Jack, The Traveler's Friend

Only yesterday, Singapore was a very old city, not so much in years but in looks and attitude. The immigrants had transplanted their Chinese cities, duplicating Foochow in one district, Swatow in another, and, subdividing further in the manner of ancient towns, had established their enclaves of commerce. To say that there was only one street in Singapore where you could buy a mattress is to give some idea of the rigidity of the pattern. Ship chandlers occupied one street, coffinmakers another, banks another, printeries another. The brothels took up a whole block, mixed higgledy-piggledy with Chinese hotels from Muscat Street to Malacca Street, a self-contained area within borders of bars and noodleshops on one side and laundries and pox doctors on the other. All the excesses of Shanghai were available in the dream district--opium dens here, massage parlors and cockfights there.

"It's just like a movie!" my American clients always said. It was this unreal flavor of Chinese vice that attracted the outsiders and, at the same time, released them from guilt and doubt. This touch of fantasy, like quaint erotic art--Joyce Li-Ho, for instance, had a tattooed panther leaping up her inner thigh.

The sequence of ceremony in a Chinese brothel parodied Oriental hospitality: the warm welcome as the host bowed low from his waist, the pause for a smoke, the chat, the cold towel, the parade of girls to choose from. Money changed hands in the bedroom when the feller was naked and excited; then came the stunt itself. Afterward, there was a hot towel and a glass of cold tea on the veranda while some old amahs ironed bed sheets and yapped beyond the rail.

The Chinese customers, of course, treated all this with perfunctory dispatch--just as we'd drop in for a quick hamburger in a luncheonette. But my gawking travelers were bent on collecting a load of mental souvenirs. It was their chance to participate in a cultural secret, to be alone with an exotic Oriental girl in her ceremonial nakedness, to have that alien act of love to describe back home in years to come. The fantasy of marrying an obedient Chinese girl, of entering into the mystery of the Orient and all that. I kept a straight face; I never mocked them.

I must say that the show was well produced. The girls were noiseless and glittering, narrow as snakes: they looked like all the male world's idea of the Eastern concubine. They posed or moved as if they were actresses born for their role. I knew them better and I had a different view. To me, they seemed always rather practical and businesslike. Their job was a kind of therapy--like sexy nurses assisting in a minor operation or a dentist's helpers soothing a feller during an extraction. They believed in ghosts; they had an equal horror of hair, kissing, stinks and dirt; they thought European men smelled like cheese.

They did their job convincingly without having the slightest interest in it. Lying spread out like all the golden, juicy dream of Cathay, they were really absent-minded, remote, thinking God knows what thought about faraway matters. Sometimes, one of them would ask serenely, "You finish, yes?" when the feller was just beginning. They were sensationally foulmouthed in English, but I was certain from the soft way they spoke among themselves in Chinese that they seldom swore in their own language. Dirty words stimulated some men but left others cold. I remember one in the Honey Bar who said, "I couldn't bring myself to fuck a girl who says fuck. It seems sorta crude."

Some of the girls, with an odd sort of modesty, would refuse to take their dresses off--and, unpredictably, they were much sought after. The silk dresses seemed to give these cold, quick girls an accidental allure, the quaint mystification of a secret half-discovered.

I knew those girls too well to consider them simple and kindly, but I did admit their virtues: obedience, reliability and good nerve. On one occasion when we were boarding a launch for a run out to a ship. Doris Goh--always present, never late--stumbled and fell into the water at the quayside. She could not swim and she went rigid as she sank. I hauled her out. She was half-drowned, streaming with dirty water; her dress stuck to her; her make-up was streaked; and her careful hairdo was now a wet rope. I told her that she could go home if she wanted to, but she said no and soldiered on, eventually earning $40 in the wheelhouse while her dress dried on a hanger in the engine room.

