Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 1

Expeditions in the Twilight Zone

Years ago, I occasionally made trekking expeditions to Sabah in East Malaysia, a more intriguing state than those on the peninsula itself. These expeditions involved a few days’ walk in a wilderness, usually with a mountain to scramble up. At the end of such a trip, I found myself in Kota Kinabalu, staying in a more elaborate hotel than I normally bothered with.

Down in the basement, near the car-park area in the nethermost region of this grand establishment, was what was euphemistically termed a “health centre”.

I had not patronised such an establishment before and was not quite sure what to expect. The room was poorly lit, the effect intended obviously being a sombre tranquillity or, perhaps, seductive gloom. It contained a mattress and a washbasin and not much else. I undressed, except for my underpants, then lay down, as only seemed sensible. Eventually a smallish woman appeared; because of the dark, I couldn’t make out anything about her looks other than her size. In due course, as I grew more accustomed to the dim lighting and as we grew acquainted with each other, I came to discover she was a Filipina, working overseas like so many others.

This masseuse was a woman of around thirty with longish hair. It was difficult to judge her features because of the sombre ambiance, but her manner appeared stern, perhaps the consequence of reserve or shyness. Nonetheless, she gave my near-naked body a good hard look, especially the middle zone, and indicated that I should remove my underpants, which she presumably found more offensive than my genitalia. She then abruptly offered me coffee or tea. Thereafter, reluctantly emitting a few gruff pleasantries, she began to massage me, working a little indifferently with oil over most of my torso and limbs. Conversation was limited, partly because of mutual miscommunication and partly because the manner of this particular Filipina (her name, she reluctantly conceded, was Concepcion) was initially very serious, as if she were a doctor confronted with a terminal case. She did not seem very sure of either me or herself. Her voice sounded low, almost gravelly. I could hardly see her, even when I looked back over my shoulders, lying as I was in the typical massage position, face down on the mattress.

Concepcion set to work in a perfunctory manner, as if she were none too keen to touch human flesh. She avoided my shoulders, which happened to be sore and blistering from sunburn; not, as she told me afterwards, out of consideration for any pain I might have felt, but because she thought they might be infected. We talked a little about her life and family. She was divorced; divorced, moreover, with two youngish children who required a maid to look after them while she was at work. “Hundreds and hundreds a month,” she griped. Twisting my head over my shoulder, I could see her grimace. Concepcion leant forwards to judge my reaction to this disclosure.

Now I could see that she bore a slight scar at the corner of her mouth, as if she had been slashed by a knife. Perhaps reflecting on the injustices of the world, she lapsed into silence. Uncertain as to how matters would develop, I myself slipped into a doze.

I woke to feel a finger tracing a circle or two round my anus. A small, oily hand then moved forward a little to brush my testicles. Meeting with no opposition from me, the small hand began to knead them and then, increasingly emboldened, pushed further still to work on my male member, squeezing it more and more confidently as it responded and I lifted my body a little to accommodate this pleasant procedure. Suddenly it was clear to me that a new chapter was about to open in my sexual life, which had never proceeded in a smooth, unfolding manner but in fits and starts, like events in the quantum world, lurching randomly into sudden life and equally sudden annihilation.

Concepcion now seemed more urgent and interested. She suggested, though still nervously, that I might like something in addition to her halfhearted massaging of my back and shoulders. I turned to face her and asked what she had in mind. She made her offer of an extra, her special. This was to mouth my penis which, although it had originally met with her diffidence, was nonetheless erect. “But you must wear a condom,” she said, with the firmness of a primary-school teacher instructing a child. She then disappeared for what seemed a long time. Returning suddenly, she pointed to my trinity.

“You washed it just now?” she asked, pausing a moment. I nodded. Kneeling before me, she tried to unroll a condom onto the relevant part of my body, making a hash of the job. “Quick, you do it,” she said, giving me a small push with one hand while offering the rubber with the other.

I obliged and she started to work with her tongue. Abruptly changing her approach, she told me to lie down on my back, straddling me on all fours and swivelling her body around so that I was staring at her rear. She peered at me between her legs. “You do to me.”

“What?” I said.

“You …” She contorted her upside-down face, searching for the right word. We looked at each other for a few seconds, mutually non-plussed. She waggled her bottom and stuck out her tongue, making circular movements with her head. “Ah”, I said and focused on her backside, my nose level with her entry and exit points. Her anus, a few centimetres away, was pinkish-brown and puckered round the edge. It was neat and charming enough as far as anuses go, and apparently very clean, but I was not greatly attracted to the reciprocal tongue exercises she had proposed. “No,” I said. Peeking through her legs, her face registered an upside-down version of disappointment.

