The East, The West, The Sex

In this book The East, The West, The Sex, the author Richard Bernstein mentioned that there are two kinds of men: One who does one thing to a hundred different women, and the kind who does a hundred different things to one woman. Yeah.

Don't get any ideas--I have no need to read a manual about sex or that this book is a sex manual, but rather a study and observation by Bernstein of the powerful erotic pull the East has always had for the West. Though Bernstein defines the East widely, covering North Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific islands, I am more interested in the part about Asia-specifically the Philippines. I know men from all over the world comes to the Philippines to vacation or to meet their pen-pal and eventually marry them, but I didn't know that there are actually sex tours arranged by local travel agencies. This is one book I have enjoyed reading for my research because the author vividly draws out the human interest in each anecdote he told.

One particular story of Bernstein was that of an American man -heavy set, gout afflicted, well beyond middle age and accompanied by a young slender Filipina who was at least forty years younger than this man. She held this man's arm to support him while he hobble into the restaurant and Bernstein observing from his seat felt a "powerful repulsion for the man for his being unwilling to grow old with more dignity,for his being an old lecher who clearly had bought the companionship of his Filipino girlfriend." No, the author was not jealous but he was voicing out what you and I would be thinking watching that scene. And after we have come down from our high horse, we probably have our own questions too, like what Bernstein asked: Is the Filipino woman taking care of that gout-ridden American more pitiable than others forced by circumstance to perform unappealing labor --like living beside garbage heaps salvaging things from the refuse to sell? And the answer might just be another question: Which foreign assistance is better? Foreign assistance through sex or foreign assistance through the government which doesn't get to the people anyway?