A Touch of Love

I want to migrate to China, Stanley said in the group chat "Just the Boys" the other day.

His inspiration stems from a recent BBC story which involved a China grandpa in New Zealand who was acquitted of pinching a boy's penis in a swimming pool toilet.

To support his immigration case, Stanley produced evidence in our group chat: A screen shot of the story that highlighted the vital bits.

"In China, tweaking a child's penis was a way of showing affection."

Carl the dense one responded by posting an emoji with a round, green face.

"I'm no child molester, but if that country sees tweaking penises as a way of showing affection, I would immediately be Miss Congeniality there," wrote Stanley, Miss Con-genitals.

"I'm gonna print this story out and keep it in my file which I'll name 'Penis Book of Records'," Stanley continued.

"But it would be such a sad thing if one day, the Sex Police comes to raid my house and instead of arresting me for possessing gay porn, they put me behind bars for compiling intellectual news stories about penises," said Stanley, who is on a roll.

Carl the dense one didn't reply.

Neither did I.

"But then again, if the Sex Police does come to my place to raid my house, they'll want to strip search me - before putting me behind bars. And then when I go to prison, it would be another exciting episode," Stanley went on, his imagination picking up speeds that have already breached danger levels.

I had to step in.

"Okay, okay, I have to work now, Stan... can you suppress your drama and your urge to fly to China to pinch penises and release them a bit later please?"

Carl responded with an emoji that showed a thumbs up.

Stanley replied with an emoji of a lone hand, curled up in a fist.

"Release I will," he last wrote.

After ploughing through tons of never-ending paper work, I took a coffee break and clicked on the story Stanley pasted in our group chat - just to make sure it wasn't fake news.

It wasn't.

I was intrigued by the news.

Not so much by the nature of the case, but by how it's caused me to think about culture and acceptance.

Obviously, some people in China find that okay.

Others - who perhaps come from another part of the world - would scowl at such norms.

But it did set me thinking about uncomfortable norms.

Surely, some clown in China must have started this trend and fellow clowns found it so amusing that they not only accepted it themselves but spread the trend.

And it got me thinking about establishing unique family trends that might make others uncomfortable. 

Years ago, my university classmate Ming told me that she had visited her then-boyfriend's family in Australia.

The family had migrated from Malaysia to Down Under in the late 1990s.

While the family was very loving and welcoming of Ming, she was weirded out.

Because the family was too welcoming of her.

Apparently, the whole family has a habit of going to the local sauna together.

And they'd think nothing of seeing one another in the nude...

Ming was horrified at the prospects of seeing so many family jewels even before marrying her then-boyfriend.

When she told us, we too were horrified.

But the fact that Ming's then-boyfriend's family does this means it's a norm that they have come to embrace.

I began to look inwardly at my family to see if we have such uncomfortable norms.

As I forced my mind to visually fast-rewind to some forty years ago, I realised I had quite endearing memories with my siblings.

One of them was of my brother and I peeing together, and criss-crossing our stream of urine like they were Star Wars light sabres.

Stanley, who learned of this memory immediately pressed me for details, expressing explicit interest in the light sabres.

Another innocent playtime memory was with my sis.

As one of our invented games, I would blindfold Sis and place objects in her hands which she had to guess.

During one such game, I cheekily took off my shorts and lowered my scrotum in her hand.

Sis yelled at the top of her voice - startling mum who was ironing upstairs - when she finally gave up and took off her blindfold after she couldn't figure out what the hell she was touching.

I on the other hand laughed myself to death.

Stanley asked me cautiously later if we were 18 when we played those games.

And when we were younger - up till secondary school - we would happily walk around the house wearing just boxers, unless it was dinner time.

Somewhere along the lines, we grew older and felt it would be better to just cover up after all.

But my guess is, if we hadn't felt conscious, then this near-naked parading in the house would eventually become a family norm which I'm sure would scare off the boyfriends of our sisters who visit.

"I think I need to evaluate our friendship," Stanley later said to me, after learning about my childhood history.

Meanwhile, in a totally different household - my partner J's - there's also another type of family norm.

They're very affectionate.

Up till today, J's dad would bless J by drawing the sign of the cross on his forehead before he leaves home.

And when J's brothers visit, they will hug one another.

J's favourite older cousin - a very passionate, loving and expressive woman - would kiss him on the cheek every time they meet (the kiss is now extended to me as I'm seen as a family member too).

And whenever we have family meals at J's, we go through a ritual where, after grace is said, the younger ones would have to address the elders before tucking in.

For the sake of this blog topic, I pressed Carl and Stanley to think about their family norms.

Carl's family is a typical conservative Asian family where touching is almost never done to one another.

Stanley insists that family members who touch one another would almost always end up in court.

Carl obviously loves his parents, and vice versa.

But they don't express it verbally or physically, though in Carl's family, money does all the talking (Carl often showers his parents with gifts and takes them on expensive holidays).

Carl's parents, while never the type who explicitly tell their children they love them, show it with action.

Years ago, after Carl broke off with his then-boyfriend Ah Boy, he was so devastated that his concerned parents kept probing Carl to the point when he told them he was gay.

To his - and our - surprise, his traditional parents walked away without saying anything but the next day, his mum, while cooking, told Carl "if Ah Boy doesn't appreciate you, then find someone better."

Carl's dad, who was nearby, stoically nodded.

In Stanley's household, it's a different story.

It's filled with stories.

Stanley's mum, the formidable Mrs Monica Ong who sports her hair in a boldly cut bob and is a typical loud Peranakan nonya, always has friends and relatives over at their three-storey house.

His household is filled with the typical shrieks of laughter and good old fashioned Baba vulgarity.

To this day, Mrs Monica Ong still addresses her younger brother, Stanley's uncle, as "kotek".

That's Baba slang for penis, Stanley would say proudly.

And while Mrs Monica Ong is a modern nonya, Stanley's grandma isn't.

She would wear the kebaya at home and would stuff her hanky in her bra, taking it out once in a while to brandish at whomever she was gossiping with, or to sometimes dab her sweat.

Stanley admitted to having his face wiped by that said hanky as a kid.

"And," Stanley confessed, "I was 18 then."



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Adam's stories are based on real life events and inspired by real people