Greatest Lie

This is a work of erotic fiction, which is written for adult readers only. It contains explicit descriptions of illegal drug use, sexual intercourse, and violence, which some readers may find disturbing. Portions of the narrative are inspired by current events in Thai society and an ongoing scientific debate concerning the safety of an over-the-counter microbicide, nonoxynol-9 (N-9). However, with the exception of the identity of the Thai Prime Minister and the protagonist's SRS doctor, whose actual names are used, all characters, business and government entities, and situations depicted in this story, including the specific story lines concerning the Thai drug war and N-9, are fictional. Readers should draw no factual conclusions from this story about the safety and efficacy of N-9 or the conduct of any persons, business or government entities depicted herein.

The Greatest Lie -- Chapter 15

East is East and West is West, and Never the Twain Shall Meet (1)

by Alexandra Rios

I think that if you could get honest answers, a lot of heterosexual guys would probably admit to having had at least a passing desire to be a girl. If they were honest, they would probably admit they thought of it "when I first noticed a girl's breasts" or "when I first felt a girl orgasm with me," but of course, most men would lie and deny it for fear of impugning their masculinity.

I think that's the reason why most therapists who treat male-to-female transsexuals believe that their transsexual patients are really gay, and that their claimed transsexuality is really just a defense against powerful feelings of guilt about their homosexuality. Thus, therapists make transsexuals jump through flaming hoops such as the so-called "one-year real-life test," the requirement that a patient live as a woman and undergo intense psychotherapy for at least a year before for sexual reassignment surgery.

Therapists have incorporated this dogma into the so-called "Harry Benjamin Standards of Care." But they adopted the real-life test without any empirical evidence, based solely on their supposition that many self- described transsexuals must be liars or delusional, reasoning that: "If anyone ever asked me if I wanted to become a member of the opposite sex, I would lie. Therefore, when this purported transsexual claims to be a girl inside, and wants a sex change, he is probably lying, because that's something all men lie about."

This logic is ridiculous: who could endure the expense, pain, humiliation, discrimination, and victimization that transsexuals experience unless she really felt her outward gender was wrong? But just try telling your therapist you're transgendered, and see what he does.

The real-life test makes even more intolerable the cruel dilemma that confronts the MtF transsexual: should the transsexual attempt to pass through a life of misery masked in the outward appearance of her birth gender, or should she adapt her outward appearance to her soul's gender, and attempt to "pass" in the eyes of the outside world?

It would help an unsympathetic world understand this dilemma, and incidentally reduce the incidence of spousal abuse, divorce, and sexual assault if all guys had to dress and live as girls for a week as a rite of passage: let's call it "GenderWeek." After a "femme initiate" had lived under the sexually interested gazes and intimidating physical presence of males, and learned to live with the expectation that the appropriate response to these pressures are indulgent smiles and responsive flirting, he would learn to moderate the extremes of his subsequent masculine behavior.

On the other hand, if you made boys live as girls you would probably increase the incidence of transsexuality in the population, as some guys got addicted the tug of a satin thong catching in the crack of their buttocks.

Perhaps a secret, latent tendency found in the male population explains the overwhelming numbers of transsexuals you meet in trans-tolerant climates like Thailand. By some estimates there are three hundred thousand male-to-female transgenders in a population of sixty million.

Perhaps more boys become MtF transsexuals in Thailand because it's more easily done in a country where nine-year-olds can buy female hormones over the counter and young adults of eighteen can get their surgeries without first having to justify themselves to two shrinks for at least a year.

Or maybe it's a product of the influence of the Thai creation story: a love triangle between Itthi, the first woman, Pullinga, the first man, and Napumsaka, a hermaphrodite. Itthi preferred Pullinga to Napumsaka, who becomes jealous and kills Pullinga, and thereby loses Ithhi's love and dies, leaving Itthi and her children alone, to repeat the love triangle of creation in the next generation. Perhaps these stories explain the Thais' tolerance for, and discrimination against, their transgendered minority.

This fascinates me because I am an American post-op MtF. I was on my way to Thailand to investigate Thai transsexuals as I continued my academic research on the behaviors of transsexual sex workers, in the steamy, tawdry cabarets and bars of Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Phuket and Koh Samui.

I roused myself from my jet-lagged reverie and turned to my friend Tran. She was just waking from her second nap of the long flight from L.A. to Bangkok, via Singapore. I tried to bounce my ideas off her, but she wasn't in the mood for an intellectual exchange. She tried to rouse herself to full alertness with a start, shook her head dramatically, and then said, "Tell me that it was all just a dream."

I replied, "You want to know whether it's a dream that I have a baby girl, you have a transsexual little sister, and that even though we're young, broke and transsexual ourselves, we have to support them?"

"Yeah, I dreamed that, right," Tran asked with a sleepy, hopeful smile.

"Dream on," I replied. Tran looked confused, so I said in a resolute voice, "No, that's reality, about eight thousand miles east of here."

"Oh, Alexandra, how are we going to do it? We could barely afford to get to Thailand to finish our sex-change operations, and now we have to support your baby and my little sister. I don't want to do escorting and make porno movies for the rest of my life! Let's just get our operations, move back to L.A. and find rich guys to support us like your mom did," Tran said sarcastically.

"Post-ops don't get paid that well in porn or escorting, and I doubt we'd be highly prized on the West L.A. singles scene. We just have to survive until the church pays off on your priest-abuse lawsuit, and I can get another grant for another transgendered sex-behavior study. Now, no more fantasizing: we need to listen to more of these." I pointed to the tape player in the seat pocket, which was loaded with a Thai language-study tape. Tran sighed wearily and put on her own earphones.

We needed to work on our Thai language skills because we were going to doing field research amongst the numerous Thai katoey, as the Thais rudely referred to their male-to-female transsexuals.

I had written a well-received research piece on the sexual behaviors of transgendered sex workers in the U.S., and had gotten a stingy five thousand dollar grant to further my research and study the sexual behaviors of Thai katoey sex workers. We would first return to Phuket in southern Thailand for surgery to complete the vaginas our Thai surgeon had fashioned the previous December. Then we would enroll in the summer session at Chiang Mai University, in Northern Thailand. There we would meet our newly post-op Thai friend Nancee, who would help us with the katoey research.

Our idyllic return to transgender paradise had been clouded over by unforeseen developments in L.A.: I found out that I had probably fathered a beautiful baby daughter by my one and only high-school girlfriend. When she visited her cousins in Long Beach, Tran found out that her little brother, Li, whom her father had taken in when her parents split up, had been cast off by her father into the toils of L.A.'s hideous foster-care system. Their father had thrown Li out like so much garbage as soon as her transgender tendencies made themselves known.

Li was now living very precariously, halfway between the cruel streets of L.A., where she survived as a runaway prostitute, and the abusive world of serial foster homes, where she was constantly clocked and targeted for taunts or sexual assault.

My own daughter lived with her mom in my mother's boyfriend's guest house, in constant danger from her old boyfriend and my own murderous nemesis, Miguel. Our own desperate circumstances had been further burdened by the even more dire circumstances of our families.

"Forget about your romantic fantasies, Tran. We just have to make this study we're doing in Thailand a real blockbuster, and then get some serious grant money for our next project. Professor Finch loves my stuff, and he'll back me once we turn in our results. We just have to get more money in the next grant. It's like Allenina said about making a porn movie: you propose a bigger project, you get a bigger budget." I had proposed a study of one hundred sex workers in Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Phuket, and Kho Samui.

It had seemed like a manageable project for three field workers: our Thai friend Nancee, Tran and me. Professor Finch had done his utmost, but the foundation that was funding it cut the budget for Tran out and had given me only five thousand dollars to complete the project. I had nothing for the subjects except vouchers they could use to buy hormones at Thai drugstores--a last-minute donation by an American drug company.

To fund Tran's trip and our surgeries I had to write two porno movies, which Tran and I had acted in. Until now, Tran and I had tried everything from streetwalking to sociological research to selling everything of value that we owned to finance our survival and transition.

Now that we were on the verge of completing our odysseys, we had to reckon with the care of unexpected dependents. Our fathers had washed their hands of us as unworthy successors to their lineages. My mother was a selfish narcissist, and Tran's mother was an impoverished and emotionally defeated immigrant.

"Tran, I'll just have to work my way up the ladder to bigger grants. We have to hold out until your priestly sex abuse suit settles, but who knows when that will be? Until then, we are just going to have to work our little tails off."

"Just when I was getting ready to fuck my little tail off."

"Shhh," I warned her, noticing that the businessman across the aisle had perked up for that comment. Then I whispered, "That too, Tran. Just make sure you get paid well every time. And no volume discounts for Italian soccer teams!"

We both giggled at the recollection of a hilarious escapade from our last trip to Thailand. She playfully poked me and complained, "You're no fun any more, Alexandra."

Tran and I turned on our tape machines and resumed our last-minute study of conversational Thai. We transferred from Singapore Airlines to Silk Air and bumped down in Phuket with only hours to spare before our appointments with Dr. Sanguan.

Our last trip to Thailand had been in December, when the tropical warmth and blue skies had been a pleasant relief from the unrelenting Arctic cold of St. Paul, where I was attending the University of Minnesota. June is the second month of summer monsoon season in southern Thailand: dense humidity mounts over the day, relieved by afternoon downpours that frequently turn to thunderstorms. Even the locals seemed listless beneath the slate-gray skies; the previously vibrant streets of Phuket were sullen and quiet in the early morning rush hour.

We dropped our luggage at our hotel and walked in a jet-lagged stupor toward a row of 'tuk-tuks,' the local three-wheel open-air motorbike taxis. We bargained with the drivers over the fare to Dr. Sanguan's Phuket Plastic Surgery Center, made a deal with one, and set off down the waterlogged streets.

A crowd of gray-green-uniformed police had gathered on the corner near the Center. As we approached, we saw to our horror that the cloth on the ground they were standing around barely covered a crumpled, bullet- riddled corpse, sprawled on the sidewalk by a dumpling stall in a bloody rain puddle.

I had seen plenty of violence during my last trip to Phuket, but I was shocked by the casual brutality of the scene: the cops snacking on the last batch of dumplings the fallen street vendor had just cooked.

My disgust escalated to rage when I recognized the dead vendor's stall as that of Mama Meo, an aging ethnic Hmong who had dealt on the side. Her dumplings had been a staple of our diet during our last stay at the Center, but she had also been a lowly foot soldier in a Thai drug-dealing empire.

I was horrified at the brutal end that this gap-toothed, smiling elder and kinswoman of Tran's had suffered. Impotent rage boiled within me, and I blurted out to the cops, "Just because she's dead doesn't give you the right to steal her dumplings."

One of the cops understood me and replied angrily, "Shut up, farang katoey somsee, or you'll be 'ying ting' yourself."

Tran pulled me away from the scene, and whispered, "Remember, they always call this 'the land of smiles,' but they'll cut your throat without a moment's hesitation." Then she turned to the angry cops, smiled and said "I'm so sorry, my friend has very bad jet-lag. I apologize for her."

She bowed to them deferentially, and then pushed me through the gate to Dr. Sanguan's office, snarling, "Do that again, and you'll be getting a posthumous sex-change operation. Mind your manners, Alexandra."

I nodded obediently.

Sanguan's assistant, Pim, greeted me with a smile and a hug as I reintroduced myself. She said "I remember you by your name, but I would never have recognized you. You are so much more beautiful now."

I guessed it was a canned line, but it was a nice one, so I reciprocated. "Thanks so much. I'll never forget the kind treatment that I got from you here." The Thais are unfailingly polite in their social discourse, and to fit in one should reply in the same polite language. And I admired the way that Sanguan's staff invariably supported the emotional well-being of his patients.

I said, "We saw the most horrifying thing on the way here: a murdered street vendor, shot in the street outside your gate, and the cops helping themselves to her food. What's happening to this wonderful country?"

She shook her head sadly, and replied, "It's the drugs. Prime Minister Thaksin has declared a war on the drug dealers, and many of them are killed and thrown away, 'ying ting.' When I heard the noise, I was afraid to go out. It was Mama Meo, wasn't it?"

I nodded my head. "It's horrible; she was just a kindly old lady."

"A kindly old drug dealer. Along with dumplings, she sold yaba. She had to be stopped: yaba, the amphetamine pills, are ruining the country, and killing the children. The drug dealers must be ying ting to save the children from the yaba."

"You mean these killings are happening regularly?"

She replied, "Every day for the last two months, about fifty drug dealers are ying ting. More than twenty five hundred of them are ying ting already, fifty thousand more in jails. It is a national cleansing. Those on the Government's blacklist must either turn themselves in, or else they will become ying ting."

"Ying ting: that's what the cop said. Are the police killing them?" I demanded.

"They are killing one another, and the police aren't stopping them: good riddance. Thaksin is strong, and the people support him. The yaba dealers must be dealt with." She smiled politely, but she spoke emphatically. She finished with our paper work, blood tests and vital signs, and then showed us to Sanguan's office.

Sanguan met me with his customary polite, somewhat stiff manner, but when he examined my neovagina, he frowned. "You are a most unusual case, Miss Rivers. Most patients I criticize for not dilating enough. You dilate too vigorously. You are overly inflamed inside."

"I'm sorry. Am I OK for surgery?" I asked in panic.

"Of course, but it is swollen. Do not dilate so roughly after this surgery," he cautioned.

I decided not to tell him about the cruel and violent sexual assault I had endured just a few days earlier for fear that he would defer the final step in my sex-change operation. I admitted instead, "I always tend to overdo things."

Sanguan advised, "It's OK to dilate, or make love vigorously, later, but not at first. It will be less tender than before, but the new labia will need time to attach, and the tissue where I dissect the ring must heal. No sex for four weeks!"

I had endured more than eight weeks of abstinence after my initial surgery, and only anal sex had been bearable thereafter, so four weeks seemed reasonable by comparison. "How long in the hospital?" I asked, remembering the weeks I had spent here in December.

"You go home as soon as anesthetic wears off. Operation hurts a little but it's no big deal, more like plastic surgery than last one, which was two difficult abdominal surgeries. Go to prep room now, you'll be done by dinner. Might not be too hungry, though. Tonight, you can stay here or at a nearby hotel."

I douched with an antiseptic and lay down on an operating table. Sanguan and his surgical nurse gave me an IV, and the room blurred and faded.

I awoke in the recovery room; nearby, Tran dozed under her anesthesia. My groin was bandaged and packed and sent firecracker blasts of pain through me as soon as I moved. I called the nurse and said, "Please help me, the incisions down there are killing me! Can you give me pain medicine?"

"Not until I take out your Foley and you pee." She expertly removed the catheter, which made me cry out so loudly that Tran stirred. "Now you go pee," she ordered me. "Then medicine."

"But I don't have to go," I protested.

"Yes, you do," she ordered. "And no pretending! I'll be listening."

I staggered painfully to a toilet behind a plastic curtain, and gingerly sat down. At first, nothing came but more pain, and I sobbed miserably in frustration. By the time I had finished this painful chore, Tran was awake and protesting much as I had.

"Look," the recovery room nurse said, "Your friend is finished and she gets her medicine. Tran looked on enviously as I popped a Percocet.

She said dopily, "This mean nurse won't give me pain meds. Alexandra, go buy me some on the street."

"Remember what you told me about minding our manners, Tran. You don't want me to end up ying ting."

"Oh, yeah," she remarked as she limped to the toilet.

Sanguan reappeared, dressed in scrubs, examined us and pronounced us fit to leave to convalesce in our hotel. "Sorry about the rough treatment, but it is necessary that we test your urinary function before you leave us."

"That's OK, but don't send us off without plenty more of these," I said, brandishing my empty sample pack of Percocet.

"Only Vicodin. New drug laws mean no Percocet outside of this facility."

"Good God, you would think we were in Singapore, or Alabama."

"It has gotten very strict here: very dangerous. Even your friends can turn into enemies."

"Thanks for the advice," I said. Tran and I hobbled to a tuk-tuk and rode to our cheap hotel room, where we downed Vicodin and recuperated, listening to Thai language study tapes. We didn't even go out the next night: we didn't feel well enough check out Tiffany or the Alcazar, and we had to wake up early the next day.

The next morning we departed on a Thai Air flight to Chiang Mai. As we took off, Tran commented, "Phuket was not like I remembered it. It's really dead: too hot, too few sexy tourists, and too many scary cops."

"Not just dead: ying ting," I commented.

A couple of bumpy hours later, we landed at Chiang Mai, a quaint provincial capital nestled in the foothills of towering, verdant tropical mountains. The sharp green peaks, seen through layers of cloud and mist, gave the landscape the appearance of a Japanese landcape painting. The mountain air is cool by Thai standards, and the population is more relaxed and rustic than the bustling populations of Bangkok or the frantic sybarites of Phuket and Kho Samui. Instead of the bulldozed, concrete- covered, and despoiled paradise of Phuket, Chiang Mai seemed a place of primitive charm and lush, hilly beauty.

Tran and I rode a cab through palmy suburbs, and then through terraced rice fields to the house that our friend Nancee had rented for us as our home base this summer. She had been proud of the bargain price. When we got there, we saw why it had been so inexpensive: it was a two-room wooden shack built on a hillside in the outskirts of town, near Chiang Mai University's science campus, Suansak Two. Chickens scratched nervously in the dirt yard as the taxi driver hauled our bags up the stairs.

"Alexandra, Tran, I missed you so much! I'm so happy now." She smiled brightly and hugged us warmly. She had had her sex-change surgery a few months before and her features had softened noticeably. Nancee looked curvier and more feminine; the absence of testosterone from her body had improved her looks as much as it had improved mine after my SRS. She had let her hair return to its natural black, instead of the brassy hue that she had worn when I met her.

"Let me show you around," she said. Even by Thai standards, the house was far from luxurious: room for three futons in the bedroom; a table and chairs beside a propane brazier for cooking, and a toilet, sink, and shower tap behind a plastic curtain. "There are no phone lines out here and no cell phone until we get into town. And it's close to the campus we'll be going to."

She pointed down to a collection of low buildings at the bottom of a long, steep hill, and three rusty bicycles. "That's Suansak Two, where your faculty advisor, Professor Pranatop, has her office, and there's a little computer center we can use. At least it will be easy getting there," she said.

I had been a little worried that I had not been getting enough exercise, but not any more. It would be a ride of at least five kilometers, and a climb of one hundred fifty meters to return to our hilltop home.

"It's much cheaper here than in town, and we'll be traveling a lot, won't we?" Nancee asked, looking insecure.

"You're right. It's perfect for us. We'll get a lot done here," I said, as Tran rolled her eyes.

We relaxed on our sleeping pads and dilated. Six months earlier, Tran and I had sex-change operations which used combinations of penile skin and grafted colon segments. When we healed, the junctions between our dissimilar tissues had formed an impassable ring of scar tissue, which had made vaginal sex horribly painful or outright impossible. Two days ago, Sanguan had surgically "broken" the ring. Now, with proper care, Tran and I looked forward joyfully to the prospect of enjoying pleasurable vaginal sex and orgasms, once this latest procedure healed adequately.

When I tested myself with the previously unusable 1.25-inch stent, it passed easily. I still felt a jarring note of pain where the stent glided over the dreaded ring, but at least the stent was getting through. The sensation was now like rubbing a sore spot, rather than like trying to puncture unyielding flesh.

"Tran," I said excitedly, "I think this operation really worked."

Tran nodded in agreement, as she admired herself with a hand mirror. "Do you like my new labia?" she asked Nancee proudly, displaying her still bruised flesh and angry red scars. [

"You are both going to look perfect," Nancee replied. "I can't wait to get my secondary labiaplasty done. Would you like to see me?" Tran and I nodded excitedly, and she shyly slid down her panties. Her own vagina was lovely, but lacked interior labia and had the same unfinished look that Tran's and my own had before our secondary operation.

"Have you been able to have sex?"

"Yeah, Eddie Liang broke me in, and then sent me an Australian who paid fifty thousand baht to be my first lover. I wasn't really ready, but it was OK."

"Can you orgasm?" I asked.

"No. I have some feelings, but I am so nervous, and my feelings are all mixed up," Nancee replied sadly.

Tran and I smiled conspiratorially, and I said, "Maybe we could help you. It took us a while, but we worked it out."

"I thought you couldn't have sex until this new operation heals," Nancee said, confused.

"Not with guys, you silly girl. With each other." Tran snuggled up behind her, and began fondling Nancee's breasts, as I approached, embraced her, and stifled her protest with a gentle kiss.

