Adam's Stories - Childhood Days

[Adam]

This is my first post. I have been lurking for quite a while in Blowing Wind. Over the years, I have enjoyed many stories posted, especially those supposedly of a true nature from days gone by. Perhaps it is time I share my stories too.

Now, where do I begin? I am an old man, 54 years old this year. Old enough to know better but young enough to understand and appreciate the stirring of the loins of a gay heart. I am deeply closeted and have only a handful of gay friends that are around my age. Never stepped into any saunas or gay bars, or even cruised for sex in Singapore. I come from a large extended family steeped in traditions. Gay sex to me means doing it outside Singapore. Period.

I was born in Geylang, moved to Katong when I was 13 years old. I lived in Katong at my family’s bungalow-type boarding house till I was 35 years old. By then both my parents have died and I guessed it was time for me to leave the nest.

One disclaimer I have to make now and I hope all you readers take good note of this. This is not a posting about the sexual acts between an adult and a kid. I am very, very much against pedophilia. I strongly believed pedophiles should be harshly punished. If you read my posts, and you have an urge to go and molest a kid, then stop!!! Remember the consequences. You will be jailed and caned!

This topic, Sexual Awakening, is about a time when I was much younger, and about the confusion, fear, thrill and desires I had felt then. No adult molested me. No adult knowingly had sex with me. This is about my personal pre-puberty sexuality and some of the things that happened to me.

Childhood Days (Part 1) First Stirrings

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Geylang is a wonderful place to grow up. Some of Singapore’s most entrepreneurial businessmen must have grown up in Geylang. Some of Singapore’s most hardcore criminals must have been their childhood friends too. I remembered prostitutes, gangsters, transvestites, criminals, businessmen, dirt poor hawkers, policemen and Indonesian Chinese refugees all living within a 100m radius of my house.

My father was a typical Chinese businessman, came to Singapore literally with only his clothes on his back before the war and there after started a small business. He was also extremely thrifty and although I was never hungry, I never lived in the lap of luxury either. We were not known among the neighbors to be rich family, and I hung out with the neighborhood kids just like one of them. I think I started wearing slippers when I started going to primary school. Our Geylang house was my father’s first and when he eventually died in 1984; he owned 12 properties, mostly in Geylang and Katong.

My family home was a typical two storey pre-war terrace house in Geylang. On the second storey, my father partitioned up four rooms, three of which he rented out to if I remembered correctly, prostitutes and seamstresses. Most of my fellow siblings slept in the one big room not rented out. There was a wc and a bathroom at the end of a long corridor on the second storey. Nothing sexual ever happened to me on the second storey.

On the ground floor, the living room is at the front, followed by two bedrooms we lived in, then the kitchen where we ate, then a small room often empty, with a very small attic with opening overlooking the wall next to the kitchen, then the bathroom and finally another two rooms rented out to seamen from Malaysia. The wc is right at the end of house after the last rented room and next to the back alley.

To go to the wc, one has to walk along a narrow passage way, past the last rented room and turn left. A few feet away is the wc. The wc is a squatting type. The unique thing about it is it is raised up about a meter high. The reason is, it was built to contain a portable sewage bin which was collected I think daily. By the time of my recollection, it had already been changed to a modern flush system. But the elevated design remained.

The first time I saw something remotely sexual was when I was 6 years old and when I need to use the wc. It was quite late, about 9 pm. Someone was using the wc, one of the seamen tenant I guess, because the rest of my family was in the living room, and so I waited by the short passage way next to the wc. There was only single light bulb lighting up the inside of the wc and the passage way where I was waiting is fairly dark.

I was a short little fellow then and I suddenly realized if I bend down, I can see under the wooden door of the wc what is going on inside. The bottom of the old wooden door to the wc had started to rot away. I was a precocious kid then. I sat down on the passage way, turned my head to the right and had my first live view of an adult man’s genitals. It was not clear, as the shadows from his upper body created by the one light bulb above his head darkened everything. However, I could see the two plumb testicles and a soft penis of the seaman. My heart was beating like crazy, my face flushed, I was almost fainting. The seaman was finishing his business and started wiping his ass. I got up quickly, leaned against the wall and looked nonchalantly after he flushed and came out. He smiled at me and then walked to his room. If he had looked at my face closely then, he would have thought I was sick.

That very incident was the awakening of my sexuality. Unconsciously, I guess, looking at men and their penises, and eventually playing with them, would be my ultimate calling. Basically, unknowingly at that young age, I was already turning gay.

[oralb]

hi adam:

good to read your 1st posting, it is a great writing, guess good things are worth the wait?

awaiting the 2nd part!

[Adam]

Thank you for your kind words oralb. Below is the second part of my story. More to come if you guys enjoy reading this kind of recollections.

Childhood Days (Part 2) Early Independence

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Not only was the house I lived in cramped, I remembered clearly, all my neighbors’ homes were equally cramped. At that time, living in a house was no big deal, everybody was living in a landed property. HDB had not even started yet I think.

House owners were partitioning any space available to create dingy, badly ventilated rooms to rent out. In my house, 9 rooms were created, we only used three and five were rented out to bargirls, prostitutes, seamstresses and seamen. One room on the ground floor, the one between the kitchen and the bathroom was never rented out because it was divided into two halves, an upper one and a lower one. I remembered clearly, the ceiling of lower half was low, maybe 1.8 m tall and the upper half, accessible by a wooden ladder was even lower, maybe 1.4m tall. The intention was to create as much sleeping space as possible. The lower half has a small window looking out to the cooking area and the upper half has a much wider opening, covered simply by wire fencing type of netting, also looking out to the cooking area. The room stank because it is just next to the cooking area and it was also cramped and dark.

Nobody ever rented this room. Maybe it was never meant to be rented out. A variety of people did sleep there, especially the upper deck, or the loft. Friends of my fathers and brothers, relatives who stayed over, my father’s workers, basically all kind of people that my father or older brothers knew who needed a temporary place to put up. Back in the 1950’s things were like that. It was at this loft that I had the most fun very often with much older people who were drunk and asleep.

