Squalor and Splendor: Expat Tales of East and West

The author's description. Squalor and Splendor is a series of unusual travel stories that take place in Europe and Asia. Flesh deals with prostitution in the Philippines and the narrator's strange reaction to it. Revolution portrays a spoiled, bored member of the Marcos class that was to fall in the revolution of 86. Million Girls is the story of a typical Philippine prostitute. Boracay is the odd story of a man who mistakes a young Filipino transvestite for a girl. Green Man is a parable of reverse racism in Japan. Jean Shrimpton relates the oddly connected experiences of a man in London over a period of eighteen years. Wimbledon is the story of a student who has had a not so idyllic experience as a cook in a steak house. Bali deals with the negative effects of tourism on that no longer enchanted island. Morocco shows a young westerner encountering the drug and hippie culture, along with a persistent boy prostitute, in that atypical Muslim country. Hemingway is an ironic look at the Hemingway heroic myth in Spain. Siquijor is an account of faith healing and magic on that island in the Philippines. The subject is a well-known faith healer named Tibor. Paul Luchessa was born in Berkeley and educated at Harvard. He spent twenty years abroad, teaching English and traveling widely, mostly in Asia. He has published stories and articles in various publications, here and abroad. His story A Surfeit of Flesh, won first prize in the fiction competition of the Berkeley Poets' Cooperative.