SYPNOSIS

Pre-marital sex, adultery, and broken homes. Men seem to be blamed for many ills that plague today's society. Kent Ridge Capers explores a fundamental instinct that drives our society and invites you to ponder : what will our world be like if we have less of that instinct? Set in the innocence or decadence of college life (depending on your point of view) this book offers a peek into the minds of two diametrically opposite college boys. The question is : which man would you rather be?

John is a common name.  It can be anybody's name.  Unlike Sam.  You think of a jolly rotund man when you hear the name Sam.  Or Joseph.  A tall slender and serious looking man would call himself Joseph.  But John is a common name with no definitive qualities.  So let me describe John to you in greater detail, to add colour to the blank canvas of his name and character to the unchiselled sculpture of his face.

Where shall I start?  John is… well, John… is John.  He is average in height, slim and mild mannered.  He likes his clothes blue and brown or khaki.  A gargantuan pair of spectacles perching on his nodulous nose grabs your attention straight away.  It takes some time before one can look beyond such aberrations to discover a pair of large intelligent eyes peering at you inquisitively, like a white mouse in a cage.

That was how John looked like standing at the huge windows of Yusof Ishak House, peering at the Sports Council Swimming Pool on the other side of Kent Ridge Rise. A young man looking out of his cage. It was Friday, the day of the week where classes ended early at 4 pm, and David was strolling to the pool with his three chums.  Usually John would have joined them.  David was his blood brother.  Or, rather, the modern college students' version of it.  And David was… well, I'll introduce you to David later.

Back to John.  Now, where was I?  Yes, John would usually join them.  But not this occasion.  John had to meet his aunt at 5 pm.  It was a matter of some urgency that John had to meet his aunt.  You want to know why?  Ah, then I'll have to introduce you to Beatrice.

Beatrice.  Now that is a name with definitive qualities.  Fun loving, petite, round eyes uncluttered by spectacles with a hint of the high-school-teacher-on-holiday kind of girl.  The name speaks for itself.

Beatrice was John's classmate.  The first time he met her outside of the classroom context was at the swimming pool.  He and his chums and she and her girlfriends – the two groups were like two paramecia floating in the water.  They would mind their separate ways up and down the length and breadth of the pool, meet midstream, brush against each other's invisible membranes, splash each other with showers of giggles and blessings and retire to their separate places in the sun.  From that distance, John could see that Beatrice was a good swimmer.  He liked that.  So whenever he spotted her in his classes, he observed her shoulder-length hair and ready smile from afar.

But Beatrice appeared to be surrounded by guys with cars in all shapes and sizes all the time.  It did not matter what kind of cars they were – they were the symbol of the well heeled amongst undergraduate society.  Do you see the problem?  The problem was that John did not have a car.  That was the problem – at least until the two paramecia bumped into each other at Orchard Theatre.  Beatrice and her friends had walked over from the Orchard Road Station.  John was surprised.  He realized that Beatrice was not car-bound, that she did not disdain the seats of the underground trains and public buses at all.

The first time John asked Beatrice for a date, he felt a complete fool.  He had been tossing with the idea for some time, and when he found himself sitting next to Beatrice one day at the canteen, his throat was dry despite the 7-Up, and his fingers kept making a racket by squashing and cracking the empty plastic cup.  Finally, he summoned all his courage and crushed the plastic cup decisively with both hands.

‘He-man And The Masters Of The Cosmos’, he declared.

‘Ha!’ she exclaimed, ‘it doesn’t take a He-man to do that.  I can do it too.’  She pinched her cup flat with her dainty fingers, but the cup bounced back into shape once she released it.

‘But have you seen the show?’

Beatrice looked at him with her wide round eyes and shook her head like a Mogwai in the Gremlins.

‘Would you like to see the He-man And The Masters Of The Cosmos? We can watch the show together’ he suggested as casually as he could.

At this juncture, Beatrice burst into squeals of laughter so loud and so unrestrained that it bordered on ridicule.  Fortunately, the lady was kind enough to rescue him from his embarrassment by suggesting Fatal Distraction instead.

