A Golden Triangle indeed

This is apropos of nothing, really, other than more evidence that I have much too much time on my hands. Also, nothing funny here, except my attempts at armchair scholarship:

As Thailand's southern provinces are increasingly fraught with Islamist separatist "tensions" -- I love that word, such a bland descriptor for indiscriminate bombings and, for example, the recent beheading of a clothing vendor while he sat having tea in a cafe -- I have been thinking about Islam and sex. More specifically, about the Islamic obsession with it, and the fact that -- I believe, without any supporting evidence -- that this obsession is one of the core reasons for the current Islamic hostility to Western values. After all, if you are willing to flog or decapitate a woman for prostitution or even being alone in the company of an unrelated man, even the tepid sexuality of a "Friends" episode beamed via sattelite is going to be very alarming (on this score generally, I recommend Benjamin Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld, although the Amazon reader reviews are reasonably uneven).

My thoughts are arrived at via a stripper at a friend's bachelor party and the shy brother of the bride. As a good stripper, she knew she was supposed to lavish some plurality of her attention on him. Being none too worldly and freshly wed himself, though, he was obviously embarassed. And so, as she crabwalked naked towards him across a large table -- and he kept looking every possible way but at her oh-so obvious vagina -- she sought to palliate this strategy of humilation with these unexpectedly memorable words:

"Don't worry, honey, it's only geometry."

And she was spot on, though perhaps her use of "only" is where she went astray. Because math, it turns out, is pivotal to our sense of the erotic. Research shows that, both historically and cross culturally, the ideals of female beauty have in common a waist-hip ratio of .70, with other key factors being bust proportionality and bilateral symmetry. The details, obviously, vary infinitely as to time and place, but the ratios and the primacy accorded symmetry and proportionality have remained suprisingly consistent templates.

And while the only images of Islam in the West are currently either a shapeless woman in a black shift or a frenzied lunatic wielding a katanah, the fact is that, historically, Islam has produced among the most consistently innovative mathematical scholars. Indeed, such scholars were profoundly instrumental in establishing the disciplines of geometry and algrebra, with one author calling Islamic scholars "indisputably the founders of plane and spherical trigonometry." And what is sexual attraction other than the most, um, well, naked expression of "plane and spherical trigonometry? (Irvine Welsh once referred to the rhetorical question as the tool of trade for "burds and psychos," to which I will add the under-researched).

But Islamic math was not plain old utilitarian math, simply designed to get their spice ships to Damascus all the faster. Rather, it was math steeped in, and indeed fundamentally informed by, religious belief. As one (admittedly uncompelling) scholar puts it:

"Although the shapes and structures are based on the geometry of Euclid and other Greek mathematicians, Islamic artists used them to create visual statements about religious ideas.

One explanation of this practice was that Mohammad had warned against the worship of idols; this prohibition was understood as a commandment against representation of human or animal forms. Geometric forms were an acceptable substitute for the proscribed forms.

An even more important reason is that geometric systems and Islamic religious values, though expressed in different forms, say similar things about universal values. In Islamic art, infinitely repeating patterns represent the unchanging laws of God. Moslems are expected to observe strict rules of behavior exactly as they were orginally set forth by Mohammad in the seventh century. These rules are known as the "Pillars of Faith":

1) pronouncing the creed (chantingan affirmation of the existence of one God and that God is Allah)
2) praying, in a precisely defined ritual of words and motions, five times a day
3) giving alms
4) fasting during the month of Ramadan (time varies according to lunar calendar)
5) making, during a lifetime, at least one pilgramage to the city of Mecca in Arabia

The strict rules for construction of geometric patterns provide a visual analogy to religious rules of behavior." http://www.askasia.org/frclasrm/lessplan/l000030.htm

So my thought is this: perhaps much of the Islamic attitude towards sex, however overlaid with sharia and its attendant protocol, derives from a deep and abiding attunement to the inextricable intertwining of the erotic and the divine in the geometric and algebraic. Under such a theory, viewing women as the apotheosis of that juncture is compelled by the twin logics of religion and biology. And this, in some ways, is not without parallel in its brother religion of Judaism; the same way that Jews keep their Torah scrolls not only locked in the ark but typically clothed as well -- allowed to be naked and examined only in accordance with strict rules and strict adherence to the protocol derived from those rules -- maybe it is in precisely the same impulse that leads Islam to keep its women so tightly under wraps. Hell, as long as I am speculating out my butt, I'll go even further and posit that Judaism is a religion that valorizes language, while Islam is a religion that valorizes form, but that parallel beliefs and practices have sprung about those objects of valorization.

