One rarely reads about closet BDSMers on sites such as this. Nor does one read about sadomasochists frequenting prostitutes for satisfaction in various international locations, although there must surely be many of us who do. I have been and done both for many years and will continue to do so, as long as my job takes me to different countries and requires me to relocate. Not that I have never been associated with any scene--far from it. It is simply that I never find myself in a scene for very long - and lose all my kink acquaintances when I move on. In most situations in life I have been a 'would be' scener--and hence, mostly, a closet BDSMer. The condition requires me to be simultaneously searcher and educator, when aspiring to 'convert' passing vanilla opportunities. But not only am I closeted, I am also a switch. So this can be even more perplexing regarding outcomes, especially when searching trans-nationally in the vanilla world for suitable temporary companions.

One wonders what exactly is the controlling force behind the ebb and flux of switch desire. It is not simply a pendulum swing of one disposition into the other--for there is no precise 'other', nor is the motion bipartite, not as a binary system, no. Often my switching - more like a visionless emotional miasma - will refocus itself into an insistently prophetic new slant: a role, a pose, a fascination for some occluded anatomical detail. And frequently eclectic - this skin texture, that alignment of the buttocks, this colouring, those stripes. Switching is a mutating existential quest, each vision replaced by another more enticing than before. To do or to be done to? To pursue or be content? Are these things persuaded by the Moon? Some sympathetic swarming and replacement of biochemical signals within our metabolic pathways?

Being a switch means one is subject to unpredictable switching. Personally, I never switch during a scene, but also I find I am not constitutionally a switch over time through some inner mechanism, but rather inspired to switch by random unconscious stimuli, or some curious intrusion prompted by fate. A passing vampire in combat zones can heave me into instant submission, whilst a demure office mermaid will ignite my fire like any Gilles de Ray. Perhaps it's all about personalities.

An unsuccessful combination of these circumstances can be displayed in the following tale of my recent sojourn in Bangkok.

Ninja is one of my recurring dominatrixes. She has flair and gusto, and unlike most Thai demimondaines, is dispositionally inclined to domination. But like all my other paid-for ephemeral connections, she vanishes into obscurity when we are not in flagrante delecto.

Having had my bottom caned by Ninja (legs apart, touching toes, 'ooh, ooh, yes madam'), on my third night in Bangkok, I 'swung' to the search for a submissive, some seventy-two hours later. Slappy, bottom-smacking of the dominant kind, for a white skin of cantaloupe proportions, was firmly on the agenda. Preferably in a clean-air setting.

But this would need more than desire and imagining. It would require research, commitment - and luck in a vanilla universe more versed in penetration and alcohol than tweaked nipples and bamboo. I needed a luck precipitated by calling on the gods--daring the divine to provide, to shock me with more than my own experience.

The first-time visitor to the world of commercial sex in Thailand might think propositioning and being propositioned a simple affair when the principle goal of the transaction is a financial one for the proposee. But, in the Far East, this would fail to credit both prostitute and client with discrimination and personal taste.

In fact, prostitutes and their clients can be very discriminating, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the process of selection is done pretty much as it would be in more conventional circumstances. That is, selection takes place on the basis of wide selection and a mutual attraction, eliminating the unsuitable on the way. Woe betide the man who thinks a Thai prostitute can be bought simply for the price of a few beers and a crisp banknote. He may be the brunt of some caustic oriental humour, or at the very least, in for a fast time back at the hotel.

Just as in ordinary life, prostitutes and their clients have fancies and preferences, and, just as in ordinary life, positive preferences are confirmed by a personable glance that is just 0.5 seconds too long to be casual.

Bearing these things in mind, I dressed in well-pressed trousers, polished shoes and an open-necked shirt and considered my chances of finding a kinky-minded demi. Thailand is not renowned for kinky sex; the culture has been catering to bull-brained heteros since Vietnam and is mainly of the 'good time' variety. Today, it is mainly fifty-year-old men with lumpy bodies and upright, macho walks; a few, younger, Bruce Willis look-alikes; a lot of boozy dissipaters. Though full of transsexuals, neither straights nor tranny prostitutes go in for BDSM - not even lightly - and I often wonder why this is so. So I have to be moderate. Insistent desire is a deterrent force when courting sexual favours; the woman can tell and will up her bargaining position, often downgrading her own sexual pleasures in the process. No, the whole thing must be … equitable.

Saturday 11pm. I leave my hotel and saunter through the seething lanes of Bangkok without too much carnality on my mind, avoiding the breathy humidity of bars with their pig-shaped men slumped on bars stools. I treat each sudden change in direction as a divinatory gesture; a kind of passive synchronization. Amidst the teeming mêlée of cackles and amplified brouhaha, I inhale every odour from boiled fish to urine. Wide illuminated signs advertise foot-massage and visa services. A constant murmur of traffic echoes from the Sukhumvit Road. Green-and-yellow taxis arrive soundlessly, like flying saucers beaming halogen cones. My feet occasionally slither on the noodle-spattered streets in the attempt to avoid potholes while I am passing every description of demimondaine - Tina Turner clones, venusian peroxide blondes, motherly Sheherezadas for the Arabs - at a time when the 'coupling instinct' is at its height. Through an interconnecting alley, I pass a bevy of late-night hairdressers, chatting and snipping under brilliant neon; steam-hooded noodle stalls bubble in the shadows, cheap tin tables are surrounded by twittering harlots; a cripple scuffles with a plastic bowl, a Tarot reader turns her cards.

Unsuitable candidates are eliminated immediately by the flatness of their gaze: one simply knows this one is not your type--and so does she. Usually, for me, this is also preordained by the girl's featureless figure and drab facial caste; plainly attired, flat-bottomed girls are out, any sign of boredom too--though extremes of taciturn slenderness can be quite attractively kinky with their sinewy, cuppable buttocks (promising a slapping and wriggling, ballerina style). Worse for me are the plain-Janes - smeary-faced, Woolworthy-looking girls with scant critical intelligence and very little experience of life. Fortunately, our aversion is mutual.

Yes, doubtless there is a similar rejection process at work, computing in my direction, perhaps based on my age and deportment. In the transient plate-glass windows, I look tall and rather out-of-place, like a mischievous metropolitan policeman - or a vacationing manager from Debbenhams.

But tonight there is another discerning predicate at work: submissiveness. Throughout this medley of faces I have to discern who would submit to a spanking - nothing over-violent, and very short of an ideal caning - but still enough to provoke a reddening of the buttocks with the same hue as my little pocket bottom-smacker's photograph - heavenly icon! - ready to be whisked out at the right moment for an inspired request. Electric!

Am I to be in luck?
(read the conclusion of this article in our May/04 issue)