"Adventures of King Prawn"
Travelogue of Bali, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Mexico

July/96

7/4/96

  Hey there, me again. July fourth. Some events fade into the past but some, tied in with a smell, sound, or other sense (power in numbers) etch themselves like tattoos into our memory. Last year, this time, I was on Chris’ rooftop. We were in the process of mixing “Duet,” and took a break to see the fireworks and to have a joint. I hadn’t smoked for a while, I’d just gotten back from the Wigmore Center, in Puerto Rico, and thirteen pounds and 100 (fewer) cholesterol points later, I’d become one of those fanatics I find so distasteful. You know, their philosophy must be yours. For your own good! Anyway, on the roof, that night, I succumbed to a couple of tokes and, though high, was still the only (relatively) lucid one left in the group to operate the tape decks. When I look back on it, what seemed laudable at the time: being the lucid one, doesn’t resonate with as much importance as it used to.

  Last week, I had to go to the local department of motor vehicles to get the required paperwork for a driver’s license. I encountered obstacles.

  “Where is your proof of residence?”
 
  “What’s that? What do I need?”
 
  “Something that says you live here. A receipt. A telephone bill or electric bill in your name.”

  “But I bought a truck to see Mexico and to decide whether I want to live here.”

  “A receipt. A telephone bill or electric bill in your name.”

  “But I live in hotels. Will a hotel receipt do?”

  “Something in your name, sir. A telephone bill or electric bill in your name.”

  “So if someone is traveling through this country and decides to buy a vehicle with which to travel, you’re telling me he can’t have license plates unless he decides to stay?

  “No sir.”

  “There’s no other way?” I ask, in a tone that stinks of bribe.

  “No sir. Well, yes sir. A letter from the Presidencia (government building in town) stating that you live here.” So I take my temporary visa and passport and four photos and go to the Presidencia. I’m sitting there, observing the flow; the obsequious nature with which the lesser classes present themselves to the classes in power, and I’m playing on my “sparkly, blue-green eyed, charming foreigner, please do me a favor, I’m giving you my focused attention, so be nice to me,” smile, to the secretaries. Okay, maybe I’m a whore, but I saved myself two hours. (“You’ll have to come back later, sir, they’re in conference”...Not willing to come back, I sigh, cast an intent gaze into the eyes of the woman, and the next thing I know, she’s typing up my requisition and stamping signatures.) Whore or not, there I am, in the process of getting the requisite paperwork, when this guy enters. He’s mid-thirties, balding, and wearing an oversized suit. “It’s cheap material, some synthetic blend,” I’m thinking, as he shoves his hands into his pockets and spreads the too ample pleats wide. It’s a studied pose of impatience. I’m feeling good about myself; having achieved victory by charming myself past a two hour siesta to accomplish my goal. “This poor shit will get nowhere with that attitude,” I muse. Looking at pictures on the wall with feigned interest, I present a personality unconcerned with the timetables of mortals. Again, I look at the man. “How,” I think, “can someone think that that attire is quality? It’s shit material. It’s wrinkled. It doesn’t fit. It’s a shit design. And it’s being worn with a shitty attitude.” Catching myself in judgment, I initiate self-analysis. “Everything is a reflection. What does this mean? What part of me is judging? Who am I?” To come up with possible answers to these questions, I look back at myself from what I imagine his perspective to be.

  “Look at that typical tourist. In the government building, a monument where the people I elected, govern. In shorts, those damned Velcro sandals, and a sleeveless T-shirt. Doesn’t he have any concept of style? No self-esteem or, at the very least, respect for the edifice in which he stands? Stupid fucking foreign shits with their “everyone is equal” middle class mentality. Look at him, sitting there acting as if he doesn’t mind waiting...I’ll show him.” And he did. A group of men walked out of the sanctified office in which important decisions were being made, (“How ‘bout we let my brother-in-law Pancho have this contract?”...) and welcomed the man into their chambers. I never again went to a government building without long pants, a great shirt, and proper shoes.

  Reflections make me think about other things, too. Remember the scorpion? (Should I say the ex-scorpion?) Anyway, a couple days after that experience I open up the downstairs door and a scorpion, A LOT LARGER THAN THE LAST ONE, scurries under the door. I try moving the door so that it goes outside. It stays under the door frame and then scurries back inside.