This might not be so wacky; after all, Jews kabbahlistically plumb the depths of the Torah -- its words -- in search of mathematical order that will reveal the will if not the face of God; perhaps Islam already knows it sleeps next to it every night.

In other words -- without in any way endorsing the subjugation of women -- perhaps we can at least recognize, if not a legitimacy, at least an understandability, to the Islamic attitude towards women and sex. One worthy at least of thoughtful consideration and interrogation, rather than either the insincere pieties of "to each his own"-ism or the "whattabunchanutjobs" approaches that hallmark most public discussion of the issue.

It would definitely -- def.in.ite.ly. -- help if I knew what I was talking about.

Will somebody smarter and better informed than me let me know if I'm on to anything at all here?

Street thoughts

A law school professor of mine, Bill Miller, wrote in his Anatomy of Disgust about a creeping failure in our "social competencies," as he called them, as we tend towards middle-age -- stray hairs about our nose and ears not only go unplucked, but we are increasingly indifferent to that fact.

This might explain, as I plummet towards 40 like a novice, limbless cliff diver, why I walk around Thailand in Tivas, Diesel t-shirts (??!!), and 3/4 length shorts bursting with zippers, pull strings and specialized cell phone pockets (which I now knowcontribute negligibly at best to peventing loss of cell phones). I am an absurdity tending towards gray, America's most visible and most grotesque export, the sort of embarassing monkey that, when I was younger, I would have prayed to be claimed by a tsunami of one. Now? Eh. That's the best I can manage. Eh.

And while I am on the subject of appearence, you can say you heard it hear first: The Thai are becoming fat. The successful franchising of American food is making this place look like the States in every possible way. The young ones, especially. You see it everywhere -- tubby little Buddhas wandering about, clamoring for bags of meat and fat. Today, four school girls in their early teens go into the elevator -- each one obese even by American standards, and all clutching electric blue Slurpies, or some such monstrosity. So, boys, my advice to you is get over here and get your love groove on before McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Pizza Factory, KFC and Dairy Queen makes it just as depressing as home.

I need a job

or at least just get out of the bars. The other night I walked into a place where the women are OBVIOUSLY dressed up to resemble schoolgirls -- white short sleeved shirts, small red plaid ties with matching plaid skirts. My first thought, though, on seeing the tiny ties and short sleeved shirts was "Why are they all dressed like Damon Runyon detectives?"

It's a very bad a sign that, when I saw this, I thought of this.

All pig. No poke.

Last night, I am speaking to Niu, a stunning 21 year old woman that I know. And I do mean stunning: 5'6", 120 lbs, skin faintly gold and unblemished, eyes so black they seem to be all pupil, thick long hair just as black, and lips so full they make you weep that this country has a tradition of kissing as about as robust as the tradition of Jewish drinking songs. In her manner, she is all playfulness and grace. Sometimes I find her so lovely that I do not trust myself to look at her full-on.

We are at the bar where she works as a hostess, which essentially means playing patticake with white shmucks like me so we'll buy her drinks (off of which she makes a commission). She doesn't have to fuck the customers -- in fact, is not allowed to -- but her earnings correlate directly to her willingness to allow grubby hands to roam at will. Cursed as I am these days with a conscience, I buy her drinks but keep my hands to myself, so I am a bit of a respite for her.

"So, Niu," I ask in my broken Thai during one such respite, "what would you rather do for a living?" This is a question I often ask, and my heart is almost as often broken because the girls -- and they are girls -- are seemingly incapable of imagining, let alone attaining, an alternate livelihood.

My hopes rise, however, as this breathtaking model gives the question serious consideration. Finally, she fixes me with those eyes, and the answer slips as softly past those lips as I am dying to slip my tongue over them:

"A farmer," she says, "with pigs."

One cannot say that she lacks for dreams, because she hastens to add, "Like my parents. Only with more pigs."

