Occupy Movement Singapore: Three Complete Novels

by CJ Tan

I stayed home more and more after the killing. My place became a cave to hide in. I cleaned and recleaned the Magnum. Watched TV. Ate out of jars. To be silent and careful and exact so that I might go down in history too. I don’t know it was like nothing mattered to me anymore except to do what I had to do and that would take time.

  It was boring a lotta the time but it didn’t seem that way to me then. I didn’t know whether I knew what it was to be bored. There was this game I used to play when I watched TV. I would be wearing all my guns and I’d be watching the TV with my feet up on that crate.

  And as the people in the little box hussled each other, I would sort of take the heel of my boots and sort of rock that crate slowly back and forth to see how far it would tip over before falling. It was all a question of balance, I guess, a teeter tottering kind of thing. This beautiful young man would be talking to the beautiful young woman earnestly about their relationship and how she had hurt him, maybe and my heels would be on the melon crate rocking it back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, everytime just a little bit more, until one day, the inevitable happened and the crate tipped backward and that TV went crashing to the floor.

  And there was a short smelly flash and everything turned white like a cloud and the box was all jagged and broken glass. Dead knobs That image had fled, “Damn,” I said to myself, “damn.” I said to myself “Damn, damn.”

  That image had fled. There wasn’t even anything to watch on TV anymore.

  Recently, I read some news online that a husband passed his wife HPV and had cervical cancer. It got me thinking about how it’s like to be be a HPV carrier and why, for some of us, it’s never easy and why some of us choose to ‘let it go’ and eventually put ourselves in a position where we have unprotected sex.

  The cute thing was that the husband and me shared something in common. We both had micropenises or some say buried penises.

  1 out of every 200 men is born with what’s medically known as ‘micro-penis’.

  I was born with a condition called micropenis which means my dick is smaller than 0.5 inch erect - a very small size. I'm 37 years old now, so I can't expect my penis to grow for me even a few mm. My penis is also bent severely to the left when erect, which I understand to be the Pelagius disease.

  I had always wondered why I never did fall in love or go into a relationship when I was in secondary school when I’ve heard of the stories of so many others meeting their first love when they were in school. What was I missing? Was I not good enough? For a long time after school, I kept on with the idea that I wasn’t good enough a person. Until recently when I reflected on my time in school did I realize I had many missed opportunities!

  Desperately, I asked one of my closest friends for advice - they advised me to go to a penis building club, at least they said it was a penis building club - truly it was a swimming club, and I was forced to hit the showers, only to face ridicule and shame, due to my little man.

  As a penultimate resort, I decided to try penis building pills, and go in for surgery that could straighten my embarrasingly bent penis, but, the pills made no difference, and I could not afford the surgery. I have also taken herbal teas and remedies known for increasing penis size, only to be let down again.

  In my first year of school, a girl had made a hand sign – I love you – with his thumb, index and last fingers to form, “I”, “L” and “Y”. Then I didn’t realize what it meant. I kept doing the same hand sign back at her, oblivious to his hints.

  In my second year, a gal would always come to me in the Student Councillor’s Room and sat on my laps. She had always said how he was curious as to how it felt to be sitting on someone else. We had a close relationship for a while but I didn’t think too much about it. I would stay back after school in my third year to wait for her (she was in his second year and in the afternoon class and I was in the morning class).

  When the discipline mistress decided to take her off being a student councillor because her closeness with me became a point of discomfort for her and some of the teachers who were teachers assigned to manage the student councillors, I was there to comfort her. I knew then why they did it but didn’t quite understand why they needed to – I hadn’t realized that the closeness that two people have could become a point of contention for people.

  There were one or two other missed opportunities but I never had the awareness to realize what they were! And I held on to the notion that sex with someone else I loved was all about kissing and hugging that person you love – the intimacy. That was until I was 15!

  While on the way back home after an art class, at the back of the bus, a man who was possibly around 40 years or so came and sat next to me, at the back row of the bus. I was perplexed, as the rest of the bus was quite empty. After a short while, he started asking about how my parents were and reminded me that I should take care of them. This man was quite thoughtful, I thought to myself! Was he here by some association to teach me how to respect my parents? And then the conversation veered towards something a little more sinister.

  “Do you play?” he asked.

  “Well, I do, yes – games, right?”

  “I mean, do you play with yourself?” he ventured further.

  “Oh!... erm… well… yes…” I wasn’t quite sure where this was going.

  “Do you want to play together?”

  That got me a bit curious, and I agreed. When the bus stopped at the bus interchange, he took me to the toilet at the Ang Mo Kio Bus Interchange, where the toilet at the old interchange used to have stories of the sexual activities of other men at the toilet scribbled at the back of the door. I would sometimes go to the toilet to read the stories inside the largest cubicle at the back of the toilet.

  That day, I was in that cubicle. Uncle-with-a-social-conscience-who-wanted-to-use-being-filial-to-my-parents-to-get-into-my-pants pulled my pants down and did what he wanted to do with his mouth. I showed him my 3 inches or smaller in erect size. Very puny and pathetic looking.

  He laughed, Like a maniacal hyena! “Dude, do you need some help finding your micro penis in order to take a piss?” He then took his out and showed me his 12 inches.

  Initially, he said he had loved me dearly, and, I can assure you are the best I will ever find, he was just scared of my penis and scared it may damage his reputation if anyone found out.