"Now I understand," Nancee said. "I'll learn from the experts."

"Mm hmm," I responded, gently guiding her down to our futons. Tran and I undressed her and ourselves, and lavished kisses on her beautiful face, breasts, and belly. Then I slipped my tongue between her labia and trilled it against her clitoris and the exterior of her vagina before slipping it inside.

Nancee's cock had been larger than mine or Tran's, so Sanguan had successfully fashioned Nancee's neovagina entirely from inverted penile skin and scrotal skin. It was lovely to the touch and taste: smooth, slightly salty flesh, without the internal juices that exude from the interior of a G-girl, or the natural lubricants that still flow from the disconnected colon tissue inside Tran and me.

Nancee's body stirred and her hips began to roll as I licked and puffed and sucked at her. She giggled, "Mm, that tingles," and began to moan a bit.

I concentrated on the exterior of her vagina, where I knew Sanguan concentrated the bundles of salvaged nerves, but her nerves had not fully healed and rejoined her nervous system, and seemed to be sending disorganized, confusing signals to Nancee's pleasure centers.

Then Tran gently tapped my shoulder and said, "Don't be a greedy girl, Alexandra! It's my turn." I protested mildly but yielded to my friend. As Tran nuzzled her pussy, I kissed Nancee's lips with a mouth drenched by her own mild, but delicious inner essences, and she kissed back with passionate interest.

"You're yummy," she said. I replied, "You're the yummy one," and she yielded her lips to another kiss. Then I said, "Nancee, kneel on top of Tran, and then lean forward over her." Tran and Nancee hastily rearranged themselves, and I reminded Nancee that our pussies were not ready for cunnilingus.

"Not fair," she protested, as I began fondling her cheeks: smooth, round, firm curves that flanked a tight, perfect, hole. Nancee had, she had admitted to me, been penetrated anally countless times in her years of katoey whoring, but her resilient little ass had remained a perfect jewel. I parted her buttocks, and tweaked the pinhole center with the tip of my tongue, and her body trembled in instantaneous response.

"Oh, no, that's too much at once," she cried, but I circled my arms around her thighs and press her ass to my lips, and thrust my tongue into the tiny space at the center of the hairless, tan ring of her anus. As I did so, Nancee's hips began flailing, and Tran and I held her torso tight and firm against our relentless mouths. Nancee's bottom skittered between my attentions to her sexually experienced ass and Tran's suckling of her nearly virginal vagina, and this rhythm resolved into a primal undulation of her flesh, as sensation surged from her new erogenous zones to her old, and back again.

Nancee, the unflappable lover who could handle anything with a stoic smile, gleefully discovered the sinful angel of passion which Tran and I had released. Nancee's hips began heaving, and she thrashed against Tran's and my insistent lips. Trapped between our Scylla and Charybdis, Nancee's nervous system valiantly struggled against the insurgency of her neurons, which were joining in a vast conspiracy of pleasure.

At last, her sensations connected into a great spasm of pleasure, and she throbbed her way to her first female orgasm. Tran and I continued relentlessly, and she spasmed again and again, squealing with ever mounting pleasure, until she was exhausted and begged us to stop. Her forehead and hair were damp with sweat and saliva, and my lips and tongue were tired and achy.

"That was incredible," she said. "The energy just kept building inside me. When you rimmed me while Tran was kissing my pussy, the feelings all just connected and exploded."

"That's how it was with me too, the first time Tran made me cum. Now, it just keeps getting better," I said, and Tran nodded enthusiastically.

"Alexandra made me cum the first time, but now I practically cum when I touch myself accidentally. I have to be careful," she whined in a mock complaint.

"Let me try you," Nancee implored, but I warned her that Sanguan had forbidden it.

"We're on the disabled list," I said, and when both Tran and Nancee looked puzzled, I added, "No baseball for four weeks."

"Can I at least see?" she begged, and we quickly agreed, as we needed to inspect the condition of our dressings.

I was wearing a Polysporin-soaked maxipad, and I had a Betadine- soaked tampon inside. When it emerged a vivid orange, Nancee shrieked, but quieted down once I assured her it was only an antibacterial. On closer inspection, my tampon had only a few dark blotches where blood had seeped from the individual sutures. The maxipad was only slightly spotted, too. After we wiped away the traces of blood, Nancee could see the foundations of genitals that would be indistinguishable from a G- girl's: an introitus with fully formed labia majora and minora and a properly-hooded clitoris.

"They're going to be perfect, like my little sister's," Nancee said admiringly.

Nancee and I joined in three-way kiss; we all tasted pure pleasure. "Thank you," Nancee whispered. "I'm so glad you came back."

"It's great to be back with you," I said, and Tran added, "It's great to see you again--and we really need you for threesomes!"

Nancee asked, "Does Eddie Liang know you're back?"

"Good God, no. I mean, I didn't tell him. Did you?"

Nancee smiled guiltily. "He asks about you and Tran every time he visits me."

"You're still seeing him? Isn't that dangerous, with the drug war on?" I replied.

"Eddie's not on the blacklist. He's much too important a bigshot," Nancee remarked. "You'd better call him, or you'll hurt his feelings. He likes to be first with us, when we are post-op."

I rolled my eyes. "How romantic," I said sarcastically. "How was he?"

Nancee nodded enthusiastically. "He's really good. And really generous."

As a new mom, I had resolved to get beyond my adolescent peccadilloes, but someone had to be first, and I had fond memories of a sexy interlude with Eddie on my first trip to Phuket. "How do I even get a hold of him?" I asked with mock reluctance.

Nancee handed me her cell. "He's programmed, but you'll have to wait to call until we're in town. No signal up here," she told me.

"When are you going to show us around Chiang Mai?" I asked.

Nancee looked at her watch and said, "If we shower and dress quickly, we can still make it to Rosepaper's cabaret show." I looked back at her inquiringly, and Nancee clarified, "It's Chiang Mai University's ladyboy sorority."

I remembered the haughty sorority bitches that our friends Rick and Randy complained about at the University of Minnesota, rolled my eyes and said, "I don't really want to get into any ladyboy competitions or catfights tonight."

She socked me playfully and said, "You two are just worried about not being the most beautiful T-girls. Come on, you have to see Chiang Mai's girls. Not only are the women here the most beautiful in Thailand and the rest of the world, so are our 'sao praphet song.'" Tran and I hadn't learned that word, so Nancee translated: "women of the third sex."

We showered, dressed and put on the university uniforms that Nancee had gotten for us: black skirts, and simple white shirts. We looked fresh and innocent as we coasted down into town on our bikes.

Chiang Mai looked like something out of a fairy tale in the misty, soft- focus light of the mountain sunset. The air was pleasantly cool after the torpor of Phuket, and the police presence seemed less intimidating than Phuket's paranoid streets. As we pedaled through the meaner streets of the city, I noticed that drug dealers still touted their wares, interspersed among the knots of streetwalkers, or somsee, but Tran and I weren't even tempted to use anymore. After all, now that we had Alyssa and Li to think of, we were learning to be responsible adults.

Nancee lead us to a bar near the campus named Fascination. It was festooned with signs announcing a cabaret given by the ladies of Rosepaper. Nancee was greeted warmly by one of the blue-and-white uniformed T-girls. Nancee, in turn, introduced us to the T-girl who had greeted her, Chris. Chris said a few incomprehensible words in rapid-fire Thai. Nancee translated into English, "This is Chris, and she would like to extend to you the privileges of membership in Rosepaper during your enrollment at Chiang Mai."

Boldly venturing with my newly learned Thai phrases, I said haltingly, "Thank you so much, we are happy to meet our katoey sisters." I could see that Chris looked hurt and offended. "What's wrong?" I asked Nancee, bewildered.

"That is a term that rude people use to describe us. The proper term is 'sao praphet song,'" she replied. I repeated the term, and pointed to myself and Tran, and Chris clasped her hands together and said "Sawat- dee ka."

"That is how we sao praphet song greet one another," Nancee added, and Tran and I quickly followed suit. Now Chris smiled at us warmly, and I smiled back. Nancee went on, "You would never know it from the behavior that we see in Pattapong, Phuket, and Koh Samui, but we Thais are very conservative and courteous. Let me do the talking in Thai until you pick up some more vocabulary."

"We have a lot to learn," I said, feeling daunted at the prospect of such rebuffs by offended interview subjects.

We sat in the audience at a table near the front to which Chris had guided us. Behind us sat a polite audience of Thais, some Asian tourists, and CMU students, including some Rosepaper sisters who sat in a cluster behind us.

They cheered their compatriots heartily when they took the stage to lip- synch, or, in some cases, actually sing their songs and do their dances. Mostly, they played the international hits of the variety that really bore me: "I Will Always Love You," "My Heart Will Go On," etc. This sort of music is not all interesting to me, even when performed by a gorgeous katoey: oops, I mean, sao praphet song. But the costumes looked fabulous and the delivery was well-polished. The crowd was courteous during each performance and enthusiastic at the end. And some of the girls got into racier material: the Rosepaper girls' versions of Madonna's "Vogue" and "Material Girl" were brilliant; at the end of each song, I joined the audience in leaping to our feet in praise of their perfect emulation of Madonna's sinuous dance moves.

As I took my seat I wondered, is this the prototype for a gender-equal society? Or would this society turn on its transsexuals with the same ruthlessness that it was employing towards the drug culture should the gender-political climate suddenly change?

After Chris sang a terrific version of "Nowadays," from "All That Jazz" in harmony with the actual soundtrack, she approached our table and stopped before us. Speaking through Nancee, she offered Rosepaper's honored guests from America a chance to perform on-stage right now.

Tran had been doing karaoke for years as PR for her bar-girling at the Townhouse in Minneapolis, so I wasn't surprised when she leapt up immediately and began pulling playfully at my arm. I don't have stage fright, but lip-synch is not my thing and my singing voice is only OK. I would have resisted, but Nancee shot me a look and warned me, "It would greatly honor your hostesses if you perform."

I said, "OK," as the applause mounted, and asked, "Do you have "Reflection" by Christina Aguilera?"

"I think so. She is still very popular," Nancee responded. She consulted with Fascination's MC, and then announced triumphantly "Yes, in English, but only with Thai script."

"You still remember the words to this one, don't you?" I asked Tran.

I knew she did: we had listened to many times. It had been one of the turning points in my life when I first heard transsexual aspirations voiced the context of, ironically enough, a G-rated, animated kids' movie.

Tran, too, had identified strongly with the gender-disguised Asian heroine, Mulan. Tran and I swayed side by side through the instrumental opening, and I got so caught up I could not resist harmonizing with Aguilera's soaring, perfectly-nuanced vocals:

Look at me

You may think you see

Who I really am

But you'll never know me

Every day

It's as if I play a part

Now I see

If I wear a mask

I can fool the world

But I cannot fool my heart

Who is that girl I see

Staring straight back at me?

When will my reflection show?

Who I am inside?

I am now

In a world where I

Have to hide my heart

And what I believe in

But somehow

I will show the world

What's inside my heart?

And be loved for who I am

Who is that girl I see

Staring straight back at me?

Why is my reflection

Someone I don't know?

Must I pretend that I'm?

Someone else for all time?

When will my reflection show?

Who I am inside?

There's a heart that must be

Free to fly

That burns with a need to know

The reason why

Why must we all conceal

What we think, how we feel?

Must there be a secret me

I'm forced to hide?

I won't pretend that I'm

Someone else for all time

When will my reflection show?

Who I am inside?

When will my reflection show?

Who I am inside?

As we finished, we each pressed our palms together in the gesture Nancee had shown us, the 'wai,' and whispered, "Sawat-dee ka," into the microphone. The crowd's reaction was stupendous, and many of the sao praphet song performers who had preceded us surged onto the stage and hugged us in loving solidarity.

Chris made an announcement, and the entire performance group of Rosepaper joined us in a reprise. We were joined in the chorus by most of the crowd, and tears started to stream down my face as the emotion of the crowd and the Rosepaper girls surged over me.

The mistress of ceremonies got the microphone, and said something in Thai, followed by, in heavily accented English, "Thank you and good night, and come back and sing for us again."

I hugged Tran and said, "Wow, that worked out awesomely."

"I always said you are a genius, even when you don't know what you are doing."

Chris and the other Rosepaper girls invited us to their dormitory for a post-concert party. We met about a hundred sao praphet song whose names I couldn't keep straight--and I was only learning their nicknames: it seemed full Thai names could run to twenty syllables. But we were instant celebrities, and everyone wanted to be part of us, so I just reveled in it. Being popular can be so handy.

Few of the Chiang Mai students spoke English well enough to really communicate with us. Many were studying the language, but they were all about my age and hailed primarily from local provinces, which are poor and secluded compared to Bangkok and Phuket.

Chris made a point of introducing us to a girl named Gift. She spoke only a few words of English: she was 'rap nong,' or a freshman still undergoing initiation into Rosepaper. Through Nancee, she told us that she had heard about our project, and that her older sister, who was also sao praphet song, had worked on a similar project. I was ecstatic: my protocols from Minneapolis were totally alien in this environment, and I was worried about finding any interview subjects except Nancee's friends from the bars of Koh Samui and Phuket.

"Is she here?" I inquired.

Gift gave me a sad frown, and replied "No, she is very sick with the skinny disease." I had not heard the term before, but didn't need Nancee's explanation to make the connection with AIDS.

"Can we visit her?" I asked.

"Yes, that would make her very happy. But you should do it soon. She hasn't long."

Tran, Nancee, Gift and I said our good-byes and went to visit Gift's sister, Lin, who was at the Baan Pewan Cheewit AIDS hospice. It was located behind a Buddhist monastery. It took in those who had been abandoned by their families in the terminal stages of the disease.

Care of AIDS in Thailand, while advanced by the standards of the Third World, is far removed from the advanced drug therapies of America, which keep the afflicted living independently for decades. Only eighteen months after diagnosis, Lin was dying in the company of strangers, lying on a narrow cot. It was one of a hundred in long, neat rows in this whitewashed ward: in lieu of plumbing, there was a bucket between each pair of beds.

Lin greeted us weakly, but in English. "It is strange that you have a grant to study our transgendered sex workers. I administered a huge study for some Americans and a Thai company."

"Who funded the study?" I asked, panicking.

"A huge condom maker called Spartan. Everyone uses Spartan's condoms. They are made in Chiang Rai Province," Lin added. "We Thais use many condoms, and we make much rubber. So we have both supply and demand." She laughed weakly.

"What were the results?" I inquired innocently. My review of the peer- reviewed literature indicated that there had been nothing done similar to my work, but this seemed too close.

Lin replied "Nothing, just a big waste of time. Part of the way through the study, they just stopped it: shut it down, and told us to forward all of the data to America. We got paid a final, double paycheck, and told to stop work. The sex worker subjects all got the same: they were very correct about it, but then again, the company is partly Thai."

That was a relief. I hadn't come all of the way here to replicate a larger study than I could afford. But perhaps she could help me. "How many subjects did you have?" I asked

Lin responded "About six hundred, split into four branches. It was a double-blind study of some kind."

"Good thing," I mused. "I'm not covering someone else's study, and I could hardly surpass this one. Tran, Nancee and I could never hope to have identified and interviewed six hundred subjects in the course of a summer." And then I had a flash. Now I could equal it, at least! I asked Lin, "Did you send the names and addresses of the subjects back to Spartan?"

"Of course, but I saved my address list, and some other materials. I thought maybe Spartan would come back to restart the study, and be angry with me if I didn't have it. But it's too late for me now; I won't be staying here much longer." Her gesture seemed to mean the world, not the hospice.

"It would really help us we could use your list."

She nodded weakly. "My computer was named with ID number PS408CMU, at the science faculty, and my username was 'Lin36' and my profile's password was 'ladyboy999.' If the data is still there you can use it. If they don't like it, it's too late for Spartan to punish me. But I don't think Spartan will care. After all, it gave up the study.

"I should warn you, Spartan paid the girls to participate in the study. Spartan also gave them free condoms and lubricant, which they had to promise to use and a 'Hello Kitty Diary' to keep track of their sex activity. These sex workers will not let you study them for nothing," she cautioned us.

"We have these," I said, producing vouchers usable for my corporate sponsor's pharmaceuticals, including their popular brand of Estrace transdermal estrogen patches. Professor Finch had arranged for a donation of two hundred thousand baht worth of vouchers that I would use as currency for recruitment to the Thai study. "The T-girls can use them to buy their hormones. Will that do?"

"Or AIDS drugs," Lin said miserably.

I gave her a thick wad of the precious vouchers, and said "Thanks so much, and good luck." I clasped my hands in a wai and exchanged sawat-dee ka's with her as I left.

Gift was in tears. "She did sex work to pay my school tuition, after my parents kicked us out," she said bitterly. Nancee's translation could not capture her frustration and anger, and didn't need to.

I touched Gift's arm. She was about my age, but seemed childlike in her unsophistication. "If she were well, I would want her to help me on my work, and to have her as my friend," I volunteered. Gift hugged me. When she finished, my cheeks were wet with her tears.

We went to a cafe for a bowl of "khao soi," a local curry noodle soup, before bedtime. I called Eddie from the cafe, which was still within the cellular network.

He answered brusquely, and I reintroduced myself shyly. "Hi, this is Nancee's friend Alexandra. Do you remember me?"

"Remember you? Of course! I have thought about you every day. Sorry I couldn't visit you in the hospital after your surgery," he apologized.

"Thanks for the beautiful ring. I wore it every day," I lied. Actually, Tran and I had sold it and the necklace he had given me long ago, during our days of direst poverty the previous winter.

"I'd love to see them on you. Where have you been?" he asked.

"We were in Phuket, and now we are with Nancee in Chiang Mai," I admitted.

"Damn, why didn't you call me?" Eddie demanded.

"We were just there for some follow-up surgery, and we were in a hurry to get to school up here. But we'll be back in a few weeks," I promised.

"I have business in Chiang Mai. I'll be up there later this month. I must see you. And Tran."

"We are still, like, recovering from some surgery. I can't do anything yet."

"Good," he said. "Save yourselves for me," he demanded.

I was offended by his presumptuousness, but he was an awesome lover, and very generous and powerful. But I wanted to play hard-to-get. "I'm not sure that I want to. You know, with this drug war going on, and I'm doing research here with the permission of the Thai authorities. I'm not sure it's OK to see a character like you." I didn't want to use the words "a drug lord like you" on the phone.

"It's OK. I am not on the blacklist. My family does not trade in yaba. I am friends with the police chief in Chiang Mai. I will tell him to look after you and Tran." I said nothing, baiting him.

"Alexandra, you want me as a friend, don't you?" he asked ominously.

"Oh yes. And as a lover," I affirmed ingratiatingly.

"I'll call you when I get to Chiang Mai," he promised.

"He certainly was insistent," I observed to Tran. "He wants to break you in, too."

"That's OK with me. I like Eddie. He's got an American face and cock, and Asian skin and hair. The perfect man," Tran giggled.

"You Asians are such bigots."

"You Anglos are such hairy apes," Tran teased, and Nancee joined her in gales of laughter. "Except you, of course. You're perfect, like one of us."

The next morning, Nancee gave us a tour of the facilities at the Population Sciences faculty of CMU, and introduced us to our faculty advisor, Dr. Pranatop.

Dr. Pranatop was very friendly but apologetic, as she was leaving for a guest lecturing post in Australia and would only be able to keep in touch via e-mail. That suited my interests. I didn't want close supervision over the project, which I was expanding and changing based on Lin's disclosure of the list of subjects from Spartan's study.

Dr. Pranatop showed us to the aging computers and wished us the best of luck.

As soon as Pranatop left, I began trolling through CMU's local network for Lin's old computer. I found it in minutes: it was being used as the server for the Population Science Faculty's own subnet. It was an old Pentium 1 with a thirteen-inch screen and a grimy keyboard that was stashed in a closet-sized service room down the hall from our own crowded workspace. I typed in Lin's profile and password, and immediately accessed her user files. I searched and found an Excel spreadsheet entitled "Spartanstudymstrlist," and opened it.

As clicked through the tabs, I let out a low whistle. The spreadsheet listed, in neatly arrayed and alphabetized columns, about six hundred names, together with nicknames, addresses, phone numbers, ethnic/language group, and study category. Study category was designated rather cryptically by a single letter; the column appeared to be a random assortment of A's, B's C's and D's. All I could see when I examined the column was that each letter seemed to appear no more often than any other--each letter category appeared beside about one hundred fifty names.

