Scribbles from the Same Island Page 13

  Some of Singapore’s finest military men have been trained by social workers and are going into the combat zone armed with candles, flowers and copies of the international bestseller, Save Your Marriage! Forget Barney, He’s Not As Well Endowed As He Looks.

  If you’re sitting in a cinema with a young dating couple beside you and they start bickering, resist the temptation to drown them in popcorn. Just wait five minutes for the Romancing Singapore Task Force to arrive and they’ll do it for you. Armed with guns, knives and heart-shaped pillows, the sensitive soldiers will have the little domestic fracas resolved in no time.

  Covering all the angles, naturally, the Task Force even has a website, www.romancingsingapore.com, which gives invaluable tips on how to be a romantic. Whether you are married, dating or single, there is something for everyone here.

  Married couples, for instance, are encouraged to watch a midnight show, which I’m sure is a foolproof way of shoring up a drooping love life. After all, camcorders are relatively inexpensive these days so you just need to find space in the bedroom for the tripod.

  Dating couples are encouraged to spend a night at a museum. Another inspired idea. Some of those displays are older than the fossils. A young couple could spend hours up there before they’re discovered by the wheezing security guard.

  Of course, there are liberal-minded cynics who’d claim this Task Force is yet another Orwellian example of third-party interference: A rather desperate, transparent attempt to get more people to have more sex, more of the time.

  Well, all I can say is; where the hell was this Task Force when I was 16? I grew up on a council housing estate in Dagenham where there were only two residents NOT having sex — the church vicar and me. Where was my Greater London campaign to generate a fine romance or two?

  I could make girls laugh at times. Sexy classmates often said: “Do you know, for an ugly beanpole, you’re occasionally funny.”

  To which I replied: “That’s bloody marvellous. But how many times does a girl have to laugh before she contemplates removing some underwear — preferably mine?”

  I was usually slapped and deservedly so. But if there had been a romance Task Force at my side, things would’ve been different. My tormentor would’ve been severely reprimanded for disrupting our love vibes and punished for hindering any chances of a relationship. She’d feel humiliated, I’d bask in my minor triumph and the romance taskforce would march off to deal with the next crime of passion.

  And then, the humbled girl would kick me in the testicles and walk off into the sunset — with the guy who had a nose like Barney.

  NOTE: I received several emails from Singaporeans who were irritated by what they saw as yet another attempt by certain people to interfere in their private lives. If a woman is happily single, for instance, does she really need some ridiculous festival full of do-gooders making themselves busy and encouraging her to pair off with some soppy sod?

  Can you imagine if it was sex-related? If any of these festival planners ever approached me and said: “Good afternoon, sir. We’re from Romancing Singapore and we hear you’re having problems getting it up?” I’d take his clipboard and shove it up his arse. That said, the festival continued unabashed across the country. For almost a month, advertisements were placed in newspapers and magazines giving patronising and largely useless tips on how to improve one’s love life. It was stunningly pathetic and trivial. In the middle of a never-ending recession, you’d think the governing powers would have more pressing issues such as rising unemployment, political apathy, Islamic extremism and migrations to Australia. They shouldn’t waste their time by telling single Singaporeans whether chocolates or flowers are more suitable on a first date. It’s up to the individual. The busybodies should mind their own bloody business.

  THE PYJAMAS

  IT’S finally over. For a while there, it seemed like it would never end. No, I’m not referring to the recent budget speech, but the recent Romancing Singapore campaign/celebration/festival. From what I understand, prostate examinations are quicker and less painful.

  If you recall, indeed I’m sure you’ll never forget, the month of February 2003 will go down in Singapore history as the month of love, romance and a rather large helping of Singapore’s all-girl band, Cherry Chocolate Candy. All of which was organised by the Singapore Task Force on behalf of Family Matters! And don’t you dare forget that exclamation mark damn it!

  There are website rumours that George Lucas is rewriting a key love scene in Episode III of Star Wars. Anakin Skywalker and Senator Amidala will exchange heart-shaped pillows and Obi-Wan Kenobi will utter the immortal line: “Remember, the Singapore Task Force will be with you, always.”