The entire neighbor’s and our front doors were never closed. Neighbors were walking in and out of each other’s houses without having to make an appointment first. Kids, me included were running all over the place. Playing hide and seek was fun. The seeker always had a hard time finding the hiders. Rooms were never locked. Nobody had any valuables lying around, and if they did, it was locked away in a cupboard. It was during one of these hide and seek sessions when I started having "fun" with a couple of neighbourhood kids.

I was a smart kid, maybe too smart. For some reasons, I was assigned to Tanjong Rhu Primary School (I think it had been closed) even though Geylang English School, between Lorong 19 and 21, was much nearer. A private car, which can seat I think at least 8 to 9 children, came to fetch me to and from school. It was maybe a 10 minutes drive to my school. The car had to go along Guillemard Road, make a left at a really busy roundabout (it is now a busy intersection connecting Guillemard Road to Nicoll Highway) before Nicoll Highway, and proceed towards Mountbatten Road, before turning into Tanjong Rhu. The total distance should be no more than three kilometers.

One day, after school, the driver did not showed up. He was never late before. Always, after school, he was there. All the kids who were driven to school by this driver waited while the rest of the school children left. I don’t know how long we waited. Maybe fifteen minutes? I knew the way home, so I asked if anyone wanted to walk home together. A smaller boy, who lived near to me agree to walk with me home. The rest stayed back.

We went merrily on our way. It was about 6.45pm, the sun was setting but it was not dark. I remembered holding my friend’s hand tightly when we crossed the road. The tricky part was the roundabout. There were many cars and no traffic lights! I was extremely careful to look out for breaks in the traffic and I recalled some cars actually slowed down for us to cross. When we reach Guillemard Road, it was a piece of cake.

I lived in Lorong 16. All the even numbered Lorongs from 8 to 40 ends at Guillemard Road, and so I knew I’ll be home soon. I can’t wait to impress my mother I was able to walk all the way home from school and how some cars were so kind to stop for us to cross the roundabout.

So it was strange when I saw from a distance two of my much older brothers at the corner of Lorong 14 and when they saw me, they started running towards me and my friend whose hand I was still holding. Welcoming party they were not. My brothers asked me what did I do, where did I go, everyone was looking for us, the driver who was late found us missing and drove back quickly with the remaining kids to see if someone had brought us back already, my mother’s going crazy, ….blah, blah, blah.

All four of us started running home and when I reached my house, there was a bunch of neighbors there. They thought we had been kidnapped or abducted and killed. (At that time, supposedly some kids disappeared one or two years earlier and the story was they were abducted, beheaded and their heads buried with the foundation of some new bridges.) While most everyone was relieved, my mother who had never punished me before starting smacking my backside, saying why didn’t I wait for the driver, and who told me to go back by myself……blah, blah,blah. You get the idea. The funny part was she never whacked me hard enough and I wasn’t even crying and she stop when I told her I wanted to come back early so she don’t have to worry about me just in case the driver never showed up. I was six years old then and I was in Primary 1 when this happened.

A couple of years later I would learn from my mother, that she had to whack me a little to show the neighbors, especially the mother of the other little boy, for dragging him along for the walk home. I knew that already; because she wasn’t inflicting pain at all and she immediately stop whacking when I told her I did it because I don’t her worrying about me. For Primary 2 onwards, I was posted to Geylang English School which was only 150 meters from my house. It was in this school I first felt the longings of puppy love for a classmate.

[maturemedium]

Please continue your story.. Old stories alway makes me nostalgic.. I lived in Geylang and "Bata" area when I was kid... but moved to HDB atbthe age of 13.. So the your stories do relate...please go on...

[marksman]

i prefer real stories to fantasies...

thank you adam.

[silversailorduo]

excellent writing. Sincere, localised and nostalgic. Fantasies can have another thread; the prose here needs none of that =) Wonderful...

[StrikeEagle]

Adam:

Your posting permeates sincereity.

Your build up with background, discusssion of the old houses sets the historical context nicely and brought me back to yester-years.

I like the nice little details where your mother give you a small slap just to show the neighbours.

This contrasts with many other writers (me included) who just concentrate on the immediate. The guy, how they met and then bang.

Wish I could write like you.

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 3) Moving Shadows

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Remembered the rotting door to the squatting wc and my first glimpse of an adult male’s genitals? Well since that day, I became attracted to such sightings and tried various ways to see them.

There were a total of four seamen sharing the two rented rooms at the end of the house, between the bathroom and the wc. Over a short period, I have seen them all. This usually happened at night. While pretending to do my homework on the kitchen/dinning table, I would try to keep an eye on which of the seamen goes to the wc. And if it is one of two that I especially like, I would tip-toed my way to the wc after they had gone in. At first there was this thrill when I squat down to peep under the rotting door to see their genitals for the first time. My heart would be pumping like crazy whenever I see their testicles and penis bunched up together. However, when they “actually start passing motion” I would always stood up and not look at them anymore. It was actually quite disgusting, this whole thing of peeping at people passing motion. Later, much later in life, I would find out some people actually pay money to see these things.

I also remembered sometimes these seamen do not go to the wc to pass motion. Sometimes they go there to pee, and sometimes to shake the urine off their penis after they pee, and when they do that, it usually take a bit of time. I was often extra careful when the seamen are not squatting down in the wc, they could open the door anytime and catch me squatting down and looking into the wc. After sometime, I could very quickly bend down to catch a glimpse whether they are squatting down or not. If they are standing up, they should be peeing and I can always hear that when their pee hits the water level of the wc. It is when they are standing up and not peeing that is interesting.

