by CJ Tan
Those poor women in shawls eating out of garbage cans at 5:00 am, well, sometimes I’d think there’d never be anything but hard times like this. So many guys sleeping out in the street, at least I had this roof over my head. First thing I did when I came out of the unemployment days was to put that roof over my head.
Most of the time, I couldn’t straighten up after an evening and I would always be getting these terrible cricks in my back. I booked in sloppy sometimes. My head just fuzzed on me was all. My head fuzzed…..
One night, I dreamt I got back to my former workplace in Hewlett Packard after a typical day with over three hundred bucks in my pocket and all the food court seats were taken by Indian foreigners. The food court had been converted to sell Indian food to suit their tastebuds. I’d have to go back out again on another shift. All I could see were signs on the walls: BE ALERT! The computer programmer is always ready for the unexpected.
That girl in the massage parlor who spread her legs open as walking past the glass panels and I thought this was just like hell. Hell surely.
People are really weird. The woman who signs your time-sheets thinks she’s got something on you. So goddamm unfriendly.
I guess she thinks you stink on ice just for being a security guard.
One night I asked for her name. “Come on,” she said, “Just because I work in a joint like this doesn’t mean I am that kind of girl. I am too good for you.” And she wouldn’t give me her name. Even after I told her I was serious: “Really”.
Well, then she says, “Want me to call the boss? What you want?”
So cruel and cold.
I ordered a big coca-cola – without ice – and a large buttered popcorn, and …. Some of the chocolate covered malted milk balls. Kind that makes you cavities ache. It came to $1.47 and they didn’t have cokes so I took a Royal Crown…. That’s when this little sorta diddy started going around and around in my head: “Whatsa life without a wife a cunt without any kindness?”
Little bits and pieces to that effect. Over and over again: “What’s a cunt without a heart a heart without a cunt?”
I don’t say it’s topflight, topnotch, really great stuff. I was only trying to express myself. Honesty. Better that than go altogether weird like the others. Those other security guards.
Those other security guards I knew, all they ever did was hate Deputy Prime Minister Suman Shammugan and the dinge. Even the dinge. They hated him too and all they ever did was jabber. Everything’s a remark. Must be because they were so bored they just had to let off some steam heat.
There’s Rizal and they just call him Freak-me-Out some people because he liked to do crazy stupid things at night with the zipper on his trousers in the front seat.
Says a guy can get a lot that way too.
He used to say his wife had taken this lover and he would kill the son of a bitch if he weren’t so grateful.
Morny is in love with a lady property agent. Big bull dyke, she won’t give him the right time of day. He wants to soften her. She aims to be a top 20 in sales. He’s always keeping tabs on her when she is around PHA. He knows her customers, and where she eats and who she is seeing after work. Well she calls Morny a pig and he isn’t, he’s just extremely jealous and possessive of his right to know her. She calls all the security guards pigs. Liked to have slapped her one sometime only Morny would get pretty mad at me if I did. He’s a married man too and he needed all his friends he can get. Not to say she was much.
There was this one Chinese security guard Charley. I used to see a lot with Morny and everything he said was a big racist remark. It was never just a customer he was seeing but a Malay or an Indian or Eurasian, a colored customer. That’s why he called his own. Colored. We are all hanging out and he has remarks galore for everybody who passes by or is in the place. Like he tries to show he knows who you are by speaking your own language.
Despite all, I’d never known how to share my life with others. Shared only the worst of it. If at all. But human beings are not bullies. They enjoy experience.
All my life I’d known that, it seems to me and I still could not convince myself it was so. Seems like I was just living in this motel, couldn’t pay the rent, couldn’t leave. Waiting for that money from home.
All my life, I thought needed was a sense of direction, someplace to go.
Those near and dear to me.
Between shifts, I got to spending a lot of time on the corner of Toa Payoh. The Shanmuggan Campaign Headquarters. A store front: “Singaporeans for Suman Shanmuggan for President of Singapore.”
The primary was July 20. A long way off. People seemed pretty excited already.
