She sighed.
‘It’s here in Singapore you discover the simplest of pleasures – like well-baked bread or the proper sound of a baby grand.’
And with a tiny lowering of the jaw and a faint gesture, she dismissed me. ‘Time for tiffin,’ she declaimed.
I am halfway through my second cocktail when I ask the barman to take a picture of me. ‘I’m in Singapore, with a sling, having a Singapore Sling. Couldn’t make it up if I wanted to,’ I tell him.
This is it! I can laugh about it.
The joke sweeps the bar like a Mexican wave. Two German girls chuckle; they have ordered one Sling between them and make it last for an hour, whereas the giggling English girl opposite has downed one by herself. Next to me, the backpacker couple laugh in that loud manner only Australians have perfected.
‘There is another famous Raffles cocktail, Sir,’ says the barman. ‘Invented by Ngiam Tong Boon, himself: the Million Dollar Cocktail.’
‘Does it cost as much?’ I ask in jest.
The barman grins with the familiar condescension of someone who has heard the same witticism one million times. ‘For you, $16 only – but that’s before tax,’ he says. ‘It appears in a book by Maugham,’ he adds as a further incentive.
He’s right, it does. The Million Dollar Cocktail crops up in The Letter, one of Maugham’s short stories made famous in the 1940 film of the same name starring Bette Davis. I’m getting nicely sloshed, I have travelled far, and I am not going to miss out on such a literary encounter. Especially if it is freshly made.
‘Let us all know how it tastes,’ say the Australians, probably hoping I’ll offer them a sip. Well, no, we haven’t been that friendly.
I try the brown concoction placed in front of me, sweet-and-sour, like, like…
‘It tastes like fruity real ale,’ is my verdict.
The Australians laugh loudly again. I wonder if sometimes they unconsciously expect that empty gullies and baking deserts will swallow the sounds of their mirth, bless them. They certainly scared off the mynahs and that’s no mean feat. The barman on the other hand appears shocked – whether it was my opinion or the racket of the Australians, I can not tell. Without saying a further word, he shows me a mat with a recipe which, of course, contains no traces of beer.
‘It’s probably the sweetness of the Sling lingering on,’ I say trying to make excuses, but they’re all in vain: from that point on, I am ostracised by the bar staff, who never speak to me again.
Only when I leave them a tolerable tip, does the barman manage a dutiful, ‘Thank you, Sir’.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE FAVOURITE
Fu means Luck; Fu means Favour; Fu means Goodwill. Fu is what Mi-zi Xia got in abundance when, as a beautiful slim, smooth youth, he appeared in front of the King of Wei. The passion of the King for him knew no bounds; in the courtier’s lashing tongue, ‘he was as affectionate and familiar with Mi-zi as a man would be with his wife’. Sometimes it seemed that Mizi’s pleasure and wellbeing were more important than matters of state and this troubled greatly the King of Wei’s mandarins. But while other sages whisperingly denounced the King’s all-consuming passion, the Chief Mandarin smiled cryptically and said: ‘Wait.’
One day, when the Chief Mandarin was accompanying the King and Mi-zi on a stroll in the Forbidden Orchard, the youth picked up a ripe peach from a tree. Impetuously, he bit into the orange-pink flesh without offering it first to the King. The Chief Mandarin seized the opportunity and cleared his throat with an eloquent cough. Mi-zi understood the implication at once and turned around, offering half of the peach to the King. He, in turn, beamed and accepted the fruit with a celestial smile. ‘Oh, Mi-zi,’ he said, ‘in truth you do love me sincerely. You have forgotten your craving and your hunger in order to please me. Blessed shall be our days together.’
The King’s entourage looked warily at the Chief Mandarin who whispered: ‘Wait.’
The days passed and the youth’s radiance turned into a man’s athletic blossom. The King was still taken in by Mi-zi and everyone lived happily – until, that is, Mi-zi’s mother fell ill. In his rush to be at her bedside unhindered by sentries and unmolested by highwaymen, Mi-zi secretly used the King’s carriage. Word got to the Chief Mandarin who leapt at the news: unauthorised use of the royal carriage was punishable by amputation of both legs. But when the King of Wei heard of the deed, he murmured approvingly: ‘What a son to his mother! In order to be at her deathbed he didn’t care about the sanctions. By heavens, this is true filial piety! Blessed shall be our days together.’
