Tidal Rage

her to have the child. Wan's parents had been religious, and although he had no qualms about dealing with child sex slavery, he could not cross the line into killing unborn children.
Sebastian was born on a hot and humid New Year's Day, the first day of 1972. Not the beautiful baby she had hoped for, but a heroin addict's child, with a defined harelip. Sebastian was an ugly child by any standard.
Kim rented an apartment situated above a Thai fighting arena, just off Walking Street and located next to Baby Doll night club. A neon Coke bottle flashed on and off continuously from the Spanky's bar opposite, filling the room with light and then plunging it into darkness just as quickly. Sebastian's crib was dark for two seconds, then illuminated for two seconds, and so it went on from 9 pm until 5 am.
The child suffered constant stress from interrupted sleep patterns, disturbed by the gasping, throaty noises of men in the throes of sex, men that Kim brought home each night.
Sebastian's existence was, from his earliest memory, all about survival. Other children suckled at their mother's breasts for milk. Sebastian was fed milk from an unsterilized bottle. The constant pulling, tugging, and bites from the men she entertained left her too sore.
Kim would feed him his eight ounces of formula with a tiny amount of heroin mixed in. It was the only way to quiet him down, or he would scream all night long.
Sebastian was the name his mother had called him. An English client insisted on bringing a video cassette along. He pressed play before heaving himself up and down on top of her. He watched episodes of the English drama Upstairs Downstairs. Kim heard the name several times over his grunting. She liked the name, so she called her half-Thai, half-European child Sebastian.
Events took a turn for the better in 1975. Sebastian was three years old, and his mother, Kim, was nineteen. Several sex workers moved away from the pimps and bars and bought in muscle to assist them. Needing to continue to work required developing a new marketing strategy; well, not new, but redefined. It was the time when the American GIs came to Bangkok; battle-weary and looking for beer, and lots of sex.
Sex workers waited outside the gates of the barracks that housed the American soldiers on respite from the terrors of the Vietnam war.
Kim found the GIs too rough; some liked to beat up their women, and they were often high on one drug or another. Kim used Don Mueang International Airport.Along with another dozen or so sex workers, she would wait for the flights from Europe, Australia, or America.
Kim's clients were usually overbearing Europeans, Australians, and a few Arabs who had a penchant for the likes of Kim. The rent boys at the airports would target lithe Nordic travellers, who preferred the ladyboys. Clients were predominantly men, some middle-aged, some positively ancient, some young, some married, some with wives in tow, and almost all wanting one kind of sexual encounter or another.
Kim, like many Thai women, appraised men differently than their Western counterparts. A paunchy belly in the US or UK is not the ideal shape for a man. Many women assume the man likes too many beers or does not work hard enough, whereas a Thai woman sees a paunch as a sign of wealth.
Hank McKenzie was such a man. He had been born in Portland, Oregon, in the United States, some forty years earlier. Hank was a victim of fast-food chains; it would kill him in the end, but not because of the food. He was a big man in every way, over six feet two inches tall, with a broad chest, and a more expansive waist and stomach. He was big, he was bald as a newborn, and fat. There was a reason he was in Thailand. Hank wanted to purchase a companion, and if it worked out, a wife. He had been here twice before and knew the lay of the land. He was determined this time was the right time.
On the day Kim and Hank crossed paths, she had her little Eurasian son in tow. Some men liked this; she knew. They thought that if a woman had a child, she would be drug- and disease-free, but this was not true in Kim's case.
"No waste time looking for other girls, they no good. I clean, no disease, we do fucky-fucky all night long. Then I clean and bathe you, I cook for you and then again, I love you long, long time."
Hank wanted a wife so badly. He was sick of going to work functions as one of an insignificant band of men who could not get a date, no matter how hard he tried. Hank had been to many social occasions where he stuck out as a lonely bachelor, the type the lonely ladies do not want. Unfortunately, his size and looks left him in the also-ran stakes of romance.
Hank was desperate and driven, and this may have clouded his vision as far as Kim was concerned. He could see she was young but had been at this game for a few years. He knew she would be drug-dependent and in need of more than a few doses of antibiotics, but as long as she was AIDS-free, he could get her assistance. The child was a bonus, a ready-made family.
Hank bought her for four weeks and told her she had to do anything he wanted in those four weeks. Hank showed Kim a $500 bill; she gasped. Kim had seen thousands of dollars cross the palms of the bar owner. The most Kim had ever held in her hands at the end of the month was $40. She had never seen so much money, nearly all of hers had gone to pimps. Hank ripped the bill and gave her one-half,