Gimme Lao bit his lip and thought hard. The boys by the wall started a chorus of wolf whistles. The girls giggled. Omala was about to put in a good word when Gimme Lao suddenly turned to her and held out his hand. The boys erupted into spontaneous cheering as Omala took off her frock uneasily and handed it over.
His face tense but determined, Gimme Lao strode over to the group of boys, glared at them belligerently and quietly slipped on the frock. At first, the boys laughed out loud. Gimme Lao remained silent but took a step closer. Some of the boys became unnerved by the proximity and belligerence of their subject of ridicule, and their laughter quickly dwindled. An awkward silence ensued. The head of the gang finally realised that Gimme Lao had effectively robbed them of their fun and with a scowl, gestured for the rest of the gang to retreat.
The game of zero point was constantly interrupted for the rest of the session. Every time curious onlookers came to gawk or ogle, Gimme Lao would stride up to them and stare them down till the element of fun was completely eroded. In no time, the girls were so frustrated with the interruptions they began to shoo the onlookers away before Gimme Lao had a chance to react.
By the third day, word had gotten around to the teachers. The principal, together with the disciplinary master, decided to investigate the matter. They recruited a mole from among the zero point players and received confirmation before they launched their surprise visit to the secluded garden. All the girls froze and looked worried.
“Why are you in a frock?” the disciplinary master asked in a severe tone.
Gimme Lao turned pallid. The disciplinary master had a reputation for ruthlessness when he dealt with recalcitrant students.
“Boys do not wear frocks,” the disciplinary master declared. “Only an Ah Gua would wear a frock. Do you want to put on lipstick and wear high heels and become an Ah Gua?”
Some of the girls giggled. There were a handful of effeminate boys in school that were badly teased and labelled as Ah Gua. The disciplinary master quickly singled out Omala, who was conspicuously missing her frock.
“And why did you lend him your frock?”
Omala looked around helplessly. Gimme Lao had his head bowed, while the other girls remained silent and unsupportive. Garnasai glared at her ferociously, daring her to mention her name.
When the disciplinary master realised he wasn’t going to extract any confession from the pair of recalcitrants, he decided to escalate it to the next level. “I want both of your mothers to see me tomorrow morning before the assembly.”
On the ride home in the school bus, Omala nudged Gimme Lao and asked if he was going to comply with the instruction. Gimme Lao shook his head. It was embarrassing enough to be called an Ah Gua by the disciplinary master in front of a group of girls. He did not want his mother to hear that too. Omala thought about it and decided she would meet the disciplinary master’s injunction midway. She would bring her cousin Sabitha, but keep her mother out of it.
Omala’s strategy did not work. When the disciplinary master saw Sabitha, he simply waved her away. “I asked to see your mother. Not your sister, not your cousin. Which part of my instruction was unclear?”
At the assembly that followed, the disciplinary master took to the stage and summoned the pair of misfits. To Gimme Lao’s horror, he made Omala remove her frock and hand it over. “Since you obviously like it, you will wear it in front of the whole school.”
The giggles and cackles in the assembly rippled from the front row backwards as those behind stood on toes or leaned sideways to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. Riotous laughter erupted when the disciplinary master produced half a dozen clothes pegs and proceeded to pinch small tufts of Gimme Lao’s hair upright. By the time he whipped out a lipstick and drew on Gimme Lao’s lips, the assembly grid had collapsed. All those behind were pushing their way forward to get a better glimpse. Some of the teachers laughed too, although there were a few who looked perturbed.
The disciplinary master allowed the students to have their fill of laughter before ordering them back into their assembly grid. Pointing his finger at Gimme Lao, who was by then sobbing with acute humiliation, he delivered his message through a loudspeaker, “This is how an Ah Gua looks like. If you are a boy, dress like a boy. Boys do not wear skirts, or frocks, or gowns or dresses. Only if you want to be an Ah Gua, then you dress like Gimme Lao. Do you want to be an Ah Gua? Do you?”