Suman had something. He was no middle-class bullshit artist. He looked like he could be your friend for life or your friend’s friend. A happy man. Lotsa positive vibes. Had one of those nice clean honest faces. Middle-aged, smiling with thin lips, wiry gary hair. Used to wear seersucker suits and pink shirts. Nice ties. I thought I would vote for him though that was not why I was hanging out.
That day, I picked up an iPhone that was dropped along one of those bucket seats. When I picked up the phone, I saw 3 missed calls and one SMS message. I called the number and it was answered by a woman with a Pinoy accent. Initially, she berated me for holding up the queue in PHA and calling me a ‘useless hubby who will be forever unemployed’. Upon realising that I was not her husband, she froze and changed tune and apologised. She wanted me to return the iPhone to her husband who was working in XingPost Limited in Paya Laba as soon as possible.
Apparently, she was the wife and worked in the Suman’s campaign office. The SMS message read “meet me at Josephine Chow’s office tomorrow to see my lawyer. Don’t you dare not turn up”.
Today was the day when I would return the iPhone back to her. Apparently, she is quite a beautiful lady as evidenced by the photos kept in the gallery of the iPhone. I didn’t even know her name but she was beautiful, tall and brunette and clean and cool. I liked keeping an eye on her, watching her with the other workers. There was a guy she talked to a lot. A chub, cute with a big shock of curly brown hair and glasses. Sort of a kid brother type. He reminded me of my second lieutenant. Well I don’t think she liked him that much but he liked her.
Me, I had eyes for her too, liked to watch her a lot, all the time. She was one of Singapore’s ‘chosen immigrants’ to prep up our falling birth rates. I sometimes think, so beautiful and fortunate. When she walked out on the street to get coffee, she always seemed to float above any of the others, suspended. She was certainly better than your run of the mill. I didn’t know what she did, we never spoke. Once in a while, our eyes touched through the glass and then she had to look away, or I would get a stare. I thought if it was ever going to happen this was it. I could only stand so much. Like being inside a tin can, holes for peering out. I had the cab fitted out with a rubber portable fan and a little transistor radio, but it was still not all the comforts of home: And I would always park across the street and stare at her typing or talking on the phone, such a beauty.
Well, one day, she pointed me out to her friend and she was coming at me through the door so I just put the cab in gear and drove away, fast. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to get involved. What did I know about politics anyway? A lone wolf like me. The’re all no good, I thought but she was so very beautiful.
I thought she was my dream woman. She always wore this nice long yellow dress or a Suman T-shirt, jeans. Built nice. She spent so much time on the phone, too, talking and looking happy and she typed with only 2 fingers. So stylish, slender, a little pug nose,brown hair, a yellow dress that clung to her body, among the masses on the street, untouched by the crowd.
Well she was like an angel out of this open sewer, out of this filthy mass. Alone; they couldn’t touch her. I would call her – what’s wrong with just her? Names wouldn’t change a thing about the way I felt for her. I’d call her Her….
But that day when her male colleague started out the door, I got so very frighte
ned and angry and started to drive away because I could see her pointing me out to him.
I don’t think he meant to chase me away. He was just being protective of her. That’s all…
By that day, I had given her a birthday. April 15, the anniversary of our eyes first meeting a week ago. I still didn’t know a thing about her except that I was madly in love with this person, if she was who I thought she was, my woman I could respond to.
I tried writing notes to leave for her: “I am a working person vitally concerned about the welfare of our country. I want to help Mr Suman and return your hubby’s iPhone to you. Can we talk? I want to meet.”
“I think you are a lovely clean young woman… Could we be friends?”
There was also a sort of poem I scribbled to myself, though I would never send her that: I bring you my lonely death with open arms to love you. Like a flower that smells sweetest whenever you are bending over it
Well, I never finished that one because it seemed she would not understand. All that week, my favourite song was, “Killing me Softly with his Song,”
I wondered what her favourite song was. Deep in my thoughts. A dreaming time. I’d have to buy her an album with my letter of introduction and poem when we got acquainted. One thing was certain, she was very well brought up. You could tell.
