No Offense Intended

My recent article entitled White Girls in Phnom Penh elicited a spirited response from a couple of fellows who either saw themselves in it or thought they did. I must admit, I’m not always so tactful; in the case of lardasses I can see how they might take offense.

However, I had just stated quite clearly only a few words earlier that I’m still sometimes attracted to fat women so how I could be down on flabmaster men, for their flab and flab only, is a bit murky. We all have our figurative beer-bellies to bear, our follies to live down, our deficiencies to work on, and our occasional stupidities to seemingly come on neverendingly.

In my life I’ve been somewhat strung out on, needy of, manic about, lots of different things – sex, female companionship, tobacco, ganja, being different – but, thankfully, I’ve never been stuck on more than moderate overeating. Funny thing is, you don’t need to look like a hippo to feel powerless over your food intake: I’m very aware of the extra 5 kilos I’m carrying around.

I don’t like the way it looks, or feels or the bloated sensation that accompanies overeating or the fact that it’s not as healthy as being thin. It isn’t the gross challenge of being obese, but it bothers me nonetheless that my mind and body don’t seem to be able to coordinate. My stomach says, “Ok, perfect, that’s enough,” and I go for another helping. Ultimately, regardless of individual propensities for gaining weight, you have to eat too much to get fat. Throughout my early life I was beside myself with longing and self-pity anytime I didn’t have a girlfriend or partner and this led to some extraordinarily bad decisionmaking, and accompanying trauma.

You know, when you’re in a relationship that you can’t leave for reasons of children, insecurity, whatever. Your partner is positively demonic but you cannot extricate yourself. It also led, in phases of my life, to being so personally weak and so hungry for love that I very quickly scared away almost all potential partners.

Growing up in the milk-toast, leave-it-to-beaver fifties left me totally unprepared for the give and take of courtship and, obviously, completely unfulfilled sexually. It was a clean-cut, hunky-dory time when you actually trusted your government and society to do the right thing. In those days you couldn’t help but be ruled by the relationship ‘double standard’, even when you fought it intellectually, as I did.

Though it’s been totally vanquished in the US – outside of religious freaks – it still holds some sway here in Cambodia. Back then, as always, you tried your best to get laid, but once you scored, she was no longer a worthy partner. She became a slut who you bragged about your success with to the whole school.

The boys would never touch inappropriately a girl they actually liked and respected. This led to a lot of neurotic and frustrated people. There was lots of petting and making out; with painful blue balls the result of the inability to consummate. The girls who did put out, in order to relieve themselves of the guilt of partaking, had to preface the act by saying “No, don’t.” The boys had to know that no meant yes.

Of course, sometimes no actually meant no, but once you had her sufficiently compromised she was fair game. This did not work for me – at – all. Once she said no I instantly deflated and shut down like a Phnom Penh power cut. This led to getting married, at the age of nineteen; to the first girl I did manage to get inside the pants of.

“If you don’t marry me, I’m leaving,” did the trick. An example of one of those extraordinarily bad decisions, but I was incapable of imagining going back to celibacy again. The late sixties saw a 180 flip and the sexual revolution. It was almost as easy to get laid then as it is now here in Phnom Penh.

The girls were as happy to check out the offerings as the boys. It was a giddy time when almost anything went. But as all things in life, the pendulum swung back a bit with the women’s liberation movement – they were freed, but also became demanding. Also I might add with the impetus of the basic biological differences between the sexes. Simply put, it’s a lot easier for men to enjoy sex than women. For men, orgasm in sex is virtually a given, for women, a sometime thing. Once women had discovered that reality, they had a lot less propensity to jump in the sack at any provocation.

It behooved them to be more selective. They also had begun to have more opportunities for self-sufficiency and didn’t need to put out just for security. AIDS was the final nail in the coffin of easy sex. It didn’t go all the way back to the guilt-ridden fifties, but most American women (Europeans seem to be freer) are insisting on some type of commitment. Once that step is taken it often leads to one telling the other how to live, what to like, how to dress, what to eat, when to come home, etc which is, for me, at my present stage of life, impossible to contemplate. It does have its compensations; finding someone you like enough to make a life and maybe family together is a special thing.

Everybody ought to be able to compromise enough to do it at least once. However, I’ve got a message for my other friend who feels that western women are out to challenge his very manhood. The fact that getting laid here is as easy as ordering a beer does in no way mean that finding one to live with and truly love is any kind of cakewalk. I could recite a bookcase full of stories of western men tormented by their local partners: I won’t because it would embarrass half of my friends. These girls won’t challenge you intellectually or make you do your own laundry, but they can be adept at putting you through hell and back.

In no way do I mean to imply that all are like that; I could also recite many stories of guys partnering with wonderful Khmer women. The point being it makes no more sense to denigrate all western women than it does to put all locals on pedestals. That said, it sure is easier to initiate a relationship with a Khmer female than a western one. Find one in a girly bar, take her home, ask her to stay and in the space of a few hours you’ve got a girlfriend. The surprises come later, sometimes not very much later, but at least, if you really need a relationship, you’ve surmounted the most difficult challenge. But what of the sex? Cambodia still mostly works on the double standard, which means you either have easy girls who, because they do it for favors, can often be quite bored and listless in the sack or good girls who have to overcome their learning that sex is for bad girls.

There’s no sex education here. These girls don’t have any idea what orgasm is. They’ve never gotten themselves off, can’t quite believe it when you explain it to them. The concept is alien to their learning and experience. Western women have no such deficiency. They know what it’s like and think they deserve it. They can be demanding, but that’s at least partly because they’ve been educated in a modern society, and understand, at least in theory, that equality is doable and desirable. Why should it be otherwise? So that we men, the superior gender, can be served hand and foot?

Hardly. Concurrently, it can’t be denied that the relationship thing in America has in some ways gotten out of hand. This is partly reflected in a wide gender gap in views of partnering. Sixty percent of men want a partner who’s more traditional… read subservient. The same percentage of women want equality and this is obviously a serious mismatch. Nevertheless, large numbers of people do manage to form relationships so it can’t be all that difficult. If an individual, like my friend, feels like all western women are out to get him, then it really has to come down to his paranoia being the problem.

I don’t wish to deny or denigrate his feelings – relating in America can be a challenge – or minimize the difficulties that relationships face in western society – there is clearly a lot of tension there. Still, his reaction being so visceral belies a problem in himself that’s deeper than his ostensible problem with western women. I’m happy being a man, especially here in Cambodia where life can be so cushy. Doesn’t matter if you’re fat, old, ugly or stupid, you can still get what you want or need and live a relatively privileged life. I may believe in equality but I’ll never complain if she doesn’t ask me to (demand that I) do the dishes. I’m also thrilled to have access to sex without hassle or trauma. Back in the states I’m typically in a state of sexual deprivation.

However, were the tables turned (and I wasn’t stuck in a traditional society and didn’t know better) I imagine I’d have a difficult time being a woman relegated to a state of lesser equality. It would seriously rankle and likely turn me into a raving bitch. Mostly what I tried to convey in the first article is that we fellas ought to at least have a little sympathy. That cow, i.e., fat woman, or dog, as many men refer to women they deem of lesser quality, may actually be a very decent person, maybe someone whose life actually enhances society. Quite a while back I challenged a guy who put all white women in a category of (something like) ‘rotten bitch’. I responded with, “I wouldn’t call my mother that, how about yours?” Being a Jew I’m quite sensitive to categorizing whole classes of people as of lesser value. In addition to everyday unfairness, it can sometimes lead to terrible consequences.

Stan Kahn