So one date led to another, and the time they spent around Orchard Road and Marina Square were the nourishment that fed his fantasies.  He dreamed of the moment when he would hold her hands, place his arm around her waist, tell her how fond he was of her and press his lips tenderly against her cheeks.  On the weekends, when she was out with someone else – a Leonard or a Lionel or other from another faculty, John spent his time day dreaming up little plans for the next date with her.

You see.  Planet Earth believes in the specialization of labour and talents.  A man’s talent is to scheme and plan.  This is talent that needs to be nurtured from young.  So John schemed to observe the routines and delights of his lady, to conjure up the little surprise meetings at the study carrels in the library or the ice-cream stall at the canteen, to discover new things to do and new places to go to.

A man, you see, has to concentrate all his energies and attention on one lady – at least one lady at a time – and buy those tickets to the movie or make that reservation at the restaurant.

And the lady?  Well the lady sits there making herself pretty.  She doesn’t have to plan the big things the way a man does. She just needs to plan the small things -- such as the curl of her hair to just the right length, the colours of her dress that should match just so from head to toe, and so on and so forth. She can afford to welcome as many suitors as there are in the market and line them up consecutively on her calendar.  The more the merrier, and the better for her to choose from.  You get the drift?

So on Thursday evening, John had graduated to calling Beatrice from the Hostel Common Room telephone to enquire about Friday lectures.

‘My goodness!  And I thought Mr Tan had cancelled his lecture tomorrow.’

‘No such luck, He-man,’ Beatrice concluded gaily.

‘Hey, by the way, I meant to ask you,’ John changed the subject as nonchalantly as possible, ‘are you free tomorrow night?’

‘Well…’ Beatrice hesitated, ‘why?’

‘Oh, I thought we might catch the Xpo on Friday night.’

‘What’s that?’ Beatrice was intrigued.

‘It’s a pop band from Philippines.  They’re supposed to be very good.’

‘Where are they playing?’

‘At Changi.’

‘Changi!  It’s so far away.’

John steeled himself for another rejection.

‘How are we to get there – do you have a car?’

‘Oh…’ John grimaced at the question.  Had not the lady heard of taxis?  But she was asking for a car.  Perhaps he could borrow one from his brother or his father.  Wouldn’t do to say no!  ‘Well let me see,’ he answered carefully, ‘maybe I could get one.’

‘Well, all right.’

For the rest of his Thursday night, John felt like a beggar.  No.  His brother’s car was not available as he was going to a party on Friday.  His father was not in yet, and he would have to telephone again later.  John waited impatiently.  He had driven his family in his father’s car before, and his father might oblige.  That was his last hope.  He wished he had a fairy godmother to turn to.  But no.  His next telephone call told him that his father had to entertain clients that Friday.  John sat by himself on his bed and moaned and groaned into his pillow, wondering how he was going to tell Beatrice of his ill luck.  Perhaps he should skip classes altogether the next day.  That would be an easy way out.  He might plead a stomachache and suffer the guilty conscience in silence.

In his hour of despair, he thought of his uncle.  He had never borrowed anything from his uncle before.  It felt strange even to contemplate the request.  How was he to put the request into words?  He paced up and down his bedroom, agitated.  Finally, his enthusiasm for the perfect Friday night exceeded his alienation from his uncle.  In the end, his uncle thought that his car was too big for an inexperienced driver such as John, and it was his aunt who came to his rescue with her little Mazda 121.

So it was that he left Yusof Ishak House a little past 4 pm that Friday.  It would take him almost and hour to reach his aunt’s place by the underground train.

L

The Xpo was fun loving and gregarious.  But the seedy jokes might have been more at home amongst army boys than college girls.  So after one hour of throbbing music and coquettish teasing, John and Beatrice found themselves facing the South China Sea along Nichol Drive. They let their souls feast on the soothing rhythms of the winds and waves.  It was as if there were two different worlds, one at the music lounge and the other by the beach a few minutes away from each other.

‘Wild, weren’t they!’ John touched her arm with a grin.

‘Terribly so,’ Beatrice groaned theatrically.  ‘The best part was when the male lead singer sat on the army boy’s lap to sing… it was so funny just to watch that guy’s embarrassment.’

