The Greatest Showman

I don't know how many of you have seen it.

I've seen quite a few.

And Stanley has seen enough.

Which of course means I'm not referring to penises.

I'm talking about show-offs who feel compelled to snap photos of their IPPT result slips and post them online.

Stanley has counted - he's seen at least 27 of such posts.

"Okay, so you got gold for IPPT. Very good. And your point is?" Stanley said agitatedly to me, thrusting his phone in my face to show me one such post.

The current offending post belonged to Stanley's NUS junior who Stanley said is annoying as hell in real life too.

The caption of that friend's post was "finally, cleared my IPPT this year, haha".

The fact that there was a "haha" in that caption didn't make the post funny nor humble.

 "Waaah.... so clever....." Stanley said in a nasal voice as if he were talking to a child. "Can do push up, can do sit up, can run.... wah.... so cleverrrrrrrr. So fiiiiiiiiiiit."

And then, suddenly sounding British, Stanley concluded: "What a stupid show-off" and rolled his eyes before clicking 'like' on that friend's post.

"Okay, what shall we eat?" Stanley asked me, suddenly returning to his normal self, all bright and cheery again.

If I had not known Stanley my sex bunny friend for some two decades, I would have thought his screw had come loose.

Which actually, given Stanley's risque lifestyle, isn't far from the truth - the words "screw" and "loose" would accurately describe Stanley on any given day.

Some days, when Stanley is truly worked up, he can channel various characters - and display his perfect mastery of voice changes - to express his sarcasm.

And on those days, Stanley would look so possessed that the only way to control him would be to beg a priest to cleanse him and firmly tell Stanley that "I command you to get out of Stanley, whatever you are (likely a dildo) and whoever you are (which can be any gay man on the street, really)!"

It's a Thursday afternoon and it's sweltering hot.

The two of us are at Holland Village - I was on one of my trips back to Singapore and Stanley had taken the day off to have lunch with me.

We settled for Crystal Jade where Stanley would always order his favourite chicken-duck congee and XO carrot cake.

We were shown to a very tiny table that was a tad too close to the adjacent one.

I kid you not.

The spacing between Stanley and my table, and the one next to us - where two very grim-looking middle-aged office ladies were having lunch - was only two fingers' gap apart.

We would have joined the two tables and shared the space if not for the fact that the two office ladies looked like they belonged to an ultra conservative religious group who would frown and utter prayers under their breaths if they had heard us talk during lunch.

Because with Stanley, meal time topics was sex.

Drawing on my 20 years of friendship with Stanley, I telepathically begged him to keep his topics lunch-friendly by eyeing the two severe-looking women who looked like they seriously needed not only to talk about sex, but to have actual sex.

Stanley rolled his eyes at me and said out loudly: "How? Should we have the sex lunch? It's very value for money."

The two office ladies glanced over at Stanley cautiously and continued eating their noodles with fierce concentration.

Fortunately, Stanley was in no mood for sex talk.

He's still highly charged by online show-offs.

After we got our orders out of the way, Stanley revisited the topic.

Stanley wonders who the hell it was that started the trend of posting IPPT results online.

It's such a humble brag thing to do, Stanley said, shaking his head, and then nodded approvingly as he fed himself a spoonful of the smooth chicken-duck congee.

I agree with Stanley.

I've seen my fair share of humble brags online.

I can still respect you if the post had been blatantly self-promoting.

What I cannot stand is how people would, for instance, post photos of themselves with not a hair out of place, and then write brazen captions like "late for work.... bad hair day".

"And," I told Stanley, "I hate it when guys post photos of themselves half naked and -

"Wait - top half or bottom half naked," Stanley had to clarify. "'Cos sister, if it's bottom half, there's little to hate."

One of the two ultra conservative office ladies suddenly stopped chewing noisily. The other one coughed and needed immediate sips of tea.

Lowering my voice, I continued.

"I can't stand it when guys post photos of themselves half naked and then say stupid things like 'oh dear, put on so much weight after my holiday... need to lose weight now' and the bloody photo shows that guy's bloody six packs."

Stanley nods appreciatively, hearing the words "six packs".

But yeah, seriously.

I do dislike humble online brags.

Give me a blatant show-off any day and I'll respect them.

Of course, there's the online breed of show-offs.

And then there are the offline, real-life humble brags.

