Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 2

1. Caroline

He is reclining in his leather armchair, reading the newspaper and she is watching him from the other side of the room. She has just come home from work. She has mixed a gin and tonic, easy on the tonic. She sips the bitter liquid and watches him flip the page.

‘What’s new?’ she says.

‘The world is fucked,’ he says.

‘Lucky world,’ she says. He doesn’t react. She takes a few paces, stops behind the armchair and puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘Anything I should care about?’ she says.

‘Another stewardess has been raped… Forest fires in Sumatra. Protests outside terrorist trial in Manila.’

‘Nothing new, then.’ Her hand slides up his collarbone, her thumb massaging the back of his neck.

‘How was work?’ he says.

‘Oh, you know. I’m still working on that deal, the one with Jakarta. Lim’s still his pig-headed, sexist self. Company stocks holding up surprisingly well, considering.’

His gaze flicks back and forth. She sits on the arm of his chair and lets her hand rest casually on his chest. He manoeuvres his arm around hers to turn another page of the newspaper. She looks out of the plate glass windows beyond the balcony to the golf course, and further, to Sentosa Island and the harbour. ‘Manchester won,’ he says.

Some time passes, and then she says, ‘How about Bintan?’

‘For what?’

‘For a weekend.’

‘Ya, okay. Can.’

‘Okay. I’ll book it.’

‘Wait. What weekend? I have golf next three ones.’

‘Honey,’ she says, looking her husband straight in the eye. He looks up at her, meets her gaze and smiles. ‘Can you make an excuse? Let’s just go. Can’t we?’ He frowns. This is not part of his plan, she can see that. For a moment, she is intensely annoyed with him, almost to the point of hatred.

But then she thinks, Of course: everyone is like this. Nobody really wants to be spontaneous. And she doesn’t really want to go to Bintan anyway; it’s a stupid island, covered in golf courses.

‘Can…’ he says, half-heartedly, but she knows he is saying it to please her. It would be better if he just refused. She walks to the window and looks out. She hears the rustle of paper behind her. She turns and looks at him, then, with a purpose, walks back to the chair and kneels down.

‘Keep reading your paper,’ she says as she unzips his trousers and slides her slim fingers with their fuschia-polished nails inside. ‘Keep reading, honey.’

2. Lim

‘The amazing thing is, when you perfect this…I can’t call it a technique, lah. It’s more like a kind of… attitude. The thing is, what I’m getting at, they come to you. You don’t even have to try. I mean this girl… married. And beautiful. Seriously.

‘I mean, she was just there for eye candy, right? That’s why we employ these MBA babes, to flick their rebonded hair and flutter the lashes. Clicky clicky on the mouse, oh-so-deh-lick-cate-ly. I could see these Jakarta guys getting all hot under the collar when she went through her Powerpoint slides.

I want her to say, “Oops, I dropped my pencil, lah” and just, you know, bend over in that tight skirt, but she doesn’t have to. The professionality of this girl is much more of a turn-on, and when she walked up and fingered that laser pointer, I knew we had them. I was hard already from the fucking, excuse my French, from the deal. I just had to reel them in like fish. Too easy.

‘So, anyway, the point is, I had no designs, absolutely none on this girl.

I mean, she’s married, I even played golf with her hubby once. I was quite shagged out anyway, you know what I mean, I went straight from Geylang to the airport and into the damn meeting and there I was, wired on coffee and just kind of winging it. We were in the hotel bar afterwards, and I was just thinking about my big, fat bonus, and it turns out she was thinking about my big fat boner… Sorry, lah, sorry. I know, I know, don’t cover your ears, it’s okay, I just get carried away telling the story. So damned sweet.

