Philosophy and fucking in vietnam

It’s not that I don’t want to do transactional… I guess it’s just that I… I don’t know what I want to do.” He didn’t ask me why I’d been in Vietnam or any other questions at all.. Since

PHILOSOPHY AND FUCKING IN VIETNAM

A Travel Memoir

★

Isaac Simpson Outlaw Publishing Los Angeles

Author’s Disclaimer: I am not an expert in history, economics,sociopolitical theory or international law The following observations arethe immediate impressions and speculations of a common man as hetravels through a strange new world

Words © 2015 Isaac Simpson

Cover design © 2015 Bjorn Johansson

Interior design © 2015 Beverly Butterfield

The following is exactly 93% true.

Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Vision quests are an ancient Native American rite of passage Boys nine to

sixteen years old travel alone to the wilderness and stay without food for one

to seven days Visions occur, sometimes induced by hallucinogenic drugs.The visions reveal to the boy his purpose in the world Upon returning tosociety, he is considered a man

One of the only surviving accounts of a vision quest was written by afamous Lakota Sioux medicine man named Black Elk He described themoment when he went over the edge, into his vision

And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and understood morethan I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things inthe spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like onebeing And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of manyhoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the

center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of onemother and one father And I saw that it was holy.

—Black Elk

I awoke to the bleep of a heart monitor, curled up in a lump on a skinnycot The room was cordoned off with a curtain the color of doctors’ scrubs.When I remembered where I was, a vice of depression clamped my gut Itwas the second time in a month I had taken myself to the emergency room to

be sedated

The shuffles and beeps of the ER triage at Touro Hospital in New Orleans,Louisiana, filled my ears There was a crusty glaze on my lips and my eyesfelt sticky The freezing air-conditioning found the gaps in my paper gown

I unfolded myself and rolled off the cot The heart monitor clip wasattached to my finger and I pulled it off and threw it on the bed My clothessat in a pile on the floor and I put them on and slipped my feet into mysandals I peeked out of the curtains and saw a few orderlies waddlingaround I moved through the curtains and past the orderlies The double doors

of the main entrance slid open I walked out of the fluorescent hospital intosoft purple dawn

The air was damp and cold, the sort of chilly humidity you only find in thebayou states I walked through the parking lot in search of my truck and theblood returned to my limbs I found it where I had left it and climbed in and

turned the key The thin neon numbers on the digital clock flickered awake.5:00 a.m.

I was a second year at One Road University Law School, where, withsubstantial effort, I had carved out a typical law student’s world—a clean,quiet apartment, a daily schedule of reading and exercising, and a set offriends in various stages of high-functioning alcoholism I had spent my 1Lsummer working as an intern at a law firm in Saigon, Vietnam I had returned

to New Orleans from Asia two months ago

By the end of the summer, I had tumbled into a pit of depravity so deep Iwasn’t sure I could climb out I had hoped that returning to my boringAmerican life would allow me to convalesce, that the daily routine of itwould work as a sort of decompression chamber But somewhere along theway Asia had flipped a switch in me that I couldn’t turn back off Readjustingwas more difficult than I could have possibly imagined

It’s hard to explain what clinical anxiety feels like to someone who hasn’texperienced it, but a good analogue is an endless paranoid high—a bad tripthat will not go away Every moment I felt like something was profoundlywrong I could not relax Nothing was enjoyable I couldn’t have a drink orwatch a movie or eat a meal in peace People with depression say everythinglooks grey For me, everything looked red

The worst symptom of my anxiety was insomnia It had started on the longplane ride across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to LAX My drug ofchoice for flying is Xanax Usually two.25mg pills put me in a slobbery comafor up to twelve hours That day I was feeling off so I took one-and-a-halfand slept in my cramped seat for maybe three hours then jolted awake inclaustrophobic fear I spent the rest of the flight in the throws of a full-onpanic attack, getting up from my seat to stretch, sitting back down, orderingwater then coke then coffee then beer Nothing helped I was in the clutches

of something out of my control

After several days of travel, I made it back to my apartment in NewOrleans, where I lived alone I had interviews for lawyer jobs scheduled thevery next morning That night I couldn’t sleep, but I passed it off as jet lag Iwent to the interviews red-eyed and full of coffee and was so tired andunprepared that I made a fool of myself A baldheaded lawyer with bigshoulders from the law firm Skadden Arps asked me what kind of law Iwanted to practice

“Definitely not transactional.”

“I’m transactional.”

“Oh… ” I laughed He didn’t “I’m sorry You’ll have to excuse me I justreturned from Vietnam and I’m super jet-lagged It’s not that I don’t want to

do transactional… I guess it’s just that I… I don’t know what I want to do.”

He didn’t ask me why I’d been in Vietnam or any other questions at all

We spent the next three minutes in awkward silence then he said “pleasure tomeet you” and pointed to the door The other interviews went just as well.Two more nights passed with nothing more than a few minutes of half-sleep I would roll around in bed, alternately reading, watching TV on mylaptop, and trying very, very hard to force myself to sleep Like allinsomniacs, the harder I tried, the more awake I felt

On the third day I managed to doze off for a few hours, but then somethingeven stranger happened I woke up with the same excruciating feeling ofpanic I had experienced on the plane, but I was disoriented and could notremember where I was The objects in the room, some of which I had ownedfor years, seemed strange and foreign I was overwhelmed with the feelingthat there was an intruder in my space At the foot of the bed stood a darkfigure When I saw it, my heart jolted like in the first moments of a freefall

“Who’s there!?” The faceless figure didn’t respond After about thirtyseconds, reality started to fall back into place and I remembered the desk andbedside table I had bought at IKEA It had taken me a whole afternoon tobuild that desk It was a sunny Saturday shortly I had moved to New Orleansand I had smoked a spliff and blasted a classic rock mix and the desk hadcome together without much trouble It was a happy day, a tranquil one, andnow I felt about as far away from that happiness and tranquility as one couldget The dark figure melted into my desk chair with a heap of dirty laundry

on it I grabbed my phone from the table and checked the time It was aftertwo I collapsed back into bed, my heart beating like a methed-outmetronome, and tossed and turned until morning

The pattern continued Every night around the same time I would wake updisoriented More than disoriented, amnesic I couldn’t have told you where Iwas, or even my first name The objects in the room were empty of meaning.Then I would see things that weren’t there, usually in the shape of a humanintruder—sometimes a large man, sometimes an old woman—causing the

anxious feeling that I wasn’t alone.

There were other visions, too On one occasion, a cloud of colors flew out

of an open closet, about ten feet off the ground It moved slowly to the bedand hovered over me I reached out and tried to touch it, only to find myselfgrasping at nothing but air Other hallucinations were auditory One night, adripping sound trickled loudly in my ears for a full minute after waking, evenafter I had tightened the bathroom faucet as tight as it would go The worsthallucinations had a smell Unearthly, like death, they lingered in my sinusesuntil I brushed my teeth

Whatever the hallucination, the fugue state lasted about thirty seconds to aminute, and then slowly melted away I could remember everything, and feltterrified about the malleability of my own mind

I developed rashes on the crux of my left elbow and behind my left knee.They were red itchy circles, raised skin like ringworm For months theydidn’t fade, nor spread They just sat there, like coins of interminable redetched onto my flesh Sometimes red bumps would rise on the tops of myhands, right below my thumb joints, and vanish almost as soon as theyappeared

I averaged two or three hours of sleep a night, all while working ten-hourdays at school I had graded onto the Law Review, a sought-after distinctionthat rewards students by forcing them to edit and cite-check complex legalarticles in a bi-yearly periodical Making Law Review is a pie-eating contestwhere the prize is more pie It is notoriously time-consuming, brain draining,and boring beyond measure Since I couldn’t sleep, each hour in the LawReview suite felt like Saran Wrap cinching tighter and tighter over my brain

I was stuck in a hamster wheel of work, fear, insomnia, and hallucinatorysleep patterns, and I thought for sure I was going insane

On the tenth night, I couldn’t take it anymore and I took myself to theemergency room I explained that I had slept only six hours in nine nights.The doctor gave me a shot of Valium and told me I was exhausted and thatthe nightmares were normal symptoms of jetlag and that I just needed torelax I slept for four or five hours on a cot in the ER, and woke up just afterdawn

