I have a friend, Chinese from Hong Kong and no longer in the prime of life, who has been crazy about Arab men for a couple of decades. He is always flying to Egypt (or occasionally Turkey) where he says he has the time of his life.Oliver wrote:The most handsome guys I've ever seen were the Egyptians of Luxor and Aswan.
In the mid-1970s I spent two weeks in Morocco trying to find what Orton, Genet and the other literary giants and others had found - without success! I went to Marrakech and Agadir, the latter with a glorious beach but still recovering for an earthquake some years earlier. Perhaps I should have tried Tangier and Casablanca. But from everything I hear, the scene had definitely changed by then.
I love this comment from Joe Orton's Diaries about having coffee at Tangier's Cafe de Paris.
I had never met an Asian - even those who worked in Chinese restaurants held no interest for me - until I moved to Asia. After a few months I met my first Chinese friend. Since then I have never changed. I'm only interested in certain Asians and in all those years I can count the liaisons with nationals of other countries on one hand.Orton was sitting at a table with friends beside a "rather stuffy American tourist and his disapproving wife." To further stoke their disapproval, the playwright began to talk about a sexual encounter. When one of those at the table reminded Orton that the tourists could hear every word, he replied, "they have no right to be occupying chairs reserved for decent sex perverts."