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“You’re very suggestible,” my Dad told me, while sitting at a dinner table in the Walsall hotel, with his friends and business colleagues, as he did every lunchtime. “I’ve just told everybody here that if I were to tell you to do something, you would do it.” We’ll see, I thought. “I think you should go to Thailand, and photograph the transsexuals in swimsuits” he said, “you could make a calender out of it. I think it would be very popular.” I thought about it for only a few seconds and replied with one word. “Okay,” I said, proving his initial point. I was a quiet child, and I could often be a young man of few words. My first school motto was “Facta non Verba” which I’ve always liked. It is Latin, meaning, “Deeds not Words.” Another saying I like is, “A good idea is a good idea,” and this, I thought, was a good idea. I flew to Bangkok with just a camera, a few clothes and a backpack. Thailand is perhaps unique in its embrace of transsexuals as a part of its popular culture. They are celebrated, not marginalized, as they are in the west. Perhaps because Thailand is mostly Buddhist. I walked straight into the biggest transsexual bar I could find. It had the ambience of a strip club, but it was more like a transsexual cabaret show. All the lady-boys I met were extremely friendly. I asked if they would model for me in swimsuits, and they leapt at the chance. I took them to the beach, and to the waterpark, or rather one of the lady-boys took me; on the back of her bright red scooter, which matched her bright red dress. To me she just looked like a hot girl, turning heads, and I just looked like a lucky man, holding on tightly. The results are a set of photographs that look much the same as many other swimsuit pictures. These particular women have a strong desire to be desired by men, and they have no objection to being objectified, in this case, as swimsuit models. In fact, they seemed to want it.
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