The Casanova of Singapore — Contents Page
To make it easier for readers to follow the story from start to finish, I’ll be updating this post with links to all chapters as they are published. Bookmark this page for the latest updates.
Prologue – (in this post)
Chapter 1 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...90&postcount=2
Chapter 2 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...03&postcount=3
Chapter 3 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...12&postcount=4
Chapter 4 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...27&postcount=5
Chapter 5 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...33&postcount=6
Chapter 6 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...4&postcount=11
Chapter 7 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...6&postcount=12
Chapter 8 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...5&postcount=13
Chapter 9 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...0&postcount=14
Chapter 10 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...6&postcount=15
Chapter 11 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...6&postcount=24
Chapter 12 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...2&postcount=25
Chapter 13 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...1&postcount=26
Chapter 14 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...4&postcount=27
Chapter 15 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...8&postcount=28
Chapter 16 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...5&postcount=38
Chapter 17 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...3&postcount=39
Chapter 18 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...8&postcount=40
Chapter 19 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...5&postcount=49
Chapter 20 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...6&postcount=50
Chapter 21 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...5&postcount=51
Chapter 22 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...2&postcount=53
Chapter 23 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...2&postcount=54
Chapter 24 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...8&postcount=55
Chapter 25 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...8&postcount=58
Chapter 26 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...1&postcount=60
Chapter 27 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...9&postcount=63
Chapter 28 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...7&postcount=67
Chapter 29 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...7&postcount=69
Chapter 30 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...1&postcount=70
Chapter 31 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...0&postcount=74
Chapter 32 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...1&postcount=77
Chapter 33 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...0&postcount=78
Chapter 34 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...4&postcount=82
Chapter 35 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...8&postcount=88
Chapter 36 -
https://sbf.net.nz/showpo...1&postcount=89
Chapter 37 -
Chapter 38 -
Chapter 39 -
Chapter 40 -
Chapter 41 -
Chapter 42 -
Chapter 43 -
Chapter 44 -
Chapter 45 -
Chapter 46 -
Chapter 47 -
Chapter 48 -
Chapter 49 -
Chapter 50 -
Chapter 51 -
Chapter 52 -
Chapter 53 -
Chapter 54 -
Chapter 55 -
Chapter 56 -
Chapter 57 -
Chapter 58 -
Chapter 59 -
Chapter 60 -
Chapter 61 -
Chapter 62 -
Chapter 63 -
Chapter 64 -
Chapter 65 -
Chapter 66 -
Chapter 67 -
Chapter 68 -
Chapter 69 -
Chapter 70 -
Chapter 71 -
Chapter 72 -
Chapter 73 -
Chapter 74 -
Chapter 75 -
Chapter 76 -
Chapter 77 -
Chapter 78 -
Chapter 79 -
Chapter 80 -
Chapter 81 -
Chapter 82 -
Chapter 83 -
Chapter 84 -
Chapter 85 -
Chapter 86 -
Chapter 87 -
Chapter 88 -
Chapter 89 -
Chapter 90 -
Chapter 91 -
Chapter 92 -
Chapter 93 -
Chapter 94 -
Chapter 95 -
Chapter 96 -
Chapter 97 -
Chapter 98 -
Chapter 99 -
Chapter 100 -
Chapter 101 -
Chapter 102 -
Chapter 103 -
Chapter 104 -
Chapter 105 -
Chapter 106 -
Chapter 107 -
Chapter 108 -
Chapter 109 -
Chapter 110 -
Chapter 111 -
Chapter 112 -
Chapter 113 -
Chapter 114 -
Chapter 115 -
Chapter 116 -
Chapter 117 -
Chapter 118 -
Chapter 119 -
Chapter 120 -
Chapter 121 -
Chapter 122 -
Chapter 123 -
Chapter 124 -
Chapter 125 -
Chapter 126 -
Chapter 127 -
Chapter 128 -
Chapter 129 -
Chapter 130 -
Chapter 131 -
Chapter 132 -
Chapter 133 -
Chapter 134 -
Chapter 135 -
Chapter 136 -
Chapter 137 -
Chapter 138 -
Chapter 139 -
Chapter 140 -
Chapter 141 -
Chapter 142 -
Chapter 143 -
Chapter 144 -
Chapter 145 -
Chapter 146 -
Chapter 147 -
Chapter 148 -
Chapter 149 -
Chapter 150 -
Confessions of a Singapore Casanova — Prologue
They call me a Casanova.
I wasn’t born one. I became one… slowly, clumsily, almost accidentally.
It began at a time of Junior College in the early nineties. My first taste of romance came in the form of Amanda, the class vice-chair, track team vice-captain, and the first girl to ever pass me a handwritten note folded like an origami heart. We had the kind of puppy love only students with curfews and A-Level stress can have, walks from school to the MRT station, awkward hugs outside tuition centres, and long texts about nothing that felt like everything.
She was the first girl I ever kissed. The first girl I fucked. We lost our virginities to each other. She was also the first to break my heart.
After Amanda, I wasn’t the same. Something had cracked open… not bitterness, but curiosity. I wanted to understand love, desire, connection, and most of all how something so beautiful could fall apart so easily.
National Service came next. Testosterone, confined spaces, and loneliness. Love letters turned to late-night texts. I had a short-lived thing with a polytechnic girl I met while bumming around and making heavy passionate love in a chalet, then a brief, confusing entanglement with a fellow medic’s sister, followed by another affair with an older Malay admin assistant from another unit. These weren’t deep romances, but they taught me things. About timing. Boundaries. Wanting what you couldn’t have.
But it was university that changed everything.
Freed from uniforms and regimentation, I slipped easily into campus life. I didn’t study anything wildly exciting, but I had enough time to join clubs, organise events, and meet people, lots of them. I had my first “real” relationship with an older woman then, a Research assistant from another faculty, loving and gentle. While not a head turner, she gave me confidence, which I wielded for my many conquests in the next four years.
My overseas exchange to London opened the floodgates further. There, everything felt more vivid, less restrained. I spent weekends in art galleries and rooftop bars, holding hands with girls whose accents melted me. I fell briefly, for a Russian student named Katya. She smoked clove cigarettes, escorted on the side, and kissed like she had nothing to lose.
By the time I graduated and started work, I had tasted enough of love to know I wanted more. Not commitment (not yet) but the thrill of newness, the intimacy of whispered secrets, the beauty of transient connection.
There were nights I held someone close just to feel less alone. Other times, I walked away first, not ready to be known too deeply.
And so the number grew.
Each woman meant something — a season, a moment, a lesson. From Air stewardesses to Zumba instructors, from students to single mothers, every one of them left a mark. I never ghosted, never lied about my intentions. I wasn’t trying to be a player. I was just looking, for something I couldn’t yet name.
There is one woman, though, who didn’t fall for me initially. The only one who didn’t try to stay. The one whose presence lingers even now.
But her story comes much later.
This is the beginning of my story. Of every woman I loved before the one who made me stop counting.
Mirror site:
Chapter 1: Amanda (Junior College)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb0rRgR
(AI-generated image of Amanda)
Note to the reader:
These earliest stories are drawn from memory… and memory, as we know, is a slippery thing. Time softens edges and rewrites details. What follows is how I remember it, which may not be how it truly was. But this is the version I carry with me.
⸻
Her name was Amanda.
If you were in our college cohort, you probably remember her. Vice-chair of the class, vice-captain of the track team, a prefect in secondary school, and one of those girls who somehow managed to look both glamorous and effortless even in a JC PE shirt. Her laugh was infectious. Her handwriting curled like it belonged in a greeting card. She had a way of speaking that made even a casual greeting feel warm and sincere.
And then there was me.
Second row, third seat from the left. Not unpopular, but not someone people noticed twice. Decent grades, but not stellar. I wasn’t particularly athletic, and I didn’t have that JC bravado some of the other guys flaunted. If I had one strength, it was that I knew how to read a room: I could sit quietly and sense who was pretending, who was anxious, who was quietly falling apart.
