Free I, Fatty by Jerry Stahl Page A

we went. First to Honolulu and a command performance for Queen Liliuokalani, at the Royal Hawaiian Opera House. During the reception afterwards, I misjudged the potency of the native cane liquor. According to Minta, I made an appearance in a hula skirt, attempted to dance cheek to cheek with the queen—who looked 96 if she looked a week—then took ill and spewed poi on a royal show pony. My poor wife had to apologize the next day. (Not, sadly, for the last time.) I was ushered unceremoniously out of the palace, and advised not to try and return to Hawaii without armed guards.
    All the way to the boat in Honolulu, I was convinced I was going to be hijacked, skewered with an apple in my mouth, and left for pineapple fertilizer. Sadly, my boorish behavior, and poor Minta's inevitable apology, set the tone for the expedition.
    Round-Eyed Demon
    When the 43 of us arrived in China, it was obvious at once this was 43 more white people than any of the natives had seen before. Men and boys followed me everywhere—including to the public latrine—where, to my amazement, I'd find them brazenly ogling my privates.
    Our host, a Chinaman who spoke English like a landed duke, explained that your average Chinee believed "round-eyes" were endowed with jumbo equipment, and could not resist the chance to catch a glimpse of the big fat white man's package. I felt like a zoo animal, and became too self-conscious to urinate. I held it in till my scalp felt damp. I was afraid of what would happen if they weren't impressed. I was a big man, but I wasn't a big man.
    To keep the locals out of pee-peek range, my host told the throngs of curious that I was a wrestler, and it would be dangerous to stand too close in case I got riled. After less than a week in the East, I found myself cupping my wiener when I passed water, blocking the eyes of the curious, like a man trying to light a smoke in a strong wind.
    We spent a year and a half in the Far East, and halfway through I stopped drinking after the show. Instead I started drinking before it. Thank you. It was all just too much. In Tokyo we saw prostitutes kept in swinging cages. They looked about 9, with eyes so dead you wanted to rip your heart out and feed it to them to make them alive again. In Shanghai, to get to our restaurant we had to step over children in the street, old-looking babies grown big-headed from starvation. My wife wanted to adopt every one, and I had to pull her away with more force than either of us cared for.
    Minta was even more livid the first time I paid for a rickshaw. How could I be so insensitive? It took four dainty yellow men to move this big fat white one an inch and a half. The Chinese on hand to catch the spectacle seemed to find it highly amusing. Especially the other rickshaw drivers.
    What the Chinks enjoyed more than anything was watching their friends get hurt. The perfect Mack Sennett audience. Stick four Keystones in coolie hats, let 'em lose control of the rickshaw on a steep hill with me in it, and you've got yourself a two-reeler. Culling a chuckle from the suffering of others appeared to be a universal plot.
    When Minta ranted about the rickshaw ride, I told her that, harsh as the work might seem to her, if she had never been broke, really broke, then she could never understand how much our little slant-eyed chums would appreciate having it—not to mention how gaga they'd go over my sizable four-way tip for a job well done.
    But Minta didn't see things that way. We fought constantly, not just about the beggars—she couldn't pass an outstretched hand—but about whatever impropriety I'd perpetrated on our gracious host or fellow cast members the night before. The worse my behavior, the more uncomfortable my wife's next-morning apology was to the other actors and local society swells whose carpets I'd waltzed on with poop on my shoes the night before. Poor Minta had sacrified a promising career to become a professional apologizer. But to give the angel her