I clicked on a name: Apple, of Pattapong. When I clicked on a link, the screen showed Apple's own Excel spreadsheet, which stated the date of her enrollment in the study, her age, place of origin, dates of gender transformation and hormone therapy, surgical status, HIV status, self- reported sexual practices and preferences, such as frequency of oral and anal sex and penetration, and condom use or non-use, and then the same data for a follow-up visit three months later.

I noted with chagrin that Apple showed a positive HIV test at the follow- up. Nevertheless, it was obvious that we had both stumbled onto an incredible resource, although it was also a possible source of bias in our study.

"This is going to make our lives a lot easier," Tran exulted. "No more walk-ups and rejections at the cabarets. We can just use this data. It's like we have already done half of the work."

I cautioned "Not a good idea. The data was collected using unknown methods. We have to approach our work as a new study. But I don't see what would be wrong with using the subjects from this study. It would just save us a lot of busywork building our own sample, and let us go directly to interviews. I'm going to save all of this data to my iBook, but we are only going to use the contact information page in the study."

Thais tend to be conformist and respectful of authority. Nancee said, "I don't think we are exactly following the rules you set up with Pranatop for our study. Are you sure this is OK? I don't want to get in trouble about this."

"Look, these girls all agreed to participate in this study, and if they don't want to help us, fine, we'll leave them out. If we don't use the old data, it's not like we are plagiarizing: whoever did this study dropped it. After all, this file hasn't been accessed for almost two years.

"I'll send an e-mail to Pranatop asking her to confirm that it's OK with her to use the contact information. She'll be so preoccupied in Australia that she'll agree in a heartbeat." From my father's dismissive comments about his own students, I knew how little professors cared about undergraduate research and undergraduate researchers.

I printed three copies of the contact list. Then, we went to work on dividing up the list. Tran had done enough interviews in Minneapolis to work on her own. As we reviewed the list she said, "A lot of the names on this list look like they are Hmong. I learned Hmong from my mom and dad."

"I thought you were Vietnamese," Nancee said with surprise.

"I was, but I am Hmong. After the Vietnam War, all of the Hmong had to leave Vietnam because the Hmong had helped the Americans fight the communists. That's why my family moved to Minnesota."

Nancee replied, "I, too, come from a hill tribe: the Karen. There are many Karen and Hmong in this part of Thailand, living in these hills." She pointed to the mountains of the Thanon Thongchai Range that stretched north from Chiang Mai.

"Many Hmong become sao praphet song, and move to Chiang Mai or even to the south of Thailand, Bangkok or Phuket. There are also many sao praphet song from among the Karen. They say that the Karen and the Hmong make the most beautiful sao praphet song."

"What about Chilean/Swedish mongrels like me?" I complained.

Tran and Nancee laughed, and Tran said "We were only talking about Asians."

"I know," I replied with mock misery. "You're all prettier than us horse- faced honkies."

"Then why do all the Asian guys choose you first?" Nancee challenged.

"My wit and charm," I replied. "Or perhaps I'm just a novelty in Thailand."

We had planned to work together for the first few weeks of the study, until Tran and I had mastered enough Thai to work independently of Nancee. Faced with the opportunity to dramatically expand the study, and with the inadequacy of my hastily-acquired Thai phrases to meet the demands of interviewing, I rethought this strategy. "I'm going to need help with my language on these interviews, at least until I pick up enough Thai. Tran, how many Vietnamese and Hmong names do you see on the list?"

"At least seventy-five, mostly in and around Chiang Mai."

I mapped out and announced our new strategy: "OK, for the first three weeks, we'll all stay here in Chiang Mai. Nancee and I will work together to get her interviewing procedure down, and I hope I'll pick up enough Thai from her to function on my own. For the second three weeks, you two will work together and if Tran picks up enough Thai to work independently, then we'll split up for the last four weeks of our visas.

"If we average four interviews per day while we're working in teams we'll do about fifty interviews per week, or about three hundred interviews, total. When we split up, we potentially increase that to seventy-five per week, or another three hundred. So we can interview everyone on this whole list if we keep to that schedule, but it's going to be hard. We'll have to be really efficient on travel time.

"I'll sort these names by language group and location, pick up some throwaway cell phones so we can call ahead if our subjects have phones, and let's get started knocking on doors right away."

"We're not going to wait to hear back from Pranatop?"

"I'm not waiting all summer for her. My e-mail was just to cover my ass."

Nancee looked worried, but Tran shrugged her shoulders and laughed. "Alexandra never lets rules get in the way of ambition."

Although I joined Nancee's laughter at Tran's comments deprecating the urgency of my ambitions, I felt something quite different growing inside me: a surge of energy like nothing I had felt since I first conceived of the Transsexual Sex Worker project. The dramatic expansion of the Thai leg of the project would surely propel me to the first rank of sex researchers: to an academic nirvana of rich grants and fellowships.

I pictured myself seated, looking dazzling in a fresh lab coat and faux glasses, on the dais of an international science conference: with luck, I would be the youngest scientist ever to be invited to present to the National Institute of Sciences. From the audience, handsome, brilliant, sensitive young scientists would goggle at me adoringly, and then throng around me at the cocktail receptions like an academic femme fatale.

In my imagined glory, I saw my father eyeing me enviously from the corner of the room. I mentally practiced my gracious acceptance speech for the academic honors to be heaped upon me, and folded in an impassioned and utterly convincing plea for recognition of the sexual rights of the transgendered community.

Tran would land a scholarship and she and I would be able to rent a house for Marta, Alyssa, and Li. Nancee would get a student visa to study with us, and we would take turns baby-sitting and partying. A sweet new Miata, a great condo on the beach in Venice, and the respect of my peers all beckoned to me.

The prospect of recognition for my intelligence and achievement, goals that I had seemingly forsaken when I took the path toward my sex change, again beckoned and seduced me. I would complete and improve on the massive study that the largest condom maker in the world had botched and abandoned, and in the process I would also achieve renown and success for myself and my friends.

I sorted the names by language group and location and drew up the interviewee lists. Tran went to a Hmong community in the Mai Ai district and Nancee and I went to an Ahka community in the Prao.

Nancee and I were looking for Bootook and Phousi, both fifteen, both Akha from Sipsongpanna, in Southern China.

"Be careful," Nancee cautioned. "Mai Ai is very dangerous, and Prao is event worse.

"Children from all over South Asia arrive here every day, to get hormones, make money in the sex trade. At least most of the sao praphet song come to the city on their own, as I did, because my family objected to my taking hormones and living like a girl.

"Many girls and even young boys are tricked and made into debt slaves, working for years in brothels to earn their freedom from their debt cards. Some are even kidnapped and brought and kept here by force."

I shuddered at the horrifying image: child slave-whores in the Land of Smiles.

We walked down a muddy, congested tanon, or side street, under the continuous gaze of the grimy, working-class Thai men. Nancee snarled rejections at their frequent propositions, and they moved on to more vulnerable prey.

At the end of another dingy, fetid tanon, we came to the Rung Ruing Cafe. The cafe was a front for a brothel: about fifteen pale-faced young girls and katoey, wearing T-shirts, sat like so much human merchandise displayed under blue and red fluorescent lights, on a tiered platform covered in worn red carpet. The atmosphere of tawdry commercialism was accentuated pink theater curtain, worn to shininess by years of exposure to the moist mountain air. The look of tawdry faux gaiety was completed by the outdated sign overhead, wishing everybody a happy New Year in English, Japanese and Thai. The signs had not been taken down even though Songkran, Thai New Year, had been on the fifteenth of April.

We watched as a few Thai men paid 110 baht to a cashier. Periodically, one of the men selected one of the young girl or katoey, and they departed to one of twenty wooden rooms at the back of the house. We went to the cashier and asked for Bootook.

"She go home to her village, long time ago," the cashier said.

"Is Phousi here?" Nancee asked.

"She gone home, too. Why you ladies want katoey? You ladies wanna get fucked by ladyboy?" The cashier laughed coarsely.

"We have a gift for them," I replied.

"Bootook and Phousi don't need a gift. They a doctor, or a funeral." He laughed mirthlessly at his cruel joke, stopping short when he noticed our stony-faced response. Now, the cashier said ingratiatingly "We have another katoey somsee who was friendly with them. Come here, Aom."

Nancee pulled me aside and asked, "Do you know what he means when he says they went home?" I shook my head. "They got the skinny disease, what you call AIDS," Nancee whispered.

Nancee asked Aom to come with us, and I paid forty baht as a cafe fine to procure her temporary release. We took Aom to another cafe and we shared Thai coffees.

Aom was a nineteen-year old sao praphet song from a small village in Chiang Rai Province, in the so-called Golden Triangle, far north of Chiang Mai. She had begun taking hormones at fourteen, with her mother's but not her father's consent. She had had a relationship with one of the Buddhist monks in her village, and when they were caught in bed together, the monk rejected her and claimed she had corrupted him, and her father had expelled her from her family's opium farm.

She ran away with a soldier from the Shan Revolutionary Army and lived with him for a year at his unit's camp high in the Thanon Thongchai mountains, until he disappeared while on an opium smuggling operation. Then she went to Chiang Mai to try to make her living in the cabarets. All she had managed to get was a job at the Rung Ruing Cafe, where she served beer wearing a T-shirt that also advertised her and her price. To keep her job, she was obliged to have sex with the customers of the cafe for the price printed on her shirt.

If she lost her job, she would have to work from the street, where it was even more dangerous, and where the customers were even coarser than the riffraff that patronized Rung Ruing. Working at Rung Ruing, Aom at least had the protection offered by the thin walls of the wooden house; the walls were thick enough to keep out intruders, but thin enough to permit the management to overhear and intervene in an encounter that was turning violent.

She required that her customers use condoms when they penetrated her anally, "rok ayd," but would perform oral sex, "faen poo-chai" without condoms if the customer appeared healthy, and for an extra price, she would, let them orgasm "toong cum."

She worked every day, and usually had six to eight customers per day. She split her take with management. Her room was on the third floor of the rickety structure.

There was only a single, filthy bathroom for all fifteen girls, and it consisted of a hole in a tile floor over a slow-running flow of water. For washing, Aom had only a bucket in her room. She took hormones every day, and was enthusiastic about the vouchers that we gave her.

She remembered Bootook and Phousi: they were the top two ladyboys at the Rung Ruing when Aom arrived. They had lots of cash, and always had extra condoms and lubricant to give to the other girls: they were getting more than they needed free, from a very proper lady who came from the University. They also got regular medical treatment and tests.

Then their special status stopped, the proper lady from the University stopped coming, and then they got sick and went away. They had too much pride, and their pride had destroyed their karma, Aom thought.

We thanked her, gave her some vouchers, and parted ways with her with a sawat-dee ka.

We interviewed three other sao praphet song that made their livings at the Rung Ruing Cafe, paying cafe fines for the privilege of talking to each, and getting variations on Aom's story. Each of the young sao praphet song working girls remembered friends who had enjoyed the status and financial benefits of working with the scientists from Chiang Mai, but who had gotten sick and disappeared. Presumably, they went back to their home villages to die.

As we rode in our songtaew jitney back to the farm hut we called home, Nancee read me the names of the unfortunate sao praphet song somsee as I marked them off our master list. The results were frustrating: although the list was little more than eighteen months old, it seemed that nearly everyone on it had disappeared.

"God! I knew AIDS was rampant in Northern Thailand, but this is horrible, like totally depressing," I said.

"I know a few girls who have gotten sick, but never as bad as this. But I work in a higher-class scene. These girls we are meeting are low-class, not very pretty. They must do dangerous things with their customers."

"Aom said she always used condoms," I pointed out.

"Everybody says that," said Nancee knowingly, "But for an extra 500 baht, these cafe T-girls and streetwalker somsee make exceptions."

I swallowed hard and remembered my own early streetwalking and bar- girling. I had been lucky: but in Northern Thailand, where ten percent of the adult population was said to be HIV-positive, a careless girl's luck could run out in days.

Tran returned a few hours later, downcast and frustrated. Everyone on her list had gone home to their villages. She had written the names of their villages down and wanted to go to check on them, but I insisted that we keep working the vicinity of Chiang Mai.

Our luck turned on the second day of the second week of survey work, when we met Ae.

Ae was a twenty-one year-old Shan from South China. She had crossed into Thailand at fifteen and had lived on the streets until eighteen, when she was recruited for the survey. The scientists supplied her with a plentiful supply of Spartan condoms and lubricants and gave her 200 baht per week to keep track of her sex activities as a bar girl at Fascination. She got blood tests every two months at a lab at CMU, for which she was paid 500 baht, but she was never told the results.

Shortly after the study began, she had achieved enough feminization and accumulated enough cash to get a breast enhancement, and her earnings rose greatly as the tourists took notice of her pretty face, lovely, slender figure, and generous breasts. She hadn't really cared when the lady scientist from the University had given her a 400 baht good-bye present, and she hadn't really thought about the experience since. She was healthy, beautiful, and successful.

"I have plenty of my own money, so I don't really need vouchers for my hormones," Ae said haughtily. "But I will help you, because I enjoyed your show at Fascination. Your Hmong friend is pretty, sings well, and you are very polite."

She described her clientele and activities, and showed us her home in a tidy, new high-rise near the Mae Ping Hotel. It was a world apart from the tawdry brothels and cafes just outside her doorstep, and her relationship with the doorman at the Mae Ping assured her a constant source of lucrative tourist contacts. She shared her 500 baht fee for his referrals, and had made enough to get the nose job that would, she believed, propel her to the top of her profession.

She could easily have thrived in Phuket, or had her operation and married one of the clients who admired her, but she had no intention of losing the comfortable, easy life she had achieved as one of Chiang Mai's top hookers. "As long as you farangs don't stay here and compete with me."

I laughed, and politely said, "I am only here to study the Thai sao praphet song, not to become one myself."

"Then take this one back with you when you leave us. She is too beautiful for her own good," Ae said jokingly of Nancee.

"Don't worry, I'm post-op now," Nancee replied. Ae uttered grudging respect.

We scoured Chiang Mai in search of the former participants in the Spartan study for three weeks, enduring disappointment after disappointment as the phantoms from the old study list disappeared into the mists.

After one particularly frustrating day, I picked up some Thai beer to relax. I had hated beer while growing up in the United States, but Thai beer actually tastes of something, and I discovered a cold one was quite refreshing in the muggy monsoon weather.

Tran arrived with a bag of steamed pork and cabbage dumplings, and we sipped beer and ate.

I let Tran and Nancee enjoy themselves, but inside, I felt worried and disappointed. By this stage, I had expected that we would have interviewed nearly a hundred subjects. Instead, we had interviewed only fifty. We had wasted untold time chasing after phantoms from the old Spartan study list. Of the eighty Chiang Mai subjects on the old list, we had interviewed only twenty five, and had been told that forty others had gone back to their villages, gotten sick, or died. The rest had simply disappeared.

Putting things another way, we had interviewed almost as many new subjects as we had old. My plan of using Spartan's old list looked like a complete waste of time rather than a time-saver. We should consider stopping chasing after Spartan's ghosts, I concluded gloomily.

"What's strange is you go to four, five places in a row, and the person is gone, and then the next two are fine, and then no more for another day," Tran mused. "Always the same story: they went home to their village. I think I'm going to check out one of those villages, and find these ghost sao praphet song."

"That's the way an epidemic is," I said. "It's random. I just had no idea how bad it was here. Nancee, is it possible that two-thirds of the T-girl sex workers in Chiang Mai get AIDS every couple of years?"

"No, it's bad, but it's not that bad. But I'm glad that I can have vaginal sex now. Good reason to get a sex-change operation," Nancee mused.

Nancee's words loosened the grip that our intellectual preoccupation had over us. As I looked up a Tran, our eyes met in a flash of non-verbal communication.

"What day is it?" Tran asked.

I replied, "Wednesday: two days short of four weeks."

Tran said, "That's close enough for me. Let's go find ourselves some lucky guys."

Nancee interjected, "I forgot to tell you--there was a voice mail from Eddie on my cell. He's in Chiang Mai. Alexandra, you're supposed to call him at the Mae Ping Hotel."

Tran looked hurt, and now I could understand why. Here in Thailand, in the land of three hundred thousand sao praphet song, I was the exotic rarity: a beautiful Anglo post-op. Tran looked a lot like the Thai girls, even though she was culturally American through and through.

Naturally, I was flattered to be prized over the exquisite Tran, even by a drug-dealing gangster like Eddie, but I did not want to make my best friend jealous. And I found the idea of a tete-a-tete with a hoodlum who was implicitly coercing me into having sex with him rather less than romantic.

"Tran, Eddie's OK, and I don't mind being with him, but it would be a lot more memorable for everyone if we did, like, a threesome with him." I winked at Nancee. "Or even a foursome. I mean, it's not like it's true love, or that we're even truly virgins. I'm really not in the mood for a big, cherry-popping date with Eddie, of all people. I'd rather party with you two."

Tran agreed. "He's cute and a good fuck, but you're right, it's not exactly true love."

"And there's no one I'd rather lose my so-called virginity with than with my best friends," I affirmed, drawing them into my scheme. "That way, we can laugh about it together, forever."

"Good point. We'll be able to remember everything," Tran enthused.

Nancee, the fundamentally conservative Thai, demurred, protesting, "I've already been with Eddie a bunch of times."

"God, what does he do, collect cherries from post-op demi-vierges?" I cracked.

"He paid for my surgical fee, and that was the deal. Whenever he wants me, he can have me. But he's nice."

"Come on, we won't go if you won't come with us."

"Sorry, I can't. Remember, I live here. He gets me whenever he wants," Nancee said.

"So you're like, his love slave?" I asked incredulously.

"No, and that's why I'm taking the night off," Nancee joked.

"The thing is, even though I've been so celibate the last few weeks, I'm really not in the mood," Tran complained.

"Me neither," I agreed. "Nancee, can we get something to adjust our moods, without the frigging police ying-tinging us?"

"You're terrible," she said, adding, "I know a guy who works down in the Somphet Market who has good yaba. We can call up Eddie as soon as we get into cell phone range, pick up the yaba down in Somphet, and get a cab to the Mae Ping. If you smoke it in the cab, you'll be high by the time you get to the hotel."

"Sounds like a plan. It's about time we had some fun on this trip. All work and no play will make Alexandra and Tran dull girls."

There was no point in showering before commuting through the traffic- clogged, polluted streets of rush-hour Chiang Mai by songtaew; one inevitably got sweat-soaked and thoroughly filthy before getting very far.

We grabbed toiletries, make-up and a change of underwear for the morning, and set off on our mission of adventure and lust. We walked down our tanon to the main road and took the songtaew to Somphet Market, where Nancee discreetly scored two hits of yaba for 100 baht. Then we flagged down a private cab, selecting one whose driver had the manic energy of a chronic yaba user. He would not mind our using his back seat as a drug den.

Yaba is a wonder of Third World marketing. It has a pleasant vanilla fragrance, and is professionally stamped with the reassuring imprint "WY," as if it were a trademarked pharmaceutical. The cabby gave us a lighter and foil, and we inhaled the acrid fumes that swirled upward as we roasted our tablets over the cabby's cigarette lighter. The cabby gratefully accepted the used foil for himself; he managed to get a good hit off the residue.

Almost instantly, I felt my head swell and float upward like a soap bubble from a child's bubble-blowing wand. "No wonder everyone is so happy in the 'Land of Smiles,'" I cracked. "They're all flying high!"

"We would have been done with your silly survey if we had this powering us," Tran laughed.

Nancee, who had abstained, observed edgily, "You'd be addicted or dead if you'd taken this the last three weeks. Don't get too used to it!"

"Tran," I said, "This is so perfect. We're probably the first two girlfriends in the world to lose their virginity at an orgy they staged."

"Alexandra, it's what I love about you. You're always on the cutting edge," Tran laughed.

I called Eddie and got him on his cell. "Baby, I was worried we were going to miss one another. Where are you?" Eddie cooed.

A bubble of chemical enthusiasm swelled my cortex, as successive rushes of the drug hit me. "Oh, Eddie, I've been having a really crappy summer; Chiang Mai is such a shithole compared to Koh Samui and the people at Chiang Mai U are such idiots. My advisor won't even talk to me, she's, like, taking the summer off or something and Tran and Nancee and I are just spinning in circles on this research because this country is such a mess--you can't find anybody and everyone's paranoid because of this insane anti-drug war."

Eddie said "Don't worry, baby, I'll make everything better.

