en cierto efecto, así como los signos del Zodíaco corresponden a los hijos de Jacob; sucede lo mismo con las piedras, o sea, de la siguiente manera:

The incident that sparked my interest in the negotiation of masculinity between Thai and tourist men was one that I observed during the early part of my fieldwork. It was interesting to me because it highlighted a moment where different understandings of what it is to be masculine seemed to chafe against each other, and yet remain unresolved. As I was to observe later during the research, it was at the less confrontational end of a continuum of encounters where differential understandings of dominant masculinity were negotiated. I begin this section on the sites where masculine difference is articulated with a description of that incident.

T m sitting in the restaurant a t butterfly G arden again. G a i a n d M o r k are w orking on reception an d restaurant duty today. They sit an d chat with me between serving customers. Reggae m usic is

playing on the stereo. The restaurant is not busy, so there’s a real laid-back feeling. The easy

atmosphere is shattered when a loud group o f Israeli men walk-in. They f i l l up the space with their voices and their bodies block the path through the restaurant.

Israeli man: You have any rooms? (demanding). ..H o w much? Gai: We have two rooms. They are 700 baht each.

Israeli man: W hat are you talking about? N o more than 500! Get the key! We want to see these rooms!

G ai gets the man the key and vaguely points him up the hill. They go. When they come back they demand for reduction in the room rate, but G a i doesn

V

When G ai went into the kitchen to collect keys fior the room, one o f the Israeli man turned, saw that I had been watching the negotiations and shrugged his shoulders, asking me: G an y o u believe these guys, they're always trying to rip y o u off.V I gave a half-hearted grin and pretended to be intently busy with the book I had sitting in front o f me. Once again I was filled with a sense oj outrage at the presumption o f the relationship ofi affiliation between myself and the tourist man who I did not know, fu s t as 1 had been at the jewellery stall in B angkok (see Chapter One). W hat had this man expected me to say? W hy had he assumed I would agree with him? I fe lt very uncomfortable about being implicated in identity politics in this way.

Watching this meeting o f these two very different styles o f masculinity really bought into focus fo r me the way that many tourist men feminise their T hai male hosts. When Western men meet there is usually a moment when they, (for want o f a better phrase) ‘sige each other up-— there is some recognition o f an equal masculinity in the meeting. B u t what I was observing seemed to entail no recognition by the tourist o f T hai masculinity as equal to Western I Israeli masculinity. I t was almost like the Israeli was speaking to a child. The Israeli immediately assumed a dominant role in the interaction. W h a t was interesting to me was the way that G a i resisted the feminised, infantile identity being ascribed to him, while at the same time appearing amicable, but never giving in on reducing the room price, (which, he told me later, he had inflated by 2 0 0 percent f o r the purpose op excluding these men). Eventually the Israeli group left in an angry ball oj arms, legs, bags and hair. The space emptied out. G ai ambled back to my table and sat down.

A fter seeing this incident unfold, I started to pay m ore attention to the ways that com peting notions o f masculinity were being articulated in everyday encounters betw een Thais and tourists on K o h Pha-ngan. A variety o f discursive and non- discursive practices w here boundaries were asserted and contested becam e apparent. I detail som e o f these practices here.

O n a discursive level, I began to notice that binary notions o f masculinity were regularly articulated in casual conversations w here off-handed references were m ade by Thais and tourists to differential body size betw een Thai and tourist m en. O ne such example was given in C hapter Five, w here a bar w orker m ade a decision n o t to sexually pursue a

particular w om an in the bar because ‘she likes big Israeli m en and look— I am so skinny!’ O th er examples like this arose regularly in conversations I had with various people, Thai and non-T hai alike. In conversations I had w ith Thai m en, they w ould often m ake reference to their lack o f large m uscles and the im plication o f this for their ability to find and keep tourist girlfriends. In conversations I had with tourist m en, they w ould often make reference to the small stature o f T hai m en in the context o f trying to understand how tourist w om en could find T hai m en attractive (which is reflective o f accounts o f the undesirability o f Asian male bodies referred to in the Q ueer literature).

Body size was clearly an im portant signifier o f a particular W estern standard o f masculinity' in encounters betw een T hai and tourist m en. Significantly, body size is n ot universally recognised as a key signifier o f masculinity, as evidenced in the discussion o f negotiations o f masculinity betw een Thai m en in the previous chapter.4 W hen these varied understandings o f w hat it is to be m asculine chafe against each other, the outcom e is often overt confrontation. This co n fron tation is spurred by two key types o f ‘incongruous acts’ (Cresswell, 1999). T he first is underpinned by different readings o f male bodies, and arises out o f b o th Thai and tourist m en assum ing a position o f masculine dom inance in the bar. T he second is m o st often associated w ith the violation o f the expected racial/gender alignm ent o f sexual desire as it is understood by some tourist m en— that is, the ‘abject’ sexual coupling o f tourist w om en and Thai m en. In

4 See also Margold (1995: 279), who argues that in relation to Filipino men, ‘masculinity has not been defined by male biological markers of difference from women (larger body size, greater muscularity) but by qualities of mind [such as the ability to reason cogently, speak eloquently and project a magnetic character] (which women possess, but without comparable social validation)’ (commentary added).

the next section I explore these two types o f encounter, focusing on the ways in which bar and bungalow w orkers assert their version o f dom inant masculinity in the bar.