Until I read Spike's column in your August 2nd issue, I had mistakenly harbored the impression that hard boiled Hong Kong bigotry was the exclusive purview of those more provincial, sadistic, nouveau riche Chinese who feel comfortable exploiting and abusing foreign domestic helpers on terms that we would, in the modern, Western world, customarily describe as indentured slavery. Confronted by your publication of Spike's contemptuous generalizations about certain interracial relationships and particularly about Southeast Asian women, I recognize how wrong I was.

In fairness, I should disclose my bias: I count myself among several western men who occasionally dare to walk along Lockhart Road (even in front of the Devil's Advocate, where the author self-righteously lurks) accompanied by my Southeast Asian wife. We walk there not because we are retiring from Laguna or pub-crawling to New Makati or scrambling toward some assignation at the Ming Court Hotel, but because I happen to work in Wan Chai and we have friends who own good quality, reasonable restaurants in that neighborhood (whom I will encourage to pull their advertising from BC Magazine, by the way). It's possible we have not been counted among those couples Spike chose to marginalize, as my wife has never worn stiletto heels, but I can't be certain about that and, more importantly, the height of a woman's heels or the length of her skirt for that matter (even though my wife dresses modestly), really ought not form a basis for any judgments by anyone claiming to be as enlightened and well educated as Spike obviously fancies himself to be.

His self effacing confession of an alcohol problem, his condescension and his pathetic pretense of humor fails to mitigate his mean spirited cuts about Southeast Asian women's "circumstances of … birth…" preventing them from realizing the "benefits of a Western liberal arts education." Even so, Spike crudely pontificates, they have, "figured out a way to escape horrendous poverty with nothing more than five-inch stiletto heels and a push-up bra." He wanders on with his vain analysis to somehow measure Southeast-Asian-women-in-Wan-Chai's abilities to discuss the, "finer points of world affairs," along with their, "little interest in the poetry of Allen Ginsberg." Incredulous at his broad swipes, I checked his related web log entries, where his blather is even more blatantly bigoted and wrong. As I began to recall the brilliance and the bravery and the integrity of so many Southeast Asian women I have met here in HK, I began to fume. Even his copied caveat, calling them Southeast Asian women of humble origins managed, the way he handled the term, to reveal itself as a hate-filled, transparent code for foreign domestic helpers. I realize, and would think he should know, that many of them have University educations. I've met Filipina domestic workers who were registered nurses, who had journalism degrees… They wont be allowed to work in the hospitals here or for B.C. Magazine due to HK's current immigration policies, but many of them can still do better for themselves and for their families by accepting humble employment, hopefully with more conscientious employers than the exploiting types I referenced above. Whether they've taken philosophy 101 or not, none of these women who might end up walking with a Western man deserve to be sneered at in a column published in your magazine.

My other bias, and the main impetus for my bothering to respond to Spike's lame column, is the sadly ironic fact that during the year before I entered law school, I worked for Allen Ginsberg, transcribing some of his journals, managing correspondence, handling his booking and offering other administrative assistance. After leaving his employ, I remained his friend for the last two and a half decades of his life. While Allen was well educated, very gay and wrongly reputed to be a pederast, he was never misogynistic nor was he bigoted. He was also brilliant enough to appreciate natural intelligence and to celebrate gifted individuals no matter what their ethnicity or formal education level was. One of the principal muses in Allen's life was an unschooled, reprobate felon named Neil Cassady who only went onto College campuses to steal cars and pick-up chicks. Allen was married (in a same sex union) to another high school dropout, Peter Orlovsky, for over forty years.

I know very well that Allen would have objected to his name being dropped at the expense of Southeast Asian women, particularly those of humble origins…and I can imagine what he would have had to say about pedantic, white trash pseudo-intellectual bigots spouting hate-speech like Spike. He would have wanted to leave Spike alone with his friends "Johnny Walker", et. al., at the bar, and he would have encouraged us, his open minded, truly liberal friends, to go out dancing and singing and playing with Wan Chai's beautiful Southeast Asian women and other Westerners secure enough about their own intelligence and dignity to be a part of their community.

In conclusion, I would like to ventilate some by suggesting your author, Spike, get off his lonely barstool, remove his beer goggles and take his head out of his ass so he might recognize not every relationship he views is as cheap or superficial as he appears to be. Finally, instead of "Head Fuck," I think it's clear he should name any bar he has a part of "Fuck Head".

Leon Meursault
(Full Name and Address supplied)

Most people who know me know that I was once married to a Southeast Asian Woman of Humble Origins, a woman who worked her way out of the gutter and into a position as a director of an international firm based on her fierce intelligence and drive to succeed. And most people who don't know me would recognize what I write as at least an attempt at humorous observations, some times more successful than others. The comments on the original version of this piece which appeared on my blog show thatmost people took it within the spirit in which it was written. Almost no one interpreted what I wrote as any attempt at bigotry or condemnation of any race or group, as that was certainly not my intent. The fact that this person feels he has the authority to instruct us in what a dead person would say about what I wrote borders on meaningless. I can only presume that this particular essay must have hit a bit close to home to garner such a response and I'm sorry if your mommy doesn't approve of your marriage. Spike