Gigolow

"Hey! Pretty lady! I have coffee, you want?"

I left the demo fuming yesterday and wanting to draw blood out of someone and anyone, and luckily found that my friend Hadeel had sent this by someone called Karin Badt (“professor of cinema and theatre in France”).

In the days before the Internet, Debbie and Mike and Jason and Sharon parachuted into a country for ten days, observed the country through a tour bus window or experienced meaningless encounters with tourist industry workers whose “friendship” they construed as a rare window into the hidden world of this ancient land and its mysterious people.

Debbie and Mike and Jason and Sharon might share their reflections during the photo slideshow in their living rooms, in between having a laugh about the image of them pointing at the hieroglyphic with the erect penis. A postcard is possibly the extent to which these reflections would be recorded for posterity.

But now, thanks to the Internet and lax submissions policies, the whole world can read that fucking postcard.

Badt’s path has quite clearly crossed with an obnoxious, salacious hustler in Luxor whose bit of patter and apparent attempt to get her in bed she misinterpreted as an anthropological examination of Egypt’s sexual mores.

Or maybe she did indeed stumble across a concealed pearl (“Mike/Mohammed”) in the algae of Luxor’s tourist touts. Let us examine the evidence. I suspect Mike/Mohammed is a figment of Badt’s imagination but we’ll ignore that and proceed.

The first paragraph reads like a Mills & Boone novel. Maybe Badt’s being ironic. We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and move on, but not before pointing out that most of my female friends if asked whether they “would like to know the difference between making love to an Egyptian woman and a European woman” by some turd would tell him to shove his wisdom up his arse and exit-left immediately.

Badt however senses she is being admitted into an inner chamber and says “yes”.

Mike/Mohammed informs Badt that his first step as a Don Juan began in pubs in the English countryside where he had “experiences with European women”. Mike claims to be stunned the first time he is set upon by one of the lady predators in the pub and describes his “it’s no coffee!” encounter with the innocence of a choirboy invited to polish the church silver by Father McRandy.

Note also the “the sun setting in the desert hills behind him, with the Valley of the Kings just beyond”- scene-setting with the finesse and subtlety of a “your name in papyrus” souvenir.

I didn’t know this but apparently in England it’s considered vulgar to ask for sex and people offer coffee instead – fancy! All those missed opportunities I misinterpreted in job interviews etc. But again this is Mike/Mohammed describing his fascinating encounters in the UK and obviously not actually Badt making up a load of old shite.

Mike/Mohammed was taught to give pleasure by a “British lady” through “using his mind” to “resist for one hour” [Mike/Mohammed apparently slept with Paul Mckenna]. Again, right-minded women who had made it this far into the conversation would deduce that douchebag Mike/Mohammed is offering coffee, but Badt is either oblivious or feels that duty calls and she must resist.

The conversation turns to Egyptian women and Mohammed/Mike “looks downcast”, as well he might given that his first attempt to get into Badt’s knickers failed.

Apparently, ALL women are circumcised/circumsized [sic] in Egypt and sex is a painful, two-minute affair for women and merely a “chance to relieve themselves” for men – who lucky for all the circumcised/circumsized women haven’t had Mike/Mohammed’s Paul Mckenna experience.

Mike/Mohammed was once married but the union failed because he married an inanimate object.

“She was a board,” he said. “That’s why the marriage failed”.

Confirming his douchebag factor +100 Mike/Mohammed tells Badt that he and the board had one son that he has never seen. The marriage was arranged of course – “as are most in Egypt” but the difference is that his was arranged in a hardware store because he married a board and he’s a tool.

There is then the inevitable description of sex with circumsized/circumcised women the reading of which is arguably more painful than the act itself.

“I had known what it is like to have sex with a woman who has pleasure, and it’s such a difference. Egyptian women don’t feel anything!” Mike/Mohammed says breathlessly, possibly while gyrating his hips.

Badt points out that Mike/Mohammed had just told her that “there’s a sex trade in Cairo [and Luxor, and it’s sitting with you]” and we think she’s finally catching on, but alas it was only to ask whether “all prostitutes are circumscribed [sic]”.

Mike/Mohammed, Luxor’s answer to Dr. Heba Qotb, says that of course they are all, but whether he’s talking about FGM or the enclosure of prostitutes within defined bounds is uncertain.

Mike/Mohammed makes another attempt at Badt by telling her that he’s “lonely” in Luxor and spends his days with tourists to “pass the time” wink wink. “Like with you, we had a chance to talk, and so we passed the time. And I will never marry again, I’ll just have an affair here and there, that’s it – and have you got the bloody message yet you stupid woman”.

Mike/Mohammed’s attempts fail but even as he is dropping Badt off he is making a last-ditch attempt, telling her about an Australian girl with whom “he had the opportunity to spend the night”.

The account ends with a UN statistic about the number of women in Egypt who have undergone FGM in Egypt, and a picture of a pharaoh.

I am so sick of chancers making green out of Egypt with tinpot bullshit like this.

Badt, sweetheart, if you want to discuss FGM, talk to an expert and circumcised women. If you want to discuss sexual relations in Egypt talk to more than one person and preferably have a point to the whole exercise.

If however you want to peddle stereotypes about British women, fetishise Egyptian men and reproduce bullshit about Egypt “substantiated” by a half-arsed paragraph at the bottom, then mission successful.

Does the Huffington Post pay for submissions? Pay me. I’ll sing you any motherfucking tune you want to hear.