Money Is Evil

The Great White Hope by Peter Nolan Smith

A good percentage of the spam cluttering my email inbox are ads for penis enhancements. The rest range from Viagra and porno to baldness and obesity cures. None of them are very sophisticated, since they are aimed at bald fat man with sexual issues. I've had a good sex life. Not this year. I'm living in America and 56 year-old men don't get much action from sexually active women in their 20s, but I wonder if all that would change if I were the reincarnation of John Holmes.

This legend of porno starred in over 2500 XXX films in the 70s.

His penis was legend.

The other night I was at the Sub-Mercer. The crowd was texting friends and drinking expensive concoctions. I was easily the oldest man in the bar. My pin-striped suit looked imported. Thailand not Italy. A woman stood beside me. Her eyes sized up my potential.

Older man maybe money.

"I sell diamonds." Women love diamonds.

"Really." The conversation quickly spun the globe to abruptly land on this following statement.

"I'm related to John Holmes."

"Let me see it." Brenda was a PR rep for Chanel. A height advantage from stiletto heels. Blonde hair from a colorist. Long trim legs. Lots of gym. I guessed her age around 38. Her wardrobe cost more than my annual beer expenditure. Her legs were long and her stilettos gave her an unfair height advantage.

"See what?" I was playing dumb. John Holmes wasn't known for his smarts.

"Your cock." Nice girls don't call your penis a cock. Brenda wasn't a nice girl, but she was fun.

"Here?" The bar was two-deep with the famed New York nightlife.

"You want to pay for a room upstairs for privacy?" This was an invitation.

"What about the bathroom?" Rooms at the Mercer Hotel were expensive. The toilet was closer.

"What kind of girl do you think I am?" Her outrage didn't fly at 2am.

"The kind of girl who would want to know John Holmes' cousin."

"Cousin?" Her eyes narrowed as her mind did genetic math. "A brother might mean you have a 10 inch cock, but cousin could mean anything. I'll give it a rain check."

She walked off with a young rocker. She tapped a beer can on her way out the door for my benefit. I wonder if those vacuums really work for enlargement.

Not that it really matters.

THe White Donkey Hope

John Holmes hailed as the white hope for XXX fans throughout the 70s. His heroic hammer was a matter of pride for the Caucasian males suffering the pangs of Black Panther penis envy. He was our Ali. 12 inches of white thunder and I always wanted one day to unzip my zipper and have a woman say, "Not with that, you don't."

I even contemplated a penis transplant.

Donkey to man.

Only for one day.

Just to hear the scream of disbelief, however judging from the number of spam emails offering penis enlargement, it seems like the age of smallitis has come to an end. Every porno site reveals bigger and bigger male members. Impossibly big. Scary big. ET Big.

So I've decided to stay with my natural self.

It's been with me for years multi-tasking according to my needs.

Maybe in the next life I'll be bequeathed with a monster.

Actually the biggest penis I ever saw on a white man was Terri Toye, but she was a transvestite, so I guess she really doesn't count.

AIN'T SUPERSTITIOUS - Jeff Beck 1968

Unbelievable band with Rod Stewart as front man and the ex-Yardbirds' guitarist playing his Fender Stratocaster covering Willie Dixon's 1961 classic.

I bought the LP.

$2.99

Still have the CD.

Go to this URL to hear AIN'T SUPERSTITIOUS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSHFhkj-hm4

Superstitions a la Carte

Thais have more superstitions about food than the Irish have about beer.

Here’s a short list of don’t.

Eating a double banana will give a woman twins, which must be tough for those showgirls doing the banana tricks at go-gos.

Eating before your elders will reincarnate you as a dog. This rule is waved for disasters and fast food restaurants.

Eating food without rice will give you rickets.

Eating salt under a tree will kill the tree.

Eating other people’s food without permission will swell your throat, so schnorrers beware. Schnorrer is a Yiddish term for people who eat from another person’s plate without permission. I’m sure there’s lots of Yiddish superstitions too.

Eating a kids’ left-overs will make them naughty.

Eating before monk during the day will turn you into a ghost.

Eating corn with the flu will raise your temperature.

Never eat all the rice on your evening plate. Leave a little for the ghosts.

Eating chicken feet will give you bad handwriting. My wife loves chicken feet. Yech.

Eating chili sauce from a mortar bowl will give your kid big lips.

Eating turtles will make you walk slow. Eating chicken feet make me sick.

The last is about eating dog. I’ve feasted on dog in Indonesia. It doesn’t taste like chicken feet. It’s actually delicious, but Thais think if you eat it, then you will be possess by the dog’s spirit. Arf Arf.

Is that such a bad thing?

The Myth of Monkey Brains

I’ve eaten a number of strange ‘delicacies’ on my travels; snails in France, dog in Indonesia, fried rats and insects in Thailand, alligator in Florida, and sausage pies in the UK, but whenever the discussions comes around the table to the most revolting meal in the world the vote unanimously goes to the fabled Monkey brain feast in Hong Kong, where the skull of the monkeys are sliced from the animal while they are still living and the diners are given long spoons with which to scoop out the raw shaking simian cerebellum. While the Chinese will eat almost anything, live monkey brains are not on the menu according to most international cuisine experts. Dead monkey brains are served in several locations throughout Asia. I’ve seen monkeys eaten in Central American and SE Asia, but never brought myself to dine on them, since the roasted bodies look like little babies.