I drove myself home and tried to go back to sleep, but couldn’t get it done

I became angry and frustrated with myself beyond any point I had everexperienced Twin engines of rage and depression cycled through me in rapid

rotation I was in a state of disbelief about what I was going through Despiteevery neuron screaming for sleep, the only thing I could do was start my dayagain I folded laundry in a black cloud It was the closest I have ever come

to suicide, which was until that day something I had never understood

Trying to juggle law school while sleep deprived creates enough anxiety

on its own to make most people cry, but trying to process an experience thathad essentially turned me into a different human being caused my brain toseize up like a frightened armadillo My whole being was inflamed After afew weeks of nighttime hallucinations, I noticed that my vision had becomeblurry I couldn’t focus on a TV screen even if it was only a few feet in front

of me The image would wobble, as if the pixels were being mashed together

If I tried to focus on a specific spot, it would wobble even more I went to aneye specialist who sprayed air into my eyes and dilated my pupils with drops

He couldn’t find anything wrong and told me to go see a neurologist I didn’t

It got worse The night terrors continued I got accustomed to beinggreeted by a dark presence in the middle of the night A doctor in the familysuggested that if it didn’t stop, I should go back to the emergency room andask for a brain scan

That night, I laid in bed, mind racing, fear ramping up to the point where Ifelt totally out of control, enveloped in a mental anguish I couldn’t begin tofight back against Again I threw my covers aside, put on my clothes andglasses and drove myself to the ER This time I told them not just that I couldnot sleep, but that I had rashes and that I couldn’t see and that I thoughtsomething was wrong with my brain The doctors were skeptical but agreed

to perform a CT scan Then they shot me full of Valium, and again left me tosleep in a green-curtained triage room I awoke, snuck out of the hospital intothe cold air and started my truck It was 5:00 a.m

I turned the radio on to an early morning talk show My truck rumbledthrough the empty, craggy streets of New Orleans, the wipers cutting paths

on my cracked windshield through a glaze of frost The regret and depression

I had still felt upon waking dissolved About two blocks from my apartment,

I experienced a feeling I can only describe as spontaneous happiness It was asort of profound tranquility, an almost meditative state, something like whatpeople say they feel when they’re certain they are going to die All of myproblems seemed trivial and distant I felt supported, held up by the world I

am staunchly agnostic; otherwise I might say I had been touched by God The

fact that I was going insane stopped bothering me I had given up For thefirst time in two months, I relaxed.

I recovered steadily from that morning on The hallucinations faded Sleepcame easier and easier The constant stress I had felt during the day wasdotted with stretches of tranquility Eventually the anxiety became something

I could control

I never received a concrete medical diagnosis The CT scan came backnormal and none of the doctors I saw while accruing $5,000 in medical billshad an explanation for what was wrong with me They had only prescribedmedications to treat the symptoms, everything from anti-nausea meds to anti-depressants to muscle relaxants to pills to inhibit puking I never took any ofthem

I googled my hallucinations and arrived at something called sleepparalysis, a condition in which the sufferer awakes frozen in place,sometimes while experiencing terrifying hallucinations, and often involvingthe belief that there is an intruder in the room It is a common conditionsimilar to night terrors and has been linked for centuries to demonicpossession Cases have been recorded for over six hundred years, and havenever been explained

Whatever it was, it had been the most painful time of my life Why did itoccur? I don’t know exactly There were aggravating factors, one of whichwas that I didn’t have an explanation for why I felt so bad all of the time If Icould have pointed to a disease with a name, it would have made things a loteasier

There were also transitions happening in my life that were causing a greatdeal of pressure I was losing an important childhood best friend, not to death

or sickness, but to growing up I had an insurmountable responsibility at aschool I hated I was on course toward a successful career I did not want.Yet I believe the true cause was my experience in Vietnam Four months inSoutheast Asia had poked a hole in me where everything drained out, thegood and the bad bile, the dark and the light humors, and I had to reanimatewith new fluids Before Vietnam, I had been a run-of-the-mill youngAmerican narcissist, certain that my country was the best and the free-est, andthat I was entitled to fame, wealth and “greatness” simply for being born Myidentity was built on faulty foundations, blind spots I didn’t want to face, andcertain beliefs about myself, my country and the world, all of which had me

at the center That system of belief just could not last after the things I hadseen that summer.

Thus my life is divided into B.V and A.V It was in Vietnam that I startedwriting, which led me to escape law and start doing what I wanted—creating,exploring, not shifting money back-and-forth between big corporations After

my months of anxiety hell, I stopped viewing myself through the eyes ofothers My warped ethics unraveled and I joined the human race I chosewarmth and freedom over achievement and control Before Vietnam I was ahypochondriac, worried constantly about my health, which would make mesick I had severe asthma and terrible allergies Constant sinus infectionsforced me to have sinus surgery Every time I took a flight I got a cold forseveral days afterward A week didn’t go by when I wasn’t convinced I wasdying Quite frequently I was feverish and missed work or school because of

it Before Vietnam I was sick more than anyone I knew In the five yearssince my return, I have been sick only once, with food poisoning My asthmaand allergies are gone

I’m a practical person, and not a particularly spiritual one I do not believe

in ghosts or spirit animals or fairy godmothers I don’t think Jesus is staringdown from heaven while people are dying all over the globe for no reason atall I am not suggesting that Native American vision quests are realcommunions with the spirit world, or that I gained some sort ofenlightenment simply by working in Vietnam for a few months

Still, this is not a novel It is true Something really happened in Vietnamthat changed my life Something that almost killed me Something I had towrite a book to explain

Freedom Street [one] A Xe Om

Day 1

Ho Chi Minh City

A city’s identity is formed in part by the way people move through it Weremember its roads, its bridges, its subway system There are other definingcharacteristics of course—people, language, food—but the infrastructure isthe body For me, that is most important

Saigon has one of the ugliest bodies of any city on Earth It’s flat, dusty,crumbling, and devoid of almost any recognizable landmark, manmade ornatural The skyscrapers are short and awkward The streets smell likegasoline from the endless streams of loud motorbikes These smog pumpersflow through the city’s vast network of veins, which cover 809 square miles

of featureless terrain There are often so many motorbikes that they make afull unbreakable line from street corner to street corner, like a swarm ofrunners at the start of a marathon

Today Saigon is technically called Ho Chi Minh City, HCMC for short,but that name exists on paper only The country that Saigon exists withincovers the southeast corner of the Asian continent like a thin coat of paint,forming a narrow path 1,000 miles from the southern border of China to theSouth China Sea For 2,000 years, a single ethnic group has occupied this

coast, a people called the Kinh.

According to the origin myth, the Kinh are descended from the dragon lord

Lạc Long Quân and his wife, the immortal mountain fairy Âu Cơ Âu Cơ

bore an egg sac of 100 eggs, from which hatched the 100 families of the Kinh

people Afterward, Quân changed his mind about Âu Cơ “I am a descendant

of the Dragon, you are a descendant of the fairy,” he said “We are asincompatible as fire and water.” So they divided their egg children Fiftyfollowed their mother to the mountains, 50 followed their father toward thecoast and what would become modern day Saigon

For 2,000 years, the Kinh have been subjugated, time and again, by foreign

powers, beginning with the Chinese, then the Japanese, then the French.Today, finally, they are independent—the self-governing masters of a land

they have tilled for millennia The Kinh are also known by another name, a

name given to them by the Chinese all those centuries ago That name is the

Bách Việt, and their country is called Vietnam.