Anus-licking or something of that nature was apparently her particular domain, being relatively safe and uncomplicated.

I renegotiated for a more conventional mode of sexual expression, in which I could be more vigorously engaged.

The lady illustrated an extreme nervousness over actual intercourse: not repulsion or inhibition at the deed itself, but fear that someone would walk into the room which, following the perverse rule in these places, could not be locked. She was equally anxious that the business arrangement be carried out. “I haven’t done this before,” she announced breathlessly, meaning that she had never participated in full commercial sex. This surprised and slightly disconcerted me, as neither had I.

We embraced awkwardly in a standing position, but not without my somehow standing on one of her small feet. “Ouch,” said my partner, recoiling and then re-embracing. Almost immediately, she had a hasty afterthought and disappeared. She scurried across the room and put the cubicle’s pouffe against the door, first stuffing a towel underneath the door so that it would jam if anyone attempted to open it from the outside. This was a cautionary practice which I subsequently found to be near universal. She had obviously consulted her peers on this, even if she were feeling her way in a new field.

All this stumbling and bumbling did nothing to help me sustain my erection … My partner obliged by poking and pulling at my trinity until vigour was restored. She lay down on the mattress. “Quick,” she said again, hastily raising her short skirt and removing her knickers. We clumsily engaged after some more fumbling with limbs, clothes and organs. “Wait a minute,” she said suddenly, expelling me in a peremptory manner before wriggling away, “the sheet will be stained.” And indeed, the sheet was rucked up between us, part of our coital tangle.

She repositioned herself on the edge of the mattress so that the crucial zone was off the sheet and my lower limbs on the carpet. We started again.

Meanwhile, somebody was clunking something down the passageway and talking in a low voice; probably the cleaning lady dragging a vacuum cleaner.

“Oh,” she said, over my shoulder, “they’re coming in!” and ejected me once more. “No, its alright,” she said as the noise passed. “Quick, come back,” and she reinserted me.

We resumed our love-making which, despite her injunctions, was relatively prolonged. I had caught some of her nervousness and could not concentrate on the act. Also, my knees were getting sore from the friction from the carpet. “Can’t we use the mattress?” I asked. “Yes, but I am so worried,” said my partner. She pushed me away yet again and spread a towel, turning over to do so, and we re-engaged in that position. More indeterminate noises could be heard from outside the cubicle. Immediately, she squirmed and tried to say something about the door, but I held her tight despite her wriggling and, after some more confused communication, at long last consummation-at any rate, my consummation-was achieved.

“Phew,” Concepcion said, getting up immediately and looking relieved, as if she had delivered a speech at some important occasion, like a wedding or college speech day. She seemed quite glad that it was all over. She scuttled about, straightening the sheet and restoring her underwear and so forth. I laughed at her amateurishness. “If you find it all so terrifying, don’t do it.” She smiled at me happily. She was obviously relieved that I was not cross, considering the inelegance of our congress. “You should give me more because it was the first time”, she said, taking advantage of the good humour.

“You should be my boyfriend”, she went on, persisting gently and repeating herself, “I have two children. I have to employ a maid to look after them while I am working here”.

Concepcion then sat down next to me and began an unflattering examination of my body. “What’s that?” she said suspiciously, pointing to some blemish in my groin area. “And that,” she continued, looking critically at the sore patches on the inside of my knees, still stinging from the carpet.

“I didn’t want to touch your back,” she said candidly, “It doesn’t look nice.” Then, worried that she had offended me, she said, “Sorry, don’t mean that.

You’re not cross?” She peered at me intently, her face pushed close to mine to judge my expression in the gloom of the cubicle, like a cat hoping to wake its owner and be fed.

“Be my boyfriend.” She leant forward enticingly. “Be my boyfriend,” she wheedled again, pressing her body against mine. I leant back, but Concepcion moved further forward until she lay on top of me, her face still close to mine. She came off as much more confident with her clothes on. I found her urging appealing and instinctively wanted to protect her from her past mistakes and present predicament, but afterwards, my natural impulse to incorporate her into my life wore off. Her insistence might have indicated some stronger need for money for drugs than for her children. This thought made me wary of entering into a relationship because I was new to the guild of massage women like her and could not easily judge how stable or controlled they were. In any event, she lived in Sabah and I in Singapore, and my romantic urge to be involved with her soon faded in the pragmatic light of day outside the centre.

And so I entered into the world of the massage women-a twilight, windowless world, not of the extremes of eroticism but of the fumbling accommodation of desire with commerce … and sometime intimacy, however awkward and confused.

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.