Текст книги "Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 1"

Автор книги: O Thiam Chin

Соавторы: Stephen Leather,Alison Lester,John Burdett,Aaron Ang,Hari Kumar,Yusuf Martin,Christopher Mooney-Singh,Jonathan Lim,Erich Sysak,Annabel Pagunsan
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

This world was not, of course, the centre of my existence, as I had loves, work and interests outside the twilight. But it was much of their world. My experience in it was maybe five, at most ten per-cent of my life, if such things may be quantified. But it was significantly more emotionally, for I liked the massage women very much and saw in them as pleasant a division of my fellow human beings as any. Since I inevitably preferred some of the massage women much more over others and spent my time mostly with this preferred subset, my overall impression of them is no doubt a little slanted and rose-tinted, just as their experience of men was skewed towards the sensual and the strayer… with not a few of the inadequate. Still, I felt soft towards them all and forgiving of their frailties, more forgiving than I would have been of people in other occupations.

On my return to Singapore after my encounter with Concepcion, I set about visiting the local ‘health centres’ and massage parlours , the first time I had ever set out on a campaign of exploratory promiscuity. Initially, I was a little wary of these twilight women, expecting drug-dependency, perhaps a parasitic or clinging tendency, or-worse-hell-cat behaviour and thievery.

However, the first local centre that I visited was very reassuring. Situated in the middle of a big hotel, it was much better appointed than the car-park den in Kota Kinabalu (as behoved this clean and clinical Republic). It had its own shower with an expensively tiled floor and was pleasantly decorated, looking organized and neat with stacked towels, a high massage bed and almost no cigarette holes in the carpet. All this bespoke an almost domestic respectability, an efficient, business-like atmosphere with a faintly medical flavour because of the stacked towels and the general emphasis on hygiene.

While I was in the shower, a female entered the room and offered me a drink. I could not see her because of the frosting on the shower-cubicle door. She disappeared again while I lay down on the massage mattress. My masseuse appeared and started talking at once, firing off questions and setting to work on my back. She announced herself as Honey or Pussy or some such absurd professional name, but eventually, after a little pressing, admitted to being Caroline.

She was, as far as I could tell peering back over my shoulder, an ethnic Chinese woman in her thirties. I did not want to swivel round to stare at her rudely, as if assessing the quality of the goods I might consume. Caroline herself was quite formal in her interrogation, asking me at the beginning how she should address me and taking it on from there. Thus, we were both careful to preserve the ordinary decencies of social intercourse.

In time, I got to know Caroline a little, although my acquaintance with her was not as deep as with subsequent lovers in this particular twilight zone.

She possessed a nondescript face but a pleasing figure and radiated sexual energy.

Caroline, as loquacious as Concepcion had been reserved and as experienced as the latter had been relatively innocent, gave me a rapid, light massage over my back and legs, accompanied by a lot of slapping as well as continuous chatter of interrogation. After less than ten minutes of this process, she ran her fingers and thumbs like a pair of five-legged spiders over my rear and inner thighs, circling my anus and tickling my testicles before kneading them slightly while groping for my penis.

“Do you want to turn over?” said the spider-lady. “That’s a very quick massage,” I said, though I was not complaining at the way proceedings were developing, just commenting on her directness. “Oh no,” said Caroline,

“there’s more to come.”

“Your approach is different,” I noted.

“Oh no,” she persisted, “I do not have an approach, I just do whatever is necessary. What do you want me to do?” Since she already had a proprietary grasp on my erect member, this was a polite but rhetorical question. So I asked her for full sex without a condom. She looked at me surprised. This was a test that I applied to the twilight women in my early days to see how sensible they were. Later, I dropped this insult to their intelligence and sense of responsibility.

“Oh no,” said Caroline, not haggling and thus passing the test with flying colours, “you must wear a condom.” She withdrew her hand. I explained my purpose. She congratulated me on my intelligence and responsibility.

We praised each other for being so sensible. In the course of this mutual admiration session, Caroline reinstated her right hand on my penis and added the other, as one might when wishing to convey strong fellow-feeling on comforting the bereaved.

