Noy gave him a final squeeze and let go. ‘Don’t make a date when you get done working,’ he told Suko. ‘Take me home with you.’

Suko did, and even after a night on Patpong, they puzzled out one another’s bodies like the streets of an unfamiliar city. Soon they were the undisputed stars of the Hi-Way’s live sex shows; they knew how to love each other in private and how to make it look good in public. They made twice as much money as the other boys. Suko started saving up for a plane ticket.

But Noy spent his money on trinkets: T-shirts printed with obscene slogans, little bags of pot and pills, even a green glow-in-the-dark dildo to use in their stage show. In the end, Noy was just smart enough to make his stupidity utterly infuriating.

I’m really leaving, Suko would tell him as they lay entwined on a straw pallet in the room they rented above a cheap restaurant, as the odours of nam pla and chili oil wafted through the open window to mingle with the scent of their lovemaking. When I save up enough, I’m going to do it. You can come, but I won’t wait for you once I have the money, not knowing how many ways I could lose this chance.

But Noy never believed him, not until the night Suko showed him the one-way ticket. And how Noy cried then, real tears such as Suko had never thought to see from him, great childish tears that reddened his smooth skin and made his eyes swell to slits. He clutched at Suko’s hands and slobbered on them and begged him not to go until Suko wanted to shove him face-first into the Patpong mud.

This is all you want? Suko demanded, waving a hand at the tawdry neon, the ramshackle bars, the Thai boys and girls putting everything on display with a clearly marked price tag: their flesh, their hunger, and if they stayed long enough, their souls. This is enough for you? Well, it isn’t enough for me.