Bruno Catalano and the Art of Displacement

Next month I will have been in the United States for 10 years. It's an anniversary that chills me when I think about it because I didn't plan to be here very long. Some of the pain of displacement has gone but it can be hard on family occasions and birthdays to be separated by an ocean.

In the United States I have met two types of Brit - those who say they would never go back even if you paid them a lot of money and gave them a lifetime's supply of jammy dodgers and those who would readily go back but are trapped due to kids or other commitments. I suppose I fall into the latter category, although I am not naive enough to think if I returned I would not miss certain aspects of the US. When I first came here I was horrified by the vast emptiness of strip malls, the ugliness of convenience and the lack of quaintness. Today I have come to embrace the convenience of convenience and the fact I can drive out of my apartment and get anything I want within 10 minutes. In London I would have had to battle traffic or walked through downtrodden streets to a half boarded up store that have stocked a few out of date biscuits.

I don't miss the buses and train so much either - the smell of other people packed against me early in the morning, the chewing gum on seats, the stampede of feet. American embraces your individuality but it also may make you less tolerant. Because America prides itself on speed we don't expect to have to wait and we get more angry when we do.

Although I would miss things, I often feel the deprivation keenly, particularly in the fall. When you grow up in and around the English countryside, you don't always appreciate its beauty. When you grow up in England, you can resent the days your parents forced you to visit a Medieval church hidden down a country lane where rooks have cawed from the tower for centuries. Only later when you look back does the wonder dawn on you.

When you drove across the moors you could curse the bleakness and the winding nature of the road. Only in retrospect do you see how the journey was as precious as getting there.

The French sculptor Bruno Catalano evokes the feeling of displacement in his new work in Marseilles in which his figures miss vital parts. When we go away, inevitably we leave parts of us behind, in some cases our whole being. The dashing poet Rupert Brooke who wrote of "some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England" was buried in an olive grove in Skyros during World War
One.

Yet this displacement can be more subtle; a displaced memory here and there - a yearning for the smell of wood smoke on a fall evening in the Peak District. There's a fear too that if we ever go back we will no longer be able to reconcile our memories with the present. And being a stranger in our home land might be far more frightening than being a stranger in a strange land.

A Languid Afternoon in Key West

The most palpable feeling at Hemingway's house in Key West is the drowsiness of the late afternoon caused by the thickness of the air and the tropical heat that can turn your clothes as wet as the late and great author's pool in the luscious grounds.

Everywhere around the great house bright and heavy flowers bend their dripping petals over the sunlit paths and the six toed cats that are descendants of his felines flick their tails contemptuously at visitors. Hemingway wrote some of his most vibrant works here - For Whom the Bell Tolls and a Farewell to Arms. The house was inhabited by a youthful Hemingway who drank hard and fished hard - but never at the same time. The  "Pop" figure, avuncular with a white beard was a later incarnation, although it's this figure that inspires the lookalike competition downtown.

After barely surviving the humidity of the house we crashed on a bench and watched the preparations for a wedding unfold under a great verdant tree. We were entirely inconspicuous and the world went by without us. A wedding planner was scuttling around, a vibrant ball of spiky energy so at odds with the languid afternoon. We watched the old people in their starched shirts looking anxiously at their watches as if marking out their limited time left on earth and the kids bounding across the grass. Even from a distance we could figure out the family dynamics - the black sheep brother who showed up in a dirty T-shirt and handed a surprised guest his cigarette, the bustling business woman making bitchy asides at the appearance of the bride. Still we were transfixed by this odd and antique ordeal, so much ado and energy about two people seeking to get a fix on each other, when we knew the transient and shifting reality.

Although we knew there haphazard and transient nature of life and love, modeled on the great man himself who went through wives like his novels, we felt curiously tranquil in the garden and supremely at ease with each other.

It took some effort to pull ourselves from the garden and hit the hot dusty road by the lighthouse. It took some effort to eventually go our separate ways and not to miss the soft and languid warmth of that afternoon in the garden and the touch of the hot wind.

