Cult of the Big Dick

I would not believe what I am about to relate had it not happened to me not once but twice. Bear with me reader as long as possible for I assure you that this is no mere tale that was born in my imagination. That it were! That I were merely hearing voices coming from the lizards that climb the walls as I roll about trying to sleep beneath a fan that cannot decide whether to die or to endlessly sputter forth and howl every time I roll inside another dream.

This story really began several nights ago at an hour when I should have been fast asleep in my hotel room. Instead, I found myself calling for yet one more beer, and then for reasons that will become clear, relating a story to my drinking friend for the night, Billy Thurmond with his mud pie eyes and clown's lips who hails from Adelaide. I should note that the drinking I am referring to took place at infamous Martini's, a short fifteen-minute ride by moto from Her Royal Highness Hotel on Street 172, Sangkat Chey Chumneas, Khan Daun Penh, where I was staying.

At this very late hour, I was, at one point, telling Billy about an incident that goes back more than 30 years to a creaky old hotel in the southern Andes of Peru, a place where I'd stopped for the night on my way hitchhiking south to Tierra del Fuego. I had gotten a top-end, four-dollar room for the night on the second story, one with a sturdy balcony that fronted on an interior courtyard in which were several old Inca statutes. Now as far as I knew, the courtyard and the balcony were completely shut off from the outside world by two mammoth doors that were bolted at night. One could not have felt more secure anywhere, I thought on first seeing them. Outside my room, on the veranda, was a clothes line, innocent looking enough, and apparently often used by travelers and those who worked in the hotel. Seeing an opportunity to feel a bit cleaner before I got back on the dusty and wind-blown and cold road going south, and no one to help in the need of the moment at the hotel, I took it upon myself to wash a shirt, one pair of underpants, and my only pair of blue jeans. I then hung them out to dry, believing that I would get on the road about mid-afternoon when the buses headed for Bolivia came through. I got up late the next day, had a banana and a couple pieces of stale bread and coffee, and then went in search of my washed clothes. It was around noon or thereabouts, as I recall. To my very considerable surprise, my blue jeans were gone. I looked all over for them, but, alas, I had no luck, even after asking the poor women who cleaned the rooms. I was beside myself, not least because I would have to wander around in the market in swim trunks, shivering and feeling like a complete ass, until I found a suitable substitute for my precious blue jeans. I say precious because the fact is that I just plain loved them. I had had them for more than a year and I wore them constantly. The jeans had, in a manner of speaking, become intimately familiar with two girlfriends that I had had for periods ranging from two weeks to three months. To boot, the jeans were a near perfect fit for my skinny 155 lb. six-foot frame. But now they were gone, stolen, I could only surmise. And the explanation, the only explanation I would ever find reasonable for the loss, was that in this part of the world at that time they were the closest thing to "walking gold." My ageing pair of blue jeans, now showing more than a little wear, would sell for three or four times what I'd paid for them. This was because they were the genuine article. Real blue jeans were then virtually impossible to find in that part of the world.

Now the reason I told Billy this story that belonged to a time when he was a mere sixteen-year-old kid growing up in a suburb of southern Adelaide is that several days before we met I had given my laundry to the accommodating young man at the desk in Her Royal Highness Hotel where I was staying. It was a considerable pile of clothes, and he said he could get all of them back to me the following evening. I didn't bother to ask how much the service would cost. When traveling on the road I am fastidious about cleanliness, or as much as is possible under the circumstances. Since none of my clothes in all of my travels had gone missing since that memorable Peruvian experience that now seemed like ancient history, I never even thought to make a list of what I handed over for washing. Everything always came back, and had through the years--in Brazil, Cuba, Honduras, Costa Rica, Myanmar, the Philippines, all over the Australian outback.

It was not until I found myself repacking the bag in which I keep all my clothes that I discovered that one of my two pairs of white jockey shorts was missing. My first thought was that I was mistaken, that I had put the shorts in my other travel bag, the small one with my notebooks and digital camera. But I looked everywhere, and they were nowhere to be found. Okay, a small mistake, I thought. No big deal. They had only cost a couple of dollars and I could get by with what I had. Still, I didn't like what happened, not at all in fact. This requires a small explanation. On this particular trip, my third extended stay in Asia in three years, I had also brought along three pairs of boxer shorts. But I do not much like boxer shorts, though I will often wear them when traveling in the tropics for the simple reason that they're cooler and I'm less likely to get a rash in the groin area. Having said this, I still prefer, as I have all my life, the more confining jockey shorts, and I wear them at least every other day no matter where I find myself. Habit is habit, and I am a victim to those I have acquired as much as anyone.