•••

The motorbikes make the streets of Saigon difficult to use You can walk, butwith the smog, broken sidewalks, squatting gamblers and sleepingconstruction workers it is a challenge At one of the lightless intersections,you have to creep across the street at a slow, steady pace so the drivers canadjust and whizz around you There are stories of mowed-down pedestriansand drive-by purse-snatchings Expat women learn to walk with theirshoulder strap on the sidewalk side

Navigating a taxi through the hordes of reckless bikers is as slow as it isterrifying More than once a green VinaSun van pulled off while I still hadone foot on the pavement Other times I was price gouged, and still others thedriver could not understand me and I would end up miles from my intendeddestination

The last, best option, before renting a scooter yourself, is flagging what is

called a xe om A xe om is like a motorbike taxi, except there is nothing

official about it Anyone riding through the streets wanting to make a couple

of dollars can be deputized a xe om It’s Uber without the app Stand near thestreet with your hand in the air and within seconds someone will drive up andsay, “Sih, sih! Whey you go!?” It’s not just for tourists Everyone can be apassenger Everyone can be a driver Even the stodgiest, most elite lawyers inSaigon take xe oms now and again, gripping the backs of sweaty strangers toand from their lunch meetings

The first xe om driver I encountered was named Tsan After 24 hours oftraveling, shirt still crusty with drool and chunks of snorted Xanax, I dropped

my bags off at the hotel and went out in search of a bowl of Pho Somehow Ihad gotten it into my head that a bowl of real, authentic Pho, not the weakbroth I got in New Orleans, would be a cure-all for jetlag But I didn’t reallyhave jetlag yet I was filled with adrenaline

I stood on a street corner and stared hopelessly into the school ofmechanical fish, trying to figure out how to get across without being moweddown, when a young man peeled out from the flow His motorbike was loudand dingy with worn down tires The front wheel bounced up onto thesidewalk and he cut the engine He was chubby and had jagged yellow teeth,and was warm and gregarious when he spoke

“Hey, sih! Whey you from?”

“I’m from America.”

“Whey in America?”

“Chicago”

“I study in Chicago!”

“What? really?”

“Yes, I do eschange in Chicago.”

“What? That’s crazy! Where?”

I noticed a makeshift marijuana pipe in a cubby on the steering column ofthe scooter It was made from a plastic water bottle with a pen stuck into it.The pen was shoved through a hole burnt into the plastic A few ounces ofyellow water sloshed in the bottom I pointed to the pipe and shouted in hisear, “Do you smoke weed?” He hesitated for a moment, and then understoodme

“Yes, wee’! You wan’?”

I was surprised at myself Back then, before my mental breakdown andsubsequent recovery, I was a much more anxious person and not one toembrace unnecessary risks Smoking illegal drugs with a stranger only hoursafter landing on the far side of the world was uncharacteristic of me I loved

to smoke weed, sure, but it made me paranoid, and in uncomfortablesituations I was afraid of freaking out This was one of those situations, butfor some reason I was feeling calm and steady For the first time in my 25years of existence, I was truly alone, separated from everything I knew,without a safety net of any kind The closest institution responsible for mywellbeing was 9,000 miles away I had thought that would be terrifying, but ithad the opposite effect I felt empowered You’re stronger alone, maybebecause you have to be

After a few minutes of silent driving we pulled into a park under somepalm trees Tsan went to a water fountain, poured out the yellow water andrefilled it with clean As he returned, a scraggly boy, probably 20, appearedfrom behind a tree “This my friend He smauk, too Okay?”

“Fine with me.”

I sat and they squatted on the grass under an enormous tree with a thick,vine-covered trunk It was painted white around its circumference abouthalfway up to the branches Many trees in Saigon are marked with this whitepaint, which, I was told, protects against parasitic beetles

We sucked bubbly hits out of the plastic bottle It crinkled with every pull.The weed was a dirty Indica, but I felt a light body high anyway We triedspeaking but were frustrated because I spoke no Vietnamese and Tsan spokelittle English and his friend spoke no English at all It got silent and awkwardand Tsan suggested we go get those shoes

Saigon is divided into 24 numbered zones, called districts District One isdowntown, the main drag, a well-bordered box for rich people to staycomfortably within The only other district visited by tourists is District Five.It’s famous for bargain basement tailors who cut custom suits for $200.District Five was where Tsan took me

On the way, clinging to Tsan’s back, I asked him if I could get a massage.The wind and the collective din of a thousand motors were so loud we wereyelling

“You wan’ massagey?!”

“Yes, maybe! I don’t know!”

“I take you massagey!”

“Like happy ending massagey!?”

“Haha, yes, happy ending massagey! You wan’?!”

“Uhh, I dunno? Is that weird?”

“Wha?”

“I’m not sure I’ve never gotten one before.”

Wha?”

“Yes, I want happy ending massagey!”

“Ok, we go! Firs’ you buy shoes.” Tsan was the first person I met inSaigon I had been in town for a matter of hours and I had already outedmyself as a horny, ignorant Westerner eager to buy buy buy everything fromflesh to leather In the moment I was somehow blind to it I thought I was sodown with him, that we were really bonding, that I really didn’t think I wasbetter than him, and that he could tell I was different from the average dumbwhite tourist Why else would I have smoked weed out of his disgustingcontraption? We were friends for sure

We stopped at a shoe store on a nondescript corner, boxed in a row ofstores selling leather goods Knock-off purses hung on racks on the sidewalk.Inside, Tsan said hello to another friend, a salesman He led me to a backroom with rows of shoes stacked to the ceiling Both Tsan and the salesmanassured me, over and over, that the products sold here were of the highestquality

They were very convincing I left with a pair of pointy black knock-offItalian derbies that I had been coaxed into believing were real Italian leatherand that one million dong, $50, was the bargain “local’s price.” Tsan insisted

on paying himself, because only he could get the local’s price He said Icould pay him back for everything later This might have raised red flags inanybody else but me; indeed an ignorant American who thought everyonewas, like, totally his bro

Lunch was at a café on the corner of a square near a stadium-sized fabricwholesale market People sat in close proximity at communal tables stickingchopsticks in bowls of simple, no-frills piles of meat and rice It was hot andeveryone had damp shirts and shiny foreheads

Tsan suggested the “Com Ga,” chicken with rice I said okay and Tsanordered it for me “You wan’ bee’?” He motioned toward a humming, glassrefrigerator filled with bottles I said yes and he got up and pulled two bottlesfrom the refrigerator and brought them back to us The bottles had a whitelabel with a circle around the numbers “333.”

A pink plastic bowl arrived full of rice with a gooey honey-coloredchicken mixture in the middle and scallions sprinkled on top It was bland,but not terrible, and at least tasted fresh, fresher than American fast food forsure We drained our beers and again Tsan insisted on paying “I get bettahprice! You get touris’ price Vewy high!”

We went inside the huge market It was a beehive of tiny stalls withproprietors hawking fabrics Person-sized bolts of cloth were propped up incolorful rows like stacks of enormous crayons Tsan stopped at a stall andintroduced me to a pale, pretty woman in her 40s

“She Chinese.”

That was abrupt

“You’re Chinese?” She only nodded, so Tsan answered for her “Yes,Chinese Many Chinese in this market.” She continued nodding vigorouslyand smiled so wide that her eyes disappeared completely

Tsan excused himself to go outside and smoke a cigarette The womanmeasured me using a paper tape measure I tried to make small talk, but thelanguage barrier again made it impossible After measuring, she told me tochoose a fabric for the suit The colors and textures were endless I pinchedthe color rolls in succession and decided on gunmetal gray, the softest I couldfind that didn’t feel like fake silk

The woman gave me a big smile and said, “Good one,” and then pulled out

a pad of paper She scrawled a dollar sign and then the number “190.” All thetravel guides had been clear to enter Saigon with a lot of cash, becauseAmerican money was accepted in most places and who knew where youcould find an ATM ATMs were everywhere, though I’m not sure why theguides were so cautious

I pulled a sweaty wad of green out of my back pocket and peeled off 10twenties and handed them to the woman She took it and went to a gray metalbox sitting on a chair and put the money inside and fished out some colorfuldong and handed it to me I folded the dong on top of the dollars and shoved

the whole mess back into my pocket She scrawled an illegible receipt on thepad of paper, ripped it out and gave it to me, like a doctor’s prescription.

“Three day.” She held up three fingers to my face

“Three days I come back?”

“Yes.”

“And all I need is this paper?”

“Yes, bing dis.” She touched the paper in my hand

“Ok, great Thank you!”

I gave her what I wanted to be a beaming grin and eyes that said, “Look atwhat a nice white boy I am! Please don’t steal my money!” She beamed backwith a look of amusement and I felt okay Tsan led me out of the market Inoticed now that the majority of merchants had pale, round faces, muchlighter and less angular than the Vietnamese They looked up at me as Iwalked by, but, unlike the Vietnamese, they did not smile

Tsan’s bike was waiting for us outside We got on and I clutched hissweaty back once more Just as we were backing up, about to drive off, aVietnamese woman in a tight blue and red Superman shirt waved at us from araised ledge in front of the market She appeared to be in her 40s and was theapparent proprietor of a store that sold shoddily made Western-logoed crap,like the t-shirt she was wearing She shouted something I couldn’t hear overthe sound of the bike Tsan stopped backing up and looked up at her Sheshouted something again

“What is she saying?” I asked

“She say whey you from.” Tsan seemed annoyed

“U.S.A.!” I shouted to her, and waved back

“Whey you from?” she shouted again

“U.S.A., Chicago!”

