It’s a 90-degree morning on our last day in Vietnam, and I’m melting on a streetcorner in Ho Chi Minh’s tourist section. Desperate for shade, I duck into a lacquer shop and pretend to examine buffalo-horn hair clips and cobalt bowls while secretly watching the action outside. Next door is a cafe with a single man sitting at a sidewalk table. His clothes mark him as a Westerner - baggy shorts, a t-shirt that clings to broad shoulders and muscular arms, a baseball cap jutting over a wide forehead, a few tufts of short, dirty blond hair peeking out underneath. But it’s his expression and posture that are distinctly American. Imperious blue eyes, chin jutting forward, head cocked to one side, one arm slung casually over the back of his chair, legs splayed along the pavement, his entire being emanating superiority as he takes in the loose electrical wires dangling overhead, barefoot children running by, rickshaw drivers napping in cab seats and street hawkers selling live crabs and bags of rice.
A woman wanders up to him, her arms sagging under a three-foot stack of pirated Lonely Planet guides. “Meestah, meestah, you want buy?”
He smirks at her fractured English and eager gestures, then flicks his gaze to the left, motioning her away without a word. Another woman approaches, this one much younger and blessed with the glossy hair, streamlined figure and porcelain skin of half the girls in this city. She carries a wooden tray packed with brightly-colored knicknacks, affixed to her shoulders with leather straps.
Eyes locked on her body, he reaches out and lifts a toy. “How much?”
“That one two dollah,” she replies.
He scoffs and holds the plastic aloft, then tosses it back on the tray. “For this? Give me a fucking break. Get out of here.” There’s no need to muffle the scorn; his American dollars make him a king in this place where $4 buys a lavish meal and $50 a three-star hotel room. Since stepping off the plane he’s been catapaulted into the role of Rich Man, at last allowed to sneer at the perceived servility that inevitably follows affluence. The disproportionate value of his two dollars to this woman, who will spend the next ten hours roaming a four-block radius with her loaded tray, never seems to cross his mind. Wealth is the direct artery to power; he has it, she doesn’t. As such, he’s entitled to say or do whatever the hell he wants. Such is the way of Western society.
The blue eyes rise and catch my disgusted expression. He scowls at me and turns away, not even bothering to look ashamed. But then, why should he? As a superior being, he’s above it all, beholden to none, including some irate brunette glaring at him from the shop next door.