Dumb and Dumber

When I was a little boy, my mum would put me to bed with a story book, planting in me the seeds of my eventual reading habit.

"I don't like where this story is going," Stanley the sex bunny interrupted. 

"I don't know what this story is about," Carl the dense one jumped in, ever keen to be clued in.

"It's just that, there are too many sex cases involving fathers who rape their own daughters and the idea of you sharing this disturbing childhood detail of your mum planting seeds in you at night is just plain creepy," said Stanley, whose ability to link current events with all things sex, surpasses all pornography writers'. 

Carl, who has no ability to link anything in life at all, frowned. 

"The rocket leaves in my salad are bitter," he concluded, satisfied that he had solved one mystery in his life. 

There are just way too many cluttered topics at our table right now, which is nicely situated al fresco, just opposite the old Raffles Hotel.

I was having a hard time talking to the boys about my topic of the day.

Stanley was having a hard time focusing. His eyes were busy trailing every young man that walked past us, as if breaking the line of visual contact would upset some cosmic balance.

Carl too was having a hard time focusing. Between trying to poke his chick peas with his fork all at one go and looking at his phone and breathing, Carl was overwhelmed.

"So, what are we taking about?"

What I would like to talk about during our Friday night dinner at Raffles City, was that these days, I'm feeling increasingly stupid.

Carl put his fork down and looked hurt. 

"I'm going to order pasta -- the salad is too bitter," he said and with that, clapped delightfully at his adult decision-making abilities, celebrating yet another win that he can solve problems in life.

Stanley couldn't be bothered to take part in the conversation sensing that it didn't involve sex.

But my point has to be made across. I feel increasingly stupid because I have Imposter Syndrome.

Stanley immediately dismissed me.

"Don't be stupid," he said. 

"That's exactly what I'm trying not to be," I retorted. 

"What are we talking about?" Carl inquired.

Imposter Syndrome is a concept that's most commonly felt in working adults: Self doubt to the point of feeling like a fraud at work.

Carl sucked in a deep breath at the words "imposter", "fraud" and "work" that are used in the same sentence and went pale as if half expecting officers from the Commercial Affairs Department to emerge from the bushes and handcuff me.

Five seconds later, Carl lit up and beamed cheerfully when the waiter brought him his pasta.

"So, this imposter... who is he?" Carl asked, forking as many penne pasta pieces as possible at one go.

Of late, I'd been tasked with a new project which required me to work with external parties. 

"Oooh, I love parties," responded Carl who was feeling particularly chatty.

"And I love all things external -- the more exposed the better," replied Stanley who was feeling particularly slutty.

Thing is, I know I'm good at my job.

I think so.

I mean, at least, I feel so, until I move out of my comfort zone and start interacting with experts from outside my company.

By then, Carl was fully engrossed in his meal and anyone with superhero vision could see Carl's force field engulfing him, protecting him from any form of distraction.

Stanley chewed slowly and gave my views some thought.

"If it's any consolation, I have Imposter's Syndrome too."

At this point, Carl was busy storing pasta in both his cheeks, no doubt preparing for winter so Stanley and I decided to continue talking among ourselves.

When we both started our careers, despite being in different fields, Stanley and I had many common traits.

We both wanted to learn as much as possible, weren't afraid of failure, and we enjoyed the process. 

That was when we were in our twenties.

I remember my then-team leader's precious advice to me: In your twenties, it's okay to fail. That's how we learn. It's how we move on and change for the better that matters, she said. 

By our thirties, we'd learned enough from role models at work and had time to hone our craft.

That's when we saw the fruits of our labour -- more tasks, promotions, pay rises.

We were well on our up the corporate ladder.

It was also the time I felt most powerful at work: I was by then a middle manager who had a small team under me, and supportive bosses above me and I was most empowered, often daring to take risks which most of the time served me well.

And then come the forties.

I'm definitely higher in the food chain and instead of eating worms, I eat bigger beasts for breakfast, a sign that I'm fiercer and one step closer to being the Lion King. 

But not quite there yet.

At my age and stage of my career, I can't afford to fail.

I have to keep improving, keep paddling. Stop to rest for a while and Betsy Chia from two desks away who'd passed up marriage and dating for a career would overtake me. 