You could have taken someone else

You should have taken someone else

But you should never go on trips with someone you do not love.

Meandering Through the Forgotten Heart of West Virginia

West Virginia is a good place to lose yourself and I wanted to lose myself as much as possible. There's a vastness to this unmanicured wilderness and an uncompromising frontier feel. As we headed south I had no map and Siri failed to cooperate. I stopped at a gas station and and asked about the unfamiliar concept of buying a map. I felt sublimely antique. The woman reached under a shelf, giving me the sort of look reserved for men who ask for porno videos involving turtles. She pulled out 10 maps of Pennsylvania and shook her head slowly.

Elkins, WV

So we drove south with little general idea of where we were going. It was suddenly good to feel the control slip away, to round one of the numerous curves to find a small battered town in the folds of the hills, clinging to the side of the mill or factory that provided its life blood. Everywhere in West Virginia there are ghosts of a past that once throbbed to a stronger industrial beat. West Virginia was once a place where men were men and women - well cooked and hid a few pennies away in the hope they would not be spent on moonshine. There are still parts of West Virginia that are like this as fracking booms. But much of the state seems happy to slide away into its past.

We were hopelessly lost and stopped for a while to wander around Elkins, a not unpleasantly run down kind of place in the heart of the state with some imposing main streets. The people in the hardware store had a problem with the map concept but directed us to a visitor center in the station. The lady behind the counter looked like she hadn't seen a visitor for a couple of weeks but could not have been more helpful. She pulled out a map of the state and offered to highlight the route to Sumersville. I told her I'd be fine without the highlighter. Still she seemed a bit concerned about the likely fate of a British guy and two kids in the heart of West Virginia without even the help of a highlighter. "Be safe," she said as I departed. By this time I was starting to wonder where Deliverance was set.

Summersville Lake

Half an hour later we were back on the road. Zara was navigating and I was beginning to wish I had taken up the highlighter offer. We arrived in Summersville just over an hour later and found a strip of chain restaurants. At Shoney's I was able to observe another curious West Virginia phenomenon. While the young waitresses were always chatty and went above and beyond to help with directions, the older staff seemed to be involved in a perpetual struggle to keep their bitterness in check. Maybe it's something about living in West Virginia for a long time, although it's hard to imagine when you have a pretty stretch of water like Summersville Lake in your back yard.

We camped at a site on the lake with a pool, mini golf and a large bouncy structure that facilitated much bouncing, although not by me. Camping can be like this with kids. You have to counterbalance a night with spindly spiders with some of the luxuries of glamping.

Hawks Nest State Park

West Virginia may lack spectacular tourist attractions but the New River Gorge Bridge is one of them. Opened in 1977, the New River Gorge Bridge is the third highest bridge in the United States and one of the most famous landmarks of Appalacia where deep wooded gorges and valleys have presented obstacles to the population for centuries. The kids were transfixed momentarily before asking if there was anywhere to play laser tag nearby. In the event I disappointed them, taking them on a drive down the gorge to a remote place called Thurmond where an iron bridge and a station house shimmered in the afternoon heat. We walked past a row of buildings that used to be the main street and the kids suddenly became engaged. After the railroad arrive here in 1892 Thurmond became an unlikely boom town. There was a passenger depot here, a freight station and an engine house. The population of the town swelled to thousands and there were hotels, stores and meat packing facilities.

New River Gorge Bridge

In the first two decades of the 20th centuries Thurmond handled more freight than Richmond in Virginia and Cincinnati in Ohio combined. The Dun Glen Hotel hosted the world's longest poker game - lasting a mere 14 years.

