Singapore Swing (10 page)

The guy next to me must have arrived at the same conclusion, because he's lighting up.

‘Cigarette?' he offers me.

I take a good look at him. Another
ang moh
, but tall, taller than me, much more corpulent and with a tiny head that stands on his shoulders like a potato on a sack. I reckon he's only in his thirties but the years have been as unkind to his countenance as they have been to his hairline; to top it all, they have conspired to expose his piggy ears that stick out like two large sea anemones, feeding. I decline his offer by shaking my head and look around to see if I fancy anybody.

‘Long queue, isn't it?' he says.

I make a sour face, for I hate queues like I hate wine recorkers.

‘Such is life,' he says philosophically.

I shrug my shoulders, realising I haven't answered back. Rude, I know, but what the hell, I find him creepy.

‘Been here before?' His English accent was very shire. I look ahead. One person on the line gets in,
one hundred thousand million to go!
Might as well be sociable; I'm stuck with this guy like others are born with unsavoury relatives.

‘No, first time,' I reply. ‘What's it like? I'm surprised such a place exists.'

‘Yes, remarkable. It all started recently. I wouldn't exactly say the PAP has embraced homosexuality, but –'

The PAP?

‘The People's Action Party. The ruling party since independence. We have one-party democracy in Singapore.'

He laughs.

‘You live here then?' I ask.

‘Oh, yes! Yes. The only way I'd leave is if they expelled me for corrupting the youth.'

Another person from the line gets in. At this rate we won't get in until Friday week.

‘So, has the government changed their policy now?'

‘It's been some time. In 2003 the then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told
Time
magazine how they would accept openly gay people in the civil service.'

You don't say.

‘It was considered a blackmailable predicament.'

‘But gay sex is still illegal?'

‘It is. But it's a dead law. No one has been prosecuted for more than a decade.'

‘Why the change of heart?'

The potatohead fixes me with his stare. ‘You are a tourist. British aren't you? You don't understand.'

‘Don't understand what?'

‘How you create a nation where none exists.'

‘Singapore is many nations,' I retort.

‘It's early days yet.'

The queue is almost racing now. They're going in in threes and fours...

‘How do you create a nation by being nice to homosexuals?' I ask.

He was waiting for that, if only to find my name.

‘Singapore, my dear – what is it?'

‘John,' I said.

‘I'm Nick. Pleased to meet you,' he says and assumes a schoolmasterish tone. ‘Singapore, dear John is surrounded by Indonesia and Malaysia, both Islamic countries. If you want to forge a distinct identity from your neighbours, you try to highlight your differences. And, if necessary, you create some.'

‘You mean –'

‘Nothing happens by chance in Singapore. Everything is the result of serious high-level debate. In the past they liked being the leader of the Asian tiger economies. In this post-9/11 world, they decided to differentiate. They want to attract creative people but creative people don't like living in straitjackets. They like living in a tolerant, gay-friendly, open environment.'

We're almost at the door.

I was expecting – well, I don't know what I was expecting, but whatever it was, it wasn't
this
.

Taboo is spread over two storeys. On the ground floor the DJ is spinning his funky techno, acoustically not a million miles from London's own DTPM. A long bar on one side is staffed by more peroxide orientals. One wall by the dance floor slopes down with makeshift wooden poles and seats. It is brimming with ladyboys: effeminate, ethereal and very, very young. Well-dressed, in designer gear and thankfully low on the oxygenated follicle front, they dance suggestively or sit cross-legged femme-fatalishly. As soon as I come within their line of sight, they all smile in unison as if I were snapping at them with an imaginary camera and their pimp closes in on me. I assume he is the pimp because he is dressed in a cheap Madonna T-shirt. All the firm's money must have gone to those embroidered D&G tops for his employees immediately behind.

‘Alone,
lah
?' the pimp asks without wasting much time.

I smile, as I do when I don't want to talk back.

‘You like boy?' he asks me straight away and points at his flock like a shepherd at his cattle.

‘No, thanks,' I whisper and try to move – in vain, as I have reached the most crowded section.

‘
No like boy?
' he exclaims in mock surprise.

I refuse the glass of beer he offers me. I like my drink but I also like my internal organs, thank you, and I don't want to wake up in a Kallang bathtub with one kidney missing – and when I say ‘one' I am being optimistic.

‘
No like drink?
' I hear him say but by then I have escaped to the centre of the dance floor.

Maybe it is the shock of dancing in a decent club in Singapore, maybe it is the pre-club drinks at Backstage, or maybe it is the overtures of the pimp, but I feel uneasy. Don't get me wrong: the music is good – better than good – but I think that everyone is watching this new face in hell with his lame left arm in his pocket. I last ten minutes before I decide to take a walk. The first floor is a chillout, abuzz with polite conversation, awash with boys looking longingly into each other's eyes, and almost aflame because the air con is busted. I attempt to open a window but they seem to have been welded shut to keep the noise in: don't offer the police a stick with which to beat you.

This does not compute
, I keep thinking as I walk downstairs: nightlife, dance music, aggressive pimps – what next? Will someone offer me drugs? But no, the death penalty hanging over a pusher's neck like an open noose is deterrent enough for at least one decadent Western practice not to have found its way into this most upright of states.