After a short pause, she produced a condom from somewhere about her person. “Come,” said Caroline. She applied the condom, stripped off a garment or two and we engaged immediately. “Slowly,” she cautioned, although she herself was hurrying the process, “I am small.” She eased me in, making slight gasping noises-whether genuine or for effect, I could not tell. Whatever the case, she came rapidly to a climax, her legs and arms clasped tightly over my back. “Wait,” she said, and slowed my movements, bringing down her legs and closing them under me. “Come on then,” she commanded, and appeared to have another orgasm. “Do what you like now,” she then conceded and so, having pleasured her, I took my own pleasure and concluded our commercial “act of love”.

Caroline rinsed and dressed, then recommenced massaging me; much more vigorously this second time round, as if stimulated by the intercourse.

“How good is business?” I asked. “Alright,” she replied, and rattled away cheerfully about customers and tips. “The desk takes most of my fee as protection money,” she said, “so I depend on tips.” I assumed that she meant the woman at the reception desk would not allocate her clients unless she got a cut in advance.

“Most men are generous,” she carried on, “even if I do not give them a special, they give me a tip.” She named a sum about the equivalent of twenty American dollars. “For specials, of course, the usual.” Caroline’s ‘specials’

were not very special at all-almost the rule, it seemed. Most massage women were coy about how much full sex they had, but Caroline more or less admitted to a norm of at least a couple a day, assuming that she was getting her fair share of customers in good times.

Caroline was frank about earning most of her money through her amiable and often enthusiastic prostitution. She commented just as explicitly on the range of masculine virility and the size and consistency of organs . Fat men tended to have small penises, while those smaller or comparatively athletic were more generously endowed. A long penis when flaccid might promise much (including alarm to its intended recipient), but often the owner failed to erect it beyond a certain soft engorgement. Small penises, on the other hand, could expand disproportionately into relatively large, hard organs, she noted.

Caroline’s centre was located deep inside what she termed a family hotel, which gave the massage women some security both against the anti-vice authorities and the rougher or more drunken element among their potential clientele. Despite the domestic atmosphere there, she was occasionally called to a hotel room where proceedings were totally safe from outsiders or time limits and could be quite prolonged.

She recounted one such experience with an old New Zealander of eighty-nine. Concerned that she might break his ancient bones, she treated him lightly until he scolded her for her half-heartedness. “Let me massage you,” he said and so she submitted to his attentions, which proved very robust. It seemed he had been a chiropractor or an osteopath. “You’re a nice girl,” he said and gave her an enormous tip: two hundred American dollars.

“He was a nice old man,” she echoed, casually adding that he was incapable of an erection.

At the other end of the age scale, Caroline recalled having serviced spoilt-brat teenagers, children of rich men who were inclined to let their male offspring do as they pleased in the purchase of sex. The youngest in this category was seventeen, an Indian national who claimed he had his first sex at eleven. Caroline was not greatly enamoured of intercourse with young men as they tended to be hasty and force themselves into her before she was properly aroused, despite the lady’s own rapid approach. Once or twice, a father-and-son team had visited the centre, though they did not patronise the same woman. Sometimes, a man whose wife and family were staying in the hotel would pop in for a quick one: appointment, intercourse, clean-up and tip all over within ten minutes.

I asked Caroline for examples of violence or criminality that she had experienced in her profession. She replied that she had had an unpleasant encounter with a Japanese who insisted on having sex without a condom.

“Oh no,” Caroline said, whereupon the Japanese threatened to violate her willy-nilly, claiming that he was a gangster in order to make her more inclined to submit. Caroline exited the cubicle fast and sought the help of the receptionist. The Japanese followed her and banged his fist on the reception desk, which the two women were soon cowering behind. Eventually, they called hotel security and the man was escorted out, still threatening all and sundry with the wrath of the mafia.

Another Japanese subsequently informed Caroline that no respectable Japanese gangster would ever admit to being a gangster-at least not in such a vulgar manner. He knew this because, he modestly conceded, he was a bona fide gangster himself. His penis contained three or four hard little lumps of jade, or some such semi-precious material, inserted to give greater pleasure to the fortunate women that he deigned to copulate with. Apparently, they were also an indication of rank,so a super-gangster would be permitted up to ten. I expressed some incredulity at all this, but Caroline said that she could feel the little lumps both with her fingers and her vagina.