Thurmond, VA

Fire, prohibition and ultimately the demise of steam did for Thurmond. Today it's just a row of empty store fronts, preserved with a museum feel for the few visitors who make it here. It's a ghost town but maybe the ghosts have departed. As we walked among the crunching fragments of the town beside the railroad line with the remnants of my nuclear family I got to thinking of demise and disintegration. There are the grand plans and the industry and the bustle, followed by the slow release, the breaking apart, the bitterness and insanity and ultimately the beauty of nature that descends again from the hills and carpets all around it in its embrace. Then one day when we return and walk back along those railroad lines that were once hard and uncompromising and find beauty once again in the ruins.

West Virginia - the Half Promised Land

I had a lot of exotic ideas about where I would take the kids on vacation this year but they never really panned out. The holiday funds were eaten up by lawyers and acrimony and suddenly the summer that began with high hopes of freedom was almost over.

That idea of a villa fringed by palm trees had been receding over the last two months until it was reduced to a tiny tent amid the dust of an obscure lake in West Virginia. I didn't let the downsizing of my dreams depress me unduly. I had never been to West Virginia so it remained a mysterious and uncharted place. And from a British mindset West Virginia seems like a fascinating and insulated place beloved of hillbillies, people who handle snakes in churches and twangy mountain singers.

The trip out did not exactly go according to plan. In hindsight it was probably not a great idea to move my furniture to my new apartment in the morning and embark on a five hour drive in the afternoon to a campsite.

We didn't hit the road until 2 pm and the specter of putting up a tent in the pitch dark aided only by a cheap Wal Mart flashlight was unappealing. Worse still my eyelids were drooping on the road after just an hour before we even reached Petersburg. It was clearly a time for desperate measures - otherwise known as gas station coffee. This stuff can strip paint off walls and it did the job of giving me a massive jolt and keeping me awake, although it failed to save me from a Siri malfunction a few miles north of Richmond. My Siri is actually a man with a British accent but he's still amazingly stupid and once tried to send me to a location in Australia when I was seeking directions for five miles in Virginia Beach.

The Siri malfunction and the inevitably static traffic on I-95 meant that three hours into the drive, West Virginia remained a far off dream. Admitting defeat I pulled over into a Super 8, thus putting off the prospect of arriving at a camp site at 10 p.m. and falling into a half deflated air mattress. I once read in a Rough Guide that Super 8 is the best budget motel and I had few complaints once I had called for instructions on how to turn on the light. I'm not sure if $80 a night counts as budget but it's always a bonus to wake up without roaches in one's mouth I find.

The only downside of the hotel was it was close to the retail park from hell. When you are with kids hell equates to the number of stores and the presence of Five Below.

The next day it took another two hours to reach West Virginia but I am happy to say we made it. We pulled over at a viewing area and took pictures of mountains that looked rather similar to those in Virginia. Then we headed over empty roads and past high hills studded with somber wind farms to reach Blackwater Falls State Park.

If there is one constant about West Virginia it's the fact it seems more empty than anywhere else I have been to. Even Blackwater Falls - a popular state park emptied after hours and there were just a handful of tents and campers in the camp ground.

Blackwater Falls State Park is breathtakingly beautiful. Of course by the time I reached the viewing platform, the five-year-old had seen it and done it and wanted to head back up the path. We also tried some trails - a concept that always leaves the kids whining and groaning. Amid the demands for candy from non existent candy machines, ice cream and crazy bear hats it can be hard to appreciate beauty. But looking back this place was beautiful with the added advantages of not having a Five Below for hundreds of miles.

The Meaning of Scot-Free

When I was recently editing some copy with the phrase "Scot-free" in it, I immediately started to wonder about the meaning of the term. My first reaction was here we go again - this is clearly a reference to Scottish people being cheap.

Just yesterday I drove past a rather basic looking hotel in Virginia Beach called the Mac Thrift Inn . Its sign featured a skinny boned Scotsman who was clearly too cheap to afford underpants under his kilt. These old stereotypes endure but is there anything to them?

Interestingly enough, the phrase "Scot-free" has nothing to do with Scotsmen. There's a perception in America that this phrase is linked to the famous case of Dredd Scott.