‘I liked the part when the female singer kissed the Indonesian man behind a silk scarf.  They made so much smooching noises.’

‘And the smooching noises continued,’ Beatrice was now shaking with laughter, ‘even after the man stepped out into view!’

‘The guy had to yank the scarf away before she stopped the smooching noises.’

They chuckled, and their laughter was carried by the winds to the four seas.  Even the stars twinkled mischievously at their merriment.

John reached out and held her hand, but she moved away a little without breaking the contact, so that they leaned against the cold night air like ballroom dancers just before the cue, held together only by the few fingers curled around each other’s.  This was the moment that he had been waiting for, the moment when the setting was romantic and carefree, the winds heady with passion and the sea rushing with joy.  He had rehearsed many times for just such a moment with Beatrice in his fantasies, when he would start by telling her that he liked the way her eyes twinkled, that he was fond of the way she laughed and that he was falling in love with her.  Yes, he was falling in love.  He could think of no one else when he hugged his pillow at night and when he blinked at the first wisp of sunlight in the morning.

But as he gazed into her shining eyes turned quizzically at him he could not bring himself to say the few simple words.  He could not help thinking about the other Lionels and Leonards, the ones with better looking faces, more muscular physiques, the cars and the money.  He feared that if the words escaped, Beatrice would laugh in his face and tell him that he was barking up the wrong tree.

You see, to John, love was sacred.  He had always dreamed of the few mystical words of endearment as words which he would reserve for the one woman in his life, who could gain his trust, a trust that his love would be treasured and returned in kind.  He could not bear the thought that Beatrice might deride its value and destroy its magic.  He remembered the story about Merlin the Magician. He would be devastated; he would be trapped impotent in a glass cage of despair by a love betrayed.  He was afraid.

So the stars twinkled and the heavens screamed across the South China Sea driving the winds into their faces.  Enthusiastically, the waves leaped at their feet.  And receded, their passions spent.  The moment had passed.  Next time.  Next week.  He would tell Beatrice how much he loved her at another time, he thought, when his head might feel less heady and his heart, less heated.

‘I think he had the last laugh!’

‘Who?’ Beatrice enquired.

‘The Indonesian man.’

‘Oh yes,’ Beatrice mused to herself, ‘the Indonesian man.’

L

John was desperate.  It had been one whole month since the Xpo had exploded onto the Changi entertainment scene.  They had left for their hometown already, presumably somewhere in the Philippines.  In that month, John had caught glimpses of Beatrice at the lecture halls, the canteens and the libraries, but there was no opportunity to engage in anything more than a few words of idle chat.  And Beatrice always seemed too busy to answer the telephone.  John could not help wondering where she was and with whom.  Another Lionel?  Another Leonard?  Perhaps someone had swept her off her feet.  Perhaps she was no longer interested in a pair of spectacles perched on a huge nose.  John could not bear the uncertainties any more.  He had to meet Beatrice.  So he dropped a note into her locker outside the library to arrange for a meeting beside the bookstore on the ground floor.

Beatrice arrived twenty minutes after the appointed time with a pile of papers tucked under her arm.

‘Hi!’ she greeted John.

‘Hi, I thought you wouldn’t come.’

‘Well, here I am,’ she leaned against the wall. ‘Well, what is it?’

‘Nothing, really,’ John shrugged hesitantly.  ‘Nothing really important.  It’s just that I had not been able to speak to you for one whole month… I… I couldn’t even get you on the phone…’

‘Oh yeah, I’ve been very busy lately.’

‘You’ve been going out,’ John bit his lip.  He had intended it to be a question, not an accusation.  He looked at Beatrice anxiously.

‘Yes, I’ve met this guy… he’s absolutely wonderful.’

‘A guy… is it Lionel?’ John cleared his throat anxiously, ‘or Leonard?’

“No, no,’ Beatrice laughed, ‘he’s a working man, graduated a year ago.’