The disciplinary master kept pressing until the entire assembly gave him a resounding ‘no’. He then turned to Gimme Lao and proclaimed, “Let this be a lesson to you, Gimme Lao. There are boundaries you do not cross. You are born a boy. You will grow up a man. One day in the future, you will recall this day of humiliation and thank me for stopping you in time before you turn into a wayward Ah Gua.”
Gimme Lao was weeping inconsolably when the disciplinary master had a teacher help remove his frock and lead him to the toilet to wash up. For the rest of the day, he hid his head in his folded arms on his desk and sniffled intermittently. His class teachers let him be. On the school bus going home, Omala sat next to him and ferociously stared down anyone who dared hurl a snigger at her buddy. Gimme Lao was too distraught to put up any form of defence himself.
By the time the bus deposited them below their block, Gimme Lao and Omala had come to an agreement. This episode of humiliation would be kept a secret from their families. The two sealed their agreement with a tug on their little fingers, not knowing that the bird was already out of the cage. Unbeknown to them, Sabitha had stayed back and witnessed their humiliation from the far end of the assembly field. Both the Subramaniams and the Laos had learnt all about it.
Over dinner, Gimme Lao was grilled by his parents. Both Mary Lao and her husband wanted to know the details. Strangely though, the two interrogators had entirely different focuses. His father wanted to know why on earth he put on a frock, while his mother wanted to know exactly how the disciplinary master had punished him in the assembly. As the dinner came to an end, the two interrogators arrived at vastly different conclusions. Gimme Lao’s father concluded that Gimme Lao had it coming and hoped that the public humiliation would dissuade him from ever crossing the boundary again. Mary Lao however stared at her husband in disgust.
“Have you not been listening to our boy?” she gasped. “He had been issued a challenge, and he took it up. That was why he put on a frock!”
“And you think that makes it right?” her husband retorted, incredulous.
“I am saying he had a reason.”
“He has to learn to do the right thing.”
“If we all had to do the right thing, the two of us wouldn’t be married in the first place, would we?” Mary Lao snapped and almost immediately regretted it. They both blushed deeply and stole a furtive glance at Gimme Lao. The boy did not appear to have caught what she said. Mary Lao heaved a sigh of relief and muttered to herself, “I need to speak to the disciplinary master.”
“About what?” her husband asked, alarmed.
“About calling our boy an Ah Gua!”
The next day, Mary Lao timed herself to arrive just as the school bell rang. She collected Gimme Lao and marched him to the principal’s office. Gimme Lao felt a heady mix of apprehension and excitement. He knew his mother was fearless and felt a secret pride that she was pitting herself against the principal for his sake.
The principal had to summon the disciplinary master upon Mary Lao’s request. Once he arrived, Mary Lao asked him point blank if he had called her son an Ah Gua in front of the entire student body. The disciplinary master sniggered and replied derisively, “Your boy was wearing a frock. What else do you expect me to call him? A good example?”
Mary Lao reached into her tote bag, extracted two library books and slammed them onto the table. She flipped through the first volume until she came to a chapter on the attire worn by ancient Chinese emperors. Tapping her knuckles on the page, Mary Lao glared at the disciplinary master and challenged, “From Tang dynasty to Ming dynasty to Qing dynasty,
tell me what the emperors are wearing? Are you calling them Ah Gua? Is that what you are teaching the students in class?”
The disciplinary master frowned at Mary Lao’s belligerence. Before he could reply, Mary Lao flipped through the second volume until she came to a chapter featuring Elizabethan attire for men and asked again, “Are you telling me these men are Western Ah Gua? All of them?”
The principal saw that the disciplinary master was flushed with anger and decided to step in quickly. “Mrs Lao, perhaps we shouldn’t have used the term Ah Gua on your boy. For that I apologise. But we do have rules in school. Boys are simply not allowed to wear frocks.”
“Show me then.”
“Sorry?” The principal looked confused.
“Show me where it is stated that boys are not allowed to wear frocks in school,” Mary Lao requested stubbornly.
The principal had to hide his look of agitation as he turned to reach for the volume of school rules and regulations. His agitation quickly turned into embarrassment as he realised there was no statement in the volume that spelled it out. It was simply understood as a hidden rule.
