In 1993 I went to Tioman island in Malaysia. beautiful beach. remote. jungle. A Western woman came into the restaurant crying that a lizard was in her bathroom. I laughed thinking it was a gecko and grabbed a broom. I went to her bungalow and opened the bathroom to discover a giant monitor lizard over a meter long. I slammed shut the door and said, "I need a bigger broom."
Written Jan 9, 2010
My teenage nephew stopped by 47th Street yesterday evening. It was closing time for our exchange. Zeb goes to a mid-town high school. Public. His father works over at Rockefeller Center. He does something with TV.
"You going home?" Zeb and I lived in Fort Greene. His father worked late. The long-haired student liked my company. He was one of my few contacts with the youth subculture. We shared mutual tastes.
"I'll buy you a beer at Frank's." He was tall for his age and Vixen the Chinese bartender never carded him. He was my nephew and family counted for something at that Fulton Street bar.
"I have to stop at the bookstore to get a Clive Barker book."
"Okay." I packed up the jewelry at a near-record pace and got my pay. It was $100 short. Manny had taken out my advance. Zeb bid good-night to Manny. It was way too far past sunset to say anything about Shabbath. We walked over to the 5th Avenue bookstore. On the way Zeb declared that he was obsessed by going to Hong Kong, if only to purchase a tailored shirt.
"Only one problem. I don't want to fly there. I want to take the Trans-Siberian Express. 6 days and night to Beijing and then another train south."
"That's a trip I've always wanted to take." Samovars, Siberia, and vodka. Dmitri was supposed to be my travel companion. He ODed a month before our departure. A long time ago. "London-Paris-Moscow-Lake Baikal-Ulan Bator-Beijing."
"The summer of 2012." The names of those places were a magical incantation for Zeb. "The end of the world."
"My 60th birthday present to myself." I never lied about my age. My body didn't either. It was a good alternative to the 28-hour flight from JFK to Bangkok. We entered the bookstore and Zeb headed to find the Clive Barker section. I searched out the travel section and pulled out a new edition of Paul Theroux's 1975 classic THE GREAT RAILWAY BAZAAR. This narrative of his rail voyage throughout Asia was an epiphany to long-hair hitchhiker in the 70s. I wanted his life and reading the first line rekindled that desire.
"What's that?" Zeb asked with BOOK OF BLOOD 3 in his hand.
"A travelogue from the 1970s about a train ride from London to Beijing."
"The Trans-Siberian Express?"
"Some of it." Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, and Mongolia covered the majority of chapters. Only the last chapter is devoted to Zeb's dream journey.
Zeb looked at the first line and nodded with appreciation. The tall teenager put down Clive Barker's book and went to the check-out.
"I only have money for one."
The store worker was surprised at the switch. He was also a fan of gore. I told them about THE DAYBREAKERS.
"Exploding bodies, cannibal vampires, and mutant dead with Willem Dafoe as a motorhead hero." I actually enjoyed the film and my old friend was a heroic counterpart to Ethan Hawke's traitorous undead.
Zeb and I decided to walk over to Grand Central Terminal. The station was crowded with weekend travelers and commuters. The gigantic vault rippled back conversations, as we traversed the concourse toward the Lexington Avenue subway.
"You ever travel by train in Asia?"
"A few times." My trips by rail in Asia had been Singapore-Chiang Mai, Kunming-Chengdu, Jogjakarta-Jarkarta, Varanasi-Agra-Delhi, and Delhi-Goa. Paul Theroux and I probably had riden the same trains. Only the Chinese had the money to upgrade the rails these days. "They were all brilliant in comparison to driving on an Interstate. In 1995 I was traveling north from Yunnan to Sichuan along the Yangtze River. It was a night train without any available sleepers. The conductors sat the westerners or fan-gwailo together including several Tibetans with knives in their belts. The Chinese were scared of them, although a drunk berated them, until a very attractive female soldier snapped a collar around his neck and led him away. She was so beautiful."
"Hot?"
"It had been summer time and the open windows cooled the passenger car. Sleep was impossible, so we drank beer and ate food. The Chinese threw their garbage out the window. We put ours in plastic bags. During the night a cleaning lady swept up the mess. Upon seeing our bags of garbage she threw them out the window. After that we did too. It was so liberating to not worry about littering. A great train ride. From Chengdu I took a plane to Tibet, but that's another story."
