Things to come

As the only child of a single parent, I am not normally a physically demonstrative person. Every woman I've ever lived with, including my mother, has complained that I'm more interested in my books and movies than in the women who share my house. Of course, I am interested in these women, otherwise I'd find someplace else to live, but I have problems showing it. I'm the type of person who compulsively rubs his palm on his pants leg after shaking hands with a stranger. I think I am probably not the only man in Thailand who has problems expressing his feelings, though I may be one of the few who can admit it to themselves, and probably the only one to admit it to 40,000 Nation readers.

But all that is changing, thanks to my son Andy. For the first time in my life there is a human being on this planet who can order from a long and varied menu of physical expressions of my affection, delivered without reservation, without hesitation, and without carnal motives. I hold him on my lap, in my arms, on my shoulders. I shower him with kisses and caresses, I stare into his eyes for minutes on end and I am obsessed with watching him sleep. While I once sulked for a week because my wife moved a single book on my desk, I let Andy pull the hairs out of my beard, yank my glasses into twisted wrecks and dribble an astonishing variety of body fluids onto my best shirts.

The question then is: why am I telling you all this? I'm telling you because I received in the mail today a copy of the May edition of Details Magazine, sent to me all the way from New York by my old friend David Lida. The reason David spent eleven dollars on air mail stamps to send me a two dollar magazine was because Traci Lords is on the cover.

For those of you who don't know, Traci was an American porn icon. She appeared in about 100 hard core triple-x movies and dozens of magazine features in the early 80's, becoming the top selling actress/model in the American pornography industry despite (or perhaps because of) making her debut at the age of fourteen. I met David when I was the charter president of the New York Traci Lords Fan Club. I had just organised the first (and last) Traci Lords Film Festival, and David was writing an article on Traci for Elle Magazine. He was on his way to interview her in LA, took with him a souvenir Film Fest T-Shirt, and brought me back an autographed photo, which is hanging over my desk as I write this.

David and I became friends and he's one of the few people I still correspond with back in the States. Traci looks good on the magazine, although I swear she's had a breast reduction while I've been away from home. In the article she talks about her new career as a legitimate actress, and her new role as the bitch-goddess Rikki on Melrose Place, which I believe has just replaced CNN on IBC.

She talks about how she's put her porn career behind her, about how she's off the drugs and monogamously married, about how she deals with the cat-calls and whistles on the street and the casting agents who still ask her to strip for an audition. It's a good article; she is articulate and confident and the writer is sympathetic.

And in his accompanying letter to me David says "I was a bit amused by your new role as anti-sexpoloitation crusader. You remind me of the people who, the day they stop smoking, suddenly start to cough and retch wildly when within 50 feet of a lit cigarette, and pull the offending butts out of the mouths of the unsuspecting. Do you have to look that far in your past to drum up any compassion for a yokel like the Single Male Traveller?"

When I wrote in this column that there was a four month old farang baby girl for sale in Patong, I received not a single letter. When I wrote that a pedarast was taking naughty pictures of little girls in their uniforms inside a classroom at a school in Patong, there was silence. But I write a simple book review and everybody from Bangkok to Des Moines sends a letter to the editor. And amid the deluge, David and Mr. Streckfuss are the only ones that made any sense.

I've never said on these pages that I was a virgin when I married, and I will further admit to you now that not all of the women I've dated have been librarians. I have mentioned before that I wrote pornography in the 80's, and I'll tell you now that most of it, seen in retrospect, was pretty degrading to women. But that was before I took up residence in Thailand, before I saw the little Burmese girls held captive behind the glass walls, before my wife Mem defied her father and gave up her career to marry me.

If Traci Lords can change, so can I. And if I can change, from an introverted recluse to the type of guy who calls his kid Mr. Snuggle Bear in public, then maybe Thailand can change from a haven for pervs and nerds to a country where people don't treat other people like Kleenex, to be used once and thrown away.

And I'll tell you something else. One of my greatest pleasures in life, now, is to carry my baby boy through Patong. We attract a lot of attention, the big, pale, hairy barbarian cradling the tiny, slit-eyed elf in his arms, but the stares we get are always accompanied by smiles.

It is my sincere hope that one day, when Andy is ten or eleven and we're walking hand-in-hand through Patong, and I plant a big wet kiss on the top of his head, Thailand will have changed enough that people will assume that I got him the normal way, instead of purchasing him like a silk sarong from a vendor, and they'll continue to smile.

Note: This column was published in 1994.

© Steve Rosse. All rights reserved by the author.