God Bless Cambodia

by Randy Ross

  In my country, the land of the free and the home of the brave, when a girl is on your bed, you bust a move.

  But what if she’s armed? What if she robs me, stabs me, and shoots me. What am I going to tell the police?

  I met this girl half my age in a bar.

  We went back to my hotel.

  And here I am in the emergency room.

  Even if she doesn’t rob me, once her clothes are off, will I be able to focus on the breasts and not the hips and butt?

  Her phone beeps again.

  I look over her shoulder. On the screen is an image of a child. Ola folds the phone into her cleavage.

  “That is my son,” she says. “He is six.”

  I flip on the light and sit, silent.

  “What’s your problem?” she finally asks. “You never had sex with a mother before? You think your mother never had sex? You think your mother never worked to feed you? You think you’re better than me?”

  “I . . . I . . . I.”

  “You what? I just spent the whole night with a man and didn’t earn any money.”

  I can’t do this, the big tush, the little kid, the disease, the crime. Too many variables. I stand up. Ola bursts into tears.

  “This was Naledi’s idea. A way to make money to feed my boy. He hasn’t eaten in a week. My husband just left me for another woman. I am on the street. You got to help me!”

  I really want to believe Ola. And so I do.

  At the cab stand, I hand her my remaining cash, seventy rand, about ten dollars. Ola doesn’t seem concerned about street crime and stuffs the bills in her pocket. She gives me a kiss on the cheek that could mean: “Bless you for your kindness.” It could also mean: “Thanks, sucker.”

  Matt stumbles by alone, looks at Ola, and gives me a thumbs-up.

  After Ola drives off, I watch a boy, who could be six, pick through a garbage can bolted to the ground. A teenager in a yellow smock chases the boy away. It’s four A.M.

  I’ve never paid for sex before but not because I have some lofty moral code. It’s that I’ve always associated prostitution with streetwalkers, Saturday Night specials, and the movie Taxi Driver. And then of course there’s the little matter of AIDS.

  And karma.

  I’m afraid that if I take a sleazy detour, I might hurt my chances of finding the right woman. Maybe that’s why I’m still single: karmic payback.

  Moody would disagree. Whenever I talk about karma, synchronicity, or fate, he talks about magical thinking, OCD, and fear. He says life is about managing fear without gimmicks. Magical thinking is a gimmick, a child’s gimmick.

  Moody could be right. But just in case, starting tomorrow, I vow to quit smoking, avoid bar girls half my age, and work out more often.

  The next morning, a desk clerk at the hostel recommends a health club in an upscale mall. “It’s a nice twenty-minute walk right now,” she says. “But after dark . . .” She hands me a card for a local cab company.

  On Long Street, the bars and restaurants are quiet. A few yellow-smocked boys are on patrol. The hostel kids must still be sleeping off last night. I bear left onto Klootzak Street. The area resembles a fortress: a narrow street, a narrow sidewalk, ten-foot-high cinder block walls topped with barbed wire. Behind the walls: a school, apartments, homes. The South African version of a gated community.

  On the sidewalk, an empty Carling Black Label bottle. I have an inkling to pick it up and put it in the garbage, but don’t.

  Graffiti on a wall: “Welkom to the Rich World.” Another empty Carling, another inkling. This time I pick it up.

  Farther along the wall, a sign: “Security Provided by Skloof Protection, Armed Response.” I imagine guard towers, machine guns, and floodlights.

  A Subway sandwich wrapper. I pick it up.

  Another wall. Above it, a dirty white rag or shred of T-shirt hanging from some barbed wire. I put my collection of trash in a can bolted to the ground. Good deeds, good karma.

  I cross onto Meersloofer Street. A begging lady with straightened gray hair down her back. I give her ten rand. “Your kindness will be rewarded,” she says. A fellow believer.

  I reach the upscale mall intact. Inside the women are long, blonde, and sleeveless. The men wear polished, lace-up shoes. No ripped T-shirts, Tevas with safety pins, or yellow smocks anywhere.

  After a workout, a long whirlpool, and a head and face shave, I go to the health club restaurant for a drink. The room is a fusion of mocha leather, exotic wood, and black pendant lamps.

