“You’ll know when we touch down,” Stanley writes in our group chat shortly before SQ997 took off.
“And whenever Stanley gets off and comes, trust me hunny, the arrival is always announced vocally,” he threatens.
Last week, my boys Stanley the sex bunny and Carl the dense one flew over to Myanmar to look for me.
It was Stanley’s third visit to the country and Carl’s first.
At exactly 9:55am local time, the faerie force field surrounding Yangon International Airport spikes beyond dangerous levels, as two of Singapore’s gayest sons step foot into Myanmar.
Carl the gym rabbit - dressed in a polo tee three sizes too small, paired with pants that accentuated his bamboo-thin legs - beams and waves excitedly at my direction like a child who had just spotted a giant stuffed toy.
Stanley - his trendy sunglasses atop his newly dyed brown hair and wearing a button down with a cardigan draped over his shoulders - casts a lustful smile in my direction after spotting a giant, who can arguably be a stuffed toy in Stanley’s world.
“Well, well, well, Man-mar, here we are,” Stanley says by way of greeting.
The three of us, who haven’t seen one another for way too long, embrace in a group hug.
Carl the dense one, who is incapable of naming all 10 countries in ASEAN and has no geopolitical knowledge whatsoever, looks around the airport warily, clutching his man bag tightly against his broad chest.
Stanley, who’s both widely travelled and widely spread, sighs and tells Carl to relax and not be so uptight.
Carl whispers urgently: “But this is a third world country and it can be dangerous!”
Stanley responds by rolling his eyes towards the airport ceiling and says drowsily: “Carl hunny, your worry shouldn’t be that you’re gonna get raped. Your worry should be that no one is gonna rape you.”
Carl the dense one, who looks jet lagged, stares back at Stanley, his eyes vacant.
Stanley later tells me that Carl is at his best whenever he gets off planes because his stupidity is fully disguised by his genuine jet-lagged look.
Back in my car, Stanley squeals in excitement as my chauffeur drives along Yangon, en route to my apartment.
Carl continues looking around warily, clutching his man bag with his python-sized biceps so tightly they look drained of blood.
The grand plan that weekend was to splurge, luxuriate and spend time with one another in the name of Stanley and my birthdays.
Stanley and I are born just a day apart and we had planned a jubilee week that straddles activities in both Myanmar and Singapore (read it here).
Stanley, who’s an expert in straddling, had put together our birthday plans.
“Okay, first stop - Circular train ride!” says Stanley who is excited by all kinds of rides.
Carl claps gleefully in response, since the script calls for it.
Yangon’s famous circular train ride would take passengers around the city for just 20 cents per person, offering visitors a glimpse into Myanmar’s rustic, charming lifestyle.
Right now, Stanley is busy enjoying his glimpse.
“Do these men actually wear anything beneath their sarong?” he asks, tilting his head, eager to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Carl looks extremely worried, and keeps covering his nose.
“Adam, how long is this ride gonna take?” Carl asks, worried he would catch something while sharing space and air with the hordes of locals.
Stanley cuts in and answers on my behalf.
“This ride will be long and rough - so enjoy it while it lasts,” he says, raising one eyebrow suggestively, unworried about catching anything as long as it’s adventurous.
The whole train ride took us some three hours.
By the end of it, Stanley was looking very pleased, having snapped enough IG-worthy photos, and garnered sufficient glamorous pictures of himself posing in all possible angles which he could update on Tinder and Grindr.
Carl looked pale by the end of the train ride and I caught him scrunching his nose in disgust as a woman balancing a tray of fruits on her head walked past him as we got off the train.
Stanley couldn’t be bothered by Carl and proceeds to fully enjoy Yangon in the best possible way.
“Let’s go to a gay bar!” Stanley says, his eyes lighting up.
Carl claps in response, his python-sized biceps pulsating with life.
Unfortunately, I had no local knowledge of the gay scene in Myanmar and the idea was snuffed out as quickly as it surfaced.