This is where Billy from Adelaide comes into the picture. We had been wandering all over the world with our stories, relating tales of little and funny incidents, and somehow, for reasons that now escape me, I got around to telling him about the blue jeans that were stolen in Peru; and then about my missing white jockey shorts in this very city in which we were talking and drinking. As I got further into the story, I saw this mischievous and knowing smile come over Billy's face, one that made me laugh inside, in good part I hate to confess because of his outsized red bulbous nose and mustard yellow teeth with black stripes that looked at though they had been chiseled to resemble those of Maori warriors.

Billy, you see, was eager to come forth with a story about his own white jockey shorts that had been stolen nine weeks earlier. He began by saying that like me he hadn't bothered to take careful note of what he handed over at the hotel desk. When his clothes were returned to him, however, he immediately noticed that his jockey shorts were missing. He brought the problem to the attention of the clerk at the desk. The clerk said he'd check with the woman who had washed Billy's clothes and get them back for him as soon as possible. The laundress, Billy soon learned, claimed no knowledge whatsoever of the missing white underpants. The hotel clerk was eager to please, and by way of doing so told Billy that there would be no charge for his laundry. That was the end of the matter. Or so Billy thought at the time.

Now this is where the story begins to get interesting, for Billy, a real talker like few people I have encountered in my many travels, was, from all I could tell, a genuine collector of all those kinds of stories and telling details that make for ethnographies as good as anything that anthropologists produce. He told me that based on what he was hearing I was only the latest victim, the target of a cult of young women who collect the white jockey shorts of Americans and those from Down Under. Why Australians in addition to Americans, he said, I would understand before he was finished with his story.

At this point I was beginning to wonder if both of us had had too much to drink and if Billy was just putting me on, setting me up for a good punch line that he'd soon drop in my lap. I figured that there'd soon be some raucous laughter and one of us would order yet another round of drinks. And then we'd be off and running on more stories, engrossing enough to keep us immune to the desperate entreaties of the very young Khmer and Vietnamese girls eager to find a paying bed partner for the night. At any rate, I said nothing as Billy talked; I just let him go on.

He claimed-and there could be not doubt he was serious, dead serious, in fact--that there is a growing number of young women in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos who are collecting white jockey shorts. But to be a legitimate part of one's collection, they cannot be bought in a store in one of these countries. Or elsewhere in Southeast Asia for that matter. They must come form a Yank or an Aussie who is known to have worn them. Billy went on to explain that members of this cult of young women buy the jockey shorts from women who work in hotels or as independents and do the laundry for traveling Yanks and those from Oz. They pay very good money for them-how much he didn't say, especially if the laundress knows with certainty where the wearer of the shorts is from. (Presumably this is information easily obtained by snooping among the registration records at the front desk.) If the traveler is from the United States, then the white jockey shorts are particularly valuable. An Australian's pair isn't worth as much, and those worn by men from the British Isles or European countries are worth almost nothing, Billy claimed.

Americans, Americans--how we are targeted by everyone, I thought on hearing this.

Billy went on with this risible tale, claiming with a perfectly straight face and not the slightest hint that he was putting me on.

I could not help laughing, and I blurted out, What the hell are you talking about? This all sounds like preposterous nonsense.

Mate, he said, be patient and let me continue this story about you cunt Yanks. Everything I am telling you is absolutely true. There is reason to all this, believe me, and a cunt Yank like you will know exactly what it is all about when you hear me all the way through.

There was a long pause, and for a moment I was fearful that this friendly conjunction of the words "cunt" and Yank, which I'd often run into in my travels in Australia, was headed in a new and nasty direction. I began to fear that Billy might either throw a punch at me or shower me with what he was drinking. But he did nothing of the sort. He slowly finished what was left in his glass and then ordered another round for both of us. While the pretty Khmer waitress took her time bringing the drinks, Billy matter of factly stated: Everyone knows you Yanks are the world's big dicks. Nothing surprising here. That's how you cunts see yourselves too. Nothing surprising here either. It's all as obvious as the reason all these pretty young skirts are trying so hard to get our attentions.

Envy, I muttered under my breath, not at all eager to get into a fight at this point. Truth is, I'd come to like Billy, and as late as it was I neither had interest in returning to the hotel or coughing up a Jackson to spend a night with one of the desperate predators who by this time were behaving like starving puppies.

Billy now shifted gears, turning to some small but well-known anatomical facts about differences between Caucasians and Asians, namely that, as everyone knows, Caucasians have larger penises. And often fatter ones too, he reminded me. He then went on to claim that Asian women are divided on their preferences in this regard. Some just do not like a man with a large member, while others believe that it is the finest experience that an Asian woman can have. It is the feeling of being "completely taken," Billy said.

