NIGHT AT PASSION TOUCH

Hari Kumar, Singapore and India

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.