Who have, it turns out, four.

How can a man not love a country where the angels dream of tending pigs -- at least five of them?

Other developments of note:

(A) I recently met a Western tourist who confessed to a bad case of dysentery. Food in, food out, and out in record time at that. Weeks of this. Having myself spent the last month skulking about corner computers at internet cafes where I anxiously compared my enduring GI distress to descriptions of "seroconversion," I found this all very relieving. God bless the Jews, and their assumption that the world finds the machinations of their bowels as fascinating as they do.

(B) I went to a club at the Bangkok Novotel with the above mentioned tourist. She is fun and smart, but a big ol' Daughter of Esther -- big tits, big ass -- which means she is sexually persona non grata around here, except among overheated Arabs and Indians. But what I realized, as she recited the standard-and-by-now-quite-boring litany of complaints about the "all the gross old guys hooking up with young Thai girls," is that Western girls in Thailand experience a double whammy: Not only are they competing against women most likely thinner, younger, more compliant and cheaper to maintain, BUT all the guys that they have had the unquestioned right to kick to the curb -- "eew, he's bald, fat, old, greasy, etc." -- are happily getting laid. So not only have Western women been excluded from competing in the market, but the market even fails to conform to a comprehensible logic. I should have some pity -- horniness and anomie are a bad combo. But seeing as I spent years 14 through 35 in exactly that state and endured dry spells measured in geologic time without feminine pity or accomodation, I think savoring some well-earned Schadenfreude -- or "sahmnanah," as the Thai would have it -- is in order. Quite tasty, actually.

(C) I put that post about Thailand up on Craigslist, and got a response from a guy who boasted about "fucking a lot of hos n bitches" over here and giving them only "breakfast and wife-beaters" in return. He berated me for making all "white ppl look like dumbos." My apologies to all white ppl out there. I will do my best going forward not to taint you with my compassion.

(D) I just came from a bar called "Taffy's Hairy Pie" where I went to buy a T-shirt for a friend and stayed to get my ass whipped -- twice -- at pool. I could not resist a bar with that kind of gorge-rising name but Taffy's unfortunately managed to be both dull and dark although, more unfortunately, not dark enough to camoflauge (sp?) the pock marks and rolls of fat of the fat, pocky whore who administered the first ass-whupping. The second was from a large Swede named Henrik, who cockily said things like "Thank you very big" when I left him an easy shot. It was all I could do to not flatten his poffertjes with my cue.

(E) On the upside, Henrik had a fat Norwegian friend named Frank, who looked and spoke exactly as I assume John C. Reilly would look and speak after a savage three-day "yaa baa" binge. Although fluent in English and seemingly savvy world travelers, both Henrik and Frank were at a loss as to what a "hairy pie" could possibly be. After I explained, Frank looked utterly baffled before saying, with genuine surprise, "But you don't want a hairy one." To his credit, the solution, however oddly phrased and disturbingly pantomimed -- "Oh. You could buy one and just shave it yourself" -- did occur to him pretty quickly.

Well, um, that's it. Enjoy.

And remember: Thailand means never being more than an arm's length away from a pirated copy of "Hart's War."

Blogging for blogging's sake

Not much new, but thought I'd try updating more frequently than once every two months:

Recently had my first Asian episode of gastric distress, which is not bad considering that I am an aging Jew on an unfamiliar diet. A few close calls out in public -- I now know why it's called the runs, as I did a great deal of running for about a week. And then it resolved into some of the most profound gas I have ever experienced. Farts as precisely timed and triumphant as a procession of marching bands, not to mention a 90-second piece de resistance which unfortunately showcased itself in a public restroom. All this put the kabosh on my social life, sure, but who is so insensate as to not marvel in their body's often astonishing productions? Only the sickest of patients could eye a particularly sizeable tumor, lying bloodied in one of those surgical steel dishes, without a sense of pride. So I lay on my couch, watched the first season of The Simpsons on pirated DVD's ("A boy without mischief is like a bowling ball without a liquid center" is genius) and stood back in awe as my intenstines seized center stage. Thai medicine is pretty good -- though they sell a Kaopectate-y stuff called "Krathai Bin," ("Flying Rabbit"), which invokes the condition more than the cure -- and so now all is good, and I can write this free from anxiety.

