There is (let’s face it) a primeval signal sent to all parts of the male nervous system when direct contact is made in this way. It’s quite a wrench to pull consciousness out of the crotch area and shove it a little higher up the spine.

“It’s okay, you can fuck me here if you want. The boss is a rich Japanese-he pays off the police. We can do anything you like.”

“But the tattoo?”

“Ask me while we’re doing it. You’ve got me really horny.”

“I can’t-I’m shy.”

“Oh, you want to take me somewhere?”

“No, I… I can’t get it up.”

“You kidding? That’s one hell of a stalk.”

“I like to just pretend.”

Disappointed: “Oh.”

“Just go through the motions. That’s right.”

“What turns you on?”

“If you would just talk about the tattoos, that would be great. I’ll pay you just the same as if we were doing it.”

“Tattoos, huh? And you’re not even Japanese. A customer made me have them,” she confesses into my ear, working her loins with a feline motion I’m rather fond of. “He was Japanese, of course. He said he liked my body, but I was too naked without tattoos. He said he would want me much more if I had them, and then he’d pay me double, so I said okay. It worked. Without the tattoos he hardly lasted more than a couple of minutes. With them he could go on and on for ages. Every time he got tired, he would make me stand up so he could study them again and get horny. He said they were the best he’d seen outside of Japan -the guy who did it was a master.”

“What was his name?”

“You like the dragon who is licking my cunt from behind?”

“Very much.”

“That one took ages. He had to come back every day for a week. He sort of sketched it out first, then did the coloring. He had to be really careful-you know, to avoid infection.”

“Was it painful?”

“Not too much. He used some long Japanese bamboo needles that he had a special name for. I was terrified, but actually he was very gentle. He sort of turned me on in a weird way.”

“What was his name?”

“The customer?”

“No, the tattooist.”

“Can’t remember. Ishy something? Ikishy? Witakashi? Or maybe it was Yamamoto-I really can’t remember. Can you talk dirty some more? I’m losing concentration.”

“What was the customer’s name?”

“Maybe Honda. Or Toshiba.”

“Okay, you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay.”

“Them’s the rules. Talk dirty, will you?”

Talk dirty? Oddly enough, considering my vocation, this is not an art I have ever had occasion to master. Furthermore, ever since my incarnation in the great Buddhist university of Nalanda, sex has often taken me in an odd way. With all due respect, farang, I have to say you’ve wasted the past two thousand years with your weird tendency to suppress it. That was never the purpose of celibacy; no sir, au contraire, the point is sublimation. Stoke up that fire, build it into an intolerable heat, a boiling cauldron of unendurable intensity, then let it take you up through the chakras all the way to the thousand-petaled lotus in the head. I always think about mathematics at this stage-Buddhist mathematics, of course. At Nalanda it took me only five short lifetimes to work my way up from slopping-out-untouchable to the abbot’s favorite disciple. With the Mogul hordes clamoring at the gates and slaughtering monks all over India, five of us worked serenely to restore the zero to its pre-Vedic dignity as the numerical symbol of nirvana (it is the number of om, if that helps); as such it not only represents Nothing (an obvious enough discovery, hardly worth all the credit the Arabs demand for stealing it from us) but also Everything and, naturally, every shade of value between those two extremes. My discovery was that when trapped in an equation, so to speak, it constantly changed value, thus solving the problem and re-creating it at the speed of thought. Transcendental math may not be much use for the household budget, but it remains the essence of narrative.

“What was that you were whispering?” Dao wants to know.

“Nothing. Everything.”

“You’re a romantic? I haven’t had a romantic client for ages. Would you like to have me with another girl? Do you have a wife? You could take turns dominating me.”

“I’m not married.”

“Or with another man-I like that. You can exploit me with both your cocks at the same time. It wouldn’t cost double-say, fifty percent more than for one.”

“Did he have a shop?”

“Who?”

“The tattooist.”

“No, he came to my customer’s condominium every time. There was something special about him, you know, he wouldn’t have had a shop.”

“What was special?”

“What are you thinking about now?”

“ Om. ”

“That’s your wife’s name?”

“I told you I’m not married. Did he tattoo any of the other girls?”

“No. He was sort of special for my customer. All the other Japanese men were jealous when they saw my tats, but he wouldn’t say who did them. They really turn you on, don’t they?”

“Umm.”

“Tell you what. Carry me over to the other bench, then you can look at them in the mirror.”

Why do I get the feeling she’s done this before? I note with forensic zeal that as she works her buttocks the two dragons, now in full view thanks to the mirror, are performing a kind of dance, a systole and diastole, clearly a reference to the inhalation and exhalation of the cosmos.

Dao, breathless, slowly eases herself off me. “Look at me, I’m sweating. You got me all worked up, and you haven’t even opened your fly.”

“Sorry, I was sublimating. Just sit on my knee so I can check your belly dragon again. I really would like to have one like that. It’s amazing the way it keeps its integrity even when you’re doubled over.”

“You want me to try to find him?”

“Could you? Do you have anything to go on?”

“The customer went with another girl-someone called Du. She hangs out at the Rose Garden. I heard he made her have a tat from the same guy. That was before me, though-he dumped her because she hit twenty-seven. Those Japs don’t like old ladies.”

“You must at least be able to remember what his tattoos were like.”

“The tattooist? Oh yeah, that’s easy. No tattoos on hands, face, or feet. The rest, well, you know, total body. He was like a walking comic strip, no part of him left uncolored. He liked to work in just a pair of shorts, so I saw everything. Then one day I asked if I could see him naked, so he dropped his pants. I tell you, his body surface was ninety percent ink.”

“His cock, too?”

“Especially that. He told me that when it was hard, you could see some famous Japanese naval battle with the Americans, but I only saw it all small and wrinkled. It wasn’t such a big one. I told him he could have me for two thousand baht if he wanted, and I wouldn’t tell the john, but he said he didn’t like women that way. I just wanted to see the naval battle.”

“He’s gay?”

“He didn’t say that. He just said he didn’t do it with women. You know how weird Japs can be.”

“Anything else?”

“He had this dreadful stutter. At first I thought he couldn’t speak Thai at all, but then I realized he was fluent, except for the stutter. He seemed incredibly shy, like he’d been working in the jungle all his life and didn’t know how to relate to people.”