The new Orientalist finds adventure in the "wicked sorcery in Asia," discovers "sexual magic in the fleshpots where girls and boys stand behind glass partitions with numbers pinned to their G-strings," finds a place where he can feel "confident, trendy, good-looking." Off to Asia, writes the writer, "I tried to become that person I always wanted to be: extemporaneous, dangerously free, perpetually living in the perpetual now."
Along the way he makes a lot of discoveries. "There are between 2,000-3,000 hired killers in Bangkok." In Tokyo "corruption is so institutionalized that it doesn't even seem corrupt." And he meets other Orientalists.
One of them is Dina, who "hops from destination to destination like some wayward location scout for the feature film that is her life, and she never seems to lose patience with those around her, to let down for a second her facade of tranquillity and peace. I envy her. I want to be just like her." Indeed, the teller of this tale is a true wannabe -- many are those with whom he would willingly trade places in his search for an Asian ultimate. And eventually he learns the lesson that travel teaches. "The essence of the circuit is movement, the traveling is an end in itself. There is in this relentless swirl of cool places, great-looking boys and girls and toxic substances, somehow the idea that if you just keep swirling, don't stop the dance, then you will be young and pretty and clever forever."