"Just check into my room for me at the Mae Ping: it's already reserved. I'll tell the desk to let you in. Just charge whatever you want to the room, at the shops and room service, but make sure there's plenty of champagne.

"I've got to do some business, so I'll be there in an hour or so."

We gave the cabby a big tip to take Nancee home, and strutted into the Mae Ping as if we owned it. The girls at the reception desk all gave us a censorious glare as Tran and I checked in for Mr. Eddie Liang's room. But the girls in the negligee shop were most solicitous as Tran and I tripped our way through selecting, and charging to Eddie's room, matching, virginal white satin and lace tie-up chemises and tie-side thongs for our encounter.

By the time we were through we were so high we had forgotten our room number. We had to ask the front desk girls to write it down for us. They shot appalled looks at each other as we giggled our way across the lobby and up the elevators of the gracious Mae Ping.

Eddie's penthouse suite was elegant and stocked with plentiful Thai knockoffs of the finest offerings of Chanel and L'Oreal. Better yet, the bathroom had both a shower and an enormous Jacuzzi. We helped ourselves to the hotel's beauty products as we showered and primped at the makeup mirror.

After I finished putting on allegedly day-long mascara and kiss-proof lipstick, I plopped down on the bed and dialed Eddie's cell. "I'm all ready," I whispered, "and I have a surprise for you."

Eddie answered, "I can't wait, but in my business, I don't like surprises. Tell me now, so I can think about it on my way over."

"OK, I'm not alone."

"I can't stand crowds, or strangers," Eddie said ominously.

"It's not a crowd or a stranger, silly. It's Tran," I said.

"Wow, you two girls and me. That's fantastic." I heard the blast of a car horn, and heard Eddie swearing in Thai.

"Eddie, it's OK, don't rush, we're fine here. We can keep ourselves amused," I assured him. "We've been saving ourselves for you this long; we can wait another half hour."

The thought of our prolonged and involuntary chastity brought to mind an omission in our preparations for this encounter. "Eddie, can you stop and pick up something for us."

"If I have to," he replied breathlessly.

"Condoms and lube. We haven't had any since we got here," I replied. "Oh, and some Neosporin and maxipads," I added, thinking of possibly messy aftermath.

"No problemo," he responded, and barked an order in Thai to his driver.

"Now, you have to let us finish getting ready for you," I added, hoping to leave him tantalized.

"I'll see you in a few, 'bye."

I hung up as Tran put on her finishing touches. She looked exquisite, and I gently modeled her soft curves with my fingertips. She sighed with pleasure and we lay down beside one another on the king-size bed.

By the time we finished our bath and make-up, the exquisite synaptic tingling in my prefrontal lobe was slowing down to enough for my intellect to recover control of my cognition and expression. But the chemical warmth of the yaba was still spreading like a golden glow through my nervous system. The energy was collecting like a thermal pool trapped in a mineral spring in my lower vertebrae, searching out vents in the pleasure centers of my thorax.

It was easy to see how this drug had seduced the Thai nation: the enervated, depressed emptiness that had afflicted me in the afternoon had been banished, and I was suffused with a warm, sensual energy. And a jolt of amphetamine to the serotonin system both delays and prolongs orgasm.

Tran was primping with concerted efficiency and style. I stood behind her and watched her in the dressing table mirror as she focused her efforts on putting the final touches to her eye makeup. As she finished, I fondled her breasts beneath the warm folds of her hotel bathrobe, and felt a golden flow of energy from my fingertips to the pleasure centers of my brain.

Her own eyes widened in an expression of pure pleasure, and she said "Mmm, you're ruining my concentration. Let me finish so we can relax with one another."

I like guys, especially tough guys like Eddie, or Rick and Randy, but I reserve my greatest affection for girls. Guys are necessary for affirming one's sexual desirability, and I suppose for sex, to a degree. A girl can't match the stomach-pounding satisfaction of a good, hard fuck, but for an understanding and complete exploration of the whole sexual network and its emotional and psychological ramifications, girls just know one another better.

Physiologically a girl is capable of so much more than a guy, whose cock is inevitably destined for an explosion that will leave it in a prolactin- induced stupor, just when the girl needs more, more, more. Ever- mindful of this inevitable shortcoming, guys are rude, impatient, and sexually selfish.

Girls, especially the Sanguan-wired models like Tran and me, can catch their breath, and then keep going on forever. And I love the soft, smooth curves of the feminine form better than the hairy roughness of most guys.

I guess I'll always be at least bisexual, but if I had to choose, I'd choose girls, and if I had to choose any one girl, it would be Tran. But, thank God, I don't have to make that choice; because I know (without ever having asked her) that Tran feels exactly the same way about me.

We reveled in one another's arms: suffused as I was with the warm inner glow from the yaba, it felt as though Tran was painting feathery, brush strokes of warm gilt on my receptive flesh. Each time her lips kissed my breasts, cheeks, or mons, she left molten pools of pleasure that simmered pleasantly afterwards: tactile intimations of ecstasy. Her eyes fluttered with my touch, as she beautifully mirrored in her gorgeous face the pleasure that she was giving me.

The cumulative effect of a thousand strokes of her finger tips, tongue, lips, and body against my yearning neurons multiplied, squared, and logarithmically expanded until my nervous system, and hers, simultaneously overloaded and crashed in a chorus of ecstasy, and briefly blinded me with the colors of cosmic energy and light from within me. When my vision cleared, I saw Eddie standing transfixed at the foot of our bed.

"Enjoying the show, Eddie?" I asked, pretending to take offense at his unannounced entry.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, but, that was the most beautiful and sexy encounters I have ever witnessed."

Tran roused, propped herself on her elbow, and said, "We do that every day. You're always welcome to watch."

Eddie plopped onto the bed between us. "I'd rather be part of the show, if you don't mind."

"We don't mind at all," I said, and started to unbutton his shirt. Tran helped me get Eddie out of his bespoke sharkskin suit. "We were just warming up for you, and got a little carried away with ourselves," I added, slipping down his silk boxers.

We began to massage his cock, until I suddenly took my hand away. "You're all sweaty and smelly. We like cock to be clean and fresh," I pronounced.

"We're going to give you a bath," Tran agreed, and began drawing a scented bath in the huge Jacuzzi in the bathroom. Eddie's flesh was soon trembling with pleasure under the soapy, silken motions of our hands.

"It's better to start out clean and finish sweaty," Tran said, as her hand joined mine in circling Eddie's rigid cock. Together we squeezed and rolled his cockhead through his foreskin. "But we'll never get this big, nasty tool clean," Tran remarked tartly, as Eddie's eyes rolled back in his head. "Don't cum here in the bath: we want it for later," Tran demanded, and Eddie nodded weakly in assent.

First Tran and then I climbed out of the gigantic, sunken spa tub, giving Eddie perfect views of our shaved and glistening pussies. Eddie whistled in appreciation and reached for us with playful grabs.

"I want to take a closer look at you," he said as he emerged and we toweled him off briskly.

We lay side by side in the bed, our flowing hair meeting in a black and gold collage. He kneeled between us and began gently stroking our mons with either hand. His cock rose and hardened as soon as his fingers reached soft, smooth flesh of our newly formed inner labia.

"You feel perfect," he said. As he praised us, I felt an electric buzz of pride and pleasure telegraphed from my groin to my brain. He parted my thighs and went down on me, fondling my left breast with one hand while with his mouth he explored the outer realm of my newly-hooded clitoris, my freshly-healed labia minora, and my super-sensate vaginal opening with flicks, darts, and swipes. Then he thrust his tongue through the vaginal opening into me, locked his lips over me, and puffed a breath of warm air into my pussy: it was as if a golden cloud swirled within me and stirred my sated passions back to life.

I moaned when his restless lips left me, but when his mouth left me for Tran, it was replaced by his inquisitive fingers, which skittered playfully from my breast to my vagina, and danced within my labia. I turned to face Tran. Her face was transformed by her pleasure into an incredible sensual beauty; her lips parted in a quiet moan. I silenced her with a kiss: they yielded beneath my firm lips, and then responded with a soft flutter.

Eddie nibbled his way to and fro, from Tran's mons up to join us in a three-way kiss, and then Tran and I nuzzled against Eddie and one another in an erotic body massage that rendered Eddie speechless.

After a lingering, delicious joining of our lips and tastes, Tran joined me in sliding down toward Eddie's groin, where his cock was already rock- hard and ready. We began flicking his cockhead with darting tongues, playfully bombarding it with rapid-fire touches, and occasionally pursing our lips against his shaft and merging our mouths into a tunnel of pleasure around him. We took turns bobbing our heads up and down over his cock, while the other kissed his nipples and strong, hairless chest.

I kissed him again as Tran sucked him, and Eddie said, "I can't believe how hot you are. What did that doctor do?"

"He wired us with broadband," I said, smiling. "Ready to upload?"

He nodded enthusiastically. I rejoined Tran for a final taste of his penis, and between sucks I asked her, "Is it OK if I go first?"

"Sure, as long as you save some for me."

"Of course," I said, and Tran got up and cuddled next to Eddie, kissing him and stroking his chest, as she studied me. Enjoying my audience, I showed off my favorite condom technique. I popped it between my teeth and my lips, planning to steady it with my tongue and roll it down his cock. I gagged and stopped when I noticed a bitter taste in my mouth. There was a weird-tasting, astringent lubricant covering the condom, which I could not tolerate in my mouth a split second longer, and I hastily reached for some tissues beside the bed and spat and spat and spat until most of the foul taste was gone. Then I rinsed my mouth with a swig of champagne.

Eddie looked crestfallen. "It's the condom that tastes yucky, not your cock," I said with a reassuring smile, taking his uncut cock bareback between my lips for a few appreciative licks. Then I slathered his rigid penis with the lubricant Eddie had brought, and slipped on a fresh condom. As I spread it liberally over my labia, vagina, and by force of habit, on and around my ass, I noticed that the lubricant, too, was redolent of the antiseptic scent that I had just gagged on. Then, I crouched on top of his groin and guided his penis between my labia.

Experience had taught me to go slowly and to expect excruciating pain at the beginning. It simply had to be endured until, one hoped, the pain of entry subsided enough to enjoy the feelings of invasion and fullness, until finally I could surrender to the joy of a hard fuck by a big cock. Until now, vaginal sex for me had been the cruel ransacking of an unfinished surgical site.

Now my vagina had been completed and I was only forty-eight hours short of the full recovery period recommended by my surgeon.

I bit my lip with anxiety as Eddie jerked his penis upward and into me, but instead of pain, my yaba-fueled senses sent a message of pure pleasure as his cock squeezed through my lower vagina. With his second thrust, his cockhead breached the surgically broken, and at last, healed ring of pain. It traversed smoothly from the lower portion of my vagina, which had been fashioned of highly sensate penile skin, to the problematic colorectal segment of my upper vagina.

These dissimilar tissues had formed a rough, tight boundary, which had been the source of my miserable experience of vaginal sex. Now that Dr. Sanguan had broken the ring and I had healed once again, whenever Eddie's cockhead bumped over slight ridge between them, I felt a ping of pleasure from the nerve endings that had reconnected at the point of fusion. With repetition, the sensations grew more intense and clamored for release.

I bit my lip and tried to concentrate, but the sensations overwhelmed the voluntary control of my muscles, and I collapsed, just short of the orgasm I now desperately needed. I was slamming my pelvis down on his cock with all of my strength, trying, like Sisyphus, to push the stone to the summit, but again my voluntary system failed to synchronize with the primal forces from within.

I felt Tran's arms circle my torso beneath my breasts: now, as I lunged upward and plunged down on Eddie's throbbing penis, she added her strength to mine. Her boobs bobbed and massaged my tiring back and her hands guided and soothed my aching shoulders as she pressed me down and helped me upward.

Eddie took hold of my own breasts, and soon we were rising and falling in perfect coordination. My sensations organized themselves into waves in synchrony with the rhythms of our relentless lovemaking. Eddie trilled my interior like a violinist's bow through a Vivaldi arpeggio, and then suddenly, a ball of orgasmic energy exploded from the nerves in front of my internal ring. Molten flows of pleasure cascaded through my body and mind. I cried out and collapsed in gasps of ecstasy.

My climax was followed by an exquisite moment of complete quiet: my petite mort. I woke up with Tran massaging my back and Eddie, limp and sweaty, beneath me.

"God, that was incredible," I sighed. Eddie grunted in agreement.

"That looks like it was fun. But when am I going to get a turn?" Tran asked with a hint of jealousy.

"Just hand me one of those blue pills from my jacket pocket," Eddie said. "We can talk, have a little champagne, and in an hour, I'll be as good as new," he predicted confidently. I peed and put on a maxipad and undies, as I was worried about the flows that such a strenuous fucking might produce from my newly-functioning pussy. When I came back, Tran was describing our research.

"Alexandra is a slave driver: Nancee and I have to chase katoey ghost somsee all over Chiang Mai. Tomorrow I am going back to a village in Chiang Rai Province, looking for some dead katoey hooker," Tran complained facetiously. "Nancee and Alexandra at least get to interview Thais and Karen right near here."

"Be very careful. In Chiang Rai the Thai anti-narcotics police are fighting with the United Wa Army," Eddie cautioned.

"Don't worry; I speak a little Hmong myself. And by now, I've been to every slum and shanty in Chiang Mai, looking for the lost T-girls from the Spartan list. But most of the time we hear this one is sick, that one went home to her village, and the other one is dead. But it's all for science, right?"

"If you'd like, I'll send along one of my guys. He'll drive you," Eddie offered.

"That's really nice. I'd feel a lot better if she weren't alone," I answered for Tran. "But you said, the United What Army?"

Eddie laughed, "Wa, I said Wa."

"Say Wa?" Tran joked.

"Not 'what,' 'Wa,'" Eddie replied.

"Who?" I asked.

"'What,' he said 'what,' not 'who,'" Tran said, as Eddie doubled up in laughter.

"Who do you mean, 'Wa?'" I asked.

"'Wa,' not 'who,' you mean!" Tran asked.

"I meant 'Wa!'" I replied.

"'Wa' is what I said," Eddie responded.

"Just don't ask him why," Tran riposted. We all dissolved in manic giggles.

Eddie said, "Very funny. So let me ask you this: 'How, high are you?'"

"Fine," Tran replied, and when we realized she had fallen into Eddie's verbal trap, we convulsed with laughter again. "Got me," Tran said, "I confess, Constable Liang. We sampled some of your local crazy pills."

"Oh, supporting our United Wa competition, eh? Big punishment for naughty girls who take yaba." He playfully pulled her over his lap and spanked her.

"No, we want more," Tran demanded, and Eddie resumed his playful pummeling.

"No, more yaba," she said, and Eddie stopped and produced a strip of foil and two more of the vanilla-scented pills from the pocket of his silk suitjacket.

"I thought you said yaba was from the Wa?"

"Who?" he replied, and then added, "Market research. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it." We each sniffed another cloud of the acrid fumes.

Eddie said, when the laughter subsided, "These Wa are not so funny. And though I love this yaba product, it's what's produced this drug war.

"It's a three-sided conflict.

"The Shan State Army is ethnic Chinese, and my father-in-law is one of its commanders. It's a leftover from one of the Nationalist Chinese divisions that fought the Japanese and the Thai puppet government here during World War II. We were promised political autonomy for our efforts, but at the end of the war, the Shan State was given to Burma. We still fight for autonomy, and finance it by smuggling, mostly opium.

"United Wa Army is the military side of the old Burmese Communist Party. They did not support our nationalist aspirations, and at first we were allies in the struggle against the Burmese military government that we both abhorred."

Tran said, "Ugh, I hate fuckin' communists."

"So why are the Shan now fighting the Wa?" I ventured.

"The Shan had a live-and-let-live relationship with the Wa and the Thai police, but now all of the old relationships have been altered by the yaba trade. The Shan don't make it, and would like to see it gone, because it supplants opium and brings Western anti-drug agencies down everyone's throats.

"The Wa have forged a criminal alliance with their old enemies, the thugs who rule Burma and now call themselves the SPRC, to run yaba into Thailand. Now the Wa are getting more rich and powerful, and are becoming more influential than we Shan with the hill tribes. But their success has made them enemies with their former patrons in the Thai government, and caused this insane drug war.

"Those Wa pigs ruined everything by targeting yaba at kids," Eddie concluded.

"It's the most slickly-marketed drug. It smells like candy," I remarked.

"Our friends in the Thai police would rather not fight with drug dealers. Without us, how would the addicts get their fixes? But the Wa were greedy, expanded their markets to the kids. While they have made themselves much richer than the Shan, and now can buy more soldiers from the hill tribes than we can, their success has made them a target. Now it's war, and we are all on the front lines."

"Maybe this drug war is the source of all of the trouble we are having," Tran said.

Eddie asked, "Trouble? What kind of trouble?"

I explained, "Tran and I are here to compare the development and sex lives of Thai katoey working girls to American transsexual sex workers. We found a list of girls on a computer at Chiang Mai University we thought we could work from, but when we call on the girls, most of them are gone, or even dead. We think a lot of them have gotten AIDS, and without that list it's going to be hard to find and interview as many subjects."

"Who made the list? Maybe they could help you make a new one?" Eddie suggested.

"The project was run here by a sao praphet song named Lin, who was doing it for a company called Spartan," I responded.

Eddie let out a low whistle. "I wouldn't mess with Spartan if I were you. It's the biggest company in this region, and its Thai owner is General Riap, the commander of the Third Army."

"Why would Spartan care? You would think it would be happy to have some independent researchers finish their research project."

"Why do you suppose they didn't finish it themselves?" Eddie asked.

"I don't know. But it's a waste of our time, and we are just going to finish with the few subjects on the list here, and then we're moving on to Pattapong. The commercial sex scene is more concentrated there; it should be easy to recruit new subjects."

"I'll arrange an apartment for you there," Eddie offered. "You American girls are so great--like an instant party." He pulled Tran and me together into a group hug.

Our second round of yaba and his Viagra were kicking in, and we resumed our long night of lovemaking. I rocked Tran against the rhythms of Eddie's Viagra-stoked lust, and I was almost as thrilled to experience the Tran's writhing, exquisite first vaginal orgasm as I had been to have had my own, wrapped in her arms.

Many hours later, Eddie dozed off into sexually-sated slumber. Tran and I partied on, sipping champagne, eating room-service bamii noodles with much more inventive toppings than the noodles we'd been getting from the pushcarts in the streets, and obsessing over our futile research like a couple of nerdy schoolgirls in their final exam week.

"When you think it through, the absurdity of our statistical anomaly is mind-boggling. Our data shows that two-thirds of the T-girl sex workers from Spartan's study group have gotten sick with AIDS badly enough to get taken out of circulation," I calculated.

"In the Twin Cities, we had what, maybe six out of every hundred?" Tran estimated.

"I hate to sound callous, but if they are getting sick and dying that fast, how could there be so many left in Chiang Mai?" I asked rhetorically.

Nothing made sense. The old study group, which appeared to have offered a God-given shortcut to a blockbuster study, was now a perplexing roadblock, and I simply couldn't figure out why.

"Let's take one more Jacuzzi and then try to get a few hours of sleep," Tran suggested.

"Maybe we'd better try dilating, too," I reminded her.

I pulled down my panties and slipped off my maxipad, and noticed a slurry of blood and tissue had collected inside it. "Oh my God, maybe Eddie was a little too energetic for a first-timer!" I worried.

"I've go the same problem. Not much blood, but kind of a mess of sloughed tissue."

I looked on with horrified fascination. It looked like my neovagina had molted a layer of skin. I tried dilating, and although the stent penetrated easily, I said, "Wow, that stings!" I felt raw, almost burned inside.

"God, I am going to be so disappointed if we have more problems down there," Tran moped.

We took a bath, and morosely went off to sleep. Post-orgasmic fatigue, champagne, and the crash from the yaba had left us exhausted. Despite the yaba still in our systems, with the help of a couple of Vicodin from Dr. Sanguan's office we managed to drift off into a short, light sleep.

I heard Eddie tiptoeing around the room and making a telephone call at first light. After conversing a few minutes in a furtive whisper, Eddie came over to our bed to speak quietly with us.

"Sorry, I gotta go look in on a merchant, but you wait here, order some room-service breakfast. I am having one of my guys pick you up at nine, take you to your place, then he'll take Tran up to Chiang Rai, drive her up to the Hmong villages and take care of her."

"Thanks, that's OK," Tran said.

