Paul Daniels

by Paul Daniels

  I saw a beautiful Chinese girl while I was walking the streets of Victoria, the main town of Hong Kong. I was instantly in love. I’ll rephrase that – I was instantly in lust. This was the girl for me. I followed her for about an hour, trying to pluck up the courage to speak to her. This was the ultimate girl of my dreams. Eventually she headed for the Kowloon Ferry. I had no reason whatsoever to go to Kowloon but I followed her on to the boat. Now or never. I decided to sit next to her and ask her the way to somewhere in Kowloon and that would break the ice. A deep breath and I moved to the seat next to hers. Just as I was about to speak she made that peculiar hacking noise in her throat, as you do, and spat over the side of the ship into the water.

  I never said anything, I just moved away again.

  Bars in Hong Kong were certainly the easiest places to pick up a girl, but several parts of the island were out of bounds for security reasons. There were gangs hiding in these areas that were keen to take on English army boys, or so we were told. The truth was probably that these were the red light areas of the capital and the Army didn’t want us straying off into forbidden territory.

  We had been fully instructed in the dangers of casual sex and had watched the most grotesque film I have ever seen. Much worse than Boris Karloff or Frankenstein, these extended movies showed the end results of all the known venereal diseases available to mankind. With horrific close-ups of a man’s penis going black and festering, I wondered who on earth would have allowed a camera crew to film their shame in such detail. Staggering out of that lecture, I was determined that if that’s what could happen to you, I would never have sex at all. I’ll stick to card tricks, I thought. My resolve didn’t last, though, and with all the pressure from without and from within, I needed to prove the state of my manhood once and for all.

  Hong Kong’s high level of prostitution was caused by the poverty that existed on the island. The bars were full of girls trying to make a quick dollar, though I didn’t really frequent them, as I am not drinking man and I am still not at ease in bars.

  In the late 1930s, a female English MP returned from Hong Kong determined to stamp out the legal prostitution that existed there. The British Government would not condone legal prostitution on one of its colonies and immediately outlawed it. The result was that it continued underground and unchecked by doctors. Within two years, venereal disease was rife. The Army stance at that time was that all soldiers should abstain from sex. The story was that they put something in your tea called bromide. A classic gag was the two very old soldiers sitting on a park bench and one said to the other, ‘do you remember that stuff they used to put in our tea when we were in the Army?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ says the other, ‘what about it?’

  ‘Well, I think it’s just starting to work!’

  Preventing soldiers from having sex was an almost impossible task. The irony was that contraceptives were freely available from the medical centre. I discovered that the condoms were so rough, thick and long that it was like wearing a rubber glove over your willy. They were more of a laugh than a practical solution and came in very useful as balloons for parties. Nevertheless, the serious fear of contracting VD remained deeply ingrained in every soldier and even more vividly so after viewing that ghastly film. Each one of us would daily and secretly inspect every part of our bodies for the slightest sore, just in case.

  The slowly rotating fans did nothing to cool the effects of the hot tropical weather and vulnerable parts of everyone’s anatomy were constantly sweating. Underarms and between legs were the worst, where the wetness caused all manner of soreness. I got heat rash and tried to avoid the medical centre but I finally gave in one day and covered my embarrassment with bravado as I showed the nurse the red patches of skin all over my privates. The nurse smiled knowingly and left, returning a few moments later with a huge jar containing a thick purple cream. This he slapped straight on to my testicles, his smile unbroken as I yelled in pain as the stinging cream took effect. Leaving the surgery, I ran up the road flapping my shorts in an unsuccessful attempt to cool the fire. I had seen men performing this ritual before and often wondered what they were doing; now I knew!

  One night, the sexual urges got too much and I left camp with the express purpose of endorsing my maleness. I knew exactly where to go, as the bars were not the only places where a female body could be purchased. Strolling slowly down the forbidden avenue, I was quickly approached by a young, thin Chinese girl. She hardly spoke any English so I just nodded when she asked, ‘You want some fun?’ Excitement and embarrassment churned away inside me. Fear, too.