There was a moment of silence.  His mind was in a turmoil.  What should he do?  What should he say?  He was at a loss for words.  He felt as if a tonne of lead was pressing on his head and shoulders, too heavy to move, too dense for clarity of thought.  He too turned and leaned against the wall to face the battalion of trees that stood like sentinels along the entire length of Kent Ridge guarding the hearts and minds of their vulnerable charges.

‘Are you in love with him?’

‘I don’t know,’ she flashed him a big wide smile, ‘but he did tell me that he loves me.’

‘What!’ John couldn’t help exclaiming.  ‘How long have you known him?’

‘About one and a half months.’

John could not believe his ears.  One and a half months!  He had known Beatrice for longer than that.  What about me, he wanted to ask, I could have told you I loved you too, I would have said those sacred words too – I almost did.  So what about me?  Would those words carry the same magic if they came from a pair of spectacles perched on a huge nose?  Do some magicians have more power over the hearts of others?  And the rest… are the rest so impotent that even the few magic incantations could not escape from their lips?

Beatrice glanced around the foyer.  She avoided John’s eyes and waited in silence.

‘Well that’s it then,’ John said lamely. ‘I just wanted… I just wanted to see how you’ve been getting on.’

‘Yeah, you know how it is,’ Beatrice said gaily. ‘I’ve got to run.  Coming?’

‘I… I’ve got to get some stationery,’ John pressed his lips together and continued with a vague wave of his hand, ‘so I’ll see you some other time.’

A nod.  A smile.  And she was gone.  John watched her shoulder-length hair swinging from side to side as she climbed the stairs and disappeared towards the library.  A few heads bobbed by, floating on their own self-contained missions to their lecture halls or the library or whatever.  But for John – time had stopped for John.  He felt numb in his heart and in his mind.  He remained slumped against the wall, sinking into his own silence.  He felt as wooden as the sentinels that guarded their hearts and minds of Kent Ridge Rise.

L

The hostel was a community of spirits.  Most of the time, its inhabitants lived in a state of spiritual high – an intoxication generated by the avalanche of activities from sports and games to art and culture simmering in a melting pot of social drama.  So when John dragged his heavy heart through the bustling dining hall and cheerful corridors, David was the first to notice that something was wrong.

Now, did I promise to introduce you to David?  Right.  David is a name originally associated with royalty.  The image it conjures is one of strength as well as vulnerability.  But it is an overused name.  So beloved is that name that everybody wants to call their sons David.  So in case the name has been diluted by the countless numbers of overzealous fathers, let me jolt your memory of the little David that stood up to Goliath.  Yes that’s the kind of David that I’m talking about.

When David first came to the hostel, he was mobbed by a horde of enchanting girls.  Not physically, of course, but socially.  They were attracted by his large sensitive eyes, they were seduced by his shy but mischievous smile, and his lean and athletic physique.  They made him introduce himself to them one by one.  They were intrigued by his unusual accent and wanted to know which part of Malaysia he came from.  And it was Jennifer who first declared to John that David was her little blood brother.

Now, wait there a moment.  I do not have the time and space to introduce Jennifer to you as well.  Suffice to say that Jennifer considered John her endearing classmate and insisted on introducing John to her little blood brother.  That was how their trinity of blood brothers and sister began.

As I was saying, David was the first to notice that something was not right.  For two days, he caught glimpses of John at the dining tables and found him strangely uncommunicative.  He wondered why John was not at the swimming pool or the billiards tables.  Even the little midnight supper gatherings could not entice John out of his room.  And Jennifer did not know what was irking her classmate either.

When David finally knocked on John’s door and let himself into his room, he found John hibernating in his neotenic winter and hiding behind his pile of blankets.

‘Are you ill or something?’ No beating about the bush for David.

‘No, I’m okay,’ the blanket stirred a little, ‘just tired.’

‘Tired?  What have you been doing?  I haven’t seen you around for days.’  David sat at the foot of the bed.  John’s face was tilted towards the wall and David could not see his expression.  ‘Is something wrong?’

Silence.

‘Hey, what is wrong?’ David was worried.  He had never seen his buddy in this state before.

‘Test results?’

No answer.

‘Family problem?’

No answer.

‘Girlfriend problem?’