There are accounts of people eating live brains from the 1940s such as this one.

“The monkey’s head was supported by its neck in a bracket, two pieces of wood with a semicircular hole on each side such that when you put them together, they form a complete circle around the animal’s neck, allowing the head to be exposed above the plank. The hair around the head is shone with a shaving razor. A small chisel and a hammer is used to quickly chisel a circle around the crown, and the top part of the skull is removed. A teaspoon is used to scoop up the brain, which is immediately eaten. This has to be done before the monkey dies.”

Of course this could be urban myth, but I’m not making any effort to find out if it’s true or not.

Above is a photo of chilled monkey brains.

Ain't for me.

Insects Yum Yum

Most tourists to Thailand are fascinated by the food cart selling with fried insects ie crickets, grubs, cockroaches, scorpions, and several unidentified members of the insect species. Photos cost 10 baht. Westerners react with revulsion and Thais revel in daring farangs to cross that culinary line in hopes of witnessing the European upchuck the crawly creatures as if they were rehearsing for a musical version of THE EXORCIST III.

Back in 1991 I caught a songthaew truck from Fang. It was headed for Doi Mai Salong, the old opium HQ of the exiled Chinese Armies. The road was dirt and the villages few. Halfway to our destination the driver stopped for an old lady and her granddaughter. She was a goddess bless with a naive innocence.

Her bag was buzzing.

The granddaughter had long black hair the color of the night between curtains of the aurora borealis. She answered my inquisitive gaze by revealing a weaved basket filled with hundreds of live crickets. My smile flattened to a frown and her eyes revealed that the distance between us was unbridgeable. Her grandmother laughed at the awkwardness and opened her basket. There was no buzzing. She scooped out a handful of cooked grubs onto a banana leaf.

I ate one tentatively, expecting its contents to transform me into Jeff Goldblum’s stand-in for THE FLY. Instead I was pleasantly surprised by the salty nutty taste. Crunchy too.

My grandmother and goddess got off before Doi Mai Salong. She blew a kiss good-bye. I savored the glance over her shoulder, almost like I was supposed to follow her down the footpath to a hidden valley, where we’d eat insects and smoke opium for the rest of our lives.

She’d be about 35 now. Not old for a Thai woman.

Since then whenever Thais offer me grubs or crickets, I make a big show about how disgusting insects are, then eat them like pop corn, thus depriving the audience of their sadistic delight.

555 in your face, however if I attempted a large cockroach, my stomach would revolt in revulsion. That insect ruled the East Village. They trekked far and wide for crud. I hated them crawling across my face, while I was lying in bed.

My efforts to eliminate the pests were futile. Sprays, traps, and poisons had no effect. They infested the 3rd floor flat like Israelis taking over Palestine. The management sprayed my place. I couldn’t move back into 3E for a week afterwards. The effect of the cockroaches was negligible. They were the plague designed to outlast man and the summer breed their hordes by the billions. The marches behind my apartment's wall echoed with the sound of their little feet on rotting plaster.

I escaped their tyranny to the Hamptons. A welcome guest to a palatial seaside cottage until vagrant cockroaches piggybacked my bag and infested paradise. My invitation was revoked by the curse of cockroaches.

Persona non grata.

The reign seemed eternal until October 1997. My married mistress from Carolina remarked that she hadn't seen a cockroach during her weeklong stay.

"What do you know about cockroaches?" I suspected that they were gathering forces. I had been cooking for guests every night. Their objective had to be my stove. The surface wore a semi-thick patina was splattered olive oil and butter.

"I'm from the South, precious." Ms. Carolina was a hunter. Her shooting was a point of pride. She had good eyes. "Your cockroaches are pets in comparison to the swamp critters crawling around my home."

"And?"

"And your place is cockroach-free."

Ms Carolina was correct. I checked under the sink and in the refrigerator. Not a dead body in sight. At first I was happy, then remembered that cockroaches were supposed to outlive the human race.

If they were gone, why were we still here?

“Be grateful and don’t ask so many questions.”

My friends hadn’t seen any cockroaches either. It was a Pied Piper of Hamblin type of miracle. St. Padraic leading them into the East River. And they never came back.

Not while I was a New Yorker, but the big water bugs made an appearance at my house on Moo X in Pattaya, Thailand as a Thai delicacy. A motorcycle cart cruised the neighborhoods with his offering of bugs. The specialty was cockroches two inches long. Thai women loved them.

My greatest fear in Pattaya is having a motorcycle accident with a scooter sidecar selling insects. The collision would send me flying into the slop of fried fly grubs, cockroaches, scorpions, and crickets. Thais would laugh at the manner of my demise. They had a morbid sense of humor.

After much prodding I tried grubs. They were tasty, but I had to ask myself, “How do these guys kill the insects?”

Have little SS gangs of insects murdering for them?

No.

Spray them with DDT?

The bugs did leave a funny taste in the mouth.

The mystery was solved during my last visit to Ban Nok.

During a rain storm Mam's aunt filled a bucket with water and illuminated a neon light. The bugs gather around the light and fell into the water. The old lady scooped the drowned insects out of the water to fry in boiling oil. No DDT or mini-gallows or electric chairs. A light, a tub of water, and a wok filled with oil. 30 seconds and done to the sound of lip smacking from the gathering.

Fresh bugs like in STARSHIP TROOPERS, only those bugs fought back.

Thank the stars they have not traveled here yet.