Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 1

Night at Passion Touch

I open the door of my flat and step into my living room. It suddenly looks small and depressing. And lifeless. In this little slot in the sky, I am nothing more than a claustrophobic pigeon. Depression rules me within these four walls, which seem to be inching closer day by day like a sinister army, a tightening noose. My tiny apartment is known by the number 15–75, which fills me with a deep longing for homes that had names, religions, moods, ghosts, personalities, attitude … Here the walls creep in, the furniture grows, the air rots and silence splits my head slooowly. My block is a giant filing cabinet. Of people filed away to be forgotten.

In the last few months after my estranged wife Nisha had got this job she would be travelling often, leaving me within these carnivorous walls to get hypnotised by the TV. Not that Nisha was great company; our home had become an art-house movie in the recent months, with monosyllables hanging in the air like the Sumatran haze. But she was a presence nevertheless. She was a scent, a grunt, a flash of colour, a shuffle of feet, a word, an incomplete line … We spoke through Post-it Notes on the fridge.

When the TV became unbearable I got drawn into the Internet. Like God, I had 108 names in the many chat rooms I stalked. Like God, I could become male, female, genderless. Like God, I felt powerful, omnipotent. But the topic was always the same. The people were always sick. And the world was such a fake. I soon got sick of it and wondered how anyone could be addicted to this cyber-madness.

Of course, there were the plus points of the Internet, like email and free pornography. But then again, my email account started receiving more and more spam than regular mails. Daily emails promised me fourteen inches of masculinity; all-I-can-eat Viagra; a thousand “sure-fire” ways to make money, lose weight, grow younger, get out of debt, etc. Even the pornography became boring. There are only so many ways the human anatomy can be arranged and juxtaposed. To me, the Internet was just a shooting star.

So when the television and the Internet died their deaths in me, I started wandering after work, in order to avoid the frozen shadows of home as much as possible. I drove past the seedy underbelly of Singapore: places like Geylang, Desker, or Changi Village where the transsexuals were prettier and curvier than the female prostitutes. But that was as far as I could go with those night creatures.

But the massage parlours, “health centres” as they were euphemistically called, were a different thing altogether. Since most of them were located in shopping malls, they bore a facade of respectability. My first such “healthy” experience was in a massage centre in the fourth floor of a shopping mall off Orchard Road. For almost a week, I had been loitering around the mall mustering up the courage to open that door of Passion Touch Health Centre.

On that night I had downed two pegs of whiskey at a nearby pub, so I had some courage flowing fast through my veins.

After spending twenty long minutes gazing at the lingerie on a mannequin in a boutique next to the health centre and getting some dirty looks from the boutique’s salesgirl in the process, I held my breath and turned the door knob of Passion Touch. The opening of the door immediately set off some kind of chime that startled me for a moment and made me want to run away. The brightly lit lobby, though small, was, to my surprise, quite plush and even pleasant. I had expected a dark and dingy place with women hanging in the shadows, smouldering cigarettes between their lips.

The cheerful old lady behind the reception desk was watching a Channel 8 Chinese drama from a small wall-mounted TV beside the door. She looked at me and gave me a very bright, “Hallowelcome.” She opened a register and asked me to write my name and identity card number. I hesitated for a moment, feeling suspicious as to whether this was some kind of a blackmail racket. “No worry, lah,” the lady said, slapping my arm. “You so malu, hor.

Everyone write, see. You go any health centre, also write.” She flipped the pages to show me lines and lines of scribbles, most of them unintelligible.

I scribbled “D. Nair,” and for my IC number, I jumbled up three digits.

Thankfully, she didn’t bother to ask for my identity card.

“You first time, haah?” She gave me a motherly smile.

“First time in Singapore,” I said proudly, pushing out my chest and placing my arms on my hips. “I go London, Paris, New York, Bangkok.

Everywhere I go massage,” I said, looking at her over the tip of my nose.

“You tourist, haah?”

I nodded impatiently.

“So how come you have IC number?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Um … I … I … That’s my passport number,” I blurted out finally.

She nodded understandingly, then added, “For tourists, thirty dollars extra, hor. So, seventy dollars.”

