BODY LANGUAGE
Mercedes Sayagues
There is only one good reason to attend an international mega-conference these days and that is the superb chance of getting laid.
It is a dream recipe for a quickie romance. A city teeming with thousands of men and women removed from spouses, children, daily routine and life commitments, all pursuing shared goals stop racism, spur development, ban landmines, halt Aids, use renewable energy, you name it.
As conferences head for growing chaos and irrelevance, as the number of delegates spirals to unmanageable levels 50 000 for the Earth Summit in Johannesburg in August and as delegates struggle in vain to find the right workshop, bus and hotel room, well, they sigh, what the hell, let’s have sex.
I have attended my share of mega-conferences, thus I speak with authority. Albeit the last one the racism jamboree in Durban last August landed me in a dilemma. Can somebody help on this one?
It happened on the very last night. I am taking the lift up to the 10th floor with My Indaba Dream Man. He is a Roma activist (that’s a gypsy for those readers low on PC political correctness), with a passion for his discriminated people. I can tell you all about the Roma in Eastern Europe. Boy, did I cram for that interview.
He was dark, tall, thin, intense and a man to my liking not consumed by food. I mean, he did not care about food. If food was there, he ate it. If food was not there, he fasted. Just the kind of man I like I am tired of gourmet foodies, eyeing each sundried tomato and baby papaya as if appraising diamonds.
So the Roma King and I have a fire in our bellies for each other, or so I fancied, and here we meet in the lift. Our planes leave on different directions tomorrow morning. As the lift door closes, my dilemma is: do I kiss him madly and passionately or not? Why not?
Because I’ve just had an extra-hot piripiri (chili) chicken at Nando’s and my breath is like a dragon’s.
Is one allowed to inflict a hot Nando on someone who perhaps has haemorrhoids, and should not partake of anything stronger than ketchup? Will my Roma King like it or think it disgusting? Do they have Nando’s in Belgrade? How do you say piripiri in Romany?
Don’t laugh. This is a serious matter. What is the etiquette for kissing a stranger when your tongue feels like a red-hot iron and reeks of garlic?
I don’t know. And I never got to find out because, while I pondered the complex issue, the lift stopped on the fourth floor and a bunch of translators on happy hour joined us, so our brief moment of intimacy was gone forever.
If only my friend Julie had been there. She is amazing. Not a beauty by any standards, even by compassionate ones, but boy, could she get laid while Miss Universe couldn’t. She had a way of leaving sex in her trail.
In 1985 we flew from New York to Nairobi for the world conference on women. Picture the joyful pandemonium on that Airbus, with 300 women and two cameramen. A dozen sisters with bright bubus and loud drums boarded in Dakar: more pandemonium. Somehow, during that sleepless night, Julie shagged the cameraman in the toilet twice and nobody noticed. Not even me, and we were seated together.
The next mega-conference I attended was even more fun. In its wisdom, Unesco held the 1990 World Conference on Education For All at Jomtien, in Thailand a 15-minute ride by taxi from the world’s biggest official brothel town, Pataya.
I fail to see what possessed the organisation to hold a conference on children’s education next to a sex market where a girl graduates when she learns how to eject a ping-pong ball from between her thighs and suck the longest dick without gagging. But fun it was.
The 100-strong Kenyan delegation, mostly men, was seen in full ethnic regalia on the opening day, and never again. They disappeared for massage and all else into Pataya. Other delegates were a wee more discreet, but business was booming that week in Pataya.
Choose your conference, take your pick: the bearded head of demining in Afghanistan, with mournful eyes la Osama Bin Laden? A pony-tailed anti-logging Canadian with perfect pecs who lives six months a year in a tree? An endangered-species defender in shorts and sandals? A radical feminist with cowrie shells on her hair or a young dreadlocked Aids activist? An aid worker or a journalist? Conferences are a sex bazaar.
I wonder what the Earth Summit will bring.