The Sex Lives of Cannibals

better”) and eighteen hours on hold (“your call is important to us”) only to finally be connected with the rude, abrasive morons that the American corporate world feels inclined to use as their link to their customers. And the experience of calling a U.S. government agency, of course, is what leads people to join the Montana militia. On Tarawa, however, a simple call to the power station to determine whether there might be any electricity forthcoming was directed straight to the man who knew all, Buebue, even on his days off, when I would be told to call him at home. He was like an oracle. If Buebue said there was to be light, then there was light. If Buebue said that all would be dark, darkness prevailed. And he didn’t spin the situation either. He just told it like it was, which left me bewildered at first, when he explained that there would be no electricity this evening because they forgot to bring the diesel, or because the technicians were too drunk to be trusted around a generator, or because he had absolutely no clue why the generator wasn’t working but that he was pretty confident it wasn’t going to work for a while yet, or—and this really hurt—the power station in Betio caught fire, reducing Tarawa’s power generation capabilities by half and spare parts weren’t expected until 2012, but I soon found this brutal candor refreshing.

He was such a nice guy too, always inquiring about Sylvia’s welfare and thanking me kindly for wondering about his kids, that I felt guilty as Judas the one night that I took advantage of his obliging nature. We were experiencing rolling blackouts at the time, with each corner of the island taking its turn in darkness, when we heard the exciting news that Australian friends of ours, volunteers, had received in the mail a package containing a videotape of the funeral of Princess Diana, whose death had greatly saddened Tarawa. I cannot quite overstate the importance of this vestige of our own world—what with Elton John and all that—particularly as we were then feeling acutely isolated from happenings of global import, and we immediately set upon procuring a television and VCR and organizing a gathering, complete with scones and jam and a highly prized bottle of sherry, which may strike some as morbid, but for us the videotape was like a revered talisman connecting us to our people and was cause for celebration. Of course, the power went out just as I was about to press the play button, which was highly disappointing and led me to call Buebue. I explained that the I-Matang community was present in our house and that they had clustered here to mourn Princess Diana, and could we please, please have some electricity, particularly since we were expecting the Australian high commissioner, which wasn’t true at all, since the Australian high commissioner was an uptight nitwit who carried on as if he were assigned to London, not Tarawa, which for diplomats is, frankly, an assignment portending the end of one’s career. However, I dropped his name because Australian foreign aid pretty much comprises the entirety of the government budget of Kiribati and, therefore, I thought it likely that the Public Utility Board could be browbeaten by mentioning the Australian high commissioner and his need for electricity-driven entertainment. This turned out to be true and we watched and mourned and speculated about Dodi while the rest of Tarawa remained dark. I have felt guilty ever since.

CHAPTER 9

In which the Author seeks wisdom on the ways of Tarawa from Tiabo.

When I was a youngster, I often found myself in conversations that began with, If you were stuck on a deserted island, what ten… And then we would spend hours listing the absolutely essential can’t-live-without-them top ten records, or books, or, as we discovered the delusions of adolescence, girls we needed to make our stay on a deserted island an enjoyable one. As the years went by, the lists changed. Iron Maiden was no longer essential listening, but The Smiths were, until they too were tossed off in favor of Fugazi, which was soon discarded to make room for Massive Attack. After crossing off Elizabeth and Carla and Becky, I settled on the woman I wanted to live with on a deserted island, and so this just left books and CDs. As I packed, I was acutely aware of the importance of bringing just the right combination to ensure that no matter what my musical or literary desire, I would have just what I needed, right here on my deserted island. True, Tarawa wasn’t actually deserted. In fact, it was overpopulated. But there were no bookstores or record stores, and so I packed as if I were departing for Pluto. For books, it was a mixture of authors we were both likely to enjoy (Philip Roth), combined with a few books we were unlikely to ever read unless stuck on a deserted island (Ulysses), as well as a couple of compromise authors (the novelist Anne Tyler for her, the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapu?sci?nski for me). As CDs are lighter, I packed thirty-odd discs that I felt could comprehensively meet any likely musical desire. Did I feel funky? Well, we could go to Sly Stone or the Beastie Boys. Did I want to kick back and chill? Mazzy Star was there to help me. Did I wish I was in Paris, walking on a rain-slicked cobblestone alley on a drizzling October evening? Miles Davis would take me there. Was I up for a bout of brooding? Hello Chopin’s Nocturnes. Was I feeling a little romantic, a little melancholic? Cesaria Evora would tell me to pull up a chair and have a cigarette.