I cursed myself under my breath and placed a fifty and two tens on the desk.

“Wait, hor. I call masseuse,” she said, putting on a toothy smile. As I waited, I took a good look at the lobby. In a niche in the wall were three large porcelain statues of Fu, Lu and Shou, the Taoist gods for happiness, wealth and longevity. They seemed to be looking at me with a what-a-stupid-boy-you-are expression. I ignored them and shifted my gaze to the high Chinese altar made of blood-red rosewood on which stood a few burning joss sticks emitting a thick scent and lazy fumes that rose up to the ceiling. Behind those joss sticks was a large statue, also porcelain, of Qwan Yin, the goddess of mercy, sitting on a giant lotus and holding a small vase on her lap. On her face was an expression of such equanimity that it disturbed me and prompted me to look away.

Within minutes, another woman who looked like the old hag’s elder sister appeared. The woman was fat, ugly as well.

“She, Jane, your masseuse,” the reception hag told me brightly, pointing to the fat woman.

I looked at her, wide-eyed, from top to bottom. “I … ermm … I …

um … Can you get me someone younger? If you please?” I asked politely, while-in my mind-I said, “She Jane or maybe Jane’s elephant, but I no Tarzan, lor. Gimme someone young and soft for my young and soft muscles, alamak!”

“She vely good! Vely vely experience,” the receptionist said.

“I can see she is ‘vely experienced.’ But please … No offence … but, I want someone younger,” I said firmly.

The two exchanged something fast in Hokkien. Jane looked at me blankly and disappeared inside. “Hokay,” the receptionist said finally, “I give you vely chio ger. Vely young. But cost thirty dollar extra, hokay?” For a moment, I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. But having come this far, I was not going back without the “passion touch” of young, girlie hands. I nodded, halfheartedly, and placed three crisp ten-dollar notes on the desk. She pocketed them and said, “Good. You wait for thirty minutes, hor. She no here. I telephone,” she picked up the phone.

“You go in. Make comfortable. Sauna, TV all inside. Jane show you.

Jane make Chinese tea for you,” she said, covering the mouthpiece.

Jane appeared again and led me through a narrow corridor, which had numbered doors on either side. She opened door Number 8 for me and handed me a large, freshly laundered white towel. “You take shower, change towel and wait. You want moe towel, inside cubberd. I bling Chinese tea.

You want sauna, TV, you go end colido, turn light,” she said, motioning with her right hand.

The room was small and dimly lit with a clean single bed in the middle.

There was a cupboard placed against one of the walls and another door, which I guessed led to the attached bathroom. Although the air was stale and reeked of dampness, the room was clean. I closed the door, undressed and, after wrapping the towel around me, stepped into the bathroom. I was initially a bit reluctant in touching the towel-you never know what things it may have been used to wipe off. But then, it appeared clean and crisp and felt nice in my hands. Luckily, there was a fresh bar of soap in the bathroom; the tiny type you find in hotels.

I had a leisurely bath; the water was hot and refreshing. By the time I stepped out of the bathroom, there was a cup of hot Chinese tea waiting for me. I hung the wet towel in the bathroom towel rack, took a dry one from the cupboard, and wrapped it around my midriff. The hot tea helped in warming me up since I was finding the air conditioning inside the room too chilly for my skin.

By the time I finished my tea, there was a knock on the door, and before I could say “Come in!”, the door swung open and in came one of the prettiest Chinese things I have seen in Singapore. At that moment, all my feelings of having been fleeced out of my hard-earned money vanished in a trice. She could have been mistaken for a Shenton Way babe except for her skirt, which showed too much thigh for a bank teller.

She crushed her cigarette butt in the ashtray and gave me a sweet,

“Hello-how-are-you-I-am-Linda-oil-or-powder?”

“What?” I gaped at her.

“Oil or powder. For massage, you want oil or powder?” she replied with amused eyes.

“Oil,” I said.

