Page 82 - Cultural Studies Volume 11

76 CULTURAL STUDIES

behaviour. He mentions, for instance, the case of a male AIDS patient who had
sex with his male foreign employer with the consent of his wife (ibid.). As
reported at the International AIDS Conference in Berlin, any attempt in the Thai
situation to isolate specific risk groups is rapidly becoming obsolete. The
obsession to focus only on female prostitutes and single males has occluded the
steady rise of incidence among married men and their wives.
The Thai profile is also complicated by the internal mobility of its people,
largely migrants from the rural North to the urban centres in the South and
Southeast. The concentration of HIV infection in the Northern region of Thailand
—nearly 50 per cent of all AIDS/ARC cases reported in 1993 are from five
provinces in the upper North with only 4.7 per cent of the Thai population
(Brummelhuis, 1993:4)—may be changing due to the internal migration patterns.

A poster in a bar in the Philippines near a United States military base greets
its customers with this poem:

A tiny little shade of light
A little bed with sheets so white
A little loving in the gloom
A little pair of lips, so warm and wet
A little whisper, ‘Please not yet’
A little pillow from the head
Slipped beneath the hips instead
A little effort to begin
A little help to get it in
A little arm that grips me tight
Then I ask, ‘Does it feel all right?’
She smiles and says ‘It feels so good’
And I reply ‘I knew it would’
Two little legs around me wind
Two slanted eyes look into mine
A little movement to and fro
A little whisper ‘give me more’
Two little hearts beat as one
Two little lovers having fun
A little hunch, a little sigh
A little phrase, ‘You come, GI?’
A little effort to repeat
A little spot upon the sheets
A little bath when you are through
A little drink or two
A little sleep and finally then
A little breakfast at half past ten