‘I just want to be alone for awhile,’ John mumbled to the wall.

‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ David declared smugly.  ‘Girls!’

Silence.

‘You’ve been dumped, haven’t you?’

John cringed behind his blanket at the other’s insensitivity.

‘You let her walk all over you and now she’s walked out on you.’

The words were not kind.  They cut like razors on an open would.

‘You’re a sucker for love.’

‘Shut up!’ John turned over, kicked at his tormentor and pulled himself into a sitting position with his blanket held tightly to his chin.  ‘Shut up!  You’re good looking, charming – girls run to you.  You don’t know that it’s like.’

‘All right!  Tell me what it’s like,’ David challenged.

John breathed in sharply.  What was it like?  How were guys supposed to feel when their love is spurned?  The bookstores are filled to the brim with love stories about women written for women.  When a girl is heartbroken, she shares her pain with countless other heroines in paperback.  But who writes love stories for guys?  John was not sure what guys normally feel when their love is rejected.  He did not know whether he was less a man for feeling such anguish.

He was emotionally exhausted.  He had no more energy left for anything.  He could not eat, he could not sleep, and at night, when he wallowed in self-pity, his chest was so heavy he felt he could explode – yet, at the same time, there was an emptiness, a hole in his heart that left him feeling as if he could not breathe, that he had not enough air – and the tears welled up in his eyes silently and flowed in painful rivulets of salt into his pillow.  But how could he tell his buddy all this.  His heart-wrenching histrionics would be greeted by more smirks and jesting.

‘It’s painful,’ he finally answered. ‘I wish I could cry, but I can’t.’  Yes, he had to preserve some measure of self-respect for himself, albeit a false one.

‘Hey, there’s nothing to worry about,’ David softened his tone.  ‘There’s plenty of other fish in the sea.  I’ll fix you up with a new date.’

John threw his head back and pulled his hair in exasperation.  He was not interested in a new date.  He was not interested in any date.  He was in pain.  He had a vacuum in his heart and had no energy left to entertain any date.  His blood brother was too immature to understand.

‘Just leave me alone,’ John muttered through his clenched teeth.  ‘It’s not fair!  I tried so hard, but it didn’t work.  Nobody cares for me.  Nobody!’  John shook his head in despair and rolled over like a foetus, withdrawing into his little cocoon of self-pity.  ‘Just leave me alone.  I want to lie here where I can feel the air seeping out of my lungs and the blood draining out of my body.  I just want to die.’

Now his last few words drew an immediate reaction from David.  It went against his male psyche to speak of dying or to surrender to failure.  Self-pity and self-doubt are the masochistic luxury of women.  Men just had to grit their teeth and get on with life.  With one sweep of the arm, David pulled John’s blanket away.

‘Get up, lazybones,’ David commanded.  ‘No more talk about dying.  We’re going for a swim.’

He stood with his arms akimbo, looking disapprovingly as John curled up into a ball and groaned.

‘Come on, you’ve been moping around with your tail between your legs long enough,’ David declared, as he rummaged in John’s drawers for his swimming trunks and towel.  ‘Some exercise will be good for your.’  He threw the necessary apparel into a plastic bag.  ‘Ten laps.  Maybe twenty.’

The ball of meat protested.

‘Uh-uh,’ David shook his head resolutely. ‘The word “no” does not belong in my vocabulary.  Come on, get up.’

And he pulled, shoved, prodded, pushed and marched the ball of meat to the swimming pool.  Well perhaps he did not need to exercise that much pulling and prodding.  But for all his tough-talking, no-nonsense manner of speech, David cared enough to be there when his buddy needed some emotional support.  Perhaps this is modern day male bonding at its most sensitive.  Not the macho, violent, gun-toting cowboys or the revengeful martial arts expert.  But the more mundane, unexplored kinship of shared trials and tribulations.  And that kinship was what John needed to salvage his wounded pride and refill the hole in his heart.

L

So.  You must be intrigued.  Did David say that John was a sucker for love?  What medicine would a hard-talking Don Johnson prescribe for a nerdy Jerry Lewis?