My own small patch of virtue, if you could call it that, was dedication to the continued health and well-being of my clients. There was the money, of course--I wouldn't call myself a pimp with a heart of gold--but I can prove that I saved many fellers from harm and many girls from brutes. I knew the greedy cabbies, the curfew districts controlled by the secret societies, the streets where all the pretty girls were actually men with sharp kukris in their handbags, the girls with pox, the sadists, the clip joints, the houses you came away from with the fungus known as Rangoon itch on your pecker. If they carve on my gravestone, He saved a lot of Fellers from Rangoon itch, it might not be the most saintly testimony to the dear departed, but at least it's one good deed in this naughty world. Aside from that, I took blame; I risked police and damnation; I didn't cheat. Maybe I'll order my gravestone to read, He was a useful man and the traveler's friend.

• • •

It surprised me--my amusement crept upon by an old slow fear--when I opened the Straits Times and saw, under "Island-wide vice ring broken--Joo Chiat raid nets 35," a photograph of five girls being dragged by the arms toward a police van while grim Malay policemen watched, sturdily planted on widely spread bandy legs, holding truncheons and riot shields. The girls' faces were very white from the flashbulb's brightness and their astonished eyebrows were high and black, their objecting mouths in the attitude of shouting. That they were objecting did not surprise me--they were indignant, an emotion as understandable in them as in any harmless lathe operator yanked from his machine. But that particular raid was a great surprise: The Joo Chiat house was thought to be safe, with a Chinese clientele, protected by the fierce Green Triangle secret society, whose spiderlike and pock-marked members could be seen at any time of the day or night playing cards by the back entrance, their knives and bearing scrapers close at hand. The article in the paper said this was "the first in an all-out campaign launched by the police to rid the island of so-called massage parlors."

There were two raids the following day; one at an opium den resulted in the arrest of seven elderly men, six of whose worried, sunken-eyed faces appeared in the paper; the seventh was pictured on a stretcher with his hands clasped--he had broken his leg when he slipped trying to escape across a steep tile roof. The second raid was at a massage parlor very close to Muscat Street, where all the girls, and the decor, were Thai. The raids disturbed me, but the picture I made of them in my mind was not of the girls--it was the terrifying vision of the old addict being hounded in his pajamas across a clattering rooftop.

I decided to lay low that night at the Bandung. "You don't understand the political background, Jack," Yates said. "I'd steer clear of Chinatown if I were you." Other club regulars joined in.

"Don't say we didn't warn you," said Yardley.

"I never go to Chinatown," said Frogget. "Bloody waste of time."

"Harry Lee's putting the boot in," said Smale. "I hate that little sod."

"I was just wondering what was going on," I said.

"Nothing that concerns you," said Yardley. "So keep out of it."

The next morning, I went to see Mr. Sim. He seemed suspicious at my arriving so early and reluctantly let me in. I asked him about the raids.

"Must be careful," he said. "How Kheng Fatt is keeping, OK?"

"He's doing all right. I'm only putting in a couple of hours a day, unless I've got business on a ship."

"So what you are worried? You got a job, neh?"

"If you want to call it that. Look, I earn peanuts there--little-little money. I can't bank on it. If they go on closing the houses down and arresting the girls. I'm going to be out of luck. And so are you!"

"Better than in jail."

"What are you going to do?"

He didn't look at me, but he showed me his face. He said, "Funny thing. You know new wireless I got? Yes? It don't work now. I enjoy that wireless set, but it need repair."

"Where are you planning to go?" I asked.

He discovered his shirt and smoothed the pockets.

"They say a lot of the cops are plain-clothesmen--you know, special-branch fellers wearing shirts like mine and plain old pants, pretending they want a girl. They pay up and just before they get into the saddle, they say, 'OK, put your clothes on. You're under arrest.' I think that's terrible, don't you?"

Mr. Sim twisted the tail of his shirt and he worked his jaw back and forth as he twisted.

"I'll level with you, Mr. Sim. The reason I came over is I've got a plan. We know they're trying to close things down--they've already nabbed about a hundred people. So why wait? Why not just put our heads together and set up somewhere safe? Like I was telling you. We'll go where they least expect us, rent a big house up on Thomson Road or near a cemetery, get ten girls or so and run a real quiet place--put up a sign in front saying 'The Wongs' or 'Hillcrest' or 'Dunroamin.' What do you say to that?"