I had an idea of what was going on when one night one of the seamen that I like, Ah Kow, went to the wc. At that time, I don’t know how old he was. He could be between the ages of 20 to 50! At my tender age then, adults are adults. They are just older and bigger than me. I like Ah Kow because he was fat and funny and because he would sometimes give me small treats, like a piece of Van Houten chocolate, or a small piece of goreng pisang.

I had noticed him going to the wc before, when he did not squat down to shit. He was standing up doing something I don’t know what. But that night was different. From the position he stood, the light bulb was directly over him and it cast a shadow over what he was doing onto the floor. Ah Kow was playing with his penis. He was violently shaking it up and down! I was fascinated. I can’t see the actual thing but the shadow on the wc floor which I can see without even bending down much is obvious. This was more thrilling than watching someone squatting down shitting! I really do not know how long he stood there doing what he did. I was trying to decipher from the shadow what he was doing – all I can tell is he often shakes his penis, sometimes he let it go momentarily, and I can tell from the shadow it was big. It looked definitely bigger than when it was bunched up with his testicles when he squats down. After a while, I noticed he stopped, threw some toilet paper into the wc and flushed it. I quickly stood up and when he saw me after opening the door, he told me I should let the person inside know next time I need to use the wc urgently. Ah Kow was not wearing a shirt and he was sweating profusely, his perspiration dripping down his forehead.

After a couple more weeks of careful observations, I realized quite a few of the male adults, including my brothers, actually go to the wc not to shit, but to play with their penises. I must have been no more than 6 or 7 years old then.

On reflection, this is not unusual. Living space was cramped. No one has any private space. If someone needs to release their load privately, the wc or the bathroom is the only place to do it. About the bathroom; it was there that I finally get to actually see someone, not their shadow, playing with his hard penis.

The single light bulb casting interesting shadows incident happened to me on another memorable occasion. This time it was warning me of the presence of some restless spirits.

It happened when we had a class camping trip to an old dormitory style chalet at Tanah Merah Beach. Near the chalet was a WW2 fortified bunker facing the sea. This was one of quite a few bunkers built by the British, facing the South, where they expected the Japanese to attack. There were quite a few along Changi and Tanah Merah Beach, but they have all been torn down when they started extending the coastal line there. There might be a few left at Labrador Park and Sentosa.

One night I was showering alone at the bathroom at the chalet. The rest of my classmates were outside. There were three showers divided up by partitions leaving a gap of about 30 cm from the floor. There were no doors. The place was lighted up by one bright single light bulb.

It was towards the end of my shower when I noticed something unusual. No only was my shadow moving the shadows cast by the light bulb on the partition were moving too. Having peeped at people for years by the time this happened, I know the light bulb have to be moving for this to happen. The wind must be blowing and the light bulb, hanging by its own wire was probably moving too, therefore causing the shadows of fixed objects to move. I looked up and the light bulb although hanging from its wire was not moving. I looked down, and the shadows cast by the partition, including my shadow were moving. I dried myself quickly and I was certain there must be another bulb somewhere causing this strange phenomenon. I got out of the shower, looked up – there was ONLY one stationary light bulb, looked down and around me and the shadows were still moving! Suddenly I can feel the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck standing up when I realized this is just not right. I bolted out of the bathroom to join my friends in the common area. I kept this incident to myself until a few days later.

My friends later told me that although they never encounter the moving shadows incident, they had felt some unease while staying there. Later, I would hear from my older brothers about people who camped at the beach near the fortified bunkers and how they hear strange things in the night – of soldiers marching, and people crying in the bunker. All urban myth I suspect, but what about what I saw? It was not dramatic, but shadows were involuntarily moving in the bathroom that night!

Feedback please. Perhaps it is an ego kind of thing but I really feel elated when I know people enjoy reading my recollections. Never mind if you do not like it t. Criticisms are welcome too. While writing all these things down, I am getting flash backs to other things that happened which I have unconsciously pushed back into some recesses of our memory. Some of these unexpected flashbacks are good, some not so good. Let me see how I can slowly incorporate them into my postings.

[silversailorduo]

What can I say? Part 3 is a little erotic, with livid descriptions of those "first time" experiences when we were so little. I particularly like the dose of "thriller" element into the story. Heh heh. Dont ask me about the reason. Maybe the "ghosts" took lessons in LIghtwave 3D 8 Lighting... heh heh...

I remember in primary school we used to have those long wall urinals, and boys being boys - we would sneak peeks at each other.

Back then if your brother is long, we would all laugh and tease.

Now that we've grown up, theres some bit of envy involved i guess, especially when we have class gatherings

[Guest Guest_guest]

continue please.... its really makes me recall my young days too.. sometime the young innocemt is more thrilling then the lustful adult thoughts

[Pickles]

Great recollections, Adam. I'm enjoying them and can't wait to hear the next one. Many thanks!

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 4) Neck and Eggs of a Duck Seller

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I was really a precocious child. Although I was smart and good in my studies, I ran wild with the neighborhood kids. I only started wearing slippers when I think I was 6 or seven years old. Shirts were often optional and shorts were those made from light blue strips cotton pajamas type material that some Ah Pek still wears nowadays. Sometime, the whole day long, I would wear the shorts I wore to school. I don’t remember having long pants when I was young. I started wearing underwear when I attend secondary school.

Running wild with the neighborhood kids mean days of exploration, learning new things, playing new games, catching lokang fishes, kites fighting, making glass re-enforced kites strings, making wooden guns with unripe buar-cherry (sp?) as bullets, playing rounders, catching, hide and seek….etc.

Special foods back then that I will always remember fondly includes the kok-kok mee that always arrived around 9.30 pm on a tricycle. My mum will always gave 20 cents for the mee. Being childish and stupid, I will often play with the bamboo kok-kok sound maker while the man is preparing the noodles for me. After eating the dry noodles, one uses the same bowl to ask for the soup. On reflection, the reason the kok-kok mee man pushed his tricycle to our Lorong at that hour was because there were quite a few brothels and gambling dens in our Lorong. You can’t find these kind of mobile hawkers anymore in Singapore but in some small towns in Malaysia, this type of kok-kok mee still survived. I always try to patronize them when I come across them when I visit Malaysia.