Well people do such things when they are about to have a relationship and I was talking to a lot of people about a lot of things lately. In my day shift, a property agent says to me, “Singapore is always cold when it’s hot and hot when it’s cold, ever wonder about that?”
At the PHA at 3:30 one morning, I’m with Morny and we are comparing our shift. The usual shit: How everybody tries to drag the security guard into their quarrels if they can. How they talk to you. How lonely it is in the night.
How they don’t even care sometimes if you are listening. And customers, they like to chisel you.
A fat guy with a sob story about his divorce. The guy was a bad drunk and he said he felt all mixed up, ethically and professionally. Words to that effect. When people tell you these things. They don’t really want you to hear really. In my journal, I write, Fat men carry their lives in a big bulge.
On April 14th, I wrote the following in my journal:
“Dear Diary – this really happened. I got up the nerve and went to Suman Shammugan’s headquarters today to see her and return to her and return her the phone.”
No kidding. I got all dressed up: Tie, pressed my jacket with the Singapore Computer Engineering Association and slacks, shined my shoes, shaved, walked right through that door on my own two feet.
Entered the place quickly, at a quick step march, headed right for her desk. That guy she sees with the curly hair trotted over, too, though I ignored him.
Me: “I want to volunteer.”
I was feeling a little panicky but OK, I guess, except for wear and tear from lack of sleep. So he comes over to her right then, too, and interrupts: “If you’ll come this way.” Didn’t even call me sir like they usually do.
Well, I give him the elbow. I’m not budging. I didn’t have enough time to notice what’s going on with her.
I just plant myself there and say, “No, I want to volunteer to you.” I took out the white bony iPhone to her and placed it on her table. “And at the same time, return this phone to you. It has 3 missed calls since you lost it yesterday.”
He sort of warns her, in an undertone, “Sienna.” Now I know for certain that’s her name. But she waves him away. Everything is going to be OK. She is looking at me real warmly, I think. Then he goes about his business and she says to me, “Why? Why is that?”
Me: “Because you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. And here is your phone. With 3 missed calls from your husband.”
“Soon-to-be-ex husband.” She corrected me. She seems to like that, in a mild way. She knows I’m coming on, gets startled, though not angry. Those lovely greenish-blue eyes are watching me close.
She: Smiling all the while, “Is that so? But what do you think of Suman Shanmuggan?”
“Who, ma’am?”
“Suman Shamuggan. The man you want to volunteer to help elect President.”
“Oh, I think he’s wonderful, a wonderful man. Make a great, great President.”
“Do you want to canvass?”
I’m trembling. We are sort of playing around, I think.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She’s grinning a bit now.
“What do you think of Suman’s stand on minimum wage system?”
She’s a real teaser, no doubt about it.
Me: I’m feeling as though I can finally speak my mind to a friend.
That guy is shuffling his papers a few desks away.
“Minimum wage system,” I asked very respectful at first, and polite. Well, even though politics is not my bread and butter, I have my views. “Well, I’d say he wants to get all the lazy people off welfare, all them old coots. Make them work for a change.”
She gives me a funny look again and then another, unreal, a little more interested.
“Well, that’s not exactly what the incumbent President has proposed. You might not want to canvass but there is plenty of other work we need done: office work, hanging pictures.”
Me: “I’m a good worker, ma’am, a real good worker.”
She says, with her cool little smile, “Call me Sienna, that’s my name. If you talk to Tom over there, he’ll assign you to something.”
“If you don’t mind, Sienna, I’d rather work for you.”
“Well, we are all working tonight.”
When I tell her I drive a taxi at night, she lifts her eyebrows at this, asks, “Well, then what is it you exactly want to do?”
“If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’d be mighty pleased if you would go out and have some coffee with me.”
Well so did she. Seem pleased. Real pleased, even smiled, openly. “All right.” Then she seems to be thinking again. “All right. I see you are not just another pretty face. Well I am taking a break at four o’clock and if you are here we will go to the coffee shop at the corner and have some coffee.”