  I sit at the back bar several feet from a long blonde nibbling some tapas. She glances at my workout bag. “You win your squash match?” she asks.

  “I was lifting weights. Can’t you tell by my big, thick neck?”

  “Cute accent. You from America?”

  “Boston.”

  “I was in New York for the last year and—”

  A crumb of potato cheese croquette flies from her mouth and lands on my bare thigh. She leans over and wipes it off with her hand. I flinch. She gulps down her martini and smiles, displaying her snaggly, European-style dental work. “Move over here, we don’t bite,” she says.

  We?

  A guy sitting on her left puts a hand on her shoulder and leans in. Unlike me, he actually does have a big, thick neck.

  First Zofia and Aurek, then Sabine and George, now another bored couple is adopting me and looking to be entertained.

  I move my stool a few inches closer.

  “I’m Randy. I mean Randall.”

  “I’m Berty. I mean Beatrice,” says the blonde, smiling.

  “And I’m Dominick,” says the guy. He has kinky hair and olive-colored skin. He looks Latin or Arab. His teeth are perfect.

  “How are you enjoying your holiday?” he asks me.

  “Great. But I think I’ve been a little too concerned about the crime around here.” I recount Ola’s real-life crime stories.

  “She was probably just trying to shake you down for money,” Dominick says. “But you should be concerned about the crime.”

  “I don’t mean to sound racist,” I say. “But she was black and kept telling me to watch out for colored people. I don’t get it.”

  Bertie butts in. “In South Africa, native Africans are ‘black,’ mixed-race people are ‘Coloured,’ and whites are ‘white.’”

  “I’m Coloured,” Dominick says, reaching for a marinated olive.

  I feel my face flush.

  Bertie holds her hand to my cheek and shakes her head. “Oh, honey. Everyone on this planet is racist; when are you Americans going to get it through your heads?”

  I think of the Greek hotel manager who hated Turks, Charlotte who disliked Germans, and then back to Ola and the Coloureds.

  “Americans blame all the country’s problems on middle-aged white guys,” she says. “When are the men going to stick up for themselves? I’d never date a white American, no selfrespect, no balls.”

  Dominick smiles like a kid listening to his favorite bedtime story. Bertie kisses him on the mouth, and then slugs down the rest of his martini.

  The frenzied eyes, the disregard for personal boundaries, the in-your-face opinions: Bertie reminds me of someone. Ricki.

  Domenic is now massaging Bertie’s bare shoulders. I am merely the middle-aged white guy in the audience.

  I point toward the window at nothing and say, “There’s my cab.”

  Bertie gives my shoulder a sloppy slap. “You know, Randall, you really need to relax.”

  I haven’t thought this much about race since I was seven years old and my family moved from Vermont to Mount Vernon, a New York City suburb. At my new elementary school, half the students were black and many lived in a nearby housing project.

  One day I was on the lunch line and a little black kid cut in front of me.

  “Hey, I was here first,” I said.

  Before I could open my mouth again, he wheeled and punched me on the side of the face.

  “Shut the fuck up,” he said,
baring his teeth. “I’m going to wait for your white nigger ass after school.”

  I looked down at him, tears filling my eyes, and didn’t say a word.

  I knew the “after school” drill because I’d seen black and white kids square off on the playground. Each combatant would balance a pencil, representing his mother, on his shoulder. Knocking the pencil off would initiate a fight.

  For weeks after the punch, I raced home after school keeping my mother in my Scooby-Doo pencil box, out of harm’s way.

  Did those experiences turn me into a racist? Is that why I’ve never dated a black woman seriously? I don’t know any white guys in Boston who date black women. I consider the unwritten rules for dating in my circle:

  • Fat Jewish women are OK.

  • Skinny shiksas are OK.

  • Mysterious Asians are OK.

  • Stacked Latinas are OK.

  • South Asian Indians with rich parents are OK.

  • But black women, no matter how skinny, stacked, or rich, are not OK.

  Why?

  Is it the lips? The nose? The hair?

  No, it’s the baggage: segregation, integration, affirmative action, busing, redlining, Black Power, White Supremacy, the Central Park jogger, Tawana Brawley, Rodney King, James Earl Ray, Jessie Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Alabama state troopers, Watts, South Boston, Crown Heights, Howard Beach, Hymie-town, the Mount Vernon elementary school lunch line.