Those are more annoying because you can't scroll them away.

And I have one such friend.

My university gal pal Sasha - who goes by Sasa to her close friends - would know.

We have this annoying classmate, Lionel, who has been humble-bragging to us since Day One of uni.

Lionel would humbly brag about his results. About his deep knowledge of world politics. About how he's quite a popular guy.

And when we graduated and started working, Lionel would humbly brag about his salary, his wealth and would find ways to remind us that he owns a car and a BTO.

"If only he owned some hair," Sasa once whispered to me during a class gathering with Lionel, a comment that sent us into violent fits from controlling our laughter.

The problem is, Lionel isn't exactly unpleasant.

I mean, if he isn't humbly showing off, he's actually quite nice.

And truth me told, Sasa and I secretly enjoy hearing Lionel humble-brag.

It's become tradition that whenever we have class outings, one of us would goad Lionel into humble-bragging and each time he falls into our trap, we would kick each other under the table while maintaining keen, attentive eye contact with the braggard.

And we all have such people in our lives.

And it's up to us, how we deal with these people.

For Sasa and me, we choose to make a joke out of these annoying but harmless people.

I shared that coping mechanism with Stanley during dessert.

As Stanley chewed his pomelo sago, his eyes brightened.

"Yes. I know how to cope with these humble brags now," he said, as if he had attained nirvana.

"You see, guys who need to show off means they have hidden flaws."

"And in most cases, it must mean they have a small penis."

Stanley immediately whipped out his phone and began investigating.

"This gives me something to do - and if my theory were right, I could well submit this as my PhD dissertation," Stanley said wisely as he tapped on his NUS junior's Facebook photos to enlarge it for further examination.



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

Money Matters

One of the joys of being forty - and having a relatively stable career and good financial habits - is that we can splurge once in a while.

"I'm feeling like a million bucks," Stanley said over a WhatsApp video call the other day, eager to share that he's found a hair salon near his workplace which made him look and feel good.

"And I'm ready for a million fucks," he adds with passion.

"How? You like it?" he asked, beaming, tilting his head leftward, rightward, and angling his phone so I get a 360 panoramic view of his Korean-stylist's artwork.

"This haircut cost me a bomb - but I'll have a blast tonight," Stanley squealed in excitement in the middle of Suntec City.

It's a Saturday afternoon and Stanley is off to a date that night.

And Stanley wants to look perfect for him.

B, who's Stanley's current love interest, belongs to someone else.

Stanley had recently confessed to us to having fallen in love with a man who's attached.

"Years ago when I was studying marketing in NUS," Stanley said, as he catwalked along the shopping mall, "my prof said that Burger King was trying to take a bite of the fast food market."

"One of its most successful marketing campaigns was in admitting that it's second place to MacDonald's - and that because they know they're second place, they're going all out to please customers," Stanley said.

"And I'm Burger King. I need to look fabulous for my B because I'm the third party here," said Stanley, Analogy Queen.

"Okay, I gotta go - I love you and stay alive," were his parting words before Stanley went on his rendezvous.

Coincidentally, in another part of Singapore, Sasha Natasha - or Sasa as we call her - had also just stepped out from what she described as a "luxurious spa session," one of her endless self-love, pampering projects.

Sasa my classmate from university is one busy woman.

On weekdays, she leads a team of staff at work, always dressed up, decked up and made up like she's ready for a photo shoot.

On some weekday nights, Richard her disgustingly rich hubby - also my friend from university - picks her up and has an expensive dinner somewhere.

The power couple are the envy of many, including Stanley the sex bunny who hasn't met them but has heard a lot about them.

Let me know when Sasa's rich and powerful husband is lonely," Stanley would say, adding "these days, I'm an expert at being a third party."

But there'll be no party.

Right now, Sasa is telling me how she fired and hired a careless facial therapist who was daydreaming while working on her face and had accidentally scratched her right cheek.

Sasa, who is an expert in the art of human manipulation, managed to get the therapist's furious manager to threaten to sack that therapist before Sasa strategically stepped in to insist that the manager does not do that.

"It's a diplomatic win-win situation. The therapist gets a scary threat but she gets to keep her job and I get my main point and message across with no blood on my hands. Easy-peasy," Sasa said cheerfully.

Stanley later asked me to remind him never to step on Sasa's powerful, manicured toes.

