The Maverick Tribe

Angkor Wat. It is the crown jewel of Southeast Asian landmarks. And due to geopolitical restrictions, only recently available to a wide audience. Even now it is beyond the reach of those both too poor to afford the airfare and too infirm to endure the sole overland route. The latter is a 7 hour ride on the back of a pickup over the soggy country "road" riddled with the pockmarks of land mines and grenades. Guess which route I took?

I always like relics that blueprint the imagination, and the ruins of Angkor really deliver. Standing on the jungle floor and overlooking the expanse of green that forms the king's arena, you can almost picture the clash of spears and the wail of elephants. This vision is greatly assisted by the fact that, rendered in stone all along the boundaries are carvings of spears clashing and elephants wailing.

The gists of Khmer history are pictorially recorded in the bas reliefs that span every major structure; no Rosetta Stone necessary. Invaded by the Chams, invaded by the Thais, ripped off by the Chinese; all tests of resolve faithfully etched into their monument walls. Social customs are also represented. These consisted mainly of self-congratulatory feasting after a battle victory, organizing harems, and executing people. The detail on this stuff is amazing: right down to the erect nipple featured on the misbehaving concubine, and, in the next panel, the wily eyes of the alligators they're feeding her to.

The ancient kingdom of Angkor strikes me as what would result if a bunch of horny 13-year-old boys were allowed to create their own society. (Given that the afternoon heat makes you want to kill yourself as soon as you become sophisticated enough to figure out how to do so painlessly, that may be precisely what it was.) Have you heard of the Linga stone? The Angkor version is a most holy representation of the Hindu god Shiva's phallus, and by divine association, that of whatever god-king ordered it built. One of the rituals involves the king's minions pouring water into a small reservoir on the top, allowing it to overflow and gush down the shaft. The resulting pool that collects around the base is then deemed "holy water". Charming, isn't it?

Another terribly important ritual has the king make a daily ascent to the top of his personal altar, where he meditates, prays, feels the holy tingle, and then selects the day's divine sexual repository from among the pool of bathing mistresses below. As I'm sure you can imagine, the gods are thoroughly displeased if this particular religious observance isn't strictly adhered to.

Modern Cambodia is a lesson in what happens when you keep these little rascals in relative cultural isolation and then give them guns: they, of course, divide into teams and shoot at each other. Now, I know what you're thinking: arrogant white boy thinks he can essentialize an entire culture he's not a part of, and in a condescending way at that. To this my reply is: touché.

But, however paradoxically, meeting the Cambodians on the street, it's hard to imagine a people of a gentler nature. Even the obligatory touts and scam artists seemed to act out their roles in life in limited earnest. And then, somehow, from this humble collage of labor, routine and coy smiles, the penultimate destruction of the Khmer nation unfolded. No one knows exactly how, but it seems collateral spillage of Cold War geopolitical acid onto native, revolutionary baseness – or whatever it was – detonated one of the most morbid social experiments the world as ever seen.

Which brings me to the point I’m trying to make, being an arrogant white boy or, perhaps, being merely an armchair sociologist. In either case, I think I'm sitting on firm cushion here when I say that, the greater the general tendency of a people toward humility and honor, the greater the tendency for those anomolous, Grade-A assholes to rise to the top.

Now, in America we benefit from a progressive system of checks and balances that distribute our asshole qualities more or less equitably among the populace. As you know, each of us is afforded moderate leeway to act like a complete jackass from time to time, but not so much as to dominate over the other 250 million jackasses out there. Granted, it is an imperfect system, with a disproportionate share allocated to our nightclub doormen, sports franchise owners, and U.S. Senators from Mississippi, but we should be thankful nonetheless.

Thankful that we don’t have the system the Cambodians had in the time of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, with no legal system to sue the guy responsible for that piece of shrapnel embedded in your daughter’s skull, no protection given by the police (or FROM the police)… not even a bloody monetary currency to buy your way out of trouble, that most fundamental exercise of capitalist freedom. Because 99% of the people were nice; they were trusting; and they were vulnerable – when the assholes took over. This I will call my First Law of Assholes.

My Second Law of Assholes states that, for every action, some righteous bastard feels he needs to react in an UNequal and opposing way. This is why so many nations, like Cambodia, become engulfed in endless, self-fueling civil war. And this is way we ourselves became engulfed in the Cold War.

But this isn’t supposed to be about the Cold War, civil wars, or any other kind of war. It’s supposed to be about Cambodia, which is, frankly, in times of war and in times of peace, a simple case of testosterone run amok.

I was solicited for the services of a lady companion at least five times during my 3-day stay in the country – always by men… pimps, I suppose, though they also happened to be my tour guides, my motorbike drivers, and my guesthouse manager, respectively. So, either there is quite a bit of horse trading of women that goes on there, or there is something about my manner that screams to people, “I’m straight and in desperate need of a good lay!”

Back in the city of Angkor, a few of the altars in the major temples are still tended to by Buddhist nuns. In the Wat itself there is one, just after the doorway with a deity carving. (Before you pass you are invited to rub her breasts for good luck. These are two mounds protruding from the otherwise porous stone that have been completely smoothed over by centuries of prurient blessings.) The nun that resides in the Wat altar is just like all the other nuns that reside in all the other altars: old, bald, and completely nuts. As you enter she waves a fistful of incense sticks at you, cackles, and points to a donation basket full of U.S. dollars. After you pay up she goes back to her ill-tempered singing and chanting, high on incense fumes – or something. Again I tried to mentally transport myself back in time. Would it be the same? A woman? In saffron robes like that? With a shaved head? If I were a Khmer woman in the 12th century I think I would have striven for the senile nun gig.

Perhaps I still would today. In addition to needing religious custodians and call girls, Cambodia needs a lot of people to rebuild things. Since a good lot of the fit men were slaughtered during the wars and holocausts, much of this rebuilding will necessarily be done by women and children. They were out in full force working on the roads and bridges along the route back into Thailand, but there is still a tremendous amount yet to be done. As many of the bridges were still incomplete, our tour bus often had to detour down into the soppy irrigation ditches that the bridges were going to span. Testosterone is indeed amuck, but then again, a lot of things are amuck in Cambodia, not the least of which is the muck itself. The bus got stuck a couple times and we all got out and pushed.

About the same time I returned to Bangkok, the movie “Tomb Raider” hit the theatres. In it, Angelina Jolie stars as a witty, sexy, and kick-ass video game heroine come to life. As an international special operations agent, a gun-wielding, martial arts trained, defender of the free world, and so on and so forth, her mission takes her to the ruins of Angkor. (It was filmed on-site.) I went to see the movie and sat there watching Angelina out-wit, out-fight, and generally out-class all the male villains on the very grounds from which I had just returned. I would have thought that I might be able to just feel a faint sense of satisfaction, a whisper of retribution, a tinkle of justice in watching Angelina kick the living crap out of all those bad guys. But all I could think the whole time was: Too little, too late, Karma.