“Chee Cago!?”

“Yes!”

“Ooohhh! So cold!” she said and did a mock shiver I laughed Even here

on the far side of the world, people say the same shit when you tell themyou’re from Chicago

“Yes! Very cold in Chicago!”

She was really smiling now “You vewy handsome! Vewwy handsomeman!”

This was the first time a stranger had shouted something like that at me inpublic, in my entire life, and it made me feel great The fact is that stuff likethis happens to Western men in Saigon all the time (Not just white men, as Ilearned from an African-American friend, but all Western men) WhetherVietnamese women are genuinely friendly, curious people or want somethingfrom you is hard to decipher Regardless, you can imagine the effect theyhave on the ego of a narcissist

“Time for massagey?” Tsan said, rolling out of the square

“Okay!”

He drove for 15 minutes or so I still had a nice body high and felt happyand adventurous The wind blew my hair and cooled my distressed ears, stillpopping from the flight We arrived at a two-story building on a desolatestreet I had no idea where we were It could have been District Four orDistrict 24 I didn’t care I was excited

We entered what looked like a dirty suburban garage Three girls loitered

at a tiny reception desk They wore spandex and lace outfits that weresomewhere between Wal-Mart Halloween French Maid and AmericanGladiator They frowned when they saw us They looked tired

Tsan spoke with them and they nodded He grabbed one by the hand andwalked through a door in the side of the garage that led up some stairs intodarkness I stood there staring for a few moments, sizing up the women asthey sized up me One of them held out her hand She had a square face andwas not bad looking, but was strapping and thick and reminded me of a girl

on my high-school’s swim team I felt pangs of disappointment

I followed her inside and up the creaky stairs It was dark, the only lightpermeating through the pilled fabric that covered the windows I could hear

my heart beating in my ears and I started thinking about being alone Panicsnuck in but I shooed it away

We came to a room divided by hanging curtains that screened off smallrectangular massage areas In each space there was a skinny white cot dressedwith a patterned sheet I lay down face forward She started immediately,scratching and rubbing my neck in a hurried way, and going to great lengths

to show she wasn’t trying Barely a minute had passed when she said,

exasperatedly, “Ok!” and motioned for me to turn over I turned over and sheabruptly reached into my pants and grabbed my dick I have had my fairshare of rub-and-tugs in the years since, and normally the hand job doesn’tcome until after a lengthy, lotion-y massage that makes you so horny you’reliterally humping the table But this was my first time, so I thought theabruptness was normal and didn’t object I was soft and she frowned.

“You no howny?”

“What?”

“One momen’,” she said and disappeared behind the curtain She cameback moments later with a bottle of lotion and squirted it into her hands Shewent at it again I was nervous Nothing was happening

“You no howny?”

“No, I am horny Just… you know… nervous.”

“You no like me?”

“No! No, not at all It’s not that It’s just… ” As a vote of confidence, Ireached down and grabbed her butt She rolled her eyes

“You no like me One momen’.” She disappeared again I sat in the darkdisappointed and embarrassed I thought about the familiar lavender smell ofthe lotion and wondered where she had gotten it I jerked off a little bit Nowthat I was alone, things started working properly

The girl returned with another girl This one was prettier, with long hairand big eyes and a small heart-shaped face Ahh, this must be the closer.They each grabbed a part of me The pretty one reached down and twisted mynipple I yelped and swatted her hand away and she giggled I came in about

a minute “So now you howny.”

They left and I put my shirt back on and went downstairs I waited a fewminutes for Tsan, who came down buckling his belt I asked him how much

we owed and he ignored me, handing the girls a wad of dong

It was dusk now and the sky was turning violet The air had cooled downand the dust wasn’t so visible We motored in silence back to District One Iwas tired now, finally, and very much in a daze I felt guilty about what hadjust happened—dirty and guilty I vowed not to pay for it again

We arrived in front of my hotel and I got off the back of the bike andpulled my helmet off and ran my hand through my sweaty hair

“Woooh!” I said, exhaustedly “That was fun!”

“You lihe’?” he asked, pointing to the bag in my hand which carried theshoebox

“Yes, I like the shoes Thank you.” We stared at each other awkwardly

“Hey by the way, so what should I do tonight? Where should I go out?”

“I show you good bars Best bars.”

“Girls?”

“Yes, I take you to best bars Many girls Vietnamee girls, not espats.Good bars.” He put his number in my cell phone, a crappy little silver flipphone I’d bought from a kiosk at the airport just after I landed

“I test you.”

“Ok, yes, you text me later Tell where to go.” I was already pidgining myEnglish It happens automatically; you start removing words from yoursentences and speaking louder, as if to a deaf child Who knows if it makesyou easier to understand “I down to go out, for sure!”

“Ok, you pay me now.”

Very abrupt

“Ok So I owe you, let’s see, I owe you $50 plus what?”

“Four million dong.”

That sounded like way too much, but I was still getting used to theexchange rate so I opened the calculator program on my phone I mashed thenumbers and it kept taking me to the wrong screen, so I had to start over threetimes and said, “Fuck!” louder each time Finally, I was able to put in4,000,000 and divide it by 19,000, the exchange rate That equaled $210,which did not include the $190 I had already paid for the suit, for which all Ihad to show was a tiny piece of paper with scribbles on it The reality sunk

in I had spent $400 in the few hours since getting off the plane That isdouble what the average Vietnamese person makes in a month

I was despondent The walls started closing in I gave Tsan a pleadinglook

“Dude, are you serious?”

“Yes, it is good price Much cheapah For you they give touris’ price.Vewy High.”

“No way, man What did you spend four million Dong on?” He raised hishand and started counting off on fingers “Shoes, fifty dollah Weed Food.Bee’ Massagey.”

“Oh, come on I had one hit of that weed!”

“Weed vewy espensive Massagey vewy espensive because you take twogihl Much mo’ money.”

“How much was one massage?”

“One million dong each And you take two gihl.”

“I didn’t ask for two girls! They just brought two girls!”

“They say you no howny, canno’ do, need two gihl.” My face felt hot Icould feel tears welling up

“Tsan I’m not giving you four million dong.”

“What you mean?” His cherubic face scrunched forward with genuinelyintimidating anger His eyes squinted to tiny lines and his nostrils flared

“Tsan Give me a break here, man!” I scanned his eyes for traces ofintegrity I thought he might say, “Jus’ joking!” but he didn’t He paused for along time and stared me hard in the face I thought he might hit me

“Tsan C’mon Give me a break here.”

“Noooooooo… ” he breathed out while shaking his head, as if he wasfiguring out, for the first time, that I was some sort of imposter, though ofcourse the opposite was true “You no fair You no fair, man.”

“Tsan, you mean to tell me that a beer and that shitty lunch and a massagecost $150?” It was indeed ludicrous, though I didn’t realize how ludicrousuntil later The chicken and rice probably cost 50 cents, the beer a dollar Themassage couldn’t have cost more than $30, even if I had used two girls

Weed is indeed more rare in Vietnam than in the U.S., but it’s not that rare.

Tsan couldn’t have spent more than $40, after the shoes

“Nooooo… and weed and massagey You no fair, man You a liar!” Hewas still on his bike and was rolling back and forth in angry juts His facewas bright red I was scared “I spend the money already!” he shouted

“Tsan, I mean, I’ll get you money out of the ATM, but we need to talkabout this.”

“Ok, you go to ATM.”

“Where is there an ATM?”

“I know whey is one.”

He motioned for me to get on the back of the scooter again I looked at himright in the eyes, hoping for some inkling of the brotherly warmth he hadexuded earlier, but he only turned his head and started the bike I got on theback We drove about 100 yards down the road and pulled up to an ANZbank ATM It was inside a tall glass phone booth-like structure, illuminatedblue on the inside

I had requested the ATM trip to buy some time I did the equation again in

my phone and was overcome with guilt $400 on my first day What afucking idiot I shook my head and punched in my pin code and retrieved thecash Tsan was waiting for me frowning, breathing hard out of his nostrils

We drove back to the front of the hotel and he stopped By now it was almostdark, a little grey still in the sky Pallid light from the lobby of my hotelglowed onto the street It made me feel a little safer

I got off the bike and handed the helmet to Tsan He scooted up onto thesidewalk and left the bike running

“Tsan, I’m going to give you three million dong I think that’s fair.” Hebecame livid and began shouting

“You no fair, man! You no fair! I spend the money already!” He lookedaround People on the street were glancing over Would they back him up?Was I about to be overtaken by a Vietnamese mob? Was I, in fact, in thewrong?