I love ice balls; at least that’s what we called them back then. This is sold by a man again on a tricycle selling chendol, ice kachang and pineapple water. Since we were kids and have very little money, the man would make the ice-kachang into the shape of a ball – 5 cents with some sweet syrup but without ingredients, and 10 cents with ingredients and some condensed milk. The ice was shaved manually on a wooden block that has a sharp metal edge protruding from the bottom. The big ice blocks were kept inside a big box and the ice blocks were kept from melting into each other by separating them using saw dusts! When the man took out a new piece of ice block, it was always covered with saw dusts. He then has to wash all the saw dust off first before using the ice. Very often we ask the man to cut the ice ball into two so we can share it with our friends.

What did we hold the ice balls with I can hear some of you asking? With our dirty bare hands of course. It tasted better that way. I don’t think takeaway plastic bags had been invented yet.

The third food item that had a lasting impression on me was “lor ark” or dark soy sauce duck. This was sold by a beefy man not old enough to be an Ah Pek. He was more like a Ah Chek, or that’s what I remembered calling him. Ah Chek carried a long bamboo poles on his shoulder with two huge baskets, one on each end of the pole. The baskets contained his ducks, his utensils – chopper, wrapping leaves (back then they use light yellow colored leaves to wrap food like fried kway teow, which I can’t find a English name for, can someone help?), and a big bowl with two dices. Besides selling ducks, Ah Chek also sell ducks’ organs, intestines, blood, Tau Kwa and fried fish balls. This type of “lor Ark” hawker is also the only hawker I knew that gambles with their customers using the dices they carried with them.

Ah Chek’s wife prepared the ducks at home. Twice a day, Ah Chek, would replenish his stock at his house in Lorong 6. I knew because Ah Chek was the father of a school mate of mine in Geylang English School. Ah Chek would often bring his ducks around to our Lorong twice a day, around 10 am and about 4 pm. I guess he stayed for maybe about thirty minutes depending on the business before he moves on to the next Lorong. Ah Chek usually dropped his basket below a huge and shady Angsana tree about 10 meters away from my house. My mother was a regular customer of his and he occasionally asked my mother’s permission to use our toilet.

While waiting for his customers, Ah Chek often seated himself on a low wooden stool he carried on his pole. I remembered Ah Chek well not because his duck was good, or how he often offered a fried fish ball to me but how he often, while seated on his stool, would innocently spread his legs to open up his shorts and exposed his genitals to me when no one is around. I like Ah Chek. He would always talk to me nicely and almost always gave me a fish ball to eat. I started noticing about Ah Chek when I was in Primary 2. I was in morning session then. Ah Chek would come around and seated himself under the Angsana tree about 4 pm. At that time, I would usually be taking a nap since I would be playing with my friends about 5.30 pm. But I started getting up earlier from my nap to wait for Ah Chek and my free fried fish ball.

At first I normally just squat or sit near to him while watching people gambled on the dice with him. Up till today, I have no idea how the game is won or lost. Often money was handed over, and portions of ducks, organs and other ingredients were chopped and wrapped up. Sometime there were no customers and it was just me and Ah Chek under the tree. Later, I don’t know how it started, I must have unconsciously glared into Ah Chek’s baggy khaki shorts when he shifted his legs in front me. I thought I saw something dark and reddish inside his shorts. I don’t know if Ah Chek saw my reaction but soon after I began to take special notice of that region of his whenever he moved or shifted his legs. I really don’t know how it began when I started noticing that whenever we are alone, he would purposely I think, moved his legs wider so I could peer inside his shorts. And he would remain in that position while talking to me. When a customer approached, he would shift his legs closer so the gap into his shorts disappeared. I guess it became a silent kind of understanding – if you want to see, I’ll showed it to you.

At that time almost all adults, unless they are rich, wears home made baggy light blue strips cotton underwear tied at the waist. If they are at home, they would wear that walking around. They would also sleep in that, or a longer, pajamas type one with nothing underneath. Basically, everyone was hanging free. If they go out, they would just slip their baggy pants or shorts over the cotton underwear.

Ah Chek was a swarthy man maybe 35 years old? I really don’t know. I was at that age where adults are divided into “Ah Hia” (big brother), Ah Chek (married uncle type) and Ah Pek (old men). He was a tanned man from carrying and selling his ducks often in the sun. However inside his thighs, I noticed he was fair, very fair. His genitals was reddish, pinkish in color too. A couple of times, he would scratch or adjust his genitals while exposing them to me. His penis would grow thicker and it looked angrier too. From the way I was squatted down in front of him, he would have seen my little penis too, if the flap of my shorts were open. I don’t know if he had seen my penis, but many a times, I have seen his.

This was not a sexual thing back then. I was only seven years old, and I guess I was starting to discover my sexuality. I was catching glimpse of something forbidden and it was more thrilling than sexual. I don’t know if I had an erection. I don’t think so since it was not a sexual thing to me. Ah Chek was not a sexual predator. He did not jump out of the bush naked exposing himself to me. He just sat there airing his genitals from the gap in his shorts and I was there peering into it.

This went on for quite some time. Ah Chek never tried to do anything to me except bribed me with fried fish balls. He knew my parents and perhaps he was just contended to let an angelic young lad peer at his privates. This was just a phase I was growing through and I soon found other more fun things to do and I did not sit down with Ah Chek as often as before. But whenever I visit Ah Chek, I know I will get my fried fish ball and I would get to see Ah Chek’s pinkish and reddish penis and testicles.

Btw, I had a bit of sniffles and I was using a Vicks inhaler today. While writing this I remembered when I was very young and I had the sniffles, my mother would tie a knot at one end of my handkerchief and shook a few drops of medicated oil into that knot. That would act as my “inhaler” for the rest of the day. I wonder if people still do that today.

