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i met up with The Magnus (#1 fagstag and proud proclaimer of the one-liner 'Fuck you lah!') for dinner and shishah several days ago at Arab street. we had a great meal of cheap murtabak which we washed down with several glasses of coffee, mint tea and a mixed fruit shishah. i did the most redundant thing of coupling shishah with several sticks of Viceroys, hoping to reach that smoker's high that has eluded me for several months. and to digress, it was while inhaling shishah and several puffs of menthol lights that i've realized that i'll be crossing the one year mark of being a smoker in just a few day's time. the 20th of August, to be exact. that was the fateful day i returned from Brunei and bought my first pack of cigarettes, a pack of cherry-flavored SKLs. they left a sickly-sweet odor of lacquer and potpurri on the fingernails. i've never liked them since. can't say that i like the amount of nicotine and tar in my lungs either.

but smokers being smokers, tend to have very clouded judgments. they will not listen to good advice and they will still want their cigarettes at the end of the day. and cheap ones at that. if cigarettes are expensive in Singapore, the cheapskate smoker will head down to Geylang to purchase contraband cigarettes. the local pack of cigarettes here cost at least $9.60. and they can rise all the way to $11.60 or more. it's ridiculous, given the amount of hospital bills we'll be racking up in the future when lung carcinomas start to set in. apparently cigarettes and sex were the two things that crossed both our minds when the spur-of-the-moment suggestion of a trip to Geylang was made. of course, i only had cigarettes in mind. but judging from the fact that we went there by cab, i'm sure that Magnus had more than the above-mentioned going through his head.

we arrived at the main arena of Geylang, a whole street filled with legalized prostitution dens all vying for the attention of the horny Singaporean male. there were various budget hotels lining the streets, all of them with tacky names like Fragrance and a personal friend that i visit on a regular basis: Hotel 81. even Fragrance was sub-divided into four different hotels: Crystal, Emerald, Pearl, Ruby. i couldn't help but think of Pokemon while traversing through the seedy underbelly of the red-light district.

it was on the way there that the Magnus started describing to me how sex was procured in the trade. the legalized dens are these houses that have lit-up lamps with numbers printed on them. each number with a lamp indicated a designated lot meant for business. pimps would normally be seen sitting outside these dens trying to attract customers. and believe me, it doesn't seem easy given that the entire street was filled with these dens. on last count, i remember seeing the number 37 on one of these dens. having walked past a few of these dens, one could see garishly lit neon lighting and glass paneling going on inside the dens. it's not exactly easy to make out what's inside given that there were walls place strategically in front of the entrances to these dens.

'It's like a fish tank concept. You go in, you see which girl you want that's sitting behind the glass paneling and then you go into a private room to have sex' explained the Magnus.

'Is it very expensive?' my curious mind asked.

'Forty dollars,' the Magnus replied with a smug look on his face that prolly thought: i have the best value for girls in town because these legalized women of the sex trade have to go for weekly HIV tests as well. 'Forty dollars for a full body and a shower scene' to which i couldn't help but giggle to myself.

'Shower scene????'

'Yah. Shower, towel and then oral and fuck lor,' the Magnus replied once more, this time in a matter-of-fact kinda voice, as if every Singaporean man should know this little bit of information.

we walked a little further from where the taxi alighted us and lo and behold, we found ourselves at House No. 18. the Magnus asked for twenty minutes of my patience while he did what forty dollars could buy in Geylang. so there i was, left stranded in the middle of the red-light district, sitting on the corner of a sidewalk and puffing away to kill the boredom. i powered up my ipod and scrolled through my collection of thug-lovin' songs, deciding to finally settle with some Ludacris. in my little brain, i could imagine ah peks and prostitutes crumping away with their bling and tube tops to the words 'Yeet Yeet! Whoop Whoop! Why y'all in my ear? Talkin' a whole buncha shit i ain't tryin' to hear!'

i didn't want to wander too far as i was afraid that the Magnus might not have made his twenty minutes worth. not that i doubted his sexual prowess (he's the testosterone alpha-male type) but the thought of pre-mature ejaculation in men did cross my mind. so i stayed put at that same kerb for the whole of twenty minutes. i actually think it was more like twenty-five minutes because the Magnus seemed to be gleaming red after the whole forty-dollar session. it was either a steam-bath going on in there, or somebody just had a rollin' good time.

and so we walked deeper into the trenches of the red-light district. we passed several streets which the Magnus would point out 'Oh, this one's the China street and when we go further down we'll be passing the Thai streets soon'. and true enough, scantily-clad women with what seemed like surgically-enhanced boobs were dotted all over the sidewalks. some of them (the boobs) were precariously stuffed into tube tops that were so low that my hands were on constant guard to catch them if they ever decided to catch some fresh air.

we walked through this alley that had a bit of illegal gambling going on. it was rather fascinating as the people who manned the stalls were a collective bunch of mats, meenas, bengs and lians. they dealt cards with the professionalism of a Macau local and the dour face of the streets. emotionless. that's the word i was looking for. it's actually rather heart-warming to see a united picture of Singaporeans in something as illegal as this.

all this time while we were touring the streets of Geylang, there were pimps constantly touting their wares. 'You wan ger? Thailand, China, Pileepin, Ang Moh?' to which i would respond with a curt 'No, thank you' and just carried on. it wasn't until we finished with the gambling area that i saw three reed-thin ah lians dressed in costumes that were garishly mixed-and-matched together. they were loud, brash and constantly shouting things like 'Chee Bye, who wan?' to whoever wanted some. they looked a little haggard from shouting the whole night and you could tell that they were getting much money from all that effort. i made the mistake of walking too close to one of them who noticed me and went:

'HOI! Ham-sum!'

she stuck out one arm while the other was balanced upon her ah-lian sister's shoulder and tried to squeeze my nipples. and these were nails that were prolly fresh from the manicurist's. let's just say she struck the jackpot and i delivered the goods by blushing a shade of red accompanied with another curt 'No, thank you.' i can see why nobody wants those chee byes tucked beneath those micro-shorts.

i went home that night with sore nipples and my original mission accomplished. it felt good (the mission that i had accomplished, not the nipples), knowing that i had seen a different side of Singapore. plus it was reassuring that procuring sex, for the gay person in Singapore, is way easier and cheaper and simpler than the heterosexual.

i may be bored of being gay in Singapore, but at least i'm glad.