I'm well aware of that so I never stop paddling.

"Me too. I paddle like mad by day, and pedal like mad by night," Stanley said, making an effort to shift his legs to give me a preview of how fast he can cycle in the air, and again, never failing to link something from the boardroom to the bedroom. 

"Oh, dragon boating! Yes!" Carl looked up from his bowl of pasta and flexed his python-sized bicep and continued making his penne disappear. 

These days, to stay on top of the game, I volunteer to take on additional projects.

That's when I realise that stepping out of my comfort zone to learn new things can be both a refreshing and intimidating experience.

We all know the adage -- knowledge is power.

But the more I know, the more I don't know: There's just way too much to grasp!

Carl, who had by then finished licking his fork and spoon and had nothing else better to do, looked at me and nodded meaningfully, comprehending every essence of what I had just said.

Stanley leaned in and set the record straight.

"I know what you mean, Adam," he said. "And you're no spring chicken so you've got to snap out of it."

According to Stanley, Imposter Syndrome happens to people who're self-conscious of their work.

"These people still have some semblance of shame," he said. "So you're alright, Adam."

Stanley says it's only people who're truly stupid or useless who don't have Imposter Syndrome at all.

That's because, he says, they can't be bothered to review their own performance and have no shame, so they don't blame themselves for being inadequate.

We on the other hand, are people who know we want to do well, recognise that we don't know it all and fear that we can't catch up.

"But guess what, Adam? It is that very fear, that you should be thankful for. Without that spark of fear, you'll forever be complacent, falling into the trap of being all-knowing. 

"Grasp it. Feel the spark. Feel the fear because that's the very fear that will propel you, not swallow you," Stanley said, channelling his inner Deepak Chopra. 

Carl looked like he was about to collapse from stress and info overload. 

"So you mustn't be defeated," Stanley said, making his closing argument.

"Imposter's Syndrome is something all good, humble workers have. I feel like I have Imposter's Syndrome his too, to be honest. And I'm sure Carl has something to add to this."

"Yes!" Carl beamed, looking up from the menu.

"I know what to have for dessert already," he concluded, immensely happy that he had yet again managed to make another important decision in his life.

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

Senior Management

 A few months ago, Stanley and I were at our lowest in life.

We were waiting to pay for our groceries at a supermarket in VivoCity when the girl asked us cheerfully: "CHAS member?"

Stanley immediately jumped, assuming CHAS was a membership for the old.

"No," he said in a slow, threatening voice as if he were Cruella.

For the uninitiated, CHAS cards are usually reserved for the older generation who have no or very low household income.

But all Singaporeans are eligible to apply for the CHAS card if they fall below a certain income bracket. 

After a frantic fact check on his phone, Stanley was still furious.

"Do we look poor?" Stanley asked me in horror, as he wheeled our full trolley to the car park.

"I mean, how old does she think we look?" Stanley said.

To be fair, the poor girl probably doesn't know any better and she must surely be reading off the NTUC script for cashiers where they're first supposed to greet you, then ask if you have any of their memberships.

And to be fair, if she had thought we were old, we can't blame her. That tiny girl looked like she's still wearing a training bra.

"Do we look poor?" Stanley asked again, aghast.

"Would poor people buy this number of wines and fill the entire trolley with useless items that can't feed their families properly, like cheddar cheese, rosemary herbs, and kale?"

That was then.

Today, I hit a new low.

I was waiting to pay up at NTUC when the cashier -- who looks to be in her mid-50s -- asked me if I were a senior citizen.

I mustered up my most delightful tone: "I would say yes just to get the discount."

The cashier burst out laughing under her mask.

Then she politely -- and sincerely -- followed up by asking me for my Senior Citizen card so she could key in that discount.

Stanley my sex bunny friend burst out laughing over the phone when I called him immediately to relay my horror.

"Adam, the puzzle is finally solved!" Stanley said when he was done guffawing.

"The VivoCity girl took one look at you and decided YOU were a CHAS card member!"

I mean, do I look that old?

"Maybe it's all the salt-and-pepper hair that misled the aunty," Stanley tried to save the day.

"I was wearing a cap."