[Guest Guest]

heh heh... Vicks? Yes, I still see it quite often in the streets, but not the liquid type you describe.

The tube version however, has a strange affinity for a permanent place in some person's nostril. Is this a fashion statement? Maybe one in the ear canal would look good too. There you have it - Uniquely Singapore

[GachiMuchi]

Hi Adam, like some of the forumer, your stories brings back memories long forgotten and not often spoken.

Just wondering, how you could remember so much details after so long? I have already forgotten most of my childhood happening. Even if I could remember it's just bits and pieces and not so detail. I am amazed tha you could recall all of it.

By the way, the light yellow leaves which is used to wrap the duck is called "Opey" (not exectaly sure of the spelling). You can still find it in some hawkers. I found it being used in Kallang airport hawker center by a stall selling Char Kuay Teow.

Hahah.. My dad, used to use that too when he was selling Char Kuay Teow, when I was much younger.

[Adam]

Haha Mr gachi,

It is not that I can remember everything. In fact my memory is as bad everyone else's.

However I can remember certain details, because they were the ones that was quite special to me. I certainly do not remember all the men that I look at in the wc.

Ah Chek was also rather special also because he was the first man, whether innocently or deliberately, that exposed himself to me.

There are many other ground breaking type of incidences that I can remember. Not all sexual. For instances, I remember the racial riots of the early sixties very well. I remember clearly the curfew imposed and the rumours circulating among the elders how many people had been killed...etc.

I remember the frequent gang fights in Geylang that sometimes spilled into our Lorong. In the middle of the night, there'll be people shouting, screaming and running outside along the Lorong. The sounds they made were terrifying. Later, the radio cars (police patrol cars) and ambulances would arrive. The adults would then venture out to view the aftermath, but small kids like me were never allowed outside at that hour to see the gory. The next day, all the adults would be talking about gang fight last night and who was involved, who was injured and occasionally how many people died.

Some memories, both good and bad, are often etched so deeply in our brain we can never forget them. For me at least, some of these memories are of a sexual nature and since this is a gay site, it is this type of memories I will mostly share.

Mr. Gachi, I am sure you have some nice memories of your childhood you can recalled to share too. I would love to read about other people's recollection too. Nostalgia is infectious and if shared among friends, makes it more meaningful.

[GachiMuchi]

Adam, I do have nice childhood memories with regards to growing up, but the sexual part is not something pleasant.

The sexual part happens more with pedophile or Dirty Old Man (DOM), when I was just about 11 or 12.

Being an active kid, while my parents are working, I would run to the amusement centre to play. There I met a DOM which follow me about. Every time, I am at the amusement park, he would be there, stalking his prey. I was one of the prey.

I remember that while I was looking at someone playing driving game, he would stand behind me and I would feel something very warm on my back. I was scared but I did not turn back to look. After that day, he would smile at me when he sees me, and follow me about.

Strangely, one of the day, he signal me to follow him to the nearby public toilet, and I don't know why, I followed him, even though I was very scared.

When in the toilet, I remember I closed my eyes as he pull down my pants. After that, my mind went blank, every time I try to remember what happened for my 1st time, I would draw a blank.

In the later years, I have a few other encounters with that DOM. He would ask me to follow him and I would (even though I was still scared) follow him. He would take me to the nearby toilet and then he will proceed to JO for me. Most of the time, I would not recipocate.

The last encounter with the amusement park DOM was when I was in Sec 4. By then I have already been exploring masutrbation and are aware of my sexual urges. He followed me home until he reach the base of my block. I knew that something sexual is going to happen and I allowed it, even though I was also afraid.

As it was evening and the stairway is dimly lit, he quickly unzipped my pants and went on to sucking me. That was something different from the JO he did, which I have not anticipated, but it felt good. I was frozen with fear but yet, I enjoyed what he was doing to me. I was very confused. That was after all, my 1st BJ. Within minutes, I felt the urge to cum. I tried to push him away but I couldn't, it was as if his mouth had latched onto my coxk. I exploded into his mouth while he continues to suck me dry until it was unbearable for me. After that, I quickly ran up the stairs and closed the door.

At that time, although I enjoyed the Bj, but the thought of someone eating my cum was really scary. I have never in my young life thought that anyone would do that and yet derived pleasure from it. From then onwards, I would ignore him if I should bum into him and making sure every time I was not followed home. That was my first BJ by a man and my last contact with that amusement park DOM.

[Adam]

Dear Mr. Gachi,

Thanks for sharing your traumatic experiences at the hands of a DOM. I hope you have gotten over the episodes and is now leading a healthy and fruitful sexual life. I pray that by sharing with us what you had gone through, the burden of your childhood trauma is somewhat lightened.

Speaking strictly for myself, I had not been "manipulated" as a child, the way you had been manipulated. As a child, I was quite street wise for my age. I have encountered DOMs before, usually at the Community Center, or like you said, the Amusement Center. Normally they are ultra-friendly and even when I was young, I was never attracted to their sweet words.

I remember vaguely, two Ah Pek exposing themselves to me when I was young at a cinema toilet in Gay World but I was never interested.

For other readers, if you have an interesting encounter during your childhood to share, it would be nice if you can post them here. Hopefully we can collectively get rid of some demons from our past, or at least share the burden of something you would like to get off your chest. In any case, share and the load will definitely be lighter.

Thanks for sharing again Mr. Gachi.

Adam

[GachiMuchi]

No worry Adam, I've adjusted to life pretty ok. Will tell on my other experiences in due time.

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 5) Kites Wars in the Sky

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Let me share with the younger readers here just how carefree my childhood was. Although speaking primarily for myself, I dare to say, most of the kids in my neighborhood lived equally or even more carefree lives back then.