In the course of the next few weeks, David set himself the mission of fulfilling his prescription for his ailing friend – lots of exercise and lots of girls!  Whether it was the swimming pool, the tennis courts or the jogging track on weekdays, the discotheque on Friday nights or a music lounge on Saturdays, he dragged John along.  The ladies were always full of fun and laughter.  They were delighted with jolly old David and curious about the jaded look in John’s eyes.

But the prescription was not working.  Every girl that smiled at John reminded him of Beatrice.  That twinkle in her eye, that twirl of shoulder-length hair and the music in her laughter kept leaping into his mind.  And each time he thought of Beatrice, his heart felt crushed with the pain of rejection, burdened by love unrequited.  He stared dejectedly at his feet and wished that the ground would open up and swallow him body and soul – perhaps then he would be released from his torment.  When he looked up and found one of the girls, Jane, gazing at him, he could not bear the scrutiny and averted his eyes.  He was relieved when the group parted at the entrance to Tornado in the wee hours of Sunday morning.

A lesser mortal would have given up.  But not the Don Johnson of Kent Ridge Rise.

Tuesday was jogging time.  David chose the route along the Kent Ridge Road which wormed its way along the ridge flanked by nature in all its unkempt glory, untouched by landscaping enthusiasm.  The intermittent breaks in the wall of trees afforded them a breathtaking view of the sprawling complex below, ranging from the hostels with all their hyper-activities to the faculties with their cerebral torture chambers.  They sat on the gravel and twigs to savour the peace and quiet, far from the maddening crowds.  A philosopher might be inspired by such tranquility to open up his mind and contemplate about the ways of the world.  David was content to open up his heart to expound on the ways of love.

‘So, have you met anyone interesting yet?’ David began nonchalantly.

John watched a bus rumble through the housing estate beyond the university complex and shook his head.

‘You haven’t?’ David pressed on disapprovingly.  ‘What about Jane?  I caught her eyeing you at the Tornado disco.’

‘Really?’ John shrugged.  ‘But I guess I’m not ready for anything yet.’

‘Not ready?’ David was surprised.  ‘Why not?’

‘I don’t know,’ John frowned.  How could he explain that he was still feeling raw around the edges, and that Jane was treading on those exposed nerves?  ‘I guess I’ve been too preoccupied.’

‘Hmm…’ David nodded his head emphatically, ‘you must learn to transfer your love, transfer your feelings from one person to another.’

‘What?’ John was flabbergasted.

‘Yeah,’ David was emboldened by John’s apparent confusion.  ‘Girls can afford to wallow in their depression over a break-up.  Like Sleeping Beauty, they simply wallow until a knight in shining armour comes to rescue them from the pit of their depression.  But you can’t.’  David wagged his finger at John meaningfully.  ‘There is no knight to come to your rescue.  You are the knight.  And to be a knight you must be impregnable in your armour.  You must be tough, hard as steel and untouchable.’

John looked at his friend and said irritably:

‘I’m suffering enough, I don’t need all these fairy tale nonsense.’

‘All right, all right,’  David held up his hands to placate his audience.  ‘Look at me.  You think I do not know how it feels to be rejected by a loved one?  I’ve been dumped too, you know’

John’s eyes widened in surprise.  The Don Johnson of Kent Ridge Rise spurned?  That was unbelievable! Was David pulling his leg? John stole a sidelong glance at David. The latter was gazing contemplatively at the up's and down's of Kent Ridge Rise -- the undulation of young hearts and minds. John waited for the tender heart to reveal itself.

‘It took me a long time to get over it.  I never thought it could happen to me,’ David shrugged his shoulders and squinted at the evening sun.  ‘But I learned my lessons.  Never give all your heart to any one person.  Keep part of it to yourself.  That’s the only way to retain your sanity in this game.’

John shook his head incredulously. The tender heart was not so tender, afterall. It had been roughened by callous hands. He did not know what to make of the advice.  Was it born of weakness or of strength?

‘Look at it another way.  A girl sits back and waits for her suitors to dance around her.  She has maybe four, maybe five suitors, and by the time she makes up her mind to be serious with one of them, she already knows that that guy is serious about her.  So she can afford to put her heart and soul into the relationship once she has made her choice.  True, even then her choice may not work.  There could be a break-up.  She starts all over again.  On the average, a girl may have four or five relationships before settling down into marriage.’