"Not OK," Eddie said. "You girls stay away from Spartan or you'll end up ying ting," Eddie warned. "Easy to get yourself killed in Chiang Rai, no matter what. And you are studying Spartan's business. Spartan's business is General Riap's business. Easy to get killed messing with Riap."

"We're giving up on all of that," I reassured him. "The Spartan list is a dead end."

"That's what I'm saying. You should stay away from Riap's business. He has all the leverage now that this drug war is on. We used to give him orders, but now we take orders from him."

"OK," I said, wondering why Eddie had become so insistent.

"Anyhow, you wait for driver, he'll take care of you two. You are my good friends now."

I called Sanguan's office and told Pim about the disturbing vaginal sloughing. She sounded confused and worried, replying, "I don't know. We don't have so many girls with your kind of operation. Sanguan is in prep, he can't talk now. Call him later."

We ate a Western breakfast of egg whites and wheat toast from room service, and in deference to Thai notions of decency, straightened up the most obvious evidence of our orgy. "Look at this," I laughed, holding up a condom package for Tran to see. "Spartan Spermicidal Extra," I read.

"Yeah, they're everywhere," Tran added, holding up a squeezed-out tube of Spartan Spermicidal Ultra Glide, before she lofted it into the trash can.

Eddie's driver arrived and brought us a package, then excused himself deferentially to wait for us downstairs. Inside, in a bag marked for Tran, was a Hmong woman's tsho, a knee-length pleated dark blue and white batik skirt, black leggings, and black tiab blouse. Both the skirt and blouse were decorated with red cross-stitch embroidery appliques at the hem, cuffs and placket. A maroon phuam, a turban-like hat decorated with white applique stripes, and pair of modern rubber and plastic sandals--Teva knockoffs, good for long walks--completed Tran's outfit.

"How charming, he wants us to save ourselves for him," Tran said, holding up the unflattering, baggy garb. "Not much of a gift, but I got more than you, I'm afraid," Tran said with mock competitiveness.

"Wait!" I said, "There's more." I held up two tissue-wrapped packages. Handing one to Tran, I pulled at the string on the other, and remarked, "This looks promising."

Inside each there was a yellow gold chain tipped with a blue sapphire pendant. My eyes met Tran's, and we exchanged joyful glances.

As I put on the silky chain, and the smooth, square-cut blue stone slapped against my chest, I felt as though I had been reborn as a princess.

"That's more like it," I said admiring Tran's stone, which dangled enticingly in the furrow between her breasts.

"You look quite lovely," Tran told me, gently rubbing the stones against one another. "I guess we made a good team last night.

"Nancee's going to kill us if she sees these," I said. "Not to mention the local banditos as we make our rounds today. Let's wrap everything back up and put it all in the computer stash when we get back to the hut.

The driver was at our disposal, so I asked him to stop by Suansak Two on our way. I went to my computer workstation and logged on, planning to e-mail Professor Pranatop at her post abroad in Australia with our decision to suspend the use of the Spartan list as soon as we had finished with the interviews of the Chiang Mai subjects. I opened my CMU mailbox and saw, in the midst of the junk e-mail, the dreaded red exclamation point beside a new e-mail from Pranatop.

I opened and read: "After consultation with Spartan Scientific Products LLC, I direct that you stop using materials from its confidential study. Furthermore, at the order of the Thai Third Army Command, I revoke the official consent for your distribution of pharmacy vouchers."

My heart skipped a beat and I cursed my luck for putting me in the care of the lazy and stupid Pranatop.

I had wanted her consent for the use of the Spartan materials. Instead of addressing it simply as a matter between two scientists, she had shown she lacked the backbone to make a decision of her own by cravenly referring the request to Spartan. Not surprisingly, Spartan had refused consent, and had apparently lodged a protest with the Thai Third Army.

Now I was well and truly screwed: I would have to waste the twenty-five interviews that we derived from their materials, and I was deprived of the use of the drug vouchers, which were my currency for paying our interviewees during the rest of the study. With only seven weeks left on my visa, I would be lucky to interview as many as the hundred subjects I had originally proposed in the survey, much less get the blockbuster results that I had hoped to obtain.

Now there was no point in consulting that idiot Pranatop any more. Her meddling would only arouse Spartan further, and their response left me feeling uncomfortable enough already.

I was about to shut down my session when I saw another red exclamation mark. It was a e-mail from the dean of CMU to all foreign students, passing along an order from Lieutenant General Riap: all foreign students at Chiang Mai University were required to immediately notify the Third Army's Internal Security Office of their current address, the names of all people living in their residences, and their course of study.

As we drove back to the hut, the driver adeptly avoided a Third Army security checkpoint that had appeared on the main road. The drug war was getting closer, and I felt the checkpoint must have been intended for me.

I was gripped with anxiety as visions of a half dozen dead friends and acquaintances scrolled before my sleep-deprived eyes: the memory of Daylene, Bo, Croc, and Seth weighed especially on my mind. These dark memories were joined by the specters of the twenty-five hundred dead victims of Thailand's drug war, marching before my mind's eye like the columns of a defeated, retreating army.

What horrors did this affably malignant culture hold for me and my friends? I felt I had loosened the cap on a bottle of poison: but what was I feeling? Realistic anxiety, or amphetamine-fueled paranoia?

As soon as we were safely back in our hooch, I retrieved the iBook from its hiding place under the floor and opened up Spartan's main Excel spreadsheet. I re-sorted the list against the data from the last three weeks of our frustrating field work, by district, language group, age, and every other category on the spreadsheet, working methodically from left to right.

By the time I reached the mysterious A's, B's, C's and D's, I was so frazzled that I was ready to chuck the whole project. But when I sorted our interviewees by letter category, I was stunned. Of the twenty-five subjects from the initial list we had found and seen in Chiang Mai, seventeen were A's, five were B's, two were C's, and only one was a D. Yet the original list had divided the Chiang Mai subjects amongst the four categories evenly.

"There's something strange going on here," I said with alarm. The alarming infection rate in the study, Pranatop's e-mail, the sudden clampdown by Third Army security on CMU's farang students, and even our own weird reactions to sex while using Spartan's products formed an alarming pattern: but of what?

Tran studied a map of Chiang Rai Province against the spreadsheet on the iBook and observed, "Three of these disappeared C's and D's are from Hmong hamlets near Cheng Meng. I'll have Liang's guy take me there, and a couple of more places," she said, changing into her Hmong ethnic costume and sandals.

"OK, then Nancee and I will check out the few remaining names we have in town, then go to the Baan Pewan Cheewit AIDS hospice and see if anyone ended up there, and talk to Lin about what's going on with the A, B, C, and D categories. After that, we're done here. We'll pack your stuff, Tran, and you can meet us at the place Eddie got us in Pattapong." I was looking forward to getting out from under the thumb of the Third Army.

Nancee and I hugged Tran good-bye. I stashed the iBook and our necklaces in their hiding place, and Nancee and I set off carrying the rest of the vouchers, to use today or throw away as far as possible from the hooch.

As we sought out the few remaining names from Spartan's study list, we had our worst day ever. The landlady of our first interviewee, Nung, told us tearfully that Nung had been hauled away by police only minutes before we arrived. "They never bother the streetwalkers that call out to my children, but they take away my most valued tenant, who never sees anyone outside her home. What is the matter with this country? It's madness," she cried.

We continued on the remaining names from the Spartan list. The next names we checked were Golf and Gigi, who lived together. When we got to their apartment, frightened neighbors told us that they had just been arrested by grey-green clad anti-narcotics police. The neighbors complained "Sure, they were somsee, but they never took drugs, or did drug deals. This drug war is getting worse than the drugs!"

We called the cell phone of our next subject, Joy, and got no answer. Fearing the worst, we crossed town to visit her, only to find yet another ransacked apartment. Her roommate would tell us only that Joy had been arrested the drug police early that morning. Then she threw us out. She was clearly scared to death to have us around.

My anxiety mounted as we approached the Baan Pewan Cheewit hospice. Madrana, the head nurse of the hospice, met us with angry tears. "The drug police took away my patients Gee, Nata and Ooh this afternoon. Those poor girls were too sick to take yaba. Everyone here is too sick for that drug, but they took them away to die." She regarded me angrily. "This is your fault, farang, for bringing us bad karma!"

"I'm sorry, but where is Lin, I need to see her." I feared the worst.

Mamasan Madrana brightened. "She bought medicine with the papers you left for her. She felt better and left with her sister."

I realized it was time to catch up with my sisters at Rosepaper.

I stuffed most of the remaining vouchers in Madrana's hand, and said "Take these as my offering to restore the good karma of Baan Pewan Cheewit. May your patients live long, and die at peace. Sawat-dee ka."

Madrana said, "Sawat-dee ka," back, and to my surprise and delight, gave me a wai for doing the most decent thing I could think of doing with our remaining vouchers.

Nancee and I slogged through Chiang Mai's tumultuous traffic toward the CMU dormitory that Rosepaper's sao praphet song had taken as their unofficial home. When we arrived, we found Chris, our hostess at Fascination, was on duty as dorm monitor, sitting at the front desk.

"Sawat-dee ka. Are we welcome here?" I asked, noting that she had greeted me with a standoffish glare.

"You never come to visit us, and your project has created turmoil for our community. The Third Army security forces have been here asking questions about you. Rosepaper forbids drugs."

"I am sorry we have been such inactive members, but our research program has been more demanding than we expected. As far as drugs go, we're not involved in that," I lied; Nancee nodded in support of my little prevarication.

"I think there has been a very serious misunderstanding about something related to our research. I'd like to talk with Gift's sister Lin, as I think she might be able to us clear things up."

"Shhhh," Chris hissed with alarm. "They came looking for her, too, and she's staying here with us. But don't tell anyone."

"We have to talk to her," I begged.

"OK, come with me," Chris agreed.

We walked to the back of the dorm, to a utility room. There, hiding beneath the meters and cables, we found Lin and Gift. But instead of the near-corpse we had seen four weeks ago, Lin was clear-eyed and healthy. She jumped up and hugged me.

"I can't thank you enough," Lin said as Gift repeated her embrace. Lin smiled through tears of happiness. "I thought I was about to die, and now I feel alive, and want to live again for the first time in years."

Gift had bartered the vouchers that I had left with Lin for protease inhibitors, antibiotics and antifungal drugs, and Lin's seemingly terminal AIDS had disappeared. The taut, deathlike mask of her face had been replaced with a warm, though still weak smile, and smooth, resilient skin.

Lin spoke clearly but softly. She reported, "My strep throat and thrush are both gone. I'm still weak, but I feel better every day now. Before you gave me the vouchers, every day was worse. Thank you for giving me the time to rectify my karma before I leave you."

"Thank God that at least one good thing has come from this misbegotten trip," I said. "Really, I am so happy for you. But everything else has gone wrong.

"The Spartan list turned out to be a complete disaster, and now the police are harassing everyone on it, including you and us. Lin, you have to tell us what's going on. What have we gotten ourselves into?"

"I couldn't tell you everything. It has been a source of great shame.

"The study was of the usefulness of Spartan's spermicidal product, nonoxynol-9, N-9 for short, as an inhibitor to the transmission of HIV.

"Another study had suggested that N9 increased rather than diminished HIV transmission, but Spartan had been selling their more expensive N9 condoms and lubricants as beneficial against sexually transmitted diseases.

"The idea of the study was to prove which concentrations of N9 worked best. They wanted to prove that N9 was beneficial in AIDS inhibition."

"And why did Spartan terminate the study?" I demanded.

"The first round of follow-up HIV tests showed the opposite of what they had expected: the subjects who used the more highly concentrated N9 products contracted HIV the fastest and their infections progressed to frank AIDS the quickest. The healthiest subjects were the ones who used the non-spermicidal products.

"They terminated the study before they got statistically significant responses, and so they kept advertising N9 as preventative because they had no statistically significant evidence that it was not--at least, no evidence that would withstand scientific review. They just stopped selling the highly concentrated products. There's corporate ethics for you."

"Oh my God, and the highly-concentrated N9 group was the D's?"

"I was in the D group. Look what happened to me!" Lin cried.

"The D's have been annihilated, and the C's and B's have been decimated. The only group that has anything close to a typical incidence of HIV are the A's," I exclaimed.

"I'm so sorry. I deserve to die," Lin said, hanging her head in shame.

"No, you have to live," I replied. "We all have to live so that we can expose the truth about those bastards from Spartan."

"You're forgetting, Alexandra, that the main bastard is the commander of the Third Army," Nancee reminded me.

"Shit," I said. "No wonder Third Army security forces are looking for us. What the fuck are we going to do?"

"Call Eddie," Nancee said, pulling out her cell phone and handing it to me.

Eddie answered, and said, "Thank God you're OK. What did you girls do after I left? General Riap ordered you, Tran, Nancee, and a couple hundred katoey added to the drug blacklist. Exactly what have you crazy Americans been doing?" he demanded.

"I think I discovered that Spartan's products are spreading AIDS. Spartan did a study and I got a hold of their subject list. They stopped the study because the early results looked not-so-good. By the time I followed up two years later, the results were like, totally horrible."

"How did they find out about you and the list?" Eddie wondered.

"That cunt Pranatop!" I shouted. "I e-mailed her for permission to use the Spartan list, and three weeks later, the lazy, stupid bitch forwarded my e- mail to Spartan.

"Then the shit hit the fan! The roadblock, the requirement that all farang students report their residences, the disappeared girls, and the visits to Rosepaper--they all came from Pranatop giving my e-mail to Spartan.

"Eddie, can you help us get out of here?"

"Smuggling is my specialty," he said cheerfully. "Get yourselves some hses and flip-flops and whatever you girls need for a long camping trip in the jungle."

"God, just what I needed, the hike from hell," I said.

I had hated the time I'd been forced to spend in the Boy Scouts, and I think that roughing it is staying in a Motel 6. For Nancee, it was a journey to her past, and she seemed almost excited.

Eddie continued, "The three of you meet me in Somphet Market at 18:00, by the fish stalls."

"O shit! What about Tran?" I exclaimed. "She's God-only-knows where in Chiang Rai Province!"

"She'll have to come out later. It's OK, she's with my guy. And unlike you, she more-or-less fits in.

"You, my little blonde friend, will make rather conspicuous contraband."

"But she doesn't even know what's going on, and her cell phone will never work until she gets back to Chiang Mai."

"So leave her a voicemail. She'll probably check it.

"Now just cover your hair, wai frequently, and stay away from your house, or anywhere else you see a police checkpoint.

I called Tran's number and chose my words carefully, not knowing who would be the one to listen to it first. "Tran, something has gone wrong on our project and we three and all of the subjects were mistakenly added to the drug blacklist. Until we can get this straightened out, Nancee and are leaving Chiang Mai with some of our mutual friend's guys.

"If you can, FedEx our stuff from its hiding place back to my Mom's house, and then go with our friend's guys.

"Stay safe and do as they say. Good luck, and sorry for all of the trouble. Good-bye." I struggled to hold back my tears as I spoke. To my relief, I managed to keep from breaking down on the spot--I did not want to make Nancee any more nervous.

We told Chris we needed to leave for the countryside. After she protested against our disloyalty to Rosepaper and CMU one more time, she organized some rap nong to shop and scrounge for Nancee and me. A rap nong with a motor scooter came back with some sunscreen and instant deep tan for me, and for both of us, Halazone water-purification tablets, mosquito netting, two plastic tarps to sleep on, and two complete Karen outfits including two big, colorfully-woven Karen handicraft tote bags of the sort we could loop over our shoulders--we would use them to hold everything that wouldn't fit in our shoulder bags.

By then, the Rosepaper girls had organized us toothbrushes and toothpaste, shampoo, Neosporin, a single, slightly-used vaginal stent, a box of condoms--non-spermicidal, of course--to make sharing the stent more sanitary, bottled water in reusable plastic bottles, and insect repellent. We exchanged our Western clothes for Karen garb: the Rosepaper girls were thrilled to get hand-me-downs from the beautiful American celebrity and her friend.

Nancee and I each got a young Karen woman's hse: a simple, loose, ankle-length V-necked shift. Each was mainly white, but decorated with Job's Tear seeds and red embroidery at the seams and with an embroidered red applique band around the midriff like a belt. My hse was rather more severe then Nancee's, and my outfit was completed by a white headscarf with red cross-stitch embroidery and a pair of "practical" sandals like Tran's--the low heels I had on were too "city."

I cherished hopes that I would blend in better with a dark tan, no visible blond hair, and sunglasses to hide my blue eyes. In truth, I was taller than most Karen and Thai women, tall enough to be read as sao praphet song if not read as farang. Still, I was determined to do my best. There was just enough time for me to put on dishgloves, slather myself with instant tan, wait for it to dry, tie my hair up into a bun and hide it all under my Karen headscarf.

Then we bade Lin a tearful good-bye.

Before I left, I asked Lin whether she needed more vouchers to buy diflucan or cephalaxin or azothymidine with lamivudine, but she insisted she still had plenty of drugs from her voucher swap and knew where to continue her antiretroviral treatment--some nice farang doctors from France had just set up a clinic on the edge of town. Still, I stuffed the remaining vouchers under her futon while Nancee was telling her good- bye. We parted after begging her to keep herself and Gift well, safe, and out of the sight of the Third Army.

"After I get back to America, I'll figure out a way to get you out of here," I said as optimistically as I could, despite my doubts that I or any of my friends could escape the death trap I had lead us all into.

I tried to keep my voice optimistic as I finished with: "Keep safe until we call for you. We need you to tell this story in America." Then Nancee and I went to the chaos of Somphet Market.

It was nearing closing time when we arrived. The local merchants had been starved of tourists by the triple curses of terrorism, recession and the panic over SARS. All around us, the remaining desperate merchants were aggressively hawking their unsold wares. The more resigned among them had already closed for the day. We spent most of our soon- to-be-useless baht on as much food as we could carry and then tried to look as inconspicuous as we could while we waited for Eddie to show up.

Eddie appeared dressed in a longyi and a Ralph Lauren polo shirt accompanied by a couple of dangerous-looking ethnic Shan. He addressed them sharply in front of us and then translated: "I told them to take you to the Shan State Army's base in Shan State of Myanmar. I told them if you didn't arrive safely, and untouched by their filthy bodies, they and their families would be ying ting.

"I'll meet up with you there after I've found Tran and figured out how to get her up there." As he finished speaking, Eddie pointed towards the Thanon Thongchai Range that loomed above Chiang Mai to the northwest. Then he helped us up onto the covered bed of an old Mitsubishi diesel truck. We spread one of our tarps on a dirty sleeping pad we found in the back, and tried to make ourselves comfortable as our Shan drivers tied the curtains at the rear of the canvas awning. As soon as we were hidden from view, they got into the cab and started off.

We discovered that the rear window of the cab had been removed to improve the ventilation in the cab; although our drivers only spoke a rather rough approximation of Thai, Nancee could understand them. We could peer through the cab at the road ahead, at least until the driver warned we were nearing a checkpoint.

Nancee and I cowered under the tarp as we passed through the first checkpoint that the Third Army had established around the outskirts of Chiang Mai. We peeked furtively through the window at the following checkpoints, and noticed the driver passed the Thai security men closed envelopes bearing the seal of the Shan State Army. We passed through the checkpoints unmolested and uninspected. It seemed Eddie had wired the lower ranks of the Third Army as thoroughly as he had wired the Thai civil police.

We drove all night and through the next day, climbing the mountains on roads whose quality declined as our altitude increased: tarmac gave way to untarred macadam, to loose gravel, to packed earth, and finally to a pair of ruts in the earth. The truck swayed and rocked through a moonlit night and an overcast day, as patches of terraced rice paddies appeared less frequently amidst the dense hardwood forest through which we drove.

We huddled under our tarp against the cold of high passes and sweltered under mosquito netting as we descended through steamy, insect-infested valleys, where the surrounding forest seethed with the sounds of predators and their prey. The drivers were indefatigable: more than once we noticed the vanilla fumes of yaba as they drove through the night and the following day.

By the end of the second day of our hejira, I was exhausted but couldn't find rest. I felt tormented by guilt and remorse. My ambition and drive had outrun my luck and ability. I had wanted to soar, but instead I had crashed and burned. As the truck lurched through the gathering twilight, I flayed myself mentally for my recklessness and vainglory.

My Thai Transsexual Sex Worker study was a hopelessly flawed, incomplete disaster. Its truncated remnants existed precariously on a lost iBook that would soon be found and confiscated by the goons of the corrupt commander of the Third Army. Then my findings, whatever little they were worth, would be lost forever to science.