Amanda didn’t need me to read her. She was always composed, always open, but never vulnerable. Or so I thought.
We ended up in the same project work group. That’s how it started, with shared deadlines, shared grumbling about the teachers, shared meals at the canteen where she somehow made a plate of bee hoon look like café fare.
I don’t remember what our project was on. What I remember was her telling me about her childhood dog, about her grandmother who raised her while her parents were both working, about how she hated losing… not because she was a sore loser, but because she hated wasting effort.
She talked. I listened. And for the first time, someone seemed to like that about me.
It confused me. Amanda could’ve dated anyone, like the rugby captain, or the debating champion, or even the student councillor who brought her flowers on Valentine’s. But she picked me. Quiet, observant, slightly awkward me.
We started hanging out after school. Walks to the MRT station. Sharing an iced lemon tea and trying not to let our hands brush too obviously. I remember the day she told me she liked me. We were walking through the HDB void deck near her house, late after PW. The wind had picked up. She stopped and said, “You know, you’re really easy to talk to. I like that.”
It didn’t sound romantic. But when I looked at her, she smiled like it was.
We were “together” in the awkward, adolescent sense of the word. There were no grand declarations, no anniversaries. But there were exchanged notes that started with “good morning
” and ended with “sleep well, talk tmr.” We kissed one night under her block while pretending to study for GP. My hands were trembling.
It happened a few weeks later, in her bedroom, on a quiet Friday evening under the pretext of “group study” for A-levels. Her parents weren’t home. We were supposed to be going through notes, but the books stayed closed. It wasn’t planned. There was no script. Just long silences, close proximity, and a mutual curiosity that had been simmering for months.
The house was unusually still, just the hum of a ceiling fan and the occasional bark from a neighbour’s dog outside. We sat on the floor for a while, General Paper notes spread around us like a half-hearted defense. But our minds weren’t on the Cold War or decolonisation. We were on each other, in that unspoken way that teenagers circle around desire, unsure how to name it, but feeling it in every glance, every pause.
She leaned her head on my shoulder as we flipped through study notes, and I remember how the weight of her felt like a question. When I turned to look at her, her face was so close it blurred. Our kiss started tentative, the kind you half-expect to be interrupted by a phone call or a parent’s key in the door. But the world stayed quiet. We stayed still.
There was no rush.
Just a slow shedding of uncertainty, layer by layer, from textbook to shirt, laughter to silence, breath to breath, till there were none. She guided me with a calm I hadn’t expected, and I followed, afraid I’d ruin it by moving too fast, or saying the wrong thing. We fumbled, of course. She somehow got hold of a packet of condoms “from her dad’s bedside table” as we both knew through sex ed that teenage pregnancy was a big no no in our stage of life. There were awkward pauses, nervous glances, too many apologies whispered between touches. But there was also something disarmingly honest about it: two young,
completely naked
people learning each other in real time.
Her right hand found mine and held it the whole way through. I unclasped her bra with trembling hands. Her beautiful, teenage breasts were staring back at me. It was my first time looking at a woman’s bare, beautiful boobs. I held each one in clammy hands, excitement creeping up inside amidst the hardening of my teenage member. She tenderly stroked it, and then tentatively tore open the condom packet.
Wordlessly, she tried to put it on but it go stuck. “Oh, it’s upside down.” I turned it around, and we both rolled it over my long shaft. At this point, my throbbing penis was ready to burst with anticipation. I took several deep breaths to calm down. She noticed and gave me the space, continuing to hold my right hand.
I then massaged her breasts lovingly, while she started to kiss my lips and caress my back, my shoulders and head. I clumsily slid my hands down, down, past her navel, down to her glorious sparsely covered pussy. She moaned lightly, both in pleasure and anticipation. I inserted my left index finger.. first up to just one joint. She shivered in pain but took several deep breaths, guiding my hand as I inserted the finger deeper and deeper, in and out rhythmically. Her creased forehead slowly lightened and she restarted her moaning again. “I want you.. all of you, inside me,” she whispered. And blew against my left ear.
And like just that, I blew a whole load into the condom tightly gripping my rock hard member.
“By we haven’t even started yet!” exclaimed Amanda. Embarrassed, I stuttered my apologies that it was my first time, and I was just so excited that I came. “It’s ok,” she replied. We embraced, two young lovers lost in each other’s company. Miraculously, my member ceased its throbbing, and within a couple of minutes, became rock hard against her warm body.
Wordlessly, this time she deftly replaced the filled condom with another one, more proficiently this round. And suddenly placed her lips around it.
“Amanda! You’re going to make me blow up again!”
This time, however, I felt raw pleasure creeping back, but with one load having been shot out earlier, was better able to control my carnal urges. She started touching her pussy, which was starting to drip with glistening dew, while giving me my very first blowjob. I caressed her shoulder length straight hair, and whispered softly “I want to be inside you now.”
She then released her hands from my waist, and laid down on her back. She looked so beautiful, like the star of the movie American Beauty, with her hair spread out over the bed. I then entered her, gently, while rubbing her breasts and kissing her lips. In missionary position, we both lost our virginities to each other, and kept at it for the next fifteen minutes (
but felt like forever
) until we both climaxed.
That’s what I remember most: the feeling of being completely inside a moment, and completely accepted in it. We didn’t say much afterward. We just lay there, tangled in sheets and the faint scent of her lotion, pretending to review notes while the evening slipped into night.
It lasted less than six months. We had sex at least another three times while at “study sessions” in her house. The innocent sex of young first time lovers.
But a few weeks before prelims, she ended it. Gently, but firmly. We were at Serene Centre, of all places (!) sharing ice cream at McDonald’s. She said, “I think we want different things.
I need someone who can keep up. You’re amazing, but I think you’re still figuring yourself out. I think I need someone more confident, more assertive.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t cry. But something sank deep in me that day.
I remember going home and thinking: What did she mean, keep up? I wasn’t fast enough? Smart enough? Interesting enough?
It took me years to realise that what Amanda liked about me,
what made her choose me
, wasn’t my grades, or social standing, or any of the things JC boys measure themselves by. It was that I listened. I really listened. And for a girl who had to always perform, always impress, always lead… that
mattered
.
Amanda was the first person who showed me that intimacy isn’t always physical. It’s being present. Attentive. Curious without being invasive.
I didn’t know it then, but that ability, to
connect
, to draw someone out, to make them feel seen, would become the core of who I was to women in the years to come.
Amanda and I never rekindled things. We met as friends occasionally after A-levels. I think she went to a top overseas university. I saw her once on Instagram recently: married, with a kid, living abroad. She looked happy.
Sometimes I wonder if she remembers me.
I’ll always remember her. Not because she was the first girl I loved, but because she was the first girl who made me see what I could become.
[End of Chapter 1]
Mirror site:
Chapter 2: Cat (Before NS)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb0mB7n
(AI-generated image of Cat)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
“After Amanda, I wasn’t the same. Something had cracked open… not bitterness, but curiosity.”
I met Cat at a mid-tier café in a mall that didn’t try too hard to be hip. I’d taken the job to pass the time after A-levels and before enlistment… mostly clearing plates and pulling espresso shots, pretending to know what I was doing.
She was already there when I joined. Catherine, though she told everyone to call her Cat. A final-year polytechnic student doing part-time shifts to save for her grad trip. She had streaks of blonde in her hair, a dangling silver chain from one ear, and this catlike way of half-smiling when she caught someone staring. Which I did,
a lot
.
Cat was loud, quick with comebacks, and called me “
shy boy
” from the start. She had a way of leaning in just a bit too close when she spoke, like she was daring you not to look down. One afternoon after our shift, she passed me a plastic cup of leftover ice hazelnut latte and said, “You’ve got nice brown eyes, you know. Why do you always look down like you owe someone money?”
I didn’t know what to say. Amanda had made me feel safe. Cat made me feel seen. And wanted.
