About the Author: William John Stapleton
The first money William John Stapleton ever made out of writing was in 1972 when he was co-winner of a short story competition held by what was then Australia's leading cultural celebration, the Adelaide Arts Festival. He graduated from Macquarie University in Sydney in 1975 with a double major in philosophy and anthropology and did post- graduate work with the Sociology Department at Flinders University. His articles and fiction have appeared in a range of magazines, newspapers and anthologies. Stapleton joined the staff of The Sydney Morning Herald in 1986. In 2004 he moved to The Australian, leaving after 15 years. As a general news reporter in Sydney John Stapleton, or "Stapo" as he was widely known, covered literally thousands of stories: from the funerals of bikies, children and dignitaries to fires, floods, droughts and demonstrations of all kinds. In 2000 he helped found the world's longest running father's show, Dads On The Air. After leaving The Australian in 2009 he established A Sense of Place Publishing while traveling in S.E. Asia.
The unique enterprise A Sense Of Place Publishing has just released its newest publication, Bangkok Busted: You Die For Sure. This is a deeply personal story by author William John Stapleton on the fallout after he wrote a book about being robbed, lied to and deceived by one of the city's go-go boys and the subsequent personal distress and widespread public ridicule he endured.
Few foreigners are crazy brave or stupidly insane enough to tell their often embarrassing and humiliating stories of falling for the practiced love lies peddled to them by Thai sex workers.
Such stories have resulted on the heterosexual side of the ledger in books such as My Private Dancer and Confessions of a Bangkok Private Eye. In the author's case he wrote The Twilight Soi, a book which made him a reviled figure by the Thai public who swallowed the lie that the book was an insult to Thailand, to its culture and to its sex workers. It is not and was never intended to be any such thing.
"Most people in Asia cannot imagine why anybody would write a story admitting to their own stupidity and misguided conduct in falling for the 'I love you very much I miss you very much' patter of their prostitutes, either male or female," Stapleton says. "For a start, I first wrote the Twilight Soi and now Bangkok Busted: You Die For Sure because painters paint, builders build and writers write, and that's what do.
"The story I related is so bizarre that I would not have believed it if it had not happened to me. The Thais were outraged that a foreigner as imperfect as myself should object to being robbed, cheated and publicly ridiculed. But I wanted to tell this story partly because I did not want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.
"These men often make easy prey. They are lonely, they are out of their own comfort zones and away from the spying eyes of friends, family and work colleagues, often are without obligations of work or children for the first time in their lives, and run off the rails in the torrid atmosphere of Asia and its bars. They often enough end up suiciding."