Caroline herself had a medium-sized tattoo, a butterfly, her trade-mark, strategically located around the upper area of her protuberant little rump. The butterfly’s abdomen thus fused with her rear cleavage and its wings spread a good six centimetres on either side. This decoration was presented as an aesthetic bonus to her customer’s gaze if he were approaching its owner from behind. I found this feature engaging; as, indeed, I found much of Caroline.

The greatest reward that Caroline had ever enjoyed came not from a member of the mafia, but from a young, indecently rich pawn-shop owner. I thought at first she was referring to a pornographer and wondered where in Singapore such an enterprise could make its owner a fortune. But this client obtained his money more ruthlessly than by peddling pictures-extracting money from the impoverished or the desperate or the improvidential by charging usurious interest, illustrating that greed is more harmful than lust.

Certainly, he had money to throw around as he gave Caroline thirteen hundred American dollars for one session. I asked Caroline if this was generosity or a form of sexual exhibitionism. She did not understand my question, but described her reaction – which was mostly alarm. She feared she might be accused of theft if such a large sum were found on her. To allay her panic or conscience, she treated all the women in the centre to a meal and gave them a share of what was left-including even the rapacious lady at the reception desk.

I myself considered the pawn-shop owner’s generosity a form of sexual showing-off. I liked to reward the massage women with tips over and above their usual fees for their specials, however. I warmed to them and their vulnerability and, if they were not greedy or pushy, which was only rarely the case, showed my appreciation of their moderation and pleasantness with some generosity.

Of course, the purchase of sex carries an inherent stimulus in itself, an addition to the idea of possession. The pawn-shop owner was doubtless indulging himself in an expression of power. He could take what he wanted and give what he wanted and enslave Caroline to his will-or so he thought.

For he subsequently offered her ten thousand American dollars to find him a virgin for his personal use. He told her how he had once purchased a maiden by putting up her entire family, mother and father included, in an expensive hotel, paying for the finest meals they could eat. The virgin was duly bedded, deflowered and returned to her family. The parents received their thousands of dollars for the single night.

Even pragmatic Caroline was shocked at this heartlessness. But wealth is power and money can make much acceptable. Doubtless, it was quite rational of the family, if poverty-stricken, to gain at least some security for the future in this time-honoured style of pandering to the sexual whims of the stinking rich. Caroline did not report this individual as cruel or repulsive, just ruthlessly opportunistic-and generous with it. Still, she made no attempt to oblige him with a second treat.

Fairly soon after I met her, Caroline moved to Malacca, initially to a centre, though she intended to leave this form of her trade and earn her living by acquiring and keeping a circle of a few favoured clients. She planned to set herself up as a small independent business, offering massage and sex in small hotels or on holiday weekends elsewhere.

I soon lost touch with Caroline as I had not visited her that often and, although warm and generous by nature, she was not sentimental about her commercial arrangements. Experience had taught her that kindness and consideration were productive and helped her in her profession, as in many services, but that feelings other than friendship were best avoided in the twilight world.

TWO MEN AND A PLAN
O Thiam Chin, Singapore

We are not the products of our circumstances, but we are surely the sum of all the stupid choices that our parents have inflicted on us.” Shun told me this when he took me to my first client.

“And there is nothing we can do to undo this damage – not you, not me,” he added emphatically.

Shun liked to spout pop-psychology babble like this, off the top of his head, given any opportunity. He spoke freely, without any fear of consequences, and he was not afraid of offending anyone. Least of all me.

How he derived all these sage-sounding maxims that he liked to toss around so much was well beyond me. But he did tell me once that he enjoyed reading the works of writers like Douglas Coupland and Chuck Palahniuk because, according to him, they tell truths – “dark sickening truths of our depraved times” – that other writers are incapable or unwilling to write about.

How true that was, I did not know. I hated to read. Beyond the textbooks and all the assigned reading materials given out by my lecturers and tutors each week, I barely had time for other forms of reading, nor did I read for leisure.