I was thinking about these CDs a few months later, when once again I was being driven to the brink of insanity by an ear-shattering, 120-beat-a-minute rendition of “La Macarena,” the only song ever played on Tarawa. It was everywhere. If I was in a minibus, overburdened as always with twentysome people and a dozen fish, hurtling down the road at a heart-stopping speed, the driver was inevitably blasting a beat-enhanced version of “La Macarena” that looped over and over again. If I was drinking with a few of the soccer players who kindly let me demonstrate my mediocrity on the soccer field with them, our piss-up in one of the seedy dives in Betio would occur to the skull-racking jangle of “La Macarena.” If I happened across some teenage boys who had gotten their hands on an old Japanese boom box, they were undoubtedly loitering to a faint and tinny “La Macarena.”

What finally brought me to the brink was the recent acquisition of a boom box by the family that lived across the road. One of their members, a seaman, had just returned from two years at sea and, as is the custom, every penny he earned that was not spent on debauchery in a distant port of call was used for expensive gifts for his family. Typically this took the form of televisions, VCRs, and stereos, all unavailable in Kiribati. A few shops had begun renting pirated movies sent up from Fiji. These movies were typically recorded by a video camera in a movie theater, with the result that the actors’ faces appeared strangely dull and elongated, as if the movie was filmed by El Greco. Audience members could be seen stretching and heard coughing. If renting a movie, one made sure to avoid comedies since you could hardly hear a word over the laughter and chatter of those fortunate enough to see the movie in a theater. “Could you keep it down,” you find yourself telling the screen. But while you could locate copies of Titanic and Forrest Gump on Tarawa, there was little music available beyond “La Macarena.” I know because I looked. I looked everywhere. I looked everywhere because I forgot our CDs in my mother’s garage in Washington, thousands and thousands of miles away.

It is difficult to convey the magnitude of this catastrophe. I would have been very pleased if I had forgotten my sweaters, which were already rotting in a closet, or my shoes, which within a month had turned green with mold. Each day I stared forlornly at our stereo, which we had purchased for an outrageous sum of money from Kate, who had bought it from her predecessor. “If you don’t want it,” Kate said, “there are plenty of others here who do.” No doubt this was true, and we forked over a large amount of bills. Every day at noon, I turned the stereo on to listen to the broadcast from Radio Australia, which Radio Kiribati carried for ten minutes, while they searched for yet another version of “La Macarena” to play for the remainder of the day. Radio Australia claimed to deliver the international news, but you wouldn’t know it from listening. Presumably, the world was as tumultuous as ever, but inevitably the lead story on Radio Australia would involve a kangaroo and a dingo in Wagga Wagga, followed by a nine-minute play-by-play summary of the Australian cricket team’s triumph over England. And then it was back to “La Macarena.”

I had sent a fax to my mother, asking her to mail the box of CDs. They’re right beside the ski boots, I wrote. A few days later, we received a fax from her. The CDs were in the mail, she assured us. They were sent by super-duper express mail and would arrive any day. The months ticked by.

In a fit of despair, I went to the Angirota Store and bought Wayne Newton’s Greatest Hits and Melanesian Love Songs. When I put in the Wayne Newton tape, the stereo emitted a primal groan and ate the tape. It was trying to tell me something, I felt. The stereo was more amenable to Melanesian Love Songs. With the moon shimmering over the ocean, Sylvia and I listened to Melanesian love ballads—You cost me two pigs, woman/ I expect you to work/ While I spend my days/ drinking kava under the banyan tree.

With musical selections reduced to Melanesian Love Songs and “La Macarena,” I began to yearn for power failures. When these occurred the techno thump of “La Macarena” would cease, and soon