Dildos, Chocolates, and Commies

I just paid $17 to look at a bunch of ho-hum dildos in Prague. Serves me right. Like a gazillion other tourists, I got suckered in by the “Sex Machines Museum” here just beyond the Old Town Square. Well, I thought, who can resist that? I’d been to Prague before and seen the Top Ten Sights already. Amazingly, I thought an obvious gimmick like this “museum” would actually be unique. Amazingly, too, I thought I was being some kind of renegade by visiting it. Let other, less sophisticated tourists go to the 600-year-old astrological clock and listen to Dvorak being performed in a Gothic church. Me, I’m going to check out a 19th century “Voyeristic Chamber Pot” and a collection of Czech butt plugs.

Yeah, well. The chamber pot – a frou-frou bowl with a hand mirror -- proved to be just downright silly. And the butt plugs? New, and downright silly, too, displayed like a bunch of cocktail napkins at a society luncheon.

Much of the small museum is dedicated to modern devices – waterproof vibrators, hand-blown (no pun intended) glass phalluses, restraining S&M furniture that looks unnervingly like the weight-lifting machines at my gym. Yawn. Go to any online sex-toy catalogue and you can pretty much see the same stuff for free – without having to fly to the Czech Republic first.

What I’d wanted, I guess, was history. Each generation, it’s been said, thinks it has invented sex. So show me the past. Show me something different. Teach me something about bygone eroticism, expand my understanding about human proclivities. If nothing else, turn me on a little. Shock me. Dilate my imagination.

But no. There’s only a smattering of cultural artifacts here, and some of them aren’t even labeled with dates or provinces. There are a couple of chastity belts. Some torturous-looking electronic “anti-masturbation” machines from 1915. A few hand-cranked vibrators – pre-batteries – that look like egg beaters. Hmm. I suppose that’s what they were…

The most interesting object was a rough-hewn wooden machine that could best be described as a “dick-cycle” or a “pedal-peenie” – a cross between a cobbler’s bench, a bicycle, and a vibrator. Apparently, the phallus entered riders as they pedaled. (Hmm: I’m thinking of my gym again…incentives?). What amused me most was the sign: Used to assuage ‘fervent feelings’ at a German women’s prison. Oooh. Anyone want to elaborate on that one? There’s a series of images for you. And sounds.

Speaking of images, the museum proudly plays what it calls “jewels of pornographic cinematography” -- two Spanish porn films circa 1920. They’re silent, black and white, jiggly, and slow: lots of women in petticoats coming in and out of a parlor fanning themselves. When the action finally happens, it mostly focuses in on the women’s truly huge, dimpled, gelatinous buttocks. You can tell immediately what the filmmaker’s fetishes were. But what interested me was that one of the films was titled “The Confessor of the Friar’s Blessing.” Yep. The male star was dressed as a friar. The premise was that female sinners would come to him, and he’d make them do penance by pulling down their bloomers and so forth. Granted, I haven’t seen a lot of porn – but I’ve certainly never seen any starring clergymen. Curiously though, from what I could tell, this didn’t seem to be intended as the shocking part of the film.

Okay Then: Chocolate.

With the Sex Machine Museum so unfulfilling, I had no choice, really, but to go on to the “Choco-Story Museum” around the corner where “Our cocoa fairy invites you to discover the extraordinary story of chocolate.” Only nine bucks? Great. Sign me up.

Never mind that it’s a museum dedicated to Belgian chocolates in the Czech Republic. I always feel a moral compulsion to visit chocolate museums whenever I find them in the world, and the “Muzeum cokolady,” manages to do as decent a job as any. There are story boards tracing the history of chocolate from the Aztecs to Europe, the introduction of sugar to the chocolate, and the introduction of genocide to the indigenous South Americans.

The production of chocolate from bean to bar is documented clearly. But best is a series of panels declaring chocolate a “health food” that “lowers cholesterol.” This is so much more satisfying, really, than the run-of-the-mill cock rings on display around the corner.

To be fair, the staff at the chocolate museum seemed beyond bored. The woman giving the chocolate making demo managed to condense an entire forty-minute process into five. She simply poured chocolate into a mold, announced “Chocolate cold for 15 minute,” and stuck it in a freezer. Then she pulled out another prefabricated tray -- and tah-dah. “Chocolate ready.” That was it. Take your free sample and go home.

But what did I expect? I went to these tourist traps because waxing rhapsodic about the splendors of Prague is as clichéd as the phrase “waxing rhapsodic” itself. It’s almost as bad as writing about Paris or extolling the beauty of a sunset. I mean, really. It’s been so done.