Stanley launched into another round of laughter and I'm not sure if he realised I had hung up.

That afternoon, as I walked slowly back to my apartment lugging what must be Senior Citizen food in my plastic bag --canned braised peanuts, Lingam chilli sauce, six cans of beer -- I wonder if I had crossed the age band without realising it.

These days when I run, swim or cycle, I'm always slower than the fittest chick in the park. 

I often find it easier to wake up early in the morning regardless of what time I slept the night before, thereby living the proverbial truth that old people don't sleep much. 

"Why do you care," Stanley said to me later in the day.

"We're fortyish and fabulous!"

I was heartened. 

Then Stanley said, "and you, Adam, are just fortyish." 

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

Fashion Where

Friday night. 

Table for three.

And dress to kill.

A message that's loud and clear in the group chat Just The Boys, shared with my sex bunny friend Stanley and the dense one Carl.

To our horror, the message wasn't clearly put across.

Then again, it's Carl the dense one we're dealing with.

"Which part of dressing up do you not understand," Stanley said in horror, staring at Carl who was wearing a dry fit T-Shirt that sticks to his Incredible Bulk body. The getup was paired with slim-cut berms that shows off Carl's under-nourished, under-worked legs.

Carl smiled sheepishly and raised his girly cocktail at Stanley and me saying "Happy Friday Night, guys?"

"There's nothing to smile about especially when you look like a drumstick," Stanley said, rolling his eyes.

That night, along with majority of the Singapore population who's allowed to drink alcohol at 10:31pm, the boys and I decided to wear decent clothes and to see and be seen outside.

No more home parties, no more clinking of glasses in home clothes, no more washing up after parties.

The location was an Italian restaurant with an excellent al fresco dinning area in Duxton.

The brief was to dress up.

And trust the dense one to mess up.

"I just came from the gym," Carl said pouting as Stanley stares unbelievably at the gym rabbit's unbelievably disrespectful dress code.

Stanley was in a tailored black shirt with floral patterns, custom-made to hug his lean frame, and skinny jeans.

I managed to throw on something decent too -- tailored navy suit with a black-and-white striped t-shirt.

"You're unbelievable," Stanley scolded Carl, who, in all honestly, isn't missing the memo for the first time.

All his life, Carl has been dense, and two beats slower than the general public.

To this day, he cannot name three of Singapore's presidents, nor tell you what the capital of Indonesia is. 

Apart from pumping iron, and indulging in his own hobbies Carl has little interest in -- and knowledge of -- what's happening outside his bubble.

Unfortunately, Stanley was bubbling and boiling to the point of no return.

"Adam here dresses up, even though he looks like Ellen DeGeneres," Stanley said to Carl, pointing a finger at me.

I knew better than to rebut. An angry Stanley is like an angry mother who, even though she's scolding your sibling, that flammable anger can easily catch fire on you if you so much as to appear in that angry mother's peripherals.

I took a sip of my tap water and tried to ignore Carl's pleading look. 

Finally, Stanley decided to stop.

"It's up to you if you want to dress up like a hobo," he concluded, and signalled the waiter to place our orders.

To be fair to Stanley, it's been quite a while since the three of us had partied outside.

In our thirties, before we each bought our own places, we would often hang out at trendy places to see and be seen.

And we'd often dress up since many of those places were patronised by equally shallow people who're keen to be seen and heard.

A decade later, while we had outgrown that shallowness, Stanley had often wished we could still revert to those happy party nights every once in a while.

Since we each bought our homes, parties have been confined to very comfortable and cosy settings, often at Stanley's lovely home in Queens Close, or occasionally, at my large one-bedder.

Two weeks prior to our table-for-three dinner date, Stanley had made it a point to remind us to dress up and have a good time outside.

To be fair, I don't blame Stanley for flaring up -- the memo was sent to us

To be fair to Carl, he's not the most intelligent person in our group. And while he definitely means no harm, his world is all about him and his hobbies, him and his interests, and him and that himbo brain of his.

Stanley decided to move on and make the Italian chefs busy with our food orders.

Promptly, cocktail orders were placed (Carl who arrived the earliest chose a girly pink drink; Manhattan for Stanley and a negroni for me).