  “This is my house!” I scream. It’s a statement of fact, which, in my mind, transcends debate. “This is my house!” This time, I’m not looking for a jar to transplant the creature to the outdoors. I’m using my foot to squash him...I mean...guide him...It is, after all, my intent...I’m guiding him, that’s what I’m doing, when my foot slips and I’m uncontrollably squashing him...”This is my house!” And, I’m thinking, what can I use to put this half-expired soul out of misery? The one can of bug repellent I find is so old, when I finally find it, that when I depress the spray button, only the exhalations of my kill-energy can be heard. Frantically running around, I soon discover mosquito repellent and, what the hell, it’s toxic, so a lot of this would probably finish the fucker off, and I’m spraying a puddle of OFF! down some crack in the wall into which the crippled creature thought it had escaped.

  “Here, they’re not poisonous or aggressive, you know,” a friend told me that evening. And that’s when it all started: My increased attention to reflections and the importance of symbols. The concept that “Humanity is a virus.” Yes, Humanity is a virus. (One notable difference being that we’re attributed with consciousness.) We spread. We multiply. We consume and weaken our host. Constantly wiping out germs and bugs (just think of the advertisements devoted to bacteria, insects, smells, etc.), we’re frightened by films like “Outbreak” where the evil is always presented as some malevolent life-force invading our homes, our world; sanctified domains which we’ve dubbed, appropriated, as “ours”. The poison is without, we fear, not within. But the pure and simple fact is that we’re the most disgusting of viruses. (But who will inoculate us against mankind?) My actions against the scorpion, based on fear and ignorance, are pathetic and deplorable. You see, I was so utterly indignant with the invasion of my space. My space! Because, I paid rent. Try explaining rent to a scorpion.

  I drive my truck back from a fiesta. I wait as some pigs cross the road. I’m still in reflection mode. “If everything is truly a reflection,” I think, “what does this mean? Does everything mean something?” Finally home, I get out of the car. Unlike my daily routine, where I have one meal in the afternoon, I’ve had lunch and followed it with a burger, tequila, pot, wine...(the list goes on). Anyway, I get out of the truck and notice that people have thrown film containers, candy wrappers, and boxes into the rear of my pick-up. I spit and curse in disgust...Wait a minute, was I talking about pigs?

  So I’m at this party, talking to this woman, and she’s trying to describe someone, and to help me visualize the man’s appearance, she uses the image of...

  “Bill...His...Bill...Wild Bill...His...Hitchkock...Wild Bill Hitch...”

  “Wild Bill Hickock?” I offer. She breaths a sigh of relief, and repeats the name...I’m thinking...(I KNOW, I’m always THINKING...in my HEAD, analyzing, but I can’t help it...Really!...In a while, maybe I’ll come up with a reason for this and tell you why...) Anyway, here I am, wondering... “Why is she stumbling on this word. Is it difficult to pronounce phonetically? Is this a language impaired individual, or does this reflect something deeper? Is this Freudian slip territory? Did she hiccup on the word cock? Did the thought of ‘his cock’ make her stumble? Is she attracted to me? Are my jeans too tight? Did some Bill she know have a big cock and treat her in a menacing, Hitchkockian manner?”...Okay, that’s enough...Jesus, give a guy a keyboard and he thinks he can write anything. Anyway, we’re soon in my truck, getting high, looking out over the Allende vista from a wonderfully elevated vantage point.

  “I feel humanity is going through a quantum leap,” she philosophizes.

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t? Oh...Well, I do. I look around me and everyone I know is going through such positive changes.”

  “Maybe everyone around you is of a similar age and going through the typical life changes of that age.”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I. That’s why I don’t make blanket, cosmic statements. Maybe I’m nothing more than a cynic, but my outlook is that mankind is getting progressively worse. And I understand your outlook. But your opinion is yours and only yours. And my opinion is mine, and only mine. To extrapolate a philosophy, a cosmology, a general truth for all of humanity based on one’s personal experience seems socially irresponsible and grossly egocentric to me. What about Socrates, and Aristotle, and Kierkegaard, and Schopenhauer? Didn’t they, and countless others, through the passage of time, have keen insights into mankind and the forces of the universe? Do we dismiss their era, and say that that group of humans weren’t evolved enough to make the leap? To think that now, in this moment of time, when baby boomers are becoming reflective, is the time of ascension, of quantum changes, seems a bit distorted. Don’t you think?”

  “Wow, I’ve never been called socially irresponsible before. I don’t know, I look around me and I feel mankind is going through a quantum leap. You’ve gotta believe it...you’ve just got to.”

  “No, I don’t think I have to. But please feel free to keep believing that you have to.” A brief pause ensued.

  “The clouds are moving in,” she said. “God, I wish it would rain. This is the worst drought in fifteen years. Did you know that?”

  “That’s what I keep hearing.”

