The Thong Also Rises (25 page)

Then Noland mentions he is leaving. He's taking the late boat out of Phranang in a few hours, back to Krabi to catch an all-night bus to Singapore.

Dang.

“I was wondering,” he says, “if you'd fancy coming along?”

On rare, perfect days I move through space as if propelled by a benevolent force. No matter where I turn, it is all is so crushingly gorgeous, and my one true purpose is to dip into each shiny poppy bowl and suck nectar like a butterfly, see
myself reflected in everything with wide-eyed familiarity. This, according to Shrink #7, is evidence of a narcissistic disorder run so amok, it has its own House of Mirrors.
I am not a narcissist!
I cried, as he nodded and scribbled into his notebook.
What would you say, then, is influencing your behavior?
#7 queried. I thought for a moment.
I'm blinded by science
, I said. He gave me that inscrutable shrink look. I wanted him to understand.
Can't you see?
I said.
I'm caught in a convergence of love and molecules! All that is good inside me is inspired to divide and multiply, a bazillion cells of beneficence splitting off into infinity.

Noland and I sit under a palm tree, dripping single-celled organisms, while I debate whether or not to abandon the enchanted inlet of Phranang, which I haven't even seen by the light of day. I remind myself that the tsunami wave of lust roaring from the horizons of my veins is not a psychologically sound reason to catch an all-night bus to Singapore with a man I'd just met in a penis cave. I counter that it has to do with
expanding the perfection of the experience
, increasing its chances of staying fixed in my memory without some bum luck busting in and taking over. Like being eaten alive by flophouse bedbugs. Or getting the runs. Or running into those three Aussies in Bangkok, whose vacation pastime is to go from village to village, sampling and comparing prostitutes. If I loiter about this penis voodoo cave much longer, I will likely end up as an instrument of the sea goddess, my sole purpose being to beget more lovers for her enjoyment. Or find myself addicted to the love sparkles in the water, forgetting who I am and where I came from and never, ever be able to leave.

Armed with a dozen rationalizations, I leave at 9
P.M.
to catch the all-night bus for Singapore.

I could report how Thais like to watch 2
A.M.
machine gun videos on buses that take mountainous turns at 45-degree angles, threatening to pitch themselves into the lush gorges below. I could explain how two people in the back of a bus can share a blanket and feel a sudden chemical reaction take place. I could hypothesize how lust isn't a nasty thing. Or maybe it is. Isn't it about being a pilgrim of the flesh, making devotional offerings to the molecules of another? Molecules that—like those throat singers in Tuva—chant your name and the name of the universe, multitonally, so they sound as one?

It's a scientific theory, anyway, that Noland and I will thoroughly test.

Melinda Misuraca earned an M.F.A. in writing at New College in San Francisco, where she teaches in the graduate writing program. She has completed a collection of short fiction and is at work on a novel.

Padded underwear, anyone?

O
N MY FIRST TRIP TO
C
AIRO
,I
HEADED STRAIGHT FOR
the Giza Pyramids with my heart set on a camelback tour. After reading T.E. Lawrence's
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
, I considered myself an expert on all camel-related matters. “Horse better for you,
madame,
” the local Bedouins advised flashing golden-toothed smiles. But a horse just did not fit my idea of an exotic desert trek. I had come to the desert and I would ride a camel.

After lengthy negotiations, one of the Bedouins agreed to rent me Habibi, a tall, beautifully adorned male camel (in spite of my insisting pleas for a she-camel—Lawrence would never ride a male, claiming they are stubborn and much more difficult than females).Then, out of a cloud of dust, appeared a skinny dirty little man astride a skinny dirty little horse. “Ali will be your guide,” the Bedouin declared, “Ali very good man.” My guide's bony face broke into a wide tobacco-stained smile.

I settled as best I could on the large wooden saddle strapped over Habibi's single hump, rearranging the colorful
folded blankets used for padding, and careful not to mess up my proud camel's pompoms. As I searched for the nonexistent stirrups, Ali encouraged me to ride Bedouin-style, insisting I tuck my right foot under left my left knee (or was it the other way around?) “Lie back,”Ali then instructed before clucking his tongue. “What?” I shrieked as Habibi jerked his rear up, nearly catapulting me head first into the sand. Like any self-respecting camel, Habibi had got up by first unfolding his hind legs and then his front legs.