  Finding myself being led into a discussion over services and prices, I really wasn’t sure what was what. Her English was so bad and some of her offers contained words I had never heard before and some I was happy never to discover the true meaning of. A gam was apparently a very old French word for one form of quick relief.

  Finally agreeing a price, I followed this girl, who would have been in her mid-twenties, on a half-mile walk to the place of paradise. Reaching a high-rise dilapidated tenement block, we began climbing the stairs. The paint was peeling, paper hung off the walls, parts of the ceilings were hanging down and as the stairs creaked I wondered if we would reach our destination without a serious accident. The excitement of the unknown became mixed with the fear of being found by the military police who toured that dubious district.

  Several flights of stairs later, we had climbed so high that I thought about the need for some extra oxygen to help me through the task ahead. The sex drive must be a very powerful thing to have got me this far. Eventually, she led us through a broken door and out on to a flat roof where an old wooden hut awaited. Never having seen a shed like this in anybody’s garden back home, let alone in Hong Kong, I was taken aback to see that it contained several rooms.

  Motioning me to lie on the ramshackle bed in one corner, she ceremoniously stripped off and disappeared into another room. Waiting silently in anticipation, but unsure whether to get aroused or not, I heard laughter and chatter coming from the room next door. Her family lived there!

  Moments later, she returned with another very, very young girl, who, she explained, was her sister. This poor girl was clearly in training for the job, as she apparently wanted her to see how it was done. For a first-timer like me, it was the ultimate turn-off and, protesting, I prepared to leave. Shooing her sister back next door, the Chinese girl was clearly not keen to lose her client and calmed me back down on to the bed.

  Lying motionless on the blanket, the naked streetwalker awaited my attentions. I knew what to do, but not how to do it. It was awful and there were no emotions whatsoever. The hooker just lay there because it was simply a job to her. I was in a strange state of mid-arousal, apprehension and awkwardness, but managed to make contact with what felt like a roll of sandpaper. I can distinctly remember thinking that this was not as good as card tricks!

  It was over awfully soon and I fled thinking that now my curiosity was assuaged, it would be the last time I would attempt that. I thought sex was awful. The knowledge that I had used a condom did not arrest the abject terror of catching VD and I spent the next few weeks searching my body for the tiniest pimple. Nightmares in which my male organ went black and dropped off during a parade haunted me for weeks.

  Having made a contract with myself not to go alone into the run-down areas of Hong Kong again, I took little convincing that filling a weekend’s leave with two other mates would do me the world of good. Macau was a tiny island off the southern coast of mainland China and could be easily reached by a short ferry ride. It was known as a place of fun and excitement and would surely prove to be an excellent choice for a mini break.

  I’ll change one name here to protect the guilty. Peter, Jack and I arrived after a long ferry ride, at 2.00am. The hour of the day apparently didn’t matter to the islanders on tri-shaws and rickshaws who immediately surrounded us with an invitation to see a wrestling match. The concept of watching this sport at such an early
hour was ridiculous and we asked to be taken directly to our hotel. We were going to make the most of our break and seize the opportunity to escape the army life as much as possible and the Grand Hotel was the best available.

  Each floor had a floor-boy who was responsible for the wellbeing of the residents under his charge. Providing us with details of his room service he also asked us, ‘… you been see wrestling match yet?’

  ‘No,’ I said, becoming puzzled, as this must be a very famous local sport. Making a mental note that this was evidently something not to be missed, we bade goodnight to one another and I soon climbed into my luxury bed and almost immediately sank into the beauty of ‘never-never-land’.