And while we sipped our cocktails quietly, Stanley decided on a wide range of dishes to fill our table -- a $200 bottle of Italian wine, sirloin, pasta, sausages, cold cut platter, fish and lots of bread.

The night was indeed beautiful.

The Italian restaurant was bustling with life and laughter.

Soon, Stanley relaxed as the alcohol kicked in.

Carl was visibly relieved.

As I looked around the restaurant, I realised that there's a Carl at every table.

Right behind us was a family -- the 50-something daddy dressed in a t-shirt and a pair of faded, washed out berms. 

To our right, a man came with his woman companion. The woman was dressed up decently -- blouse and pants. The man looked like he decided to skip is IPPT and come straight to dinner, clad in a black sports t-shirt and shorts. 

The most decently dressed table -- apart from ours (but minus Carl) -- was this young couple who looked to be on one of their first puppy love dates.

The boy with floppy hair was wearing a loose striped shirt. His jeans were torn at the knees and shin, as if he fell from his skateboard enroute to Duxton Hill.

I have not been out for quite a while since COVID, and seeing this many people is a culture shock to me -- both in terms of mass and dress sense.

Are Singaporean men hopeless in dressing?

I mean, yes, I know Singaporean men are famous for wearing their flip flops and sports attire while dinning out.

But at a trendy restaurant downtown?

What has happened to the dress sense of Singaporean men?

I dared to raise this topic after our fourth round of glass refills .

Stanley rolled his eyes.

"Singaporean men wear sports t-shirts and jeans even to wedding dinners. What do you expect?"

Indeed, I must say that my fellow countrymen are an embarrassment when it comes to wardrobe pieces.

We're no frills like that, and that's a good thing.

But there's fine line between no frills and no class.

Has the Singaporean men dressing been influenced by years of being told what to wear?

Perhaps, we all started off on the same page: Our mummies decided for us what to wear, down to our boring, white briefs. 

When we went to school, we were all forced to dress uniformly though we each tried to find our own style.

And then came National Service where again, we're told what to wear: Standard-issue tees, shorts, shoes. 

It's like after all those years of hand holding, men have simply given up on buying their own clothes and resorted to reaching out for the first piece of clothes they see on their way out.

Sure, army singlets and unit tees make for comfortable Sunday fashion. Visit any heartland coffee shop or hawker centre and you'll see just that: Men of all shapes and sizes, of all ages, wearing just that, and sipping kopi in their just-out-of-bed hair.

At shopping centres, we seldom see men bothering to dress up.

It's the proud Singaporean man identity -- wear a sports finisher tee, or an army singlet with shorts and slippers.

"What's there to be proud of, come to think of it," Stanley asks. 

Carl starts to shift uncomfortably in his comfortable dry-fit tee. 

"Then again, what really matters to me isn't so much as what the men choose to wear," Stanley said.

"At the end of the day, it's what 's beneath those bad dressing that matters."

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

All Talk, No Accent

I saw a couple near my home the other day. 

One angmoh man, one Asian woman.

The woman may or may not be an SPG.

And she may or may not be speaking in a distinct Western accent.

The key word here, is distinct because what came out of her mouth was definitely an angmoh accent.

British, in fact. Mainly.

The intonation and even the choice of words were designed to sound like sentences that might come out of the Queen's mouth.

"That's pretty wicked," the Asian woman had said.

The problem is, Ms Asian Who Spouts British Accent had said the word "pretty" like an American, softening the 't's such that it sounds more like priddy instead of prittee. 

I may sound priddy judgemental but I'm definitely sure Ms Asian is putting on an accent.

I really shouldn't be bothered by something so trivial but fake accents has always been my pet peeve. 

It's not so much that I cannot accept people who speak with accents.

I can. If it's natural.

My partner of 20 years J for instance.

Despite having converted to be a proud pink-IC-carrying citizen, and despite having spent his education in Singapore since 11 years old, he still speaks English with an Indonesian accent. 

Perhaps, it's deeply embedded in him -- his entire family including his sister-in-law who's from Surabaya speak like that.

I strongly believe that accents are planted and cultivated very early on when we learn to speak -- and subsequent changes in accents is not natural but by choice. 

Sure, if one chooses to adapt a different accent, that's perfectly fine.

