Varanasi, 26.apr.99

So there I found myself, alone with my new friend, waiting for his young
helper to retrieve the bag of ganja we'd discussed on the road outside
where we'd met only a few minutes before.  It was a small shop, only one
room perhaps three meters square, two of its walls covered with shelved
handicrafts, carvings, chillums and pipes.  Another wall contained the
door to the narrow stone alley by which we'd entered, and the small bench
on which we sat completed the room.  A gortty little shop, but warmly lit.
I began to pass the time by glancing around at all the carved Hindu icons
lining the shelves, the inlaid wooden boxes and soapstone chess boards,
but in this holiest and most touristed of cities such knick-knacks are
ridiculously common, so I ultimately turned my eyes to my companion seated
next to me.

To call him unprepossessing would be unfair:  he posessed ugliness, and in
tremendous quantity.  Mangy clothing and stooped figure aside, his already
small face with its rounded nose crowning a whiff of long-abandoned
attempt at moustache was made to appear even smaller by its frame:  a
gappy rope-woven mat of peppered black hair, thickened by scalp oil and
draped up, across and down from a part just above his right ear.  The
yellows of his eyes had a dirty, lacquered finish, and his thin mouth
contained only five or six visible teeth -- if indeed any enamel yet
survived beneath the carapaces of brown streaks branching outward from his
pale gums.  His saliva was thick and interfered with his tongue as he
spoke, which as I admired his physiognomy he began to do.

"You know why I like western women?" he asked.  I shrugged, polite, but
not too interested in what was to follow -- this is, after all, a
relatively standard way for an asian man to initiate a conversation.  He
continued, "I like western women because there is something I love that no
Indian woman will do.  Only western women."  He tried to fix my eyes with
a deeply significant look, but I found myself only able to stare at the
way his teeth tapered toward his gums.  I suppose this heightened the
impact of his words when he then burst out, "I am crazy for 69.  Craaaaazy
for 69!"  He beamed elation, both at the very idea of it, as well as at my
expression of (no doubt) horror and amusement.  I did my best to fend off
the mental images which his words would necessarily inspire, by trying to
wonder where his several teeth had each been originally positioned in his
mouth, and at what angles, but to no avail.  "I looooove 69!" he sang out
again, then adding confidentially, "you know 69?"  

I nodded in wonder at who, how and why, when he said, "I hab a girlprend,"
(he pronounced his f's like p's and his v's like b's), "Canadian girlprend
three weeks bepore.  She was 45 years.  I am 47 years.  She take LSD three
times ebery day."  She'd need to, I thought, as three dirty fingers with
nails edged in black wagged in my face.  "...and we 69 soooo much!"  His
eyes sparked with enthusiasm.  "And sex also so much!  Because you know
what she do?"  I shook my head, not daring to guess.  "She always say,
'Oh, one more, flease, one more!'  And what can I do?  I want her to be
haffy.  So ebery day so many time, so much!  And apter some days my fenis
don't want to work."

Dear god, no -- I thought as he pointed to his crotch, -- just focus on
the teeth.  Picture the fenis and you're done for.

He pressed on:  "So you know what she do me?  We hab nice shower, and she
gib me nice massage, and then..."  -- Please no! my thoughts cried as his
tongue flickered out between his teeth to dance in a small circle.  --
"...her tongue..."  Still his own flickered about as he spoke, "...around
where, you know, fiss comes out..." -- NO! -- "...and then it come to lipe
and I must with her more."  This last word he emphasized impressively, and
then added, "E-ber-y day!"

I shuddered in contemplation of the likely truth coming from this slimy
man's even slimier mouth.  Since he clearly now awaited a response, I
found a weak voice to ask, "And no Indian woman will do this?"

"Neber," he said resolutely.  (He had apparently investigated this
possibility.)

"And this was three weeks ago?" Like eating chilis, I felt tempted to
press for further details in order to eclipse those I'd already been
subjected to.  He grinned horribly.

"Yes.  She was here one week."  He sat for a moment in thought, and then
perked up:  "And THEN you know what she do?"  I already regretted my
question, and wondered when the ganja-boy would arrive to save me.  "She
say, 'Oh, is my last day in Baranasi, you can do something special for
me?'" His eyes narrowed.  "And you know what she want?"  I shook my head
numbly.  He grinned deviously, lifing one hip from his chair to point at
his butt.  I cringed, horrified, terrified, but oddly fascinated.  The
look her gave me now was *very* significant, and proud.  He went on, "And
I say I never try, but she beg me, so I try.... and is good!  And after, I
am washing my fenis..."

Must you say 'fenis'? I wondered, but by this point I'd given up all hope
of staving off my visual imagination, and was suffering as a result.

"...and you know what she say to me?" he continued, "'Again.'  So I do.
And the next day she leabe Baranasi and she give me $100 US."

"That's good money," I chimed in.

"Yeah is good money," he agreed. "She say to spend it on curd and cheese
and dahl, to reflace so much energy I use for her.  Then she say..." and
his face now took on its most significant tome yet, "...she say if she
come back she want to marry me."

He stopped now, looking prioud, and sleazy, and disgusting, when at long
last the boy returned with a small wrapped-up piece of newspaper, which he
handed to my rancid racconteur, who handed it to me.  I accepted it, and
started to open it.  His grimy hand gripped my own, arresting my
examination.  "Don't look now," he said, "not here.  Later, in your room."
I didn't want him touching me, and this business I did not like.

"No, I want to see," I said, pulling it away and continuing to unwrap the
bundle.

He looked at me disapprovingly.  "You don't trust me?"

"This isn't trust," I told him, "it's business.  I can't look, I don't
buy."

He did his best to look hurt by this, and let me inspect the package,
which contained a collection of dry, scrawny buds.  But it was good
enough.  I stood to go.  He showed me out, taking my hand firmly and not
relinquishing it.  When we reached the alleyway he leaned into me, still
holding my hand tightly, and asked quietly, motioning again to his butt
with his other hand, "You ever try?"

I wrenched my hand free, and said, "Well, my friends are waiting for me.
Thank you," and started to walk away from him toward the road.  As the
diustance between us grew I could hear him say, "You don't trust me.  I
speak from heart and you don't trust me."  I turned the corner into the
sunlit road, and left him in the shadows behind.