The King’s courtiers were assembled excitedly outside the Great Reception Hall. When the Chief Mandarin told the congregation of the ruler’s reaction, their looks hung dispiritedly in the air. ‘Wait,’ said the Chief Mandarin exuding confidence and detached wisdom.
The years passed and the good life took its toll on Mi-zi. He turned portly; his hairline receded; his face turned red from the over consumption of rice wine. While he steadily lost his looks, his Fu with the King diminished until there was none left. One spring morning when the snows from the mountains had melted, Mi-zi decided to go fishing, as he normally did that time of year, and made his way to the King’s private pond. The warden routinely informed the Chief Mandarin that Mi-zi had caught three of the Emperor’s own plump carp. But this time the Chief Mandarin was quick to denounce Mi-zi’s misdemeanour; using the King’s private pond was punishable by banishment – never mind that Mi-zi had fished there every spring for years.
The ruler’s reaction was swift: ‘I believe anything you say against that scoundrel,’ he cried. ‘Once he offered me a half-eaten peach! Remember? Another time he tried to steal my carriage! Remember? Ungrateful knave – to hell with him.’
The Chief Mandarin left the Great Reception Hall beaming. He conveyed the long-awaited news to a relieved assembly of courtiers: ‘It is my duty to announce to you that henceforth Mizi shall be banished from the Kingdom,’ he said and, shaking his head, he added: ‘The scales on the dragon’s back are smooth downwards, but they are sharp upwards: when you ride the dragon, you can only fall.’
- 9 -
The most unlikely place for a gay bar in Singapore must be on the first floor of a corner building overlooking a busy Chinatown junction, but that’s where you’ll find Backstage. In the most crowded pedestrian part of a city where sexual coyness reigns supreme, a huge rainbow flag is flying brazenly over the evening crowd. I swallow hard. It’s taken me ages, but I’m out on a Friday night.
A small sign leads me up a stairway adorned with old movie and theatre posters all individually framed. Some of them are familiar: Jack Lemmon in drag in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the lithography of the little girl’s face in Les Miserables, the intertwined arms in Blood Brothers; and some are lost in thespian mist: The Andrews Sisters in Over There, Copacabana starring Gary Wilmott, Company by Stephen Sondheim. In the bar itself, the air con is set on max as if coolness could be measured by degrees Fahrenheit. The young barman is the first peroxide-blonde Chinese I’ve ever met; in the bar’s dim darkness his hair is as strong a light source as the individual table lamps – perhaps more so. It’s 10 p.m. and Backstage is at its fullest. This must be the place to come before hitting the Singapore clubs, and I must confess that I am secretly curious about the nightlife of a city with the rip-roaring reputation of a sleepy Siberian settlement.
‘Go to Club Taboo,’ says the peroxide blonde whose name is David (‘like Beckham’, he informs me). ‘Most popular.’
I am concerned it might be too late. ‘Should I leave soon?’
‘Still early. Normally go there after midnight.’
Wow, an all-nighter, I tell myself as I open the balcony door. The hot, humid air hits me straight away. Singapore is a sauna in reverse with the sweat-inducing chamber on the outside and the cool relief to be found in the air-conditioned rooms inside. I sip my vodka and tonic next to the rainbow flag while observing the multitudes below. The male-only crowd aroun
d me is composed equally of gregarious Westerners and giggling Asians. The Westerners are mostly old, English, and uninterested in me. The Asians are much, much younger and they are staring at me unabashed, their pert eyes examining my face and the direction of my gaze. I daren’t look at any of them directly for longer than a nanosecond because I fear I will embolden them too much. I’m also feeling uncomfortable, because I’ve left my sling behind and I am keeping my left arm stuck lifelessly in my jeans pocket. Will they notice? I keep wondering. I gulp my drink quickly, overwhelmed by my new surroundings and self-conscious in an environment that should be familiar but turns out to be mildly oppressive.