Scott was a black slave who was born in Virginia in 1799. In a number of high profile court cases he sought to win his freedom before he was made a free man by his owners the Blow family. In fact, the phrase has nothing to do with Dredd Scott or Scotsmen.

In reality the phrase is derived from the Scandinavian word "skat" which is a phrase for tax or payment that migrated to Britain and turned into scot. It was levied as early as the 10th Century as a form of municipal poor relief. It was later used to describe a variety of taxes. In fact, the term scot-free means getting away without paying your taxes.

It's interesting how misinformation gathers pace, though. Like the stereotypes of Scottish people being mean. Although Scotland gave us a number of sayings about saving pennies, Scotland apparently now gives more money to charity than the rest of the United Kingdom.

History can commonly distort facts and these distortions are then taken for granted. Take, for example, the claim that the disturbed painter Van Gogh cut off his ear. Recently, a new book claimed he may have made up the story to protect his friend the painter Paul Gauguin, a keen fencer, who loped of Van Gogh's ear during a heated argument.

This is not so say Van Gogh was a more stable bunny than history has hitheto given him credit. Nobody is disputing the fact he then presented his severed ear to a prostitute who then fainted. What a charmer.

How Graphic Should Sex Scenes be In Literature?

In my previous novel Red Savanna there were sex scenes but they were somewhat tame, hinting at carnal goings-on but not being overly graphic. This may be just as well because my characters were trapped in a rapidly deteriorating African civil war - a situation that does not make for intimacy or good personal hygiene.

In my second novel Reportage, I decided to ramp up the sex a bit but run up against the dilemma about how graphic the sex should be. In Reportage two young reporters get it on - the staid and slightly pompous Charles and the vampish Penny, Anyone who has worked in newspapers will know they are hotbeds of sexual dysfunction, although my experience tends to suggest British newspapers are more salacious than those in the United States, perhaps due to the vast amount of alcohol we drank to dull the pain of long hours, low pay and constant deadline pressure.

On one newspaper, we expected editors to have affairs with secretaries but it was still a bit shocking to hear one of the admin girls boast about buying a butt plug for the managing director.

One editor even succeeded in getting himself fired by getting into a fight with a pimp over payment of a prostitute. Needless to say all of the players in these various tawdry scenes were married but I assume the recipient of the butt plug was the man  who made the firing decision.

This brings me back to the issue that is occupying my mind about how graphic sex scenes should be before they become the equivalent of the narratives of the soft core porn magazines that were so in demand when I was a teenager. Let's just say we didn't pay much attention to the words.

Still some novelists have gone for the graphic. When I think visceral, I think JG Ballard. Personally I find the sort of terms a gynecologist might use to be a turn off in literature. Who wants to read about vulvas and scrotum?

On the other end of the spectrum there were those trashy bodice rippers with their flowery language that one's grandmother read back in the day. "He caressed her womanly curves" etc.

I turned to help to a website on 10 Amazingly Written Sex Scenes for some help. Some of these are rather raunchy and not appropriate for a blog without the adult filter on it. I was interested to see On Chesil Beach by the incomparable Ian McEwan on this list, not least because this novel is on my bed side table but I haven't got far into it. It's actually about a newly married couple who have sexual issues.

The novel builds up to a crescendo. Yes I deliberately avoided the word 'climax.'

"Had she pulled on the wrong thing? Had she gripped too tight? He gave out a wail, a complicated series of agonised, rising vowels, the sort of sound she had heard once in a comedy film when a waiter, weaving this way and that, appeared to be about to drop a pile of towering soup plates."

Clearly it doesn't get hotter than a pile of towering soup plates. And then there's DH Lawrence - the author who shocked polite society and whose novel Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the early 20th Century, but doesn't seem so risque now.

"With a queer obedience, she lay down on the blanket. Then she felt the soft, groping, helplessly desirous hand touching her body, feeling for her face. The hand stroked her face softly, softly, with infinite soothing and assurance, and at last there was the soft touch of a kiss on her cheek."

In the end I decided to just write it and go with the flow. Here's the prelude to naughtiness.