From the cupboard, she took out a bottle of baby oil and gestured for me to lie on the bed. I lay on my stomach and became like a lump of chapathi dough in her hands. She started kneading me, and I started needing her. Ooh so badly! I moaned like I had never moaned before. “Aaaahhh … that’s it …

yesssss … ooohh … a little to the left … that’s the point … hmmm …” And she was going like, “Good muscles … not too much … not too little …”

“What’s your name?” she asked casually.

“James Bond,” I replied. She giggled.

She removed my towel with an expert flick and started on my buttocks and thighs.

“You married?”

“James Bond’s not married,” I replied.

She pinched my butt.

“Ow! Hope I don’t have to pay extra for that.”

She giggled again. “You’re a joker … You’re also a liar.”

“And you speak good English for a Passion Touch girl.”

“Was a remisier once upon a time … with the Midas touch … earning big bucks …” She applied light karate chops on my thighs with both her hands.

“Aaah … that feels good …” I said, letting off a sigh of pleasure.

“Now a masseur … with Passion Touch … earning big fucks,” she said with a chuckle and quickly added, “Have no regrets anyway. Now turn over.” I turned over and lay on my back. She deftly laid the towel over my middle. I looked at her straight. The dim ceiling light was behind her head and I couldn’t make out the look on her face. She leaned closely to massage my chest after sprinkling oil on it. Her hair fell on my face. I could smell her shampoo mingled with a faint scent of sweat. Garlic sweat.

“So what’ll it be? Hand job, blow, sandwich or the full course?” she asked; her tone was very professional.

“Sandwich,” I said confidently, although I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. I felt like a snack anyway.

“That’ll be forty dollars extra, okay,” she said softly.

“That’s one expensive sandwich!” I thought, and swallowed spit. But I didn’t want to give her the impression I was a cheapskate. So I nodded my head impatiently and asked her to get on with it.

She lifted my towel like a magician lifts the cloth over the caged bird.

She took one look at my manhood and said, “Now I know why you called yourself James Bond: that’s a nought-nought-seven-inch — nought-nought much!” she giggled.

“Nought-nought little either,” I said crossly.

“Just kidding. Don’t worry, you’re average,” she said, taking off her clothes. In no time, she was stark naked. She wore absolutely nothing under her natty outfit. She had a slim body with perky tits-very playful, like twin puppies, jiggling at the slightest movement, topped by tiny cherry nipples.

Her skin was like milk.

She unscrewed the spout on the bottle of oil, poured a generous amount on my chest and applied it thickly all over. Then she handed me the bottle and said, “Now it’s your turn.”

I raised myself to a sitting position and poured a handful of oil into my cupped hand. I then applied the oil on her chest and stomach. She gently pushed me back onto the bed, whispering, “Lie, you liar.” She then lay on me, skin on oily skin, like two slithering snakes. “No sex, okay. Only touch touch. For sex, my rate is a hundred.” Hundred bucks for a blasted fuck! I knew my wallet had only a fifty-dollar note. Not this time anyway, I thought. “Not that I don’t have the money, but I think I will pass this time,” I said.

She looked at me but said nothing. She hugged me tight and continued rubbing her body on mine. Her breath came hot on my lips. I could catch the whiff of Fisherman’s Friend mints, apple and cinnamon, I guess. Her hair fell around my face like a black curtain. My whole body tingled with sensations never felt before. Primal moans rose in my throat. Down below, I was hard as rock. Feeling my hardness, she asked breathlessly, “Do you want sex?”

“Do you … take Visa?” I asked between gasps.

“Cash … only cash,”

“But …”

“Yeah … many others do, but we don’t … Never mind,” she said, getting up, “There’s always a next time.”

“But where’s my sandwich?” I asked innocently as she was putting her clothes back on.

She looked at me blankly before saying, “Oh! I forgot to tell you-

usually a sandwich massage is an oily guy between two girls. But I didn’t think you wanted to lie on top of Jane. After all, you’re only James Bond, not Tarzan,” she chuckled.

“Oh yes-the sandwich massage!” I exclaimed. Suddenly things were a lot clearer.

She gave me another blank look and said, “My time is up. Forty dollars please.” A month later, I rang up Passion Touch and asked for Linda.

“She go Austalia. Myglate myglate. With ang moh boyflend,” the reception hag said.