Travel Book Review ~ Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) True Stories from a War Zone

Emergency Sex by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thompson. ISBN 0091908868. First published 2004. Click here to see if we currently have a copy in stock, we usually do.

It's not just the saucy title that made me pick out of the shop to read, Emergency Sex has been a constant seller in my shop for years and always gets good feedback from customers. I packed this book on our recent trip to Japan and mowed through most of it on the plane, it gets a little bleak in the middle, it's an easy read but not a light read, not your average cheery travelogue, but I'm glad I pushed through.

In Emergency Sex, each of the three authors, Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson tell of their lives while working in the international aid game. Their stories intermingle throughout the developing world and back home in the USA. These are above average folks: a doctor saving lives and prisoners in Cambodia, a human rights lawyer and a very determined administrator. The three authors meet in Phnom Penh Cambodia in as the UN amasses to oversee the Cambodian elections, and become addicted the lifestyle.

As with all our reviews, we could blab on endlessly about the how good the book is, and you would have no reason to believe us because we are also trying to sell it, so we select a favourite passage or two from the book and leave it up to you.

Ken stays with Tali, a friend-of-a-friend in Israel. Scud missiles and sexual tension...

 She absently kicks the front door into place behind us with her foot, her back to it. The force is just right; it doesn't slam but the bolt engages in a ringing click. We're alone.

She puts a cassette in a little boom box; it sounds Arabic. I turn it up but she says no, turn it down. Then she turns the radio on, but there's no sound. She says the army has a special station, called gal sheket, the quiet station. It's always silent except when it announces an attack. We have to keep it on all night.

How many other security protocols are there that I can't even conceive of?

She goes into the bedroom, the door is only half closed, I can see clothes everywhere and her shadow bobbing. She comes back out in sweats and a tank top, dripping in coffee-coloured skin, black hair everywhere. That girl smell wafts toward me again, it almost hurts. I get up to go to the bathroom, not because I have to but because I want to avoid facing her on the couch.

I go to my bag, digging for my toothbrush, beep beep beep beep - from the radio, not the boom box. It's the quiet station. The announcer repeats two words in Hebrew over and over again. Nachash tsefa. 'What does that mean?' I ask, I hope not too hysterically. She puts her hand on my shoulder and says, 'Dey attack us, it is a code from the army. Nachasch tsefa mean poison snake, you must take your mask gas, we go up to sealed room.' A siren starts to wail outside.

The quiet station is loud now. The announcer is repeating messages in Hebew, Arabic, English, Russian, and Ahharic for the Ethiopians. He says, 'Citizens of Israel, a missile attack has been launched against us. You are requested to enter your sealed room calmly, put on your gas mask, bring radio batteries and water with you.'

This isn't a story on CNN, this is real: I'm with Tali in Tel Aviv and 'dey attack us.'

Okay, okay, just follow her lead.

I unpack the gas mask the army handed me as soon as I arrived at the airport. She takes my hand and we go upstairs. There's a room completely sealed in nylon sheeting. She says, 'This the sealed room. We wait here after the Scud come, but maybe we go on the porch to see him first, sometimes we also to see the Patriot missile. You want?" She nods yes.

Fuck no I don't, I want to curl up in the sealed room and lay my head in your lap.

"Yeah, okay good,' I say. 'Let's go on the porch, I want to see.'

We put on the masks, walk out to the porch, and wait. The mask makes here look like a monster with a huge ugly black nose. When we talk it's muffled and echoes. It's hot and the strap hurts. She points to where the Scuds usually come, from the east, she says, the direction of Jerusalem. Amman. Baghdad. Then she points again, 'Dare, dare you see, the Scud, a red light over dare.' I follow here little smooth brown finger, and there's a red tail hanging in the sky far off. It's not moving fast, almost lazy, lobbing down casually. Suddenly I'm conscious of everything I hear my breathing her breathing the refrigerator humming I feel my blood spurt through my body I see black eyes through the mask they're wide open. The red light slides steadily lower and lower it's going to hit something eventually it's excruciatingly slow it's not coming at us it's falling far away. I turn to look for the door back to the sealed room, what if it's a chemical or gas? The red light hangs lower almost to the ground and flashes orange then flashes again and it's gone, like the sun setting into the sea.

I just watched a missile land, and people died. They're bleeding and burning right now. That Scud hit and killed people. I keep repeating it all in my mind, to make it real.

The phone rings downstairs, my heart jumps, for a second I think it's my parents, but they have no idean where I am. Tali takes her gas mask off and says the Scud landed far away this time, we can wait downstairs for the All Clear code word on the quiet station. What about the sealed room, I ask, what if it was a chemical or gas attack? She says 'If it is chemical or gas the army to tell us, you sit inside if you scared of chemical, no problem, I go down to talk to my friend.'