  But you certainly can’t fault the Task Force for effort, can you? They spread out across the island like a battalion of love-makers organising everything from gentle river cruises under a starry, starry night to nostalgic drive-in movies.

  The latter was a bit of a tragedy for me. I can’t drive and, with hindsight, turning up on a BMX bicycle was probably a bad idea. It was a big turn-off for the ladies and I ended up with a sore groin. Moreover, the wicker basket at the front was, I suspect, a touch too feminine, hindering my chances of impressing all the pretty girls. But that particular activity was inspired compared to the late night pyjama party for singles, which was an unmitigated disaster.

  Have you seen a grown man in nothing but a pair of stripy pyjamas? He looks about as sexually desirable as, well, a grown man in a pair of stripy pyjamas. Slumber parties are for teenaged girls to eat popcorn and gossip wistfully about handsome teenaged boys. Or in Dagenham, where I grew up, all night parties were for teenaged boys to discover pornography and recognise the importance of being well endowed.

  A skinny adult, however, in stripy pyjamas looks like a giant blob of toothpaste. Would you invite Mr. Aquafresh into your bedroom? According to media reports, only one man turned up appropriately attired at the campaign’s pyjama party. He is my hero. He should be the next Singaporean president. In fact, he should be the next Singaporean president in stripy pyjamas. If Mr. Aquafresh doesn’t impress foreign dignitaries then no one will. By all accounts, my hero wasn’t inhibited at the party, but he took the precaution of sewing up his frontal flap first. He was a little disturbed, perhaps, but he didn’t want to come across as dangerous.

  But the post-puberty pyjama party was not as baffling as the festival’s obsession with the beach. First, there was the kissing competition at the Pasir Ris beach. Now I’m not bitching because the organisers turned down my request to be both judge and demonstrator, but why pick the beach for a snogging contest? If I threw 50kg of salt onto a damp floor, would you lay down with your partner and start eating each other?

  But it didn’t end there. On the Romancing Singapore website, (there is always, always a website) there were several polls, loosely related to shagging. There was one question that asked: Which was the romantic beach in Singapore: East Coast, Pasir Ris, Changi Point or Sentosa? The actual answer should be of course, none of the above. Has the Singapore Task Force of love-makers never stepped on a beach? We smother ourselves in tanning creams, get sun burnt, then the wind blows, the sand gets stuck to our skin and we spend the rest of the day looking like a jam doughnut. Would you invite Mr. Jam Doughnut into your bedroom?

  The one glaring omission from the website’s plethora of romantic questions was: Who would you rather date Mr. Aquafresh or Mr. Jam Doughnut? But the Task Force was relentless. Even commuters on the No. 65 bus were not spared the message of love and sex. In the middle of February, Cherry Chocolate Candy jumped aboard and gave away free CDs of love songs. Bewildered aunties were heard to ask: “You Cherry Chocolate wha’? Got free ice cream is it? Got sample or not?”

  This wasn’t such a big deal to me. Where I grew up, many of the old drunks in east London wouldn’t have been too impressed with Cherry Chocolate Candy. Having staggered onto the last night bus after the pubs had closed, they think they see beautiful women bearing
gifts every night. Of course, what they actually see is a woman in blue, bearing a breathalyser.

  But now that the hilarity has subsided and the rip-roaring activities have concluded, the campaign/festival/celebration/ baby-making exercise has come to a sad end.

  A colleague in the office said it was a noble plan that was poorly executed. No, it wasn’t. That’s grossly unfair on the volunteers and organisers who genuinely worked hard throughout February to make the festival a success for many people across Singapore.

  On the contrary, Romancing Singapore was a poor plan that was nobly executed. The campaign’s intentions were hardly honourable. This was top-down cynicism at its worst.

  What sort of festival or campaign can we expect next? A free savings account with every pregnancy? A $1,000 discount, per baby, off the latest Space Wagon? A nationwide ban on contraception? Perhaps Aquafresh and Jam Doughnut could form a singing duo and re-release that Guns And Roses classic, Sweet child of mine. Let’s make babies all the time.