“Tsan, you and I both know you did not spend four million dong.” Hebegan shrieking now, really screaming “Tsan, if you’re going to yell at me,I’ll just go back to my hotel.”

“You assho’!” he shouted He revved his engine and jolted toward me,screeching to a stop just before my foot

“Whoa! Are you crazy!”

“You crazy! You steal my money!”

“I didn’t steal anything from you.”

“You no fair You steal.” He revved the engine again He rocketed forwardand stopped inches from my foot, a definite threat I didn’t think he wasreally going to run me over, though, so I didn’t budge Now I was angry,

ready for a fight I calmly took the dong out of my back pocket and handedthem forward “Here’s three million.” He wouldn’t take it and his shoutinggot louder and louder, his face bright red and contorting His jagged yellowteeth gnashed and his eyes were slits He kept jerking forward on his bike.

I put the three million on his front handlebars and dropped it It fell to theground next to his front wheel, and he lurched forward to grab it He rose andbegan to shout again I raised my finger to my throat and I made a slittingmotion and shouted, “Enough!” It came out high-pitched and strange, toodistressed, too panicky, but it worked Tsan was silent I turned my back andwalked up the stairs into my hotel

[two] A Prostitute

Day Three

Ho Chi Minh City

The woman yelling that I was handsome was just the beginning My sexualmarket value inflated from “law school student” to “rock star” overnight Igot catcalls on the street and long stares in the stores One of the nice oldclerks at the hotel desk insisted I meet her granddaughter Another time,alone at the movies, I was accosted by a group of teenagers who asked me totake them for ice cream My yoga teacher hit on me after class Where backhome I was middling, indistinguishable bait, in Vietnam I was a tuna dropped

in a tank of sharks

My experience was not unique Vietnamese women are drawn to Westernmen The reason for this is not something people like to talk about, but thesimple answer is that women mate for social status Western men are fromcountries that are much, much wealthier than Vietnam

Across from my hotel there was an Indian restaurant I would spendevenings there alone, with a book and a beer and an exquisite spicy curry.There were always three or four other foreigners there, always men, alsodining alone One night, a waitress named Ruby wrote her number on mycheck I texted her and took her out We went back to my room and I tried tokiss her, but she acted like she didn’t understand

Such is dating in Saigon They flirt with you aggressively, but they expect

a lot out of you before anything happens And by “a lot” I mean “money.”There is no going Dutch with a Vietnamese girl I tried that several times andwas met with quizzical looks or anger, one time even tears To date aVietnamese woman you must be both a lover and a provider There is noarguing about it

Part of the reason for this bare reality is that birth control is much lessprevalent in Vietnam Every time a Vietnamese woman sleeps with a man,she faces the real risk of pregnancy So flirt she will, but before she has sexshe must make sure he is committed, and if not, that he can at least supportthe child At first I thought of them as a bunch of gold diggers, but afterawhile I learned to enjoy their shallowness as a more natural and honestcourtship ritual

To describe Vietnam but omit the shift in my sexual reality would be

disingenuous and cowardly To include it is banal and in bad taste I reject thelatter perspective The fact that sex is on our mind more than anything elseyet we are terrified of talking about it is psychological transference on a massscale In other words, we act as if sex is the last thing on our minds preciselybecause it is the first This habit imputes layers of dishonesty upon ourdiscourse The single most strange and fascinating part about traveling inSoutheast Asia for many men is their newfound attractiveness and it shouldnot be avoided just because it runs counter to traditional notions of decency.Some think of having sex with women in third world countries asexploitative They are right Like many books about white men abroad, thisone is about exploitation Unlike those books, however, this one doesn’tapologize for it What is sex, in any country, besides mutual exploitation?This story explores its limits It presents the raw thoughts of the exploiter inall their ugliness and occasional beauty It is a story about freedom Whetherexploitation is necessary for freedom is for you to decide.

•••

The Adderall peaked around 2 p.m., after following it with a Red Bull and acigarette on a rooftop balcony, 50 stories above the fat brown slug of theSaigon River I didn’t smoke cigarettes, but I had decided that in Saigon Iwould because they fit the image of the whole thing I found them to be littlecures for loneliness

I flicked the butt into a stone planter and re-entered the building Thefirm’s office occupied the entire top floor Enclosed glass bullpens housedclusters of lawyers’ desks My own desk was isolated, tucked into a privatenook, as if I merited some distinction

Sweat from my sun-soaked cigarette break stung cold in the airconditioning and I used the sleeve of my pink Brooks Brothers shirt to dab

my forehead My navy blue suit jacket, also Brooks Brothers, also purchased

by my grandmother during a post-college-graduation shopping spree, hung

on the back of my leather desk chair I clacked away on an ancient whiteCompaq, searching LexisNexis for cases about Vietnamese trademark law

It was the summer after my first year of law school and I had gotten a job

as an intern at Affini & Clarke, a semi-prestigious international corporate lawfirm with headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City In 2010, two years into therecession, there were few paid summer jobs for any law students, other thanfor those who had attended one of the top 14 law schools (the “T-14”), which

I had not Unlike my less fortunate peers, however, some of whom wereactually paying to intern for various organizations in the U.S., I wasresourceful enough to track down, through an uncle, a firm that was willing

to pay me It just happened to be in Vietnam

The substance of the work involved mostly complex legal research, whichalways required a steady intake of cigarettes, Redbull and Adderall Theresearch was for one of our big fish clients, Ontech, the largest microchipmanufacturer in the world They had just opened a $3 billion factory on theoutskirts of Saigon and it was causing a rash of trademark infringement Thelocals were so excited about Ontech’s arrival that they began to name theirbusinesses after it “Ontech Billiards,” “Ontech Financial Analysts,” “OntechPool Construction,” and “Ontech Chicken” had all opened in the past severalmonths It was our job to make those evil trademark pirates change theirnames

After the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh, won the “American War,”Vietnam closed itself off to the West Two decades later, shortly after thecollapse of the Soviet Union, the Vietnamese changed tack and opened theireconomy to Western investment in 1993 Now global capitalists were having

a feeding frenzy on Vietnam’s abundance of cheap labor Corporations weretaking over When you invade a country, pesky things like the pride of theinvaded people can fuel enough dissent to prevent a more powerful nationfrom consuming a weaker one Buying a country is a quieter way in Wherethe gun had failed to conquer Vietnam, the dollar was succeeding

Affini & Clarke was a mergers-and-acquisitions law firm, which, in theVietnamese context, meant they acted as the lubricant between profit-hungryWestern corporations, like Ontech, and the communists who ran theVietnamese Government Harold Affini had come to Vietnam as a sailor inthe U.S Navy during the Vietnam War He met Isabel, a Vietnamese woman,

in Saigon She was part of the southern aristocracy, which was being bootedout by Uncle Ho (the national moniker for Ho Chi Minh) and the socialistNorthern Vietnamese The two of them fled to the United States and Affiniwent to law school

When the Vietnamese economy re-opened in ’93, they moved back toSaigon, and Affini opened a practice focusing on international investment Itwas the dawn of a new era of unbridled capitalism in the East, led by EastAsian cities like Shanghai and Seoul, and for Affini it was perfect timing

Twenty years later, Affini and his partner James Clarke, who ran theBangkok office, represented major corporations around the globe Affini &Clarke helped those corporations “invest” in developing nations, which reallymeant paying very little for labor while exploiting untapped naturalresources If there was ever an entity at which to point the finger of blame forthe rampant, culture-crushing havoc Western capitalism has wreaked uponthe world, Affini & Clarke is it In 2010, the firm was minting money.

