Swimming to Cambodia

by Spalding Gray

  And Renée and I were walking down the beach arguing and I said, “Stop, Renée. Stop with the fighting. Look at this beautiful sunset. Look! Look! I might be able to have a Perfect Moment right now and we could go home.”

  But Reńee would have none of it. She’s very confrontational and always wants to talk about what is going on in the relationship, not the sunset. So she went off to cry on Therese’s shoulder and talk to Julian, and I went to Ivan (Devil in My Ear) who said, “Spalding, don’t let her get the upper hand, man. I mean, after all, how many straight, single men your age are there left in New York City anyway? What’s she going to do?”

  And I said, “Ivan, no, don’t say things like that.”

  Then Renee and I came out of our respective comers and went back at it for another round, until at last she said, “Listen, I’ll give you an ultimatum. Either you marry me or you give me a date when you’re coming back.”

  I thought for a minute and said, “July 8. I’ll be back on July 8.”

  Then it was time for the pleasure. We had fought and made up and it was time for the sanug. That’s the order in which we do it in our culture. So we went down to the beach with Ivan and sat at the water’s edge. By then it was dark and gentle waves were lapping as party sounds drifted in the distance. We were the only ones down on the beach, under the stars, and it was almost too much, too beautiful to bear. Ivan lit the Thai stick and passed it down.

  I took three deep tokes and as I held the smoke in, this overwhelming wave of anxiety came over me. I closed my eyes and saw this pile of black and brown shit steaming on the edge of a stainless steel counter. The shit was cold and yet it was steaming, and I somehow knew that it represented all of the negative energy in my mind. I could see a string extending from between my eyes to the shit and I knew that if I pulled that string with my head I could pull all that shit right off the edge of that stainless steel counter. I started to pull and as I was pulling I could see that next to the shit was this pile of bubbly pastel energy floating about two inches off the stainless steel counter. I saw that this pastel energy was connected to the shit through these tendrils that ranged from pastel to shit-brown. It was then I realized that if I pulled the negative energy off the counter I would pull the positive off with it, and I’d be left with nothing but a stainless steel counter, which I was not yet ready for in my life. And at the moment I realized that, the counter turned into a tunnel I was going down at the speed of the Santa Cruz roller coaster. But the tunnel was not black this time so I knew I was getting healthier. It was gold-leaf, and the leaves were spreading like palm leaves or like the iris of a big eye as I picked up speed and headed for the center of the Earth, until I was going so fast that I couldn’t stand it anymore and I pulled back, opened my eyes, grabbed the beach and let out a great WHOOOA. . . .

  When I opened my eyes Ivan was there but Renée was gone. She must have wandered off down the beach. I had no real sense of where I was. It all looked and felt like a demented Wallace Stevens poem with food poisoning, and in the distance I saw what looked like a group of Thai girl scouts dancing around a campfire. I thought that if I could get in that circle and hold hands with them I would be whole again. I would be cured and back in real time. I got up and tried to walk toward the fire and found that I was falling down like a Bowery bum, like a drunken teenager or the fraternity brother I’d never been. And all of a sudden I realized I was going to be very sick and I crawled off like a Thai dog to a far corner of the beach.

  Up it came, and each time the vomit hit the ground I covered it over with sand, and the sand I covered it with turned into a black gauze death mask that flew up and covered my face. And so it went; vomit-cover-mask, vomit-cover-mask, until I looked down to see that I had built an entire corpse in the sand and it was my corpse. It was my own decomposing corpse staring back at me, and I could see the teeth pushing through the rotting lips and the ribs coming through the decomposing flesh of my side. I looked up to see Renée standing over me saying, “What’s wrong, Hon?”

  “I’m dying, that’s what’s wrong.”

  “Oh. I thought you were having a good time building sand castles.”

  She had been looking on at a distance.

  Two men, I don’t know who, carried me out of there, one arm over one shoulder and one arm over another, like a drunken, crucified sailor. And I was very upset because the following day I was scheduled to do my big scene in the movie.

