Swimming to Cambodia Read Online Free

into the man.
    It was then that I realized it was getting out of hand. I thought, I’d better slow down with this stuff or I’ll get put away before I even get the role in the movie. I guess it was then that the “Little King” took over. The superego figure took charge and set up an alternative condition that was very new for me. I’d have to call it a Will. And the Little King superego figure proclaimed that if I willed my Will to stop this Magical Thinking then this act of will, willing Will, would have more power toward getting me the role in the film.
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    Around the time I was developing my Will I was invited out to Los Angeles to perform my monologues. I got good reviews so Warner Brothers Television called me up and said, “Could you come in and read? Anything, just come in and read.”
    â€œCome up and see my monologue, why don’t you? It’s just up the street.”
    â€œWell, we haven’t got time for that, we go to bed early out here. But could you come in?”
    And what they chose for me to read was a sitcom—a pilot that had been “axed” or “cut” or whatever the technical term is for a show that’s been put on the shelf because it’s no good. So that was the text.
    I was to be reading the role of Howard and my wife was Harriet. I started out, “But I don’t want to spend
my Sundays eating mixed nuts in the company of your sister and her jerky husband.”
    Harriet answered, “Oh come on. You know you really like Norman.”
    â€œHarriet, the idea of Norman doesn’t put a smile on any part of my body.”
    â€œGet ready. Put your shoes on.”
    â€œWhy? They know I have feet.”
    â€œCome on, you know it’s become a tradition to have them over on Sundays.”
    â€œTradition? Now listen Harriet. Decorating a Christmas tree is a tradition. Fireworks on the Fourth is a tradition. But having your sister and her jerky husband over here to park their carcasses on my couch, watch my TV and scarf down all the cashews from the mixed-nut bowl is not my idea of a tradition!”
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    I didn’t get the role. I think I read it with too much of an edge, actually. Too East Coast intellectual. So I was on my way out and—the Lord works in strange ways—lo and behold, I ran into Roland Joffe, who was there casting The Killing Fields. Warner Brothers was putting money into the film and they were going to distribute it, so they were letting him use an office. Roland said, “Let’s chat again.”
    I went home and put on my white shirt and my pink tie and my tweed jacket and went back to the studio. Once again Roland talked to me, this time for forty-five minutes. He did all the talking again, about what an incredible country Cambodia was before it was colonized, that it had a strain of Buddhism so permissive and so sensual that the Cambodians seemed to have
done away with unnecessary guilt. Compared to Cambodia, Thailand was a Nordic country—Thailand was like Sweden compared to Cambodia, which was more like Italy. Ninety percent of the Cambodians owned their land—it was dirty land, it was earth, but it was clean. Earth dirt. Clean dirt. And they were so happy.
    The Cambodians knew how to have fun. They knew how to have a good time being born; how to have a good time growing up; a good time going through puberty; a good time falling in love and staying in love; a good time getting married and having children; a good time raising children; and a good time growing old and dying. They even knew how to have a good time on New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t believe it.
    The only thing, according to Roland, was that they had lost touch with evil. Because it was such a beautiful, gentle land, they’d lost touch with evil. The situation was something like that of the Tantric colonies on the East Coast of India. They were so open down there that the Huns just came in and