And Now, For the Commies…

What is worth noting, however, is that Prague, even more than Paris, stands as a monument to What the Rest of Europe Could Have Looked Like If the Nazis and the Communists Hadn’t Fucked It All Up By Starting Wars and Demolishing Everything. (I’m letting the Allies off the hook here because hey, we didn’t start the WW’s). Unlike the French capital, Prague had to duck two bullets: the massive aerial bombardments of WWII and the hideous, ego-driven architectural decision-making of the Communist dictators. As a result, Prague is perhaps the greatest Art Nouveau jewel-box in the world. It’s just street after street of late 19th and early 20th century gorgeousness.

A reminder of this is currently on display in the plaza beside the National Theatre. After the chocolates and dildos, my next stop was there: a photography exhibit on Bucharest sponsored by the Romanian government.

Of course: talk about contrasts. I found the exhibit heartbreaking. Documenting the changes in Bucharest from the mid 1800’s to the present is like watching a beauty makeover in reverse. Early photographs show a city as lovely as Prague, full of parks, spires, domes, wedding cake buildings dripping with angels. Then – boom – come the wars. The 1940 earthquake. And then the Communists. Any little bit of beauty that’s managed to survive, they bulldoze. And what they build instead is concrete grotesqueness: an architectural embodiment of hopelessness and oppression and arrogance and really, really bad taste.

Communism. If you yourself didn’t grow up with it, it’s easy to forget about it in Prague: There’s so much new life and old beauty here. But particularly now, when some of my fellow Americans are insisting that President Obama is no different from, say, Stalin or Ceausescu (or Hitler), a reality check is in order.

And a Reality check, please...

Prague is a good place to do it. My friend Beth and I take a “Walking Tour of Communism.” Oddly, we're the only ones on it. Our guide is Josef, a vigorous, debonair 77-year-old opera singer who's lived through it all in Prague: the Nazi invasion. The Communist takeover in 1948. The Prague Spring. The student uprisings. The Velvet Revolution. He takes us from one historic landmark to the next, but most interestingly, he tells us his own experiences. Finding Soviet tanks in his garden. Everyone in his neighborhood removing street signs to confuse the troops. Having his passport confiscated after he’d spoken critically of the government. The old women who used to sit in the lobby writing down everyone who came and went.

His own past suffering is palpable, but his humor is effusive.

“And it wasn’t all bad,” he said diplomatically. “What was good was, when I got sick, I went right to the hospital. They gave me excellent health care, an operation – and at the end, no bills. And I am happy because today, we still have this. I need operations on my eyes, and still no bills, even though we have democracy now, and I am free to make my own decisions about my life.”

Lest anyone still think that a public option for health care is the equivalent of totalitarianism, allow me to propose a visit to Prague’s Museum of Communism – where I ended my tour.

Aptly, this museum is hidden away in a back alley off Wenceslas Square. And – here’s your irony supplement for the day – it’s wedged between a casino and a McDonald’s. Really. As if that doesn’t say it all.

For people who never experienced first-hand the delights of, say, the Aral Sea, East Germany in 1967, or a Soviet gulag, the Museum does a fine job of conjuring up the misery, ugliness, and delusions wrought by Communism. There are sections on Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, of course, plus anti-American propaganda; “social realist” art extolling factory workers as heroes; and full scale recreations of a dreary schoolroom under Communism; an empty, Eastern Bloc butcher shop with nothing but a few canned goods for sale; and a secret police interrogation room. There’s an exhibit of government surveillance equipment, too, including wiretapping machines from the 1950’s. Funnily enough, they look exactly like the anti-masturbation devices back at the Sex Machines Museum…

Displays are also dedicated to the ways in which entire populations were manipulated to inform on their friends and family; the imposed groupthink and conformity; and the environmental atrocities committed by the government. According to a plaque, immediately after the fall of Communism, the average life-expectancy of Czech men increased by five years.

It’s a small, sobering place. Seeking to avoid the very type of propaganda it condemns, the museum contains, impressively, a section called “Life Goes On.” Here are pictures of Czech citizens enjoying themselves despite their government: going to the beach, spending a day in the park, etc. The display seems meant to confirm what Josef told us: “To be fair, Communism wasn’t all bad. No system is all bad or all good.” Having endured the oppression of absolutist thinking, the Czechs refuse to be absolutist about it.

The museum illuminates a whole other, dark dimension of history.

It’s powerful – and also cautionary.