I had misjudged my capacity to understand and operate in this complex land. The methods of science and analysis in which I had been trained, and in which I believed, were foolish ideals in a place where one's place in society, even those of the sao praphet song, had been established, understood, and accepted by all, long before America had even been founded.

It had been sheer madness for me to have taken on Spartan and General Riap with nothing more than a handful of katoey comrades and an iBook. If I had only known, if only I had studied the situation more carefully, then I, Nancee and my beloved Tran would not have been placed in mortal danger. My boundless desire for fame and glory had led me to gamble for stakes I had never understood, much less considered. Under the pretext of providing for Alyssa, Marta and Li, I had ruined all of us utterly.

My bitter musings were interrupted quite abruptly: the truck stopped short, jerking Nancee awake, and I heard commands barked in a strange tongue. Nancee looked at me in startled fear: "Shit, I can't tell whether that's Burmese or Wa!"

"So good, we're across the border," I said complacently.

"Borders don't mean anything here. It depends on whose territory you land in," Nancee replied. "If that's the United Wa Army out there, we're screwed."

We waited under the tarp as our anxiety mounted. After what seemed hours, a glaring flashlight was shined under our tarp, followed by an incomprehensible, but obvious command. "It's them. Get out slowly with your hands up," Nancee advised.

Covering my eyes from the blinding light, I struggled out over the tail gate of the truck and was pushed at gunpoint towards a group of soldiers on a hillock by the track. Our Shan guides were already hog-tied there, their faces averted from our captors.

Suddenly, the commander uttered an order, and two fighters sprang forward and hacked the Shan across the backs of their necks with machetes. With a horrible thud, the guides' heads flopped over as their bodies hit the ground. Blood started to spray from their partly decapitated bodies.

Our guides were decapitated with second or third blows; their headless bodies twitched uncontrollably against their bonds as more and more of their blood poured downhill, staining the jungle scrub scarlet. The fetid jungle air was filled with the stench of urine and blood.

Now the commander screamed and pointed at us.

"Tell him we are costly concubines on our way to the commander of the Shan State Army," I hissed to Nancee. She said something in halting Burmese. He snorted in disbelief.

"He thinks we're Karen village girls," Nancee said, terrified.

"Tell him that we'd be delighted to prove otherwise, if he would honor us with a private audience. Tell him he could bring great honor to himself if he presented the Shan State Army commander's new concubines to his commander."

Nancee translated, and the commander rewarded me with a predatory smile. He ordered us searched for weapons, and then directed us to the back of the truck. The commander and his lieutenant got in behind us.

I pulled off the tribal headscarf under which I had hidden my hair, tied up in a tight bun. My blond hair floated down over my shoulders as I started to pull up my hse. I slipped it off over my head while giving my underwire bra-clad breasts a provocative shake in his direction.

I gave him a lubricious smile and bade Nancee speak for me: "Tell him if he takes good care of us, we can offer the commander and his lieutenant greater pleasure than they have ever known."

Nancee got into the act, and translated with greater assurance and a lascivious tone of her own, as she bared her breasts, which thanks to silicone, were unusually bountiful for an Asian girl.

The commander reached for me hesitantly, as if he were afraid to touch a sacrosanct icon. I nodded encouragement, and then gently took his trembling fingers in my hand and pressed them against me. "Nice?" I inquired with a friendly smile.

"Nice," he answered with a shy grin. I looked over as Nancee made the lieutenant fondle her, and then we gestured to suggest that they change places.

"Ask him if he doesn't think we wouldn't make a fine gift for his general." Nancee translated, in a now almost haughty tone, and the commander and his subordinate nodded enthusiastic approval. "Tell him we are not common village girls, that we are fragile and delicate princesses, and need careful attention. From no more than one man each!" Nancee translated, but the commander shook his head and began arguing.

"He says we must each allow two men to have us." I tried to hide my disgust and exchanged a revolted glance with Nancee.

"OK, two and no more, and both must use condoms, to keep us safe and clean so we may be concubines for his general." He nodded assent, and left, to be replaced by a guard, who kept his eyes away from us, even after we had pulled on our hses once again.

We heard the commander give a loud order, and immediately heard a mutinous outcry. The commander barked another command, and when the angry complaints continued, I heard the crack of a pistol shot. The guard peeked out the rear of the truck, and responded to our quizzical looks by pointing an imaginary pistol at his head and saying, "Pow!"

Nancee gave me an admiring look and said, "Alexandra, you are truly brilliant."

"Thanks, necessity is the mother of invention. I just remembered that in Asia you bargain over everything."

"You learned the lessons of the Thai marketplace very well," Nancee said admiringly. "I think you saved us from a deadly gangbang."

"For now, at least. As to the future, let's hope."

The truck started moving again. We bumped up the track more slowly now, to let the soldiers of this detachment of the United Wa Army keep up with us.

As the three of us bounced around in the back of the truck, out of sight of the rest of our captors, Nancee whispered with our guard. After a while, he became more and more forthcoming with answers to her questions. Nancee finally turned to me and filled me in on what was happening.

Our captors were indeed part of the United Wa State Army. They were returning, I learned, from a massive smuggling voyage that had brought millions of yaba pills into Chiang Mai Province.

I thought ruefully of the small, but vital role that I had played in this murderous enterprise. Without hedonists like me, there would be no addicts, and without five million addicts to demand more and more drugs, there would be no raison d'etre for this ragtag army of scoundrels. Without hedonists like me, there would be no cause for this drug war; General Riap would neither be able to enjoy and abuse his position of privilege nor be able to hound and persecute those who might expose his corporate malfeasance.

I had made a critical contribution to the enterprise that now threatened to destroy me and my friends. I would pay the price soon enough, when I would play the role of whore for two smelly, filthy, and probably diseased cutthroats of the United Wa Army, the biggest drug gang on the planet.

I would have to play my role as if my life depended on it; considering in whose hands I was, though, I was most likely wasting my time: I was already probably as good as dead.

We continued on the long bumpy ride in the twilight. As night fell, the convoy stopped, and after a few minutes of waiting in the ominous silence, there was a furious consultation by the side of the truck.

"What are they saying?" I demanded of Nancee.

"Their scouts have spotted a Karen village. They are going to attack and loot it, and take the women and girls to be sex slaves for the men. That way, the officers can keep us for themselves, and they can make a even bigger gift to their commander."

"That's horrible. These people are beasts. Nancee, how are we ever going to survive this?" I asked.

"Our problems are nothing compared to those of the people in that village," Nancee said sadly.

After a few minutes, we heard the booming of grenades and a rattling fusillade of gunfire, followed by screams of agony and pleas for mercy, followed by isolated snaps of rifle shots echoing from the hills surrounding the village near the valley floor.

The affray ended quickly--automatic weapons are like that.

Within the hour, the triumphant Wa battle party had returned with captives: seven women and girls that they captured from the village, several of them bleeding from recent wounds. The Wa gunmen looked cheerful and expectant: now they, like their commanders, would have fresh meat for their sexual appetites.

The Wa fighters tied the women up and loaded them into the truck with us: the Karen women cried miserably and looked at us piteously.

"What are they saying: do you understand them?" I asked Nancee.

"They speak a different dialect, but I understand that the Wa shot the few old men in the village and slaughtered their children, except for these few young girls. They want and expect to die themselves. I think I shouldn't talk to them. I don't want these Wa pigs to think I'm a Karen."

It was a brutal calculation, but she was right. We had bartered a better way to die than these poor creatures would suffer. But the cruelty that we had seen from the Wa made our fate all too clear.

We rolled to a stop in a foggy mountain pass. The Wa soldiers routed the terrified Karen girls out of the truck and herded them into the mouth of a cave or bunker in the side of the mountain. The officers came for us, and we stepped down from the truck bed. The officers helped us down with faux gallantry.

I had known the limestone mountains of this region featured many spectacular 'thum' or caves, but I had never entertained the slightest desire to visit any of them. From the mouth of what was now clearly an extensive cavern, we heard renewed cries and savage shouts as the soldiers began their debauch of the Karen girls. I wondered how many of them would survive this night of rape and abuse, or how long we could survive amongst these butchers.

For now, we could only try to prolong our survival by offering these commanders sexual experiences worthy of the "Thousand and One Nights."

"Nancee, tell the commander that we wish to get ready to receive our conquering heroes." I handed her two condoms, and she handed me a tube of lubricant, which I hurriedly spread under my mons and ass. I whispered, "I'm going to try to do these pigs two at a time. Then they'll never forget us!"

Captain Rap, the commander, and Lieutenant Gurp guided me through the meandering cave to a vaulted chamber that, by its odor, had been used as a shelter by the Wa bandit army for many years. As my eyes became used to the flickering light from their hurricane lamps, I noticed a pair of dank sleeping pallets lying off to one side. I kicked the pallets together and spread my tarp and mosquito netting over them as best I could.

The two Wa leaders passed a plastic bottle of some foul-smelling alcoholic drink between them. When they offered me the cloudy dregs, I declined.

The air in the cavern was rank, damp, and cold, and I made an exaggerated shiver. Rap barked a command to Gurp, who assembled some wood, and sprayed it with some gasoline from a bottle carried at his belt. Gurp followed up by tossing a match onto the pile. It burst into flames with a pop and a petroleum smell that managed to overpower the musty, earthy smell of the cave. As the fire grew, the cavern was filled with dancing light from its flames, which flickered in heartrending syncopation with the cries of the Karen girls echoing from a distant chamber.

I pulled off my hse with an erotic shimmy, and beckoned Rap to me. He approached me warily, as if he were unacquainted with the notion of a willing sex partner. I pulled at the rope that held his trousers at his waist, and slipped off his stiff, filthy clothing.

Third World rustics like Rap don't bathe much in the best of circumstances, and Rap's occupation, smuggling drugs across one of the most dangerous and wild frontiers in the world, gave him little motive or opportunity to maintain even the most rudimentary standards of personal hygiene. He reeked of sweat of sweat, filth, and God-knows-what else.

I circled my fingers around his stiff, but small cock, and rubbed him with Neosporin, and inspected him in the firelight. Although his penis appeared to be free of any visible lesions, before swallowing him I used my well-practiced lip-slide technique to put on his condom.

He recoiled in protest against the condom initially, but after a few seconds of tongue-trilling and deep, quick head lunges of my hot, wet lips over his cock, Rap was unable to resist the pleasures of one of my well-practiced blowjobs. Within moments Rap was, like most of my lovers, more my captive than I was his.

Gurp watched intently, and I gestured to him to come near. Rap's eyes widened with offense when he saw his subordinate pull off his uniform and join us on the pallets, but I nodded my head vigorously in assent. Rap was too preoccupied with his own pleasure to protest the Neosporin- lubricated hand job I started giving Gurp, as I continued sucking Rap's cock.

I sheathed Gurp's cock with a condom, and then began alternated my lips between their modest, but intrusive cocks. Then I threw myself down on the pallets, tilted my head over the back and invited Gurp to my head, and threw my legs apart for Rap.

If Rap had ever had sex in a setting other than rape, he had forgotten how, for he entered me in a single, painful lunge. He was small even for an Asian guy, and I handled him easily: my vagina had fully recovered from the exfoliation caused by my encounter with the spermicidal lubricant and Eddie's much larger cock.

I moaned and ground my pelvis with mock pleasure, and wrapped my hands around Gurp's skinny ass to press his cock into my mouth. Now both my Wa barbarians were captivated: their initial inhibition had been overcome by their drinking, and the intensity of my mock passion for them. They accepted my moans and cries of feigned pleasure as the real thing, and smiled smugly at their virile performance.

My own nerves, which had exploded to orgasmic life with Eddie, were completely quiescent: I experienced motion and penetration, but no pleasure. Rap was energetic but artless in his fucking, and his cock was not big enough to batter through the emotional defense of loathing that I had established.

Gurp made a servile request to Rap, which Rap repudiated, and then pointed to my ass. With that, he rolled me on top of him, and pulled me forward onto his chest. I braced myself for the anal penetration that I knew would come.

Like his superior, Gurp had not mastered the subtle art of entering a woman, as soon as he had pressed his cock's tip against my rectum, I felt him wiggle it in a millimeter, and then bull forward as far as he could. I knew that the initial shock and pain would soon subside, so I bit my lip and forced myself to accept the burning blast through my nervous system.

They seemed to enjoy the sensation of one another's penises thumping at each other through the thin layers of tissue between my ass and vagina. I was surprised at how easily I accommodated them, and by the pleasant buzz that emerged from my vestigial prostate, now squeezed between their plunging penises.

My senses began to be flooded with warm, building sensations from that forgotten corner of my male past, and despite myself, my feigned vocalizations of pleasure were supplanted by the real thing.

I laughed to myself and cursed Sanguan for the efficacy of his work with my nerves: even when raped by two violent, filthy land pirates, I could not prevent myself from having an orgasm!

I abandoned my righteous obduracy, and let my fantasies go wild. I was a Spanish countess, traveling by a golden galleon to reunite with my true love, the prince, and my ship was taken by a crew of heartless pirates. After they slaughtered the crew, they took their turns with me, fucking me from stem to stern. Though I tried to be faithful even to point of attempting to take my own life, I could not and instead, after a protracted debauch, melted into a delicious orgasm.

And with that, I began cumming, my face contorting with pleasure, and my body growing taut and spasming as I begged, "More, more, more!"

Rap and Gurp, astounded by this passion, responded with more, reaching climaxes while my body was still throbbing from my own pleasure. Afterwards, Rap pulled the mosquito net over our slack bodies. I fell asleep guiltily to the hideous cacophony of pain echoing from the distant chamber where the Wa soldiers were tormenting the Karen girls.

Rap and Gurp were still asleep when I awoke. Alcohol, sexual satiation, or death had stilled the voices that had filled the cave with eerie echoes through the night. I inspected their kit: they had machetes and pistols, and I fantasized a bloody double assassination. But what would I do afterwards? There were two more leaders, and over a dozen more men.

God only knew where I was, and where I would go from this godforsaken spot. I put on my hse, threw some more wood on the embers of the fire, brewed a pot of tea, cooked a mess kit full of rice, and sat by the fire, waiting for my captors to awaken.

When Rap and Gurp awoke, they sipped the tea and ate my rice gratefully, and said something I took as thanks and a compliment. Then we went to make reveille to the rest of the troop. I feared the worst when we went to Nancee's companions, but she was already dressed, looked fresh and healthy, and gave me a furtive thumbs-up, to which I replied as discretely as I could.

The soldiers' vault exceeded my nightmarish expectations. One of the Karen girls, a skinny twelve year-old, lay crumpled and twisted, and the soldiers ordered the other Karen to carry her out.

Under the harsh commands of Gurp, the Karen girls dug a shallow grave for their dead fellow villager by the mouth of the cave, and Gurp kicked at the battered, forlorn corpse until she rolled in. Then he ordered the surviving Karen to cover the pathetic, broken body with jungle dirt and foliage.

Once the grave was hidden in foliage, Rap ordered his men to tie the Karen girls' hands and herd them into the truck; Gurp helped me and Nancee up with ostentatious gallantry. Then we resumed our laborious ride up and down the winding track.

Nancee and I sat in stunned silence. "I heard their screams, but I had no idea how bad it was for them."

"I feel like such a whore. I actually enjoyed myself with those two pigs," I said.

"I heard, and wondered how you could act so well. You drowned out the torture for a few minutes, and that was a welcome relief."

"My two used condoms, did yours?" I asked anxiously.

"It was a negotiation, but yes," Nancee responded. "I guess we'll change partners tonight."

"I hope you can do double penetration," I said grimly.

"Alexandra, you always set expectations so high," Nancee said.

I surveyed the bruised, weeping Karen girls, and felt rage boil within me. I wished I had gone on a killing binge in the night. We were all dead anyhow, I mused.

Then I heard ripping sounds from the canvas that covered the truck, followed in a fraction of a second by a loud crackling sound from the side of the road. I grabbed Nancee's arm and flung myself flat against the bed of the truck, dragging Nancee down beside me.

We were buried under a pile of Karen women imitating me. Amidst the booming clatter of automatic weapons, I heard the roars of several nearby explosions, and then after a moment of silence, the sounds of voices shouting in a new language.

I looked up anxiously at Nancee. She smiled and said, "They're Karen."

I wouldn't haven known them from Wa at first. They were dressed in sandals, shorts of various colors, and same sort of green military shirt the Wa wore. The most noticeable difference from our Wa captors was that a number of the men had black tattoos on their legs, some in quite elaborate swirling geometric patterns, and that the smokers seemed to favor short little wooden pipes over cheroots.

We watched in horror as the armed Karen shot the wounded Wa as they lay splayed on the ground, and rounded up and hog-tied a handful of prisoners.

Nancee surprised the Karen commander when she addressed him in his native tongue. After a brief exchange, she explained that a troop of vengeful soldiers from Karen National Liberation Army of the Karen National Union had tracked our Wa captors from atrocity to atrocity.

Now the KNU force exacted a terrible revenge for the slaughter at the Karen village and the murder of the Karen girl in the cave, and the savage rapes of the others.

The Karen girls had denounced us, believing that we were the privileged whores of the Wa commanders, and deserving of the same fate as their hated Wa captors.

"Tell him that we were kidnapped by these swine just hours before the Karen girls got snatched and that we are very thankful to him as our liberator. Tell him that the Karen girls are mistaken," I said.

Nancee translated my argument and listened to his, and then said "He suggests that we repay his service by executing the judgment of the KNU tribunal against the Wa commanders."

She pointed through the scrub to the circle of Wa prisoners, who awaited their fates with hung heads. "They have been sentenced to die, and we are asked to execute the sentence."

"You mean, shoot them?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yes, to prove that we are not their allies," Nancee replied.

"Both of us?"

She nodded.

"Do you even know how to shoot a gun?" I retorted. I hadn't shot a gun since I'd been shown how to shoot a .22 caliber rifle in target practice at a Boy Scout camp eight years ago.

The memory of my murderous fantasy the night before came back to haunt me. Could I do this? Surely, Rap deserved to die for his crimes, but not by my hand.

"They'll shoot us if we don't," Nancee said nervously. "They're going to shoot them anyhow, and it's not like they don't deserve it."

I had to live. Not just for my own sake, but for Alyssa, Marta, Tran, Nancee, and Lin: people whom my overreaching ambition had placed in jeopardy, and whom I was obligated to help.

To do that, and to salvage my own tarnished reputation, I had to unravel the Spartan/N9 scandal and expose the devastating truth about the lethal spermicide and Riap's cynical, brutal cover-up: trying to ying ting me, my friends, and our pathetic AIDS-infected interview subjects. I didn't want to die an undeserved death at the hands of angry hill tribesman as a pawn in a border, drug, and clan war.

I followed the Karen leader to the hillock. The Karen commander placed us each next to a Wa leader; I stood beside Rap, Nancee by Gurp.

Rap smiled obsequiously, and began uttering fawning words in Wa. His demeanor transformed to nervousness and then jabbering, pants-pissing fear when the Karen commander loosened a catch at the bottom of the pistol in his hand, pocketed the magazine, and then put the pistol in my hand. I noticed that it was the same sort of pistol as the Wa used, Makarov 9x18mm, as I learned later. I looked back at Nancee and asked, "Is this thing even loaded?" as another Karen did the same thing to his pistol and handed it to Nancee.

Nancee spoke briefly with the Karen leader, then told me there was a round of ammunition inside the top part of each weapon. The Karen leader took my left hand and wrapped it around my right hand to steady my wavering grip on the sweaty plastic handle. I saw Nancee copied my grip, and noticed that other Karen with rifles in their hands were giving us hard, apprising glances.

Then the Karen leader barked an order that Nancee didn't bother to translate. Nancee and I lowered our pistols and aimed at the begging, pleading men. I closed my left eye, got a sight picture the way I remembered from those awful days with the Boy Scouts, and started to pull the trigger.

Pulling the trigger seemed to take infinitely longer than I remembered from Boy Scout riflery. I couldn't bear it any longer, and closed my right eye as well. The blast and recoil took me by surprise. I felt a mild shock in my hand, but only thought I heard a door slamming nearby, not a pistol going off. Then I felt droplets of something wet landing on me, and recognized the smell of blood in the air, together with something else, perhaps a note of sawdust, and perhaps hot shortening, or maybe beeswax. I bit my tongue. I must not cry, or even cry out.