  “Still, I love it here, so much. This town is an energy vortex. It really is. It’s full of very powerful, transformational individuals. I really believe mankind is going through a quantum leap.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that earlier. But tell me, why don’t all these powerful, transformational individuals just get together and make it rain? It shouldn’t be that difficult to create rain when one is capable of cellular reconstruction and quantum leaps, should it?” The conversation ceased at that moment. It didn’t rain as I drove her home.

  Reflections. There we are, each of us attached to his dripping machine...like paratroopers connected to a static line, and I can’t help but smile at myself; to look back understandingly with the eyes of time. Is this Sedona all over again? Wherever I go, there I am? A week ago, I’d walked into the Holistic Center of Allende. A friend, who was healed of allergies after a month of Homeopathic remedies, suggested I check it out. I’d come to get rid of eczema on my hands...had it for a while, seen numerous doctors, homeopaths, and herbalists, to no success. (Homeopathy is extremely common in Mexico.) I love the philosophy of homeopathy but it’s given me no relief, as of yet. Though I’m aware that everything external is internally based, I seem incapable of sounding the depths of my being, to heal from within. So I look for external solutions. How fitting that someone (me) so conscious of appearances and the external world would be afflicted with an ailment of the exterior...Anyway, I walk in, and remove my shoes. Four people on sumptuous pillows, on the floor, in repose, as IV’s drip into them, are discussing the benefits of chelation therapy. I’m thinking, “These poor suckers, look at them! Some people will try anything!” A week later, after my prescribed homeopathic remedies have little effect on my condition, I’m attached to an IV, amongst a group, discussing the concept of chelation therapy. Reflections.

  I enter the bathroom of a McDonalds in America. A Mexican is cleaning it. I enter the bathroom of a McDonalds in Mexico. A Mexican is cleaning it. Have I really moved?

  The common greeting for a man and a woman in Mexico involves a simple grasp of the right hands. Pulled toward each other, each leans to one’s left to plant a peck on the right cheek of the person one faces.

  A simple joy for me is my morning coffee. In Sedona, upon awakening, I hopped into the Lexus and went to a drive-thru coffee shop. I ingested a quadruple espresso as I drove home. (It was less than a five minute drive.) In Allende, I walk to the Jardin, order an espresso, and sit, taking in the view. A nun feeds a flourish of pigeons with heaping hands-full of seed. A man shines my shoes. (An experience tantamount to massage. Meditation. And the shoes look great, too.) Vendors offer the morning papers. People stroll by en route to their daily activities. The church bells sound. I continue sipping my single espresso as another day begins.

  Tacos are about 2 1/2” to 3” in diameter, here. On a soft tortilla, atop another soft tortilla, are placed the meat, onions, and cilantro. One is left to add any other salsas or condiments one desires. A slight fold of the mouth-sized morsel and into the face it disappears.

  Part of the underground economy includes one of my favorites: the individuals who work as car washers. They’re everywhere, especially parking areas. Standing with rags and a bucket of water, they approach you and offer to wash your car. I almost always agree. At less than three dollars a pop, one is assured a thoroughly clean, hand-washed car.

  Youths, usually males between the ages of ten to sixteen, are accustomed to hopping onto the back of moving pick-up trucks to hitch rides. The first time it happened to me, before I knew it to be a common practice, I was shocked and a bit perturbed. Since then, I’ve noticed it frequently and have come to accept it as another cultural idiosyncrasy.

  Out of the US for some time now (especially when one includes my time in Asia) and with no television, I’m not sure what fashions are universal and which are attributes of this culture. I know I spoke, in a previous entry, of construction workers rolling up their shirts as a sexual turn-on. Lately, I’ve noticed numerous girls with mid-riff shirts revealing tight tummies and beautiful belly buttons. Is this common in the US, as well? Mmmm. It’s absolutely delicious to behold. Yummy tummies. Taut, tantalizing tummies. I feel like a man from a previous era turned on by the sight of a bare ankle.

  Twice now, in one month, I’ve overheard tourist women saying, “He got her pregnant.” This phrase reveals a point of view which strikes me as remarkably unconscious. Which is what the pregnant women must have been, during the act, if those statements are, indeed, true.

  Fat wallets in the rear pocket of someone’s pants. Ugly. Gauche. Bad for one’s posture. Did I mention ugly and gauche?

  Beds with lots, and lots of overly stuffed pillows...the kind of pillows that have no “give”. I’ve never understood this. I can see sleeping at a steep incline if one must do so for health purposes; you know, ulcers, hiatal hernias, or something along those lines. Otherwise? One pillow is enough.