  Bertie is right: We’re all a bunch of racists.

  The next morning, I board the bus for a two-week tour along something called the Garden Route, a stretch of South African coastline sandwiched between mountainous rain forests and the Indian Ocean. According to Pittman’s guidebook, the route is renowned for golden beaches and sheltered lagoons, soaring peaks and sheer gorges, and scrubland thick with fragrant vegetation. For decades, the scenery has been an inspiration to artists and writers. Have I mentioned how much I like sightseeing? I’m not here for the sights; I’m here for the party.

  Steve is sitting alone, his constant companion, a coldie, in hand. He looks rested and sated. I sit across the aisle from him. He leans over to offer me a beer and gestures to the scenery outside the idling bus where a young black woman is kissing an old white guy. “He’s a punter.” I’m guessing Steve means a john and that somehow we’re better than the old guy.

  “You’re headed for Thailand and Vietnam, right?” Steve asks. “Hands down, they have the best birds. You’re going to have a time once you get there. But we should do OK in Bakvissie.”

  Bakvissie is our first overnight stop on the bus tour. The local hostel is renowned for mountain views and Mandrax parties. Mandrax are like Quaaludes. “When birds take them, they go crazy for a shag,” Steve has told me multiple times.

  The bus holds about twenty people, but is half empty. The two untouchable Dutch girls sit in back by themselves. Matt, Tara, and Ivy, the Americans, sit two rows ahead of us.

  In the first row, a red-faced, Irish-looking guy sits by himself. Besides me and Steve, the guy is the only other person without hair. He appears to be in his fifties. He sits rigidly upright, stares straight ahead, and looks like an alcoholic or a priest or both. Steve offers another theory: “Pedophile. What else would a bloke that age be doing on this bus?”

  Matt, Tara, and Ivy erupt into a freshman-style giggle fit: They’re probably thinking the same thing about me. I swill my coldie and close my eyes for a sleep.

  Four hours later we pull into a beachside town called Mompie Bay. Our lunch stop is Dogie’s, South Africa’s answer to McDonald’s. I order a Double Dogie with cheese for thirty-three rand, about five dollars, and wait outside at a picnic table for Steve. The taller Dutch woman is sitting by herself at the table next to me. She’s looking beyond the parking lot at a sheltered lagoon framed by a golden beach.

  “Having fun?” I ask her.

  “Sure thing,” she says.

  “That beach looks great.”

  She fingers a loose strand of blonde hair. “Yeah, it’s awesome. I stayed here the last two years. This year I wanted to check out Bakvissie.”

  Her friend arrives. “Ciao,” she says. They move to another table.

  The alcoholic, pedophile priest is eating by himself at a table for four. Am I going to end up like that?

  Steve comes outside with a huge bag of food and two attractive black girls. He hands one of the girls the bag and calls me to the side. “Want to stay and party? Can’t do it alone, mate.”

  “Are they hookers?”

  “No, part-timers like Naledi and Ola—they’ve got regular jobs, just looking for some fun and extra coin.”

  “What about the Mandrax party?” I ask.

  “Look, mate, you know what they say about having a bird in hand.”

  I look at the girls: One is slim and attractive, the other, on second glance, not so much—below the table she is bigger than Ola.

  Maybe for Steve this is an easy bird-in-the-hand decision. But at my age, I can’t have sex with just anyone anymore. In recent years, I’ve learned the hard way that I have to feel some attraction or connection to sleep with a woman. It’s not a moral issue, it’s a performance issue—the little head, like the big head, isn’t as reliable as it used to be.

  The bigger girl smiles and pats the bench next to her.

  “What do you say, mate?” Steve asks.

  I catch the tall Dutch girl looking at me from across the picnic area. We smile at each other. She looks away.

  “Can’t do it, Steve. I know you can handle two,” I say. “If you change your mind I’ll be at the Mandrax party. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Ciao.”

