He tried hard not to look at me, his discomfort contagious and almost palpable. His big brown eyes betrayed the scenario, they were the sad eyes of someone who has been hurt many times before, not the eyes of the bad man it would have been so much easier to see. The bar girl on his lap was teasing him and slapping his face, telling us he hits her to simultaneously gain sympathy and humiliate him. He sat quietly beneath her holding his face close to her shoulder as though he was trying to breathe her in, with a look of longing that read more like love than lust. He flashed a forced grin tinged with so much sadness that I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer.
Each breath I took was increasingly heavy, trying to suppress the words that wanted to spew forth. I reached across the table, tapped his arm and asked if I could speak to him. I meant privately as not to embarrass him further, especially since I was not clear as to what would be coming out of my mouth next. He said yes and continued to sit at the table. I asked his name, and unable to dam the flood welling up in my heart, I told him he looked so sad. He acknowledged this as though I had told him the day of the week, I felt failed and unsteady. This man had shifted my world. I wanted to cry for him, I wanted to grab him and hug him until all the hurt of the world had been squeezed out of him. I could barely understand the feelings that were twisting in my heart but each one demanded action.
Before I came to Chaing Mai I was worried about working in the red light district. I was afraid of how I would react to the seeming hopelessness of many of the situations I knew we’d find there. I was afraid the ugly spirit of judgment would creep into my thoughts about the women and not just the men who I thought probably deserved it. I like many people, thought the bad men in the red light district are the problem and the guilty party. Yet here I was faced with a sad eyed boy who was just as much a victim of this world as the girl on his lap.
After a short while he stood and left the table to use the restroom in the back of the bar and I went to sit on the sofa in the back of the bar and I prayed. I prayed hard and fast and without any regard to who might hear me because it was getting hard to breath. “Lord if you want me to speak to this man like I think you do please have him sit here beside me on the couch. I won’t ask him, I won’t say anything, please if this is your will just have him sit and I will be faithful”. The door opened and he stepped out into the bar, he rounded the corner and awkwardly took the seat next to me.
” I feel you are sad” I said, ” I feel like you don’t realize your worth, that you don’t believe you are loved, that you don’t even feel you are worth loving” I went on and he let me. I said things all etiquette dictates you never mention to anyone let alone a stranger. He nodded with acceptance as though I had given an accurate report of the weather. I stood up, uncomfortable with all the craziness of the situation, he stood up too. I barely had time to gain his permission before I threw my arms around him to hug him. His body felt uncomfortable under my embrace, like the tense shivering of a scared puppy. It made me sad, I could feel his unease, I could feel the lie of expected performance that was making him so uneasy, he didn’t know how to receive a platonic hug.
We talked that night about God and Jesus and the spirit world. We talked about how he was loved and I could feel it in my bones almost like it was being screamed at him. I told him I KNEW he was loved, because the feeling of love for him was so overwhelming that I loved him too. Over the next 2 weeks in Chaing Mai I saw him often, at the café, or the bar, and sometimes just on the street. We had many conversations about many things and with each hug he seemed to become more at ease. There was an openness there that I have seldom experienced in this life. He was willing to tell me the vulnerable truth of his life and to hear whatever I had to say. He told me about coming to Thailand thinking he could save the girls. That he had given one woman ,a friend, a monthly stipend to stay out of the bars and stay home with her children but she took the money and went to the bars anyway. He had become jaded and now believed that the best he could do was to be a boyfriend, provide a roof and meals and allow the girl to do her “job”. He didn’t believe there was a way to get the girls out of the bars but commended us for trying.
What my friend taught me about bar street is something that I couldn’t understand until I had spent time there. Bar street wasn’t the marketplace for victims and victimizers I would have imagined but rather a menagerie of broken people. People who are hurt. People who are lonely. People who need true friends. People who need true love. People who need Jesus.