7/13/96

  Lately, I’ve been thinking about the debate between civil liberties and civil rights. Unfortunately, the debate is hardly ever civil. At times, I think one could also call it the clash between sensitivity and insensitivity. This subject has been on my mind as a result of people and their pets; dogs, specifically. All you dog owners out there, hold on, don’t get your dander up, just yet. After all, some of my best friends are dogs, I mean, have dogs. Sure, some of you will be ready to dismiss what I have to say as the ranting of someone not intimately acquainted with the love and joy man’s best friend can provide. (I recall the saying “To a dog, man is God. Hence, the popularity of dogs.”) In any case, there are some things that are undeniably bothersome, at least to me. Not unlike cigarette smokers, dog owners become inured to certain smells. Additionally, as mentioned in a previous entry, the owners’ hearing develops a greater threshold of pain. And this is all fine and good until dog owners’ liberties minimize my rights. I mean, really, who are these people who endure their dogs yelping incessantly throughout an evening, assuming others must also suffer the barkathon? Why do some people watch their dogs shit squarely in the footpath of a sidewalk without making so much as an effort to clean up the offensive mound of doo? Anyway, back to sensitivities. Allende is populated with people and their dogs. It appears to be some form of status symbol. Dog owners, parading their pets, adorn themselves with pedigrees as if they were some Lacoste or Polo logo. Again, this is their right...until they bring their pets into restaurants, or institutions with signs expressly forbidding the entry of animals. Are they so used to having their cute companions cuddling up next to them, swapping sloppy kisses, with shed hair adorning their clothing and blankets, that their noses have stopped functioning? Okay, take it easy, I know, this is their right. But damn it, I’m trying to eat, and though they may be ten to fifteen feet away, my enchilada smells like a wet Flokati rug. Their insensitivity surrounds them like a malodorous cloud. If I wanted to be tasting dog while eating, I’d return to Vietnam. Next time one of these canine-laden boors sits next to me with his barking, shitting, shedding unit, I think I’ll engage him in conversation about my experience with dog kabobs in Hanoi. Pretty rude, huh? Like blowing smoke into a non-smoker’s face.

  Why is it correct to eat beef and chicken but not dog? And why do vegetarians (which I have been, on and off, for many years) feel so righteous about their diet preference? I feel more sensitivity to cutting a flower or plant than eating an animal. Each of us draws the lines of what we feel to be proper behavior while inhabiting this planet. Other than breatharians, I have no patience for the preaching of vegetarians. Let them consume air, and air only, and then I will respect their choice as truly admirable.

  ...And speaking of dogs, there I am sitting next to a four-top at a restaurant. They’re Texans, one group of the droves that invade San Miguel during summer. One of the women is beseeching her friends to join the SPA, the local SPCA, and to assist in their efforts to save the myriad animals abandoned and homeless. She continues, telling her party of her somewhat intense attachment to animals. Her dog had died two months prior, and unable to let go, she put the lifeless carcass in her refrigerator so that she could greet it each time she went for food.

  Looking into a pharmacy’s display window, one box draws my attention. “Studd,” reads the label above a picture of a horse’s head. Beneath the picture is written, “Desensitizing gel for male genitalia”. ...And here I thought that sex and making love were about feeling something. Are there women in the world who think, “Hey, maybe if the guy desensitized his penis and lasted a little longer I could have an orgasm”? Or is that merely what some men assume women think? Either way, it’s this concept that’s had men going through baseball statistics in their minds when they should be in the moment, released, and present. In the past, I know I’ve been victim to the “duration equals quality” mentality. But, lately, I’ve come to believe that each person’s orgasm is his own responsibility. Let each of us get in tune with ourselves and release the blocks that prevent orgasm. Let’s not place all the burden of pleasure on our mates. Sensitizing oneself can make for a better experience for both parties.

  In Mexico City, most the cabs are Volkswagen Beetle “Bugs”. The front passenger seat has been removed to provide easy access to the rear seat, for a one or two person fare. While I’m on the subject of the native cabs...there are pick-up trucks here, painted yellow. On top is a “Taxi” sign under which is printed “Mixta” (mixed). As I’ve yet to see one occupied, I can only guess that the rear bed of the trucks is used to haul animals, packages, or the countless offspring of Catholic breeding marvels.

  Portrait of a tourist couple in the courtyard of a cathedral on a Sunday morning: Both long past the pleasantly plump stage, flesh cascading out of their too short shorts and tattered tank tops, they walk side by side. On the back of the man’s shirt is an American flag with the saying “America love it or leave it”. In full view of the passers-by, the male grabs his partner’s ample ass and gives it a squeeze. Following this overture of affection, a sub-simian display of ownership, he releases a torrent of liquid from his mouth, some of the bile still hanging from the stubble on his chin. Ambassadors for their culture, they walk on with an air of haughty superiority.
 

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