Tom over there didn’t seem too pleased but I was.
“Oh, I appreciate that, Sienna, ma’am. I’ll be here at four o’clock. Exactly.”
“Sienna,” I went on.
“Yes?” She was delighted with me.
“My name is Cheng Juan.”
“Well, thank you, Cheng Juan.”
And after 4pm, I added the following little note in the same book:
“Sienna even nicer than I thought and very well brought up, too. Lives a broad. Sienna wouldn’t tell me much. Said her parents had been cruel to her when she was little. Well, I don’t see how, the way she looks. They must have loved her a lot, though she wouldn’t tell me more. Said it was time she grew up.”
Which all goes to prove I took Sienna to the Mayfair Coffee Shop and had only just returned when I started writing in my book again.
Me: Black coffee and apple pie with melted yellow cheese. I think that was a good selection.
Sienna: Coffee and a fruit salad dish. She could have had anything she wanted.
She told me at first about her work with all the volunteers. Hundreds of them. Said, “The organisational problems are just staggering.”
Me: “I know what you mean. I got the same problem. I just can’t get things organised. Little things, I mean. Like my room, and possessions. I should get one of those signs that say, ‘One of these days I’m going to get organised.’”
Well I guess I ended up grinning at myself and her like that because she matched me with her own grin then and laughed, threw back her head with all that blond soft hair and said, again: “Cheng Juan, you really are not just another pretty face. I never met anybody like you before.”
“I can believe that.” Though I was blushing.
Sienna asked, “Where do you work?”
I pointed into the direction of PHA building and
explained how I had this regular job for a while days doing this and that computer server maintenance stuff. Didn’t go into any of the details about the server room and stuff. Why should I?
Why should I reveal that I am just a security guard to ruin my chances with her. No Pinoy girl would fall in love with a Singaporean male who earns lower than her. But I did tell her I never had much to do nights. That I got kinda lonely and that’s when I decided to work nights coz at nights, we do server maintenance so that it doesn’t get disruptive to the other staff who work normal day shift working hours.
That was when I picked up her husband’s phone in one of the bucket seat when I went down to the customer service counter.
“It ain’t good to be lonely,” I told her, “you know”
Sienna says, “After this job, I’m looking forward to being alone for a while after my divorce. Things haven’t been working out well ever since he was demoted from being the post office worker to a financial consultant. That’s why I shouted at him over the phone when you picked it up yesterday.”
Me: “Yeah, well… the forces of globalisation and privatisation of state-owned enterprises have done wrongs to Singaporeans in general and with people like you……” Trailing off, as I might be referring to the influx of foreigners like Sienna.
Sienna asks, “What kind of people?”
“Just people, people, you know, just people.”
Well, you know, again, I didn’t want to go into any of the amazing unreal details. Just stuck with the obvious. Bullshit like that. Didn’t mention that sickening security guard job.
I felt she was pushing me a bit, so I said, “Oh, you see lots of freaky stuff when you work in PHA.”
I wasn’t exactly trying to impress her but it was getting me down being there like that with nothing more to say (a person would never understand, I thought, if I said what was really on my mind).
Sienna cut me short with another question, “What hours do you work?”
I explained how it all came to about seventy hours a week. Sienna (amazed): “You mean you work seventy hours a week as a computer engineer in PHA?”
Me: “Sometimes we work overtime but because we are white collar workers, there is no overtime pay. Sometimes, things can get unpredictable. For example, changing a new server may take 2 hours but the data transfer would take more than 6 hours which means my weekends are burnt. It keeps you busy.”
Sienna: “You know what you remind me of?”’
“What.”
Sienna smiling again. “That song by Springsteen, in 2009, he wrote his first song about a "guy that wears a tie in his album Wrecking Ball". The financial crisis reportedly convinced him it was time to write about the people and forces that brought America to a breaking point to Occupy Movement.”
Well you know, as soon as I heard the word, breaking point, I half shut off on her. Grew a little riled.