‘Anyway, there we are, in the hotel bar, at the bar, drinking Chivas and green tea to celebrate. I’ve got one eye on her, one on the television, which is showing the news, nothing interesting, no football, just some kind of riot being put down in the Philippines. And she says “So how is Mrs Lim?” and I’m like “She’s a wonderful woman, I would do anything for her, she’s a saint” because I’m in such a good mood. And is she pouting just a little at this? I don’t know, they always look like they’re pouting a little bit anyway, and anyway I don’t notice, and she says “Your wife really understands you, then?”. And I say “Well I suppose she does, as much as anyone understands anyone else” because I’m kind of a philosopher sometimes, you know me.

‘Anyway, then she says something like “I have a wonderful marriage, my husband is taking me to Bintan next weekend” and I say that’s nice, and I drink some more Chivas, and she gives me a really long, kind of weird look, like I’ve said something really irritating, and after while, she says “How about Champagne?”. And I say “I think that is a very wonderful idea, and the company would be delighted to pay for us to drink Champagne given how we have nailed the Jakartans and all”, and so she orders a bottle and we polish it off in about twenty minutes, and by this point I suddenly start to think perhaps she might be MBA in more ways than one…

‘What? You never heard that one? Married But Available… ha ha… anyway, at this point I am definitely starting to suspect that something may be on the cards, so I’m thinking, well I will just try something subtle, so I say “Have you checked the movies on the hotel TV?” and she says “Let’s go check them now” and she orders another bottle of Champagne and off we are going upstairs, leaning on each other and the walls but we get to her room, and…

‘No, lah. No, I know you don’t want to know the saucy details, man, but seriously, her ass is the cutest thing I ever saw. Oh my god. Sorry, lah. Sorry.

You’re such a good guy. I think it’s just my hormonal make-up or something.

I am overactive in that department ever since I was—hey, beer, over here!—well, you know me.

‘Well, if you insist. Yes, we did. Yes, she was. I mean, seriously, I never… the things she can do with those hands, even though I was a bit drunk and all. And I hardly had to move a muscle, just lay back and let it all happen. There was a movie on the TV too. It was a funny one, you know, that American one, with the students. Pie something.’

3. Marlene

She cannot decide whether he is an Epic or a Romantic. Clearly, according to the theory, he must be one or the other. So, she must work it out: which one is he?

It was not clear at first even that he was one of those two. It has taken her some time to narrow it down. But now he is inside her, pushing into her over and again, and she is lying there on her belly, her face muffled in the pillow while he shunts behind her and she tries to work it out.

Consider the evidence, she thinks. For the Epic hypothesis: he cheats.

Clearly. Repeatedly. This is obvious. And he doesn’t feel guilty. The Romantics still do it, but they have this tragic look on their faces, like they hate themselves. He doesn’t have that.

On the other hand, he clearly knows what he wants. There is a routine to this for him, she can see it. There is not enough adventure in this for him for it to be an Epic encounter.

So, it’s an enigma. Unless, that is, there might be a new category. What would she call it? She frowns.

He finishes with a grunt and rolls over. She waits the usual length of time before showering, puts her clothes back on, checks herself in the mirror, and kisses him on the cheek.

‘Thanks,’ he says.

‘Welcome,’ she says, and heads out to the street, getting into a taxi.

When the driver drops her off at the shopping centre, she picks her way up a halted escalator to the second floor, and shows her ID at the entrance to Club Island.

Inside, the band has started. A group of Western guys is being served beer. She stands nearby. One of them is very drunk, wearing a fright wig, a dog collar and a pair of frilly pink panties over the top of his jeans. ‘My fiance,’ he is saying, ‘is the best… the best… you know. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Lovely Keiko. I bloody love her.’

Marlene walks into his line of sight and gives him the look. He glances at her and smiles. Mine, she thinks.

As she is walking over to the group, it comes to her. That Chinese businessman does need a new category, she thinks, and now she knows what it is.

4. Keiko

5. Brett

No work this week. Only essential travel to the Philippines is advised. Unrest has spread from the cities to the countryside. The rice fields are alight. Some flights are cancelled, including the ones he was due to pilot.