But not when the purpose is to put on a fake front because it's glamarous.

I have a friend whose mission in life is to elevate his own status and show off whatever little he can: His degree, his wealth, his love for art and just how widely-travelled he sounds when he speaks with an American accent because he studied in the US.

Said friend would try very hard to sustain his accent.

But like a heavily made up geisha who uses cheap cosmetics, as the night goes on, his accent wears off, revealing who he truly is beneath that put-on accent. Just a Singaporean boy who attends a non-elite school and sounds exactly like that.

For that friend, he ought to worry about fixing his grammar more than sticking to a fake accent.

And don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against neighbourhood schools at all.

My problem is fake accents, fake identities. 

And I'm also a bit miffed at how we Asians often tend to look up to Western accents as superior.

I always wonder: If I ordered food at a posh restaurant with Hokkien-accented English, would I be mocked by fellow diners and the smartly dressed waiters? If my presentation to my board of directors were delivered in, say, English with a Vietnamese accent, would I impress anyone? Or can I get better service on the phone if I called and sounded like I just got off the boat from somewhere?

Years ago, a Singaporean friend whom I was studying in Australia with told me that if we sounded too Singaporean, the angmohs won't understand us.

"What's more, we should blend in and sound like them!".

That bitch goes around speaking with an American accent on good days.

And while I was there, I did pick up the accent.

In fact, I'm so good with sounding Aussie that if you closed your eyes, you wouldn't expect that those words are coming out of the mouth of an Asian -- a very proud Asian who disapproves of unnecessary Western worship.

During one term break, I took a holiday at the Gold Coast.

I ordered fish and chips and when the young Aussie girl handed me my food, she leaned over and said sincerely -- but with deliberate slowness in case my Asian ears didn't catch her -- that You speak good English.

I know she wasn't being sarcastic. I swear she was earnest because that poor girl must have interacted with 500 Japanese tourists a day and none of them would speak English the way I did -- with clarity and a distinctly Singaporean accent.

But I was young and also priddy guai lan back then so I couldn't bite my tongue.

I smiled, and said with equal slowness that I learnt English from OUR coloniser.

I left that poor and sincere girl to digest my Asian sarcasm.

When my younger brother studied law in the UK and came back during school holidays, he would always speak with a crisp English accent just to irritate me, knowing full well that I'm irked.

I once told him that I will slap him across the face if he didn't stop it. 

My English-accented threat was well received.

Now that I'm more mature, I am also milder.

And when I do come across fake-accent spouters, I go right to the heart of the matter.

I keep asking them about their accent and trace the origin right back to that person's ancestral roots.

My partner J says I have nothing better to do.

"I can't understand you amid your thick Indo accent," I replied him, giving him my best Bapak accent.

 

 

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

Health is Wealth

My mother, the chatty and bossy Mrs Lee, called me recently announcing she may have the much-dreaded C word in healthcare.

She had gone for one of her regular polyclinic health checkups and while preparing for an ECG, an eagle-eyed nurse spotted a strange growth on Mrs Lee's left breast.

"Anyway, the doctor referred me to a public hospital for follow up, in case it's cancer," Mrs Lee said casually to me over the phone like it's the most common topic to bring up for a Friday evening phone call.

I was having dinner with some business associates and my mind went blank at the word "cancer".

What followed was a whirlwind of texting activities with my siblings.

Brother Barry was drowning -- his work, which has an international scope that covers Europe, kept him and his team extremely busy.

"We are fighting fire," he texted briefly.

As the bigger brother, I took matters in my own hands.

I texted my friend, who runs a private derm practice.

He had very kindly given me a slot first thing on Monday morning.

Long story short, my friend took biopsy samples from my mum's skin and in just a matter of a few days, texted me to say that the results showed no cancer.

It was such a relief for the entire family -- including Mrs Lee who pretended she was very calm with cancer growing on her breast. 

That evening, we had a family gathering -- we had each taken time off to eat with Mrs Lee.

Brother Barry and my sis, and me visibly exhausted from the weekend stress but clearly relieved. 

Over dinner, our mum revealed she had already drawn up a will and had made sure everyone gets something.

Barry, the baby of the family, fought back tears.

