so that Lori can get treatment whenever she wants when I can’t afford to. You see, the difference between Lori and me is I own a farm so if I can’t make my payments for hospital treatment both the lawyers and the health care professionals know they can always foreclose on my farm. So Lori just puts her medical treatments on her tab which is paid by Medicaid or simply ignored.

As I just mentioned Lori works as little as possible, but she sure does a lot of pot, smoking it at night, in the morning. I can always tell when she’s doing it when she’s on the phone with me. Her breathing or hackled cough gives her away nearly every time. Now Lori’s always the first to cry lawsuit. A couple of years ago she had a breast job, then got into a minor car accident that supposedly misaligned her breasts. I think she’s still in court trying to get that straightened out. Meanwhile Lori is always threatening to sue somebody, whether it’s this club or that club for discrimination, someone for sexual harassment, or a store for selling her batteries that didn’t work.

Well, at least here in Pattaya Lori couldn’t call me to complain about the latest event that’s screwing up her life. The masseuse started with my feet, massaging gently my toes. Then she went up to the tops of my feet, then my ankles, calves, then my knees, and finally she got to the tops of my thighs as she firmly pushed down on them. The next day I would get my neck and shoulders massaged along with my feet and legs. And a couple days after that I’d get the full body oil massage. I’d wind up being able to easily walk miles throughout the city each day without even a hint of the back problems I had been experiencing.

These Thai masseuses sure had a firm understanding of the human body, at least when it came to back pain. Even though my present masseuse limited her ministrations to my feet and legs, she must have gotten through the nerve endings that controlled the nerves in other parts of my body. And as I lay down in the reclining chair as he fingers and hands went all over me, I thought: “This is the life. Where for just eight dollars I can lie in complete comfort as someone focuses all her time and energies on making me feel good, where I am the center of attention, and the raison d’etre for one’s success or failure in this woman’s line of work, and afterwards I can go out and get the finest meals of a lifetime and then still go out afterwards to get picked up by my choice of hundreds if not thousands of women. Life doesn’t get any better than this.” 

Unless We are getting our Soapie Massages