Off to Cambodia this weekend - secret mission, then a look-see at Phnom Penh. I’ve heard reports ranging from “a wretched hive of scum and villainy” to “cool place” to “the new Prague” (as in, sexy, yet cheap, since Prague is no longer the latter). It looks like a cool place. Will report.
Once in a while, you find something fascinating in the newspaper:
…for he loves fucking much. [source — good old Rochester]
So, after considering various opinions, I’ve decided that the people who tell me the new Gwynn story doesn’t stand on its own are right, and I will have to make it, er, longer and thicker.
I’ve finished another, 10 000 word story which I’ve had some positive feedback on. Depending on what other readers say, I might start sending this one out.
The other Gwynn story, where he’s hanging out with the adventuress, seems to be aspiring to the condition of porn, hence the title of this post. He does love fucking, and by all that dangles, thrusts, nibbles, sucks, and creaks in leather, he is going to do it on camera, with a crazy debauched woman, in a tub of milk recently vacated by three underage boys, or he is not going to give me the rest of the story.
Other tidbits: Angel Eyes is apparently behaving in his cage and Big Nose Kate is still alive. I’ve lost a kilo. I like to be 48kg, my body thinks 51 is fine. It’s an ongoing argument. Currently 50, abs kinda showing, huzzah! I’ve been jogging and cutting back on sugar, which is the only way I ever really drop fat. Giant snails — they come out in the rain. The other day I saw one about five inches long. These snails have pointed shells, huge sharp pointy teeth, and Bette Davis eyes.
And I have auditory hallucinations. Every morning the school near us sings their school song, which sounds like the Addams Family theme slowed down and churchified. But I keep hearing it faintly at other times of day when they’re not singing it. And if I play youtube videos with the sound off, I swear I can still hear things, even if I don’t know what the music should sound like. I’ve had these sound effects all my life, in this minor sort of way, and it doesn’t bother me. But it’s odd. I must have a wire crossed somewhere.
I.
I may have mentioned the little soi near the swampy canal. It’s a backstreet lined with dilapidated wooden houses and banyan and jackfruit trees. I often jog through it in the mornings, as it’s a shortcut to the park. The people in it are poor. I don’t know any of them, except (sort of) for a guy who isn’t right in the head and keeps trying to get me to sit down and have a drink with him. The street is full of cats, dogs, kittens, puppies, and motorbikes. Surprisingly to me, although plenty of these animals are in poor condition, I was yet to see one that had obviously been hit by a vehicle — I guess they grow up traffic smart — until three days ago.
The cat that caught my eye was a half-grown mackerel tabby wearing a collar. He was playing feistily with a dog, but his back legs were dragging. They were moving, so it obviously wasn’t paralysed, they just weren’t moving right. I asked a lady who was also watching him if he’d been hit by a car, and she said yes. Next day I went past again, and saw the cat still scrambling around with its legs screwed up.
I decided to do a crazy farang thing (farang are widely known to be crazy.) Next morning, armed with the vocab I would need and a cardboard box, I went up to the soi and found out where the cat lived. It was curled up asleep with the dog I saw it playing with the other day. I got the owner’s permission to take it to a vet. She said that as well as a sore leg it had diarrhea. The cat nearly destroyed the box during the walk down to Sukhumvit to get a taxi. It was quiet in the taxi, but resumed destruction when we got out. But we made it to the vet, thanks to a kind security guard who helped me find the place when the cat had all but made its escape and I was having to hold it inside the box with my hand. Credit to the little critter, it didn’t bite or deliberately scratch me.
The vet clinic is opposite a swanky hospital. Though far from swanky itself, I still probably could have found a cheaper vet — although there aren’t that many around, so maybe not — but I figured that at least there should be a decent standard of care at this place. The assistants made a great fuss over the cat, who I had by then in my own mind nicknamed Angel Eyes. They affirmed that he’s male, though his balls haven’t dropped yet, and clipped his very long claws, throughout which procedure he was surprisingly docile — and he remained so throughout the entire visit. Remembering my own cat’s homicidal antics at the vet, I watched amazed as Angel Eyes allowed himself to be carried around, poked and prodded, had a thermometer stuck in his ass, etc.
An x-ray showed a fractured hip, but, said the vet, not a bad one, and if he stays confined in a cage for a month his young bones should heal by themselves. She gave me a bunch of medicines and instructions in Thai for the owner. Cost: 1700 baht — about US$50. Owner’s monthly income — rough guess, 5000 baht. The vet said that after a month, if I’m willing to, I should bring him back for vaccinations, which will be about 2000 bt ($60). Neutering, another 2000 bt. So, imagine spending virtually a month’s income on vaccinating and sterilising a cat.