We started talking more, during shifts, after closing, sometimes over supper at the nearby prata place. I was struck by how open she was about everything. She told me she hated clingy guys but loved clingy dogs. She had dated two older boys before and claimed she’d never fallen in love. She said she believed in horoscopes “only when convenient” and kept a tarot deck in her bag but had never used it.
“You ever had sex?” she asked one night over milo peng, out of nowhere.
I nodded too quickly. Then, after a beat, added, “Yes. With someone I was dating. A while ago.”
She smirked. “Was it good?”
“I think so,” I said. “I was too nervous to know.”
She tilted her head and looked at me for a moment, like she was deciding something. Then she said, “You’ve got good energy. Gentle. Not desperate.”
I didn’t know what “good energy” meant, but I knew I wanted her to keep looking at me like that.
We talked often. We’d pass notes during breaks, scribbled on order chits and napkins. Sometimes I’d call her on her home landline after dinner, whispering into the receiver from the kitchen while my parents watched TV just metres away. On weekends, we’d meet up, sometimes without a plan… just to walk, talk, sit by the reservoir with a bottle of Green Spot or Kickapoo between us.
Cat was playful but never crass. She flirted with a kind of confident detachment that made it hard to tell how much she really liked you. And that uncertainty only pulled me in deeper.
The night it happened was at a friend’s birthday chalet. We were both a little buzzed from vodka orange and too much BBQ chicken. The group was playing some chaotic mix of charades and drinking dares, and Cat leaned over to whisper, “This is getting boring.”
We slipped away to one of the rooms. She locked the door behind us, then turned and said, “Don’t overthink.”
It wasn’t like with Amanda, which was slow, uncertain, drenched in emotion. With Cat, it was
physical
first.
Natural
.
Intuitive
.
The door closed behind us with a soft click, and suddenly the muffled sounds of the party faded, replaced by the quiet thrum of our breathing. She didn’t hesitate. Her fingers hooked into the belt loops of my jeans as she pulled me toward her, and our mouths met, not cautiously, but like we were already halfway through a conversation neither of us had started.
There was laughter between kisses… her teasing when I fumbled with the clasp of her bra… her whisper of “
shy boy
” in my ear when I looked down too long, trying to find the rhythm of my hands.
She was unhurried, unashamed, peeling off her clothes like she was shedding a layer of weather, comfortable in her own skin. I followed suit, less confidently, but she watched with something close to approval.
She was warm everywhere, skin flushed from the drinks, lips tasting of orange and smoke, her breath light against my neck as she pressed her body against mine. Her fingers traced the contours of my chest, pausing at my ribs like she was testing how fragile I was beneath all that silence.
We moved together, bodies finding sync in fits and starts, laughter again when our knees bumped, soft gasps when things aligned just right. She guided me without words, the way her hips tilted or her hands adjusted me, gently, until I understood what she liked. There was no need for performance. Just
presence
.
It was the way she held eye contact when my long manhood was inside her, steady, unwavering, like she wanted me to feel seen, not just desired. My nerves dissolved in that look, in the low hum of her voice urging me not to rush, in the warmth of her legs wrapping around mine as if pulling me closer to something beyond the physical.
Afterward, we lay tangled in each other, the room dim and still. Our breaths slowed, syncing again, this time in the quiet aftermath. She turned to me, her cheek resting on my shoulder, and exhaled a long, lazy breath.
“You did okay, shy boy,” she said, tracing a finger along my arm. “Didn’t freak out. Didn’t say anything weird.”
“I’m trying to act experienced,” I admitted.
“You don’t have to act,” she said. “You’ve got a
vibe
. The quiet kind. The kind girls like when they’re tired of boys shouting for attention.”
I didn’t know it then, but that was the first time someone named it.. that vibe that would follow me for years to come. I didn’t need to be the loudest guy in the room. I just had to be the one who listened. Who made you feel like you were the only person in it.
We didn’t become a couple. There were no candlelit dates, no dramatic goodbyes. We saw each other a few more times before I enlisted. Each time, it felt easy: warm, playful, uncomplicated.
The day before I shaved my head, I slipped a printed photo of myself in a cap into her locker at the café. On the back, I’d written: Say goodbye to the hair.
She passed me a folded napkin during our shift the next day. On it, in her slanted handwriting: Say goodbye to civilian life too. Don’t go falling in love with your sergeant ah.
I smiled. That night, I called her one last time and asked, “Will you miss me?”
There was a pause. Then a soft laugh. “Maybe. A little.”
And somehow, that felt just right.
Cat wasn’t meant to stay. She was the spark that showed me I could be wanted for something I didn’t even realise I had. She made me feel sexy, desirable — not because I was bold, but because I wasn’t.
And as I stepped into National Service, into months of regimentation, sweat, and separation, I carried her smirk with me. Like a private secret. Like proof that there was more to discover.
[End of Chapter 2]
Mirror site:
Chapter 3: Ice (During NS)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1dnp9
(AI-generated image of Ice)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
Her name was Iselin.
Norwegian, she once told me. Pronounced
EE-suh-lin
. Her twin brother, Alvin, whose name didn’t quite rhyme in real life but often got lumped with hers in jokes, was in my section. One of those NSFs who always seemed to have his admin matters settled before anyone else, and yet somehow snoozed through every medic lecture without consequence.
“Wait till you meet my twin sister,” he told me one night in the bunk while flipping through his wallet-sized photo album. “She’s damn
extra
.”
He showed me a picture. Faded, slightly dog-eared. She was wearing a school uniform, flashing a peace sign with her tongue out. I didn’t think much of it.
Then one Saturday, we were both on base duty when Alvin’s family came by to drop off home-cooked food in those floral metal tingkat containers. His parents were polite, kind of old-school. But behind them was Iselin: ponytail high, wearing a huge No Fear T-shirt, socks with sandals, and a confidence that felt almost out of place in the quiet, sun-baked camp foyer.
She looked at me like she already knew a secret.
We didn’t speak; just a small wave. But two days later, Alvin passed me a folded piece of paper during lunch at the cookhouse. “My sister wants you to pager her. Don’t ask me why and don’t make it weird.”
Her number was scrawled in loopy handwriting, followed by: Iselin. Call after 8pm, cheaper.
That night, I queued at the public payphone outside the canteen. Slotted in my stored value phonecard. Called.
“Hi,” she said, before I even introduced myself. “You sounded nervous on the phone.”
“I didn’t say anything yet.”
“I know. But I could feel it.”
⸻
That weekend, I met her at Orchard, outside Centrepoint. She was early. I was sweating. We watched some movie (
I think it was Speed - the Keanu Reeves one
) at Lido and ate chicken rice at Scotts Picnic Food Court. She made fun of how I always looked like I was about to salute someone.
“You’re too polite,” she said, sipping her ice Milo. “That’s rare. Most army boys want to act fierce after BMT.”
“You’re too bold,” I said. “That’s even rarer.”
She grinned. “Nicest insult I’ve gotten all week.”
⸻
It didn’t take long.
We started meeting nearly every weekend, catching movies, walking along East Coast, listening to cassette mixtapes on her Sony Walkman. She kissed me in the staircase of her block on our third date. By the fourth, we were in her bedroom while her parents were at a wedding dinner.
Iselin was fire in a name that meant ice. She always had music playing, slow grooves from Janet Jackson, Boyz II Men, Sade, as though sound itself was part of the ritual. Her room smelled faintly of lavender and pencil shavings, a scent that would imprint itself onto my memory long after the sheets had been changed. The walls were pale cream, posters of Take That and an old Madonna calendar curling at the edges. A single oscillating fan droned from the corner, and somewhere beneath the steady rhythm of Sade’s
No Ordinary Love
, her breathing was already changing.
Iselin locked the door gently, drew the curtains closed with deliberate ease, and turned back toward me with a look that sent a tremor through my knees.
