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For all the shame associated with visiting dark coffees, there is a refreshing lack of ambiguity about them. People may go to a movie to watch the film, but nobody goes to a dark coffee to sample the joe. Simply by showing up, couples openly declare their lust for each other. More subtle — but perhaps more important — is the thrill of publicly challenging a taboo. Sex is usually good, but forbidden sex is better.  By visiting a dark coffee, young Vietnamese couples are engaging in a quiet but unmistakable rebellion against societal strictures, and they're doing so with plenty of co-conspirators within earshot.
One evening, a "special friend" takes me to a typical Thanh Da riverside dark coffee. We park the motorbike and allow a hostess to lead us to the make-out area. Under a large open canopy sit rows of beach chairs, placed two-by-two and separated by small wooden trellises with vines. The huge dark swath of the Mekong flows by, silently guarding the couples who are engaged in affectionate whispering and/or intense cuddling (although the low-backed chairs and ambient light make serious lovemaking impossible). After we take our seats and place our orders, the mumbling and rustling of clothes blend into the background, melding with the sound of crickets and frogs. Soon these disappear, and the world shrinks — the other couples, the café's dusty driveway, the assignments left undone downtown all become quickly irrelevant. Anyone whose sexual experiences have been confined to bedrooms will be surprised at how unnecessary all those walls are, how quickly a public space can become an intimate cocoon.
We leave an hour or so later, and on the way out, we found the café much busier than when we entered. The number of people willing to drive to suburban
Ho Chi Minh City — and pay top dollar for the privilege of sitting in a beach chair — attests to the popularity of these erotic dives. On a Sunday evening, one of the biggest days of the week in the industry, couples must hold their libidos in check for hours as they wait for a seat. As sexual attitudes change, the perception of dark coffees softens from xao qau (horrible) to merely khong tot (not good). Liberal ideas are seeping in from the outside world, state and parental controls are relaxing, and biology perseveres, guaranteeing that dark coffees do a brisk business.
Yet it's precisely those cultural shifts that may ultimately spell the demise of the dark coffee. Sexual taboos will fade; men and women will be able to visit each others' apartments unchaperoned. Rising incomes and increasingly liberal laws (or at least, more lax enforcement) will allow couples to rent hotel rooms, thus robbing dark coffees of their raisons d'être. Liberal Westerners might cheer the demise of Vietnam's harsh sexual double standards, but progress will inevitably exact a price.
Yet for now, progress is coming slowly in socially conservative and politically authoritarian Vietnam. It will be years before dark coffees go the way of the drive-in. In the meantime, fighting oppressive norms and smashing taboos continues to be the arousal method of choice. Certainly sex is more convenient when you can just invite your girlfriend over to your pad, but is it as exciting?
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©2001
Amit Gilboa and Nerve.com
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