Cambodia Barworld Studies: A Celebration of Barworld Discourse
I like the conversations here. Maybe it’s because I hang around with deranged alcoholics. Or perhaps it’s all the old perverts I’ve met while doing research at hostess bars. Or it might just be the permissiveness of expatriate society. But I rarely go out without hearing some story that makes me laugh.
I admit that I have a strange sense of humour. Sometimes I’m the only one who finds something funny, while everyone else just looks at me like I’m a bit creepy, but I think I’ve figured out what makes me laugh. It all has to do with perspective.
Some people believe they’ve gone through a sort of mental revolution after spending a while in the barworld. They talk about Western values, middle class ideals, and bourgeois morality like they’re alien concepts.
Unless theyr’e really warped, and can’t stop talking about hookers, they’re usually able to moderate their conversations. When they’re back home or in unfamiliar company, they slip back into everyday chitchat. It’s that thing about permissiveness.
But when they’re with people they know, they seem shameless about their own depravity and revel in the sordidness of the world around them. I?m one of the people who finds listening to this sort of stuff very funny. You can almost stand outside of yourself and marvel at their addictions to sleaze.
This is clearly the case with one of my friends, Dirty Davy. For him, the addiction to sleaze isn’t unconscious. Dirty Davy isn’t that bad. He can wear the mask of respectability. But he gets off on seeing the world as unspeakably depraved.
It’s fun talking with people like Dirty Davy. I can go to breakfast and feel like it’s an ordinary day. I mull over the morning newspaper between mouthfuls of bacon and eggs. And then he interjects, ‘That girl last night wouldn’t give me a blowjob. I don’t know what came over me, but I grabbed her head and shoved it down to my cock and commanded her to suck.?
Say that in the wrong company and you’ll be accused of gender based violence. But everyone at the table just sits, and nods, and sips their coffee. Someone might even try to say something more outrageous and make everyone laugh.
Sometimes people don’t even know they’re looking at the world through grimy sexpat glasses. One night Dirty Davy met up with Dodgy Deke. Their madcap antics started out with slipping each other viagra and finished with spit-roasting a Vietnamese girl.
The next day saw both of them privately marvelling at the other’s depravity: ”She wouldn?t do backdoor. So he just grabbed her by the hips, flipped her over, and declared, ‘All right! Forced anal!? It was all I could do to keep him from ripping her in half!’
Sometimes these conversations drift into the surreal. But then they’re even funnier. Take the time Dirty Davy talked to someone from WorldVision. He spent the whole night pounding back Pastis and arguing that village boys form secret societies to watch porno videos and gang-rape bar girls. ‘No, it’s true!’ he insisted. ‘What you read in the papers is just the tip of the iceberg! It’s everywhere!’
I must admit that I have great affection for the outrageous. Sometimes it even prompts me to stretch the truth when I write. It’s imagining the rosy cheeked backpacker checking out the Lonely Planet website, finding some reference to Khmer440, and then searching for the site to get information for his upcoming trip that makes it fun.
He’s a fresh college graduate, travelling with his long-term girlfriend, whom he plans to marry in six months, and he’s totally unprepared for what he’s about to read. He clicks on the site and the first thing he sees is an article about teachers poking students, kids going spastic on ketamine, or old men buying virgins. His brain starts to pop and fizzle.
Or take the bloated white NGO heifer working on a report about gender based violence. She’s sitting in front of her computer with a pastry from The Shoppe when she clicks on a link and then suddenly sprays the screen with whipped cream and tips her double latte all over the pink frock she uses to cover her massive girth.
I shamefacedly apologise to the powers that be at Khmer440 when I submit articles because I know they’re going to be exactly the type of thing that scares away posh advertisers. But they always tell me that the stories that get the most hits are the ones that scare the advertisers away. Some people must share my sense of humour.
Sexism, racism, misogyny, churlishness, brutal callousness. They’re all used in comedy. Every standup comic makes his bread and butter by pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable. You laugh so as not to take offence.
Mostly it doesn’t reflect anyone’s real feelings. It’s just being outrageous. But in Cambodia it becomes everyday. Some people find this hard to take lightly. Perhaps they fear it’s inching us toward moral nihilism. But I just can’t help but laugh.
Mac Hathaway