Affini had carved out a Kurtzian niche in Saigon He was a white generalwho had gone off the reservation, a legal god to a team of loyal natives Otherthan Affini, there was only one other American lawyer in an office thatemployed 30 local attorneys She was Regina, a big, bullish New Jerseyanwho had graduated law school several years earlier She was assigned to me

as a sort of guide, someone to help get me settled

On this Wednesday, it happened to be my 25th birthday, my GoldenBirthday, and, even though I had arrived only three days ago, Regina hadtaken pity on me and organized a small lunchtime celebration Nearly all theVietnamese attorneys attended and thus a crowd of Vietnamese people I hadmet only yesterday gathered around a cake that read, “Happy Birthday, IsaacSimpson!” in frosted lettering They sang the Happy Birthday Song in brokenEnglish

After the cake, the Vietnamese attorneys and secretaries passed around apaper sack of fertilized duck eggs, a common Vietnamese snack TheVietnamese workday is punctuated by frequent snack breaks where everyoneshares a small meal, usually fertilized eggs or lychee fruit or sticky cakes.One by one they pulled the little white-and-brown spotted eggs out of thesack, bored into them with chopsticks, picked out the little gooey red duckfetuses and popped them in their mouths One of the lawyers—a tall, muscledyoung guy named Canh—tried to pressure me into eating one, but afternoticing traces of amniotic tissue stuck between his incisors, I just couldn’t

do it

So I smoked a cigarette, drank a Redbull and returned to my desk to work

on the Ontech memo I was happily typing away when a notification blinged

on Outlook It was an email from Regina with the subject line “BirthdayDrinks?” It was an invitation to a happy hour just down the street at an expatbar called Voodoo Lounge “Sounds great!” I typed, and hit send

Birthdays are stressful in normal life because they come with expectations,

but on this particular birthday I had an excuse for having no plans or friends,

as I had only been in town for three days, and it felt great I had planned onretreating to my windowless hotel room at the Spring Hotel and rewarding

myself with the series finale of Lost and a cheeseburger and a couple of

beers Now, suddenly, I had plans

At 5:30 p.m., a chipper Regina showed up at my desk “Ready to go?” Sheasked with a cartoonish smile She was Russian American and had a familiarSlavic prickliness, always right on the edge of shouting On the surface, tomake up for it, she played excited schoolgirl, lots of giggling and squintysmiles

The elevator was crowded and Regina and I towered over a canopy ofblack hair We descended 15 stories, which took five minutes A commercialplayed on a TV on the wall of the elevator It was for an anti-perspirant thatpromised to whiten the skin of the armpits At first I was certain it was atoothpaste commercial, only to be surprised when a smiling, ghost-whiteAsian woman rubbed the toothpaste in her armpit The armpit was so hairlessand white it looked like a cartoon

We left the high-rise office and walked a few blocks over to Hai Bai TrungStreet Voodoo Lounge was small and packed with tall white people inexpensive shimmery suits talking in British and Australian accents Theywere having a British Chamber of Commerce Event, which meant free beer-of-the-host-country, which in this case was Newcastle and Heineken.Heineken is Dutch, of course, but it owns Newcastle, which used to beBritish

Flittering amongst the tall white bodies were shorter, quicker-movingAsian ones The eager, usually bespectacled Vietnamese handed out businesscards like excited robots, and the British responded with annoyedindifference A Brit would accept an offered business card with a bored nod,then turn back to his circle of friends and roll his eyes The Vietnameseperson would then scamper away with a smile, as if he had just made somebig business deal, and the Brit would rip another shot of Jameson and laugh alittle too loudly

Regina was talking to a Vietnamese girl and a white guy I came over,clutching a free Heineken wrapped tightly in a napkin

“Here he is!” said Regina

“Hi,” I said, holding out my hand The couple looked bored.

“Hi, mate I’m Max,” said the guy He was about my height, six feet,maybe an inch taller, and had a pale weaselish face When he shook my handhis thin lips curved into a mischievous smile

“I’m Cece,” said the girl She was short and pretty Her smile was long andfake, but like she knew it, like she was saying, “Isn’t this all so retarded?”Together, the duo seemed aloof, elite and interesting

“Isaac is an intern at Affini & Clarke this summer!” bubbled Regina.Cece’s eyes brightened

“You’re an intern?” she asked

“Kind of I guess so Paid intern.” I said “I prefer Summer Associate.”Regina frowned “He’s an intern.” Her chuckles sent waves through herchins

Max walked off to some other Brits to rip shots and smoke cigarettes and Istayed and chatted with Cece She was Vietnamese but grew up in Poland.She had moved all the way to Southern California to attend university, thencame back to Saigon to live with her parents Since she had left Vietnam tolive in the West, and then returned, she was known in Vietnam as a “VietKieu.”

Cece explained that the Native Vietnamese, who were generally veryfriendly to travelers, hated Viet Kieus They would harass them at customs,demand bribes, make doing business difficult, and give them dirty looks onthe street The pro-West Southern Vietnamese controlled Saigon during theAmerican War After the war, Ho Chi Minh unified the country and threw outall Western influences, including many wealthy Southern Vietnamese, which,

I imagined, described Cece’s family just as it described Affini’s wife Isabel.Viet Kieus returned to Vietnam only after it had opened itself up in ’93 andwere treated with disdain In Saigon it was bad, but in Hanoi, the morestaunchly Communist capital in the North, it was even worse

Cece got sick of my eager questioning and wandered off to find Max,leaving me with Regina, whom I wanted to get away from as quickly aspossible The Adderall was wearing off, I could tell because I was gettinghungry A pang of sadness shot through me as I remembered it was mybirthday I hadn’t talked to anyone in America My local flip phone couldn’treceive calls from home My mother and father had emailed separately A

few friends had too The 50 Facebook wall posts counted for nothing.

I said goodbye to Regina and lit another cigarette, my last The pack hadcost me only 9,000 dong, which is about 50 cents American, and I resolved tobuy another at one of the tiny metal tobacco stalls on Hai Ba Trung Street

I walked up Hai Ba Trung, toward Le Thanh Ton, a primary artery of theexpat ghetto of Saigon This neighborhood is today known as the Dong Khoi,after the street that serves as its main drag During French colonization thestreet was called Rue Catinat The Americans, during the war, christened it

“Freedom Street,” because it was filled with the cheap booze and prostitutesthey exploited for R-and-R In 1975, the Vietnamese re-named it “DongKhoi,” which means “uprising.”

The Spring Hotel, where I had rented a small room for the summer for

$300 a month, was on Le Thanh Ton, across from a French restaurant, anIrish pub and the Indian Restaurant with the great curry and lonely foreigners

It was only about a 10-minute walk from the Voodoo Lounge and, although it

was probably too late for a cheeseburger, I intended to enjoy that Lost

episode, a little slice of home amidst the strangeness

Just before I reached the corner of Le Thanh Ton, I noticed a dark buildingwith a big number 88 glowing on the marquee I must have been staring alittle too curiously, because like magic the double doors fluttered open andtwo Vietnamese women in bikinis appeared and silently beckoned me towardthe darkness inside

Some of the world’s more honest societies allow prostitution, either by law

or tacit approval In Vietnam, it’s tacit approval In Saigon, the mostcosmopolitan and progressive city in Vietnam, prostitution is common.Brothels, like the one I was about to enter, operate on major streets and areidentified by neon numbers prominently displayed on their marquees On thefaçade of Smiley’s, the most famous brothel in Saigon, a circular smiley facethe size of a Volkswagen burns in yellow neon two stories above the street

Of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time

That’s not to say I was innocent The truth is that the idea of sleeping withprostitutes had been floating in my head since the Vietnam trip was planned

It wasn’t fully articulated, more of a whisper of excitement circumnavigating

my mind and darting into a corner whenever the light hit it We hear certainthings about Southeast Asia and say, “Oh, my God! That’s so gross!” then get

a little hard wondering what banging a harem of subservient Asian hookers

might be like I was intrigued by the freedom of it I was born with anextremely high libido, a burden of sexual frustration embedded in my brain.Drugs, booze, exercise, friends, movies—they all help me forget the burden,but there is only one thing that can relieve it, however temporarily I wasalone on the far side of the world, with no one to judge, so I followed mydick into the dark.

The bar was empty and pitch black Stale American Top 40 farted out ofcheap speakers I sat on a stool and, shouting over the music, ordered awhiskey and asked for a cigarette The bartender, a young man, nodded,poured and pulled a cigarette from a pack in his own back pocket Even as helit it, he refused to make eye contact with me

My eyes adjusted and I realized I wasn’t alone Women in bikinis filled thespace, perched on ledges and leaning on walls, staring at me from the dark Agirl crept up She touched my arm

“You wan’ to meet gihl?” she asked

“What?” I shouted

“I say, you wan’ meet gihl?”