As soon as I put my empty glass down, David is there immediately to take an order. I look out for the CCTV.
‘Another one?’ he asks me.
I point at an advertisement for the Chingay Parade. Is that Gay Pride?
He shakes his head. ‘No, Chinese festival. The “gay” bit accident. Pride different. We celebrate Pride. Out there.’
Out there is a scene so colourful it belongs to a Gilbert and Sullivan production. The low-rise terraced shophouses are bedaubed with deep, vivid pigments: paprika red, mustard yellow, sage green, date brown, berry blue. They stand on five-foot covered walkways, as decreed by Raffles himself, very practical in those frequent downpours. The fascias are a mixture of the colonial and oriental: there are pilasters and there are louvres, but they are painted in contrasting colour combinations that would have made even a Victoriana collector faint. The combined decorative effect is mildly psychedelic; there are good reasons for the ban on psychotropic substances in Singapore, and one of them is for your own protection against chromatic overkill.
I turn my gaze to the diner opposite which is closing. The lone waitress picks up the plastic chairs and stacks them by the kitchen. She lifts every round table with an audible grumph and walks awkwardly. Her centre of gravity is highly precarious as her arms form a twenty-past-eight arrangement on the round table boards. I grab sight of a middle-aged Chinese couple looking up and I detect some curiosity in their glances. They catch my eye and instantly look away, as if they had peeped through a keyhole and come up against a depravity.
David interrupts my reverie.
‘Pride not advertised. We must be discreet.’
I point at the big rainbow flag hanging over the Chinatown masses. ‘You call that discreet?’
David shrugs his shoulders. ‘A rainbow? Why no rainbow? Even children love rainbow. Nobody say “rainbow flag minus one colour, gay”. I did no’ say that. You did no’ say that.’
I kind of see the mindset behind relaxation of the Confucian leash; no persecution in turn for invisibility. It’s like being in an eternal Clintonian limbo: don’t ask, don’t tell. Toleration rather than tolerance is always the first step out of the shadows.
‘And you are happy with that?’ I ask.
‘Yes. We have club, sauna, bar and they leave us alone. And every year we have biggest gay party in Asia: Nation, on Sentosa Island.’ And picking up my empty glass, he repeats: ‘Another one?’
Yes, I do need another vodka and tonic. I need to get to terms with the imponderable. A thriving gay scene in Singapore? This is a country that still uses flogging for petty offences like scrawling graffiti on walls. This is a country with more mundane rules and regulations than the army and navy manuals combined. More to the point, it is a country that explicitly criminalises sex between males.
The heat outside is getting oppressive so I follow David to the bar and I pick up a gay map of ultra-conservative, Muslim Malaysia – plus one of Singapore. I look in and find Backstage, the bar I’m in. What is this mark on the map opposite us? An escort? A male escort?
David hands me a glossy magazine along with my vodka. ‘This is Manazine. It is gay,’ David explains matter-of-factly. ‘Before you buy it like a newspaper. But now MDA say: subscription only or free in gay bar.’
MDA stands for the Media Development Authority, a powerful organisation that can close magazines and fine editors.
Its Censorship Review Committee was last convened in April 2002 and its report was typically vague. Publications and society’s values should walk hand in hand and the press should be a follower, not a leader. Free speech depended on the cultural, economic and political set-up of a society and the parameters of expression regarding race, religion, violence, sexual content, nudity, homosexuality and coarse language had to be set considering Singaporean community values. (And who sets a marker for those values? No prizes for guessing.) So, although the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ – such Thatcherite wording– was to be prohibited, a more flexible approach would be put in place when dealing with homosexual themes and greater leeway would be allowed for adults to access non-exploitative content. In short, a discreet gay scene was to be allowed.
‘My friend there likes you.’
I crash down back to the present. David is pointing mischievously at a guy leaning against the bar. He is more Malay-looking than the rest of the patrons and his string vest loosely covers a well-defined torso. As I turn, he looks towards us, sees me staring, sees David giggling and makes a shooting sign with his finger. Then he points at his mouth and blows to cool down the imaginary barrel.