"That therapist doesn't have her heart in the right place," I conveyed to Stanley Sasa's exact words to me.

"Rich people... very hard to please, you think?" I ask Stanley, who fervently disagrees.

"You'll have to be hard to be pleased, hunny," Stanley said.

Later, as I was spending one hour on the treadmill as part of my Saturday routine, my thought process sparked off very rapidly like firecrackers.

I first started by thinking about the joys of a working life - that it allows us to splurge once in a while on treating ourselves well with facial and spas.

Then it jumped to the distant future - can we sustain that lifestyle?

It dwindled very quickly because my next thought was how much do we need when we're old.

We're at the mid-point of our lives, assuming we die at 80.

So we should be at the peak of our career - and finances.

In Singapore, when you reach 40, you automatically get accepted into the government's national health insurance scheme for the elderly.

And that's another reminder that you'll have to be rich at 40: You are ageing and you might chalk up hospital bills.

These days, my peers are buying loads of heavyweight items.

While it's clothes and shoes and all things fashionable in our teens and early twenties, and nice watches and tailored suits in our late twenties and early thirties, people my age buy bigass items like financial products.

To prove my point, Stanley, who recently found a job after he was retrenched, dumped in more money on stocks and shares so that his money can grow. He's also considering upgrading some of his healthcare insurance policies which would mean he'll pay some $10,000 a year for all his insurance policies added up.

My partner J - just a year older but fuckloads richer - is paying off his second property and planning his third. A commercial unit, he says, so that he can evade additional residential property tax.

Carl our dense friend is throwing money in plastic surgery, protein powder and steroids - investments of a different sort.

Sasa and Richard, needless to say, have them all: From government bonds and structured deposits and timeshares to gold and an overseas property.
  
The reason I'm writing about this so passionately isn't because I worship money.

I mean, we all need them and we'll never have enough even if we are wealthy.

But it stems from the fact that we're gay.

Ageing gay people have very little social security.

Stanley used to say that when we're old, we'll have to help one another change adult diapers because we have no children.

We won't have sons and daughters to drive us to the hospital for check ups, or even try to curry favour us in the hope of getting inheritance.

So having money - and a sound retirement plan is the way to go.

As I ended my very morbid one-hour run, I messaged J, Stanley and Carl to randomly ask them their retirement plans.

Carl the gym rabbit says he's investing his money in beauty so that he can look young, look good and therefore not fall sick.

J my partner says when we're old, we can look for retirement villages elsewhere if none materialises in Singapore by the time we're ancient and frail. One of J's single and ageing friends now lives in one such village in Australia where he functions independently with his own house, while living amongst other elderly neighbours within a community that has nurses and therapists on the standby.

Stanley's ideal retirement plan is to hire a team of money boys who will change his adult diapers.

"But not because it's wet with pee, hunny," he said while taking a toilet break with his date B.



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

Face Value the Sequel

It's been half a work day gone and I still haven't been able to properly focus in the office.

Granted, it isn't exactly a busy day at the office, plus it's a Friday.

My staff are all winding down after lunch in anticipation of the weekend.

I on the other hand, am anticipating updates in my group chat, titled Just the Boys.

Three of us are in that group - me, my dense friend Carl and Stanley the sex bunny.

As of now, the group is silent.

The last message, at 9:13am Singapore time, was a photo of Stanley making a funny face, pointing at Carl's large nose.

Carl looked hurt in the photo.

Three hours later, there are still no updates.

Carl couldn't type because he's lying on the surgical bed with a surgeon prodding at his nose.

Then again, it's also possible that Stanley couldn't type because he's lying on some bed with someone prodding at him too.

Then, at 2:45pm, my WhatsApp alert sounded.

"Frankenstein is alive," Stanley reported.

"But he's groggy," updated Stanley.

"ttyl" was the last message.

Yes, that day has come when Carl takes this next big step to looking like a Korean pop star after thinking about it for decades, talking about it for years, researching on the topic for months.

About half an hour later, I received a photo.

Stanley was making a funny face, pointing at Carl's large, bandaged nose.

Carl looked hurt in the photo.

And it must hurt pretty bad, given that the upper half of his face looked like a hastily wrapped mummy.

"You look groggy and zoned out," I pointed out to Carl.

"Then Carl is doing just fine," Stanley replied without missing a beat.