The phrases “Communism” and “big government” are bandied about so recklessly in America these days. Yet we Americans have so little idea of what they really mean or entail. We label an attempt to give everyone access to health insurance “Communism” – yet there was no similar clamor and rhetoric when, say, the American government declared it had a right to secretly wiretap its citizens…or journalists were jailed a few years ago for not disclosing their sources…or suspects were detained at Guantanamo Bay without due process…or environmental protections were stripped…

If we’re worried about becoming a Communist country like the Czech Republic and the Soviet Union used to be, trust me: This museum shows us that we’re focusing on the wrong things.

Maybe I’m getting older, but in the end, it hasn’t been the sex toys or the chocolate displays in Prague that have satisfied me, but the Museum of Communism. Here is history. Here is a past we can learn from. Here is a museum offering some insight about human proclivities. It’s shocking in places, and it dilates the imagination. Certainly, it has left me wanting more –for everyone.

Need Health Care Reform? Raise a Glass to the Swiss.

Given all the hot-under-the-collar hullabaloo over health care reform in America, I feel compelled to offer my fellow Yankees a drink. Let’s all peruse a wine list and chill out for a moment, shall we? How about a premier cru Chablis? Or a wonderful 15-year-old Bordeaux? Or, if you’re a Bubblehead like me, champagne? Veuve Cliquot is available in splits and full bottles.

This wine list I’m using, by the way, comes from a “semi-private” hospital here in Geneva, Switzerland – a “clinique” as they’re called. I am not kidding. In Switzerland, among other things, you can eat and drink damn well in its health care facilities.

When it comes to health care reform, everyone’s talking about our neighbors to the north these days. But I say: Yoo-hoo. Over here. I know it’s easy to confuse Switzerland with Sweden (or, in the case of our credit card companies, Swaziland), but you gotta check it out. Because right now, Switzerland probably has the system that’s closest to what Obama is ideally proposing for America. And lemme tell you, it doesn’t suck.

In Switzerland, everyone is required to have health insurance. This can be provided by employers (the cost deducted from your pay) or purchased privately. It’s not cheap. But for those who can’t afford anything else, a basic “public” health insurance is offered by the Swiss government at reduced rates. Everyone is covered, and there are no exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Admittedly, I don’t fully understand the nuts-and-bolts of the system – I think malpractice liability is also extremely limited here – and there are undoubtedly drawbacks, shortcomings, and abuses like anywhere else.

But overall, health care in Switzerland seems to be a hybrid between the socialized medicine of Canada and the current for-profit dysfunction of our own.

And the quality ranges from decent to ridiculously, obscenely good.

Case in point: that wine list.

At a clinique, you can come out of an anesthetized fog and order a bottle of Rasteau’s Domaine La Soumade’s Cuvee Prestige for only 34 francs. Or plunk down 120 bones for a 1994 Haute Medoc.

I know this because recently, I had a small, routine “procedure” done here in Geneva. In the US, it would’ve been performed as outpatient surgery, but in Switzerland, they keep you overnight because it involves general anesthesia, and they want to make sure you’re okay afterwards and infections don’t set in. Care and caution – not expediency – are the priorities.

Lucky, lucky me, I’d never had to stay overnight in a hospital until this point. Now I was going into a clinique where they spoke only French. To say that I was an anxious wreck is an understatement.

I should mention that I went to this particular hospital simply because it’s the one my doctor is affiliated with. Also, it required a guarantee from our insurer beforehand stating that we were, in fact, covered. My husband is what might be termed "an international civil servant," and I’m a writer. We’re comfortable, but in Switzerland, with its bankers and Saudi princes and gazillionaires, we’re probably barely middle-class. The health insurance we have is very good, though not gold-plated top-of-the-line. It covers us for roughly 80%. And the cost of doctors and such, as I’ve said, is high – at least as much as it is in the US.

Nonetheless, I was required to fill out only one short form before my admission to the clinique, and they dealt directly with our insurer for the guarantee.

Then, I was led to a gorgeous, phenomenally light and clean room that almost looked like a Philip Starck hotel. I was given a flimsy robe – but one that thoughtfully closed on the side – and also a pair of slippers! And a toothbrush with a tiny tube of toothpaste! And a comb! And a Caran D’Ache pen! (So sue me: I’m easily impressed. I still go bazookies over the little shampoos at the Marriott).

Then, I got a visit from “la dieticienne.” I thought she was just coming to tell me what I shouldn’t ingest after the anesthesia. But no. She wanted to know what I wanted for dinner after the surgery. Did I have any allergies?

“Well, goat cheese,” I laughed. “But I guess that shouldn’t be a problem here.”

“Actually, it is,” she said, straight-faced. “Tonight, we’re offering a warm goat cheese salad with fresh rosemary. I’ll make sure you just get the salad.”

Then, she held up a menu.