My sis, the eldest, made enquiries on Mrs Lee's collection of jewellery.  

That evening, our dinner at Spring Court, Chinatown, was most meaningful.

Our family gatherings have always revolved around Cantonese restaurants and Spring Court happens to be one of a few restaurants Mrs Lee approves.

That night, when I went home after a very filling dinner, I sat on my couch, processing my week.

We had been on a rollercoaster ride -- from the discovery of a potential health problem to living the healthscare over the weekend and discussing plans and backup plans among the family, to holding our breaths at the biopsy tests.

That night, for the first time in days, I slept well. 

Here's wishing all my readers and their loved ones good health.

 

 

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

Get it Over and Done with

"Everyone and his grandmother are getting it, except me," Stanley said as he set a huge, transparent bowl of tossed salad on his dining table.

I couldn't tell from his tone if he was extremely proud of not getting it, or extremely left out for not getting it.

Also not getting it is our dense friend Carl who had just finished chewing at his sixth fingernail and had paused to get with the programme.

"What are we talking about?" he asked with a hopeful grin on his face, ever optimistic that there'll always be that one kind soul in his life who'd help point him in the right direction when he's lost in a shopping centre.

Stanley looked at Carl and asked "where have all the nails you'd been biting off gone to?"

Carl beamed even brighter as if an adult had just praised him for brushing his teeth at night.

Stanley backed away slowly and returned to his open-concept kitchen to fetch that afternoon's main meal of aglio olio.

Stanley started with a dramatic sigh as we picked up our fork and got ready to dig in.

"I really don't get it," Stanley said.

Carl shook his head on cue. "Yeah Stan. You me both," he said with meaning.

"I mean, everyone we know is getting COVID... it must really either mean we're extremely careful and blessed or simply that we don't have enough friends to mingle with!"

Carl's eyes lit up. "Oh, so that's what it is!"

Stanley and I gave him a side glance and waited. "It's anchovies. No wonder it tastes so familiar," concluded Carl who is in his own world.

Back in our real world, Stanley and I are facing real issues.

My sister, my partner J's parents and his brother are down with COVID.

Stanley's aunty and two of his friends are down with COVID.

A sizeable portion of the Singapore population are all getting COVID, Stanley says, and this shit is real 'cos now your loved ones have it, according to Stanley.

Indeed, it's worrying and not worrying at the same time.

While we know that vaccinations can offer extra layers of protection, your loved ones' health are at stake here.

I first got wind of my sister's condition two weeks ago. 

She casually texted me her positive results.

My sister, who recently got attached, still lives alone in her huge, gorgeous apartment designed for magazine covers. She now has to make sure it's also designed for quarantines. 

I don't worry very much for her because she is a health nut and takes very good care of her body.

The only concern is whether she'd be eating well because she's complained of extreme fatigue and loss of appetite.

"It's too painful to swallow 'cos of her extremely sore throat," I explained to Stanley and Carl who nodded approvingly at his aglio olio. 

To his credit, Stanley didn't take the bait to turn that into a sex joke. 

Because COVID is no joke.

Granted, it's not as serious now, but you still can't help but worry.

My sis had been too tired to talk on the phone and even texting, she says, is taxing. 

She didn't eat in her first few days of home treatment but on the fourth day, she managed to whip up an Instagram-worthy plate of aglio olio.

I can only imagine how much tougher it is for the older folks.

J's parents are both retired civil servants who should be enjoying their fruits of their labour by travelling the world, and visiting J's siblings and cousins scattered all over the world.

Instead, they're now holed up in their homes spitting phlegm every 10 minutes.

The last time I spoke to J's mum she sounded like she had swallowed enough nails to puncture her voice box.

But two years into this pandemic, the world has come to slowly adjust itself and move on.

Globally, some borders are reopening. Domestically, some rules are changing. All this, in step with adapting and progressing.

As we polished off our plates at Stanley's that afternoon, we concluded that as long as we're vaccinated, getting COVID should be seen as just another flu episode.

"Nothing to worry about as long as precautions are taken," Stanley said wisely. 

Carl nodded peacefully on Stanley's couch. 

Here's wishing everyone a speedy recovery -- or future speedy recovery -- from COVID.