The owners didn’t have a cage, so I went up to Tesco at the end of the BTS line (not very far) to get one. They didn’t have anything, but the manager kindly took me outside to a pet shop, and when there were no cages there either, gave me directions to a larger pet shop down the road. Here I was able to buy a cheap cage, big enough for a small dog, so that the cat could still move around a bit. I took it back to the soi, and on the way, passing a beauty parlour I must have gone by a hundred times, saw in the window a sign I hadn’t noticed before: BEARTINTING. I want my bear tinted!
After all this running around I was hot, so I stopped at the little drinks shop on the corner and got something I’ve never had before. It’s called nam kaeng sai: a bowl of shaved ice with syrup over the top. The young woman in the shop used an old-fashioned hand-turned ice shaver, and I felt like a kid watching as the shiny block of ice, pressed in the screw, turned to ice shavings. Once I’d stirred the sweet red syrup in, it was a lot like a crushed popsicle.
II.
Next day I drop by in the morning to see how Angel Eyes is doing in his cage — and to make sure he actually is in the cage, and hopefully get the vet on the phone for the owners to speak to, but they aren’t home and I can’t see him. However, the girl at the drinks shop shows me her cat, a black female with three or four kittens, and cat flu. I phone the vet and she says it might well be too late, and that treatment will be at least 1000 bt. I get gold feet. I don’t want — can’t afford — to be known as a soft-touch farang who’ll buy veterinary care for every animal in the soi. I tell the girl I can’t help. She looks downcast but says it’s ok. About 30 metres down the road, I get an invisible kick in the backside. I go back and say I’ll try, but that I don’t know if the vet can help. She brightens and fetches a Singha beer box for the cat. This is an adult cat in a bad mood, so in cat vs. box, I give the box about 5 minutes. So it’s back to the pet shop, for a smaller carry-cage, back to the soi, and back to the vet. The cat is vocal in the taxi and clearly unimpressed with the cage. I’m glad I didn’t attempt to carry it in the box.
The vet is the same woman I saw yesterday. She asks me to give the cat a name for the paperwork, so, since the cat is temperamental and sneezing, and I’ve already started a western theme, I call her Big Nose Kate, though only Kate goes on the form. The vet says that to guarantee her recovery, an expensive stay in the clinic would be required. I’m not willing to go that far, so she provides medicine and gives me a discount. Since she’s an employee here, she probably cut the discount out of her own wage.
I ask her if there’s a veterinary charity or subsidised service for low-income pet owners. She says there’s nothing official, only small groups that come and go. When she had her own practice she used to give a lot of free treatment to street animals. However, as she says, the responsibility really shouldn’t have to be shouldered by individual vets. I mention the Soi Cat and Dog (SCAD) rescue organisation, and she says she thinks they might do free sterilisations and shots. If Kate survives the flu, it would be a very good idea to have her spayed. She’s too old for vaccinations to take full effect, and lowered immunity from being pregnant and nursing probably contributed to her getting sick in the first place.
So, Kate goes back home. I give the owner the clinic’s number, since the vet wants to talk in more detail about keeping Kate away from male cats, since she’s coming on heat, and possibly her own kittens, if they’re old enough, since they could catch her flu. I’ve emailed SCAD asking about free treatments. If they offer them, I’d be willing to transport cats and possibly small dogs to their health care centre.
I’ve lost weight from all the running around, learned some new vocab, made some new acquaintances, and discovered the edibility of crushed ice with syrup. I have also, undoubtedly, got myself a reputation as a sucker for a sick cat, so I’m pre-firming my resolve to say no to the next one, since I honestly can’t afford to do this a lot. Hopefully I’ll hear some good news from SCAD.
This deer with a genetic defect causing it to grow a single, centrally placed horn is alive and well and living in Italy.
Rant the Second
So this morning I was thinking again about the fashion for skinny male models, and I did a bit of surfing on the subject. I found a couple of articles airing the opinion that designers will probably start going for buffer models again soon. And it hit me. What I mean is, the truth of something I must have read once in a cultural studies or feminist context hit me. The point of these “fashions” for different body types is to keep the consuming public in a state of insecurity and anxiety born of measuring ourselves against unattainable ideals. Whatever the ideal is — very young, very thin, very buff — it’s always a physical shape that the people who actually have the money to buy the clothes are too old and too busy to attain. To make themselves feel a little better, they buy the bags and shoes (Stu was right). You notice that they make shoes in all sizes. No designer says, “Oh, we’re only making shoes for people with old-style Chinese bound feet this year;” or, “We’re only making teeny tiny bags; bags you can fit stuff in are so crass.” No, they make damn sure to have bags and shoes for pretty much anyone with a spare two or three grand.