I had a choice, she informed me, between seafood lasagna and beouf bourgignon. Tarte tatin or a berry cobbler.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I said. “Ha. Ha ha. I suppose you’ve got a wine list, too?”

With a shrug, she pointed to the drawer in my nightstand. There, right between the tv remote and the bed pan, was the wine list.

As soon as she left, I told my husband that – if I did indeed survive the 20-minute procedure – he had to go get our digital camera and photograph all this shit. Otherwise, folks back home would never believe it. God knows I didn’t – and I was sitting there.

After I’d placed my dinner order, the anesthesiologist stopped by to confirm what we’d discussed during our uninterrupted, 45-minute meeting the day before. I got several lovely visits from nurses as well. And then, after the 20-minute procedure – which went without a hitch -- my doctor came by to see me. Twice.

And I got not only a three-course dinner, but a three-course lunch before check-out the next day. Salad Caprese. Fish in a beurre-blanc sauce with potatoes “nature” and homemade wild mushroom ravioli. I shit thee not: it was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. I almost forgot dessert – blackberries in a red wine sauce. They served it to me when I was already changed out of my robe. “Madame, n’obliez pas votre dessert!” the nurse cried.

M’am, don’t forget to eat your dessert.

That was the only thing they handed me before I left – no further forms to complete, no bills to pay. Just a spoon and a cup full of berries.

God, I loved that clinique.

This is semi-private Swiss health care.

Now, I’m aware that comparing Switzerland’s system with America’s is in some ways specious, misleading, and unfair. Apples and oranges, to a degree. The entire population of Switzerland (7 million), after all, isn’t even equal to my hometown of Noo Yawk alone. It’s easier to provide excellent health care to a limited number of people with a huge amount of resources – especially when these people are generally in fine shape to begin with -- given their mountain air, and their perverse addiction to things like hiking, biking, and skiing, and their high standard of living and excellent fresh food an’ all.

What’s more, unlike us Americans, the Swiss are, well, how to I put this? Anal. They’re not only highly organized, but reserved – there’s none of the rhetorical or emotional extremism that we have in America. Temperamentally and culturally, they’re a lot more community-minded and a lot less freewheeling than we are.

While this can make for some truly terrible rock’n’roll, it can also result in remarkably shrewd, balanced, and humane policy-making. They’ve managed to strike a balance between single-payer, universal, “socialist” health care and a system where 15 percent of the population goes uninsured, a pre-existing condition can screw you for life, and even those with coverage can go bankrupt after a single nasty twist of fate. It's also a system that incorporates holistic and preventive medicine: massages and herbs, anyone?

Sure, I’ve had a bad experience or two with Swiss doctors – one ob-gyn kept fondling my breasts long after the exam was over – and my little stay at the clinique cost my husband and I a hefty amount out-of-pocket when all was said and done, too. Like I said: it ain’t perfect.

But in certain ways, it’s better. So while many Swiss doctors do some of their training in the US, some of our policy makers might want to do a little more investigating over here in return. The Swiss system has its costs and inequities, but nobody’s uninsured, or denied coverage because they once had a polyp, or living in fear of losing their job because it means their asthmatic child will go without medicine, or having to take out a second mortgage because their spouse had a stroke and they’ve maxed out their lifetime deductible.

The Swiss system strikes a balance between the private sector and public health. It’s pricey, but humane and inspiring. It suggests what can be delivered when the focus of medicine is on healing and prevention.

I, for one, will drink to that.

Oz: There is Some Place Like Home

So I just spent two weeks in Australia. This should be a big deal and a big blog because, let’s face it, Oz, as they call it, is one big continent and one even bigger hassle to get to. Unless you’re in one of the “‘Nesia’s” or that other galactic outpost, New Zealand, Australia is far away from just about anywhere.

What’s more, when I arrived in Melbourne, I reunited with Sandy Fenton after 23 years. If you’ve read my new book, ahem, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, (insert shameless subliminal plug here) you know that Sandy is a Canadian who saved my life in southwestern China 23 years ago. Today, she’s living in Melbourne. Reconnecting with her was a very big deal, too.

Obviously, however, these opening paragraphs are a drum roll to an anticlimax. Sandy met me at the airport, there was a huge shriek and hug – and then we started to talk. And it was like: So anyway, as I was saying 23 years ago…

We practically picked up in mid-sentence. Two decades have gone by but we slid back into our friendship like a pair of beloved slippers. Which was wonderful for us, but boring for readers. Who wants to hear about how two women, seeing each other for the first time in 20 years, start talking about where they can get a really good deal on handbags?

And then, there was Australia itself. The Aussies are going to hate me for writing this. They will no doubt bar me from entering their country again – though I don’t mean this as an affront to them at all. But that said: Australia, to me, was very much like the USA. There. Gulp. I’ve blasphemed.

