Continued from Pg. 6. are so terrified of these people they immediately run away. Of course, that attracts me. And they were looking so wild and beautiful Father Trenkenschuh said, “Here are these people you wanted to go see, so go with them.” They agreed to take me and came for me the next morning. We started out. There were four canoes, each one with about ten men. Then we hit this terrible storm; it really was dreadful; it was so bad that men in our canoe were thrown right out because the waves were so high. I thought, my god, this is going to be another Michael Rockefeller incident. Nobody would ever suspect that these people, with whom I was travelling, who were the ones presumed to have killed Michael, would have drowned. That would be impossible; everyone would think they had killed me and then run off to hide. There was no way to see the shore but I knew we had to be at least two miles away. I turned around and saw the two men who had been thrown out and there they were standing in the mud. It’s so shallow at that point on the south coast of New Guinea that a motor boat has to go six or seven miles from shore before it can use the motor. Anyway, it was a dreadful night — nobody had any sleep. In the morning the tide went out and finally the sun came out and we started and then we got so hot we got dehydrated — or I got dehydrated. They didn’t but you could see by the way they were paddling so languidly that it was getting warm even for them. And the chief pointed to a great mound of mud that was ahead of us. Then all the men from all the canoes, who were naked at that point, including me, dove headlong into the mud and began rolling around. It was an oozy slime that was fabulous. I understood then about women who take mudpacks. I don’t know how sensual that experience is for them but this rolling around in the mud was absolutely fantastic. It is difficult for anyone who has never done that kind of thing to imagine how sensual and exciting it can be. Everyone rolled around and when the time came to leave we left. Everyone got up and washed. They were not having sex with one another. The experience was rolling around in the mud. To me it was a sexual experience. Do they ever have orgies? I don’t think they do. The first time I went to my own village, where I have my particular friend, I was staying in the teacher’s house, the catechist. It was still a very primitive village. All the men were still naked; none of the women had any type of western garment; there were no western garments in the village except on the teacher. And I went into the men’s house at night and they did not expect me. By the light of the embers I could All the men from oil the canoes, who were naked at that point, including me, dove headlong into the mud and began rolling around. It was on oozy slime that was fabulous. see that there were pairs of men masturbating one another, which they stopped instantly when they saw this outsider. Of course, I couldn’t help but get an erection, with all those men looking at me and me looking at them, even though it was dark. That’s how I first became involved with this particular group. And over the years I would say I have had some kind of sexual contact with 90% of the men over fifteen in that village. Of course; the population is not very high, about two hundred, the entire population, babies included. Do all the men in your district have mbai friends? One hundred percent, except those whose friends have died and they have not yet taken another mbai. Although I did hear of one older man whose friend had died or had been killed and he was more or less “playing the field” with the younger men. It’s also interesting that they are of the same age group, these mbai. In other groups of people where there is homosexual contact, to a great extent it's always an older man and a younger man. Therefore, it’s so peculiar that among the Asmat it’s the same age. Of course, they do have relationships with older men and younger men but not through fellatio or sodomy. You must do that with your mbai only, they told me. How true this is I cannot say, they insisted that you might be able to have sex with another man but you cannot swallow his semen. Do they seem to prefer sex with either men or women or are they very egalitarian about that? That’s an impossible question. I don’t know the answer to that. In the south I would say they prefer to have sex with men. So they do it with their wives kind of infrequently? Well, I don’t really know. They are not really aware of how often they have sex. No matter how many men I have asked, how often do you have sex with your wife and how often dd you have sex with your male friend, they are confused. In the first place, they can’t count. They can count to three or four but that’s about it. Doniphan Blair: Would you say they are sexually satisfied as a rule? Tobias Schneebaum: Yes . . . that is, they have sex with their wives, their mbai, and sometimes with other women and perhaps even with other men. That should satisfy anyone. There are always problems though, when someone is particularly taken with a man or a woman. And where on earth is anyone really satisfied with what he has? In some groups, not Asmat, they have the younger boys as well. At what age does that start? That can start at age six or seven or eight, anything like that. They are completely open about that. Is that done with love? I think it’s done with affection if not love. They get along very well. So that is a big difference with homosexuals here, in cosmic comparison with homosexuality as it ’s practiced amongst the primitive people. It seems to come from a different source. Well, we are trained to believe it’s wrong. It seems to them normal, it’s part of their normal lives for men to have sex with one another, in certain groups. It’s not true all over New Guinea. They also find it necessary to be heterosexual. They must have children; otherwise the group can’t go on, so therefore they have their pleasures there too. It isn’t a purely biological thing, you aren’t always born with the traits. Well, there we are, we are getting into determinism as opposed to environmentalism. There have been so many anthropological fights on that very question . . . I don’t.know the answer. But I do think it’s interesting that their society can accept all these things. Their society can develop this theory whereby men, in order to grow and become men, must absorb semen, one way or the other. And also! if I recall what you said correctly, as soon as they become men through this process of absorbing semen then they get married and all of a sudden have to deal with . . . Women. According to Gerald Herdt, in his group, it’s a traumatic experience to have sex with women because they have been taught all the time while growing up that the vagina is a horrible thing. That menstral blood is something to be absolutely terrified of, and they are, and they always continue to be terrified of that. So how do they reconcile that? It takes them a while. Their adjustment takes some time before they become “heterosexual.” Because in the meantime they have already grown old enough to be what we call the active partner in the male-to-male relationship. From what you said, they don’t have really great relations with their wives? They are separated most of the time from their wives. When you watch someone that you know well, will you see him have as good a time sitting and laughing with his wife as with his mbai friend? NEW MUSIC — IMPORTS PiEnEUJflL Buy Sell Trade rEcnrds 4 5 4 8 Universit 6 y 3 W 4 a -1 y 7 N 7 .E 5 . 110 So. Washington Street Seattle 98104 (206) 623-3173 ’ I 6 pp, 6 X S'/4. perfectbound, $-.oo ISBN 0-939306-06-9 L E F T City People’s Mercantile B A N K 1463 E. Republican 324-9510 THE REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE by Raoul Vaneigem • translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith E DON’T WANT a world where the guarantee of not dying of hunger is paid for by the risk of dying of boredom” was the slogan of the 1980 Swiss rioters. Its source: Raoul Vaneigem’s situationist book The Revolution o f Everyday Life. Many shorter pieces by Vaneigem have already appeared in the Situationist International Anthology. Now his incendiary book is finally available in English. “Eluding academic pigeonholes and bypassing the dazed incomprehension of the authorities, only to find its formulations inscribed in graffiti from Berlin to Berkeley, this book has managed to help ignite actions and debates before, during and after May ’68. . .Almost as if the molten lava of Breton’s Surrealist Manifestos were poured over the substructure of some Thomistic summa. . .Vaneigem’s achievement will stand as one of the seminal works of this century.” — Village Voice, 31 May 1983 B O O K S 92 Pike St. Seattle 98101 32 Clinton St. Quarterly
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