“Asian Girls Go Horizontal,” Dad Said.

“What the heck does that mean, Dad?” I asked with dismay.

My father made this strange statement when I was 15 and in junior high school. At the time, I was seeing a beautiful Chinese girl. He met her and then turned to me to speak.

I was shocked because his words came out of the blue, and I wasn’t sure what they meant (although his grin said a lot). He didn’t respond. He just turned and walked away.

Dad was in the Navy. He’d travelled to Asia, including Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. He knew the Orient and its people well. He also had an uncanny knack for saying what we say today are inappropriate words. They usually came out of nowhere.

I’d grown up listening to his peculiar statements with hidden meanings. The horizontal thing certainly wasn’t about her eyes or clothes.

Before you jump to conclusions, I was very naive. Women’s studies was a new subject I hadn’t yet passed. I knew that sex was a mostly horizontal activity, so I expected my dad’s phrase to connect to what many call “The Horizontal Mamba”.

But that didn’t make sense. Isn’t that a basic standard? Why would Asians be any different or special for wanting horizontal sex?

It took me a few days to realise that the missionary position wasn’t the story’s destination. That location was, let’s say, something more feminine-specific.

Before writing this piece today, I researched to see if my father’s story was only his or if it had an origin where others knew or told it. My gut feeling was that it was a tall tale told by servicemen abroad to amuse themselves. They probably created many stories like that one for every new culture they encountered, for each port where the native girls left a unique mark on their memories.

I was correct.

Some stories were fact-based, but plenty were just nonsense. They were shared for titillation and entertainment, especially when new recruits arrived and hadn’t yet sampled the local ladies. Laughter signified a shared yet hidden detail between the experienced men.

Only when the newbies connected with them would they come to know the absolute truth – a truth I don’t need to explain.

-Michael

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