I considered it a waste of time. I had better things to do.

“And treat this client well, you hear? Big fish like him are hard to find, especially since he’s paying top dollar for a virgin like you,” Shun said in jest, throwing a snickering look in my direction.

“Fuck you,” I replied caustically.

“I don’t think so tonight, my dear. He-” Shun emphasised the word, while pointing to the hotel door in front of us, “will be fucking you tonight.

And do everything he says. He says fuck, you fuck. He says suck, you suck.

He wants to rim you, by all means, spread your legs wider and let him rim.

Don’t say no, don’t ever, or we’ll lose him. Remember, it’s easier to retain an existing client than scout for ten new ones.” Shun grinned at me and gestured for me to knock on the door.

I hated him when he spun out this kind of tough talk, like I was the novice and he was the professional. As if this was my first time fucking or sucking or rimming. Fucker. But on a deeper level, I knew that I did not want to disappoint him nor be angry with him for long. I hated this mixed feeling, this anger combined with an eagerness to please him and do what he said. I hated to admit it because I knew exactly why I reacted in this way. Because I knew that I had grown to like Shun a lot. Damn it, damn me.

“I’ll pick you up when you’re done, or when he’s done with you. Give me a call later,” Shun said, flashing me his killer smile and nudging me again to knock on the door.

Before I could say anything more to him, he had turned and begun to walk away, down the quiet corridor towards the lift. I stood and watched him saunter away from me. He turned the corner and disappeared from my sight.

I stared at the room door – 235 – and gathered my random thoughts.

This was not my first time fucking another guy, so why was I feeling this way? This dreaded sense of inevitability? Had I made a wrong choice here?

And if so, why did I agree to Shun’s idea in the first place?

I took in a breath, and felt the sharp intake of air lifting away some of my anxieties. I knocked on the door. It opened almost immediately and I entered the hotel room.

I was cruising in one of the toilets in the university hostel where I was staying when Shun first saw me. Right away, my sight was on him, this handsome and darkly tanned man, muscular in an athletic way. My lust went into high alert instantly, mounting all my senses into full force. Of course, I had seen him around on campus; it was hard not to notice him, with his clean-cut good looks, which no doubt attracted attention from women and men alike. Well, gay men, in any case.

Being in such close proximity with him, in the toilet, I grabbed my chance. I tried to arouse his attention with an obvious look of lust and longing.

He was washing his hands, but I could tell he was aware that I was looking hard at him, getting his attention. He glanced in my direction and caught my lingering stare, my intentional body signals. He did not look surprised or puzzled by my actions, nor did he walk away with an unhidden disgust, as some would when faced with people like me in the public toilets or changing rooms. Instead, he walked over to me in a fume.

“What are you looking at?” he asked angrily. He stood inches away from my heated face, his words coming at me with unbridled force. I looked away guiltily, cursing inwardly for trying to hook the wrong guy. But Shun pressed on, his angry words building up to a crescendo.

“You make me sick! All day long, hanging around in public toilets, in school, at the pools, anywhere, waiting with that cock-hungry look, eager to suck on any cock that comes along the way. You pathetic fuckers – get a life!” His words came out in a torrent while his intense gaze continued to remain on me. My body began to tremble visibly, as my own words choked in my throat. I wanted to say something, anything, in return, but I did not. I was scared somehow. I did not want to be caught like this and the shame of being trapped in this awkward situation only ate at me relentlessly, building up to an unbearable degree.

I quickly gathered up the courage to walk briskly away and head for the exit. But Shun stopped me abruptly on my way out and demanded to have my details. “Give me your hostel room number; if not, I’ll report you to the dean,” he threatened. In the heat of being caught, exposed and threatened, I did as he told me. I gave him my hostel room number without a second thought and left the toilet hurriedly.

That night, Shun knocked on door and I let him in. He fucked me without saying a word and I became his secret friend.