He paused to see whether John was following his long discourse and continued: ‘But the guy… the guy will be one of those four or five suitors dancing around the girl.  If the girl makes up her mind and he is not chosen, he has to move on to the next girl and the next until he finds one who responds, and they begin a relationship.  Now think… if the average guy goes through the same four or five relationships before settling down to marriage, it means that he as to take a fancy to and dance around twenty to twenty-five girls in his lifetime.’

‘So there,’ David concluded smugly, ‘a guy can’t afford to invest his emotions too heavily in the girls who catch his fancy.  He must hold some part of it back and learn to transfer his fancy from one girl to the next.’

He watched the tiny figures on the football field below while he waited for John to mull over his theory.  He felt pleased with himself.  His was a theory based on gut instinct.  The logic behind the theory was formulated only to buttress the instinct.  And he was pleased that the mathematical analysis appeared so infallible.

‘Well?’ David demanded after what seemed an eternity, ‘what do you say to my theory?’

John leaned back onto the gravel and placed his hands behind his head for support.  His thoughts were like the clouds in the sky – they tumbled over each other in shapeless forms, floating this way and that.  And depending on where the setting sun was shining at, that portion glowed with a golden lining, that portion seemed most beautiful and most logical in shape and form.  And David’s theory was like the sunlight, forceful, direct and beautiful in its simple logic.  It might appear too simple.  Too mathematical.  But how could his clouded thoughts refute them!

‘Well?’ David demanded again.

‘I don’t know.  Let’s suppose you are right.  What, then?  Perhaps some guys… like you, can transfer your feelings.  But what about other guys like me… who can’t?’

‘Why do you say you can’t?  You simply stop thinking about the one and start thinking about the other.’

‘It’s not like that!’ John was exasperated.  ‘Sometimes, you look at every girl and you are reminded of the past, the hurt.’

‘Really?’ David mocked.  ‘All right, let’s try and see.’

‘Try what?’

‘Just sit back.  Relax.  And when I count from one to ten, I want you to think of Jane.’

John stared at David for a moment to see what he was getting at.  When he saw that David was earnest in his prescription, he lay back and thought about Jane with her hair cropped at her neck and her lips half opened as if she was about to say something.

‘Close your eyes,’ David directed.

John closed his eyes.

‘One. Two. Three…’ David counted to ten.

This was not hypnosis, John tried to reassure himself.  This was merely a mental exercise, John reminded himself as he tried to reconstruct the image of his previous Sunday night.  But the Jane that he saw was motionless, lifeless, like a photograph; and after a while, the twirl of shoulder length hair and the smile that broke into his consciousness was Beatrice’s.  The months he spent brooding about Beatrice were too vivid to erase with a still portrait.  He opened his eyes wide.

‘What happened?’ David asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Well what did you see?’

‘We were at Tornado – Jane and I.  But Jane was there for only a while.  Then Beatrice came.  And everything disappeared.  It’s a stupid game anyway.’

‘No, no, tell me,’ David was persistent.  ‘What was Jane doing just before she disappeared?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Okay,’ David proceeded slyly.  ‘And you, what were you doing?’

‘Nothing.  I was just looking.’

‘Looking?  That’s all?’

‘Yeah.  Looking.’

‘You infantile moron!’ David exploded in his heap of gravel and twigs, ‘you stunted jackass!  Of course she disappears if the two of you simply look at each other motionless.’

John propped up his head in surprise at the sudden tirade of insults.  What had he done to deserve this?

‘You were supposed to move closer to her, touch her cheeks, hold her hands.  Okay, now try again.’

‘Good grief!’

‘Now close your eyes,’ David commanded.

John threw his head back with a sigh and closed his eyes.  The countdown began.

‘Now do you see Jane?’

‘Yep,’ John replied after a pause.

‘Are you close to her?’

‘Yes,’ John muttered.

‘Get closer,’ David nudged his friend.

Another pause.

