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