The conversation took an unexpected turn when she started stroking his hand. “Let’s not have our first matrimonial before we’ve even got to know each other. You do want to know me better, don’t you?”

Matthews decided against reminding her it was not their first matrimonial even though he had a reporter’s instinct to correct. “Yes Penny,” he said hesitantly.

“God Charles. I really have pissed you off haven’t I? I need to make it up to you. Let’s get out of this dive and go for a ride.”

“It’s getting late.”

“Oh go to bed at 9 do you?”

Soon they were back in the BMW, Matthews feeling a soft fuzziness from the wine he had drank to soak out Penny’s performance. The high towers of the docklands, the gas holders and gaunt cylinders flitted by. Finally Penny pulled hard right and they went through a hole in the fence and into a rubble strewn yard behind a ghastly concrete warehouse that was rotting away.

“God Penny. Where are you taking me? This looks like a perfect place for a murder.”

“I know. Grim isn’t it?” she said, barely concealing her elation. “Dad owned this place 20 years ago. It was a slaughter house but he got out of the killing business. You were right.”

Matthews made out some crumbling metal cattle pens and a vague sad image of the lumbering beasts going to their deaths  appeared in his mind. Matthews had toyed with vegetarianism. Places like this were the reason why. He looked into Penny’s eyes, wide, possum-like and comprehending in the dark.

“I don’t like meat either. I urged Daddy to drop that side of his business and he did. I wouldn’t mind yours, though.”

He turned to her and she had collapsed her seat. Her skirt had been pulled half way up her pale backside and she was tugging on her panties.

“Come on Charles. When did you last get some action with that zipper?”

“I do OK,” he said, realizing to his chagrin it was probably at least a year.

It's July - Let's Be Total Dickheads

There is something about July that seems to turn people into total dickheads. I'm not sure if it's the humidity or the almost daily rainstorms, but it  has certainly brought a dick head onto every street corner.

This weekend marked the July 4 holiday but I chose not to celebrate the liberation of British people from Americans as I was feeling rather down due to a legal bombshell, so instead engaged in some wallowing in loneliness and self pity.

I wasn't going to go out at all, but eventually wandered the mean streets of River City just before the firework display musing on how I needed to finally cleanse River City out of my system and make a new start. The fireworks, which I expected to be token and derisory were actually rather impressive. Then I saw the obligatory dickhead. I would say he was 18 and he had just lit five sparklers in his baseball hat and was running around yelling, cutting a swathe in the crowd on the sidewalk.

Clearly obligatory dickhead was not aware of the fact that sparklers cause more injuries than any other firework in the country - about 700 every July 4 and they burn at 2000 F. The obligatory dickhead's squeals of excitement quickly turned into yelps of pain but he managed to throw off his hat before the sparklers fried his gray matter - which would have taken about two seconds.

Tragically a guy called Devon Staples from Maine was not so lucky. Staples decided it would be a good idea to place a firework mortar tube on his head and launch off a firework, according to police. He died instantly. His brother, who disputed the head launching account, said there was very little of Devon left.

Another accident in Orange County, Texas could have been avoidable, methinks. A 28-year-old man called Tommie Woodward decided to ignore signs that stated "No swimming - alligators," jumped in a bayou and even yelled "blank the alligators" before the aforementioned creatures had him as a late night snack.

It should not really be necessary to point out that fireworks and alligators are inherently dangerous but maybe that's not as obvious as I thought. I know July sucks folks but please resist the temptation to be another dickhead.

Five Little Known Facts About the Confederate Flag

The Confederate flag has always struck me as distasteful. I feel something unpleasant in my gut when I see it. It makes me think of rednecks swilling Miller Lite, arm less shirts and those old re-runs of the Dukes of Hazzard. The feeling I get isn't as strong as if I see a Swastika but it's along those lines.