"It is a very hot day." He went imbecilic.

"Come on, we haven't got much time. Are you interested or not?"

"It is a hot day," said Mr. Sim. "I am expecting my auntie."

"No taxis allowed--only private cars, no syces. Girls by appointment. If you think the Dunroamin idea is silly, we can put up a sign saying 'Secretarial School--Typing and Shorthand Lessons.' No one'll know the difference."

He had twisted his shirttail into a hank of rope and now he was knotting it. "My auntie is very old. I tell her to stop so much smoking--forty-over sticks a day! But old peoples. Kss!"

"OK, forget it." I stood up.

Mr. Sim let go of his shirt and leaped to the door. "Bye-bye, Jack. See you next time. Don't mention."

That night, I took a feller to Muscat Street. I had met him in a bar on Stamford Road, he had asked me if I knew a good "cat house" and I had told him to follow me. But the house was in darkness, the shutters were closed and the red light over the altar was turned off. I rapped the lock against the gate bar, but no one stirred. Mr. Sim had run out on me.

"This looks like a washout," the feller said. "I'm not even in the mood now."

"They're worried about the cops. There's a political party here that's putting the heat on--trying to close down the whole district. They've got everyone scared. It didn't use to be this way, but maybe if we walk over--"

"I don't know why it is," said the feller, "but people are always saying to me, 'You should have been here last year.' It really burns me up."

"That's natural," I said. "But you gotta understand the political background, you see."

"Political background is crap," he said. "I'm going back to the ship."

"If there's anything else you want, anything at all," I said. "I could find you a gal easy enough. Fix you up in a hotel. Bed and breakfast."

He shook his head. "I had my heart set on a cat house."

"We could try another one," I said. "But I don't want you to get in Dutch. How would it look if you got your picture in the papers? Cripe!"

"Makes you stop and think, don't it?" he said.

"Sure does," I said. "But if there's anything else--"

"Naw," he said, but, saying so, he laughed and said again, "Naw," as if he were trying to discourage a thought. I was hoping he didn't want a transvestite--it would be hours before they'd be on Bugis Street.

"What is it?" I asked in a whisper. "Go ahead, try me. God, you don't want to leave empty-handed, do you?"

"Naw, I was just kicking around an idea that popped up," he said, laughing (continued on page 154)Jack. the traveler's friend(continued from page 72) down his nose. "I don't know, I've never seen one."

"Seen what?"

He stopped laughing and said gravely, "Back home they call them skin flicks."

• • •

The room was stifling with all the shades drawn, and the screen was a bed sheet, which struck me as uniquely repellent. We sat, six of us, wordlessly fixed on the blue squares jumping and flickering on the screen while the rattling projector whirred: the countdown--a few numbers were missing; the title--something about a brush salesman; the opening shot--a man knocking at a door. We fidgeted when the man knocked; no knock was heard. It was a silent film.

The absence of a sound track necessitated many close-ups of facial expressions; and a story was attempted, for both characters, salesman and housewife, were clothed, implying a seduction, the classic plot of conquest with a natural climax--an older concept of pornography. The salesman wore a tweed double-breasted suit and his hair was slick and wavy. I guessed it was late Forties, but what country? The housewife wore a long bathrobe trimmed with white fur, and when she sat down, the front flapped open. She laughed and tucked it back together. The salesman sat beside her and rolled his eyes. He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one, a Camel. So it was America.

He opened his case of samples and pulled out a limp contraceptive and made a face ("Oh, gosh!") and shoved it back. Then there was an elaborate business with the brushes, various shapes and sizes. He demonstrated each one by tickling the housewife in different places, starting on the sole of her foot. Soon he was pushing a feather duster under her loosening bathrobe. The housewife was laughing and trying to hold her robe shut, but the horseplay went on, the robe slipped off her shoulders.