The Karen leaders did not give me so much as a look. They just collected their pistols, reloaded, and went among the others and killed them with quick, one-handed single shots to the back of the neck. I noticed they stood further back than Tran and I stood. They must have known about the backspatter. I wanted to wash my face, but I was afraid to move. I stood there, frozen to the spot until we were ordered back into the trucks again.

Once we were back in the trucks again, we retraced our journey of the previous days, heading back down the trails toward Thong Pha Phum, back towards the Myanmar-Thai border. The closer to the border we got the greater my anxiety grew.

"Nancee, you have to talk to them. I didn't commit homicide for them so that they could give us to the Third Army."

Nancee replied with a note of urgency in her voice: "The KNU hates the Third Army as much as we do, but we have to get out of Myanmar. If the Third Army intercepts us, they'll send us back into Myanmar to be slaughtered by the SPRC or the Wa. The Wa are united with the SPRC against the KNU, and this troop was probably already being hunted by the Tatmadaw, the SPRC's official forces, when they found us. We're even more screwed than before if we fall into the hands of the SPRC: that's the criminal gang that runs Burma, or Myanmar as they call it now."

We reached the Moei River, where the Karen camouflaged the Wa trucks and hid them off-road. We forded the muddy Moei, bags, packs and weapons held high, alert for predatory aquatic life and Thai or Tatmadaw patrols. On the Thai side, we crept through the jungle slowly but purposefully: our Karen guides knew where they were going and what to avoid.

We marched over ten kilometers through dense rain forest. The Karen soldiers hacked a trail with machetes for us, avoiding the winding tracks that we occasionally crossed. When Nancee asked why we kept off the beaten path, she was told something which she translated into two words: "Land mines."

"God, what horrors does this hideous place lack?" I wondered. Then, just when the forest seemed as if it could not become more dense and impenetrable, it ceased abruptly; we broke through a tree line to a broad expanse of rice paddies. We hiked down a dike toward a collection of neat, whitewashed buildings, next to which we saw a shiny red and white single-engine Cessna. Were we saved, or ruined?

That question was answered when a white-shirted, blond Caucasian bounded out of a building to greet us with a smile, and, noticing my European features said cheerfully, "Bonjour mesdemoiselles, comment allez-vous?

"Tres bien, et toi?"

"Oui, ca va. Tu est francaise?"

"Non, je suis americaine et ma amie et thailandaise."

"Well then, hello American girl, will you come in and have a Coke with Dr. Alain Richard?" His English was flawless but with that 'je ne sais quoi' that only a French accent can convey.

"That's the nicest thing I've heard in days," I said. "My name is Alexandra Rivers, and this is my Karen friend Nancee. She's Thai, but Karen too. These Karen rescued us from a group of Wa bandits. We weren't sure where they were taking us. Are we safe here?"

"'Bienvenues a Camp du Mer, so named after the ocean of rice paddies around us; we also call it 'Cap du Merde.'" I giggled, because I realized that meant 'Cape Shit.' Nancee looked bemused, so he explained his little play on words to her and continued: "You are most fortunate to be alive, and you are both welcome and safe here. This is a compound of 'Medicins Sans Frontieres.'"

"'Doctors Without Borders?' What does that mean?" I asked.

My French "Lord Jim" smiled and chuckled. With strong, suntanned arms around our fragile shoulders he guided us to a neat, tile-roofed residence. "You Americans are so provincial in your own way. If you didn't invent it, it doesn't exist in your world."

It was a putdown, but he said it with elegance, gentility, and such a dazzling smile I could hardly care. I rejoined, "But we are very quick studies."

"I'm sure you are, but first you must bathe. We must find you some clothes, and we should examine you. You were how long in the bush?"

"Four or five days. I lost track."

"The Karen brought their women here for examination and treatment after their ordeal with the Wa. Have you been violated, too?" he asked matter-of-factly, but with a sympathetic look.

"We convinced the Wa commander that we would make perfect concubine presents for his commanding officers, and that kept the rape within bearable limits, if that makes any kind of sense at all. I mean, we even got them to use condoms," I reported with a sense of unreality in my voice. I was not five minutes out of the jungle, and I was already trying to distance myself from my memories.

"You are fortunate; the likelihood of HIV transmission from those soldiers is, sadly for your Karen companions, quite high. And even more fortunate that you were not delivered to the United Wa Army commander, who is a notoriously sadistic killer."

"Tough neighborhood, this is," I said.

Alain nodded and said "This is an island of tranquility in a turbulent region. You'll be safe here. There's a shower, and I'll bring you some nurses' uniforms, while we wash those." He pointed to our filthy hses. "And will you join me and my colleague for dinner? We rarely see outsiders in this outpost, especially ones as lovely as you."

"Merci," I said with a smile, as he left to retrieve clothes for us.

When he was out of earshot, I turned and smiled smugly to Nancee, who said with mock disapproval, "I can't believe I associate with such a slut. First you seduce the Wa war criminal, and after you kill him, you move on to the French doctor saint!"

"I'm sorry, but he's adorable. And maybe he can help us get out of this godforsaken shithole. Think about it, Nancee. We're on the blacklist in the land of ying ting. We've still got to scheme our way out of here."

"What's your plan?" Nancee asked.

"None, yet, but he said 'without borders.'" That gives me hope.

We showered under the blue sky in a bamboo enclosure. We had no make-up, blow dryer, or perfume, so it seemed fitting to be dressed in simple white nurses' dresses that clearly had been cut for the traditional Asian physique, rather than Nancee's and my upgraded models. They fitted very snugly against our more adventurous curves. We made an attention-grabbing sight when we hailed Alain.

I said, "We're starving."

"Have some soup at the kitchen. I must still treat more of the Karen girls, and then I must insist on examining you and Nancee as well," he replied, as his eyes drank our figures in hungrily. "This was a particularly brutal encounter with the Wa."

"OK, if it's the doctor's orders," I joked, but internally, I froze with apprehension. When he was out of earshot, I whispered to Nancee, "I think he liked me, but if he's going to examine me, then I have to tell him, you know, that we're post-ops. He's going to figure it out when he examines us."

"I can barely tell now, with you," Nancee said with a touch of envy.

"It's very obvious inside," I said grimly. "I hope he's open-minded."

We had a few spoonfuls of some sort of local soup--it tasted loathsome. Then I waited with dread for my least favorite moment in a new relationship.

As we left the kitchen, we noticed the airplane climbing high into the sky. I idly wondered where it was headed, but didn't think more about it. We strolled about the compound a bit, then returned to the medical building and Alain.

Alain summoned me to his examining room, asked me to undress, and left for a moment. I cowered beneath a sheet awaiting his return. He asked briskly "Tell me, how did you end up on Thailand's frontier with hell?"

"It's a long story, but the first part is that, I was in Thailand for a follow- up to sex-reassignment surgery."

Alain looked dumbfounded. "I had no idea. You look and sound perfect, right down to your use of the masculine and feminine 'en francais!' Well, let us inspect your surgeon's expertise." He peeked under the sheet, and examined me with a speculum, my very least favorite medical instrument. Still, I felt a twinge of pleasure as this handsome doctor examined me, murmuring "incroyable," and "c'est merveilleuse" beneath his breath.

"Quite indistinguishable from a genetic girl, until we inspect deep within you. What was the most recent surgery?" I explained Dr. Sanguan's technique, and the treatment of the resulting ring. "You, and your lovers- to-be, are quite lucky that you had such a skilled doctor." I had the impression that he put himself onto that list.

"So you chose to take your convalescence amongst the Wa?" he asked with ironic humor.

"That's a long story: one that demands dinner and a bottle of Meursault," I replied.

"Very impressive, you know your Burgundies. Let's have your friend and my colleague Jacques join us and dine on the cuisine of Tak Province."

Thai food is one of my favorites, as it is served in L.A. or one of the big cities. The cuisine of Tak was simple: boiled chicken and fish with rice noodles. And the Meursault of my fantasies was Maekong, a mediocre whiskey that Alain cautioned me to go slowly with.

Alain and Jacques sat in rapt, and astounded attention as we unfolded our tale: our lucky encounter with Lin; our discovery of the Spartan list; my e-mail to Pranatop asking permission to use the list; the devastating AIDS epidemic among the Spartan subjects; the strange correlation of disease with alphabetic coding; Pranatop's belated but urgent demand that we abandon using the list; the sudden emergence of security checkpoints and demands on farang students; the disappearances and arrests of the last subjects, and then our being added to the drug blacklist, along with many of the Spartan subjects; our escape, and the disappearance of Tran in Chiang Rai; the lost computer and data; and our kidnapping by the Wa.

When I had finished, Alain said, "Mon dieu, c'est incroyable, fantastique. I drink a toast to Alexandra and her brave friends." He and Jacques raised their glasses and solemnly drank a sip of Maekong. "It's so obvious that you have uncovered a sordid corporate scandal and cover-up. And did you say your advisor was Pranatop?"

I nodded.

"I remember her from a conference in Tahiti. She's the charlatan girlfriend of a Thai Army bigshot who is probably in on the Spartan venture. But it is such an irony that an American should explode this cesspool of corruption when it was America that built the structure for these corrupt tinpot gangsters."

"What do you mean?" I asked innocently.

"Only the muscle half of Spartan is Thai. The money half is red, white and blue. That's why we Europeans are reluctant in your imposition of your "freedoms" in places like Iraq. Your corporations, under the protection of your government, propped these gangsters in power in the first instance: Saddam in the eighties, the swine of the SPRC in the present Myanmar; and of course, both were petroleum or rubber providers to your SUV culture."

"Sorry to be me," I said, feigning insult.

Like most people from West L.A., I really have more in common with Chirac than Bush. But I pretended, "I don't really know about all that political stuff. I was only trying to do comparative research on Thai and U.S. transsexuals, and now it's ruined. My grant is wasted, and my research work is unfinished."

"Alexandra, you have done something far greater than a cross-cultural study. This is the public health scandal of the decade. You, Nancee, your friends Tran and Lin, and your computer are the sparks that will burn Spartan and its charlatan science of AIDS inhibition to the ground."

"But we're outlaws in Thailand, and I never want to set foot in Burma again. What shall we do?"

"We've got an airplane at our disposal, and I can make you employees of MSF. That will get you entry into Switzerland. I will make it my duty to bring you safely out of Thailand. But the question is how to get past the checkpoints and through immigration at Bangkok International? Let me think it through overnight."

I smiled conspiratorially at Nancee and she nodded assent. I would make it my duty to give Alain a lot more than immigration to work out overnight.

After dinner, we walked hand-in-hand around the compound. I asked Alain, "What makes a handsome, brilliant young doctor like you travel to an impoverished and dangerous corner of the world?"

Accepting my characterization as accurate, he answered, "My parents and my old girlfriend asked me as much. We Europeans live in a cocoon, even more than you Americans. Our grandfathers made empires of blood and loot in these jungles, and left a legacy of chaos, which you have experienced for yourself. My generation seeks to experience the same adventures as our grandfathers while healing rather than destroying the world we inhabit."

I hugged him and said, "That's a really beautiful thought. I'm glad that I came here, if only to hear you say that."

"And the big pharmaceutical company in Lucerne that I work for pays us to take sabbaticals with MSF. But anyhow, you're a brave, brilliant and beautiful girl, and I am happy that you are here with me."

"Are you comfortable with my being who I am?"

"I wouldn't want you to be anyone else. You are a fantastically brave and beautiful girl, and I am privileged to know you."

He gathered me in his arms, and caressed me with his skillful, sensitive surgeon's hands. My lips melted under his, and I instantly felt a warm energy growing within me.

Eddie had been a drug-buzzed social obligation. My intercourse with the Wa had been an act in which I had gotten caught up, to the point of accidentally being brought to orgasm. With Alain I felt the real thing, an overpowering desire to be loved and to love in return.

"J'ai envie de faire l'amour avec toi," I whispered.

"Moi aussi," he managed between desperate kisses.

We strolled, arm in arm, to his hut, and the stars of the moonlit mountain night seemed to be twinkling messages of approval. Alain was handsome, passionate, intelligent, and seemed smitten not only with my looks, but with me as a whole person.

Not only was I needful of a lover to purge me of my filthy Wa captors, but I needed one who regarded me a something more than a pretty face with a tight ass. Eddie, Rick and even Alec enjoyed me as arm candy and as a sex object; my intellect was unnerving and off-putting. My mind raced ahead of my body, imagining possibilities.

He came to me by his simple bed, and said, "I want to drink in this vision of you, so that I may never forget anything about you." He rubbed the arches of my feet, which ached from the jungle march, my calves, thighs, and buttocks, working the sore muscles as he studied my sinuous curves.

"Mmm, that feels good. More there," I said, as he rubbed circles on my buttocks. "Three days in a truck will do terrible things to a butt," I said jokingly.

"Nothing that some loving, gentle care can't cure." The circles of relaxation spread from my bottom to my lower back, up my spine, across my shoulders and down my slender arms, and out the tips of my fingers. Then again, the waves of relaxation surged straight up the ladder of my vertebrae, up my neck, across my cheeks and forehead, and then, with a pop of fingers, out the top of my head.

"Mmm, do they teach that in French medical school?" I asked dreamily.

"Ah, no, an old, er, friend," he said with embarrassment.

"That's OK," I said with an indulgent laugh, "As long as she's a really old friend. Because I want you to myself!" I kissed him passionately, and he got on top of me, and I felt his cock pressing against my pussy. I touched him: he was circumcised, which I prefer, and of medium length and width, which is perfect for my new anatomy. He gently opened my outer lips with his fingers and entered me, patiently and slowly.

I said, to encourage him, "I'm OK."

He whispered, "I want to experience every millimeter of you as if it were new."

"That's OK, too," I said with a cry of pleasure. Putting overblown descriptions of unbridled passion aside, a gentle, careful beginning is best with a new lover, for it is the fire that is kindled most carefully that burns the hottest.

His careful, gentle entry first relaxed me, and then had my body craving each further entry expectantly. When after fifteen careful strokes, Alain was fully inside me, my body was already throbbing with an electric charge of sexual energy. His hands, well trained and experienced in the healing arts, were well versed in the architecture of sexual pleasure. His movements, sensual and languid to begin, enticed rather than demanded my response. And as I responded, he responded in kind, his caresses and thrusts growing more firm and potent as my pleasure was manifest in murmurs, moans, and writhing motions of ecstasy.

Alain was an existentialist's lover: one whose only demand was for both lovers to maximize their exercise of free will. Freed from all earthly connections to my past, my present self, or to my wishes for the future, I felt my body go thermonuclear and explode in an orgasm that made me cry, "More, more, more!"

Now Alain responded with thrusts that were superhuman in their speed and power, and I orgasmed over and over again, finally slowing only when Alain came and his frenzied pace gradually slowed. The last words I heard and spoke before drifting off into a dazed sleep were, "Je t'aime."

When I awoke in the gathering tropical heat, Alain was gone. I ran into Nancee in the bathroom. She said, "I was happy with Sanguan's work, until I started sleeping in the room next to you. I want to get myself rewired like you," she complained wryly.

"Sorry, I hope I didn't keep you up," I said laughingly.

"No, Jacques and I thought it was charming," Nancee replied ironically.

"Where are our French lovers?" I asked.

"I woke up when the airplane landed about an hour ago, and they took a stretcher in there," Nancee said, pointing to the medical building.

We showered and primped as best we could under these austere conditions, and then we investigated the medical building. Jacques was outside, lighting a Gauloise. "I never smoke anymore, but we have a very difficult case: one of our backpack nurses, Lizette, has come down with SARS, Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome. We have to stabilize her and repatriate her to Switzerland: her father's the boss, and he thinks Thailand's SARS treatment facilities are inadequate.

"He's right. Thailand had only a few cases; Prime Minister Thaksin declared SARS defeated on April 28.

"Because the Thais were so successful in preventing the spread of SARS by imposing strict quarantines immediately, they are way behind on treatment. Worse still, there are no negative-pressure isolation rooms in any hospital in Thailand, which makes treating the sickest patients risker not only for their caregivers but for the other hospitalized patients as well."

"I've heard about this disease, but I haven't seen anyone with it," Nancee said.

"The government only admitted to eight cases, and they were mostly infected abroad," Jacques commented.

"I guess Thaksin's drug war was the perfect training ground for a repressive quarantine regime." I added. "How did Lizette get it?"

"Lizette's contracting SARS upcountry is really quite alarming. She probably from someone she treated, but we can only guess the source: probably a smuggler from South China. SARS emerged in South China a few months ago and has leapfrogged from region to region, primarily through carriers with airline tickets.

"Wherever it has landed, it has found fertile breeding grounds in hospitals and clinics, including ours. It is the perfect virus for a massively destructive epidemic: its onset is rapid enough to spread quickly, but it sickens and kills slowly enough so that one victim can easily infect a hundred others before succumbing.

"We risk Lizette's life, and infecting the entire, extremely vulnerable population of this region, if we treat her here; it would be better for everyone to get her proper care and isolation, in Switzerland."

"Can you take a contagious patient on a commercial flight?" I asked.

"Of course not. But she is the daughter of the CEO of our employer: not MSF, but ICF, the pharmaceutical maker that is sponsoring us here. If she dies?" Jacques made a throat-slitting motion.

Alain emerged, looking fatigued and stressed, and said, "I got Lucerne on the satellite phone again. They have just sent the company plane--it was laying over in Singapore; the company bigshots aboard will fly home later or some other way. We must move Lizette to Bangkok International immediately."

Then he said, "Ah, bon, that's it! We will disguise Alexandra and Nancee as her attendants. We can't afford to send anyone else: with Lizette sick, and a potential epidemic of SARS in this province we will need every nurse we have and more. And it is a perfect cloak for your escape," he said, turning to me. "The immigration police at Bangkok International don't want to get close to SARS cases or their health workers."

"How do we avoid getting it ourselves?" I asked.

"Surgical masks to cover your beautiful faces. Tant mieux, for now you will have a perfect excuse to travel in disguise. Medical staff must wear masks at all times while attending to SARS patients."

I was half-tempted to reject this plan and spend a few more nights with Alain, but the escape plan did sound promising. And I had many reasons to want to leave Thailand.

We gathered the scant remains of our personal belongings--all that we had left that we needed to take with us was the stent, a few days worth of hormones, our toiletries, and the now washed, but rather worn hses. Everything fit into a single tote with room to spare.

Inside the medical building, Alain watched us swallow our first doses of a prophylactic cocktail of ribavirin and oseltamivir.

"Your CDC thinks these drugs are ineffective against SARS, but then again, you are going to Switzerland, and most specifically to ICF's research facility. These drugs may not shorten the course of the disease, but they could shorten the length of your quarantine," Alain commented.

"What quarantine?" I asked innocently.

"Alas, you are trading one kind of prison for another. Switzerland will require that you be isolated for at least ten days after your exposure to SARS. With this treatment, you may be able to shorten that quarantine."

"Do you have to tell them?" I asked.

"I am afraid that with this poor girl in your care, it will be all too obvious. When you get to Bangkok International, the representative of the Swiss embassy will provide visas for you and Nancee and transit documentation for Lizette's transport via a quarantined flight back to Lucerne. You won't be allowed off the plane at any of your stops.

"I must tell you that this diseaposes a terrible dilemma for us, the caregivers. On one hand, we must be very attentive and responsive, and on the other hand, we must be very cautious in our contacts with the patient. It will be your duty to balance your safety against Lizette's survival. But you two are experienced in the art of survival."

He gave us each something that looked like a contractor's dust mask and a wad of throwaway surgical masks.

"This is the best preventative we have, a particulate mask called the N-95, for the size of the particle it removes. You should cover it with a surgical mask to avoid surface contamination, and handle the N-95 only after removing contaminated gloves. Equally important: you must practice rigorous 'hand hygiene.'"

I looked at him quizzically, and he clarified "That means 'Lave tes mains!'--even though you will double-glove. You must dispose of your outer glove after every contact with Lizette, you must also wash your hands and reglove completely after every contact with her bodily fluids. As there is no sink on the plane, to wash your hands, use this." He handed us bottles of alcohol-based disinfectant gel.

"She has a fever of 38.9, that's over102 degrees Fahrenheit, but her lungs are still about 80% capacity. We must hurry and move her before her disease advances and her lungs fill with mucous. This plane is not pressurized, so breathing will be difficult for Lizette. She will wear an aviation oxygen mask during the flight, which will provide you with some protection as long as the mask covers her nose and mouth. But if her cough becomes productive, she will need to remove the mask to spit, and you may need to assist her in replacing the mask. It is then you will be in greatest danger."