He arrives at Boat Quay at seven-fifteen and takes a table by the river, ordering a Heineken. Jazz drifts from the bar next door. Luminous towers dwarf the shophouses.

She arrives. He checks her out—small, cute—he approves—before standing and waving to catch her attention. She has the slightly knock-kneed gait of many Japanese women, as if modestly keeping her legs together. He will see about that.

He has made the most of these free evenings, and this is his fourth date of the week. God bless date-or-not.com, he thinks.

‘So, you’re an airline pilot,’ she says. ‘That must be very interesting.’

It’s a good sign. Impressed by his job. He checks her out subtly while sipping his beer. She will certainly do.

He is already thinking about the mirrors on his ceiling, how she will look, how he will look doing it to her when he sees them reflected. He has lost weight recently, buffed up a bit. He spent a full twenty-five minutes before heading out examining his reflection in the full-length wall mirror in his bedroom.

‘You have lovely ears,’ he says. He means it. She really does. Each woman has her own special part of the body, he thinks. Like Juvita, the air hostess who kept blowing him in the aircraft toilets. Perfect neck. Tragic what happened to her.

‘Thank you,’ Keiko says, modestly. She insists on pouring his beer for him.

‘Would you like to see a great view of the city?’ he says.

‘Of course,’ she says.

She is under him, her eyes wide. He shifts position so that she is on top. He grasps her slim hips with both hands, then lets the back of one graze across the gentle curve of her breasts, feeling the hard small nipples against his skin. Her mouth is open in a silent exclamation, her eyes tight shut, pelvis rocking. He glances upwards, taking in the sight of her moving on him, and his own body, taught under her. She opens her eyes, looks upwards, then squeezes them tightly shut again and digs her nails into his chest. For a moment, he looks up into his own eyes as if into those of an adversary, one who acknowledges him silently in the dimly lit room.

6. Juvita

She meets Andrew at her tennis club. They have sex that afternoon, in the showers of the ladies’ changing rooms, with the water running. They have sex at dusk, behind a bush in the Botanical Gardens, and in his car, and in the disabled toilets at the Esplanade in the interval of a classical concert, and on the beach on Bintan, and in every room of his apartment, and she sucks him off in the cable car between Harbour Front and Sentosa and wanks him off in the back of a multiplex on Orchard Road during a car chase. He is her thirty-second lover since it happened.

‘I love you,’ he says one day. She stops returning his calls.

7. Andrew

May is cooking rice and some kind of Japanese soup with seaweed in it. He stands in the kitchen with her, opens the wine and pours it into two blue-tinged, thick-stemmed glasses. The trick is not to look too desperate, he thinks. He discreetly checks out her buttocks and then feels guilty.

‘How was your friend’s birthday?’ he says.

‘Not bad,’ she says, tasting the soup. ‘Although we had a few too many, I’m afraid.’ He chuckles complicitly. ‘We had to send the birthday girl home early in a taxi. And then I got talking to a very nice couple, and, um, did that for a while. And then Saturday was shopping. How about you?’ She stirs more rapidly.

‘Pretty boring, I’m afraid,’ he says. ‘I just watched the news. Seems the Philippine thing has spread.’

‘Really?’ she says, absently. The rice cooker light flicks from red to amber.

‘I hope I’m getting some sex tonight,’ she says as he takes the last spoonful of soup. He swallows heavily and looks at her, startled. ‘It doesn’t have to be right now,’ she adds quickly. ‘We can let our food settle first. Drink?’

Several very large gin-and-tonics later, he gets up, sits down, gets up again and they stagger together to her room. He fiddles with the portable CD

player while she removes her clothes and lies back, ready. Barry White starts playing. They laugh together at the cheesiness of his choice. He falls back next to her and begins kissing her. Her tongue probes his mouth. He clutches her breasts, then licks them. She makes noises of approval.

He pushes his hand down inside her panties and fingers her. She is already wet. He finds her clitoris and makes small circles with his finger.