I never had curfews imposed on me even when I was young. I was allowed by my parents to stay up as late as I want. Back then, it meant the end of TV’s transmission at about midnight. If I felt sleepy earlier, I can always go to bed anytime. Coming from a family with 10 children, a busy father who works everyday (good god, I can write a whole book about my papa) except Chinese New Year’s day, a mother that washes, cooks, cleans and irons for 10 kids, it is understandable why my parents left us kids alone most of the time. As long as your grades are ok, you are not sick, you are not rude, you don’t walk back home alone from school when you are in Primary 1, you will get 3 square meals a day, new clothes every Chinese new year, and all the freedom you want.

Week days are not so fun when I was in the afternoon session. It seemed the whole morning is wasted just waiting to prepare to go to school. I hated school because it was too restrictive. Right after assembly, I’ll be waiting for the recess and after that for school to let out. I would normally rushed back home, only 150 meters away, to salvage what is left of the rest of the day. Normally most kids would be getting ready for dinner and I would not find anyone to play with.

Back in those days the sun set earlier too. What do I mean by that? I think sometime back in the early 1980s, Malaysia which has the same time zone as Singapore decided to move themselves half an hour forward to be in line with Hong Kong. Singapore followed soon after. So, when it was 7pm back during my childhood, it is 7.30 pm nowadays. It got dark real quickly after school.

Attending morning session in school was much better. Time seemed to pass faster. Ever noticed that? Afternoons after school was filled with freedom to do anything I want. Went home, have lunch, take a bath, sometime I took a nap very often not. I would be out of the house by 3.30 to 4 pm with usually 20 cents in my pocket – that’s the daily allowance I get from my mom for recess that I never use, and that’ll be enough for ice balls, pineapple drink, lychee drink for me and my friends when we get thirsty. I would only go back when it was time for dinner.

My favorite game is hide and seek, I will let you guys know why in another posting, but I enjoyed marbles, catching, chatek, catching lonkang fishes and tadpoles, etc. I even played with dolls and five stones!

Street games that we played were often seasonal. I don’t and cannot remember who or what actually set the season to start lets say kite flying? We do not fly and fight kites whole year round. Looking back, it might be the kite supplier that might start the yearly trend. Anyone who has any other theories kindly shares them here. All of a sudden, many kids and quite a few adults would be playing with kites, actually not so much playing but fighting, especially during the weekends.

Solid glue would be melted down, glass from light bulbs would be pounded into powder and mixed with the glue, and the mixture would be used to cover the cotton thread from a reel. The cotton thread soaked with the mixture of glue and powdered glass, would be wound round and round two poles about 4 meters apart for it to dry. The dried thread would be used as a kite string and because of the powdered glass embedded is sharp enough to cut other kite strings or fingers of both children and adults.

When kite fighting season arrived, it would often be my older brothers and his friends who take the lead to make the strings. The younger kids like me and my friends would help out. For some reasons, even as I grew older, I never become a leader for the kite fighting team. Sure, I’ll get involved and got my fingers cut numerous times when kite fighting but I was never really into it. Maybe, I just don’t like the violent nature of this street game.

You can fly your kites by yourself but if you want it to fight, you will need help. While you are concentrating on “uloh”, “tarik” or letting go more strings or pulling back the strings, you need someone to unwind or wind back the strings. From the moving actions, quick letting go or pulling back, the sharp string will then be able to cut off the strings of your opponent. At least that is the theory. I have often seen kites “committing suicide” when their string at a particular point slides up and down against another string. To prevent that, when two or more kites are in action together, the strings are always being pulled or let go.

The violent part of kite fighting does not involve the kites but the players. Fighting kites are very cheap. Maybe 5 cents? They are made of light flimsy paper held together by bamboo sticks and a little glue. It is when these cheap kites are held up in the air by time consuming carefully made strings and pig headed kites fighters that problems often arises. In our Lorong, we are usually divided generally into two groups. One group who lived nearer to Geylang Road and our group consisting of my brothers and their friends and the youngsters that tagged along who lived nearer towards Guillemard Road. Occasionally these two groups will fight their kites together, but the real enemies are kites that rise from the two Lorongs next to ours, Lorong 14 and 18.

If you think our Lorong is bad, 14 and 18 are worse. For some reasons, the road running through Lorong 14 was never properly paved leaving patches of clay and mud by the side of the road. Also, there are no proper terrace houses in Lorong 14. I remembered it was a place filled with wooden huts and a few very bland 2 or 3 storey walk-up apartments. Rumor was that the Lorong 14 was full of gangsters.

Lorong 18 was better but the terrace houses smaller than Lorong 16’s. The other thing about Lorong 18 is that ALL the houses were brothels. So I guess the kites flyers from Lorong 18 must be bastards or pimps. OK, you know I am kidding here.

I have no idea how many groups of kites fighters were there in Lorong 14 and 18. What I did know was that the two groups in our Lorong did not like them and would often try to bring down their kites at every opportunity. Kites can be flown upwards of 30 or 40 meters or even higher if strings are tied together for extension. In those days, houses were no more than 2 to 3 storey tall and therefore depending on the directions of the winds, the kites can sail anywhere. Weekends were crazy days during kites fighting season. There were some kites up in the air in the early mornings, but by late mornings, almost all the kids and some adults were flying/helping to fly kites. Others not participating were watching.

Some days the sky could have as many as 10, 15, and 20 kites from the 3 Lorongs all trying to bring each other down. Truth be known, quite a few of these kites were probably brought down by “friendly” kites. In such a mass orgy, there was often no winner. When kites go down, there would be groups of kids or adults chasing and trying to recover these “down” kites. This is when most quarrels or fights occur. Some kids will cross over to the next Lorong to retrieve their kite when it goes down there, and it is often a mistake. Quarrels will also occur when passer-bys are cut by kite strings or strings with attached kites are pulled off by passing lorries. You get the idea.