Said, “I’m no anti-foreigner or anti-globalisation……”
“Oh,” she said, all wide-eyed. “Well, I didn’t mean that, Cheng Juan, honest. Just the other part…. About the guy that wears a tie…”
Words to that effect. As I recall. Bullshit like that.
Well, so I said, “Who was that you said, again?”
“The singer?”
Told Sienna I didn’t follow music much.
“Bruce,” she said, slowly. “Springsteen.”
I confided to my journal why I went to HMW to buy her that Bruce Springsteen Wrecking Ball record:
“Now that I know her, Sienna,” I wrote, “I can give it to her if we ever go out. A good first meeting. Didn’t like being pushed so much about me. What do I know about her except she is lovely. Real pretty.”
“Such a beauty. Stuff like that. Guess she must just be stringing her husband along. Who am I to her? I always get uncomfortable around a woman after the first few minutes because I am living a lie.”
“I think I talked too much. She was real easy to talk to. In some ways. In others not. I had to lie a little. Anyway, she always got more out of me that I got from her. No fair. Don’t want her to betray me. Ever.
Decided finally I can’t walk around with a broken heart rest of my life over what’s not going to happen with me and some women so I brought her the album. Approx $10. Maybe I’ll take her to a movie. If only I could find out her last name. Must remember to ask her things like that and maybe racial and religious origins.”
In case you don’t know it I’m the sort of person there’s always a crisis moving up I’m not doing too well at. It’s always a case of overwhelming odds, I think, except maybe with Sienna. Lately things were always happening to me in PHA I didn’t know what to do about.
That very same afternoon, the gal who spread her legs open came by again and said, “Hellow Cheng Juan, how are you?”
“I’m fine…”
“Good,” she said. “My name is Myra. Can I suck your cock?”
“Well I don’t know about that.” I found myself asking him, “What did you say your name was?”
“Myra,” she said, “But you haven’t answered my question.”
“Sorry, I don’t think we ever met before.”
“Well, if we had,” she says, handing me a five dollar note, “even if we had, would that matter? I just want a Singapore husband to stay in Singapore a bit longer to prostitute myself.”
My journal reports that on April 27 I called her finally at the office, of course, and she said we could go to the movies together after she got out of work tomorrow, my day off.
Other things would happen too: Like with the tourists. A woman comes to PHA from China and asks me how to go to the PHA Auditorium. Well, I was so upset I didn’t even know where it was. I carried this little blue book but that doesn’t help.
In those days, I was living for nice smiles, but in between shifts, I somehow managed to walk past Suman headquarters for another look at Sienna.
My journal reports that on April 27 I called her finally at the office, of course and she said we could go to the movies together after she got out of work tomorrow, my day off.
On that very same day on the way uptown, a party of three very nice well-dressed men stopped me and one of them was, guess who… the man Sienna is working so hard for, Mr Suman Shammugam himself. Her boss. Her hero.
Well he looked so much more real in person. Sort of a nice-looking fellow. Like a TV commentator. Well, I just had to check the rear view mirror to know just who I was seeing. But my eyes certainly did not deceive me.
The candidate was talking about how to line up delegates from Singapore when I interrupted him.
Said, “Say, aren’t you the candidate, Mr Suman Shammugan?...”
Well, I guess that happens to him all the time with his face as big as life in color all over Singapore but he said, only mildly irritated, “Yes, I am.”
He cleared his throat. “Well,” says I, “I’m one of your biggest supporters. I tell you and everybody that comes into PHA, they should vote for you.”
I can feel his eyes moving from my shoulders to the Singapore Computer Engineering Association badge on my jacket. He’s smart.
Suman says, “This is going to be a crucial race here in Singapore. A tight race with many voters unhappy with globalisation and growing income disparity.”
Me: “I’m sure you will win. Sir. Everyone I know is going to vote for you.”
“In fact,” I tell him, “I was going to put one of your stickers on this jacket, but the company said it was against their policy.”
“Well,” Suman says, “I’ve always respected the opinions of computer engineers.”
So now he stopped relating to his other friends and seems interested in me. “Tell me, what single thing would you want the next President of the country to do most?”
