Jen was playing this for some reason this morning (something to do with Abba), and it hit me: the song is about the transformative nature of sex with a ladyboy.   All that talk of chess?  Window dressing!  Excuse for escapade!

Let’s get to it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmoEHnUpjk

So, let’s start with the basics.  The basic choral refrain is:

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster

We’ll leave the obviousness of the 4th & 5th chorus lines until later.

This sentence got me thinking about the “one X and Y” construct in English…which is what led me to my final conclusion.  YES! It is based on one line, completely ignoring the line that basically states the obvious later.  Because you don’t need to read anything into the obvious.

Anyway.  So, it may not look that way at first, but the “one X and Y” construct denotes sequentiality.  Normally you’d assume “X & Y” means that two things occur/exist together, but adding “one” changes things – possibly because it binds the X clause, forcing a separation from the Y? Way too rusty to actually remember the specifics, so I’m going to go all armchair ling on ya’ll.

Peruse:

“One trip to the UK and she thinks she knows everything about Europe.”

“One sip of real beer and you’ll never go back to that crap.”

“One bite of that nasty fish and she threw up.”

In each of these cases the meaning is clearly (at least to me): After X occurs, then Y.  Even though Y contains a different tense each time (present, ?future?, past) the events or states are still clearly occurring after X.  In fact – X is clearly the cause of Y!  For these constructions, X works best tenseless (I’m sure there’s a technical term here, but again – long since gone from my brain) – and in fact seems to get its tense from Y.  Man I wish I actually remembered linguistics and could sort this out.  I’ll have to dig around later…

SO.  Where am I going with all this?

One night in Bangkok and the world’s your oyster

Translation:

After one night in Bangkok, you are getting everything you want from life. (idiom def: world’s your oyster).

ie something happened (or will happen) in that one night that will allow to take full advantage of life.

Chess tournaments don’t happen at night, so that’s not it.

What does the phrase “one night” conjure?   First association for me is “one night stand” ie sex.

What is Thailand known for?  Drugs, child porn, ladyboys!  Of these 3, the last seems most likely – as serious drug usage would probably ruin our protagonists chances as a continuing chess star right?  And I seriously fucking hope no one is going to right a song about the glories of child porn.

How would a one night stand with a ladyboy cause such a profound change in someone?  You got me, but the author obviously thinks they know the answer.  Personal experience?  Perhaps the strength of personality and clarity that comes from knowingly having sex with a woman you know is a man but that still looks like a woman…conquering your sexual confusions?  Or maybe its just the sheer domination power of taking someone in the ass…  O.o

The rest of the chorus:

The bars are temples but the pearls ain’t free
You’ll find a god in every golden cloister
And if you’re lucky then the god’s a she
I can feel an angel sliding up to me

Note the use of “god” (male), even when that “god” is identified as a she.  The speaker doesn’t seem to think  the god’s gender appearance bears on whether or not you should engage in some “worship” with them – you should do it either way – but if the (male) god has a female gender appearance – jackpot!

The rest of the song teeters back and forth between chess metaphors and gay sex innuendo, often invoking both.  Here’s  a classic:

don’t see you guys rating
The kind of mate I’m contemplating
I’d let you watch, I would invite you
But the queens we use would not excite you

I don’t think I need to break that down for you do I?

So, what have we learned?

1. Andy thinks about weird shit.

2. The songwriter was into dudes, preferably dudes that looked like ladies.

My Linguistics is so rusty I can’t recall the proper way to present the semantics, but basically it’s the other usage of only.

Reading 1: (The one I’ve been operating under for the last 14 years) He only wants to be with her, and no one else.

Reading 2: (The one that just came to me in a moment of zen on the way back from the grocery store) He only wants to be with her, and nothing more.  ie, he just wants to tap that ass, not ring it.  The ring line in particular (“but she wants to wear my ring” – or something like that) in particular makes much more sense.

Brains are funny things.