“So you are telling me my boy was punished for breaching a rule that does not exist in your school rules and regulations,” Mary Lao stated coldly. The principal and the disciplinary master exchanged looks of silent fury. They knew they were right, but simply could not prove it.
Mary Lao glared at them a little longer before she swept the two library books back into her tote bag. Turning to Gimme Lao, she spoke in a clear voice so the two could hear her. “What did the disciplinary master tell you again? That there are boundaries you do not cross? Remember this. People who follow rules blindly are people who are too lazy to use their brains. You have your own brain. Use it. Question the rules. Question the boundaries.” With that, Mary Lao stood up and left the office with her boy.
The same night, Mary Lao’s husband blew his top. He was aghast at the bad example his wife set for their child. What was she thinking? How could she possibly teach the child to disrespect school authority? When his tirade gained momentum, Mary Lao sent Gimme Lao next door to play at Grandma Toh’s place. But the walls were thin, and Gimme Lao did not miss a word of his parents’ thunderous argument.
When Harrison the sales manager drove by to pick Mary Lao and her husband up for work the next morning, he could sense the palpable frost between husband and wife. Unwittingly, he enquired and was instantly ensnared and pressed for an opinion.
“If your boy crossed the line, I guess we should trust the school authorities to discipline him.” Harrison cleared his throat uneasily. “The principal can’t possibly have all the boys running around in frocks in school, right?”
“It was not stated in the school rules and regulations,” Mary Lao insisted icily.
“Some boundaries are drawn with invisible ink, but respected nonetheless.” Harrison attempted to make his case. “Take for example, insurance sales. As a man, I can walk into the red light district at Geylang to make cold calls and suffer no consequence to my safety or reputation. As a woman, you can’t do the same. There is a boundary. It may not be spelled out in our company rules and regulations, but we all know it exists, and we all respect it.”
Mary Lao sealed her lips in defiance and thought hard. Despite the logic in Harrison’s analogy, she was not convinced. But Mary Lao was not one who was adamant about winning an argument. She would rather prove her point. And the name that sprang to her mind was Black Cougar.
Black Cougar was a sinister character. Tawny, sinewy and taciturn, he prowled the corridors in the ungodly hours between midnight and sunrise when most of the neighbours were fast asleep. Just before first light broke, he would stamp out his sixth cigarette butt and retire to bed. It would be close to dinnertime before he re-emerged, another cigarette pinched between his fingers and a can of beer clamped in his palm. Leaning against the parapet, he maintained a languid gaze into the distance and ignored the neighbours who strolled past him. He did not see the distaste on the women’s faces as they frowned at his exposed torso, leaving nothing to the imagination except what was shrouded in a white pair of cotton briefs. He did not see the wonderment in the children’s eyes as they strained themselves to study the various tattoos on his limbs and his back. A mermaid and a skull pierced with daggers adorned each arm, while a ferocious black cougar and a nymph caught in an erotic entanglement with a python graced each thigh. His broad back provided an ample canvas for a menacing dragon to roll and rumble in and out of tufts of heavy clouds. There was a sixth tattoo, a tiny calligraphy of a Hindu mantra inked half an inch above the base of his manhood, meant to enhance his sexual prowess. Among the neighbours, only Aunty Seah had seen it. She first saw it up close 25 years ago, when they were newly married and Black Cougar made her give him fellatio. Five years later, when Black Cougar stopped bringing home money, Aunty Seah refused to engage in his favourite sport. That was the last she had seen of the mantra tattoo up close.
Black Cougar worked as a bouncer at the Apollo Night Club along Havelock Road. At 50, he was the oldest bouncer in the team. He was not the strongest, but his thirst for blood made him one of the most fearsome. Other bouncers stopped once they threw the troublemakers out the back door and sent them scurrying away with bloodied lips. Black Cougar brought them to the back alley and manhandled them till they could hardly recognise themselves in the mirror. He was especially brutal to men who were rough on the hostesses. He simply could not stand the sight of any girl bruised or crying, or in pain. It reminded him of his sister.
