Byline: Ruby Smith

Guilty Pleasures

She: Oh thank god. I finally found the only other lesbian in Cambodia besides me.
Me: I’m not a lesbian.
She: Well, you fucken’ look like one.
Me: …
She: And don’t think I’m trying to chat you up or anything!
Right you are, sister. And while you’re out, single and staggering – stillies in hand – down life’s walk of shame, I’m the one snug as a bug in the arms of my doting, top-hot rootrat better half. So go fuck yourself. Said no one ever – and especially not me.

Instead, later on that evening, I found myself hunched over my handbag in a tuk tuk, parked inexplicably in the Caltex Bokor forecourt, mewling pitifully into a moist towelette and scaring the poor driver into smoking 300 cigarettes well out of sobshot.

For long after my happy hand-dancing half hour (Dusk till Dawn), well past the apocalyptic shot-quaffing phase (Nova), and languishing deep in the repetitive but inevitable post 3am shambaholic mawk (on the footpath outside Pontoon), I had foolishly remembered this encounter. My enfeebled self esteem, perpetually sickly since the time my sister got a pony and I didn’t, had now collapsed in a moribund heap and was shallow-breathing its terminal gasps. It wasn’t the sapphic taunt that bothered me. I’m as heteroflexible as the next person. I accept that with my half-arsed home cut mullhawk and penchant for tasteful sneakers I could just pass for Ellen in the right light. It wasn’t even that my crapulous rejectress wine-burped in my face a little bit as she said it. It was that she wasn’t even trying to hit on me. Nothing says you’re a hideous, unbonkworthy crone, straight and/or LGBT, like a blousy, shit-faced, middle-aged dyke who wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.

Or does it? My current hot, youthful husband accepts my ample silhouette, my kumbayah-meets-Harry-Styles wardrobe and my self-inflicted Howard Jonesian hair with admirable forbearance. And classic, candid Khmerness. ‘You were fat when I met you. Still fat now. Love you all the time.’ Bless. He’s never drawn into the old: ‘Is my arse bigger than Nikki Minaj’s?’ or ‘Do you think I should go to Bangkok to get my fat sucked out from my <insert body part here>?’ He may not know who Nikki Minaj is, but he’s not fucking stupid. I’m heartened by his forthright vote of confidence. But Cambodian straight talk works both ways.

I was rummaging deep inside Psah Chas the other week when a tiny, wizened prune with betel-inked lips and two random teethpegs grabbed my admittedly stupendous tits harder than strictly necessary and cackled: ‘Thom! Thom!’ The fortune teller next to us nearly pissed her pants. Hilaire. I felt like a couple of mangoes at Lucky or a Nat Geo special on a lost Papuan tribe.

I laughed anyway, as one must. It’s The Way of The Bodes. Everyone I know gets the: ‘Are you pregnant?/Wow so hairy/ Very, very fat!’ and sometimes all in the same sentence. Khmers aren’t spared, either. A young monk in my colleague’s history lecture told her she looked like a monkey. He wasn’t being mean. She really does.

As the StarMart fluoros illuminated my tears and the tiny fairy of my fading self-worth squeezed my hand and fell back into a swoon, I started coming round. Like, it took me a few goes, but I have a small, loving group of sexy, funny and smart friends who make me feel sexy, funny and smart. I have a husband. Ditto. I considered that my loudmouth nemesis probably left the house sober and hoping for fun, flirtation and an Earth-moving bang. Don’t we all? If she’d been a bit more of a gentleman we could have had a laugh and a quick cottage out the back. But manners, dear. I don’t give a shit how many chardonnays you’ve had. Unminced words or not, everyone in our Charming Ville is just trying to get along, discover a new friend and maybe even snag a mate. It’s never easy. So darlings, please play nice.

 

Guilty Pleasures

I saw a hair carpet the other day. I try to be open minded about these things, but I was a little bit sick in my mouth as I clocked this artisanal homeware en route to important lady bidness with my personal waxer. A street barber down the rattan end of Sothearos had his toes wriggling luxuriously in an area rug of his customer’s creation – a springy black mat of upcycled lopped locks and whiskers, tamped and cosy, circumnavigating the base of his swivel chair. Next he’ll be weaving matching drapes. And don’t get me started on those foot-long strokers that sprout from lucky moles. I fucking hate those. Get a moto mirror and some tweezers, people.

Despite all the impressive K-pop quiffs, I’ve yet to see a Khmer guy sport a respectable stubble ‘n’ tache, let alone a full hobo. When my bloke and I glamped around the Kiris for a fortnight, he let his hairs – all five of them – run free. There is no kind translation of ‘ridiculous bumfluff’. It was a tense 12-hour trip back, with a detour via DeCaprio’s on 63.