When I buy my next drink at the long bar, I feel someone's gaze at my neck. Scientists who question paranormal experiences should explain how people can sense within
seconds
when someone in the same room is staring at them. I can describe the symptoms: a warm tickle starts on the neck below the hairline, the ears itch and the Adam's apple jumps inadvertently as a stare is transformed into an invisible caress. I wish Glaxo or Pfizer put some money into researching the subject, because then we might be able to solve the other conundrum: how to spot who it is, without looking around. In most cases we're disappointed, anyway – why, sometimes we can be positively insulted.

I certainly am not. My man is on the small side (well, if you want to pick up Vikings, go to Sweden) but sweet. Our eyes lock and he smiles first. I smile back and, losing no time, hewalks towards me.

‘Hello,' he says to me.

‘Hi.'

‘You sexy, sexy, SEXY man,' he says, and I knew then he was more drunk than me.

I weigh him with a glance. He is short, thirty-ish and slightly stocky with broad shoulders and a pale, round face. His eyes are small and drooping at the outer edges – just like, just like…

‘Are you Japanese?' I ask.

Night falls quickly on his face as if someone had closed shut a skylight above his head. ‘Japanese?' he repeats with his voice raised. Call the orientals impenetrable if you like, but you do know when they are upset, for they bark like pit-bulls.

I realise I have some explaining to do.

‘Erm, I just said what came to my head,' I grovel. ‘I am not a great observer of characteristics where Asians are concerned.'

‘Nobody says this to me befo',' he shouts.

‘I am sorry, I thought…'

‘My grandmotha' Japanese. But I no Japanese! I, Chinese!'

‘You do look Chinese,' I correct myself. ‘It's me. To me everyone looks Japanese in Asia. What's your name?'

‘My name is Dan,' he says.

‘Hardly a Japanese name, is it?' I laugh nervously. ‘It's very, ermm,
Chinese
. Like, like –' I stop. Dan Dare? Dan Brown? Dan Ackroyd?

‘I'm John,' I belatedly introduce myself. ‘Glad to meet you Dan.'

And I am. Sometimes you can't make out a genuine person in the hydra-headed pick-up falseness that permeates clubland from Soho to Singapore, but Dan's eyes still glow with that guileless innocence that comes from within rather than without. The gallivanting of the ladyboys further down only serve to emphasise Dan's affectionate stare as he leans at the bar; he gives my belly a warm feeling that, for now at least, only I matter in his world.

This is someone I can wear my sling in front of and not feel awkward.

‘First time in Singapore?'

‘I was here a long time ago. Long, long time.'

‘You like Singapore?'

‘I do,' I reply. ‘There are some scenes that are difficult to forget.'

Like the songbirds.

I am the nightmare of maids everywhere and with good reason: it's only some really major catastrophe like global thermonuclear war or a Richter scale nine earthquake that can wake me up early on a weekday, let alone on a weekend, so my room is the last one to be made. I have found that different nationalities react differently to lie-ins. In South America the maid and her friends and her friends' friends start gossiping in a loud voice outside the door until you emerge beaten and hung over. In France and Italy they bang on the door – if you are lucky – or just barge in and feign surprise that you are still in bed and not up with the chickens to admire the Duomo/
Hôtel de Ville
/magnificent coastline. In Asia they leave you alone, but at a cost: they never replace items like soap or toilet paper ever again.

But that Sunday the maids were happy and pleasantly puzzled to see the hotel's sleep demon emerge from his room before they had even started to lay down the breakfast table. See, I have grown up with tales such as that of the Emperor and his Nightingale that personify the passion of the Far East for songbirds and the bird-singing competition at Tiong Bahru was unmissable. Malays also cherish their melodies, especially those of the
merbok
, a zebra-striped dove that is supposed to trill verses of the Qur'an if you but hear closely. The Chinese prefer the
mata puteh
, the white-eyed zosterops, a tiny olive-green songster with a powerful soundbox and a distinctive white circle around the eye; the
shama
, a beautiful and bossy member of the thrush family with a glossy ink-black head, back and wings contrasting with an orange chest; and the sparrow-sized red-whiskered bulbul, called
jambul
, whose voice is as close to human whistling as can be.

I knew that bird singing contests are common in South East Asia, but nothing had prepared me for the scale of the spectacle in the Bird Arena Café: a roof of railings with hooks on which dozens of identical 20-inch round bamboo cages were hanging, one bird per cage; competitors, almost exclusively male, sitting in a row of chairs parallel to the line of cages above, sipping a mug of coffee; waiters bringing drinks, collecting dishes and taking orders; judges walking around making notes; and spectators sitting at tables, eating– whenever Singaporeans sit down, they get pangs of hunger – or walking with necks stretched, because the cages are hung high to leave the birds undisturbed and minimise interference from man-made obstructions.

But my overwhelming memory is of the aural tapestry woven by the birds themselves – seemingly
shamas
on my Sunday – caressing my eardrums and imprinting their love songs into my unconscious. Yes, love songs they were, as only the male
shamas
sing, competing to find a mate who appreciates their musicality. And theirs was no twitter or squeak, no chirp nor chip: occasionally they sang as if with themselves as a duet, a strange a cappella tune arising from their lungs; sometimes the melodic air went on for minutes on end, its resonance lingering on for longer. I'd have liked to know what they were on about, but my even greater wish was to hear them in the wild where a mate could and would fly to them to make them content. How would a happy, satisfied
shama
sing as opposed to the ungratified avian choir above me laden with perpetual longing?