Personally for me, I like to fly a kite just to see it soaring and flying way up in the air. I sometime attached one or three tails to my kite. It looked so lovely and carefree up in the air. See, I was already turning gay at that age. However, if I need to fight with my kite I would. I would often fight dirty, joining in unexpectedly when two or three kites are already fighting. I would let go as much of my strings as possible before jumping into the fray and pulling back as fast as I can, while hoping that this quick pull-back motion would cut off the others’ kite strings. There was no strategy. Very often, I would “kill” friendly kites along with those of the enemies.

I never try to retrieve any of my “down” kites thus staying away from all the fights and quarrels that were associated with trying to get them back. So I guess, even at that tender age, I was already a pacifistic gay fellow avoiding confrontation even though I had often engaged in the rough and tumble game of kite fighting.

Next posting, I will write about a boy name Thomas who indirectly got me hooked on kite flying. He was about 7 or 8 years older than I was.

[blowingwind]

Welcome Adam. Your postings is what this forum is all about. Never mind about the nasty ones.

Tired as I am, I had to read this before bed.

Be Happy

[GachiMuchi]

Adam, I also enjoy your posting. Brings back such nice memories of my childhood.

[GachiMuchi]

In my teens, my brother and I would go to a school opposite our house to catch fighting spiders.

We will always go to the school fence to look for male spiders, but if we caught a female spider, we will put it in a separate box, so as to let the male spider mate the female spider. In doing so, the male spider will get more aggressive; it's our hope that it will win more fights and the female spider a reward for its win.

It is actually quite sexual watching the male spider slowly and jerkingly raising his 2 front legs (like when we are aroused and our coxk slowly rise to the occasion) and carefully approaching the female spider to tempt her and later mate her.

Hahaha..of course, it can be quite sexual for kids our age to know that they (the spiders) are mating. But I don't thing we know exactly what that means. It was much later that I have a better understanding about sex after some self exploratory.

The other interesting thing to watch is the mating of our cats with neighouring stray cats. Our tom cat will slowly approach a female cat and if successful, it will bite her on the neck and later mount her. Its then you will see the tom cat does a few quick jabs and it's over in less than a minute.

Watching those acts during my hormone raging teen years, usually makes me very “excited” and will result in visiting the toilet to relieve myself.

I hope that's is also regarded as sexual awakeing.

[Adam]

"Street games that we played were often seasonal. I don’t and cannot remember who or what actually set the season to start lets say kite flying? We do not fly and fight kites whole year round. Looking back, it might be the kite supplier that might start the yearly trend. Anyone who has any other theories kindly shares them here."

I met up with an older friend earlier today. Brought up the subject of kite fighting and according to him, it would start around the 9th or 10th month of the Chinese lunar calendar. If what he said is correct, then it would about October to December time frame - the start of the North-East monsoon. According to him, no wind how to fly kites?

I need to clarify a couple of things also. He reminded me, not all kites fights ended up with winners or losers. Very often, and I am starting to recall now, kites get entangled in the sky and just dropped straight down especially if they do not "catch" the wind anymore. Also at that time, the sides of the roads are full of electric and telephone poles. Many down kites are left stranded up there and also at the top of tall trees waiting for a downpour to end their misery. Only maybe 30% of down kites were salvaged.

Mr. Gachi, I think as long as you never get an erection from watching animals have sex, then it should be all right. Sexual awakening is ok, sexual desires from watching animals do it is maybe not ok.

[GachiMuchi]

Aiya, Adam, as I grew older, although still in my teens, I know something about sex lah. So the thought of sex, made me excited lah.

Used to DIY every day, some times cum 2 or 3 times per day. Hahaha...young mah.

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 6) Thomas

-------------------------------------------

I was the youngest child in my family. The 6 oldest were boys followed by 3 girls and I was the last child. I was considered the pet of the family and I usually get my way whenever I want something.

My third brother is my mom’s favorite though. The reason was he actually had a twin brother that died even before I was born. My mom devoted extra attention on him since. He is also the brother that dared to throw a metal pencil box at me when I was throwing a tantrum when I was really young, thereby cutting open my eyebrow (my mother thought I would be blinded). My mom rushed me to the clinic to have my eyebrow stitched up and bribed me not to tell my father what actually happened else third brother would get a thrashing from him. I agreed to lie to my father that I had fallen down and hit my head while playing. My mom and all my siblings knew what actually happened but not my dad. Till today, I have this funny little scar running across my right eyebrow.

Thomas was a friend of my third brother. I think, though I can’t be sure, he was an orphan, born during the war. His parents must have died during the war because he was brought up by Catholic brothers and nuns somewhere. When he grew older, he hung around our neighborhood because he had friends from the church staying in our Lorong. I never knew if Thomas had a proper home. When I was older, I learnt that he was living in the quarters of the Catholic Young Men Association, which was then along Bras Basar Road.

Having been brought up, I think, in a Catholic Church orphanage, Thomas always spoke in English. I may have heard him joking a little in Hokkien but he always seemed to be speaking in English and was never comfortable in any dialect. I don’t think I have ever seen him attending school, so his English must be the result of his upbringing in a Church run orphanage rather than his scholastic results. For all I know, he might even be working – helping out at the church or helping at a hawker stall. Child labor laws were not in existence then, and in fact, all children are expectedly to work once they stopped attending school. Thomas was a big brawny teenager for his age and was known among the kids in the Lorong as someone you really do not want to pick a fight with.

Thomas was a close friend to my second and third brothers, both whom were fairly good in their studies and spoke English well. Thomas was so close to my family he sometime slept over, sleeping on a straw mattress, in a corner of our living room.

Two things involving Thomas happened to me that made me remember him always. The first one happened when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old. My brothers and some of his friends were melting some solid glue over a small fire in the back lane. As usual I was hanging around, curious as ever, and my itchy hand tried stirring the mixture and promptly tilted the container containing the liquefy glue over. My brothers were jumping mad and started scolding me and threatening to smack me. I started crying and I remember clearly it was Thomas who stepped in and told my brothers off in English to stop scolding me. He told me not to cry and jokingly said he will whack my brothers for me and led me off to get a sweet drink for me. I don’t remember he ever spoke a word of Hokkien to me. Since that day, Thomas became my idol and the object of my adoration.