Foreigners have no problem sprouting lame-arsed manponies and unscaped backs. Ditto with the face fur. But the preened and pruned topiary of the mid-noughties flashpacker has manned up. I’m not just talking a Gosling ‘gateway beard’, or the ‘Wat Langka Wanka’, which is plaitable, but fuck-off enormous Darwinian bushmasters. That’s a lot of yangness. As a red-blooded heterosexualish woman I am not averse to fellows exposing their inner Lebowski. Though I’ve not spent much time aboard the beardy bandwagon, I don’t mind hitching a ride now and then, and there are some notable chops I yearn to stroke. Charlie Hunnam out of Sons Of Anarchy. JT hirsuted up. Clooney’s salt and pepper pleasure. But for the most part I like my men’s jaws and chins where I can see them.

So it thrills me to my chakras whenever I see a monk. I’m sorry, Buddha, but frankly I get a bit pervy. See that twitchy tuk tuk curtain? It’s not a capricious Mekong breeze. That’s me spying on a wing of handsome, hair-free holy men on their way to instant karma. They pop and ping across the Penh, instantly reviving some long-dormant happy place in my usually blue-grey matter. Granted, they give good wardrobe – swathed in every mandarin hue under the sun and sometimes all in the same radiant ensemble. Righteous layering, right there. But it’s their serene hairlessness that seals the deal. Their androgynous aesthetic is catnip to me.  Sans eyebrows they are like beatific aliens sauntering among us – perfectly, piously odd.

Like the Sweeney Todd of Sothearos, I accept man hair is all around us, especially so at this festive time of year. Sure, sweet baby Jesus was an adorable little poppet back in the day. According to the edible nativity in one of our laughable malls, he was certainly smooth, pink and unusually blond for someone who wasn’t born in Jönköping. But they all grow up, don’t they? Yesterday’s glaborous suckling is today’s beardy oracle. Santa was young once and look at him now: covered in the stuff.

 

Guilty Pleasures

I’ve just taken up a light smoking regime after five years off the darts. For 20 years I worshipped the odious durrie as slavishly as the next sad gasper. Then, in the name of love, I went cold turkey. My pink-lunged, sweet-tongued bloke and I skipped wheezeless down the smoke-free bridal path of life.

But as addicts of any stripe will tell you, shit gets you when you least expect it. I now have three packets of risibly renamed Mevius cached in various orifices around our flat.

I shower after each secret, sordid suck. I feel dirtier than coal.

I blame my recidivism on another furtive and thrilling development in my deeply local apartment building. It’s not more German documentary filmmakers bent on scenic grit, or petrol-sniffing ne’er-do-wells with K-pop hair and bag-snatching on their minds. To a man they smoke like chimneys – not the wisest choice for the huffers especially – but it’s not them what made me do it.

Instead, a chain-smoking bookie has installed himself at the bottom of my stairwell. The siren allure of each freshly lit Ara has proved inescapable. I stump two flights down to increasingly futile gym classes, or waddle up 27,000 feet with groaning Lucky bags, reflexively scrabbling for my Bic. I’m Pavlov’s bitch to his fragrant butts.

As tourists sally past in green fleets of smoke-free cyclos, Ron, as I call him inside my head, arcs up another lung-buster and borrows wifi from the blind masseurs next door. Like a dapper bridge troll, he and his laptop lurk taking bets on the English Premier League. And he never lurks alone. Men of every ilk flutter around the irresistible flame that is Ron, his hot tips and the chance of untold bounty scored by 11 unpronounceable Poms. To Ron’s credit, and in contrast to the raucous chess smack-downs that daily ricochet round the neighbourhood tuk tuks, the transactions proceed with surprising restraint.

Given his nefarious career choice, Ron’s a twinkly and not at all shystery older fellow: natty from his backless loafers to blade-sharp safari shirts and a suspiciously jet-black combover.

He’s as close to a Cambodian OCD sufferer as I have ever seen. At 7.45am he folds out his tin table and computer in exactly the same place, to the centimetre, fastidiously wiping every surface over and over with a clean cotton handkerchief. He lights up on the dot of 8, cracks his first Angkor at precisely 10 and, fagging steadily, conducts brisk business with punters till 6 sharp. Then it’s up sticks with his meticulous tote book down the mini-mart for free wifi and a few more nails before heading home.

As I passed this fledgling enterprise for the first time I naively questioned, out loud, the legality of the whole setup. I was vehemently shushed by my Khmer-speaking husband. Ron’s customer demographic includes a good many patrons currently serving their country in a law enforcement capacity. Some days it’s like walkie-talkie Jenga down there.

But there’s another reason why my sainted other half likes the status quo. Apparently he places the odd wager with Ron and won almost 70 bucks on a recent Arsenal/Fulham match.

This is news to me. And, it dawns on me, golden leverage for later, when he hits me up about those filthy, dirty, delicious fags.