"What are those medicines you gave us?" I asked, as I recalled unhappy memories of the side effects of antivirals from my HIV prophylaxis.

Alain replied "Ribavirin is a neucleoside analogue with broad antiviral activity, clearly useful against respiratory syncytical virus and the hepatitis C virus, and oseltamivir is a flu drug also known as Tamiflu. Ribavarin is hemolytic--it destroys red blood cells--we are not sure yet whether it is efficacious in curing SARS, but it is useful against other respiratory viruses; it may help protect you, and it will certainly appease the Swiss Health Ministry.

Alain brought out the oxygen tank and mask, showed us how to connect the system, and explained the valves and gauges. "This is the most important thing," Alain said. "All contaminated gloves, masks, and wipes go into these red medical waste bags, and you must keep them sealed at all times. Now, let me show you how to wear these surgical gowns, gloves and sleeve guards."

Before we all gowned and gloved to take Lizette to the airplane, Alain embraced and kissed me, and said, "I'm sorry you must rush off like this, but there will be no better opportunity for you to escape this hellhole.

I replied, "I felt so safe and happy here. I'd rather stay here with you."

"Helas," Alain said, "It is better that you should take your chances with disease, rather than death by the blacklist. From the disease, I can protect you. From the drug blacklist, I can do nothing. And you must be free to live your life and to tell your story."

We gathered up our equipment and our pathetically light baggage and walked out to the airplane. Nancee and Jacques stood off to one side, and spoke quietly together.

Alain belted Lizette to her stretcher, and looked at me and said "You must loosen these as soon as you have begun level flight. Her breathing is weak, and these belts may interfere with her breathing." Lizette's eyes looked glassy, but they followed what we were doing.

"Thank you for helping us; I love you and I will never forget you," I said as I fought back my tears.

"I won't let you forget me," Alain said with a confident smile. Alain lifted me from the ground with a final hug. His firm, strong chest pressed against my breasts until they ached with longing for him, but there was no more time to linger--we bade one another farewell under the wing of the STOL air ambulance. Three feet away, Nancee and Jacques were hugging as awkwardly as we were, bundled up in all our protective clothing.

Nancee and I climbed through the big double door on the right, sat ourselves in the two seats behind the pilot's seat, then steadied Lizette's stretcher as it was pushed in and locked down where the three seats on the right side of the cabin used to be. The pilot, masked and gowned as we were, locked our doors, climbed up through his door, and started the engine. We taxied down the gravel almost to the grass runway, turned our tail away from the compound and did a noisy, dusty engine run-up check. The pilot partially extended the flaps, advanced the throttle to full power and noisily rolled us onto the grass.

Takeoff was absolutely petrifying. Rather than the lumbering but steady takeoff and climb out of a commercial jetliner, our pilot held the controls back all the way as the plane bounced down the rough grass field. After a very short roll, the airplane lurched into the air with a dreadful shriek; when I yelled, "What's happening?" our pilot replied calmly that it was just the stall warning horn. As he spoke, he abruptly relaxed the back pressure on the yoke. We hadn't climbed more than ten feet, and now we seemed to be heading back to the ground. Instead of slamming back into the grass, we leveled smoothly about a yard above ground and accelerated toward the line of trees at the end of the runway. I couldn't bring myself to speak again; I was sure we would smash into the trees in an instant. After gaining speed flying just above the grass, the pilot suddenly but smoothly pulled the nose up and up and up until we were climbing away from the jungle strip at a frighteningly steep angle.

Nancee's appearance mirrored my own feelings; she was speechless and what little I could see of her face looked deathly pale.

Noticing our apprehension, the pilot, completely calm and irritatingly cheerful, explained that he'd performed a standard soft-field takeoff followed by a best-angle-of-climb departure to clear the trees. "Enjoy the ride," he said as he lowered the nose and banked the plane at a scary angle. The pilot turned the plane again and again to follow a gradual climbing path over a series of low ridgelines. We seemed to barely clear the trees atop each successive line of hills.

Nancee whispered, "He's going to kill us all!" as we bounced around in the bumpy air.

Lizette was uncomfortable lying down. We loosened our seat belts and then loosened Lizette's belts and raised her back. She seemed more comfortable with her shoulders up, but her speech was almost inaudible and not very coherent.

We were climbing much less steeply than before. We were almost out of the hills at the western border of Thailand. Just as we cleared what I hoped would be the very last ridgeline, the plane was caught by a very strong slopewind and got bounced around in the updraft so vigorously that first Nancee and then Lizette vomited in very quick succession. I handed Nancee a wad of paper towels and a surgical mask. Then I replaced Lizette's mask with a nasal cannula, cleared Lizette's mouth and wiped her face clean, feeling acutely all the while that her fluids and my hands were now one big deadly culture of SARS virus.

Nancee managed to get her masks off with one hand, wipe herself with the same hand, and then hold a surgical mask over her nose and mouth with her clean hand until I was finished with Lizette.

When I was done, I covered Lizette's mouth with a surgical mask while Nancee masked herself again. Nancee's N-95 was ruined, but luckily we had a spare, which she put on as soon as she had changed gloves. But she couldn't avoid breathing in unfiltered cabin air as she changed masks. We traded apprehensive glances as she red-bagged her old masks.

I cleaned Lizettes's oxygen mask thoroughly with alcohol gel, then threw away her surgical mask and cleaned her face. I replaced her cannula with her breathing mask, pulled off both my gloves, red-bagged them and then smeared my hands with anti-bacterial gel. I rubbed my hands together as I sang two choruses of "Happy Birthday" to myself to calm my frazzled nerves and time my hand hygiene. But even after I wiped with a paper towel, I could just feel my hands buzzing with viral infection, no matter how often I told myself it was only my nerves.

Suddenly I noticed another smell in the cockpit: the pilot had lit a rather rich-smelling blunt and was starting to smoke it through his mask. Didn't he know he was risking a fire by lighting up around oxygen? And how could he even think of smoking weed here? I was about to lose it. I tapped him on the shoulder and shook my head vigorously, but he just grinned and offered the blunt to me.

I declined, saying, "It just makes me tired and hungry, and it's too noisy to sleep and there's nothing to eat." Nancee also declined with a dismissive wave of her hand and an angry glare. I pulled at her gown and whispered, "Don't worry. He's such an idiot, he probably flies just as well baked as not."

After he smoked the beanie down so far it burned his thumb and forefinger, the pilot shouted, "I can't stand the stink of this plane another second. Secure all the loose shit in the cabin." I hurried to do so, but before I had half finished, he abruptly opened his window to pitch his blunt out. The red bag upended in the gusting wind that engulfed us, and vomit- and phlegm- stained paper towels flew out of the bag and swirled about the cabin: a cyclone of fomites leaving smears of disease wherever they touched. I imagined myself in a midst of a cloud of SARS virus, and imagined the virus coating my skin and lungs. "Oh, joy," I thought. "If this idiot doesn't kill us now, we can die of SARS later."

"Close the fucking window!" I screamed; and the pilot nodded and complied. The cabin was cooler and less rank with the smells of vomit and the pilot's rather resinous weed, but I felt certain that we must have been exposed to massive quantities of wind-whipped, aerosolized SARS virus.

We were now flying over less hilly country. The air became much smoother when we got about four thousand feet above ground level; the alarming way we changed direction at low altitude was replaced by mostly straight and level flight.

Lizette's and Nancee's nausea seemed to both improve as we headed over the lowlands to the south by southwest. Lizette became thirsty, and I removed her oxygen mask and fed her a few spoonfuls of that awful Tak soup from one of our thermos bottles. She seemed to doze off shortly afterwards.

After dozing about a half hour, she woke and needed to use the bedpan; she produced a mess of nasty-looking diarrhea. As we cleaned her and one another up, Nancee and I exchanged frightened glances. "God, by now we must have been thoroughly contaminated," Nancee groaned.

"Better this than death by Wa," I reminded her. I screamed to the pilot over the roar of the prop, "Don't even think of opening that window again." He nodded in agreement.

I had programmed my cell phone to vibrate when it was time for Lizette's medication. When I woke her to give her the Tamiflu and ribavarin, she spoke coherently for the first time.

"Nurse, I'm so sorry for having made such an awful mess for you. I just couldn't help it. I felt as helpless as a baby."

"It's OK, you'll probably be doing the same for us in a few days," I said grimly.

"I have never seen you before, and you look so young to be nurses. Where did Alain conjure you up from?" Lizette asked.

"Alain recruited us straight from the KNU," I replied mysteriously.

"Alain is helping us get out of Thailand. We got wrongly accused of drug crimes but found out we on the blacklist before we got ying-tinged. We need to play nurse to get out of Thailand--you are our exit visa."

"You're not nurses, but are really on the run?" Lizette exclaimed. "God, but I do love an adventure! Were you and Alain lovers?"

I shook my head in denial, but Lizette exclaimed,"Of course you were. And then, as with me, he sent you off to save the world for him! And to make way for the next girl!"

I wondered whether this was just jealous gossip, or a sisterly warning. But for now, we needed Lizette as much as she needed us.

"When we get to BKK, Bangkok International Airport, can you play really sick again?" I requested.

"It's the least I could do for you," she said conspiratorially. "I feel a little better now," she added, but when she struggled to rise, she collapsed. "I really am still sick."

For the rest of the bumpy voyage, we entertained Lizette with an account of our disastrous Spartan study, our flight, abduction, and rescue. She told us of her own adventures in the bush, living amongst the harried Karen, dodging Tatmadaw patrols and Wa marauders. (2)

Lizette told us of her work as a backpack nurse. She explained that malaria was still endemic in Tak and Chaing Mai Provinces, and especially prevalent among the most downtrodden of all--the refugee populations moving this way and that across the border. Lizette had mainly followed groups of displaced Karen, but she had attended members of other ethnic groups 'en passant.' She had been resigned to the risk of contracting malaria from constant exposure to her patients, and was surprised to have developed 'la malade du jour,' SARS, instead.

"It will be boring for us to go back to our classmates, and those silly boys who think they are brave when they play their silly games!" Lizette said.

"I don't know--maybe I could get used to a little boredom!" I argued.

When we touched down at BKK, I was struck by how the runways seemed to dwarf our little airplane: we could have landed across the runway more easily than we had taken off from Cap du Merde. A jeep with a sign saying "follow me" over its tailgate was waiting for us at the first runway turnoff, what seemed an absurdly long distance from the runway numbers we had touched down on. We followed it to a group of buildings far from the passenger terminal. The lineboy in the follow-me jeep stopped, got out, and used hand signals to wave us to a spot on the general aviation tiedown area. The lineboy made a throat-slitting gesture and the pilot stopped the engine, cut the master switch, set the brakes, locked the controls, and climbed down to the apron.

As the pilot finished securing the airplane, a customs and immigration officer approached us accompanied by another lineboy pushing a wheeled stretcher. Both wore masks and gloves; the lineboy brought the stretcher up to the plane, then turned about and walked back to the general aviation building stepping very quickly. Nancee and I struggled to get out of the airplane while the pilot argued heatedly with the customs and immigration officer beside the engine cowling. With the help of a big push on the backside from Nancee, I finally managed to swing around the pilot's seat without stepping on Lizette. I had just sat down in the pilot's seat and was about to open the left side door and step down to the apron when the customs and immigration officer noticed me and barked an incomprehensible command in Thai. I paused and looked at him quizzically as he walked forward to the cabin windows.

The customs and immigration officer peered cautiously into the filthy cabin. After he took a closer look at our supine patient and our vomit- stained gowns, his eyes opened wide with fright. He waved at us dismissively and stalked back to our pilot, who handed the immigration officer Alain's letter and spread our passports open and held them down on the flat top of the engine cowling. The officer glanced at the letter from Alain and stamped our passports without paying any attention to our names, much less asking us to get out and peering under our masks. He turned and strode away without having set foot inside the airplane.

The pilot helped me step down, opened the right hand doors, and helped us lift Lizette down to the apron and transfer her and her oxygen tank to the the wheeled stretcher. Then he put his stretcher back in the Cessna, turned to us and said "Good flying with you ladies. Come back and fly with me soon."

"Oh, we can't wait," I assured him. "It was an exciting flight that we will never forget."

"Thank you, I will never forget traveling with such beautiful passengers," he said, bowing idiotically. He beamed when I blew him a dramatic kiss from the general direction of my masks. At least SARS had excused me from doing the real thing, I reflected gratefully.

Less than a hundred yards away, a dark blue and red twin-engine jet the size of a small airliner waited next to a low-slung piece of airport equipment. Other than its dramatic paint job, the jet was unmarked except for a small Swiss flag and its national registration, HB-xxx, on the engine cowlings.

We rolled Lizette's stretcher across the apron to the waiting scissors lift, lowered her stretcher to the ground, and pushed her up the ramp onto the bed of the lift. We piled our baggage beside her, and the operator raised us to the cabin door of the waiting Gulfstream IV. The polite but nervous steward ushered us aboard and advised us, "The nurse that has been engaged for this flight should be here shortly." He was masked and gloved as we were; as soon as Lizette's stretcher was in the cabin, he removed his outer gloves and regloved. Then he sealed the pressure door behind us and showed us how to settle in without touching any of us or anything of ours again.

He showed us to a wardrobe where fresh masks, gowns and drapes were stored, right next to a lav whose gold-plated fixtures contrasted oddly with the hospital germicides arrayed by the vanity mirror. Then he made himself scarce behind the forward cabin door as we draped the seats nearest us, changed Lizette and then changed ourselves out of our vomit- stained gowns. After the soiled clothing and disposables were safely stowed away, he told us where to find a locker full of medical supplies, half of which I couldn't even recognize, and asked us whether we thought we needed anything more. I said I couldn't imagine what more I could want, and returned to Lizette.

We transferred Lizette to a convertible sofa that took up less than a third of one side of the main cabin; it was now a bunk bed, made up with crisply-ironed linen decorated with the company logo. At the steward's direction, I plugged Lizette's oxygen mask into the airplane's oxygen system while Nancee folded the stretcher up and pushed it aft, past the main galley, through the posh aft lav and into the main baggage compartment.

There were two big swiveling recliners facing each other across the aisle from Lizette; Nancee and I sat down and waited nervously for the nurse to arrive.

We waited for half an hour, as the fidgety steward repeatedly came and went from his hiding place behind the cockpit. He would bang numbers into an air-to-ground telephone on the table next to Lizette's bunk, then keep himself as far away from the three of us as he could while he talked. He seemed to be trying to deal with an agency for English-speaking private-duty nurses.

Each time he called, he would grow more and more impatient. After each call, he would disappear behind the forward cabin door for a few more minutes, then reappear to call again. At last, he realized he was getting the runaround, said a few harsh words into the handset and slammed the phone down.

He turned to us and said, "The nurse I arranged is refusing to take this flight. She doesn't want to be exposed to SARS, and quite frankly, neither do I. Since your exposure has already occurred, you have nothing further to risk, so I am leaving Lizette in your competent hands.

Nancee and I looked at each other with horror. "You can't do this," I exclaimed to the steward.

The steward said, "I must also advise you that our flight plan is only valid for another half hour, and the pilot has intercommed me that he sees police activity around nearby aircraft for some reason or other. We don't want to get involved in whatever police activity is taking place at this airport and we cannot file a new flight plan now that you are on board. We have to leave now.

"Remember, in the aft locker you will find plenty of medical supplies. You said they were sufficient for Lizette's needs yourself."

Nancee and I shot each other glances of pure horror. "But we have no idea what most of these supplies are for, or how to use them," I wailed. I was starting to feel panicky.

"If you have any medical problems, you can ask for a phone patch to MedAire. A doctor will talk you through whatever you need to do. Au revoir," he said with a shrug and a nervous wave good-bye. He walked through the door to the front lav and auxiliary galley area behind the cockpit and shut it behind him.

"I guess this is not a very popular flight," Nancee said.

"No one wants to fly on Air SARS," I replied. "I wonder if we'll see him again before landing."

Lizette looked up from her bunk and said in a weak voice, "What a bunch of cowards. They all have yellow fever!"

Nancee gave Lizette a blank look. I'd grown up around doctors and knew what they thought about health workers who got cold feet when they suddenly discovered that it's actually possible to catch something from a patient. I explained Lizette's rather sarcastic diagnosis to Nancee.

Looking at the eight plush doeskin swiveling and reclining armchairs in the main cabin, I asked Nancee ironically, "What would you prefer, Ma'am, a window or an aisle seat?"

"Both," Nancee replied. As we sat down, the pilot intercommed that we should buckle up--we were cleared to taxi.

Although I was nervous that there was no real medical help on board, I consoled myself with the thought that Nancee and I had managed to keep poor Lizette alive up until now, and that the antiviral drugs seemed to be working. I only hoped Lizette would not worsen, and that Nancee or I would not contract SARS on our long flight to Lucerne.

After we reached altitude, I went aft to the main galley and discovered an espresso machine and a refrigerator full of food and wine. Lizette requested her favorite fromage du chevre, and I poured her a glass of Meursault.

I perused the DVD library, selected "Chocolat," and set it to play on the plasma screen television in the cabin wall opposite Lizette's bunk.

Recalling how long it had been since my last Starbucks latte, I made a cup of delicious-smelling French roast, fortified it with a little cognac from the bar cabinet, then walked up front to the group of four facing recliners ahead of where we had changed Lizette. I pulled out a table, sat down, and tore open the envelope Alain had given me before we left Cap du Merde. I sipped my coffee and read the note that Alain had asked me to read once we were safely under way.

Alain had scribbled his note half in English, half in French, proclaiming his love for me in two languages, and telling me that he would arrange an air ticket home to L.A. through ICF's travel office in Lucerne as soon as the Swiss health authorities allowed me to travel. He gave me the number of the MSF satellite phone, and begged me to call soon and tell him how I was getting on.

Nancee sat down in the seat facing mine, looking apologetic. She couldn't read her note from Jacques, and asked me to read it to her. Jacques promised to call her by satellite phone and to make arrangements for her to get a temporary visa, work permit, and a job at ICF. His posting was ending in six weeks, and he would then return to Lucerne and be with her. She could stay in his parents' guest room in the meantime. To work out the arrangements at ICF, Nancee was to talk to his boss at ICF: Dr. Eduardo Rios. Jacque's note explained Nancee, Lizette and I would all get to know Dr. Rios in any case--ICF had arranged to have our quarantine and Lizette's treatment all take place at Dr. Rios' research institute at ICF's laboratory in Lucerne.

I burst into tears, unable to read on.

"What's the matter, Alexandra?"

But I could not answer. I was convulsed with tears of disappointment and frustration. The vengeful specter of my father had re-entered my life to thwart my hopes and dreams once again.

Postscript:

On January 16, 2003, the United States Food and Drug Administration issued a propose rule that would require vaginal contraceptive products containing nonoxynol 9 as the active ingredient that are sold over-the- counter in the United States to be labeled conspicuously with the following warning labels:

For vaginal use only

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) alert: This

product does not protect against the AIDS virus

(HIV) or other STDs.

Ask a doctor before use if you have a new sex partner,

multiple sex partners, or unprotected sex. Frequent use

(more than once a day) of this product can increase

vaginal irritation, which may increase the risk of getting

the AIDS virus (HIV) or other STDs from infected

partners. Ask a doctor or other health professional for

your best birth-control method.

Stop use and ask a doctor if you or your partner get

burning, itching, a rash, or other irritation of the vagina

or penis.

Studies have raised safety concerns that frequent use

(more than once a day) of products containing

nonoxynol 9 can increase vaginal irritation, which may

increase the risk of getting the AIDS virus (HIV) or

other STDs from infected partners. Vaginal irritation

may include symptoms such as burning, itching, or a

rash, or you may not notice any symptoms at all. If you

use these products frequently and/or have a new sex

partner, multiple sex partners, or unprotected sex, see a

doctor or other health professional for your best birth

control and methods to prevent STDs.

Comments were due by April 16, 2003. As of this writing no final FDA rules have been promulgated.

Footnotes:

(1) - Rudyard Kipling, "The Ballad of East and West."

(2) - Start at http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/KW35.htm for more on the

behavior of the Tatmadaw vis-a-vis minorities and Karen resistance.

(3) - The author acknowledges and thanks the editor of this and prior

chapters, riottgrrl, for countless invaluable contributions of research,

ideas, and creativity. A truly great editor, like riottgrrl, is truly a

collaborator. Thanks as well to our redactrice francaise, Debra.

End of Chapter 15 -- To Be Continued