He pulls off her, and then his own, underwear. She lies back, legs open, eyes closed.

After a little while, his member is still, at most, half-mast. The room is turning gin-flavoured circles around his head, which he lowers to the bed to rest a little. It is a little worrying, but he optimistically reasons that if he just carries on, eventually things will sort themselves out.

He is about to suggest that she offer him a hand when she speaks. ‘Can I say something direct?’ she says. His middle digit keeps making small circles, the room large ones. ‘If all I wanted was a finger,’ she says, ‘I wouldn’t have bothered to cook for someone. I could have done that on my own.’

‘Sorry,’ he says.

‘Perhaps,’ she says,’ you would like to just talk some more. We could exchange knitting patterns. Would you like to do that instead?’

He withdraws his hands from her and lies staring at the curtains. She sighs and looks him in the eyes.

‘Let me introduce you to my best friend,’ she says. She reaches under the bed and pulls out a smooth black dildo, a foot and a half long. His eyes widen. She grasps it two-handed, rolls sideways and impales herself on it, groaning convulsively as she comes, and then lies still, smiling. It is like watching someone commit Japanese ritual suicide.

Andrew gets up and pulls on his boxer shorts. ‘I have to go,’ he says.

‘Really?’ she says, looking surprised. ‘Why?’

8. May

‘That just gave me a great idea for a story.’

‘You want me to stop?’

‘No… just. Ah. No… Listen. I’m thinking…’

‘Seriously, Alex, at least finish fucking me before you start work.’

‘Okay…’

‘Okay… Ah. Yes.’

‘…’

‘Is that good, baby?’

‘It’s… um. Yes.’

‘Yes?’

‘Yes… in the conflict. It’s set on one of the rebel-held islands…’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. I’m not going to stop, you know.’

‘No… keep going, it’s good.’

‘I know. I’m damn good. They all say that.’

‘…’

‘Oh…’

‘… and the rebel leader has a kind of harem, of girls from the local population…’

‘For fuck’s sake, Alex.’

‘Sorry… Ah! Is that a new trick?’

‘Do you like it?’

‘… but his favourite one escapes, and it kind of ruins his… Oh My Fucking Christ… Ah!’

‘Okay, I give up. Keep going with the story. I’ll just…’

‘Jesus. And he goes looking for the girl…’

‘Wait, let me try it like this.’

‘And he finds her. In a…’

‘In a?’

‘In a brothel, in a local town…’

‘…’

‘…and he can’t touch her any more, because to him it’s as if she was… polluted.’

‘People are shit.’

‘Yep. This guy especially so.’

‘…’

‘Oh.’

‘Touch me here.’

‘…and he’s so pissed off that he goes back to the jungle and brings his rebels and burns down the brothel and burns and massacres half the town for good measure, just out of pique…’

‘…’

‘…and after the battle, he’s in his tent and a girl comes in at night and…’

‘And…?’

‘…and does… what you just did… and it… blows his…’

‘Uhuh?’

‘…ah… his mind. And he wakes up next morning and sees that it’s the same girl, escaped from the burning brothel.’

‘And?’

‘…and he realizes the error of his ways and embraces true love.’

‘…’

‘Oh God, May…’

‘Okay…’

‘Don’t stop… keep going…’

‘That’s it. That’s it. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.’

‘Jesus… fucking… Christ… on a… fucking… bike…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘That was good.’

‘You’re not kidding.’

‘But you know what?’

‘What?’

‘Your story sucks.’

9. Alex

You have to be fucking kidding me. A dude?

10. Nong

She tucks her dick and balls between her legs and slips on the tight black trousers. Arranges her silicon tits inside purple lace. Practices her pout in the mirror. She is picked up and driven to the ambassador’s residence, showing her ID at the manned gate. ‘Hello Baby,’ she says to him.

They spend the evening doing all the things he likes, which are many and varied, and include, after the semen has dried on the sheets and used condoms litter the floor, talking about the international situation.