Now in the wake of the terrible Charleston church killings in which a white youth who took pictures of himself with a gun and the flag, killed nine black worshipers, politicians have been racing to distance themselves from the Confederate flag. The Republican party has been in the vanguard with Mitt Romney leading the way. In the past some Republicans have defended the right to fly this flag which is odd really when you consider Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

The Confederate battle flag still flies close to South Carolina's capitol

I'm not sure this flag should have any place in the American psyche but the fact it does says much about the American psyche. There have also been reports this week of a large upsurge in demand for products with the Confederate flag on, perhaps in anticipation of a ban.

Locally people have been going even further and calling for the removal of Confederate war memorials from the Civil War which frankly I think is stupid because these soldiers died in large numbers, admittedly fighting for a disturbing cause. The Confederate flag flying in official places is a different matter entirely.

Here are five little known facts about the Confederate flag.

1 - It was never the official flag of the Confederacy. Instead, it was the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee.

2 - The Confederate battle flag came into widespread use during anti desegregation protests in the mid 20th century. It's modern use is closely mired in racism. It was adopted by South Carolina politician Strom Thurmond who ran for president on a segregation ticket.

3 - Mississippi, which has a good claim to be the most backward and depressing state in the US, is the only state to feature the battle flag in its state flag.

4 - The battle flag was also called the Southern Cross.

5 - General Robert E. Lee, who led the Army of Northern Virginia, was closely associated with the flag but he rejected the symbols of the Civil War after his defeat and no flags flew at his funeral.

Echoes of Jaws as Sharks Attack Kids on North Carolina Beaches

Sharks are attacking kids off the beach, there's screaming and panic in the water and the Mayor said there wasn't time to get people out of the water. It sounds like a certain movie but alarmingly this was what really happened over the weekend at Oak Island in North Carolina.

The wounds from these shark attacks were no mere graze. In both case kids lost arms on a beach where a girl had suffered less serious shark injuries a week earlier.

Just a day earlier I had been at North Carolina Aquarium showing the kids the famous shark tank. Of course shark attacks are rare, I told them. The sharks drifted graceful and silver in the tank, never showing any sign of turning vicious and attacking the large fish they shared a tank with. Still, there was something disconcerting about their button eyes. It would be cliched to say there was not a spark of humanity in them because sharks are, afterall, fish. You would, expect them to be cold fish. Nevertheless, their eyes are rather chilling.

I've never been to Oak Island but I've been down to Wilmington. It gets so humid on the North Carolina coast that it's unbearable not to go into the water. However, the victims in these attacks were only up to their waists in water.

George Burgess, the director of Florida's Program for Shark Research at the University of Florida's Museum of Natural History, said blacktip and spinner sharks frequent this coast and can get up to seven feet long. He said they only tend to bite people in "mistaken identity" situations when they think splashing arms and legs are normal prey.

Mistaken identity or not, it's harrowing to lose a limb and these sharks seem rather focused.

Oak Island Mayor Better Wallace said it all happened so fast there was little time to get people out of the water.

Although there are clearly echoes of Jaws Mayor Wallace has a long way to go to become Mayor Vaughn who said: "It's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July."

OMG - Twisted Around Like a Tornado Girl

Most reporters have been saddled with covering car accidents at some time or another and it's not always easy to find people who can talk about what happened. News editors, naturally seemed to live in a parallel universe and to believe that every accident scene is populated by an army of people who are waiting there to give their account to the media.

Of course TV reporters have the upper hand in this regard. There are people who are dying to get on their local TV station no matter how hokey it is. In my days as a reporter I spent more time than I can remember, trying to find eye witnesses who would give lively quotes. In saying that there was always the danger of finding a witnesses who would give too many quotes and hog the limelight. I thought about this when I saw the video footage of "twisted round like a tornado girl,"

My first reaction to this clip was to ask what she was on.

My second was who goes to Burger King to get a "piece of burger."

My thought thought was just another confirmation of why I never want to visit Mississippi.

This video is like looking at a second car wreck. "This attention whore looks like a horse on cocaine," stated one unkind commentator. Sort of true, though, even if the polite term is flamboyant witness...

