American Sex Columnist Bernard Trink Attracts Hate Mail and Laughter

Copyright February 1995 by Richard S. Ehrlich

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Amid raging controversies over commercialized prostitution, a soaring AIDS rate, exploitation of Asian women, and unbridled male lust, much of the response by foreign "expats" is directed at an aged, rotund, politically incorrect American sex columnist known simply as Trink.

"The first live show I went to, a girl stripped and pulled out a snake," Bernard Trink explains in his low-key, New York accent, referring to Bangkok's raunchy cabaret acts in which nude females extract unusual items from inside themselves.

"I didn't feel sorry for the snake, but I just wondered how she had gotten it inside. And I'm curious, right? I'm a reporter."

Trink is now celebrating his 30th year as Bangkok's most popular "entertainment" columnist in which he has described virtually every aspect of sex imaginable -- and available -- here in a city where prostitution is big business, lit up by neon lights and set to throbbing rock and roll.

Trink, in his 60s and married to a Thai, is one of the most famous foreigners living in this Southeast Asian nation.

He receives more hate mail than anyone else, and is partly responsible for the success of the respected, daily, English-language Bangkok Post newspaper's heavily subscribed Saturday edition in which his column appears.

When he reports there is absolutely no AIDS among the thousands of Bangkok bar girls who cavort every night with tourists and upscale residents, even his staunchest supporters groan.

But each week they continue scanning "The Trink Page," which contains his chatty, full-page, "Night Owl" report.

A typical Trink Page includes his information to curious customers, such as: "There is some confusion between 'no hands bars' and 'no hands restaurants'.

"Oral sex is offered in the former.

"In the latter, the waitress of your choice feeds you, usually Chinese food with chopsticks. And while she's thus engaged, your hands are free to wander."

He also writes up the latest naughty gossip.

"According to a night spot proprietor, two farang (foreign) girls in their 20s asked him to recommend a lass who was either a lesbian or bisexual.

"They talked to her, and soon bought her out. The following day, he asked her what happened. 'Everything,' she replied."

Commercial teasers also pepper his page.

"Nana Entertainment Plaza is the only area in Fun City where go-go girls step outside their establishments in (topless) mono-kinis between dancing stints to take the night air. See for yourselves."

The Trink Page also tells which bars and restaurants give good deals, popular bargains in department stores, new bus routes, jokes, police warnings and bits of homespun advice.

He also deals with readers' questions including, "How can you tell the difference between a freelance hooker and a normal girl who is out for a bit of fun with her friends?"

Trink started reporting Bangkok's red-light scene in 1965.

Marking his 30th year in Bangkok as a columnist, Trink recently spoke at The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand.

He attracted a full-house which laughed and jeered at his two-hour talk, delivered in a slow-paced, deadpan style reminiscent of the late American author Charles Bukowski.

Recalling his early days, Trink said, "I was fascinated, because the girls in the bars were the average age of 13.

"And the way the girls were crawling up each of us, they had had more experience than I did.

"And I'm not a virgin.

"So I began thinking, there might be something in this bar scene."

Trink blasted his colleagues in the press corps for reporting how bar girls were suffering.

"You know, (in most news reports) it says, 'They put on a brave smile but inside they're crying because the man is caressing them.'

"Nonsense. They're not crying. They're waiting for the proposition, 'How much do you want, for me to take you home?'

"And they negotiate. And if it's within her range, she'll accept."

He added, "They do it for the money, and they don't want to do anything else."

Social workers also came in for criticism.

"You have social columns, and these social columns are written by women, Thai women, university graduates. And they would write about these poor innocent girls who are being exploited on Patpong (Road) or on these other nightery entertainment areas. 'And we must save them. We must get them out of this terrible environment and give them respectable jobs. Like servants. And painting umbrellas. This is what the girls are made for.'

"And I would go to the girls and say, 'Do you want to be a servant?'