She didn’t undress all at once. First, she pulled her T-shirt off over her head, revealing the curve of her shoulder blades, her black bra straps slipping slightly from the movement. Then she tugged her shorts down, inch by inch, until they gathered at her ankles. Her eyes never left mine. She wasn’t coy; she was
deliberate
.
Confident
. She knew her body, and knew how to offer it like a slow question: Are you ready for this answer?
I swallowed. Nodded. Maybe said her name once.
She walked toward me and unbuttoned my shirt slowly, her fingers brushing the rising tension in my chest. Her mouth found my collarbone first, then the base of my throat, soft, open kisses that made my skin feel electric. When her lips found mine, it wasn’t rushed. It was exploratory. Patient. Tongue sliding over tongue in a rhythm that made time seem like a liquid thing.
She pushed me gently back onto her bed, then straddled my lap, grinding softly against the bulge in my shorts as her hands explored the tautness of my stomach. Every touch was slow, as though she was trying to memorize me with her fingertips. I reached up and unclasped her bra, awkwardly at first, then more smoothly, like I’d done it before. The way her breasts spilled into my palms made me feel suddenly older, more capable, like I had stepped into some secret rite of manhood.
Her nipples hardened under my touch, and she let out a breath (
half-sigh, half-moan
) that made my erection throb so hard I could barely think. She whispered something then. A word I didn’t understand but sounded like a spell. I kissed her neck, her shoulders, the gentle swell of her breasts, down her stomach. She pulled her panties aside and guided me there — her folds slick, warm, inviting. I explored her with fingers first, then with my tongue, and she arched her back, clutching my hair, biting her lip to keep from crying out too loud.
When she came, it was quiet but powerful, like a wave crashing beneath the surface. Her thighs quivered around my ears, and she collapsed backward, pulling me up with her.
I reached for my wallet, found the condom tucked behind my 11B. But just as I fumbled to tear it open, she touched my hand and whispered, “It’s okay.”
There was hesitation,
just a moment
, and then I nodded, heart racing. I pressed into her, bare, and the sensation was overwhelming.
Warmth. Wetness. Depth.
Her body folded around me like silk wrapping over flame. She gasped, her hands clawing lightly down my back, pulling me deeper into her.
We moved slowly at first, bodies swaying in rhythm to the music, breath syncing with the creak of the old single bed. I watched her face as I thrust: eyes closed, mouth parted, head tilted back in abandon. She rolled her hips against mine,
tightening
around me each time I withdrew, then
swallowed
me whole again. There was nothing else. No camp. No army. No future. Just her.
When I came, it was with a groan I couldn’t stifle: raw, primal, and terrifyingly good. She kissed me through it, fingers in my hair, legs still wrapped tight around my waist.
I stayed inside her, panting, trembling, barely aware of anything beyond the aftershocks rippling through me. When I finally pulled out, I watched, mesmerised, guilty, yet sexually satisfied and amazed, as a thick ooze of my cum began to slip from between her swollen pussy lips, pooling softly onto the bedsheet below. The sight of my first creampie was both beautiful and terrifying. Raw proof of what we’d done, of how deeply I’d been inside her, of the risk we hadn’t spoken about but had both chosen in silence. She didn’t flinch. Just closed her legs slowly, as though trying to hold the memory in for a moment longer.
Afterwards, we lay tangled together, skin damp with sweat, her cheek pressed to my chest as though listening for something fragile beneath my ribcage. She didn’t speak. Neither did I. The silence wasn’t awkward. It was sacred.
I stared at the ceiling, my hand still tracing lazy circles along the ridge of her hipbone, and felt the weight of something new: not just lust, not just thrill, but consequence.
Even then, in the afterglow of the most intimate thing I had ever experienced, I felt a crack begin to form inside me, the knowledge that we had crossed a line we couldn’t uncross, and that what felt so real might never be safe again.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the SAF medical pamphlets… the ones they shoved into our hands during briefings we barely listened to. Syphilis. Gonorrhoea. HIV. Herpes. One reckless moment could change everything.
More importantly, I didn’t want to be a teenage dad.
After two days of hesitation, I visited the medical centre.
“Any symptoms?” the MO asked, glancing at the form.
“No… just being cautious,” I muttered.
He nodded and told me to come back in a few days.
The results came back negative. But the fear? That stayed with me longer than I expected. Iselin took a pregnancy test too, which came back negative. And from that day on, I swore never to skip protection again.
I respected Iselin. But I also realised that trust and desire don’t cancel out consequences. Especially when the girl you’re falling into is your friend’s sister. Especially when she looks at you like she means forever, and you’re not even sure you’re ready for next month.
⸻
We burned fast and bright.
She asked questions no one had ever dared to:
“What scares you the most?”
“What would your mother be surprised to learn about you?”
“Do you think sex is love, or just a way to hide from it?”
I didn’t know the answers.
Eventually, I began to retreat. Slowly. Quietly. And she noticed.
She paged me once at 1:56am. The code was 143 911. I love you — emergency.
When I called back, she simply said, “I think I care too much. You make me feel like I’m flooding a room you haven’t finished building.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I didn’t.
We drifted. Or rather, I drifted… and she let me.
⸻
The last time we met, she passed me a packet of pineapple tarts for her brother who was on overnight medic duties and a small white envelope.
Inside was a fuzzy photo, grainy, her arm around me, her hair a mess, both of us half-smiling.
“You’re not a bad guy,” she said. “You just don’t know how to carry something heavy yet.”
She was right.
Back in camp, I kept that photo inside my diary, folded between SAF100s and scraps of lyrics I’d never turn into songs.
And I learnt something I’d never forget.
From Iselin, I learnt how it felt to be fully wanted.
I learnt what it meant to disappoint someone without ever meaning to.
And I learnt that desire, if left unchecked, can be dangerous, not because of what it gives, but because of what it risks.
For the memory of a girl who taught me that even heat has consequences.
[End of Chapter 3]
Mirror site:
Chapter 4: Anissa (Late NS)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1K4Ve
(AI-generated image of Anissa)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
You never forget the women who show you what it means to enjoy someone without needing to possess them.
Anissa was one of those women.
I met her during an inter-unit assignment at a logistics depot in Jurong. I’d been seconded for a short stint, a temporary cog in someone else’s machine. She was the admin assistant who ran the office like a sergeant-major in civilian clothes, with sharp nails, and an even sharper tongue. She called everyone “boy” or “uncle,” depending on how irritating they were being that day. The regulars moved around her like she was furniture that could suddenly explode. The NSFs flirted badly, hoping for a laugh or a number. They got neither.
I didn’t flirt. I just kept to the routine, filed my paperwork on time, offered a respectful “Good morning kak” when I saw her, and cracked the occasional dry joke when the mood allowed. One humid afternoon, as she handed me a sheaf of forms with a staple so crooked it looked rebellious, she tilted her head and said, “You’re different. Got manners. Not like the others.”
I shrugged. “I’m just trying not to get scolded.”
She smiled slightly. “Smart boy.”
Her name was Anissa. Late twenties, maybe 27, 28. Not that much older, but far enough to feel like she lived on another frequency. Malay, with sharp cheekbones, thick lashes, and a wardrobe of simple blouses and jeans that somehow made her look like she belonged in a magazine ad for washing powder or long-distance phone cards.
She walked like a woman who had nothing to prove and everything under control.
Our first proper conversation happened after knock-off. The office had cleared, the depot was quiet. I was nursing a kopi peng at the canteen when she sat down across from me with her own cup and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not here to check your filing.”
We talked about everything, movies at Cathay, the ridiculous price of cigarettes at the 7-Eleven, her once-a-month shopping trips across the Causeway. I asked if she had siblings. She rolled her eyes and said, “Three brothers. I’m the only girl. Which means I don’t get bullied; I get deployed.”
She had a way of speaking that made even small talk feel charged.
After that, we talked more. She’d leave me Post-It notes. I’d call her office extension to confirm details I already knew. Sometimes, she’d buzz the phone just once, her version of “hello.” Our messages were scribbled notes and after-hours phone calls from shared landlines, always short and always a little too warm to be strictly professional.