I recognized the sofa, a large prewar claw-foot model with thick velvet cushions, and just above it on the wall, a picture of a stag feeding at a mountain pool. The man took off his shoes. This was interesting: He wore a suit, but these were workman's shoes, heavy-soled ones with high counters and large bulbs for toes--the steel-toed shoes a man who does heavy work might wear. His Argyle socks had holes in them and he had a chain around his neck with a religious medal on it. His muscled arms and broad shoulders confirmed he was a laborer; he also wore a wedding ring. I guessed he had lost his job; as a Catholic, he would not have acted in a blue movie on a Sunday, and if it was a weekday and he had a job, he would not have acted in the movie at all. Out the apartment window the sun shone on rooftops, but I noticed that he did not take his socks off. Perhaps it was cold in the apartment. Afterward, he walked back to his wife through some wintry American city and said, "Hey, honey, look what I won--twenty clams!"

The housewife was more complicated. Judging from her breasts, she had had more than one child. I wondered where they were. There was a detailed shot of her moving her hand--long, perfect fingernails: She didn't do housework. Who looked after her kids? From the way she sat on the sofa, on the edge, not using the pillows. I knew it was not her apartment. She took off the fancy bathrobe with great care--either it was not hers (it was rather big) or she was poor enough to value it. She had a very bad bruise on the top of her thigh; someone had recently thumped her; and now I could see the man's appendectomy scar, a vivid one.

Two details hinted that the housewife wasn't American: Her legs and armpits were not shaved and she was not speaking. The man talked, but her replies were exaggerated faces: awe, interest, lust, hilarity, pleasure, surprise. She kissed the man's lips and then her head slid down his chest, past the appendectomy scar--it was fresh, the reason he was out of a job: He had to wait until it healed before he could go back to any heavy work. The housewife opened her mouth; she had excellent teeth and pierced ears--a war bride, maybe Italian, deserted by her GI husband (he thumped her and took the children). The camera stayed on her face for a long time, her profile moved back and forth, and even though it was impossible now for her mouth to show any expression, as soon as she closed her eyes, abstraction was on her face--she was tense, her eyes were shut tight, a moment of dramatic meditation on unwilling surrender: She wasn't acting.

Mercifully, the camera moved to a full view of the room. On the left, there were a wing chair with a torn seat and a coffee table holding a glass ashtray with cigarette butts in it (they had talked it over--Are you sure you don't mind?--perhaps rehearsed it) and, on the right, the face of a water stain on the wall, a fake fireplace with a half-filled bottle on the mantelpiece; the Catholic laborer had needed a drink to go through with it. There had been a scene. If you're not interested, we'll find someone else. And: OK, let's get it over with. It was breaking my heart.

There was a shot of the front door. It flew open and a large naked woman stood grinning at the pair on the floor--this certainly was the owner of the fancy bathrobe (the cameraman's girlfriend?). She joined them, vigorously, but I was so engrossed in the tragic suggestions I saw in their nakedness I had not questioned the door. It was a silent movie, but the door had opened with a bang and a clatter. The feller beside me had turned around and was saying, "What do we do now?"

With some kidding fictor's touches, changing the time of day and my tone of voice to make it truer, by intensifying it to the point of comedy where it was a bearable memory, the story of my escape from the blue-movie raid became part of my repertoire, and within a year I was telling it at the bar of my own place, Dunroamin: "Then the chief inspector, a Scotty, says to me, 'Have I not seen you somewhere before?' and I says, 'Not the club, by any chance?' and he says, 'Jack, I'll be jiggered--fancy finding you in a place like this!' 'I can explain everything,' I says. 'Confidentially, I thought they were showing Gone with the Wind,' and he laughs like hell. 'Look,' he says in a whisper, 'I'm a bit short-staffed. Give me a hand rounding up some of this kit and we'll say no more about it.' So I unplugged the projector and carried it out to the police van and later we all joked about it over a beer. And to top it off, I still haven't found out which club he had in mind."