...The announcer on the quiet station reads  All Clear messages in five languages with code names that relate to various cities and it was conventional, not gas, not chemical.

Living the good life, UN staff, pre Cambodian election... Or How Ken Met Heidi.

It's the weekend and we're on the roof. Someone brought a rubber kiddie pool back from Bangkok. It's bright blue with yellow lightning bolts shooting along the side. Chloe is in charge of the house but Karim, a Morroccan guy in a Yankees cap, is in charge of the roof. He once played professional soccer in France, knows half a dozen languages, and is the perpetual eye of a social storm.

 He's rigged a hose from the sink in his bathroom across the roof to feed the pool. He lets the water run freely, overflowing onto the red roof tiles, cooling them so we can walk barefoot. The top of a mango tree droops nearby, and if you are willing to lean over the ledge far enough that your feet leave the safety of the roof, you can snap a mango right off the tree. You just have to crack the skin and squeeze. Sun warmed juice and flesh explode like a melting popsicle.

Karim chops up a block of ice with a huge machete and we make mango daiquiries in the blender until all the ice melts.

It's blistering hot. All the housemates except Chloe are lying the pool, plus a tan, lithe Swiss girl with long, sun streaked blond hair, who may or may not be Karim's girlfriend. Daiquiries and mango juice and suntan oil and bodies. Karim smokes joint after massive joint of Cambodian dope. When one gets wet from splashing pool water, he just throws it out and lights another like it's a cheap cigarette. We're on the roof of our mansion in the middle of Indochina, no parents, no boss. Everything everyone does is funny and perfect.

Karim reaches out from the pool , groaning from the exertion, to put a CD into the boom box. It's a Fai singer from Algeria, Khaled. The music sends Karim into a tirade about the Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria who assasinate Rai singers because they represent corrupt western culture and therefore have to die. He says something indecipherable about how the fundamentalists have to die, and he starts swearing excitedly in Arabic. I think what he's saying might be really interesting and thought provoking if any part of it were comprehensible.

The Swiss girl is wearing one of those revealing European-style bikinis. I can feel the heat of her skin in the sun as the rolls around in this tiny, oiled up kiddie pool. I'm not sure if she and Karim are together and her writhing right next to me is a little disconcerting. It's all very intimate, but everyone is poised and cool about it. I have to learn how to strike that nonchalent pose they all seem to have down pat.

Karim puts a House of Pain song, 'Jump Around.'

It's street music from the States, and I'm the only American on this roof, but they all know the words. Karim is lying flat, splayed out and submerged. He starts to rock his hips rythmically to the beat and it catches on and then all six of us are thrusting our hips up each time House of Pain chants 'Jump'. The water starts to form waves in rythm with the beat of our thrusts and the Swiss girl is beautiful and the pot and the rum and music are in charge and then a giant wave forms from a group hip thrust executed in perfect unison and it all crashes out of the pool and washes over in a small tidal wave to the electric cable spliced from the generator that's feeding the blender and boom box and everyone stops and waits to die and nothing happens and we're young and immortal and together and drunk and stupid in Cambodia.

Chloe appears. It's like a parent came home. She's frowning furiously. Is it the music or the dope or the mango mess or the exposed electric cables or the water running everywhere or the Swiss girl or is it just that she missed the whole thing?

Lunch is ready. Chloe announcem Heidi the American girl is coming to see the house. She orders us to get dressed to greet this Heidi downstairs. We gather ourselves as best we can - it's useless to oppose the will of the beautiful Chloe creature - and we file downstairs for lunch. 

The cook serves amok, fresh fish soaked in coconunt curry, wrapped in banana leaves, served over fluffy white rice. It's the best fish I've ever tasted. There's ecstacy in the heat of the curry and the rice is sticky white and feathery and who knew rice could taste this good? I'm transfixed by my lunch and then the American girl walks in.

It's an unwelcome interuption. She's dressed like it's a job interview but we're three sheets to the wind and four minutes out of the pool and it doesn't fit. She thrusts her head back and chin up as she strides into the room like she's in a marching band. She stares at us like she wants and expects something from us. Fuck you, I'm making love to my amok. She sounds like she's from some exit in New Jersey and the last thing I want is another American here to spoil my gig. I'm in place here and you're not. I can figure this jet-set shit out and you can't and you're going to interfere if you try and I'm voting no. I want an African or a Latin housemate to complete the lineup, go away. I am in love with my amok. Bye, nice to meet you.

Emergency Sex by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thompson. ISBN 0091908868. First published 2004. Click here to see if we currently have a copy in stock, we usually do.