Over these last months, she has offered her advice on various matters, but this is the most important. Now the trouble has spread to several countries, including her own, and his country is considering sending in its military in support of its allies. Tomorrow’s negotiation is, as he puts it, the crunch.

She worries for him. She soothes him, says kind things, thoughtful things, insightful things. He will consider her advice, he says. Then she leaves, discreetly picking up the envelope of cash from the table on her way out to where a limousine is waiting, the driver trying not to make it obvious that he is staring from the side of his eyes in a fascination he would not admit to in front of his friends.

11. Charles

She asked him for a favour. There were so few flights, and her family were all back there, her children also, and she missed them, she was worried, and she was very sorry to ask and to bother him but she was due the vacation and he was so important and so smart, could he get her back home for Christmas?

No, he said, too dangerous, the jungle is full of terrorists, but when she wept, he couldn’t stand it. He relented and pulled a string or two. She was booked on one of the few flights still operating to Cebu City.

Now, in the quiet of the early evening, with the dark palms whispering outside in the garden and deep-throated bullfrogs honking in the trees like a broken accordion, the ambassador returns to his house with a heavy heart.

He sits in the leather armchair and rests his forehead in his hands. She brings him a glass of Highland Park with a single ice cube, and puts down a bowl of pistachio nuts.

He looks up at her. She has a kind face. ‘Thank you, Rosa,’ he says.

‘Is there anything else I can do, Sir?’ she asks. He says that there is not.

She steps forward, takes his hand and touches it to her forehead.

What follows could be construed as exploitation, as abuse of his power over her. This thought certainly crosses his mind briefly during the act, but he dismisses it. When he comes, it is with a strange feeling of peace, as if all his striving, all his work is doomed to futility, but that he doesn’t mind at all.

12. Rosa

Rosa is awake in the night. A gecko says “geck-oh” with the voice of a dog’s squeaky bone. Insects chorus and then cease in unison at the sound of a shot in the forest. The air is close, unstirred.

The moon has disappeared now, and through the uncurtained window, Rosa can see the silhouette of the volcano against a backdrop of stars. She wonders what the stars are. Are they angels in Heaven? Are they the souls of dead children? Are they the frozen tears of God?

She flies up to touch them.

She must have drifted into sleep because she did not notice him come in, but now a dark figure stands by her bed. She catches her breath, thinking that it is her husband, Reynante, come back from his hiding place in the forest. It is too dangerous, she thinks. If they catch him… but this, after all, is why she has come back.

She cannot bear to open her eyes fully, so she pretends to be asleep and watches through quivering lashes. Something metallic is lowered gently to the floor. He stands, not moving, but he is looking at her, she can tell. Go away, she thinks. Hide.

Stay, she thinks.

She is sure he can hear her thoughts.

His breathing can now be heard, with the merest edge of a wheeze. She tries to remember how her husband breathes. Is it like this?

He lies down on the bed next to her. After some more time, a rough knuckle barely touches the skin of her belly, withdraws, then comes back, stroking her skin below the T-shirt. Her heart beats fast.

She closes her eyes and lets the tip of one small finger stray to where he is.

In the darkness, with the sound of the ocean and the forest outside, he enters her. And as he enters her, her soul leaves her body and flies up, away from this small house, up to the million stars; and she looks down on their two bodies making love, on the wooden house with the vegetables growing outside and the fishing boat hauled up on the black-sand beach, on the forest stretching up the side of the smoking mountain and on the islands all around, the thousands of sand-fringed islands in this calm sea, dotted by human souls.

And as she feels him enter her again and again and clutches at him, she feels her soul rise higher, so that she can see the whole world, and every dwelling place in the world, and every couple who at that moment is making love; and for a moment, each couple is a fire, burning in the night, a flickering pinpoint of light on the curving dark map of the Earth.

And the sky above is a great mirror, stretching away to eternity all around, the fires reflected in its depths.

And suddenly she knows what the stars are.