As a child, Black Cougar was close to his sister. His earliest memory was that of himself clinging on to her for dear life when the twirling saucer at the fun fair spun so fast he feared his head would detach itself from his shoulders. After that, his sister would buy a sticky candy and both of them would lick it to the bone while they watched the other children shriek their way through various rides. They could not afford a second ride, not with the coin their father gave them. Their father worked as a bricklayer, and he gave them a coin for the fun fair only during dry seasons, when work was plentiful. Black Cougar and his sister enjoyed the fun fair for many dry seasons, until the day their father’s employer, a man they called Boss Kwok, brought news that their father had lost his footing and fallen off the scaffolding from a height of five storeys.
After their mother was done with the funeral and the crying, she went back to Boss Kwok to beg for work. Boss Kwok arranged for her to work at the construction site transporting bricks between floors, but she was too frail for the job. Boss Kwok then switched her to cleaning and cooking, but the women at the kitchen were of a different dialect group and did not take to her. They ganged up and made life so miserable for her that she went back to Boss Kwok and begged him to take in the three of them. Although Boss Kwok was a widower, he was not inclined to start a new family. At her wits’ end, she whimpered and made an offer. Black Cougar’s sister would become his goddaughter. As the godfather, it was understood that he had full command of their obedience.
Black Cougar was nine and his sister 13 when they packed their bags and moved in with Boss Kwok. He slept on a thin mattress rolled out in the kitchen next to his mother. His sister got to sleep in the bedroom with Boss Kwok. The first night, his mother pressed the pillow over his ears and urged him to sleep quickly. He couldn’t, not when he could still hear the muffled shrieks and whimpers coming through the wall. The next morning, once Boss Kwok had left for work, his mother hugged his sister dearly and explained to her that it was now her duty. If she did not perform her duty, all three of them would end up sleeping on the streets.
Black Cougar watched helplessly as his sister lost the lustre in her eyes. There were always bruises on her body. Their mother told her not to fight it, but the bruising continued despite her adopted compliance. It finally became apparent that Boss Kwok was turned on by the struggles. Over the next five years, she became pregnant thrice. Each time it happened, their mother brought her to the clin
ic to have an abortion. On the third occasion, the operating equipment must have been contaminated, for she came down with a fever that lasted for a week. Even after the fever subsided, she appeared enervated. One night, Boss Kwok lost his patience and reached for her under the blankets, blatantly ignoring her feeble protests. He only stopped when Black Cougar barged into the bedroom and bashed the headboard with a cleaver. The next morning, his mother packed a bag and forlornly told Black Cougar he had to leave before Boss Kwok threw the whole family out.
One of the bricklayers took pity on the teenager and referred him to a relative who ran an import and export business at Boat Quay. Black Cougar moved in, slept in a corner of a granary at night and unloaded grain sacks from bumboats in the day. Over the next few years, he grew taller and his scrawny frame packed on muscles like a bull. After he saved up enough money, Black Cougar went back to look for his mother and his sister. It was his intention to rescue the two from the tyranny of Boss Kwok, but not before he reduced the man to a pulp with a good trouncing.
Black Cougar was prepared for bloodshed. What he was unprepared for was the serene spectacle of his sister breastfeeding a newborn while Boss Kwok played a game of five stones with a laughing toddler. His mother was delighted to see him. She took money from Boss Kwok and went downstairs to buy fish head curry to celebrate the occasion. Throughout dinner, though they were kept busy feeding the children, Boss Kwok and his sister listened cordially as his mother caught up with his life over the missing years. For Black Cougar, it felt surreal and disorientating. He found it hard to believe that none of the three remembered how he was thrown out of the house as a teenager.
Prior to the reunion, Black Cougar was an angry young man harbouring a focused and targeted vengeance. But the altered dynamics of the family had robbed him of his target. Frustrated, he lost his focus and began to pick fights randomly. It did not take much to trigger his rage. As his battle scars accrued, his fighting skills sharpened. He began to attract the attention of the triads, who wanted to recruit him as their fighter. Alarmed, his mother quickly arranged for his marriage, in the hope that conjugal joy would release his tension and tone down his belligerence.
Let's Give It Up for Gimme Lao! Page 8