  Being a tropical venue and not having the benefit of air conditioning, the walls stopped about 18in from the ceiling, so that the ceiling fans could circulate the air across the entire floor of the hotel. It also meant that you could hear everything going on in every other room on your floor. I must have been tired to have fallen asleep in that environment. Shouts and giggles coming from the hallway brought me back to consciousness and my watch told me it was 10.00am. Breakfast was over, but something else was going on. I opened my door only to see a long line of women outside. The queue, consisting of black, white, Chinese, blondes, brunettes and redheads was snaking its way into Jack’s room. Reaching the front of the column I could see Jack sitting up in bed like merry Old King Cole as each girl filed slowly past.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’m auditioning for some company for tonight,’ came the reply and a knowing smile.

  With the help of the floor-boy extolling their virtues, Jack was openly auditioning for some ‘extra’ services to spice up his visit to Macau. Party-pooper me stopped the proceedings and the girls were ushered away, as we prepared for our first day of sightseeing.

  Sixty-four kilometres across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong, the visitors’ guide explained, Macau had derived its name from a Chinese goddess. It had a distinctly European flavour with winding narrow streets and alleys peppered with churches, colonial mansions and elegant inns. Throughout 400 years of history, Macau had been a Portuguese stronghold and a centre of culture in the Far East. Strangely, the beliefs, arts and customs of traditional China thrive in Macau, where a devout, conservative community somehow managed to compete in the rat-race while celebrating their responsibilities to their ancestors and gods. Tree-shaded country lanes, wide sandy beaches, lush pine forests and modern hotels all reminded me of the holiday I had always dreamed of. Macau was obviously a unique blend of cultures, people, aromas, flavours and styles and I was sorry I wasn’t staying there longer

  We took excursions to the town and surrounding countryside, but found ourselves constantly being pestered to go to a wrestling match. At the end of a tiring day as a tourist, I returned to the hotel early for a well-needed rest. The ground floor consisted of a huge casino and seemed to continue its wheeling and dealing 24 hours a day. Even though I’ve never been a gambling man, I was still interested in the concept, mathematics and skill of the procedure. Cautiously entering the unexpected hush of a busy room, I was strangely aware that 100 eyes were watching me. A huge, fat, ‘Buddha-like’ man sat operating the dice cage which would be rotated to decide the result of the bets being placed.

  Standing by the table, watching every move and looking like a flash and confident British lad, proud of my newly acquired manipulation skills, I waited for my moment to declare my ‘oneness’ with the overweight croupier. I began to perform my coin roll under his nose and wondered if he was impressed. Turning his head towards me, the ‘Buddha’ hit a stack of ten-cent pieces with his finger and split them perfectly in half, with the top pile dropping alongside the bottom half. He grabbed the two piles and riffle-shuffled them back together with one hand. With my eyes nearly popping out of my head, I was bowled over with the skill he had just demonstrated and instantly felt incredibly stupid having shown him my pathetic little coin trick.

  I was about to leave when I was halted by the arrival of a huge black limousine outside. An enormously obese Chinese man alighted and came straight into the room, carrying a large black suitcase. Placing a mammoth pile of paper notes on to the number nine in silence, the skilled ‘Buddha’ swung the dice cage and, miraculously, number nine was shown. This really was straight out of the movies, I reckoned.

  Still in a complete and still silence, assistants pulled all the money off the other tables and put it into their client’s suitcase. Every person around the table received a large-value note, as the eminent guest walked straight out, got back into the car and vanished. We were obviously being encouraged to keep the experience to ourselves. I didn’t know what had happened and I was wise enough not to ask.

  Once out into the street with a pocket full of money and at a loose end, I was once again a vulnerable target.

  ‘You wanna see wrestling match? Velly cheap.’

  Having been accosted all day by the eagerness of the locals to display their national sport, I reluctantly agreed. The rickshaw man took me to a block of flats, which seemed an extremely unusual place for such an important competition. My curiosity having been aroused, I would see this through to the end. Marching up several flights of stairs, with worrying echoes of my last experience of an apartment building, I was led into a dimly lit room where on the floor was a pile of mattresses. Having sat on a seat and paid my dues, the equivalent of about half a crown, an adjoining door opened and in walked three women and two fellas completely naked. Without one look in my direction they got straight down to business with one another. The wrestling match was in fact their word for a full-blown orgy. I was so stunned, my initial instinct was to fall about laughing, whereupon the rickshaw man said that for another one-and-three pence, I could join in!