It’s all about whispering inadequacy into people’s ears in order to create desire. In the case of women, the skinny pre-pubescent shape is an ideal one for this purpose, since it’s the least obtainable one for most adult women. In the case of guys, both the skinny look and the buff look serve. Fashion folks say the new focus on tender young striplings is all about giving the awkward, geeky kid — the ordinary suburban boy who’ll never be a jock — his day in the sun. If that were true, it would be commendable. Maybe it is even a little bit true. But the fact is, one type — somatotype and cultural type — is being extolled above others; one “brand” of human being is being promoted as the ideal; and that is all about the implantation and control of desire.
So it’s about money. I think it’s also about memes. Artists, whether or not they have physical children, reproduce themselves culturally, sowing the wild oats of their own tastes. It takes a little humility and appreciation for diversity to see that your tastes, and your memetic children, are just one part of the cultural and aesthetic picture of the world. When an artist gets obsessed with a certain form, a certain combination of qualia (my new favourite word) — and I think men are particularly prone to this — they can start to imagine that their subjective tastes and loves have objective value. They may feel themselves inspired with a mission to spread their own tastes far and wide, and to conquer the memetic kingdoms of others.
Designer Hedi Slimane, who is credited with setting off the trend for fragile guys on the catwalk, piffles thus, ex-cathedra: “From a classic suit, to jeans or a Speedo, there is not much you can do when you look high on testosterone. I guess one can’t have style and a buff body as well. There is justice after all.”
I’m taking a slight license here, interpreting “high on testosterone” to mean “quite well developed”. In the first picture, some boy models (from this article in the Telegraph). In the second, Yul Brynner. And the award for style goes to…?
Mrow. I’m ranting on about this because it’s something that really upsets and frustrates me. I’ve had a lot of issues with my body in the past, and still, to be honest, am not 100% at home in my skin. I’m quite slim, but I’m also muscular, and I’m short. So I’ve never been the ideal. My most often complimented part are my hands, which for some reason are long and thin; I swear there’s a tall, skinny girl out there wondering why she has short, stubby peasant fingers — they were meant to be mine.
I hate to think about how much mental energy I’ve spent throughout my life bemoaning my fatal shortness of thigh (as one similarly “pony-built” woman wonderfully put it), and my somewhat muscly calves. Obviously I haven’t gone unloved. I’m married. This body is not unappreciated. And I’m well aware that it’s healthy, and that that is something to be grateful for. But I’ve been down on myself and resentful of my genetics for as long as I can remember, because, yes, I would like to be glamorous; I would like to be stylish. When I find clothes that do make me look stylish, I snap them up, then wear them forever. I think I’ve been wearing the same pair of black satin Dangerfield cargo pants for 15 years.
I’m still high on a Blues Brothers moment. Right now, I’m seeing the light. I’m seeing that body fashions are all about making money for someone somewhere in Paris or London or Milan or New York, and about increasing that person’s cultural power. Right now, I feel kind of free. But sooner or later, I have to go shopping, and find something that fits and flatters, and that’s where the no-fun starts. Personally, I think I’d look pretty hot in that jacket Yul is sporting. Reckon it’d go with black satin cargo pants?
Ok, bitching and moaning over. What I’m curious about now is how the multishaped adult masses can reclaim style for ourselves. Maybe we need to start looking outside the box a little more. What kind of clothes suit our different shapes? Dressing gowns? Cossack pants? Bearskins…? Muu-muus…..?
Edit: I don’t know who this model is, but she looks refreshingly normal to me. Slender, sure, but obviously not in need of UN aid. And hey, the clothes look just fine on her. I can also see the last one working on a figure with more hip and bust — it has that kind of 1940s thing going on.
Some of you might remember Szilveszter Szabo, the Hungarian singer and actor who I babbled about last year. Some new videos have appeared. I love this guy. He writes short stories, too, did I mention?
Sweet transvestite (from the musical Kabaret):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh3gFeo0wn0
He plays piano! …and pulls funny faces, and tells jokes. Wish I could understand Hungarian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg6fTaedt3U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA6RoKKD7tc
Last night I was walking in Queen Sirikit park, and as I went past a tree I heard a bird somewhere up in its branches uttering a call that sounded just like: “Poontang! Poontang! Poontang!” I kid you not.
On the other side of the lake that occupies most of the park, a young soldier sitting on a bench, singing softly and strumming his walkie talkie like a guitar.
