HEADING SOUTH

Several years ago I watched Charlotte Rampling on the BBC. The actress had been a fantasy of mine after seeing THE NIGHT PORTER and the 60-year-old was promoting her new film by Laurent Cantent's HEADING SOUTH.

This movie featured a rare examination of sex, lust, and lust set in Haiti of the 1970s and Charlotte Rampling played a well-educated tourist frequenting a Caribbean resort for liaisons with young Haitian men.

Having lived in Pattaya I had grown accustomed to the sight of older men with younger women, but older western women have also taken up the trend of December-May relations as a fountain of youth, as long as you don’t look too closely at the reflection in the mirror, then you can get away with believing your lies.

While the West might frown on this difference of age between the sexes.

My sister-in-law called it obscene. My brother said it was a sin. Their daughter rightly protested their stances by saying neither of them turn their heads for someone their own age. They had once tried to fix me up with their friend. She was 40. I was 50. She was a great woman without the usual hang-ups. We had laughs but it never went anywhere. Later she met a man in her 60s and she said, “But he’s so old.”

Youth so wasted on the young, which is why someone older can offer a helping hand to a younger protege so both parties are get what they want and sometimes more, however the subject has seldom been explored from the viewpoint of a female other than a brief glimpse of tropical parity in NIGHT OF THE IGUANA when Ava Gardner vamps with her Mexican pendejos, although John Huston the director depicted her character as an aging nympho. I had thought of her as an early Mrs. Robinson and went to Puerto Vallarta to see that beach. The actual beach boys bragged about their exploits. Ava had done her research.

Sex for older women in America was mostly a memory and Ms. Rambling’s character, Ellen, stated, “If you’re over 40 and not as dumb as a fashion model, the only guys who are interested are natural born losers or husbands whose wives are cheating on them.’’

This movie sold a glimpse of paradise.

Which supposedly long longer existed in Haiti due to the country’s complete collapse. Wrong. I’ve heard of older women going there, Mozambique, Brazil, Angola, and Cuba. I have also seen these women in Bali and Lombok.

Slender men with large women.

Both happy in the trade off without asking too many question since languages get in the way of true understanding. During a long session of raki drinking I asked the Lombok boys how they could satisfy women twice or three times their size. To a man the beach boys raised their fists and pummeled the air like a jack hammer. They obviously had learned the technique from the same master.

Puritan people in the west will excoriate HEADING SOUTH as an anathema to Christian life and call the women with the Balinese beach boys names under their breath, however I think they have found the courage to achieve equality with men their own age who refuse to accept a life of utter loneliness in which no one ever touches anyone.

It’s an illusion, but better than the reality. And the motto is like Vegas 'Whatever happens here, stays here'. Older women aren’t going to get pregnant. They don’t have to fall in love. Except like the men coming to Pattaya, these women in HEADING SOUTH confuse lust for love.

It’s an easy thing to do in an age of no-love.