“Oh, umm What do you mean?”

She pulled back and squinted her eyes as if to say, “Are you serious?” andshifted away, disappearing back into the darkness After that they left mealone for 10 minutes I felt like a misplaced houseplant—hunched over thebar in my suit and pink shirt, alone and out of my element, my every movewatched by a ring of half-naked women I finished my drink and cigaretteand stood up to leave I threw a few thousand dong on the countertop, andpushed in my stool

Another woman materialized out of the dark This one was beautiful Eventhrough layers of darkness and makeup, she made my heart beat faster

“You wan’ meet gihl?”

“I guess,” I said “It’s my birthday.”

“Ohhh, Happy Bihrday!” she said, and patted me on the back “So… youwan’ meet gihl?”

“Okay.”

The magic word The music stopped and fluorescent lights burst on,blinding like a police spotlight My stomach dropped and my hand flew up to

my eyes to shield them I had just solicited prostitution, and was about to bethrown in a Communist gulag.

Through a crack in my fingers I saw the ladies bounce out from theirhiding places and form a cheerleader-style line in front of me There were 10

to 15 of them, all Vietnamese and all gorgeous, so hot that they didn’t seemreal They were nothing like American strippers, our own PG-13 version oflegal prostitutes Strippers are usually rough around the edges These womenwere classically beautiful, more like our idea of models

In the U.S., the average beautiful woman thinks she is far removed fromprostitution—it is abhorrent to her—yet she and most of her counterpartsconsistently end up, one way or another, exchanging sex for money.Memories of brash rejections by countless snotty rich girls flashed through

my brain and a stirring vengeance rose in me I respected this lineup, as theystood there in bouncy unison, so jovial I thought they might break out into ashow tune, greater in beauty than their suburban American counterparts andwithout that streak of determined ignorance in their eyes

“I do not want man,” I said, an important clarification

“No man here You choose,” said the one who had approached me, with ano-nonsense glare

“I’m serious If any of you man, you tell me now!”

“No man! Choi oi! You choose now!”

One woman shoved her way to the middle She made it clear that shewanted to be chosen—pouting and blowing kisses She bumped a girl next toher with her butt and the girl next to her started blowing kisses too Then theyall started blowing kisses and doing model poses, shifting their weight fromone foot to the other like a pack of lemurs

I did not dwell on the selection process The one who had shoved her way

to the middle was a bit shorter than the others, but had the same perfect faceand luscious, impossible body I pointed at her She grinned and the othergirls moved away My face flushed the color of ketchup

“What you name?” she asked

“Isaac,” I said

“I-sack?”

“Yes, I-sack What’s your name?”

“I Tam.”

“How old are you, Tam?”

She held up two fingers Then two fingers again

“Twenty two?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you from?”

She looked at me blankly I said it louder

“Where you come from?!”

“Mekong Delta.”

“Oh Nice That’s awesome.”

It began to bear the mark of a casual first date and, following suit, it wasall about the looks She had a paradigmatic Southeast Asian face—wide, highcheekbones and big Disney eyes; smooth tan skin, tight bubble of a butt, andtits way too big to balance her perfect ass It was her smallness though, theunforgiving lines of her thin waist, the flatness of her stomach as it ran intothe top of her bikini bottoms, that made me choose her

She stared up at me with a big white glossy smile of perfect teeth Straightteeth are rare in native Vietnamese, and hers made me feel better about what Iwas doing There wasn’t the slightest hint of destitution or drug abuse abouther She looked as healthy as an Olympian She looked liked the goddamnprom queen

We walked to the so-called Billiards Room upstairs All brothels in Saigonare labeled “Billiards Hall” or “Billiards Room,” and they all have pool tables

to keep up the façade The room was lit by a cheap fluorescent lamp pointed

at the ceiling in an odd angle that made the room look like a cheap hauntedhouse Around a mauve pool table stood three or four Korean men in theirmid-30s They were drunk, clutching bottles of Tiger Beer and laughing atthe top of their lungs They had lots of gel in their hair They passed the poolcue from one to the other, their jet black heads glistening in the bizarre light.Four or five hookers, as gorgeous as the girls in the lineup, flirted with themen, expertly touching their backs and shoulders and giggling at the righttimes They wore geisha robes, open in the front with nothing underneath,and their faces were made up like exotic tropics girls, red on the cheeks andgreen on the eyes They passed the wooden pool cues between the men,

though the Koreans seemed to barely notice them, too engrossed in theirmanic bouts of laughter Red-faced Asian businessmen drunk in awhorehouse—they don’t put those scenes in movies for nothing.

The Koreans paid Tam and I no mind as she led me past their group andinto another Billiards Room She sat on a cushion on the floor and I hiked up

my suit pants and plopped down next to her She oozed desire at me out ofher Disney eyes Anyone who has ever slept with a high-class hooker, oreven flirted with a high-class stripper, knows that they are very good at theirjobs They truly appear to want to fuck you and despite knowing somewhere

in your brain that they don’t, in the moment, their desire seems 100 percentreal

Tam was not flirty and girlish in the Japanese schoolgirl way, nordesperate in a tiger-on-the-prowl kind of way She played the guardedingénue, and even though her English was basically non-existent, she was incharge My Vietnamese was limited to counting to 10 I did it for her and shelaughed I was still unsure I wanted to go through with it I sipped the dregs

of my whisky and chewed on bits of ice

“So, where we go?” I said

“We go to hotew.”

“Can we do here?”

“No! No here Hotew.”

I made it clear to her that whatever was going to happen, I wanted it tohappen there in the brothel, but that was against the rules “No Canno’!Canno’! I say you We go to hoteww!” When I told her we couldn’t go to myhotel, she said, “It okayy! Choi Oi!”

Her reprimands made me feel like a misbehaving child I flip floppedbetween feeling ridiculous for arguing with her and wanting to respect her Iwas unsure what that respect would even look like At a certain point, Ifought back too strongly and she got up and walked out of the room

explained that, due to local law, it was impossible for us to do anything in theestablishment, and that we would have to go elsewhere, and that a third partyhotel was completely safe The pimp was so nice, and my desire was ramping

up with each brush of Tam’s fingers

“Ok, how much?” I asked

“One hundred dollah, for two drinks and cigarettes and—” he gestured tothe exquisite Tam

“For how long?”

“One bum bum.” The kindly pimp’s lips curved into a sly smile

“What is one bum bum? You mean one hour?”

“Noooo, you silly One bum bum You know bum bum!?” He made ahumping motion with his hips All three of us laughed, just three pals hangingout in a whorehouse

“What about $150 for two bum bums?” I said I wanted more than fiveminutes of awkward humping with Tam I was afraid it would be like inAmsterdam, where they milk you furiously like the family’s last cow andkick you out as soon as the last spurt hits the oversized paper towel they put

on the bed It is an incredibly unsatisfying experience, only slightly betterthan jerking off to Internet porn Like most johns, I craved the intimacy just

as much as the sex

The pimp thought about it for a few moments and eventually said, “Ok,two bum bums one fidee,” and nodded at Tam, who sort of rolled her eyes atthe whole thing

Tam hailed a van cab We sat in the back She said something to the driver

in Vietnamese and we began to move I felt shivers of guilt as the driverglanced back at me from the rearview mirror I grew up in an ultra-liberalacademic household with white guilt as one of its central tenets The shoes ofthe international white exploiter were an uncomfortable fit

We pulled up to a thin four-story building on Le Than Ton and PasteurStreet, near Ben Thanh Market There were signs advertising cheap rooms Iasked Tam to walk in first, as we were still in the Dong Khoi, still nearVoodoo and all the expat spots where people might recognize me Beforeleaving the brothel she had put on a loose floral dress, the kind that hippiebackpackers wear, that hung off her perfect curves like a slipcover over aPorsche I exhaled to the bottom of my diaphragm

The lobby was dark and empty Fear crawled up my chest as I approachedthe front desk Sitting behind the counter was an ancient woman in acleaner’s uniform She diverted her eyes and motioned me up the stairs.