With no harm done, I followed Ali's horse up the first sand dune. “
Ya madame, anti yaani
, you're a natural!” my guide cheered as I cantered smoothly behind him, feeling like a true Bedouin girl, already over-confident. Satisfied, Ali turned around and whipped his horse into a mad gallop he would keep up for much of the ride and that Habibi needed little convincing to imitate.

Until I had mounted Habibi, my riding experience had been limited to about half a dozen horseback rides on beaten trails. I soon discovered that a camel's gallop has nothing to do with a horse's smooth run where you only need to let yourself get carried by the momentum of the horse. I was riding an earthquake! Ali was already too far ahead to hear my desperate cries for help, and Habibi ignored my English, French, and Spanish swears. I remembered Lawrence writing about Bedouin riders who controlled their camel by squeezing its neck between their thighs. With my life depending on my ability to perform fancy Kama Sutra perched atop a twelve-foot-high galloping camel, I searched for other options.

Riding Habibi was like riding an electric bull. Only this wasn't Wild Bill's Rodeo Bar and no one would buy me a beer if I got flung off more than six feet away from my raging
mount. Holding on for dear life, I rode around the venerable pyramids with my left hand on the saddle, my right arm stretched up above my head and my shoulders thrown back. With my goofy Gilligan hat and khaki pants, this did not go without entertaining every other rider I met. “Hey! You cowgirl!” one guide shouted through his chuckles, as I raced by him halfway off my saddle, my right arm still up.

Two hours of this led me to a very important conclusion: Thongs are not suitable camel riding apparel. With only thin quick-dry pants between my bare bum and the rough saddle of a galloping camel, I was left looking as if I had slid across a hundred yards of carpet on my bare behind.

In fact, the bruise was so bad that a week later it still had not healed and was threatening to fester. A (sorry) disciple of the “travel light” philosophy, I only carried thongs on my trips. Wearing those would never allow my seeping bruise to heal or even form a scab. I needed fullback cotton underwear.

I ended up shopping for panties in the small Egyptian town of Marsa Matruh. On the main commercial street I first asked a saleswoman where I could find ladies' underwear. It soon became clear that sign language would require me to engage in pantomime unacceptable by any culture's standards. I pulled my travel diary out of my pack and drew a pair of panties for the woman. She smiled knowingly, and wrote down under the picture what I believed was the name of the store where they were sold. She told me to walk up three blocks and to look for a woman in a headscarf.

I walked up three blocks and asked one shopkeeper after another about the underwear store, showing them the lady's inscription in my diary, modestly hiding the panties' picture with my thumb. They all shook their head with a mischievous smile, invariably directing me farther down the road. The last shopkeeper who got to peek at my diary smiled broadly and, with a wink, pinched his hips with his forefingers, mimicking sexy panties. “Yes?” he purred. All color drained from my face as I realized that what that woman had written down in my diary was not the name of the store, but the Arabic word for panties! The shopkeeper signaled for me to follow him and led me to the infamous ladies' underwear store run by an old white-robed man (who also sold ladies' headscarves, hence my confusion).

The old man presented me with a selection of oversized granny undies that seemed to date back to the Second World War. Wearing those, the only male I could ever hope to catch would be of the four-legged kind at best, as I suspect even Habibi would refuse to give me a second look. I settled for two pairs of electric pink and yellow parachutes that set me back a grand total of seventy-five cents. Not a bad investment considering I can wear them again during the last trimester of my first pregnancy.

A week later I was back to wearing thongs. But I never rode a camel again.

Christine Michaud-Martinez has lived, worked, and traveled extensively throughout the Middle East. Her stories have appeared
in Sand in My Bra, Whose Panties Are These?,
BootsnAll.com
,
Worldhum.com
, and Vagabonding.net. Recently wed to her beloved Cuban amore, she divides her time between Havana and Montreal.

But can he get it up and down without all of us screaming?

I
FULLY INTENDED TO GET DOWN TO THE WEIGHT
I
PUT
on my original driver's license application—someday.