STDs

Saigon... shit; I'm still only in Saigon... Well, actually, no I'm not - been through there though and had a great time drinking, singing and exploring exotic and strange tunnels. Which brings me, rather graphically, to my next subject - sex tourism and the Sex Tourist Deviants (I hope you appreciate the tenuous attempt at a pun there - it'll just have to do) I've invented a drinking game out here since arriving - imagining for one minute that I find people tolerant enough to put up with my behaviour for an evening - that involves taking a gulp every time you see one of these niche crowd of grotesques and the fact I'm always losing my key and way home bears testament to the saturation of them in every country I've visited so far. They are everywhere and about as inconspicuous as a python in a wormery.

In the queue at Gatwick I noticed a couple of older, hirsute men knuckling their way towards the check-in desk and immediately had my suspicions, having heard all the stories and seen the documentaries - well, Louis Theroux's one anyway. But I thought they wouldn't be that easy to spot - the reality is that they really are, so allow me to describe them for you. I hope you're not eating.

The uniform they wear is fairly distinctive; a flowing, silky shirt with a deliberately haphazard design splattered onto the front - to hide those less deliberate stains of blood, semen and HP sauce; the Holy Trinity - that hangs loosely over the belly's cliff-face and slobbers hungrily up and down in the merest puff of wind. The untouchable's unmentionables are usually kept at bay - albeit temporarily - by an option of tight shorts or tight jeans ridden high above the beltline, forcing gut blobs to jelly over a belt notch long-since past its wear-by date. It's funny that this sounds so embellished and obvious, but the truth is that most of these descriptions are taken from an STD sitting about two tables away from me as I write this. Or is that a mirror? No, it bloody well isn't. Anyway the outfit is finished off with a pair of durable sandals (socks appeal optional) worn out at the sides from leaning into cars and crawling along kerbs - you get the picture.

Let's face it, the face is what we all want to know about. So, the standard palor is greying, ashen, deathly - whatever a life of smoking 40 Mayfair a day will do to your skin tone with a complexion to match. Wrinkles and folds in the skin tumble down the mush like a stack of upmarket pram wheels with extra tread and lank, greasy hair usually finds a tread to sit in and leer from. I swear I'm not making this up - he's here, he's sitting opposite me and he's a beauty! These men, almost always European and invariably German or English, come to the continent in search of a wanton desire - like the soup, but with their own scaly face croutons. They come to find what they couldn't in their homeland and so something that confuses me is the look of conquest and achievement that pours from their pores. An appearance of justice and victory about their deeds that is steadfast and not only unfounded, but creepily unsettling.

It's as if the cost of the ticket to get out here justifies the lewd acts which transpire as a consequence and people in this part of the world can either like it or hump it. It's a conflicting phenomenon though - whole families, who have previously lived with poverty and destitution for generations, are lifted from that into a far more comfortable world as a result of these relationships. The girls spend 3-4 years 'attached', rarely having more than 1-2 months a year where they actually have to tolerate time with the STDs, and in that time have a massively positive effect on their family's desperate circumstances. So the question is, is it such a bad thing?

Yes, of course it is! It's an act of exploitation and as such can never be fully morally justified. From what I've observed, there seems to be two types of girls who suffer this kind of degradation - the meek and the strong. The meek kind make your heart ache as they resign themselves to their lot and are pulled and dragged alongside the STDs, kind of like the way rich girls put a little shaky dog in their handbags, but the strong kind... look out. Since being out here I've seen plenty of examples of local girls completely bullying the pitiful, but grateful, STDs. They berate and intimidate the men and are able to use their unfortunate circumstances to their advantage. It's not perfect, but at least it's the exploitative men who are treated like dogs in this version of the story. Plus, I'll never get bored of seeing an STD gorilla-type getting a public dressing down by a skinny 19-year-old mummy long-legs. It's golden.

No pic this week - I've literally spared you and you should be thankful - but I have finished my new movie for the past month, which I'm sure you've already seen (if not, why? Give it a try, you might like it... Do it now!) but if not, here's the link. http://vimeo.com/32436430 By the way, kudos if you got the movie quote I started the post with. Couldn't resist. Ta-ta