  In February of ’83 I met this incredible British documentary filmmaker, Roland Joffe. He was very intense—a combination of Zorro, Jesus and Rasputin—body of Zorro, heart of Jesus and eyes of Rasputin. Roland had come to New York to cast a new film called The Killing Fields, produced by David Puttnam, and I was called in for an audition. Peter Wollen had seen one of my monologues and told Susie Figgis, who was helping cast the film, about me and she had set up an audition with Roland.

  It was unlike any audition I’d ever been to before. Roland didn’t have me read; he didn’t even ask me any questions. He did all of the talking while I listened, and he talked and talked. He talked for about forty minutes nonstop. Roland told me the story of The Killing Fields.

  It was the story of a New York Times reporter named Sidney Schanberg and his sidekick, Dith Pran, who was a Cambodian photographer. It was about how they covered and reported the story of the Americans’ secret bombing of Cambodia, and how Schanberg and Pran stayed behind in Phnom Penh after the American embassy was evacuated because they wanted to cover what happened when the Khmer Rouge marched in. They wanted to find out if there was going to be a “bloodbath” or not, so they fled to the French embassy to hide out, and when the Khmer Rouge marched into the city they went directly to the French embassy and demanded, “All Cambodians out or everyone dies.” So Dith Pran had to be expelled to almost certain death because the Khmer Rouge were killing any Cambodian who was connected with Americans. Pran was given up for dead by most, but Schanberg never gave up hope and kept searching until, after three years, he located Pran in a Thai refugee camp. He brought him to New York City where Pran now works for The New York Times.

  “Great story,” I said. “Sounds fantastic. Sounds like someone made it up. I want to tell you that I would love to play any role in this film, just to be in it. But I must also confess that I know nothing about what you’ve told me. I’m not very political—in fact, I’ve never even voted in my life.”

  And Roland said, “Perfect! We’re looking for the American ambassador’s aide.”

  He went on, “But I’m not saying you have the role. I have a lot of other people to see and I have to see how it all shapes up and fits together with casting. I’m going out to the Coast to see some people and I’ll be back in a couple of months. Let’s chat again then.”

  I said goodbye and left, and as I went out of the room I thought, I really want to be in that film. In fact, I want to be in that film more than any project I’ve ever been approached for. At the same time, I had no idea what I could actively do to get the role. That was a large part of why I had stopped trying to be a professional actor in the first place; I couldn’t stand all the waiting while that big, indifferent machine made up its so-called mind. I wanted some power and influence over the events of my life.

  I couldn’t stand leaving it all to chance, and the first idea that occurred to me was prayer. But I thought, it’s been so long, God would know I was in bad faith.

  The next thing that occurred to me was contacts. Well, no, maybe contacts was first and prayer was second.... But anyway, I didn’t have any contacts within the British film industry. So the next voice that came to me was that old logical, coping voice we all know so well: “Well, if I get it, I get it. If I don’t, I don’t. I’ll do something else. After all, I can still see and walk.” And my mother had always said, “Think of the starving Koreans.” I was trying to do that.

  But my illogical, preconscious voice would have none of this, and set up a condition I would have to call Compulsive Magical Thinking, which
soon got quite out of control.

  It all started innocently enough in my living loft. I found that I was unable to leave my loft without turning my little KLH radio off on a positive word. And do you know how difficult those words are to find these days? I would just stand there by the radio with my hand on the little knob so I could turn it off real fast when I heard the positive word.

  “The stock market is rising.” (click)

  “... consider moving Marines to safer . . .” (click)

  “You may go to a doctor that belongs to the AMA but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to the best.” (click)

  And then I could leave my loft. And as I went out I found that I would turn the doorknob three times. Threes became very important, as did right shoe in front of left shoe. I always made sure that I put my right shoe ahead of my left shoe when I left them by the bed. I led with my right foot as I started up the street, snapping my fingers three times, then in sets of three, then three fingers in sets of six, as I walked up to the supermarket to buy soup, where every third can was fine. The first two had botulism.

  Then I went on to Barnes & Noble, snapping all the way, in search of books on Cambodia. When I got there I went to the piles of books in the Annex and, pulling out every third book, I whispered to myself, “Now this has power.”

  Then I turned and saw a man behind me fleeing from stack to stack. I knew he didn’t work for Barnes & Noble because of his overcoat and the wads of newspaper stuck in his ears and I thought, this is one of the therapeutic joys of living in New York City. It always works. As soon as you think you’re crazy, all you have to do is look over your shoulder.