The woman in question is apparently variously called Ruby Evans or Courtney Barnes. She has been on some kind of reality TV show and a parody song is on its way. I have no idea why I have wasted five minutes writing about this person or why anyone else should.

Fixated by Naked and Afraid

I haven't watched much tele but of late I have become fixated by Discovery's Naked and Afraid. It's the show where total strangers get their kits off and try to survive in a jungle or another godforsaken wilderness for 21 days.

My fixation isn't due to prurience. Believe me - after a couple of days in the jungle, naked and sweaty bodies have little allure and the show blurs out naughty parts anyhow.

I'm more interested in what this show reveals about the human psychology because it can be a bit like The Lord of the Flies on reality TV. The show starts with two strangers - a man and a woman - who are flown to a remote places such as Borneo, Colombia, Brazil etc. and then told to strip in front of each other.

The contestants usually have some kind of survivalist background. Typically, they treat the first day like some kind of nudist vacation, skipping through the jungle or sand dunes and musing on the beauty of the wilderness. Then the reality that they have no shelter or water will occur to them a couple of hours later.

It's at this stage that the things we take for granted such as supermarkets and air conditioning kick in. Watch a few episodes of Naked and Afraid and you will never complain about the 300 pound man or woman in front of you at the Wal-Mart check out who is meticulously describing each item he has bought to the cashier.

Although building a house from palm trees on a desert island may seem romantic, the contestants soon find they dehydrate quickly in temperatures of 100 degrees and finding water is no easy job. Drink from a stream and you could catch some terrible tropical disease. You need fire and methods of purifying water but contestants have spent five days on this show trying to start a fire. The happiness of the contestants when they get a sip of water is worth savoring but a couple of days later hunger sets in and you realize killing animals in the wild or eating safe plants is no mean feat.

On one challenge the contestants find coconuts only to discover rats had eaten them and they were crawling with lice. The male contestant set up traps and manage to kill multiple rats which the woman would not eat, prompting the man to become increasingly crazy and to describe his pleasure at devouring their ratty entrails. This particular contestant had no girlfriend at the start of the episode and it unlikely to now either.

That's another interesting thing about Naked and Afraid. We start to see how people behave when they are deprived of water and food and it's not pretty. In one show the most chilled of guys who prided himself on his skills as a life coach started bitching out his partner who spent 20 out of 21 days whining.

Naked and Afraid also raises questions about traditional gender roles, especially when we see the men trying to hunt and the women doing domestic tasks such as cooking and repairing the home. Is this nature or nurture? Did humans fall into these traditional roles for a biological reason based on strength or has society conditioned us to take them up.

Whiny women is something of a theme but that's not to say this plays out with all couples. In one episode an overweight guy spent 21 days sitting on his backside in the palm hut while the woman risked heat stroke, attempting to find food. The woman was taken off the show, suffering from extreme dehydration and the man completed the challenge. Maybe we can try too hard when we can sometimes achieve results by sitting on our backsides.

The deterioration of couples in Naked and Afraid gives a frightening glimpse into why the settlers in Jamestown turned to cannibalism and why there are more wars in Third World countries. Let's not forget this is only a 21 day challenge and there's always the fall back of dropping out and going home. It's frightening to imagine Naked and Afraid as reality but it's exactly what our predecessors faced.

There are also some heart warming episodes among the poisonous snakes and rats such as the episode in which a pig headed chauvinistic former Marine who was holed up with a vegetarian woman finally learned about mutual respect in the jungle. The scene where she brings him a dead toad to snack on when his machismo had washed away, bordered on the moving.

The other thing I wonder about this show is if anyone had sex. It's hard to imagine when you are malnourished and you stink and tics are eating your eyelids but I have to wonder. They are naked afterall. There are certainly scenes in cold places where sharing body warmth makes total sense. If anyone is doing the extremely dirty out in the jungle, nobody is showing it on TV, which I am really fine with.