I told him just like I told Sienna: “Reduce the widening income gap. Improve our unions. Robin Hood style – tax the rich and give to the poor.” Words to that effect.
“It’s filled
with filthy greed,” I told him. Words to that effect. “Greed is like an open wound. It’s too open, it can get infected. We need a President that would clean up and flush out the greedy pigs in every organisation.”
I figured he was not some professional bullshitter but a real person, a real man, if Sienna liked him so much. And he looked OK to me, too, as I say, but I guess he couldn’t help but be a little vague. Said something like “I know just what you mean”
His friends were looking more upset than he.
Suman said, “It’s not going to be easy. Look at Sweden, their union is so strong that each employee is drawing too high a salary until the employers cannot fire them or reduce their income. In the end, this affected the fresh graduates from Sweden universities who can’t even find jobs after graduation. We are going to have radical changes but not so soon.”
Me: “Damned straight.”
Afterwards, I felt lonely again.
Felt a little let down.
Well I mean I had this Wrecking Ball Springsteen CD for Sienna and all gift wrapped by my side and I was going to be with her in just a while and I knew I couldn’t breathe a word about that to the Mr Suman and there he went all slim, neat, and trim from the shoulders down, up these steps, through the glittery entrance to the Plaza.
Well, I just had to go right home and clean up because I had to let Sienna see me as a computer engineer and not as a security guard.
The rest is history. My journal records: She was smartly dressed when I went to see her tonight all blue. I can’t describe the exact outfit but it was neat. For sure. Sienna seemed very glad to see me too. We are walking down.
The big moment: I give Sienna her CD and seems very very please. It was a limited edition Bruce Springsteen. It had one more extra bonus track titled “Calling You”.
Says, “Terrific. I told you you weren’t just another pretty……….”
“Face,” I interrupt as we walk.
“Really, you didn’t have to spend your money.”
Well, she saw the seal on the album hadn’t been broken and said, “CJ, you haven’t even played this.”
Well I lied to her, my player was broke but assured her the album was just fine.
Sienna was pointing to the CD. “So you haven’t even heard this song yet?”
“No.” I took a chance on Sienna then, said, “I thought maybe you could play it for me on your player later.”
Well it was the wrongest thing to say. I know that now. Her face just turned off on me. She looked really worried, bit her lower lip and made a little laugh.
Well I asked could I carry the CD for her and then I turned her on the corner from Toa Payoh to ERA Centre. Eng Wah Cinemas was showing Lost Weekend, a revival. We went next door where they advertised in big letters, “Swedish Marriage Manual,” because I wanted her to know that I was a serious person. Not just in this for kicks. I said, “You stay here and l’ll buy the tickets.”
She actually started pulling on my hand, then my elbow: “What are you doing?” Unreal again, the look on her face.
“Buying a couple of tickets.”
“But,” she sputtered, “these are movies that normal people go to.”
“No,” I tried to explain, “These are the kind that couples go to. They are not like some others. All kinds of couples go all the time.”
I wanted her to follow me. I wanted her inside that movie theatre with me. Wanted her to see with me.
Sienna wasn’t buying any of that. “CJ,” she said, “these aren’t the kind of movies normal people go to.”
“Well, mostly….”
Again, that look. She slapped her brow with one hand, weakly, “My God!”
Well it was very crowded there with the usual freaks and degnerates staring at us when she started walking away back toward the corner of the street and Sienna started pulling me by the elbow to another movie poster, “We can go to this movie if you’d like. I don’t care. There’s plenty of movies around here. I haven’t seen this yet.” She pointed to Fifty Shades of Grey. “I’m sure this one is all good.”
Sienna looked so filthy when she said that. She seemed determined to watch Fifty Shades of Grey, stamping her foot and looking at me very grimly, her lips tight: No, CJ, you are a sweet guy and all that but I need something dirty.’
“You mean,” I asked, feeling embarrassed in front of all those people, “You wanna watch something porno?”
Sienna seemed practically in tears, “Yes.”