  It wasn’t long before these little compulsions got more elaborate and the condition more complex. I was walking down the street and I saw a man coming toward me and I thought, I’ve got to keep this lamppost on my right and the man on my left and have us all line up perpendicular just at the end of the third snap in a series of six finger snaps. Then I thought, wait a minute, lamppost on right or man on right? Which is more important, man or lamppost? And, wham. I ran into the man.

  It was then that I realized it was getting out of hand. I thought, I’d better slow down with this stuff or I’ll get put away before I even get the role in the movie. I guess it was then that the “Little King” took over. The superego figure took charge and set up an alternative condition that was very new for me. I’d have to call it a Will. And the Little King superego figure proclaimed that if I willed my Will to stop this Magical Thinking then this act of will, willing Will, would have more power toward getting me the role in the film.

  Around the time I was developing my Will I was invited out to Los Angeles to perform my monologues. I got good reviews so Warner Brothers Television called me up and said, “Could you come in and read? Anything, just come in and read.”

  “Come up and see my monologue, why don’t you? It’s just up the street.”

  “Well, we haven’t got time for that, we go to bed early out here. But could you come in?”

  And what they chose for me to read was a sitcom—a pilot that had been “axed” or “cut” or whatever the technical term is for a show that’s been put on the shelf because it’s no good. So that was the text.

  I was to be reading the role of Howard and my wife was Harriet. I started out, “But I don’t want to spend my Sundays eating mixed nuts in the company of your sister and her jerky husband.”

  Harriet answered, “Oh come on. You know you really like Norman.”

  “Harriet, the idea of Norman doesn’t put a smile on any part of my body.”

  “Get ready. Put your shoes on.”

  “Why? They know I have feet.”

  “Come on, you know it’s become a tradition to have them over on Sundays.”

  “Tradition? Now listen Harriet. Decorating a Christmas tree is a tradition. Fireworks on the Fourth is a tradition. But having your sister and her jerky husband over here to park their carcasses on my couch, watch my TV and scarf down all the cashews from the mixed-nut bowl is not my idea of a tradition!”

  I didn’t get the role. I think I read it with too much of an edge, actually. Too East Coast intellectual. So I was on my way out and—the Lord works in strange ways—lo and behold, I ran into Roland Joffe, who was there casting The Killing Fields. Warner Brothers was putting money into the film and they were going to distribute it, so they were letting him use an office. Roland said, “Let’s chat again.”

  I went home and put on my white shirt and my pink tie and my tweed jacket and went back to the studio. Once again Roland talked to me, this time for forty-five minutes. He did all the talking again, about what an incredible country Cambodia was before it was colonized, that it had a strain of Buddhism so permissive and so sensual that the Cambodians seemed to have done away with unnecessary guilt. Compared to Cambodia, Thailand was a Nordic country—Thailand was like Sweden compared to Cambodia, which was more like Italy. Ninety percent of the Cambodians owned their land—it was dirty land, it was earth, but it was clean. Earth dirt. Clean dirt. And they were so happy.

  The Cambodians knew how to have fun. They knew how to have a good time being born; how to have a good time growing up; a good time going through puberty; a good time falling in love and staying in love; a good time getting married and having children; a good time raising children; and a good time growing old and dying. They even knew how to have a good time on New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t believe it.

  The only thing, according to Roland, was that they had lost touch with evil. Because it was such a beautiful, gentle land, they’d lost touch with evil. The situation was something like that of the Tantric colonies on the East Coast of India. They were so open down there that the Huns just came in and ate them up like chocolate-covered cherries. And the same thing was happening to the Cambodians.

  The Samoans, on the other hand, have a very pleasurable culture but they’ve made sure to initiate their children into pain through certain tattoo rituals, so that they have a realistic association with pain.