  ‘Get me outta here,’ I stammered, with thoughts of the other girl still fresh and a strong sense of unwillingness to play this unreal game.

  ‘You no wanna stay?’ questioned the little rickshaw man, who in the end agreed to take me on to other sightseeing adventures.

  He wheeled me down to the coastline and we peered across the water into the pitch-blackness of the night. Suddenly, there was the sound of faraway thunder. The distant noise sounded like fireworks, until my escort pointed out that it was, in fact, gunfire.

  ‘People try to swim river to get to Macau from China,’ he attempted to explain in pidgin English. ‘Soldiers shoot men, women and children, no problem.’

  I stood aghast and imagined the women with children strapped to their backs being used as target practice. As a young man of 19, a million questions filled my mind. What was so horrible across the water that would make people want to take that risk? What was it that so frightened that country’s system that would cause them to shoot innocent people in order to stop them leaving? From that moment on I became strongly anticommunist.

  ‘No many get here,’ my guide sadly whispered, as we walked away. Lessons to be learnt here, I thought.

  Lessons also needed to be learnt by the third member of our party who had all but deserted Peter and I. Jack was a serious drinker and was in constant danger of being thrown out of the Army because of it. He was getting worse. Having seen Jack spend almost every moment of his holiday propping up a bar, I decided that his problem would ultimately destroy him and we had to intervene.

  On the last night, Jack got so intoxicated with the chemical beers they served on the island, that we had no alternative than to carry him up and into bed. I had an idea.

  I went back out in the street looking for an ugly prostitute. In any country street girls do not have a good life. In fact, they probably have the worst kind of life, but in the Far East you could multiply that a hundredfold. They don’t have an easy or a long life at all. They have no protection and are extremely susceptible to disease. By the time they are 30, it all catches up with them; they have become wrecks. I wandered around the streets looking for the worst one.

  In due course
, I found the one I was looking for in a doorway. She whispered to me as I walked past her dimly lit doorway and I motioned for her to come out into the light. She resisted my demands at first and soon I saw why. She was the most awful, pitiful creature I had seen. With no teeth, her face was collapsed and scarred and looked 90, though I suspected she had hardly reached middle age.

  I felt sorry for her and I handed her the equivalent of several weeks’ wages and explained that I had an unusual job for her. She nodded some sort of agreement and I hoped and prayed she would understand what I wanted her to do.

  Back at the hotel, the floor-boy looked at me in astonishment as I led the old-looking woman into Jack’s room. The floor-boy obviously thought I was totally insane having arrived back with this little treasure, compared with the beauties he’d managed.

  Instructing the woman to get into bed with Jack, it was vital that she didn’t touch him, only sleep with him, I explained. I spoke my most fluent Chinese, ‘No touchee, just sleepee.’ She nodded once again and off I went to bed.

  It must have been at about 8.00am the next morning that I was awoken by a scream that shook the entire hotel. Naked, Jack burst into my room and grabbed me.

  ‘Tell me I didn’t! Please tell me I didn’t,’ he yelled.

  ‘Well, we tried to talk you out of it, but you wouldn’t listen,’ I lied. ‘Last night you said she was the most beautiful thing on the planet. It’s not our fault if you drink like that,’ I reasoned.

  Back at base and in a permanent state of terror, Jack went to the medical centre daily for the next three months and took all the penicillin jabs he could get. It cured his drinking problem, too.

  * * *

  From the moment of joining the Army, I had started a demob map. This would be a two-year countdown showing the number of days left before I was released. As departure day neared, the atmosphere of fun among us increased. We called our state of euphoria being ‘demob happy’.