  But that would be ludicrous, wouldn’t it? And yet, an anal civil servant desperate to reach the next rung on the bureaucratic ladder, could be reading this right now and thinking: “That song has a catchy lyric. It might just work. I mean, if we can get grown men to wear pyjamas...”

  THE HOOKERS

  “WE’RE coming to Singapore,” she said. “I’ve been on the Internet and I’ve found some hotels and they’re really cheap. You told me Singaporean hotels were expensive, but these are much cheaper than anything in London. With a bit of saving, we could easily afford these prices.” My mother was so excited. It had been five years since I moved to Singapore and she hadn’t yet visited. But, according to her, that was about to change.

  “These hotels are budget hotels, but that’s all right. We’re not snobs, are we? They’re near to buses and trains apparently and not that far from that place, Orchard Road, where the shops and restaurants are.”

  “That sounds great, mum,” I replied, rather enthusiastically, over the phone. “Where are they?”

  “In some place called ‘Gay-lang’. There’s a chain of them called Hotel 81. They say it’s a lively area.”

  “It certainly is a lively place.”

  “Yeah? Will there be things for your step-dad to do there? To keep him busy?”

  “Oh, absolutely.”

  “What about your little brother?”

  “I bloody hope not mum, it’s the red light district.”

  “What? You mean prostitutes?... Fucking hell... We won’t bloody stay there then.”

  “Fair enough, mum.”

  “What sort of place is this Singapore? You said it was clean and safe and you can’t eat chewing gum. Now you’re telling me the place is full of old tarts with all their bits hanging out on street corners?”

  “Yes, mum.”

  “What about little Gary then, eh? You think I can let your little brother walk about when there’s all these tarts all over the place?”

  “No, mum.”

  “No, mum is bloody right. We’ll spend a fortnight down in Ramsgate instead. I mean, I know we have to put up with the smell of horse shit from the stables next door, but at least your little brother can go out on his bike in peace. And I won’t have to worry about him bumping into some old tart’s tits.”

  “Fair enough, mum.”

  Sometimes I wish I hadn’t told her. I can imagine my mother, who’s not one to keep her opinions to herself, expressing concern at the number of women standing in line along the streets.

  “This is terrible. Singaporeans aren’t too bloody bright are they? I’ve only been here for five minutes and I know that the bus stop is further down the road. I’d better go and sort them out... Excuse me... the bus stop is up there. The buses won’t stop here... I’m sorry?... Fifty dollars for what?... Here, there’s no need to be so bloody rude. I should wash your mouth out with soap and water if I were you.”

  But the world’s oldest profession continues to thrive in Singapore. I’ve been down to Geylang’s red-light district several times because there are some decent coffee shops in the area. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. My old friend David, who was the first Singaporean I met, took me to the various houses of ill repute during my first week on the island. It was a novelty, at first, because women wanted me. Usually, they don’t. But in Geylang, a tall Caucasian seems to suggest a rather large wallet. So the compliments came thick and fast. I was frequently asked “Hey handsome (pronounced ‘ham-sum’), you want a good time?” Or “Hey, big boy, come inside.” Curiously, I’ve been called ‘big boy’ on numerous occasions in Singapore, sometimes by old uncles. It’s most flattering, but also, a trifle disturbing.

  I know the ladies of the night only wanted the money they assumed I had, but I lapped up the attention nonetheless. Call me fickle and shallow, but in 28 years I’ve perfected the art of repulsing women. To be sure, many men say this, usually in a transparent attempt to appear sensitive in an ‘aw-shucks’ kind of way. But I can honestly say it’s the truth. Indeed, I actually achieved the impossible with the opposite sex — British prostitutes turned me down and it was their job to say yes.

  When I was studying in Manchester, part of our post-pub drunken routine was to tease hookers by asking for the price list. “How much will a shag cost?” we’d ask, before roaring with laughter.

  “Fuck off, you student wankers. You ain’t got no fucking money,” came the humbling, but truthful reply.

