Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich

SAN FRANCISCO, California -- A switchblade to the throat, a former CIA "Apocalypse Now" paramilitary leader, and a warning not to say "chicks," greeted us during our three-week book signing tour in San Francisco. And who were those "Trotskyite feminists"?

Our non-fiction book of documentary journalism, titled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews, had finally gotten published in America, after being on sale only in Thailand for the past several years.

Co-author Dave Walker and I were invited to fly to San Francisco, where our publisher planned a dazzling book signing tour of the Bay area. We stalked into bookshops, art galleries, bars and the University of California, Berkeley. Schmoozed for two days at the Oakland Convention Center. And inspired Pacifica Radio's listener-sponsored KPFA-FM staff to read live excerpts on their "Cover to Cover" literary review broadcast.

First on our tour was the respected, leftist-intellectual Modern Times Bookstore where we were given a podium and microphone to converse with serious-minded customers. They wanted to know if the Thai bar girls we interviewed were exploited by superpower men. So we described the Thai women who appear in the book and related their difficult lives. When we returned to the bookshop a few days later to ask how our appearance was interpreted, we saw "Hello My Big Big Honey!" perched in shop's window, front and center, amid other new arrivals.

The next day, we carried boxes into the Oakland Convention Center to sign copies at our publisher's annual booth during WonderCon 2001. The convention offered plenty of kitsch icons and commercial memorabilia, billing itself as "northern California's largest comic book and pop culture convention, featuring comics, TV, video games, 60,000-plus square feet of sales and exhibits, a Japanese animation festival, and summer movie previews."

Upon seeing the crowd, we wondered if these collectors, fans, nerds and Star Trek geeks would want a book about men and women falling in love in red-lit moonlight on the other side of the world. But after button-holing them for two days at the convention, we sold a bunch of signed books, and also made friends with hip-hop cartoonists from Oakland who promised to spread the word among their inner-city friends -- a "demographic" we hadn't considered.

The convention, however, brought out some strange characters. The actor who played "Radar" on the TV series "Mash," and an actor who was the "Hologram" on the cult classic film "THX" were signing autographs for money. Further down the food chain were Playboy fold-out women from -- can you remember back that far? -- 1978. Polyester guys were paying to be photographed with the rabbits.

Weirder things happen in San Francisco, especially at night, as I soon discovered after we later emerged from a "benefit" book signing at the Minna Street Gallery in which all profits went to the Saint James Infirmary, providing free medical and legal assistance to San Francisco's sex workers. The gallery was suitably decked out with paintings by various artists, including Sharon Leong's masterpiece titled, "Dangers of Sex: Eating Pussy".

That's when our publisher, San Francisco legend Ron Turner, introduced us to S. Clay Wilson. Some of you may know the name of the "underground comic book artist" Robert Crumb who did Zap Comix, Fritz the Cat and other radical animation which came to symbolize much of the late 1960s and early 1970s counter-culture humor in America.

At our publisher's warehouse we eventually met Crumb, who now lives in self-exile in France. But one of his competitors, S. Clay Wilson, also churns out freaky comic books, albeit heavier on crudeness compared with Crumb's often profound lines. When Turner introduced us to Wilson, I instinctively pulled out my camera and shot a photo of him in the street in front of the gallery, while we were moving on to our next venue.

I heard the horrific metal click of Wilson's switchblade just as it reached my neck. Wilson was drunk, laughing and leering. He angrily shouted about not wanting his picture taken. As soon as I realized my fate, he pocketed the blade. Stunned, and not wanting to provoke him again, we continued the evening as if nothing happened, mostly because he began "speaking in tongues," as Turner later dubbed Wilson's incoherent babble.

On another night, our tour took us to Francis Ford Coppola's Italian restaurant in North Beach where a table of cultural elites and one of mayor's officials toasted us with wine from Coppola's vineyard, though alas, the film director wasn't there. Our hosts were in a generous mood. One of them opened the menu, selected an expensive Italian meal, called the waiter and, when the delicious dish arrived, placed the plate of pasta underneath our sidewalk table so his pet dog wouldn't go hungry.

Our biggest coup, meanwhile, came after we mailed a copy of the book to KPFA-FM Pacifica Radio. They received the book on a Friday and telephoned us on Monday to say they rushed it to the top of their list and had already read excerpts live on Sunday.

Back in San Francisco, while passing a Mission Street storefront organization proclaiming itself as, "Radical Women -- a Socialist Feminist Group," we flashed the book and talked about the angst experienced by Thai bar girls and their foreign lovers. We also knew what not to say. Earlier in our tour, one wise guy took us aside and warned, "When you talk about the women in your book, remember, this is San Francisco, so don't say 'chicks'."

As it turned out, no need for a politically correct sell. One of the radical women exclaimed: "I saw that book in the window of the Modern Times Bookshop!" With street cred like that, the revolution clutched us to its bosom and even promised to tell their "Trotskyite feminist" comrades to buy our tome.

Among the luminaries we met who put a copy of our signed book in their personal libraries was Tony Poe, the former CIA paramilitary leader whose tribal guerrillas fought in Laos during America's Vietnam War -- and who was portrayed as "Kurtz" in the film "Apocalypse Now."

We also went to book stores and met their buyers, who immediately stocked us on their shelves. Beatnik-rooted City Lights Bookshop put us in their "Evidence" section. Some of the best news we discovered on our tour, however, was the popularity of Thailand among Americans. Men and women regaled us with their memories of holidays along Thailand's beaches, or their insatiable appetite for Thai food or their longing desire to travel to Thailand because they heard about its amazing delights. They wanted to come with their families. And yes, they all knew Thailand wasn't a place where you might get your throat slit while taking a photograph.



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Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based correspondent for international media who has reported from Asia since 1978.

His web page is located at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent

and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo *dot* com