By Ben Hopkins

You can’t always get what you want – no matter how hard you try.
When Mick Jagger came to Bangkok wild horses couldn’t have stopped Cameron Cooper from getting his feet under the table of a legend – or at least that’s what he thought!

As far as I knew it was all set. My friend, a reasonably well-known person in Thailand whom we will call ‘Ted,’ had been asked to take Mick Jagger and a female friend out for the evening. He could use a ‘point man’ – me – to count ahead and reserve tables so Mick would have his own protected place to sit at each venue. Also along for the ride – or, as it turns out, driving the bus — was Mick’s bodyguard, a wall of muscle we’ll call Harold, on what was supposed to be a rollicking evening out, with people staring enviously as we enjoyed free drinks in the company of Sir Mick. Since the Stones had cancelled their concert in Bangkok, and since Mick was still hanging around, it seemed like a great op­portunity to meet Ol’ rubber lips himself and to gain an exclusive for the magazine I was running at the time.

Ted and I had scoped out Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza, earmark­ing the best and most secure bars to visit while mapping out the itinerary. The hastily assembled plan was that Ted was to meet the Mick camp at 11pm at the Oriental, tell them which venues had been selected and that his point man was already stationed at Nana Plaza, standing by his mobile, poised to smooth the way. As Ted was hailing a taxi, leaving me behind, a nagging feeling hit me that somehow I might get cut out of the loop. “Hey Ted,” I said extending my hand, “Buds for life, right?” He agreed, but somehow…

I positioned myself in a bar at the mouth of Nana Plaza, eyes glued to my phone, and ordered a beer. After an hour of “Where you come from?” “You have wife?” “How old you?” I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to send Ted a text message. “What’s going on?” Ted was enjoying his Mick-decanted Heineken in the stars massive penthouse suite when he heard his phone beep – pricking the bodyguard’s ears. “Who is that?” the professionally para­noid Harold demanded. “Just a friend from Chiang Mai,” said Ted, who later admitted feeling a bit intimidated by the rarified air and his unfamiliarity with the customs of the private planet he had gained temporary access to. He quickly sent a response, then complied with Harold’s request that he switch off his phone.

My phone beeped, “Nana n”. What in Christ did that mean? The north cor­ner? (It later turned out to mean “Nana… no”). Several unanswered messages later, Mick, Ted, the girl and a suspicious-looking Harold strode past me. (Mick, by the way, is very short, has a face like a raisin so that you can’t even find his eyes in the folds of flesh, and moves like a man a third his age.)

There must be some mistake, I thought. They can’t go ahead without their point man – can they? They seemed to think so. I paid my bill and hurried off after them, keen to correct the error. When I entered the Rainbow II, they were already seated at a table on the left. Nobody in the bar appeared to recognize Mick. I sat nearby where Ted could spot me and wave me over to the table, saying, “Hey guys, this is the point man I told you about.”

Ted glanced over in my direction and failed to recognize me – utterly blanked me. It was then that I started feeling like a complete wanker.

I avoided staring, only glancing over a few times nonchalantly, wondering what I was supposed to do next. I was all wired up with no place to go. Then a young woman in a bikini approached me, “What you name?” followed by the 19 usual questions. My protestations that I was a married man had little effect on her dogged perseverance.

Meanwhile, at the beautiful people’s table, an interesting conversation was developing. With a sour look on her face, Mick’s female friend leaned over to Ted, and it wasn’t hard to tell it was the standard western woman in go-go bar conversation, “The guys in here are… pathetic, aren’t they? Take that dis­gusting old guy with that young woman over there,” I had become the focus of their conversation, clearly singled out as a prime example of slime hood. “What’s he going to do with her?” She had conveniently forgotten that she was a woman in her late 20s cuddling up with a man of 59. Ted, of course ex­plained that most men like the repulsive fellow in question just have a couple of drinks, get their ego stroked by the girl for a bit, and eventually go home.

Then Harold hoed in with his opinion, “I think that guy is stalking us. We’re leaving.” They swiftly paid the bill and buggered off.

I suppose it’s Harold’s job to notice these things. Evidently, my body lan­guage tipped him off that I wasn’t a normal punter. There was something sinister about me. Adding up the opinions in the room, I was a wanker, an old pervert, a threat, and a potential customer who hadn’t had a great blow-job in a really long time.

Harold’s suspicions must have been vindicated when I tailed them into their next port of call, Hollywood II, and scanned the room, not realizing they were seated on the small balcony. I sat in front of the stage, where two baby-oiled women a couple of feet away were committing unspeak­able acts. I figured that my last resort – the adoring fan photo op – had slipped away for good, so I dialed some friends who I knew were in the neighborhood, hoping to buoy my spirits with familiar company. Harold assumed I was calling in a gang of gunmen or worse, the pa­parazzi. I guess it was a bit suspicious that I took a seat next to the stage and was so oblivious to the show. Again they got up and escaped from my malign presence – this time to Soi Cowboy, and without me spotting them. Probably just as well. I was about two minutes away from Harold busting my arm.

My friends arrived and commiserated and were kind enough not to make me the sub­ject of the evening’s mirth. Two hours later, we were at the Grace Hotel coffee shop, sur­rounded by policemen who jabbed trun­cheons into my ribs and demanded we piss into little plastic bottles.

Not exactly the way I’d envisioned the evening panning out.

I talked to Ted on the phone the next day, asking him to ex­plain where our little plan went wrong. “I’m really sorry man. You know, I was going to mention you, but they are really in complete control of that private world of theirs, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it -especially after that thing with the phone message. I must have been crazy to think it could work.”

He’d had a lovely evening, and Mick was a very charm­ing down-to-earth guy, he assured me, pausing only to laugh uproariously as I interjected with parallel descriptions of my own big night out. “The funny thing is, nobody recognized Mick but you -strange, huh? I guess we didn’t really need a point man after all.”