On a completely unrelated note, I have noticed that the Thai have no sense whatsoever of killing the golden goose. In the bars, in the markets, anywhere, they are dogged and relentless and, frankly, quite ugly once they get the whiff of money. Telling them to slow down, you'll come back, etc.., does no good at all -- they just keep right on pushing. People say Cambodians have no sense of tomorrow, which I can understand as they are still recovering oh so slowly from the Khmer Rouge horrors, but the Thai have nothing comparable in their history, so I can't figure it out.

Been reading a lot, too. Bringing "The Art of The Personal Essay" with me was the smartest decision I made. Some serious gems in there. For everyone who hates their job and wonders why they are in them, I recommend Seymour Krim's "For My Brothers and Sisters in the Failure Business" and Charles Lamb's "The Superannuated Man." Sorry, no link to the Krim, so I'll give you instead the best Irvine Welsh short story (he's the "Trainspotting" guy).

Well, that was a bit pointless and disjointed, but so is my life here, so it will have to do.

Six months in and this shit still bugs me (pun intended)

If you already read this in my email, sorry about that, but there is only so much creativity I can squeeze in between massages. I did add a Monty Python reference that I forgot in the original, but I can't say it's worth wading through the whole thing again just for that:

So, after 6 months here, I am finally getting used to much of the everyday texture of Thai life -- the diseased dogs, ants pillaging the taro cakes offered to storefront Buddhas, the strange homonculi who pull up next to me on their motorbikes at 2 am and ask why I don't like "gey seks" -- but there are still certain things I can't quite cope with:

1. Bugs: While gecko lizards crawling about restaurants and passport control no longer faze me, last night my kitchen hosted a cockroach with both the bulk and, apparently, the armored plating of Hitler's prize Duesenberg (sp?). After loosing a falsetto yelp that did nothing to bolster my already paltry sense of machismo, I then spent five burlesque minutes vainly having at the thing -- or, more properly, The Thing -- with the sole of my Tiva. Think of it as a second-order comic homage -- Charlie Chaplin to Woody Allen to me. Not quite the Tinkers-to-Evers-to-Chance of hilarity, but it will have to do. Also, this morning, there were, comfortably, 300 or so moths in the hallway by the elevator, laying quietly on the ground but exuding a lazy menace of the Stephen King "amassing of creepy animals as the first harbinger of Evil's portal opening into our world" variety. However, as the Thai eat bugs with such gusto that I've considered sponsoring one as a ringer on "Fear Factor," I decided it would do no good to complain to management.

2. Again, the Englishisms: Two excellent typos I wanted to share. One was on a flyer for an upscale spa that unfortunately advertised its weight loss treatment as a "Sliming Massage," the troubling implications of which I leave you to sort out on your own. The other was a chicken dish at a Western-style restaurant prepared to apparent porn-star perfection in "Gordon Bleu" style. Also, the names of various bars, such as those named in honor of improbable celebrities. Bangkok has a girlie bar called "Oliver Reed's Club," with pictures of the actor all over the place and where the hostesses' lack of English fortunately spared me my just comeuppance when I loudly -- and wrongly -- identified him as Thomas a Becket in "Murder in the Cathedral." Pattaya, a beach town a few hours from Bangkok, has a bar called "Monica Lewinsky's Place" -- I did not ask as to the nature of their services (see No. 3, below) -- with signage that flatteringly depicts Ms. Lewinsky as having the face of Betty Paige and proportions more typically seen on a Playboy mudflap (speaking of mudflaps, a seasoned expat explained the Serpico mystery to me -- apparently, it's the Thai truckers' way of advertising to the local mafia their uncorruptibility. I like that explanation even if it turns out to be utter horseshit).

Having recently looked at a Thai-written English phrase book, I realized this problem is endemic. Among the phrases that the authors deemed essential for survival in this increasingly English-speaking world are "Are you a model?," "Why did you not drink Coke this afternoon?" and "Has she seen the panda?" I weep for an entire generation.