Stanley had been very sweet, taking the day off to drive Carl to and from his plastic surgery.

But that didn't guarantee Carl that Stanley wouldn't happily poke fun at Carl.

On any other day, the words poke and fun would also accurately describe Stanley's hobbies.

And for the next few weeks, Carl would have to move very gently and do things very, very slowly.

Something which Stanley later said was something Carl was fully capable of, considering.

By dinner time, while I was busy slurping a bowl of Korean instant noodles (one of those days where I'm simply too lazy to cook), Stanley sent the group more photos.

Mainly of Carl's nose in different angles.

"I'm feeling okay... it's not painful yet," Carl replied me, adding that he hopes he won't sneeze in the next few weeks.

In one of the wefies taken with Stanley, Carl looked like a victim of an acid attack, his eyes looking puffy and the skin at the edge of his bandage looking pretty sore.

Later that night, my partner J dropped by Carl's home with packed desserts.

One thing I love about J is how he has also come to love my friends - and care for them like I would.

And it was a particularly important gesture that J was there, given that I am now based overseas and can't fly back as and when I wished.

For the next few weeks, Carl was on MC and was slowly nursing himself back to recovery.

His bandage came off in the second week, and again, it was a day of anticipation for me.

This time, Stanley didn't accompany Carl, who was by then well enough to get around on his on.

The first before-after photo was introduced to the group two weeks into Carl's surgery, and shortly after the bandage was removed.

Two photos of Carl's front profile juxtaposed side by side.

"Wow," Stanley typed. "Which photo is the before photo?????"

Stanley wasn't being funny.

I stared very hard at the two photos and even I couldn't tell the difference.

The photo on the left, which I'm made to understand was taken a few weeks before Carl's surgery, looked better than the photo on the right, taken at the clinic toilet.

In fact, Carl's post-surgery nose looks slightly bigger, redder and painful.

Santa Claus would be keen to hire Carl.

Stanley immediately messaged me privately, saying "are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
I typed the words botched surgery, then deleted them, and re-typed the words kena cheated. Then I deleted them again and composed my thoughts.

"We told him so" was my final answer.

"RIGHT? I HATE TO SAY THIS TO MY DEAR CARL, BUT SEE? WE WERE NOT WRONG," Stanley replied, adding that it's no wonder we think like twins given we're a day apart in age.

In our main group chat, Carl typed: "The doctor says don't worry - the swelling will go down after a while".

"Yeah," Stanley replied with a smirk icon.

"Exactly what I said in bed last night."



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

Knock, Knock

In creepy movies, one of the lines we might hear from predators is "you can run, but you cannot hide".

But in real life, we can.

Particularly in gay life.

Well, some of us, at least.

Stanley my sex bunny friend fully agrees with me.

"In the creepy movies that I watch," he said, making quotation marks in the air at the word creepy, "the predators will also say you can run but you cannot hide."

"But in those movies, they always have a happy ending," Stanley said with great gratification.

I'm inspired to write about hiding in the closet because the topic came up the other day when Stanley WhatsApped me.

"It's a boy," Stanley wrote, pasting a photo of a very tiny being wrapped up in swathes of towels.

The newborn, fresh into this world and fresh out of the oven, looked reddish and very annoyed, the photo capturing him in a perpetual scream.

"Anyone who comes out of that tunnel will definitely be pissed like this li'l cutie," Stanley said.

The cutie belonged to our friend Matthew, and the oven belonged to Carey, Matthew's wife.

Of course, we're happy for Matthew - Stanley and my friend from our army days - and Mrs Matthew.

I mean, the natural thing would be to feel happy for a friend's new baby boy, right?

Except in Matthew's case, we aren't exactly sure.

Matthew is gay and in denial.

We know because years ago, we found out that Matthew slept around with the same number of men - and in some cases, the same men - as Stanley.

The matter came to light when Stanley had a prolonged chat with one of his talkative One Night Stand partners.

Matthew was mentioned because the One Night Stand asked if Stanley might know Matthew since both of them belonged to a small, elite force in the army, and both were of the same age.

Shocked, Stanley took on the probing role and dug for more info and, to his utter surprise, confirmed that the Matthew was our Matthew. There was photographic and text evidence.  

I remember Stanley urgently texting me immediately with that news when he found out.