"You have a lot of them."
"Yeah, and they're all true."
"All of them."
"If it sounds like a lie, then it's true."
"And if it sounds true?" Zeb liked most teenagers didn't trust anyone over twenty.
"Then it's even more true, because I'm too lazy to lie."
And that's the honest truth both on the Lexington Avenue train and all those everywhere else in the world. The track runs straight except for where it curves and then it gets straight again. Just like the truth.
Playboy recently listed Detroit as the nation's # 1 unsexy city.
Murder, rust factories, and overweight people are the LimpDs calling cards, nothing about Motor City says 'sexy' better than the MC5, Grand Funk Railroad, and Wendy Whitelaw.
But Detroit has competition from Asia, as indicated by the Global Sexual Wellbeing Survey released at the World Congress on Sexual Health in Sydney.
Three cities in Asia topped the list of places where people are having sex less than the global average of 106 times a year.
Singapore, Tokyo, and Bangkok.
Tokyo citizens are the most infrequent sexual practitioners at 48 couplings per annum. The Japanese are also the least satisfied with their sex lives. Limp T unrocks.
Small penises, no endurance, and too little of it as well. No wonder Japanese women shag brothers in New York city like they were racial engineering a new culture. Yo Nisei.
My ex-, Vee, worked at a Japanese karaoke bar in Pattaya. Sex was 3000 baht/session. The girls loved their job. The son of the Rising Sun shut their eyes and shuttered in less than a minute.
Sayonara teelak.
The most satisfied with the Nigerians at 79% who take 24 minutes to reach a happy ending.
Strangely the Chinese were seventh, which must be from eating friend alligator cock and bulls' balls.
Hong Kong (32 percent), Australia (40), Singapore (41), Thailand (42) and New Zealand (43) were all bottom feeders in the sea of sexual satisfaction.
"All work and no play."
Of course women don't orgasm as much as men, but that's because they spent so much energy trying to fake it.
But Bangkok as a non-erotic city?
You ride the Skytrain and see thousands of people in a zombie state of mass consumerism. Nana Plaza was a turn-off and Patpong even more of a buzzkill. Sitting at the Oriental Hotel I visual surveyed the guests and figured only 3 in a hundred were having sex having sex and I was one of them.
Most of the female staff were virgins.
Work is all important.
Same as New York.
Last week I attended a dinner party in Soho and asked, "When was the last time you had sex?"
Few wanted to answer.
Mostly because they were embarrassed and even worse they couldn't remember when.
The women thought my question was a crude come-on.
Then again the consumer class ony takes pleasure rom sopping.
Last week I flew fifteen hours to the Orient to deliver a very expensive handbag to a Hong Kong billionaire.
After checking into my reserved Kowloon hotel room a little before dawn I searched Moby Road for an open restaurant. Everything was closed, except for a 7/11. I bought a big can of beer and two rice cakes. The sun rose in the east. The air was sultry, sweat dripped from my face, and I sat by the waters of the Fragrant Harbor for the first in my life.
Old imperial Hong Kong had been the jewel of the British Empire.
Now THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG was buried under concrete.
To the east lay China.
I cracked open my beer and ate the rice cake in two bites.
It was good to be back in Asia.
It's all about coming to grips with the contrasting views of good and bad.
Touching someone on the head is bad for a Thai.
Patting someone on the head is good for a farang.
These gestures can sear the soul, yet we can find a common ground if we are willing to open our minds to the ways of the East.
Adaptations of ZEN
1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me either. Just pretty much leave me the hell alone.
2. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
3. it's always darkest before dawn. So if you're going to steal your
neighbor's newspaper, that's the time to do it.
4. Sex is like air -- it's not important unless you aren't getting any.
5. Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
6. No one is listening until you fart.
7. Always remember you are unique -- just like everyone else.
8. Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
9. If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
10. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away, and you have their shoes.
11. If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
12. Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
13. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.
14. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
15. Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windshield.
16. Don't worry--It only seems kinky the first time.
17. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
18. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it back in your pocket.
19. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
20. Duct tape is like the Force--It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
21. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
22. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
23. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
24. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
25. We are born naked, wet, and hungry, and get slapped on our ass...then things get worse.
26. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
27. There is a fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness".
28. No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too
seriously.
29. There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday...around age 11.
30. Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