Yet I’m doing this not to gloss over cultural differences or dispense with nuance or to commit the ultimate, typical American faux pas of measuring another country against the “standard” of us. Rather, I say this, because as much as I’ve traveled and lived abroad, no other place has challenged my idea of American exceptionalism quite so much as Oz.

Through traveling and living abroad – as documented in this blog -- I’ve come to better understand American culture, foibles, shortcomings, and character. To this end, I’ve also come to better appreciate my country’s uniqueness as well: our idealism, our founding principles, our outsized humor and friendliness.

That is, until I arrived in Australia – where, harrumph, American uniqueness suddenly didn’t seem quite so unique anymore.

For starters, there’s the superficial, physical stuff. Never mind that the Aussies have better accents and drive on the wrong side of the road (wink). The few places I went to Down Under looked unnervingly like parts of California and Florida -- shiny, tinker-toyed housing mixed together with historical architecture and palm trees -- or like Chicago and San Francisco – pretty 19th century buildings next to brawny glass skyscrapers …cable cars weaving among them… There are brazen billboards in English, American tv shows, drive-thru McDonalds, Subway franchises, malls, Krispy Kreme donuts. (Mmm. Donuts. Can’t get those in Switzerland…) It felt more than a little familiar.

More importantly, the streets in Melbourne and Sydney look like the United Nations in motion. And at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, there’s an introductory video showing immigrants on ships loaded down with bundles and suitcases. A better life, the screen reads. Freedom from persecution. Escape from natural disasters. Reuniting with family. These are some of the reasons why people come to Australia.

Immigrants of all different backgrounds are then filmed talking about their journey to Australia while old newsreels play of Chinese laborers disembarking from steamers and Greek street peddlers hawking goods in Brisbane decades ago and Jews fleeing pogroms back in Europe then settling in Sydney. If maps didn’t show arrows radiating from all over the globe to Melbourne and Perth, the video could’ve been plucked directly from the Ellis Island Museum back in my hometown.

Harrumph again.

Apparently, there’s another country on this planet that prides itself on being a haven for the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, yearning to be free.

Granted, while we Yankees never shut up about our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, the Aussies still have the Queen on their money. And while we have our Statue of Liberty lifting her lamp beside the “Golden Door,” Australia had a “White Australia” immigration policy well into the 20th century -- and “white” really meant British – not so fast all you Slavs and garlic-eaters.

But the legends that we two nations promote about ourselves are strikingly similar. We both pride ourselves on being the New Frontier, the Multicultural Melting Pot of the West, the land of opportunity. We are the fresh start, the Can-Doers, the beaches full of blond surfers dashing boldly into the sunshine to catch the next wave.

And for all our high-minded ideals, we share similar hypocrisies, too: genocide against indigenous people; discrimination against immigrants; quota systems; ongoing hate crimes; crazed national security measures, etc. Australians, I was surprised to learn, even interned their Japanese citizens in camps during World War Two just like Americans did.

Yet to be fair, just like in America, on a personal level, Australians are one gregarious, fun-loving bunch. Histories aside, they are sunny and just fucking great to be around. God bless ‘em: Aussies don’t give a shit. Like us Yanks, they’ll start talking to you in elevators, cafeteria lines, public restrooms. Who cares if they’re a bell-hop and you’re a customer? They’ll tease you about your flat American accent while they toss your luggage into the back of a taxi. No worries. It’s all in good fun. They’ve got a fabulous sense of humor and irreverence. They claim they’re a bit rougher than Americans – but to me, this simply makes them closer to New Yorkers.

So what can I say? Apologies, mates. But I flew halfway around the globe and felt closer to home than ever – if a bit more humbled.

The Book Whore on the Book Tour: Part II

I’ve just returned from a six week book tour in the United States for my new tome, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. I was in ten different cities – three of them twice – which meant I got to get a really good, satisfying dose of my homeland. I also got to drink tequila and eat a lot of turkey burgers –neither of which really exist in Switzerland.

And since I was on the road a lot, I got to see a lot of billboards, road signs, and bumper-stickers, too. This doesn’t sound remarkable, but trust me, it is. Europe doesn’t have this stuff, either. People here don’t feel compelled to use their back fender to tell you that their “boss is a Jewish carpenter” or to “Visualize Whirled Peas.”

