I didn’t come to Da Nang to get involved with a “working girl.” I got involved with a woman I thought might be capable of a long-term trajectory, a woman I’ve been with every single day for a month and a half. But in this ocean of “just making it,” I’ve realized that the air isn’t the only thing that’s transactional. Every day she shows up after a ten-hour factory shift, and every day I perform a systematic, deviant analysis of the human body. This isn’t just sex; it’s a demeaning, high-performance dismantling of the assets she holds dear. I’ve spent forty-five days stretching and destroying the boundaries she spent twenty years building with a boring husband who probably didn’t even know where the light switch was. She admitted she doesn’t even know how to masturbate, let alone how to ride a man, and here I am—the high-performer, the pervert, the deviant—taking full advantage of the void. The cameras are out, the sheets are stained, and every ounce of her body has been documented and analyzed. This is my MO. I’m not a guest in this room; I’m the architect of a reality she never knew existed.
But there is a tax on everything out here. Foreigners pay a price that locals don’t, and you’ll never truly be part of the sequence of life here if you don’t recognize the squeeze. She fished out her divorce papers, talked about a five-year plan, and hinted about money until the “Wife Tax” finally took the form of a twenty-three-hundred-dollar scooter. She took my offer of taxi money—a gesture of Western comfort—and tried to turn it into a capital investment. She thought she was playing a “smuck,” a cockroach she could peg and move into a defensive crouch. She wouldn’t dare pull this on a Vietnamese man; he’d pound her face and beat the spirit out of her before telling her to get back in the kitchen and spread her legs for free. But she felt comfortable asking me. She saw a commodity, not a relationship. And that was the moment the philosophy rotted. That was the moment I decided to perform the quiet, cold kill.
If she wants to play the game of transactions, I’ll pay the fee—about five million dong. That’s my “Wife Tax” for the month, and in exchange, I expect high performance every single day. She will drive in, she will perform, and I will continue to work on my computer, rebuilding my empire while she serves her function. But the “Sinister Plan” is already in motion. We are moving toward April, toward the government holiday, and toward a trip to Thailand. We are flying as a couple, husband and wife, for her first time ever out of the country. I’m using my points for the Hyatt, and I’m going to spend that time teaching her how to swim and pounding her into the dirt on a daily basis. We’re going to do trios—seven of them, one for every night—and every single second will be documented on video. I’m going to give her the world for a week, and then I’m going to close the transaction with the precision of a sniper.
Because of my “Visa problems,” I’ll tell her I can’t return with her. I’ll walk her to the airport, give her the kiss, the “husband and wife” routine, and wave as she disappears into the terminal. I’ll pay for her taxi on the other side, and then I’ll head back to the Hyatt, pack my bags, and disappear into the mist of Pattaya for sixty days. From there, it’s Indonesia for another sixty, and then a long, needed rest in the Philippines after the rainy season. That is where I’ll stay. I plan on playing this routine until the very end because I owe her nothing. When she lands, she’ll find herself ghosted on Facebook and her phone. The final text will be the only closure she gets: “Everything has been transactional. Thank you for the understanding that in a woman, love is dead and sex is a commodity. I have paid myself in full. I owe you nothing. The transaction is ended. Good luck on the next one.”
It sounds cold-blooded because it is. But how else do you explain an exchange where she’s already turned me into a commodity? I’m just a man who knows how to read a ledger. I’m sneaking up on the elk who thinks he’s got a leg up on the hunter. I’ve seen the true colors of the Southern Asian woman—the average worker trying to squeeze a two-hundred-dollar tax out of a foreigner—and I’ve decided that the only response is a total, tactical withdrawal. I’ve paid my bill, I’ve documented the deviancy, and I’m moving forward to a frontier that doesn’t smell like a bribe. The transaction is closed, the sheets are being burned, and the “Primary” is back in control of the breath.