"They'd laugh for the next 30 minutes. And I'd say, 'Forget servants, do you want to paint umbrellas? Do you want to go on to basket weaving?'

"And they'd say, 'Are you crazy? Look what I'm earning what I'm doing. What do you think these people are earning that you're suggesting? These people are getting a few hundred baht (about 12 US dollars) a month. I get a few hundred baht just from lady's drinks.'

"So the people who are writing about these bar girls, apart from myself, never went out to see them.

"They had this mental idea of what a bar girl should be, based on television programs where, whenever you see a bar girl, she's crying buckets.

"Why is she crying buckets? 'She's a bar girl.' Bar girls do not cry buckets. They want money, and they'll do anything to get it."

As a result of his weekly reports, anti-Trink hate mail floods The Bangkok Post.

"The personal letters I get are mainly anonymous:

"'You bastard.'

"'How dare you.'

"'Why don't you die.'

"'You son of a bitch.'

"'I know you, and when you look over your shoulder, I'll be there.'

"'You asshole.'

"'I'm going to get you, and your family.'

"These are the letters I generally get. I do get positive ones too," he added, chuckling.

"I'll get letters from Iceland. I'm not joking.

"'You scumbag'."

Thailand has more than 200,000 prostitutes, and more than 700,000 people infected with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

While many readers may be upset because The Bangkok Post publishes his vivid descriptions of sex workers and their business, others are extremely angry that he also reports his unusual view about AIDS.

"When you check the blood of people with malaria, measles, or the flu, they are HIV-positive," he said, insisting those disease creates deceptive, HIV-positive test results.

He also claims there is no AIDS among the thousands of prostitutes who work in bars along Bangkok's world famous, tourist-packed Patpong Road.

"There's no AIDS in Patpong. None. Zero. Not a little. Not one case. None."

Over the years, Trink has cleaned up some parts of his page, bowing to pressure from his employers to make The Bangkok Post a "family paper."

"I used to go to massage parlors," and enjoy free erotic treatment, "on the house."

Trink added, "If I found a masseuse I liked, who performed good service, I would put her number in my column. And I'd say, 'Go to her for extra specials. Believe me, she delivered.'

"No reader was ever disappointed when I mentioned a massage girl.

"I mean, it was never hearsay. It was always first-hand."

But the Bangkok Post eventually axed his massage girl recommendations.

"I couldn't recommend massage numbers any longer. Frankly, I thought this was a great loss. The public wanted to know."

When critics point to London-based Amnesty International's reports of how females from Burma, Laos, China, Cambodia and the Thai countryside are kidnapped, tortured, chained and sometimes executed in an effort to fill hundreds of AIDS-ridden brothels in Bangkok and elsewhere, Trink always has a response.

"Bars are not brothels," he said.

"A brothel is a place where the girl is forced to work, she cannot leave, she is a sex slave. I abhor this.

"A bar is different. A girl applies to work in a bar. It's a form of employment. She is accepted or not. If she is accepted, she has a job.

"The bar owners make it very clear to her. If you dance, if you take nothing off, it's 4,500 baht (180 US dollars salary) a month. If you take off your top, it's 5,500 baht (220 US dollars) a month.

"If you dance nude, it's 6,500 baht (260 US dollars) a month salary. Now it's up to the girl."

"The girls there can make money.

"She's not going to send the money to her mother. This has been the lie that these bar girls have been telling for 30 years.

"They buy things with it. They gamble with it. What little is left over, maybe they send home. Maybe.

"This salary is not why they're working. They're working because of what they will get (extra) from the men who will buy them out."

Despite the criticism, Trink expects to continue writing his page as long as he can, and sees no end in sight to Thailand's vast sex industry.

"Married men go to prostitutes for a variety of reasons," he told The Foreign Correspondents Club.

"One reason -- and this is the one which will upset, I’m sure, the women here -- they go because the prostitutes do it better.

"You go to a lawyer because he knows the law. You go to a doctor because he knows medicine.

"You go to a prostitute because she knows sex."