Naturally, I wanted to ask him about his outburst during our first meeting in the toilet. But I kept quiet as I was afraid of upsetting him and did not want to appear too forward, lest he drop me after a few fucks. Basically, I had to acknowledge he was a great fuck and there were not many like him around, at least not in the university. The weekend sex in town always seemed so far away, especially with my schoolwork and projects with looming deadlines; to have Shun nearby for a quick fuck was more than I could ask for.

So after that first night he fucked me, and the night that followed, I let him have his way with me, whichever way he wanted me. And he came every night for the whole week, always around eight, when my roommate was in the library poring through his school texts or assignments till late at night.

Shun kept absolutely quiet throughout the fucking. And I followed his lead and kept quiet. I did not want to spoil anything between us at this stage.

“Sometimes you really make me sick. Always hanging around some pathetic toilet, waiting for some cock to appear.”

We had agreed to meet for lunch at the canteen after our lectures. Shun majored in Mechanical Engineering in National Technological University, where he was in his final year, while I was in my second year in the same engineering faculty, taking Computer Sciences.

Shun was in a good mood that day, going through his litany of complaints about me. This was four months after we first met in my hostel toilet.

“You can never stop, can you?” Shun asked in a tone that preempted any reply from me. Not that I had anything to say in return. All that he had said was true, in some sense. I cruised for sex and I sucked cocks. It was simple as that, and Shun knew and was able to exploit it. It was hard to change one’s nature, and Shun knew this well.

And he knew where he stood in the gay food chain and wanted to remain there, among those in the upper echelon, feasting and preying on those below him. A vicious cycle of man-eating-man within the gay world.

And he knew how to make the most of his looks to give him what he wanted, in any circumstance. He refused to be the product of his circumstances, a fate and state that he abhorred, because, to him, “… it rules out the possibility – or certainty – of free will and the stupid choices that made us who we are.” And so he stuck to his self-made logic and beliefs.

“Since you are always so cock-hungry, then learn to make use of this desire for your own advantage, to gain something for yourself, not just swallow what comes along the way.”

I gave him a blank look and a disgusted cluck of the tongue. Shun saw my look of contempt but ignored it completely and continued, “What I’m saying is this: since you are still young, only twenty-three and not bad-looking, you can use these god-given attributes and your superb cock-sucking skill for some gains, to reap the benefits of your youth, so to speak. To keep it simple: Let sex and money go hand in hand, that’s what I’m saying.” I was not surprised by his suggestion since I had known for some time that Shun had been a rent boy for a while – since his junior college days, in fact. While Shun did not spell out exactly what he was doing, he had dropped strong hints about this “freelance job” he had which allowed him to pay for his school fees and some “small luxuries.” From what I could gather from our conversations and see with my own eyes, he was being way too humble about how lucrative this job could be. He was earning tons from his so-called freelance work, as far as I could tell. Shun did not hesitate to pay for the meals we had, the movies, the clothes and bags that I wanted, my school fees, my allowance. He relished being “the provider,” he told me once after we had sex, “unlike my father, who ran away with his mistress, leaving nothing for me and my mother.” When I tried to inquire more about his family background, he grew very still and quiet, lying like a stranger beside me in the dark. And that was when I knew never to ask him again about his family. I would let him tell me what he wanted to reveal, if he chose to, but I could never ask him for details or any questions of that sort.

“So you want me to be like you?” I said mockingly, enunciating each word slowly.

“Yes, and I’ll be your mentor or something. Your daddy pimp, so to speak.”

“You? So what’s in it for you? What will you gain?”

“Fifty-fifty for the first few times. After that, seventy-thirty, you seventy, me thirty. How’s that?”

“Sounds fair. But how are you going to find the clients?”

“That’s for me to worry about.” Shun smiled at me disarmingly, as if hoarding a common secret of which I had no knowledge, and I was briefly agitated by his cocksure attitude.

“In case you are so blind and haven’t noticed, living in that little world of yours,” he pointed to my head with wry off-handedness, “there are plenty of rich old faggots around who’re dying for some companionship and a quick fuck now and then. And we’ll give them just that, a good fuck. Their money for the sex we give. A fair transaction.”