I laugh, give him the thumbs up and make a mental note to exchange phone numbers when I leave. Tonight I really want to check out those clubs.
- 10 -
I leave Backstage at midnight and follow the South Bridge Road down to the end. It’s a Saturday night and yet all is quiet. The damp air should magnify the flip and flop of every sandal’s footstep; yet, in a city where open footwear is de rigeur, I hear none: I am the only one walking the street. This is a major road but there are few cars and they are gliding around mutely like dolphins in the deep. I long for the drivers to rev the engines up and accelerate until the traffic lights where they can drop two gears in succession to make some ear-splitting noise. Are orientals as in love with the motor car as Westerners? Maybe yes, maybe not; maybe this is the love that dares not count its cost: import prices on this congested island can be triple those in the United States or Europe. But even so, those who have cars don’t seem to enjoy them. Give it some gas, remind me I’m in a city that’s alive.
Yet the street is stirring in a different way: it is hypervisual. The light-polluted sky appears verdigris like an ancient Greek discoloured bronze. Flashing neon signs make up for what the night lacks in sound and the occasional strobe illuminates a laminated glass door from the inside. So, there are people within those soundproofed clubs. But the whirr of the air conditioning units is more boisterous than the timid hum emanating from Tantric Bar – another rainbow flag poised over a main traffic artery – and it doesn’t even have a door to shut. This area was a nutmeg plantation until the 1850s; I bet it was more noisy then. Is anyone out now or shall I go back to my hotel?
I suddenly notice the silent line of clubbers a few minutes ahead and pinch myself. A queue? And by the rate this one is moving, it looks like twenty minutes or so to the scary bouncer with the pencil ’tache.
The guy next to me must have arrived at the same conclusion, because he’s lighting up.
‘Cigarette?’ he offers me.
I take a good look at him. Another ang moh, but tall, taller than me, much more corpulent and with a tiny head that stands on his shoulders like a potato on a sack. I reckon he’s only in his thirties but the years have been as unkind to his countenance as they have been to his hairline; to top it all, they have conspired to expose his piggy ears that stick out like two large sea anemones, feeding. I decline his offer by shaking my head and look around to see if I fancy anybody.
‘Long queue, isn’t it?’ he says.
I make a sour face, for I hate queues like I hate wine recorkers.
‘Such is life,’ he says philosophically.
I shrug my shoulders, realising I haven’t answered back. Rude, I know, but what the hell, I find him creepy.
‘Been here before?’ His
English accent was very shire. I look ahead. One person on the line gets in, one hundred thousand million to go! Might as well be sociable; I’m stuck with this guy like others are born with unsavoury relatives.
‘No, first time,’ I reply. ‘What’s it like? I’m surprised such a place exists.’
‘Yes, remarkable. It all started recently. I wouldn’t exactly say the PAP has embraced homosexuality, but –’
The PAP?
‘The People’s Action Party. The ruling party since independence. We have one-party democracy in Singapore.’
He laughs.
‘You live here then?’ I ask.
‘Oh, yes! Yes. The only way I’d leave is if they expelled me for corrupting the youth.’
Another person from the line gets in. At this rate we won’t get in until Friday week.
‘So, has the government changed their policy now?’
‘It’s been some time. In 2003 the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told Time magazine how they would accept openly gay people in the civil service.’
You don’t say.
‘It was considered a blackmailable predicament.’
‘But gay sex is still illegal?’
‘It is. But it’s a dead law. No one has been prosecuted for more than a decade.’
‘Why the change of heart?’
The potatohead fixes me with his stare. ‘You are a tourist. British aren’t you? You don’t understand.’
‘Don’t understand what?’
‘How you create a nation where none exists.’
‘Singapore is many nations,’ I retort.
‘It’s early days yet.’
The queue is almost racing now. They’re going in in threes and fours...
‘How do you create a nation by being nice to homosexuals?’ I ask.
He was waiting for that, if only to find my name.
‘Singapore, my dear – what is it?’
Singapore Swing Page 7