Only in America are roads, stores, and cars so declarative. My favorites? Outside of Philadelphia: A giant billboard for a Jewish paperback thriller, “Murder at the Mikvah” with an erotic photo of a nude woman emerging from a ritual bath. Can you make this stuff up? In Michigan, a billboard reading: “East Lansing: One of the most diverse and dynamic cities in America” – hung over a used car lot going out of business. A drive-up ice cream parlor near King of Prussia announces: “Ice Custard – and Happiness.” Happiness! They’re selling ice cream and happiness. God, I love America.

And then, of course, in Virginia, a giant gun store right next to “Fat Boys’ Barbecue.” Aah, yes. Home. Bullets and BBQ!

The phrase “book tour” sounds incredibly glamorous. And part of it is. This is the part where you get your photo in bookstore windows, hotel room upgrades, and drivers holding pieces of cardboard with your name misspelled on them at the baggage claims in the airports.

But book tours are also exercises in manic-depression.

Mind you, I’m not blogging to be a prima donna and moan about my pampered little authorial life: OMG. You have no idea how hard it is being on the road. I have to go to bookstore after bookstore. And every night I’m in a different hotel. Please. Cry me a river. I know only too well that the world should have my problems.

However, a lot of people think that writing is not only glamorous, but easy – that if you can talk, you can write. Any idiot, in their opinion, can publish a book. And given some of the dreck that gets published, they’re unfortunately right.

But the great irony of writing, like that of any art or sport, is that if you do it well enough, you make it look effortless. Then everyone around you thinks that it is effortless, and so they say stuff like:

“Yeah? You’re a writer? No kidding. You know, I was thinking of taking a few months off and writing a book myself.”

(To which I always want to respond. Yeah? Funny, I was thinking of just taking a few months off and practicing brain surgery…Oh, we writers are such a prickly, humorless bunch).

The reality of being a “glamorous” author is this: for years on end, we are not on book tours. We are not being published. We are sitting alone in a room somewhere, staring at a blank notebook or a blinking cursor. We write and delete, write and rewrite, and the bulk of our efforts never see print. We have no colleagues except for the relentless, needling little voices in our head that tell us one day we’re an unsung literary genius, the next day that we are total shit.

Let me be clear: There are far worse jobs to have. Writing is neither high-stakes nor mind-numbing nor physically dangerous, though we do seem to have a predisposition for alcoholism and suicide (though hey: who doesn’t?).

And I’m happy just to be employed, period.

But the book tour itself is a bipolar experience. One night, 150 people will show up to a reading at a Barnes & Noble; they’ll applaud. They’ll buy my books. They’ll tell me they love my work. And I’ll feel exultant, like champagne is raining down on my head.

The next night, in the next city, there will be a whopping crowd of eleven. And two of these will be homeless people sitting in the back eating a Styrofoam cup.

And of course, I’ll look out at the sea of empty chairs and stacks of unsold books and feel like a failure, publicly humiliated.

And this is par for the course on any book tour, even in far better economic times. Each reading is like a wedding where you don’t know if the guests – let alone the groom – are going to show up. One night, you’re a star, the next night, you’re jilted. Over and over.

And amazingly, it’s an experience you only get if you are very, very lucky.

So overall, I feel blessed to have had the chance to prostitute myself for weeks on end in my beloved homeland. Who knows if I’ll ever get to again. Keep your eyes open. Next time you see a book title of mine, it might just be gracing a billboard off the Interstate. Or the back of a fender. And I just might call it Ice Cream and Happiness.

Note: My next dispatches should be from Australia, where I'm heading not only to promote 'Undress Me,' but to reunite with Sandy Fenton, a Canadian nurse who figures prominently in the story. We'll be reunited after 22 years. We haven't seen each other since Asia.

The Book Whore on the Book Tour

In case you haven't noticed, I haven't been blogging recently. This is because I've been on the road in America tirelessly and shamelessly promoting my new book, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven. I suppose, before I write anything else, I should say that it is an absolutely fabulous, stupendous, riveting book about my misadventures in China -- and that it got a rave review in Oprah's "O" magazine; that USA Today named it as one of its "Top Nonfiction Picks"; and that it just hit the local bestseller list in the San Francisco/Bay Area.

Plus, my totally unbiased dad says it's the best thing I've ever written.

Then, I suppose, I should just start begging: Please buy it. Please, please, please. And none of this "Hey, I just got it for $2.99 on Ebay" stuff, either. Please spend the extra dough and support a local bookstore (not to mention yours truly; more than a few books on Ebay are recycled reviewers' copies and don't mean diddly in publishers' assessments of me).

But beyond this necessary and embarrassing prostitution, I wanted to let readers know that I haven't been blogging here because last week, I was blogging for Powell's independent bookstore in Portland, OR. If you have nothing better to do or are in dire need of new procrastination techniques, you can check out my back blogs at http://www.powells.com

Otherwise, as soon as I get a break in my tour (sometime next week, I'm hoping, between appearances in DC and Richmond), I'll be back at it, writing about America, and all the groovy, poignant beauty and irony I've seen in returning to my homeland.

