[Tonchi]

Zip, you have not been reading this in any other sense than a WHITE sahib who likes/liked to go to the "exotic" Orient, where by means of your money (and to no small extent your maleness) you fondly remember how you could stay drunk and lazy and dirty and nobody cared, and where women would wait on you or sleep with you without the hang-ups of the civilized world. In other words, the Shore Leave mentality. Well good for you and all your male acquaintances, because you were contributing to the Third World economy in one of the few ways they have one. And like I have said, you make the mistake of thinking that because Orientals smile and bow that means they respect you or are enjoying your company. You are drunk and on "an adventure" or just trying to block out the way your life is elsewhere, so it pleases you to think that because the women are so friendly and easy that means you are a really cool dude, life is good, and these kind of women adore you. King for a Day. King for a DOLLAR.

I'm talking about YOU now, not Slang. Although I don't believe he is telling us everything he is seeing or doing because he can't, Slang is on a mission, he has a job to do which he chooses to make into a series of adventures. I admire him for that, he obviously does it well. But YOU, my dear, have chosen to attack me on a personal level because I do not swoon over the Sailor in Paradise fantasy. Well, you have already told us elsewhere what your life was like in "those days" and also what the extent of your substance abuse was. I did not attack you for that, nor make personal slurs nor tell you to get a life. I did not curse at you or make assumptions about your personality or background. So knock it off, OK? Illusions are a way of life and an industry in the Orient. The Sailor in Paradise fantasy is just that - a fantasy. Glad you enjoyed your fantasy, you were supposed to, but you could just as easily have ended up rolled in some alley depending on the opportunity you gave somebody.

I have no illusions about these fantasies, because I am too well aware of their cost. My best friend could have been sold as a bar girl in Manila, her aunt got a very good offer for her. After all, what else can you do with a worthless girl when nobody is around to marry her and you would rather save the money it takes to feed her? You see, WOMEN are not allowed to have "adventures", in NONE of the places Slang has told us about. They are only permitted, culturally and legally, to have "profitable acquaintenances" and if they don't turn out profitable the woman is labled a whore - even to her face on the street - and that definitely limits her chances in the future. No, I never lived in the Philippines, something else you missed in translation, and for very good reasons I never intend to visit it. Why would I want to? I will not be going to India, San Salvador, or Africa either. That is called smart, not prejudiced. People who DO live there are giving even their lives to get out, "any way you have to, legal or illegal". And one way or another I WILL get my friend of 8 years out of that place. Like everything else in the Third World, all it requires is money and time.

And please don't make any further assumptions about whether I would not be happy anywhere, because you don't have a clue about all the places I have lived and worked and studied and the hundreds of people from countries all around the world who I am in touch with because of my job as a monitor elsewhere. If any of those places HAD been mentioned here I would have been glad to tell you about them. I'll even start a thread about FRESNO, at least I have some great memories of how it was in the '70s.