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

A Tooth for a Tooth

I am writing this with a tinge of anger.

Actually, no.

Make that a tsunami of anger.

Recently, my partner J told me something that made my jaw drop.

J had lost a tooth because our regular - but apparently incompetent dentist - had failed to prevent a crack in his tooth from worsening.

It all began last year when J complained of a toothache.

I had accompanied J to visit Dr C, whom we'd been going to for the last 10 years.

We would go for the usual - cleaning and maintaining our teeth.

During our visit then, Dr C said he couldn't find anything wrong with J's tooth.

No crack, no decay, nothing.

So of course we trusted him.

Weeks later, J felt a very sharp pain while having dinner.

He immediately made an appointment with Dr C the next day.

Turns out, the very tooth which Dr C had dismissed as having "nothing wrong" had cracked right down to its root.

It had to be extracted because there was no way the tooth could be salvaged.

I posted this shocking piece of news in our group chat with the boys - Stanley the sex bunny and Carl the dense one.

Stanley was indignant.

"WHAT?!" he wrote.

Carl the dense one, who has no idea how many teeth an adult has, replied with a series of exclamation marks.

"Will J sue?" Stanley asked.

"Oh my god, I am so angry right now," Stanley wrote all in caps.

But of course, J won't sue.

My kind-hearted J - God bless his heart (and all his remaining teeth) - had decided to not pursue the matter although he could have kicked up a fuss.

"It's just a tooth," J told me over video call the other day.

Stanley told me later that if it were up to him, he would return to that clinic and bite that bloody dentist in his ass, missing one tooth or not.

And then came Stanley's next most pressing question - was J disfigured?

Tooth be told, J wasn't, since the extracted tooth is hidden deep in his mouth and isn't visible.

Still, Stanley wasn't pleased.

And neither was I.

I was in anger.

But more importantly, my heart ached.

It pained me to know that J had lost a tooth - a perfectly fine tooth if only Dr C had exercised due diligence and called for a scan which his human eye couldn't detect.

It pained me to see J in such a health crisis I never want him to be in any sort of medical emergency.

Over the next few days, I had been googling facts about missing teeth and whether it was necessary to replace them.

All the literature I read suggested that it should be, or a slew of problems including overgrowth or invasion of teeth into that missing spot would occur.

But all J would do was to assure me that his eating and chewing weren't affected, and "it's just a tooth, dear. We'll see how."

Stanley didn't think so.

"How would your blow jobs be from now on?" my concerned sex bunny friend asked.

The supportive Stanley later told me he messaged J to offer his condolences, to which, J replied that everything is okay and that I had been the one to blow things out of proportion.

Stanley told me he wanted to reply J that "blowing" is indeed one thing he needs to think about carefully in the future, but decided to be a toothless tiger instead.

J's tooth loss got me so upset that for the next few days, all I could think of was that my lovely partner J now has one less tooth.

Of course, to put things into context, it's "just a tooth" as J had comforted me.

It could have been worse - the loss of an eye, or a limb or something.

Which got me thinking.

If J were to need a kidney transplant I would willingly give up mine.

Or if I could have my way, I would even give up years of my life so that J could live longer.

J replied me with a smiley icon when I shared those thoughts with him, and stressed for the umpteenth time that "it's just a tooth lah".

Stanley on the other hand was more appreciative.

"I love it that you're so melodramatic," he said with approval.

"And by the way," Stanley said, "as a gift to my best friend, I have hooked up my ex with your current bf."

For context, Stanley had once dated an orthodontist who brought the screwing, drilling and prodding from the dentist's chair to the dentist's bed.

Said bed was in Orchard Road, where Stanley had on more than one occasion, graced with his bodily warmth.

Anyway, the point is, Stanley and the dentist didn't work out and their whirlwind relationship ended like the fate of a decaying tooth.

The bigger point is, Stanley had actually got in touch with the dentist for J's sake, asking him if he would "do the procedure for my best friend's partner".

At that moment, I had to busk in my simple joys.

That I have a non-fussy, easy-going partner, and a gay best friend who would go all out for me and J.

"Yeah, count your blessings," Stanley wrote to me that night.

"And if you're J, the answer would be 31".

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