  I couldn’t get a clear vision of Cambodia in my mind. I had a map in my head, but I couldn’t quite place it among the other countries—so I looked at a map and there it was, about the size of the state of Missouri. In 1965 there were about seven million people in the entire country, six hundred thousand in the capital of Phnom Penh. There’s a big freshwater lake right in the middle for all sorts of recreational activities, fishing along the coast, seaports along the Gulf of Siam. And in 1966 that happy, sexy Prince Sihanouk—perhaps because of his Buddhist tolerance and open-mindednessallowed the Vietnamese a few “sanctuaries” along the border.

  The American Air Force got very upset about this, one general in particular, who was sure that there was a Central Headquarters up there about the size of the Pentagon from which the Vietnamese sent out orders. Maybe it was even a replica of the Pentgon—I think the Air Force thought that.

  And if they could just bump off that Central Headquarters by flying in a few B-52s from Bangkok . . . they wouldn’t even have to tell the American public about it. “Who needs to know about it? We can do it in one raid and we’d be done with that Central Headquarters.” So the general called a secret meeting at the Pentagon, named, of course, Operation Breakfast. At Operation Breakfast they came up with the menu.

  It was kind of a weird diet, as you can imagine. The bombers came up from Bangkok like big flying motels, dropping their bombs according to some computer program on all the sanctuaries, then up to where they thought the headquarters might be and all along the Ho Chi Minh supply line.

  But instead of driving the Vietcong back, Operation Breakfast had the opposite effect. It drove them further into the Cambodian jungles where they hitched up with this weird bunch of rednecks called the Khmer Rouge, run by Pol Pot along with Khieu Samphan and Ieng Sary. They had been educated in Paris in the strict Maoist doctrine, except someone threw a perverse little bit of Rousseau into the soup.

  This made for a strange bunch o
f bandits, hanging out in the jungle living on bark, bugs, leaves and lizards, being trained by the Vietcong. They had a back-to-the-land, racist consciousness beyond anything Hitler had ever dreamed of. But they had no scapegoat other than the city-dwellers of Phnom Penh. They were like a hundred thousand rednecks rallying in New Paltz, New York, ninety miles above the City, about to march in.

  Now, around the time that the VC were up there training the Khmer Rouge, Sihanouk-who was out of town for a day—was deposed, maybe by a CIA plot. No one really knows about that. And Lon Nol was put in his place, General Lon Nol, formerly Prince Sihanouk’s prime minister. No one knew anything about Lon Nol in the United States. As one political cartoonist noted at the time, the only thing we knew was that “Lon Nol” spelled backwards was “Lon Nol.”

  Well, leave it to a Brit to tell you your own history; the next thing that Roland told me was that, at that time, President Nixon was developing this madman theory on the banks of Key Biscayne. He said to Bob Haldeman, “Listen Bob, just let it be known that I’ve gone mad, see, and then the Vietcong will think that I’m going to press the button—you know how trigger-happy I am—and they’ll stop all of their bombing.”

  In order to develop this madman theory he was watching reruns of Patton in his bedroom every night, over and over again, and taking military advice from Bebe Rebozo and John Mitchell.

  The incident at Kent State happened around then as well, as Roland reminded me. He suggested I read up on it in a book called Sideshow, by William Shawcross, which I did, later. I remembered Kent State but I had just lumped it in with the Vietnam protest; I’d forgotten that it was a direct protest against the invasion of Cambodia. I also didn’t know that most U.S. National Guard troops were not allowed to have live ammunition in their guns, but in Ohio they were. Governor James Rhodes had called them out because the protesters were storming Kent’s ROTC building, and on a lovely May day fifteen people were shot, four innocent bystanders were killed. Roland told me that the American public was polled on its reaction to the incident and the majority of people said that the shooting was justified. This caused enormous dissension and one hundred thousand protesters marched on the White House. Haig massed troops in the basement of the White House thinking there was going to be a siege. According to Shawcross, Nixon got no sleep at all; he was up the entire night making phone calls. He made fifty calls, eight to Kissinger, seven to Haldeman, one to Norman Vincent Peale, one to Billy Graham. After one hour of sleep he got up and put on Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. I and, with his Cuban valet Manolo Sanchez, he went down to the Lincoln Memorial to talk to the protesters about surfing, football, how travel broadens the mind. In fact, Roland reports that one of the students said, “I hope it was because our President was tired, but when he asked me what college I was from and I told him, he said, ”How’s your team doing this year?”