  Once the deed was called off, I ran out of the toilet. I remembered thinking to myself, when he took his first dip – Woah, you mean mine is so short?!

  So, there goes my romantic idealism of lovemaking and what the kissing and hugging it would entail.

  Morny had asked me, “The thing is I am worried about, what if a woman meet a bad guy, and he decides to infect a wife with HPV?”

  Morny at that time was pissing in the men’s urinal. I was washing my hands after a meal and rinsing my mouth when he broached the subject. Based on the reflection in the mirror, he had a very long foreskin and his piss parlayed into split directions due to the crumpled skin.

  “I don’t know. Why you ask?” I told him while bending down in the basin trough to splash some cold water on my face.

  “Coz that time, when I tried to fuck that prostitute, she told me to use a alcohol swop to clean the tip of my penis as she said that another hooker got cold sores on her mouth after blowing another customer.”

  I said, “Well, it’s better that you realize early, rather than if you had found out later through her.”

  “Perhaps that’s the way for you to find out – by dating more people and seeing if they get cold sores after that.”

  That night, I clicked Human papillomavirus (HPV). It is a virus from the papillomavirus family that is capable of infecting humans. Cancers of the cervix, vulva, vagina, penis, oropharynx and anus. This process usually takes 5 years, providing many opportunities for detection and treatment of the pre-cancerous lesion. 37% of 582 Mexican army recruits positive for high risk HPV. They were told not to wash their genitals for 12 hours before s
ampling.

  Uncut are left with all pitfalls of that tiny flap of skin.

  All penises have a unique smell. And smegma (the white cheesy stuff that appears from nowhere under our foreskin) is meant to be there. But to get smelling cheesy, you do not wash under your foreskin every day, mix it with warm milk, a bit of cheap apricot brandy to marinate into that area and leave it unwashed to incubate for more than 2 days. The sugar and the proteins in the milk and brandy will be a great playground for HPV.

  I have no clear recollection of the days that followed. I had gotten into the habit of tracking down every single Suman rally. Making an appearance there. It was just important to me to see the candidate in action. If I was to go down in history I had to make an appropriate plan.

  Looking back I don’t know whether I got to certain places on my own or because I arranged to take a fare there. Can’t even recall any of the words Suman said those days. I can remember the city, though feeling very much like a cage. Doors everywhere. You squirm around to get what you needed. Needed to be on the scene with Suman.

  I walked on, calmly watching him drop. There seemed no way of knowing the expression on the man’s face except to note those of the pedestrains on the busy street. The people in cars. The people sitting in the plazas near fountains or coming out of bars.

  People seemed so hard and clear, as if they all had purposes to lose themselves in, all those determined city striders they seemed stamped against the building fronts like pressed tin.

  The man high up momentarily waded in the air and moments later, I thought I heard his screams as conversations of shoppers drifted back at me to the din of traffic horns from the various arcades.

  Well I was feeling pretty shakey, I guess, and that same afternoon in Queens there was this rally for Suman in the parking lot of a supermarket. Everything all dressed in red, white and blue bunting.

  Maybe five hundred people milling about. Music on loudspeakers. I had gotten so I could recognise the secret service men from their metallic gray suits, their sunglasses and big linebacker physiques and I knew hot to position myself so as to stay always out of notice. Especially when I was carrying hardware.

  I got there just as a whole bunch of local political types and some of the Suman workers were being seated on the platform and I saw Sienna and she was talking to another worker. Looked beautiful as ever. You better believe it. Well as I say, I was trying to be inconspicuous as hell but that Tom looked up for a moment to his left and then back down into his clipboard and then he seemed to look my way again. Watching me sort of very closely and I didn’t dare to hide. After a moment, I saw him go over to Sienna and point my way. They started whispering together, I could imagine what they were saying. I saw Sienna and she started salivating.

  I was all in a sweat in this bulky, bulged out army jacket with my hardware. I almost bumped right into this secret service guy. Better I thought to brazen it out, if I could hardware and all.

  “Oh say, pardon me,” very boyish, “are you a secret service man?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I have seen a lot of suspicious-looking people around here.”

  The agent gave me this very chilly look for a moment and then he asks, “Who?”

  “Oh, lots. I don’t know where they all are now, there used to be one standing over there.” And I pointed over to where I’d been.

  He followed me with this look… actually followed the tip of my finger for a second and then he was staring at me hard and I just had to improvise fast. “Is it hard to get to be an agent?”

  “Why?”

  “Well I kind of thought I might make a good one,” I said, “Because I am observant.”

  The agent was getting interested in me now in his sly way. “Oh?” He was looking at me hard and cold.

  I used to be in army as a sniper.

  Said, “Listen mister, if you just give me your name, I will send you the information on how to apply to the organisation.”

  Thinking of what to do next. Said, “You would, uh?”

  He took out his notebook and said, “Oh, sure.”

  There would be eight more rallies next week. My time was coming. One way or the other.

  “The name is Tan Cheng Juan. I live in Blk 10, Lor 7 Toa Payoh Level 9 Unit 33.”

  “Sure. We will send you all the stuff.”

  Like I recalled how I used to say as a kid, someday I am going to do something and nobody is going to stop me. Ever. I felt that I could, if only I dared to, because there was nobody who dared to stop me not even the secret service agent.

  Well, it was in the next couple of days that I started going to Xingpost again. I thought I might see that man again. Something about his look made me think he would help me if I could help him. Something about a friend in need. It didn’t take me too long to find him.