The first time we kissed, it was in her Proton Saga parked outside the depot gate. The car smelled like pandan air freshener and faint cigarette smoke. We were both quiet after a long shift. She turned to say goodbye, and I kissed her, quick, unsure. She didn’t flinch.
“You’re brave,” she said. “But slow. I’ve been waiting since lunch.”
I smiled nervously. “I don’t have much experience.”
She gave a small nod. “I can tell. Don’t worry. You’ll learn.”
And I did.
Anissa didn’t teach with instructions. She taught with presence, the way she let silence stretch between kisses, the way she reached for my hands and placed them where she wanted them. Our first time was at a small, slightly run-down budget hotel along Balestier. The aircon rattled, the sheets were sun-bleached thin, and the bedside lamp gave off a dull yellow halo. But when she touched me, the whole room glowed.
She undressed slowly, folding her blouse and placing it on the chair like it mattered. Then she unhooked her bra with one hand, tossed it aside, and stood before me, not posing, not performing, just
present
. Her breasts were round and lightly brown, with dark nipples and areola, and her beautiful pussy was shaved.
She had a few burn marks and scars on her left shoulder, a memory of a previous motorcycle accident. Her body wasn’t perfect, but it was hers, and she carried it like a woman who knew it was worth worshiping.
She pulled me down beside her on the bed and whispered, “Don’t rush. Let everything take its time.”
Her kisses were deep and languid, her fingers mapping the lines of my back, her breath hot against my neck. She guided me, with hips, with sighs, with subtle shifts of weight, and when we finally moved together, there was no fumbling, no shame. Just slow waves, syncopated with the clink of the ceiling fan and the hush of traffic outside. She moaned softly, like she didn’t need to be loud to be heard. When I tensed and came deeply inside her (
capped, of course
), she pressed her forehead to mine and said, “You’re doing fine. Just stay with me.” We embraced and shared a passionate kiss.
Later, she lay sprawled across the sheets, dark hair fanned out, one foot dangling off the edge. She looked at me and said, “You touch like someone asking for permission. That’s rare. Don’t lose that.”
I didn’t know how to respond. So I kissed her again, gently this time, and she smiled without opening her eyes.
We kept meeting at that same hotel. The receptionist stopped asking for our ICs. Our evenings followed a quiet rhythm: mee goreng at the coffee shop, shared drinks, whispered conversations in a room we pretended was our own.
Sometimes we’d make love twice in a night. Once slow, almost reverent, the way people touch when they want to remember the shape of each other’s longing. And once with urgency… hands grasping, bodies locked, heat radiating like the whole world was pulsing in that moment. She liked being on top, said it made her feel in control. I liked watching her, the way her wavy hair clung to her bronzed coloured back, the way her pretty lips parted when she shuddered.
We never spoke of love. We didn’t need to.
One night, I asked if she ever wanted to get married.
She looked at the ceiling for a long time, then said, “I think some people are meant to hold. Others are meant to hold space.”
She told me about her family. Her father was unwell in Johor. Her mother depended on her. Her brothers? “
Decorative
,” she joked. “Good for nothing except Hari Raya photos.”
“I’m the only daughter,” she said. “Which means I’m the one who always stays.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I held her. Not sexually, just arms wrapped around, cheek resting on her shoulder, breathing in her scent like it was something I needed to remember for later.
Eventually, she said she’d be going back to Johor for a while. A major family issue. She was taking a long term of absence from work. “Could be a few weeks. Could be months. I don’t know yet.”
I offered to visit. She shook her head gently and touched my cheek. “You’ve already done more than you know.”
We exchanged a few calls after that, from coin-operated phones, from the guardhouse line. Then less. Then none.
There was no big goodbye. No final kiss. Just the quiet understanding that some things are beautiful because they aren’t meant to last.
Anissa taught me that intimacy doesn’t need permanence. That pleasure can be sacred even without love. And that sometimes, what matters most is how someone makes you feel,
seen, safe, unashamed
, for a season.
I still think of her when I walk through Balestier. When I hear the low hum of ceiling fans. When an old Malay song plays softly on a cassette tape in a roadside nasi padang stall.
Not with longing. But with gratitude.
[End of Chapter 4]
Mirror site:
Chapter 5: Charlotte (Between NS and Uni)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1CI0g
(AI-generated image of Charlotte)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
After ORD, life felt like static.
The army had given every day a purpose: wake up, fall in, train, chow, repeat. Without it, I was a dropped cassette tape, unspooling in slow motion.
I wasn’t in university yet. Just slightly above twenty one, suspended between uniformed duty and adult responsibilities, drifting through hot afternoons in FBT shorts and an oversized tee, playing Super Mario World on my Super Nintendo and re-reading Game Master cheat code booklets for no reason. Evenings were spent in smoky arcades, with Street Fighter II, King of the Monsters, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, or wandering the corridors of Far East Plaza, pretending I had something to do.
My parents called it “rest.” I called it “downtime.” But really, it was
limbo
.
Then I met Charlotte.
It was at a friend’s chalet in East Coast, one of those NS-exit BBQs where no one really talked beyond their social circles, and everyone brought too much soft drink but not enough charcoal. Charlotte stood by the wall, sipping Pokka green tea with one hand and flipping through a U-magazine from Hong Kong with the other. Her cropped Pepsi tee barely met the top of her stonewashed jeans. Her hair was long, straight, and pinned in place with a tortoiseshell clip.
She’d moved to Singapore a few months ago from Kowloon. Her father had been transferred to a regional trading post. She hated the move.
“Singapore is too neat,” she said. “Too slow. Like a city on training wheels.”
“You just described me,” I replied.
She smirked. “Then you’ll be perfect for me to bully.”
That night, she slipped me her pager number. 888 at the end…
lucky
, she said.
The next day, I buzzed her with 143, followed by 43770. She returned the call on my home landline after dinner, a smooth, languid voice on the other end. We talked for over an hour. Her accent was sharper than her eyes, but everything she said landed with a lazy grace, like she knew how far to push and when to pull back.
“I don’t believe in love,” she told me on our second call. “Just chemistry. Love is for Hallmark cards and slow learners.”
“So what do you believe in?”
“Mutual distraction.”
We became each other’s distraction quickly.
Mornings at Tiong Bahru market for kopi and soft-boiled eggs. Afternoons hiding out in Far East Plaza, watching people try on oversized Timberlands and fake Diesel belts. She always had an opinion, always carried herself like she was the director of a film the rest of us were fumbling through.
Evenings at her condo were electric. Her parents were often out, at dinner galas, mahjong nights, or golf trips. She’d page me just before 8pm: “Come over. Don’t bring flowers. Bring yourself.”
She greeted me barefoot, usually in tiny cotton shorts and a thin racerback top, the smell of mango shampoo still clinging to her wet hair. Her room was dim, her aircon rattling, Anita Mui playing softly from her cassette deck.
There were no slow buildups. Our clothes came off like afterthoughts.
Charlotte didn’t seduce; she
orchestrated
. She moved with the assurance of someone who knew exactly what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to take it.
She liked being in control. She liked pinning me down with her thighs and grinding slowly while keeping eye contact, like she was daring me to flinch. Her lips traced the edge of my jaw while her hands roamed, learning me like braille.
Sometimes, she whispered in Cantonese, not for romance, but power.
“你锺意咁？话我知啦。”
(You like that? Tell me.)
She knew when to go hard and when to slow down, a sudden bite on the shoulder, a lingering kiss on the spine. She rode me with quiet confidence, moaning softly into my ear, arching her back as if offering her body to the room itself.
I matched her tempo, hands gripping her hips, letting her set the rhythm until she gasped and collapsed against me, skin slick, breath tangled with mine, my throbbing penis deep within her womanhood. By this point, I was much more capable of controlling my orgasm and time it with hers.