Completely taken? I said. That's an odd way of putting it.

The distinction Billy was making and how some Asian women allegedly feel about big dicks, whether American or Australian or German or British, had not been something I'd given much thought to.

Exact words, mate, he said. Just the right ones. It all goes back to the Vietnam War when you had some of my cunt-loving countrymen over here with you. Who can't remember that you fucking cunt Yanks were running wild in this part of the world, bombing anything that squeaked, crawled or breathed. You big dicks were up there in the blue with your tons of steel raining down on these poor helpless cunts. Then when you weren't flying the skies you were lying in hootches or out back of alley bars shagging for God and Uncle Sam these tiny birds till you went dry. And they loved you! They absolutely loved you for your huge Yank cocks. After that you went home and never looked back. Left them all wanting more of the same. Crying and moaning for all they'd lost. Yeah, that's right. You left them with these half-breed kids nobody wanted, and you left them to the fate of having to return to shithole villages full of tiny peckers.

I wanted to respond, but found no words. None at all.

At first they resented your leaving, he went on. Then they just forgot all about you. They had to keep sane, after all. But not all of them forgot, and that's where you and I come in.

Have another drink, Billy, I said. I called over the waitress and ordered a couple more Tigers, four in fact, two for each of us. Preposterous stuff, I thought. This is what happens when you've had too much to drink, or wander the world with a thrice-read copy of Mark Twain's tall tales. Billy's problem, surely.

That brings us someplace near the present, Billy went on. From what I'm hearing, and many times over mate, there were young Vietnamese girls who began to hear stories from their mothers who had been with you cunt-hungry bastards. These young girls of today as they began to have sexual experiences with their local boyfriends got the idea from their mothers they would just never know how great shagging is until they had a Yank cock slamming them good. But big problem, mate. Big fucking problem. These were not skirts who were going to be hungry whores in Saigon or like all this meat here in Phnom Penh, or let some two-bit smiling pimp on a moto find them what their mothers knew to be the best shag anywhere. These are good girls, wholesome girls. They have, you see, convinced themselves they can have the same thing their mothers had just by collecting white jockey shorts from traveling Yank cunts. Logical? What the fuck logic got to do with the Asian mind?

There was a long pause, and then he said, Even in your losing that no good war, they were completely taken in by your gigantic aggressive cocks.

There's those words again, I thought. My hand fell to my groin. Small, and soft as sun-cooked butter.

That's right, mate. You took 'em fuck all good, just like you're now doing to the rest of the world. Big dicks everywhere. Soon we'll be hearing after you leave Iraq that young Iraqi cunts will be talking just like these Vietnamese good-girls in this growing Cult of the Big Dick.

Bad biology, Billy, I said, not exactly sure what I was trying to say or where I would go next. I bet those Iraqi men are about like you and me. Hell, maybe they're bigger for all I know.
    
No mate. Got it wrong. Don't matter none how big those cunt Islamic fanatic cocks are. We're not talking real size. We're talking what's in the mind. What these young Asian birds of good upbringing want to believe. He paused and gulped his Tiger, and I could feel that long arm of his squeezing my shoulder. Trying to tell me to get sober and understand what's so obvious, so transparent.

Think about all those fucking Chinese up north coming south. Big, big appetites and small peckers, believe me. Yeah, mate, all inventions are as good as the real thing with time.
    
I could see where he was going, where he had been, but… Come on, Billy, have some more to drink, I said. This was all going too far, sounding a little like one of my good friends with his many fantastical tales that come out of musty Korean nights filled with rum and postmodern exaggerations spiced with imaginary Burmese heroin.
    
Billy lowered his voice and pulled away his arm, and he talked on. He added a few more details. And then I told him it was well past my bedtime. I suddenly felt exhausted.
    
I got a moto to take me back to my hotel. I paid him 15,000, or maybe it was 20,000 riel. Whatever it was he asked for. I woke late and had a slow breakfast of overcooked eggs and dry toast and read several pages in the Mencken biography that I'd been reading for several days. I didn't think a whole lot about Billy's story. Just bullshit, I told myself while sipping on a second cup of coffee.
    
This afternoon in Can Tho in the Delta where I want to spend a couple of days before taking a bus to Saigon, I got back my small load of wash where I'm staying, at the Nha Khach. I stood at the desk and looked through the neat pile of folded clothes. Then I went through the returned laundry a second time. I didn't want to believe my eyes. My second and last pair of white jockey shorts was missing.

Korski

© Korski. All rights reserved by the author.

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