  Later, the bus seems much emptier. No Steve. No pedophile priest either. The driver starts the engine. Matt leaves Tara and Ivy in the front row and sits across the aisle from me. “So I hear you’re a writer,” he says. “I want to be a gonzo journalist, travel solo like you, write about shit. Truth is, I’m not crazy about traveling with two girls; they act like they’re still in high school and a man needs his space.”

  He lowers his voice. “I’m banging Tara, the one with big tits.” As if on cue, Tara turns around in her seat and gestures for Matt to come up and join her. “Later, man,” he says.

  Was I a knucklehead like Matt at his age? Have I changed? What kind of grown man keeps a spreadsheet of women? I stare out the window at the sandy shore and try not to think about anything.

  Midafternoon, we pull into the Bakvissie hostel, a meandering farmhouse with a porch and spindly rocking chairs. The Swartberg Mountains undulate in the distance like clay-colored waves. Instead of warnings about taxis, the wall behind the front desk lists local attractions, group trips, and hostel job openings.

  A guy about my age checks me in. He has a deep tan, an earring, and blond, poodle-style hair down to his collar.

  “You requested a single room, mate, but we’re sold out,” Mr. Blond says to me. “So we put you in the honeymoon suite. I trust you will use it for good, not evil. See you at breakfast.” He winks, pats my shoulder, and sends me on my way.

  As I’m leaving the lobby, I hear him address a clutch of young women. “Gooood afternoon ladies,” he says in a precious South African accent. “Checking in? Join us tonight for the Bakvissie Boom-Boom Party, hey?”

  At the Boom-Boom party, Mr. Blond plays pool with the Dutch girls. Other hostel kids I haven’t met stand at the bar and giggle. Matt and his sidekicks giggle. Must have missed the Mandrax hors d’oeuvres. If I had a job like Mr. Blond’s, I’d be partying with giggling chicks every night. If I had listened to Steve, I’d be partying with two Dogie’s birds tonight. My mood plunges like a mallard full of lead shot.

  Action item: Stop thinking about birds all the time.

  I head back alone to the honeymoon suite.

  Over the next few days, I sample a few other local attractions.

  Ostrich Ride

  Promotional brochure: “An ostrich can run at speeds up to sixty miles per hour and can
disembowel a man with a single kick.”

  Riding the ostrich is like riding a 250-pound feather duster mounted on a grocery cart with a broken wheel. I steer and brake by yanking its bony wings while praying it doesn’t get mad and kick me.

  Disturbing thought: This is the most action I’ve gotten from a bird in months.

  Cave Trek

  Promotional brochure: “Twenty-million-year-old cave system composed of hidden grottos cut into limestone.”

  It’s like hiking through a giant skull. Fifty-foot-high chambers resemble sinuses and stalactites hang from the ceiling like mucous from the world’s worst case of post-nasal drip. The Americans giggle incessantly. All I think about is my medication stash back at the hostel.

  Boom-Boom Party #2

  Boom-boom is a bust: just me, Matt, Tara, and Ivy. We play pool. They joke about their former boss: “The old perv,” “the bipolar geezer,” “wanted to kick him in his junk.”

  “He sounds like a real dick,” I say. “How old was he?”

  “I don’t know,” Matt says. “Maybe forty. But he was probably an asshole when he was ten.”

  And so goes the rest of the week: No Mandrax and no action.

  On Friday, our little tour group, which unfortunately still includes me, checks out of the hostel. As Mr. Blond swipes my credit card, I notice that the shorter Dutch girl is behind the counter assisting him. They both look rested and sated.

  “Hey, mate,” he says to me. “You’re a writer. Will you look at my novel?”

  Before I can answer, he addresses a new clutch of chickies waiting to check in. “Hello ladies, coming to our Bakvissie Boom-Boom party tonight?” The Dutch girl is still by his side. He may be a dick, but he’s not a settler.

  Blog Entry: October 7

  Bakvissie, South Africa

  Please FedEx me a new liver . . .

  Met a woman on red-eye flight to Cape Town. Drank too much.

  Been staying in hostels with college kids the last two weeks. Shots till two A.M.

  Also, met a couple of decent guys my age:

  • An Australian physician named Steve showed me the sights in Cape Town. He’s here on a humanitarian mission at a nearby beach town called Mompie Bay.