Afterwards, she usually lit an incense stick, claiming it helped her sleep. She lay on her side, tracing lines across my chest with her finger, not speaking unless she had something specific to say.
“You feel too much,” she said once. “That’s not always a strength.”
“You act like you feel nothing.”
She smiled. “That’s not always a lie.”
We weren’t in love, but there was a deep magnetism, a current that pulled us together, then slammed us against each other’s edges.
She was volatile. A missed call could lead to cold silence. A wrong word might spark a sarcastic barb or a disappearing act.
“你都唔识听人讲嘢。”
(You really don’t know how to listen.)
“I’m trying…”
“Exactly. You’re trying. I need someone who gets it.”
She once left her own birthday dinner halfway and came over, furious, crying. We didn’t talk. She undressed silently, pulled me onto the bed, and took what she needed from me,
rough, needy, desperate
. Afterwards, she curled into my chest and whispered,
“有时我真係想消失，只要有人会揾我。”
(Sometimes I really do want to disappear… as long as someone will come find me.)
I held her tighter than I should have.
But I knew I wasn’t the one to rescue her. Not really. I was hardly twenty, barely surviving my own ghosts.
The next morning, I paged her:
You’re incredible, but I don’t think I can be what you need.
She didn’t reply.
I returned the pager she gave me, put it in her mailbox in a white envelope with no note inside. That was the end.
Charlotte showed me that sex can be intense without being safe. That chemistry is not connection. That sometimes, two people can burn so hot they evaporate the space around them.
I never saw her again.
But when the clouds roll in fast over East Coast Park, and the wind smells faintly of rain and regret, I think of her.
Not with longing. Not with guilt.
Just with the memory of heat, and silence, and two people trying to lose themselves in each other… before they had to learn how to be whole alone.
[End of Chapter 5]
Mirror site:
Chapter 6: Rachel (University Freshman Orientation Camp)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1opxp
(AI-generated image of Rachel)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from university.
After the regimentation of NS and the strange drift that followed ORD, all the restless afternoons, all the fire and fallout of Charlotte, I was ready for something steadier. Simpler.
Orientation camp wasn’t
it
.
Held in an old MOE campsite off Jalan Bahar, it was a humid, insect-ridden blur of cheers, name tags, water bombs, and overly familiar seniors shouting instructions like over-caffeinated sergeants. Everyone was trying to outdo one another: louder, cooler, funnier than they probably were in real life.
And then there was Rachel.
She was in my OG, Orientation Group 13, nicknamed “
Thirsty Thirteen
” by the seniors. The name was meant as a joke, but Rachel made it feel like prophecy.
She wasn’t conventionally pretty. She was
arresting
. Slender, sun-browned legs in cut-off cotton shorts, a camp T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves, and a high ponytail that swayed with every deliberate step. She walked like she knew who was watching, and didn’t care, but also absolutely did.
During icebreakers, she sat cross-legged beside me, always leaning just close enough to be felt. Her laughter was low and deliberate, like each chuckle had been selected from a drawer full of options. Every time I looked her way, she was already looking.
By the second day, I knew Rachel wasn’t safe.
She was the one who suggested “
Never Have I Ever
” during supper break, pulling out a dusty bottle of Absolut Raspberry someone had smuggled in. She tilted the bottle, took a long sip, and declared:
“Never have I ever kissed a girl… in a church.”
Laughter. Groans. Then she locked eyes with another girl across the circle, and smirked when that girl blushed and drank.
Me? I sat back, sipping my chrysanthemum tea, keeping quiet.
Rachel leaned toward me, her knee brushing mine. “Why so shy? You look like a boy pretending to be a monk.”
“I’m just watching the drama unfold.”
“Then watch properly,” she said, her voice low. “There’s more coming.”
Later that night, when the bunk lights had been switched off and most people were passed out or pretending to be, I stepped outside for air.
Rachel was already there, barefoot on the stone bench beside the basketball court, wearing her oversized OG shirt and a pair of gym shorts. A single cigarette dangled between her fingers. And smoking wasn’t legal in the grounds.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked.
“Brain’s still buzzing,” I said.
She patted the space beside her. I sat.
She lit the cigarette and inhaled slowly, then offered me one. I took it, more to match her mood than from craving (
I was a social smoker during NS and my early 20s but stopped around 24
), and we sat in silence for a while, watching moths circle the flickering lamplight.
“JC was boring,” she said. “I used to wear my cousin’s St Nick’s uniform and sneak into Zouk. Or Sparks. Nobody checked much if you acted like you belonged.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“That’s the point,” she said. “Boring girls don’t learn anything.”
We talked about siblings, music, NS stories. She had an older brother and a Walkman full of Faye Wong and Depeche Mode. She said she didn’t believe in relationships, only moments.
“I like quiet boys who don’t know they’re hot. You’re not hot, by the way,” she added, glancing at me. “But you’ve got something.”
“Thanks?”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
She leaned in, with no warning, no hesitation. Her lips were dry, but her kiss wasn’t. It was direct, rhythmic, tasting faintly of cigarette smoke and lemon barley.
Her hand slid under my shirt, fingertips skimming across my stomach like a question she’d already answered. I kissed back harder, letting instinct guide me.
We ended up in the boys’ shower block, the furthest cubicle, with door locked, the air humid with the day’s leftover heat. The floor was gritty underfoot. The only light came from the crack beneath the door.
She pulled her shirt off without ceremony. I followed.
Her body was lean, tight, sun-warmed. She guided my hands to her hips, then up to her chest, her breath catching slightly as I kissed her neck, then lower. She pulled me in by the waistband and whispered, “Don’t be gentle just because I look
small
”, gesturing to her chest.
We moved like we’d rehearsed it, except we hadn’t. She straddled me against the cool tiles, one leg hooked around my thigh, her hips rolling with slow pressure as I inserted my capped member deep into her crevice. I matched her rhythm, hands exploring the curve of her back, the softness of her nape, the arch of her spine.
She groaned low in her throat, bit my lip, then kissed it better. She looked me in the eye while we moved, as if testing how much of myself I’d give her, and how much I’d dare take.
For the first time, I didn’t hesitate. I pushed back. I moved with her, not after her. When she said, “Faster,” I didn’t ask. I just obeyed.
We came together in silence, breath and skin pressed close, her face buried in my neck.
Afterwards, we leaned against the wall, her head resting on my shoulder, both of us catching our breath.
She smiled. “Okay, not bad. Maybe not so shy after all.”
I smiled back. “I’ve had some decent instructors.”
We hooked up twice more that week. Once behind the multipurpose hall. Once in the storeroom under the pretext of unpacking logistics boxes. No promises. No follow-ups. Just heat, motion, and mutual relief.
There were no numbers exchanged. No long goodbyes. When the camp ended, we hugged in the canteen with the casual affection of co-conspirators.
Not every intimacy had to carry a future. Chemistry doesn’t require context. Sometimes, two people can share a moment like a spark on dry grass, bright, sudden, and gone before the world even noticed.
Not every woman changed me. Not every encounter left a scar.
Some left a mark.
And Rachel’s?
Rachel’s mark was the first time I realised confidence wasn’t about performance.
It was about permission, to take, to lead, to enjoy.
And finally, to let go.
[End of Chapter 6]
Mirror site:
Chapter 7: Yanning (University, Freshman Year)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1IMOJ
(AI-generated image of Yanning)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
By mid-year, campus life had fallen into a rhythm.
Orientation had long faded. The mass dance cheers and after-dinner icebreakers were replaced by tutorial deadlines, sleepy library afternoons, and lukewarm kopi from the arts canteen. The pretences wore off. Everyone was becoming who they were again, tired, broke, and trying not to fail their mods.
And that was when I met Yanning.
It was in one of the old science blocks, one of those dim buildings with red tile floors, musty air, and chalky blackboards that hadn’t been cleaned properly in years. I was passing through when I saw her struggling to unlock a lab door with a large bunch of keys and a plastic bag of agar plates slipping from her grip.
