A lot of people come to the staircase where I enjoy my morning ritual of coffee and cigarettes. I figure they must be drawn to it for the same reasons I am. Wide open space, enough to host a small reunion. Divine and perpetual breeze, accompanied by the sound of ecstatic, rustling leaves. Drinkers, couples and friends having heart-to-heart talks, cyclists catching their breath; all of them taking in the top-floor view of the estate.
For the most part, the people I meet at the staircase are friendly and willing to share the space. I'm usually there first, so sometimes a surprised couple might stumble in and then hastily leave. Oh well.
One morning I was enjoying and checking the results of last night's game when the door swung open loudly, followed by a Chinese woman who immediately made eye contact with me. I smiled, my eyebrows going up all happy for this surprise entry of a short, tight bodied MILF. I noticed the the big ring, and my eyes immediately drifted down past her calves to see if there was an anklet. No such luck.
"Tch," she clicked her tongue and looked away, walking to a corner. Okay, I thought, she's a prude. I can work with that. I studied her as she turned her back to look out, as if scanning for a waving friend in the nearest block. Her legs were plump, and her butt looked small but still biteable. I felt an instant surge of blood rush to my cock. When she turned she saw me looking down at my groin, and then back at her ass.
"Tch," again, "you people ah, always think about sex only."
"My people?" I asked, staring at her chest.
"You Indians la." She took a step forwards, and then back, as if she just remembered that she was alone here with me. "You are always horny for sex."
I looked away and took a drag of my cigarette, which was nearing the stub. I turned and said "Sorry. To a man, a woman is the most beautiful thing in the world. How can we not stare?"
She didn't quite know how to respond to that. I held my gaze, looking where I wanted. She crossed her arms and looked down.
"Ya, we women also like to look at a good-looking men (her bad English, not mine), but we can control ourselves what."
"Okay." The shifting of my body away and tone of my voice did its job. She disappeared, the door quietly shutting behind her.
I thought about what just happened. I knew she must have been the terrible victim of thousands of pervy stares and come ons by men who lacked shame and the ability to recognise when a woman was out of their league. Like every other woman any place where civilisation thrives, really.
I also knew that such a strong reaction carried with it projection and repression: she was just as likely to be sex-crazy, and she might not need much convincing to act on it, especially when the object was her most personal and prized taboo: a much younger, virile, and dirty Indian fiend outraging her delicate modesty. She, a married woman, taken like an animal, by an animal of lower stature in her clean Chinese eyes.
Hey, that shit works for me too.
*
I decided to change up my routine by getting in a workout before my coffee. So flushed and sweaty from a run in the park, I sat and rolled my morning cigarette. I had recently bought a packet of cherry-flavoured tobacco from a cigar store in the city and was eager to have my first taste. Like the Japanese and their tea ceremonies, I rolled with Zen-like grace, taking my time, being there for every moment, as if it was my last.
I heard the creak of the door and turned. It was her. She had a ridiculous wide-brimmed sun hat on. Coupled with her average SG aunty attire of shorts and top, she looked like a coolie showing up on her first day as a street-walking prostitute.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded.
"I'm walking," she replied, her eyes roving over my sweaty arms, glistening in the morning light.
"I just exercised also." I didn't know if it was runner's high, but her clothes seemed to leave even less to the imagination than before. Why did prim and proper ladies wear such revealing clothes? Never did I rejoice for the full protection my shorts provided when I was in one of the freezing malls these women cohabited. And out in the open air no matter where I stopped I picked up a selection of insect bites. And to what kind of mind was it really truly comfortable having yourself exposed to strangers of all descriptions, in such large numbers, constantly?
Know when I did enjoy wearing shorts? In the gym, where I would hypnotise older bitches like this one with the swinging of my long flaccid cock as I worked the kettlebells. And my boxers, doing nothing for concealment but instead emphasising the shape of it to all the little fitspos gathering around me in their little tribal circles. I ignored all of them, until one by one they started engineering situations for face-to-face interactions near the weight rack or watercooler, and then it was game over. Try it, men. That's how you tease a woman, good clean fun.
"What's your name?" I knew I didn't want to start by calling her 'aunty'; that could wait for when I was balls deep in her guts. She thought she was better than me, I was going to help her adjust that little misconception.
"Janet."
We talked, and I found out she was a long-time resident too, though I'd never seen her before. She had two kids, worked in real estate until she met her husband, a businessman of some renown in the fin-tech realm. It was difficult stifling the yawns, but I managed. She was still keeping her distance. It might have been the small black flies circling my torso. I had no deodorant on, either, so I knew that if she could smell me, she was getting the full musk of an Indian man.
And worse, one who smoked like cigarettes were going out of style soon.
She chastised me for smoking, and when I pried she revealed her dad was a smoker, and everyone in the family failed in getting him to quit. It gets better. Licking the glue of the carefully prepared stick, I asked with an innocent boys' smile if she'd ever had an Indian boyfriend. No, but so many friends are married to them, both local and expatriate. A fleet of hairy mocha men, whose voices were interchangeable and who grew their facial hair the same, all coupling with local Chinese ladies of good stock.
"I see," I said as I stood up, rolled my singlet off and placed it on the railing.
"What are you..."
"Towelling down." I said it as if it was the most obvious thing, and that she was an idiot for having to ask.
She was staring, in disdain for my youth, anger for my audacity, lust for my lean but chiseled physique. I get gold for my yearly IPPT, you know. Pretending I didn't notice, I adjusted my fbts, making them even more crooked. I'd worn them a size smaller too. This is a game for two, honey.
"You know about psychology, Jenny?"