Going home down Soi 10, incessant lightning flashing in the clouds above the tapering tower block facing the soi down on Sukhumvit. I expected a light to come on in the heights of the tower and Riff Raff to appear at the window. Living in this part of Bangkok is a bit like living in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, after all.
Speaking of horror — and glamorous things — how about this for a feather boa? The Shocking Pink Dragon Millipede (Desmoxytes purpurosea) of Thailand, discovered by team led by Dr. Somsak Panha of Chulalongkorn University was among TOP 10 New Species Listing announced by The International Institute for Species Exploration (IISE) on 23 May 2008. The list is for species described (not necessarily discovered; it includes a dinosaur and an extinct frog) in 2007.
Also on the list was a sleeper ray dubbed Electrolux addisoni. Saith Wikipedia: “The name alludes to the well-developed electrogenic properties of this ray” and to “the vigorous sucking action displayed on the videotape of the feeding ray that…may rival a well-known electrical device used to suck the detritus from carpets, furniture, and other dust-gathering surfaces in modern home.”
Idly reading the increasingly trivial The Age this morning, I came across this article about model David Sciola, who had trouble getting work in Paris because he didn’t look enough like a terminally ill twink. Looking at the picture featured in the article, I see a very attractive man - lean, nicely defined, on the slender side but obviously capable of defending the cave, who looks damn fine in his faded jeans (designer? who knows, I’ve seen pairs just like that for $3 at Chatuchak market) . Now, very skinny guys have their own kind of beauty; there’s many a naturally rail-thin man out there, and their bodies can have a supple, angular elegance that looks just great - in some kinds of clothing. Other clothes look better on bodies with a bit more bulk. Those jeans, for instance - when the wearer turns around, you would hope to see them hugging a fine firm butt, not hanging off the back of nothing like grandma knickers with the elastic gone.
Of course, as these thoughts went through my head, I realised how much clearer they were than my thoughts about female models. While my intellect despairs at all the child- brides of Skeletor shaking their poor bones on the catwalk, there’s another part of me that would love to be that skinny - that far removed from the physical shape of normal human adulthood. “But men like women who aren’t gaunt!” cry many male voices; yes, I reply, but this isn’t about wanting to be desirable to men; this has nothing to do with men. This is about complicated, conflicted feelings. It is about anxiety over the grown-up female body - its inferior status (it’s still a man’s world), its fetishisation, its potential fertility.
But turn the tables, put a fit, nicely covered man in the same place as a fit, nicely covered woman, and I have to wonder where the anxiety is. Western culture doesn’t have nearly the neuroses about the male body that it has about the female. Mature men, fertile men, strong men, are all idealised; fragile boys are not. Sure, twinks have their fans in the gay community, but so do muscle studs, bears and medium-sized guys, so you can’t blame the fad for very skinny models on the designers’ sexual preferences.
So what’s going on? The standard protest from Fashion Land is basically that clothes look best on coathangers, and therefore models should physically resemble coathangers as much as possible. The damn silliness of this should be obvious. I cannot think of a reason for clothes to exist except as protection and adornment for the human body. If clothes don’t protect and/or fit and flatter the body, they FAIL.
Clothing designers are artists. Every art has its challenges. The human body is a challenge to the tailor, and any tailor worth their salt knows what styles work best on different body types. But couture designers seem to have utterly forgotten the tailor’s mission to make people look as good as possible in their clothes - all people, not just the terrifically tall and ectomorphic ones. Now, some body types are probably harder to design garments for than others. But one of average size and in lean, fit shape — a cause for a tailor’s despair? One would hope not.
Cultural commentators come up with all sorts of sinister theories about the prevalence of extremely thin models. They may be right. Or maybe there’s an economic reason (always look for the economic reason behind any human phenomenon, I say). I present a theory: the kind of people, a handful of princes and princesses aside, who actually shell out for couture, can’t afford therefore to buy food: they subsist on carrot tops and wilted cabbage leaves scavenged from garbage bins, so that they are all very thin, and it is these people for whom designers must design if they are to make sales. Plausible?
Not that Mr Sciola himself, who obviously does eat, appears to be in urgent need of couture. He looks great just as he is in those $3 jeans from Chatuchak.
Title: She Mirrors. It must be the fastest story I’ve ever written - 4000 words in four days and a morning. It started off as an epigram, turned into a vignette, and then into, well, a 4000 word vignette. It probably needs a rewrite, but in my own mind I’m pretty happy with it — and more than happy that Milord Muse swooped suddenly in.
So if Baron Mammon could arrange a sale…