She wore an oversized T-shirt with faded cartoon ducks, tucked into high-waisted jeans that hugged her round hips. Her hair was pulled into a clumsy ponytail, and a pencil stuck out of it like a forgotten thought. Her cheeks were pink, and she looked like she’d walked too fast for too long.
She glanced up, startled, then gave a sheepish smile.
“Sorry, you know how to open this ah?” she asked, showing me a ring of keys like they were foreign objects. “I always forget which one.”
I shook my head. “I’m not even supposed to be here. Just passing by.”
She nodded, then giggled softly. “Wah, then we both blur lor.”
Her name was Yanning. She was 26, a part-time research assistant doing her Master’s in microbiology. First in her extended Hakka family from Batu Pahat to get a degree. Her parents were hawkers. Her brothers were all in poly or NS. She said she ended up in science because she didn’t know what else to do, and someone once told her she looked “like the lab type.”
We ran into each other again at a talk on soil ecology. I only went for the free curry puffs and the air-con. She was scribbling notes in a Hello Kitty notebook and using a yellow highlighter that had dried out.
“You’re the lost boy from last week!” she said brightly, nudging my arm.
From then on, we started talking. Casually at first. Then more often.
⸻
Yanning wasn’t like other girls I knew. She was
blur
, in the classic, early-90s, sweet sort of way. She’d forget what day her tutorials were. She said “huh?” at least twice in every conversation. She once walked into the wrong lecture theatre and only realised after 20 minutes. Her bag was full of random stationery: erasers shaped like sushi, half-used notebooks, stickers she never peeled.
She was also a little plump, round in the arms, soft at the belly, her cheeks full and perpetually flushed. But she wore it with a kind of innocence, never trying to hide herself. She laughed at her own clumsiness and always brought extra packets of tissue paper “just in case.”
We began to study together. Sometimes she’d pass me a note scribbled on lined foolscap, folded into a triangle. Other times she’d drop a sweet on my table during lectures with a quiet “
for energy lah
.”
She never flirted. She just gave.
⸻
One night after a long study session, she invited me to her shared flat near campus. Her housemate was away, and she had cooked instant noodles with a cracked egg and some leftover bak choy.
Her room was small and smelled like Vicks and Tiger Balm. A cassette deck played Leslie Cheung softly in the background. On her desk were revision guides, a half-finished mug of Milo, and a plush Keroppi doll with a missing eye.
I watched her move, clumsily, gently, never in a rush. She picked up the bowl, turned, and bumped into the edge of her study chair, muttering “
Aiyo
…” under her breath, then laughing at herself.
That night, we sat on her bed, the fan spinning above us, the windows open to the sounds of crickets.
“I think I’m very boring,” she said, looking away.
“Like not pretty… not smart enough. Just… slow.”
“You’re not boring,” I said.
“Then what am I?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I kissed her.
Her lips were warm. Unsure. Her body tensed at first, then melted into me. She kissed like someone who’d memorized the idea of intimacy, but was now learning the real thing, touch by touch.
⸻
We didn’t sleep together that night. That came later. It was after the midterms, when I stayed over because I had “
missed the last bus
”, though we both knew I hadn’t even tried.
She wore a nightgown with strawberries printed on it. Her hair was damp from a shower. She crawled into bed beside me, then lay still, not touching, not breathing too loud.
When I turned to face her, she blinked up at me.
“Okay… but slow ah,” she whispered. “I never really… I mean I got try before, but not like… properly.”
We undressed in quiet awkwardness, shirts pulled over heads, limbs tangled in sheets. She tried to fold her clothes even while I kissed her neck. Her stomach jiggled as I ran my hands over her. She pulled a pillow to her chest at first, shy. But when I kissed her down her belly, she let it fall aside.
She made little sounds, soft gasps, breathy laughs when I fumbled with the condom, and a nervous moan when I finally slid inside her. Her eyes searched mine the whole time, as if checking that she was still safe.
She clung to me tightly, thighs wrapped around my hips, her body moving in uneven rhythms. She came with a long sigh, her face buried in my neck, whispering “
don’t stop
” in a shaky voice. She came first, shivering with pleasure, and allowed me to come a few minutes later while pumping her from the rear.
Afterwards, she curled into my chest like a cat. I lay awake for a while, staring at the ceiling fan.
⸻
That was how it began, this quiet, undefined thing.
I didn’t call her my girlfriend. We never had “
the talk
.” But I kept going back to her room, for Milo, for naps, for sex. And in between, I flirted with other girls. Sometimes seriously. Sometimes not. Sometimes I disappeared for days and made up reasons about group projects or family things.
Yanning never asked. She just smiled, offered me a snack, and said, “You must be very busy hor.”
She never got angry. Just quieter.
Once, when I came over after a week of silence, she handed me a towel for my shower and said, “You smell like other people’s perfume.”
I didn’t know what to say. She didn’t ask for an explanation.
⸻
Eventually, it faded.
I stopped staying over. She stopped calling the payphone at my hall. One day, she passed me a packet of muah chee during lunch and said, “You don’t have to come over anymore. I think I’m okay already.”
I wanted to say something, to apologize, to explain, to pretend I hadn’t noticed how I’d hurt her.
But I just nodded. I now know that even blur girls
notice everything
. They just pretend not to.
Yanning also taught me that sweetness doesn’t mean softness. It means giving someone your warmth, and
letting them go
when they stop deserving it.
[End of Chapter 7]
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Chapter 8: Vanessa (University, Freshman Semester 1)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1RFd7
(AI-generated image of Vanessa)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
University teaches you things you won’t find in the syllabus.
Some lessons happen in lecture theatres. Others… in someone else’s bed.
I met Vanessa at a hall social. It was a Friday night “Bash & Bond” event in the multi-purpose room, fluorescent lights dimmed, Hi-Fi speakers blasting Ace of Base and C+C Music Factory, cartons of Green Spot and warm Tiger beer on the foldable tables.
I almost didn’t go. I hated small talk over cheap snacks. But my OG mate dragged me in, saying, “Bro, uni life don’t repeat one. You gotta collect stories.”
She was hard to miss.
Tall, almost my height, maybe taller with her Reebok platforms. High-waisted jeans, white halter top, hoop earrings that swayed when she walked. Her hair was long, loose, and perfect, like something out of a Harpers Bazaar ad. And she didn’t smile often, just looked.
Like she was choosing.
Even the seniors noticed. Not just for her figure,
though that turned heads
, but because of how she stood: like the party wasn’t enough for her, but she was still going to enjoy it anyway.
When our eyes met across the beer cup table, she didn’t blush or look away.
She raised one eyebrow and took a sip from her drink.
I didn’t approach her. I just kept playing.
Later, she walked over and said, “You look like the kind of guy who pretends to be chill but actually hates losing.”
I shrugged. “Only when I think it matters.”
She smiled, just a corner of her mouth. “Good answer.”
Her name was Vanessa. Business student. Stayed at Bukit Timah Road in a landed house with a helper and a dad who imported watches. She smelled like vanilla musk and department store confidence. Lipstick that didn’t smudge. Bangles that didn’t jingle. And a tone that said: I’m not here to play games. I’m here to win.
We didn’t talk about lectures or dreams. We flirted in glances and half-smiles. During a slow dance, a remix of All-4-One, she leaned her back into me and whispered, “You’ve been looking at my chest all night. Want to do something about it?”
It was a challenge. And an invitation.
We left before anyone noticed.
⸻
Her room in hall was spotless. A Hello Kitty calendar hung over her desk, next to a stack of Cleo and Female magazines. A small table fan hummed softly in the corner. There was no candle, no mood lighting. Just a strong whiff of Johnson’s baby powder and lavender talc.
She locked the door with one hand while unzipping her jeans with the other.
There was no teasing. No slow burn. Just heat.