Until then, stay tuned, thanks for indulging me, and, oh yes -- did I say "Please buy my book?"

As always, thanks for playing.

Talk Like An Egyptian

Last week, my friend Maureen and I did something typically European: we went to an Egyptian resort on the Red Sea whose sole design and purpose, it seems, is to make Westerners forget that they are actually in Egypt.

There’s a heated pool, a coiffed blonde singing Dido covers in the marble lobby, a beach-side bar. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves stand guard outside the “Kiddie Club,” and the main restaurant serves up a buffet night dubbed “Manhattan Grill.” I am not kidding. Take a quick look around, and you’d think you were in Cancun or Club Med or even Disneyworld.

That is, until you see the vacationing Arab women in hajibs, their arms and legs fully covered, lying on beach chairs just meters away from sausage-y German men in their unfortunate Speedos and small-breasted Danish women sunbathing topless – despite the hotel’s signs asking them kindly not to.

Half the clientele was speaking Arabic and eying man-less Maureen and me with suspicion, while the other half was wearing less fabric than it takes to make a dinner napkin and sipping rum punch and thumping along to the tiny Kayne West videos playing on their Ipods.

The architecture was vaguely Islamic, the staff entirely male, the menu devoid of pork. But there were also hamburgers. Snickers in the mini-bars. CNN. Menus in German, English, French, and Russian.

Needless to say, it was a strange convergence of sensibilities – a paean to Westerners’ perverse desire to “get away from it all” in a foreign locale without ever actually having to step outside our own culture.

Maureen, like me, is a Damn Yankee currently living in Europe. She and I went to this resort in Hurghada for the very same reasons the Europeans do – because winter in Yurp is hideous, frigid, and depressing, and Egypt is not only nearby and sunny, but cheap. After two and a half consecutive months of gray in Paris and Geneva, we knew that if we didn’t make like the Europeans and head for the sun, we’d end up making like the Europeans and become alcoholics.

Still, we both felt ashamed of trekking to a land laden with so much ancient booty only to lie on a beach for five days. And so, in addition to booking a trip to Giza, we did our best to mitigate our insulation as uber-tourists by learning a little Arabic. Our contact with the Egyptians was going to be severely limited, we knew, but that didn’t mean we shouldn’t at least make an effort.

So okay. Easier said than done. Arabic writing looks to me like lace. But with help from a few bored security guards at Cairo Airport, Maureen and I learned “thank you” (show-croon), “please” (mum fat lock), “beautiful” (gamilla), and “handbag" (shan-tah). After much perseverance, we even managed to count as high as four. And we learned the polite form of “hello” (as-salem alekham), which I walked around chirping annoyingly to everyone I came into contact with.

To our surprise, we were the only Westerners who attempted this, who treated the Egyptians as anything more than servants. When we croaked As-salem alekham, the Egyptians looked at us with delighted astonishment. “Oh, you speak Arabic?” they laughed. “Welcome to Egypt! Where are you from?”

Clearly, we had impressed them. And yet consequently, we found ourselves faced with a very un-European dilemma. Given all that has been happening with the U.S. and in the Middle East, did we dare fess up to being Americans?

For the past eight years, being an American abroad has meant living in a sort of purdah. Feeling both vulnerable in the wake of Sept. 11th and appalled by the Bush Administration, many ex-pats have either kept our nationality veiled or flat-out lied.

Maureen and I could resort to that great fall-back of saying we were Canadian, or tell the truth and hope that in doing so, we wouldn’t inspire hatred but perhaps a more favorable view of Americans. Self-preservation versus p.r.

Drama queens that we are, we opted for bold, self-promotional, possibly stupid honesty. “We’re from New York City,” we said.

As soon as we said this, the Egyptians smiled. “Oh, you’re American!” they cried. “America and Egypt are very good friends! Obama, yes? Obama is a good man!”

“Obama,” it seems, is quickly becoming a universal slogan of approval and a shorthand for forgiveness. Since the November election, I’ve been in Turkey, France, and Egypt. Without exception, the people there have cried “Obama” as they would “Hallaluyah.” In Cairo, in fact, Maureen and I found the entire staff at our hotel wearing “Yes We Can” buttons. (Granted, they claimed that it meant “Yes, we can serve you better,” but c’mon. No one was wearing “Country First” buttons and claiming they meant “See our Country First, then go to the beach.”)