A door on the second floor landing was cracked open, and I could see Tamlying on the bed inside I walked in but before I could close the door, thelobby woman entered behind me Silently, eyes still diverted, she placed twocondoms in my palm Then she walked over to a mini-fridge and pulled out aTiger Beer Her eyes finally flickered toward mine

“You wan’? Two dollah.”

I handed her $2 and asked Tam if she wanted anything She said, “RedBull,” and the woman pulled a squat golden can of Thai Red Bull out of thefridge and handed it to me She looked up expectantly I forked over twomore dollars She kept staring I gave her two more She smiled, but remainedstanding, eyes now locked on mine

“Ok, enough,” I said, and held the door open and she sighed and shuffledout I closed the door behind her and locked it I opened my beer with a fizzycrack Tam’s face bore a sassy defiance; her enormous eyes tracked my everymovement from the headboard I sat down in a chair to take my shoes off andthe exhaustion hit me all at once It was nearly one in the morning I hadn’teaten anything besides cake since breakfast I remembered the duck fetuses

I unbuckled my belt Tam spoke from the bed

“You vewy handsome Handsome boy.”

I smiled

“Thank you That’s very nice of you.”

I peeled my suit pants off and hung them hastily over the back of the chair.Down to my boxers and shirt I moved toward her Tam got up and lifted thefloral dress over her head She wasn’t wearing underwear Her breasts werebig and round as advertised and the same honey tone as the rest of her Shewas short, but with slender legs A little heart-shaped space formed betweenthe bottom of her vagina and her upper thighs

She grinned at me, and her cool demeanor flared She grabbed my handand guided me toward the bed She looked soft and plump as a ripe apple, but

I was as nervous as a stutterer before a speech “Take you clothes off,” sheinstructed, and I took my shirt off and crawled on top of her I tried to kissher but she turned her head away, making me feel cold and uncomfortable

The illusion, for a moment, was broken.

To divert my attention, she said, “Take off,” pointing to my boxers I wasafraid to do it My fight or flight instinct was on high That old woman could

be watching us! I awkwardly pulled off my boxers and threw them on the tanplastic tile floor exposing a flaccid one to the cold hotel air

“Ohh, what wrong?” said Tam pointing to my penis

“Nervous.” I tried not to giggle

“Okay, you come here,” she said She guided me onto my back, straddled

me and started sucking my soft dick I got about 60 percent hard and started

to feel like I might come too soon, a soft misfire, so I told her to stop I stood

up, naked and still a bit shivery, and went to find one of the condoms

I found it on top of the mini-fridge, but by the time I was back I was softagain, so I stood by the side of the bed as she went down on me some more Islid the condom on over her saliva, pushed her onto her back so she was lyingparallel to the headboard, and we had sex She moaned and played along andlooked at me with those eyes of beautiful agony women have only whenyou’re in them She was small, both in physical stature and in vaginaldimension, which made me feel good I tossed her around a little bit and feltlike a big man She made me feel like a big guy with a big dick, a king’s dick

or a God’s dick, and after three minutes I pulled out and orgasmed into thecondom

We lay in a post-coital sweat She glowed a little bit and looked even morelike an apple, relaxed and chipper, like she was grateful we had gotten it overwith We made noise-and-gesture-based conversation She explained that shewas from a family of fishermen in the Mekong Delta I asked her what type

of fish they caught She didn’t know the English word, and made little wigglyhorns with her fingers on her head like a devil I didn’t understand At first Ithought she meant cows, that she was making bullhorns, so I mooed like oneand she started laughing and said, “No, no! You stupii’!”

I dug in a drawer and found a menu and pulled a pen from the pocket of

my suit jacket and gave it to her She drew a box with little spindles comingout of it Then she drew claws on two of the spindles and eyes on the othertwo It was a crab

“Ohhh, crabs! They’re crab fishermen?”

“Yes, cab fishaman!”

Tam was a crab trapper from the Mekong Delta Her family depended onnature She had gone from something so primal through a whirlwind ofmakeup and silk and landed on a bed in Saigon, doing something primal onceagain, still dependent on nature She was both fisherman and bait and I was afish I was also the only child of divorced white college professors I camefrom The Suburbs, America, and had traveled from my cocoon of shelteredcomfort in a flying tube of sheltered comfort to the same warm bed in Saigonand laid on my birthday with the most beautiful woman I had ever slept with.

We were each testing our freedom, yet neither of us could escape ourselves

We tried for a second bum bum She went down on me once more, thistime for a longer stretch, but it didn’t work We gave up and showeredtogether I jerked off and she watched curiously as my come filtered downthe drain Afterward we cuddled in damp towels in the bed for a half hourbefore she got up and sheathed her dress back over her head and said it wastime to go

Socialism is a system designed to maximize the social good Socialism

believes that social good comes from equality and cooperation Its politicalcounterpart communism—as with associated words like commune,communicate, and commute—also implicates togetherness

One problem with socialism is that equality and cooperation areunfortunately not the only things that make people happy Capitalism’sstruggle for the accumulation of credits draws upon a source of pleasureeschewed by socialism: ambition AKA the drive to live better than our fellowmen Socialism tamps down that drive while capitalism rewards it Capitalismrelies not on social good, but on the pursuit of individual good; the perceivedchance to rise up in the hierarchy, each citizen becoming “better” as they riseanother rung

In the West, we don’t think too much about how our system pits us againsteach other We separate politics and daily life The way our country works,and who runs it, is something we pay attention to every four years, and eventhen it is mostly for entertainment But become embedded with the citizens of

a socialist country and stark differences in the two economies becomeapparent You can see how a given system permeates society down to its veryroots For me this was a revelation

At first, socialism’s rejection individualism seemed oppressive But oncloser examination, I learned that it came with a kind of freedom we have lost

in America

•••

On my second weekend in Vietnam, I traveled to Phan Tiet, a beach townnear Saigon, for a work retreat The whole staff of Affini & Clarke was tospend the weekend relaxing at a beautiful beach resort Regina, Affini and Iwere the only Westerners immersed with a group of 30-40 Vietnamese Thus

I became the only pupil of an intimate crash course in socialist mores

Early in the morning of the first day, we took a day trip to a lighthouse on

a small island off the coast Regina and Affini stayed at the hotel to work, so

the group consisted of a few Viet lawyers and a whole gaggle of female Vietsecretaries There were no male secretaries, but there were three or fourfemale attorneys.

The lighthouse was built by the French in 1899, and really isn’t veryimpressive as far as lighthouses go, but it was the only tourist attraction inPhan Tiet other than the beach Ten of us waded into the surf, hoistingourselves into a cylindrical basket boat It looked like a wicker coffee cupfloating on top of the water A shirtless, chain-smoking guide flicked hiscigarette into the sea and, without saying a word of hello, picked up a longpole He was as sundried as a tomato and a permanent sun squint encircledhis slitted eyes He propelled us across the narrow channel, jamming the stickinto the ocean floor then scrambling to the other side of the basket andjamming it down again Slowly across the choppy tide we went The boatrocked and the secretaries shrieked “Canno’ swim! Canno’ swim!” I foundthat unbelievable considering the country is one long sliver of coast

Me and two other lawyers climbed a metal spiral staircase to the top of thesmall lighthouse where there was an observation deck The turquoise coastbelow was dotted with banana-shaped wooden fishing boats They werebuoyed in clusters about 100 feet from the beach, just on the other side of thewave break which made a thin line of white foam like chalk on a greenchalkboard out to the horizon One of the secretaries, a smart, soft-spokenone who dressed different than the others, like a hipster, joined us on the roofand took photos of us posing in the sun

We climbed down and I bummed a cigarette from Duc, a wry lawyer who Iwas sharing a bungalow with back at the resort He was one of the few whosmoked He was short and baby-faced with an adolescent’s spotty mustache

He liked to tell everyone he had an “MBA,” meaning “Married ButAvailable.” We liked each other instantly, but he spoke poor English and Ispoke no Vietnamese, so there was a lot of silence

We set off from the lighthouse island back to the beach in one of the basketboats Halfway across the channel, there was a tugging at the side of thebasket and it nearly capsized, eliciting more high-pitched screaming from thesecretaries Our guide shouted to a shirtless Vietnamese man who wasclimbing from the water up the side into the boat It was terrifying He hadcome out of nowhere, some kind of merman He ignored the guide and satdown on one edge of the basket He had a rope tied around his wrist He