Carl’s swollen biceps deflated in disappointment.
Although we knew Carl the uncultured one would not enjoy Myanmar, we had asked him along since we didn’t want him to feel left out.
Indeed, Carl didn’t enjoy himself throughout the trip, occasionally grumbling that Myanmar is backward and had no gym where he could upkeep his python-sized biceps, and that he couldn’t understand why men would wear sarong and why people chewed bethel leaves and had to spit all over the place.
Stanley, an expert in blocking out princess complaints, would marvel at how amazed he is with Myanmar’s progress since his visit in 2014, and engage intellectually with me and English-speaking locals on the country’s transition and future.
Though Carl and Stanley had polarising interests of Myanmar, the two had one thing in common: The men.
Stanley the eagle eyed would sharply point out that men in the county are generally very lean, and very muscular.
To which, Carl would suddenly snap out of his stupor and come to full alertness, his eyes darting around eagerly.
“I wonder which gym they go to,” Carl would ask out loud, admiring the creations of the Almighty while gently patting his own biceps, the creations of all his might.
“I think Myanmar is not so bad,” Carl concludes.
During our trip, one of the highlights was food.
I had to cater to both the boys’ palates.
Stanley wants to try all things local while Carl would frown at exotic tastes and complain that there’s no MacDonald’s in Myanmar.
The other highlight was getting to spend time with one another in my apartment.
One of Carl’s favourite activities is to concoct and apply homemade masques like we are Disney Princesses having a sleepover party in one of our castles.
Carl had appointed himself as chief beautician for this trip, demanding that I bought cucumbers and a peeler for his DIY project.
“Carl darling,” Stanley says as we gather around the Muscle Mary in my kitchen. “In my world, cucumbers and DIY projects are best done alone in the bedroom and not as a group project.”
Carl didn’t respond - more from his inability to detect innuendos rather than from rudeness.
Carl had read somewhere that cucumbers does wonders for the face.
Stanley quips that he too had read somewhere that cucumbers does wonders - though not for the face .
“So all we need to do is to peel the cucumber thinly in strips, and paste it on our face,” Carl says delightfully.
“If we slice it - which people tend to do and slap on their eyes - it will be too thick,” Carl continues, doing his part to contribute something useful in society.
“Thick has never been a problem,” Stanley says, speaking from experience from doing his part to contribute to society.
“So you peel this off thinly and stick it on your cheek,” Carl says blissfully, sticking another cool, thin layer of cucumber across my left cheek.
The idea is to leave on multiple strips of thin cucumber on our face and leave it overnight so that the natural moisture of the veggie can be fully absorbed by our skin.
“My turn, do me, do me,” Stanley says anxiously to Carl, a phrase he no doubt also uses frequently on random strangers.
“Ahhh,” Stanley sighs in pleasure as Carl tenderly pastes one strip on Stanley’s forehead.
“I never knew cucumbers could feel this good - on my face,” Stanley says.
“I really feel like a Disney Princess,” Stanley says as he gingerly lies flat on his back, lifts his legs up and begins cycling in the air.
Stanley remarks that if we were Disney Princesses, Carl would no doubt be Sleeping Beauty given that he’s never fully aware of what’s happening in this cruel world and that he’s always spacing out.
“And you would be Snow White,” Stanley points at my belly “because you eat every damn thing that people offer you. God, Adam, you seriously need to lose some weight darling,” he adds lovingly, pinching my left muffin top.
“And if I were a Disney Princess,” Stanley says, “I’ll be Mulan.”
“Each of you only will have one Prince Charming whereas for me, I’ll be surrounded by a bunch of burly, Asian soldiers who would once in a while squeeze my buttocks after a long day at training all in the wholesome name of brotherly horseplay.”
And just like that, the three boys who met in the late 90s and who’ve grown into men through our years, became giggly girls in the privacy and comfort of my apartment.
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Adam's stories are based on real life events and inspired by real people
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