Some of the Egyptians in Hurghada told us that we were only the second Americans they’d ever met. Others had had a lot of contact with Americans. But all of them were cognizant of our policies and our power. “When America vibrates,” one man told us, “the world vibrates.”

Maureen and I are not only New Yorkers but former waitresses, so we’ve got fairly well-honed shit-detectors. We never felt we were being snowed. The Egyptians spoke thoughtfully to us, with good humor and frankness, asking us about how effective Obama could really be in the face of so many crises, telling us about how important he is symbolically, and offering their opinions.

“Don’t worry about George Bush,” a physical therapist named Wahid told me. “We know that the Americans are not the same as your former president. We know that half of you did not vote for him, and that most Americans now dislike him and think that he has created many problems for the world. We know that you have protested. We have knowledge here. We watch the news, we read, we see on the internet. We Egyptians are well informed about the world.”

Later, en route to Cairo, I recalled Wahid’s words with a renewed sense of shame. The day before, a bomb had gone off in Cairo’s big, heavily-touristed medina. A 17-year-old French girl was killed, and scores more tourists and locals were injured. A second bomb had been found un-detonated. The Egyptians were beside themselves, and Maureen and I were sure that our loved ones back home would be frantic. But when we called the U.S. to assure everyone that we were fine, people had no idea what we were talking about.

The bombing went largely unreported in the United States. When we vibrate, it seems, the world feels it. But when the ground shakes in Cairo, it doesn’t even register.

Mama Mia. Shalom. Inshallah. Obama...

Stunningly, amidst all the Obamania of this past week, there’s actually been some other news coming out of Europe; my favorite headline concerned those lovable, madcap Italian bankers. According to the Swiss media, the Italian banking industry is bragging that it managed to avoid much of the credit crisis because Italian bankers don’t speak English well enough to understand mortgage-backed securities.

Mama mia. Could you make this stuff up? The Italians are essentially saying – proudly – that their economy hasn’t completely tanked because they're simply too incompetent to grasp what’s been going on.

Although there are a zillion reasons I love Italy, this one really takes the Panettone. The only other country I know that’s ever been as cheerfully forthright about its own ignorance is, well, the U.S. of A. itself. ( We confused Sunnis and Shiites? Whoops! Our bad…)

The banking industry’s claim is the most amazing news I’ve heard out of Italy since Silvio Berlusconi announced that he had been missing in action for almost a month because he’d been getting a face lift in preparation for the 2004 elections. No, I am not making that up, either. What’s more, he was completely unabashed about it; he behaved as if cosmetic surgery was not only his right, but practically his political obligation: how else would he remain a virile, powerful leader? (read: sexually active). Wilder still, perhaps, was the fact that nobody in Italy laughed him out of office for this. They actually seemed to think it made sense. La bella figura trumps all.

My other favorite news story from the past week is more poignant: on the eve of the U.S. presidential Inauguration, Jews and Arabs here in Geneva got together at a public square to hold a sort of bonfire/candlelight vigil/dialogue. Among those present was Ruth Dreifuss, a former president of Switzerland (not only the first woman, but une juife, as the newspapers are often quick to point out.)

As news cameras panned across a huddle of women shivering in hajibs and men in yarmulkes shivering in down parkas, Dreifuss explained in the fire light that Jewish and Arab residents from all over Geneva – whether they hailed from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Israel, or Switzerland itself – had come together to show the world that they could meet, speak together peacefully, and reaffirm their common humanity during the crisis in Gaza.

It was a small group, and Dreifuss spoke with humility. The media coverage here seemed glancing; elsewhere, it was simply nonexistent. But it was a story that I believe deserved more attention. After all, it embodied the same ideals that were being celebrated that very moment half a world away on Capitol Hill.

Which was precisely the problem, of course. While the vigil’s intentions were admirable, its timing was terrible. On January 20th, there was really only one story worldwide. For the first time in history, even French television broadcast the L' Americain Investiture as it's called. (And the earth, as you might imagine, nearly fell off its axis...)

Now, a week later, while the Italian bankers and Genevoise Arabs and Jews are no longer news, Obama still is – he’s a brilliant, blinding star, the center of the media universe here. He and Michelle grace the cover of almost every magazine. Every half hour, Euronews leads with his cabinet picks and executive orders. Large portraits reading “Barack Obama 44th President of the United States” fill the windows of the biggest international bookstore downtown, displaying no less than 23 different books about Barack and Michelle in a variety of languages.

If the world’s attentions are not on the Italian banks, or the well-meaning Arabs and Jews here, it’s because everyone is besotted with “the kid with the funny name.”

I can’t say I blame them. I've got to admit: I'm swooning along beside them -- one proud (albeit smartass) Yankee.