  Along the streets of Geylang, however, I was treated like a white god. Like respectful tourists, we walked along the seedier streets, peering into the dimly lit living rooms that served as brothels and then we left and had a prata supper.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. Years later, some colleagues and I went back to Geylang’s mean streets out of curiosity. This trip wasn’t fun, however, it was horrifying. Watching young girls sell their bodies at 3am was deeply disturbing for me. My parents divorced when I was four years old, so I grew up in a house with two wonderful, hard-working women. In 20 years, both my mother and sister taught me more about feminism than any pretentious textbook or patronising, middle-class sociologist ever could. Consequently, I never had the inclination to discuss prostitution in Singapore. It’s been done before and has become a tedious cliché in itself. Besides, I’ve always argued that, despite the assumptions of other western writers, there is so much more to Singapore than Sarong Party Girls chasing rich white men and hookers chasing any men. That belief still holds. Yet I can’t deny that prostitution eats away at this society like a stubborn tumour that simply refuses to go away.

  A little research discovered that there are around 400 brothels in Singapore. Yes, that’s 400. To be fair, I’m sure that figure wasn’t arrived at via a comprehensive survey. If anything, the statistic could be higher. If you are the proprietor of a number of illicit brothels, you’re probably not in a great hurry to register your business, are you? But still, for a country smaller than greater London, that’s a lot of hookers. Apparently, there are something like 10 to 20 prostitutes in each brothel, which means dirty old men have approximately 6,000 women to choose from.

  You won’t find photographs of these ladies in the Singapore Tourism Board’s Things To Do In Singapore guide, of course. But everybody knows where they are. What I didn’t realise was that these places are not just ad hoc meat racks established in various nooks and crannies. These brothels operate in geo-graphically, and legally, defined districts of Singapore. They are termed designated red-light areas (DRA’s). Only a Singaporean civil servant could come up with the term ‘designated red-light areas’ and not laugh.

  In England, hookers operated in areas known as NFPA, which stood for No Fucking Policemen Around. But prostitution was never as organised, much less legalised, as it is in Singapore. It’s so systematic it’s terrifying. Hookers must carry a yellow health card at all times, which can only be earned through regular hospital check ups. In London, a quick post-pub nightcap with a Soho ‘working
girl’ and you risked catching ‘the clap’, which is a wonderfully romantic colloquialism for a sexually transmitted disease. No chance of that in Singapore.

  The commonly known DRA’s, and I’m sure there are others, are Desker Road, Orchard Road’s Orchard Towers, which is tastefully known as the four floors of whores and, of course, Geylang. Home to some great hawker centres, thousands of foreign workers and countless brothels, Geylang serves Singaporeans in the same way that Soho serves Londoners. It’s a haven for the sex-starved. I’ve been there several times with friends and we laugh, ogle and make predictable, juvenile comments, male banter and all that bullshit. But honestly, the place is a public sewer. You end up feeling like Robert De Niro’s deranged Taxi Driver, praying that torrential rain will wash away the sleazy clientele and blow the nocturnal nightmare from the memory.

  I’ve encountered prostitution before, of course. I’m not going to pretend I was Dagenham’s answer to The Artful Dodger, but I did come across one or two stone-faced ladies selling their wares in Manchester’s city centre late at night, when I was there as a student. But I never felt sympathy for them in the same way that I do for the young girls in Geylang. In Manchester, and this will sound grossly stereotypical I know, the women were so typically fierce and resilient. Hard as nails, they could humiliate you in front of your peers with one savage tongue lashing. Metaphorically, of course, not literally. Undoubtedly, that may have been a facade. No one wants to be standing on Manchester’s Oxford Road at 1am, trying to somehow make a frozen body look sexually desirable. Nevertheless, if their ferocious independence was an act, it was pretty damn convincing.

  In Geylang, the poor girls look so young and fragile, you want to rescue them like some patronising Victorian liberal. You certainly don’t want to sleep with them. Many of the girls are from China, of course, and I’m aware of the scheming Chinese “Crows” who arrive here to work these Singaporean streets paved with gold. Perhaps the girls I’ve seen, standing outside seedy hotels at 3am, are merely keeping up appearances too. Perhaps, their demure, innocent, slightly startled look is all an act too. But if they really are heartless, ruthless money grabbers then they, too, are pretty damn convincing.