She pressed me against the wall, kissed me hard, and bit my lower lip before pulling away. Her hands found my belt, tugged it open with the ease of someone who’d done it before.
We didn’t speak. Our bodies did.
She unbuttoned her halter top and let it fall. No bra, her breasts full and high, swaying as she stepped out of her jeans. I undressed fast, fumbling with my socks while she laughed softly.
She pushed me onto the bed and climbed over me, straddling my hips, her skin warm and smooth under my hands. She rolled her hips slowly, teasing me with pressure, grinding just enough to make me groan.
“You like control,” I whispered.
“No,” she said, lowering herself onto me in one motion, impaling herself onto my stiff rod. “I like getting what I want.”
She moved with rhythm and confidence, her palms flat on my chest, her head tilted back, hair falling like silk down her back. I grabbed her waist, then her thighs, thrusting to match her pace, faster each time she moaned low in her throat.
She didn’t fake anything. She knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t shy about taking it.
When she came, it was with a shudder and a single whispered curse, her nails digging into my shoulder. I came not long after, gasping against her neck.
She stayed on top of me a few minutes more, her breath steadying. Then she rolled off, wiped her forehead with the edge of a towel, and lay back.
⸻
We lay there in silence, sweat cooling.
Vanessa reached for her Walkman, clicked a cassette in, Janet Jackson. The tape crackled as the next track started. Then she turned to me and said, “You can stay for a bit if you want. But no cuddling.”
I laughed. “No danger of that.”
We talked, but only in fragments. She liked iced tea from Far East Plaza but hated the long queues. Woke up early for morning jogs. Had dated a guy from RJ once, but dumped him because he asked too many questions.
“I don’t want a project,” she said. “I just want release.”
I nodded. “Same.”
But when I left an hour later, walking back barefoot with my shoes in hand, something lingered.
We didn’t meet again. A passing glance outside the canteen. Maybe a wave from across the walkway.
That was all. Sex doesn’t need language. That you can feel someone completely, yet know nothing about them.
Vanessa also taught me something quieter, that sometimes, physical satisfaction leaves no echo. No ache. No longing. Just warmth fading into coolness.
I was learning how to
compartmentalize
.
To separate touch from tenderness. Lust from affection. Presence from intention.
And in doing so, I was shaping myself into someone I didn’t yet know how to love.
[End of Chapter 8]
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Chapter 9: Neon Nights (Freshman Year, Semester 1)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1Ychu
(AI-generated image of Benz)
https://freeimage.host/i/Fb1aVMG
(AI-generated image of Noina)
Disclaimer: All names, characters, and events in this chapter are fictional, although inspired by the lived experiences and memories of the protagonist. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Settings and timelines have been adapted for narrative purposes.
There comes a point in every young man’s life when curiosity overrules conscience, when the thrill of being wanted begins to outpace the desire to be known.
For me, that point came during one week of neon lights, tight dresses, swirling smoke, and Thai disco basslines that pulsed louder than my heartbeat.
It started with a phone call.
Darren, my old bunkmate from BMT, was on the line. I could barely hear him over the background thump of dance beats.
“Bro,” he shouted, “you free or not this weekend? Time to graduate from kopi and crash course lah. I bring you go TD.”
I paused. “TD?”
“Thai disco, la. Don’t blur. It’s like Zouk but with real women and less nonsense.”
I should’ve said no.
But I was tired, of tutorials, of guilt, of pretending to be emotionally available for Yanning when I wasn’t. I wanted a night where nothing mattered.
⸻
That Saturday, we stepped into a club on the third floor of Golden Mile Tower. The name was forgettable, something like Bamboo Palace, but the scene wasn’t.
Red velvet banquettes. Ceiling fans rattling above. Tables ringed with crushed ice buckets, bottles of Chivas, and too many glasses. The music was thumping remixes of Thai ballads and Eurodance, Two Become One slowed down, then flipped into Rhythm of the Night. Everything smelled of hairspray and whisky.
Darren was in his element. He tipped the waiter, who snapped his fingers, and three girls were ushered to our table like it was pre-arranged.
That’s when I met Benz and Noina.
Benz was tall and statuesque, smoky-eyed, bare-shouldered, with hoop earrings the size of bangles. She had a raspy laugh that came from somewhere deep in her throat. Noina was petite, doll-like, and called me
khun na rak
(“Mr Handsome”) every ten minutes.
They poured drinks, pressed their legs against mine, whispered to each other in Thai while glancing at me.
I surprised them when I leaned in and said, “Pom chob nang Dao Pra Sook. Khun chai mai?”
(I like watching Dao Pra Sook. You know it?)
They squealed.
“จริงเหรอ?! Wah! You watch Thai lakorn?”
I grinned. “I used to watch at the medical centre night duty. No subtitles. Still cry.”
They were delighted. We toasted to it.
⸻
At 2am, the club dimmed further. Someone lit a sparkler. Benz leaned over and asked, “You going home or… somewhere more fun?”
Darren lived nearby. His parents were overseas. He winked when I looked over, already showing me his spare keys.
The five of us (Darren also brought the remaining girl, Mai, whom he took a liking to) stumbled into his apartment laughing too loudly. His living room fan was already on. Benz kicked off her heels. Noina turned on a table lamp with a floral shade. And suddenly, we weren’t in Singapore anymore. We were in a dream.
⸻
We ended up in Darren’s house guest room while Darren brought Mai to his own room.
It began with laughter and kisses, light, exploratory, a game of closeness. Noina tugged at my shirt while Benz unzipped my jeans from behind. Their perfume clung to the air: jasmine, cheap strawberry body spray, and cigarette smoke.
Benz kissed me first, hard, controlling, pinning me to the wall with one arm while her mouth traced the side of my neck. Noina giggled as she pulled me backwards onto the bed. Her hands were smaller, unsure at first, but hungry.
Clothes came off quickly, like we all knew this wasn’t meant to be elegant. I felt fingers on my chest, on my thighs, and then warm lips along my belly. Noina lowered herself onto me slowly, impaling herself onto my stiff shaft, pausing with a breathy sigh as Benz watched from beside us, her hand tracing lazy circles around my nipples before leaning down to kiss my mouth.
We moved as three bodies knotted into one rhythm, tangled, pressed, shifting between combinations of pleasure and boldness. Benz then rode me like she was claiming something, arching her back as her hair fell around her face. Noina held my hand while she kissed my chest, moaning lightly each time my hips bucked upward.
There was nothing sacred about it, but it wasn’t cold either. It was theatre. Heat. Noise. It was the high of doing something you’d never thought you’d do. I lasted longer than I thought I would, driven by the pure adrenaline of their touch, the scent of skin and sweat mixing in a haze.
After I came, in a condom of course, inside Benz while she was riding me, breathless and dazed, I felt one of them, I think Noina, stroking my hair, murmuring something soft in Thai I couldn’t understand. In a soft, imploring voice. Then it was Noina’s turn again.
⸻
We lay in a messy tangle, limbs, damp sheets, cigarette smoke curling toward the ceiling.
Benz lit a cigarette and passed it to me. “You’re good,” she said, exhaling. “Singaporean boys usually too shy.”
Noina sat cross-legged on the mattress, tracing the edge of her fake fingernail. “Next time, we bring you to champagne room.”
I laughed. “Let me survive this one first.”
They didn’t stay the night. We exchanged pagers, I scribbled mine on a tissue with a leaky pen.
I paged a few days later. No reply.
Darren said they went back to Thailand for “family things.”
I didn’t ask.
⸻
That week didn’t leave me wounded.
It left me stunned. Like I had walked into a mirror version of myself, louder, braver, more detached. And found that thrill isn’t the same as intimacy. That lust, when fed like fire, leaves no warmth, only smoke.
I told no one. Not even the girls I dated after.
It became one of those many stories I filed away in the back of my head, not with shame, but as proof of a time in my youth I let go completely.
And I survived. But it wouldn’t be my last time making such stories, only in different settings…
[End of Chapter 9]
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