Paul Theroux: Saint Jack

Mr. Leigh was just pushing through the glass doors as I came back from the toilet smoothing my sleeves. I said hello and tried to take his suitcase. He wouldn’t let go; he seemed offended that I should try to help. I knew the feeling. He was abrupt and wheezing and his movements tried to be quick. It is usually this way with people who have just left a plane: they are overexcited in a foreign place, their rhythm is different — they are attempting a new rhythm — and they are not sure what is going to happen next. The sentence they have been practicing on the plane, a greeting, a quip, they know to be inappropriate as soon as they say it. Leigh said, “So they didn’t send the mayor.” Then, “You don’t look Chinese to me.”

I suggested a beer in the lounge.

“What time are they expecting me?” he asked. He had just arrived and already he was worried about Hing. I knew this man: he didn’t want to lose his job or his dignity; but it is impossible to keep both.

“They weren’t too sure what time your plane was coming in,” I said. We both knew who “they” were. He put down his suitcase.

One reason I remember the first conversation I had with Mr. Leigh (or William, as he insisted I call him, but I found this more formal than Mister; he didn’t reply to “Bill”) is that I had the same conversation with every ang moh I met in Singapore. We were in the lounge having a beer, sharing a large Anchor; every few minutes the loud-speakers became noisy with adenoidal announcements of arrivals and departures in three languages. Leigh was still keyed up and he sat forward in his chair, taking quick gulps of beer and then staring into his glass.

I asked about the flight and the weather in — William being English, I attempted some slang—“Honkers.” This made him look up from his glass and squint straight at me, so I gave up. And was it a direct flight? No, he said, it landed for fueling at Bangkok.

“Now that’s a well-named place!” I said and grinned. I can’t remember whether it got a rise out of him. I asked if he had a meal on the plane.

“Yes,” he said, “perfectly hideous.”

“Well, that food is always so damned hideous,” I said, trying to sound more disgusted than him. The word stuck to my tongue. I wasn’t telling the truth. I thought airplane food was very good, always the correct color and each course in its own little covered trough on the tray, the knives and forks wrapped up and all the rest of the utensils in clean envelopes and in fitted slots and compartments. I had to agree the food was hideous. He was a guest, and I had plans for him.

The next thing I said to him was what I said to everyone who came through. I said it slowly, with suggestive emphasis on the right syllables: “If there’s anything you want in Singapore, anything at all”—I smiled here—“just let me know and I’ll see what I can fix up.”

He replied, as most strangers did — but he was not smiling—“I’m sure you don’t mean anything. ”

“Anything.” I took a drink of my beer to show I wasn’t going to qualify the promise.

He mopped his face. “I was wondering—”

And I knew what he was wondering. The choice wasn’t large, but people didn’t realize that. A tout could follow a tourist on the sidewalk and in the space of a minute offer everything that tourist could conceivably want. The touts who didn’t know English handed over a crudely printed three-by-five card to the man with a curious idle face. The card had half a dozen choices on it: blue movies, girls, boys, exhibition, massage, ganja — a menu which covered the whole appetite of longing. No new longings were likely, and the tout who breathed, “You want something special?” had in mind a combination based on the six choices.

Leigh was perspiring heavily. Vice, I was thinking: it sounded like what it was, it squeezed, expressing the grape of fantasy. Gladys was free. It was possible to stop off at her place on the way back from the airport — Leigh would appreciate the convenience — and I was going to say so. But it is a mistake to make explicit suggestions: I discovered that very early. If I suggested a girl and the feller wanted a boy he would be ashamed to admit it and the deal would be off. It was always wrong to offer an exhibition — like saying, “You can’t cut the mustard but how about watching?”—and if a person was thinking of having a go he would refuse if I suggested it. Most people thought their longings were original, but they weren’t: they could only be one of six, or else a combination. Various as fantasy, but fantasy didn’t allow for the irregular performance of man’s engine. I knew the folly of expectation, and how to caution a feller against despairing of his poor engine and perhaps hitting his pecker with a hammer.

I sized up Leigh as he was blotting his cheeks and pulling at his collar, counting the whirring fans in the lounge. I took him to be an exhibition man, with a massage to follow — not an ordinary massage, something special, Lillian jumping naked on his spine. Intimacy, as the girls called it, or boochakong , to use the common Chinese term I preferred to the English verb, would still be a strong possibility, I was thinking. There was no such thing as impotence: it was successful as soon as money changed hands. It wasn’t the money, but the ritual.

“What do you say?” I asked, as brightly as I could. Usually it wasn’t so hard; when it was, it meant the feller was worried about asking for something I couldn’t provide.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, and drew a deep breath. So I was wrong about the exhibition, and just as well, I thought; I hated those monkeyshines. I guessed Leigh was slightly bent; his particular crimp was a weakness for transvestites, of which, as is well known, there is a whole sorority in Singapore. Very few fellers admitted to this yen; they were the hardest ones to handle, but over the years I had seen how they reacted to the Chinese boys who in skirts were more winsome than girls. Middle age may be an emergence of this comfort, too, a fling at play-acting with a pretty boy, a reasonable occasion for gaiety, the surprise of costuming and merry vestments. If I detected the wish I took the fellers down to Bugis Street and steeered them over to the reliable ones, Tiny or Gina. Lucy had the operation which sometimes disappointed the fellers. Your bashful fruit pretended he was talking to a girl, but just so we knew where we stood I said, “Take Gina — he’s a very nice feller.” The client looked surprised and said, “You mean—?” And then: “I might as well take him home — I’m too drunk to notice the difference,” and going out would slip me ten dollars.

“What did you have in mind?” asked Leigh.

A very uncommon question. I was going to say nothing, just keep smiling in a willing fashion. But he looked as though he meant it and wouldn’t tumble to my willingness.

I said, “I thought… if you were interested in anything illegal, hyah-yah, I might be able to—”

“Illegal?” said Leigh and put his hanky down. He leaned over and, puzzled and interested, asked, “You mean a prostitute?”

I tried to laugh again, but the expression on his face turning from puzzlement to disgust rattled me. It had been a mistake to say anything.

“No,” I said, “of course not.” But it came too late, my tardy denial only confirmed the truth, and Leigh was so indignant — he had straightened up and stopped drinking — that shame, unfamiliar as regret, tugged at my neck hairs. Through the glass-topped table in front of me I could see I was curling my toes and clawing at my sandals.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’ll call a taxi.” I started to get up. I was hot; I wanted to roll up my sleeves, now damply stuck to my tattoos, revealing them.