‘Now place your hands on her shoulders.  How does it feel?’

‘This is hard work,’ John protested weakly.

‘Do her shoulders feel soft and smooth?’

John grunted.

A pause.

David watched his motionless friend thoughtfully.

‘Now slide your hands slowly down her back.  Can you feel her bundle of flesh in your arms?’

John’s lips twitched a little.

‘Now you’re at the small of her back.  Embrace her tightly.  Squeeze the breath out of her.’

David was smiling at the frown on his student’s face.

‘Now slide your hands over her bums and massage them gently.  What is Jane doing now?’

‘I don’t know,’ John murmured shyly.

‘She’s enjoying it, of course.  She’s wound her arms tightly around your neck.  She’s kissing your chin.  Now kiss her.  Kiss her on her lips.’

David grinned as his friend shifted deeper into the pile of gravel and twigs as one would on a bed of cotton and linen.  ‘Now what are your hands doing?’

‘My hands?’ John’s smiled.  ‘My hands are moving up the sides of her belly.’

‘Yeah, man,’ David chuckled happily, ‘that’s the way to do it, man.  It’s softer and warmer, it's responding to your touch.  It’s hot, man.  Where’re you at now?’

‘I’m at her breasts.’  The thought of Richard Gere in An Officer And a Gentleman flashed through his mind.

‘Yeah, man, it’s hotter now, really hot.’

‘It’s round and soft,’ John continued, ‘and I’m going to kiss her there.’

‘Good grief!’ David exclaimed in mock surprise.  ‘You’re naughtier than I thought.  What have I done?  What have I done?’ he squealed in jest; ‘I’ve unleashed a sex maniac!’

‘What?’ John’s eyes sprang open.  His friend was thrashing about on the gravel and twigs, trying to contain his laughter.  John saw that he was the object of ridicule.  Had he been tricked into this silly game?  Was it all a joke?  But as he watched his friend rolling in fits of uncontrolled merriment, he could not suppress his own laughter, even though the joke was on him.  So he rolled over to his friend, heaved, shoved, sent his friend tumbling down the lalang slope and capped it all by raining showers of gravel and twigs onto his friend five feet below.

‘Enough… enough…’ David chuckled amidst another shower of gravel and twigs, ‘okay, okay, no more sex maniac.  I won’t even mention the word.  Okay, okay, let’s try again.’  David had to rub the tears from his eyes.

And they did.  David had to coax his friend and assure him it was not a joke.  But they did try again.  It was a game.  It was a journey.  It was the opening of a heart and mind.  It was an exercise in pure lust.  And pure lust could be a steel armour that saps your heart of love.

As they jogged back the way back the way they came, John wondered how many of his friends were like David.  Strong.  Lusty.  Hiding behind their steel armour.  And how many were like him.  Romantic.  Vulnerable.  And heartbroken.

And Jane? Jane was no loner a pretty face in the crowd.  She was flesh and blood.  John could feel her arms and smell her perfume in his mind.  Perhaps he might invite Jane for a movie the next time they met.  But was he ready to give up the mud of depression that he was wallowing in?  It seemed as if the greater his suffering, the truer and nobler was his love.  If he pulled himself out of the mud and donned a steel armour, what would his heart be filled with?  Love?  Lust?  Or both?

But then again, John wondered, if he refused the armour and continued to wallow in his mud, would a damsel in shining armour come to rescue him?  That was food for thought – enough to occupy John’s mind that entire evening.

Indeed.

You may be wondering too.

I wish I could give you the answer in the usual simplistic “and they lived happily ever after” variety.  But life is too complex for such endings.  Ask Jane.  She will tell you how complicated life is.  Jane, whose smile had lingered over those sad puppy eyes hiding behind thick spectacle frames.  But I haven’t introduced you to Jane, have I?  Is Jane the modern damsel in shining armour?  Or is Jane busy lining up her suitors one by one on her calendar?

Jane is… well Jane is… too complicated to introduce to you in a sentence or two.  I’ll tell you more about Jane some other time.  Who knows?  She might be quite different from the paperback heroines you have read about so far…

****          THE    END      ****