Matthew is a very straight-acting man.

So straight-acting that, like method actors, he believes he's straight.

While he is our friend, he had never opened his heart to show anyone his most vulnerable part.

"Yah, but he can open up his zip and show people his most vulnerable bits," Stanley retorted in mock anger, unwilling to accept such irony.

Years ago, Stanley and I decided to help Matthew get out of his closet so that he knows he's not alone in this world.

Over a casual dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Holland Village, Stanley got the conversation moving.

"Matt, I have something to tell you," Stanley said casually, setting his green tea cup on the table.

Matthew waited cautiously, sensing potentially heavy news.

"I'm gay," Stanley said and paused.

It took Matthew just two seconds to recover and say the words "Okay!" in a decidedly clam manner.

"I'm gay too," I added, and paused.

Again, two seconds later, Matthew bounced back calmly. "Oh, okay," he said.

Stanley waited for Matthew to finish chewing - so that he had no excuse to stall his next answer - when he went for the kill: "Are you gay, Matt?"

Matthew paused and this time, he breached the two-second mark.. third second, fourth second... tick tock tick tock... Matthew stared blankly at Stanley his mouth slightly agape and a grand total of nine seconds later (yes, I had to keep count as Stanley had instructed carefully at the plotting stage), said "no."

That night, Stanley decided to brush it off and not produce evidence that would force Matthew into an unretractable corner.

Eventually, Matthew retreated further into his closet - his prison - and eventually, years later, invited us to his wedding.

Matthew's newborn stirred up that evening's dinner topic and it made me feel sad for Matthew.

I am in no position to judge.

And neither was Stanley - he was in a compromised position and couldn't think clearly when he received my message asking him for his thoughts.

I of all people - gay and sometimes indignant about how other people shouldn't judge gays - should never impose my judgement on anyone.

Because whether you want to step out of the closet or not is none of my business.

Except in Stanley's case - I was one of those heavily involved in his coming out party when he invited a handful of our army buddies to his house for a barbeque gathering at a time when the group of us were starting to marry one by one and Stanley's sick of answering when his turn might be.

After that party, Stanley teared.

Three of our best pals in our unit toasted to Stanley's (and slightly later, my) coming out, and today, they remain fierce, loyal buddies to us.

Carl our dense friend's coming out was a simple affair.

He didn't need to step out of his closet: His closet was transparent and made of glass for all to view.

While we aren't open gayvangalists, introducing ourselves at parties by stating that we're gay, we don't outrightly lie or - most importantly - feel ashamed of ourselves.

But that's not the case for Uncle Thomas, my uni classmate Sasa's uncle.

Sasa, who, while isn't a faghag, isn't clueless about gays either.

She's a gay associate given that she has wonderful gay men in her life: Her creative boss, her interior designer, her ex-classmates from SCGS, and of course, me.

Oh, and apparently, Uncle Thomas too.

Sasa has long suspected that Uncle Thomas, 55, single and available is gay.

And being his favourite niece, Sasa wants to be supportive and so has on many occasions, hinted to Uncle Thomas that she's open minded, has a great good gay friend from uni, and will go all out to burn her expensive branded bra if necessary, at the Pink Dot event.

But Uncle Thomas never took the bait.

"I don't want him to feel pressured - I just want him to know I'll always love him," Sasa would say.

What worries Sasa is, Uncle Thomas doesn't seem to be comfortable with the idea of his sexuality 'cos most of Uncle Thomas' friends are straight and she worries that Uncle Thomas is forever gonna be in the closet that the closet becomes a coffin.

"Maybe I'm too close to him for him to be open," Sasa would say at every opportunity whenever the topic of old gay men came up.

I thought about it the other night.

Coming out of the closet gets harder when you're older.

The key is lost. And even if it's unlocked, the hinges of the closet become rusty.

There's a lot more at stake - especially since the skeleton that's in the closet has lived a large part of his life like that.

Maybe, they're like turtles.

Without their shells, they die.

So we shouldn't act like we know better and force them out of their shells. 

Stanley fully agrees.

"Turtles remind me of dick heads," Stanley said on WhatsApp.

"And those dick heads find it harder to shed their shell as they grow older. Circumcision gets more complicated with age."

I told Sasa who told me she couldn't look at Uncle Thomas in the eye for the next three weeks.



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