While I disagreed with Shun on many occasions, what he had just said made plenty of good sense. In a way, he dared to put into words what went on in his head and was able to justify his actions with his own concocted motives and convictions. I would have failed to see – or maybe refused to acknowledge – these basic human needs of love and sex. Clear knowledge was not something I wanted to hold onto, I found it too cumbersome, a burden. But the fact that we are all lonely and always craving for some form of companionship, to the extent of being willing to pay anything for someone to love, to hold even for a short while, all these rang true to me.

I did not answer him; what could I say to what he had just told me? How much of it was true, how much of it was fabricated by him? I did not know. I had never paid for sex nor had I been paid for sex. Most of the sex I ever had up to then had been the anonymous, cruising-in-the-toilet kind. Of course, I was vaguely aware that there was a dark, seedy side to the sex trade, but I was never that curious to find out more. But Shun knew that world well and was willing to share his knowledge with me. He wanted to be my friend and pimp.

So I listened to him like a young protege learning the ways of the world.

Shun kept his word and let me keep the money I earned, after the fifth time he introduced me to a new client. Though at that point, I was not hard up for money, as I had developed a steady flow of regular clients that patronised me. After the initial meeting, they would come back to me for more and I would always agree to every request. Why say no to good money? I reminded myself constantly, and slowly I was convinced of the validity of what I had said.

“Keep the rates fixed,” Shun reminded me for the first few times. “And don’t change them at all. It’s in the best interest of both you and your clients.” Within a few months, I was already getting the hang of the trade, of what needed to be done or was expected from Shun and the clients that he introduced me to. Shun would scout out prospective clients: some were his old clients, some he found through his ingenious means of contact, which he kept hidden from me. Given the secrecy that governed this kind of sex, still banned in Singapore and subject to criminal prosecution, I was genuinely surprised and mildly curious how Shun managed to find these contacts.

He once told me, when we were having dinner in a shopping centre food court in Jurong after our economics classes, that guys would often approach him in gay clubs on the weekends and chat him up. Slowly they would express their interest in knowing him more, some blatant or bold enough might even suggest some action for later. Of course, Shun would assess each person according to his own criteria, which were quite simple actually: he must be rich; he must own at least a Lexus, Mercedes or Porsche; he must live by himself in some District 9 or 10 apartment; and he must hold a high senior-management position in some big-shot company. These criteria were non-negotiable, he said, otherwise one might compromise and lose out in the end. Shun reminded me countless times that I was in it for their money, not for some fucking relationship or friendship.

“They do not care about you – that is why they’d rather pay for sex than invest their time and effort in finding somebody to build a reasonable relationship with. These people do not have the time for such things and that is the reason why we exist. We provide them with the one-stop centre where they can purchase companionship, sex and cheap feelings for a premium price. It is a fair deal.”

As he said these things, Shun’s eyes would often glint with a self-satisfied concentration, as if he had set everything in place and nothing would go wrong. To him, our freelance work was based on a supply-and-demand fulfillment of human needs. The nature and practicality of what we were doing could be set down in simple workable rules and a positive mindset. The ABCs of the gay sex trade, so to speak.

Shun was amoral, and he lived by what he believed in. “Nothing is impossible if you put your mind to it,” he would say, spouting a dead wise man’s often-repeated, dead-of-meaning axiom. But he also had his own salubrious blend of half-fucked ideas and self-thought-out rules of gay life.

I told him once, “Maybe you should write a book, be the voice of our generation, start a new sexual revolution here in Singapore, break new fucking frontiers for us disenfranchised and delusional faggots. Perhaps people would take note of us. We would be the mainstream and they, these normal heterosexual fucks, would finally be sidelined and marginalised, a sideshow of freaks preserving their straight traditions and way of life.” But Shun just shot me a what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about look, as if I was the biggest idiot in this world and my words were all one-cent coins – useless, worth nothing.

“And why the hell would I do this? To tell the big fucking world about what we are doing? The bloody reason why we are able to do well, to get the clients we are getting now, be paid obscenely for our sex, is because we – our deeds, are kept hidden, away from the public eye and this secrecy grants us greater value. Because we are scarce, ‘at a premium,’ we are always in demand.”