After I broke up with my first girlfriend I changed a lot. From a normal school boy into a naughty one. I started to hang out with those friends whom my girlfriend didn’t like. The reason she didn’t like them is because they were never serious with any girls. They just played around with girls and treated them like a toy. I started to hang out with them more and more. One day I became one of them, a “butterfly boy”.

Since I became a butterfly boy, my attitude toward girls was different. I changed from white to black, good to bad. I didn’t treat girls like I used to do before. I began to have more than one girl at the same time and I wasn’t being serious with any of them. I played around with them like I played a game. At that time, I never thought about starting a serious relationship again. It wasn’t in my head. What I had in my head was mostly about getting more girls for myself and playing with them until they had satisfied me.

During this time I never ran out of girls because I was always looking for new ones. Most of my girls I met by the market and on the telephone chat lines. When I walked around the market with my friends and I saw a cute girl, I always went up to them and asked for their phone number. Then I rang and flirted with them. I had dozens of phone numbers. Sometimes I couldn’t remember which one was which. But I just kept chatting with them until I started to remember.

Sometimes one girl saw me dating another girl. Two of them faced each other and asked me to choose one. If I didn’t want to choose or I was in a bad mood, I just broke up with both of them. I didn’t care. Never cared at all about which girl was going to stay, which girl was going to go. But if sometimes I had to choose, I always chose the one that was cuter, richer or more importantly made me feel more satisfied.

But a butterfly can’t live forever. It has to die one day and that day was coming to the “Big Lovely Butterfly” so fast. My friend gave me the phone number of his girlfriend’s friend. Her name was Kra-tai. I took it and then rang her. Her voice, when she first picked up the phone, was so sweet. I really liked it. I talked to her and flirted with her.

After that we chatted every night on the phone. I started to realise that I didn’t talk to the rest of my girls that much any more. The relationship between Kra-tai and me was getting better and closer every day. I told her everything about myself. I even told her about me being a “Big Lovely Butterfly”. She seemed to be OK with it. I began to realise that I was in love and about to have a serious relationship again. I felt good and bad mixed together.

Now I know why I became a butterfly boy. I think it is because I was too scared to have a serious relationship with a girl. I was scared to love, scared to get hurt and scared that the same story would happen to me again. I didn’t want to get hurt so I didn’t love anyone.

The “Big Lovely Butterfly” now became a “small butterfly”. It was all because a superb girl became my girlfriend. I accepted then that I loved her and when I accepted that, the butterfly started to change. It stayed at “The Lovely Flower” most of the time. Even though it sometimes flew away for a while, each time it would come back to “The Lovely Flower” which it loved very much. Now this butterfly will live with this “Lovely Flower” until the day they both die.

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This is the uncut version of Panrit's article that first appeared in his Gor's World column in the Bangkok Post when he was 16 years old. We will be posting his full versions every Sunday for him while he is still in prison. Read more about Gor at his website www.ThailandLife.com.