3. Certain aspects of the sex industry: Being both a Patpong habitue and an accomplished pervert, I consider myself fairly immune to shock in this regard. Nonetheless, I was more than a bit startled when I walked into a bar in Patpong -- my attention drawn by the blackout curtains permanently pulled over its windows -- to see a man chatting on a cell phone and sipping his beer while a woman furiously slurped away on his knob. Not only did this fail to occassion shame on the part of the cell-phone chatter (who I imagine would have been all too glad to dispense with the now-understood blackout curtains), but it in no way tamped the mood of the Swiss man with his wife (a former bar employee, it turns out) who were in there to celebrate having just gotten married earlier that day -- I can only assume that the tea room at the Oriental was previously booked for another reception. The bar itself has four escalloped indentations with cloth curtains in front, so that patrons can stand and drink while the women kneel behind the bar; those wanting privacy can stand behind the half-dozen strands of straggly beads that pass for a door into the backroom.

I was told that at times the place can get quite busy, with perhaps as many as 10 customers at once, and that on a typical day a woman might have between three and five customers. The rate is 600 baht -- or about $15 -- for a blowjob and 1000 baht for sex, of which the women keep something like 400 and 700 baht respectively (in addition, I am hoping that only a true cad would fail to tip). One patron, in between toasting the new couple and telling me how the girls there were "like family," confided that the guy getting blown was "a regular monster" who frequently fucked five women at a time right there in the public area. Having both seen his admittedly impressive life (a euphemism I pinched from Nabakov) and having myself experienced the legendary um petiteness of Thai women, I could only guess they were perfectly content to spread the burden out. Indeed, against my will, I imagined five women, bereft of their jeans and bending over in a row, murmuring a disconsolate series of "Oy jep!"'s ("it hurts") as he variably had at them, much like Monty Python's Terry Jones use of a mallet to coax "The Bells of St. Mary" from a chorus of luckless mice.

When I asked one woman why she worked in a place where her job was literally distasteful, she explained "boss have very good heart." Um. Er. In one sentence, the culture gap blazed into a yawning chasm, the rickety rope bridge now dangling uselessly down the far slope.

Those of you wishing the name and location of the bar, feel free to email me privately. I was told that female customers are both common and welcome so don't be shy, ladies.

Overcome by uncharacteristic shyness, I did not participate in the life of the bar, though I will be certain to make it a must-see destination spot for naive tourists. Honesty does compel me to admit that I asked whether her recent nuptials meant the new bride was no longer working. Tragically for my karma, to be serviced for cash by a honeymooning bride had irresistible appeal.

4. The heat: Its been above 90 since I woke up at 8 this morning. The Thai bitch about it as much as the farang do, so it seems it's just not something you get used to. The only redeeming thing about the heat is that touch of linguistic Schadenfreude I experience as I watch Thai tongues hopelessly engage the unfamiliar phonemes in "schvitz," which many do as they eagerly try to imitate my incongruous but apparently charming Upper West Side declamations.

5. The Thai language: Although I recognize that I have an unorthodox presentation of my heterosexuality that has lead both friend and stranger to question my orientation, I still find the Thai language ridiculously fruity. There is a whole series of whining tones that makes most Thai conversations sound like catty Meatpacking trannies gossiping about the inadequacies of their tricks. Even the cops talk this way, so, no, it's not the company I am keeping, you bastards. The more I feel like I am making fun of them, the better I am understood, which is a bit awkward. I sometimes speculate that the inherent effeminacy of the language is a contributing factor to the country's large number of lady boys (that, plus the fact that Thai toilets sport a hose for washing up after a dump, so that boys are introduced at an early age to a life of certain delights).

Any expressions of commiseration, revulsion or both are most welcome.

P.S. A new Thai fun fact: I recently learned that the going rate for a hitman varies according to the nature of the victim: 5000 baht for a Thai, 8000 for a farang.

P.P.S. An ad for a Bangkok plastic surgery office promises affordable botox, tummy tucks, lip, nose and boob jobs, and "sex reassignment surgery (M to F)" all in the same breath.

But you have no ARMS!

1. Drinking my morning coffee, a cool mint green polo shirt urged me to "set world records in waistline reduction!" The shirt's color giving a bulimic boost in that direction.

2. In Thailand, the government allocates the selling of lottery tickets to the deaf, the deformed and unloved old people. Not really the folks to be peddling good luck, nah?