Belly in the Lion

I was walking towards the lobby of the Elizabeth hotel in Singapore, making my way from my room, when i passed by the possile pre-op whore.

I say possible, because I was 50-50 on the matter. Her tight denim daisy dukes and spaghetti strap stripped top were just the right side of slutty. Combine that with the over-the-top hair and bright red make-up together with a height not often found in most Asian females and the fact that she was walking into a hotel escorted by a concierge at one in the morning, made the possibility very real.

The last time I had seen girls like her were in the Four Floors of Whores, a mall by day that became a den of debauchery once th sun came down. It was there, in a bar called Romeo's, where we were surrounded by girls just like her - beautiful by sexy by FHM standards but somehow not quite right. The height. that was the giveaway. But as my friend put it as we slowly sipped our drinks and tried to avoid making eye contact, "if a horse looked as good as that, I'd fuck a horse."


By the time the whore came back out of the hotel I was already outside of it, smoking a cigarette that I would usually be smoking in the lobby if I were back in Malaysia. Less than fifteen minutes had passed. Perhaps the client was incredibly quick. Perhaps he wanted something different. Perhaps she left her purse.

Or perhaps she was a guest at the hotel, an unusually tall Asian woman with traces of an Adam's apple who had checked in to the same hotel as I had with my parents and little brother on this most commercialized and celebrated religious occasions - the birth of baby Jesus. I shouldn't even be writing this. I have a script to complete. A paying script that will no doubt be flipped a 180 degrees by the time it reaches the third and final draft and I won't even know what happened till I see it on air. But that all seems so far away right now in the sterile comfort of the City of the Faking Lion.

Thirty five hours ago I was sat at the back seat of a five series BMW, listening to random mp3's and watching Malaysia go by as we drove towards the neighboring island that was once a part of my country. At some point we stopped for lunch at a place renown for natural and healthy Herbs & Spices, a restaurant so health oriented that you have to take off your shoes before entering so that you can experience the massage stone paths from the door to your table, hundreds of smooth rocks that are meant to give your feet a quick reflexogical tingle before digging in to herb tea and healthy briyani rice.

I slept for most of the journey, all the way till the incredibly long queue at customs. This was followed by an insane drive through Singapore trying to find Orchard Road, ducking and diving through different highways, going through maps and discovering that the GPRS map function on my mother's Nokia was beyond shit.

We arrived at our hotel at 8.30pm. We'd been on the road since ten in the morning.

After a bad soba dinner I went for a walkabout, Kitty on my mind. She'd been on my mind for quite a while, through most of the journey, and it began to hit me - one of the things I truly do not miss about going on these holidays with my parents is the amount of dead time it gives me to think about things. contemplate. Wonder and ponder.

And sometimes, these thoughts can fuck you up.

But the thoughts aren't the one to blame. The fact that I was having the thoughts about Kitty was a shocker to my entire nervous system. I hadn't had a girl trigger The Thoughts in a long time, and the sheer emotional power The Thoughts had over me made me realize something, and that something made me more than a wee bit scared at how vulnerable I was. I hadn't been this vulnerable in a long time, and the realization filled me both with joy and fear. It was the uncertainty - like someone saying "sure" with a shrug as opposed to a firm "yes" - that was on my mind, and I knew I had no right to push it further.

Then again, if it wasn't about this, it would be about something else. It would be about the direction of the Guber for the upcoming 2009 or something else of greater and/or lesser importance. It's both a blessing and a curse, the amount of time afforded to me to spend just thinking about everything and nothing whenever I go on holiday with my parents. it's both annoying yet strangely reassuring that it's a habit that hasn't changed since I was a child. Every holiday, the majority of the time would be spent thinking. The Thoughts. They don't die so easily.

And yet, when I finally spoke to Kitty on the phone, The Thoughts went away and the emo boy was put aside for a while, something she's often able to do with just the sound of her voice where I know that she's smiling and the infectious laugh that follows it. And as I roamed the nooks and crannies of Orchard Road The Thoughts made way for better Thoughts. And though i'd rather spend my brain time on The Work, perhaps a few hours spent on The Thoughts ain't so bad after all.

At least not as bad as the infuriating 'no jaywalking' rule this city enforces.