We were never really close because he was quite a few years older than me and the chance to hang out with him was remote. The second incident happened a few weeks later when he taught me how to “fight” with a kite. He explained to me the only way to bring down another kite is to cut off its strings. If both kites are entangled, both will go down. It was rather patient of him as a teenager to explain to a little kid how things worked. To my brothers, I was just a nuisance. To Thomas, maybe, I was a younger brother he never had. A couple of times when he was “fighting” with his kite, he would ask me over and explained what he was doing.

Inevitably, when a young gay boy idolized someone male, sooner or later it will turn into a semi-romantic attraction kind of thing. My feelings for Thomas took a turn into something more edgy and darker during the year end school holidays when I was in Primary 2. Please help me I am falling……in love with you……you get the idea.

It was early one morning probably during the weekend. Thomas had apparently stayed over because when I went to the living room, there he was, sleeping on the straw mattress next to the wall at the corner. No one was up yet except my mom who always got up at 5.30 am to prepare breakfast for us. My mom was tottering about in the kitchen and the living room was still dark, although outside the window which was opened, the sky was starting to brighten up. The overhead fan was whirling and Thomas just had a thin cotton sheet covering his torso. His shirt and trousers were flung over a chair next to him. The lower part of his body from the groin onward was uncovered.

Thomas’s morning erection had created a huge tent on his loose tie-string cotton underwear. It was like a big camping tent. I have seen such tents caused by morning erections before. Living with a bunch of older brothers, it is not uncommon to see such things. Even for my age then, I personally had a morning erection that would not go away unless I went to pee. However, morning erection tents on your brothers are different than morning erection tent on someone you idolized.

I knew there is a hard penis below that tent that I was curious about. At that age, I think all children are completely unaware of the significance of an erect penis, the orgasmic joy it can bring us in the future, the children it will be capable of helping to produce, the hurt and sadness it can bring to another rejected penis or a vagina, the career it can bring down, the murders it can cause the penis holder to commit. You know what I am getting at.

I had been attracted to penis and testicles on adults for quite a while now from looking at them under the wc door, and on Ah Chek. I even know sometime adults will spend some time playing with them in the wc or carefully washing them over and over again inside the bathroom (details in another upcoming post). It was not a sexual thing to me then. It was just something I was fascinated with, something taboo, something forbidden. My fascination with adult male genitals then was something I did not and dared not share with anyone. It was a lonely secret.

Thomas’s stiffened penis was a different thing. It was attached to Thomas and it was right there in front of me. I must have stood there for at least a minute or two, staring at that huge tent. For some reasons, I wanted to touch it although I have never touch another penis other than my own before. I reached out my hand, touched the top of the tent gently and felt something hot and hard. It was I guess precisely at this moment that half of my youthful innocence went down the drain when I realized I want to touch Thomas’s penis again. My heart was pounding like crazy, my face flushed like a tomato. I knew it was forbidden, it was wrong and boys just do not touch the penis of another boy. I threw caution to the wind, looked around to make sure no one else is in the living room, reached out my hand and touched it again. This time, I let my fingers lingered a little longer, while completely mesmerized by its hardness and thickness. I was starting on a never ending journey of addiction that still continues today.

Thomas was still fast asleep dead to the fact that I was fondling him. His penis was big and thick. Exactly how big I can’t tell. At that age, I guess all penises that are not mine are big. Especially on a boy almost double my age. Thomas must be 14, 15, or 16 years old. I really don’t know but he was definitely much older than me and if he hung out with my second and third eldest brothers, he must be about 15/16 years old then. I was later to find out that when erect, Thomas actually had a bigger penis than most guys – even some grown ups. I removed my hand but reached out to touch him again a couple of times. I would sometime softly squeeze the head or the shaft. The cotton tie-string underwear was so soft; I can actually feel his whole penis in my small hands. I did not wank him because I have no idea what wanking was all about at that age. It was until I realized that it was already quite bright in the living room then I stopped. The sun had risen. I also realized my penis was very hard. I guessed I had stumbled into the joy of sexually touching another man.

I reluctantly got up, went straight to the bathroom to ease myself and later went to the kitchen to ask my mom for my breakfast.

[marksman]

I got an impression, kite-flying season was in July and August. Don't know why.

Adam, did you mention how the boys got together to prepare for the battle?

They grinded glass into powder. They boiled hot water. They put in glue-powder and string. Then, they sun-bathed the string...

When the glass-string was well-made, it stood a better chance to win the battle.

If the string thickened with too much glue, it would be too heavy and not flexible to fly up a kite.

There was technique too....

B)

Last year, I had a project on Kite-flying.

When I interviewed some of the people about their kite-flying session during their childhood, I could see their eyes still burst with sunlight.

10 years back, heard there was kite-competition in South Marina.

Were all these gone with the wind as well, like my childhood, like my kite...

Suddenly, I realise how time flies and I am no more a boy.

[GachiMuchi]

I reluctantly got up, went straight to the bathroom to ease myself and later went to the kitchen to ask my mom for my breakfast.

Er.. Adam, what exactly did you mean by "easing" yourself? Ease = DIY or Ease = Pee?

[FattChoy]

Adam then was only 7 years old.

As he mentioned, at that age, he knows nothing about DIY.

Definitely peeing lar.

[Pickles]

Adam -- your recollections are getting better and better! Please keep it up, and many thanks for reviving in us all our own memories!

Pickles

[Adam]

Mr Marksman,

You are right about peoples's eyes lighting up when you talk to them about kites fighting. The old man I spoke to became a lot more animated when I brought up the subject. I am not sure about other months that people fly kites. Maybe like durians, it appeared twice a year?

Mr Fattchoy,

You are right. Easing oneself is going to the toilet to pee. This is an old British expression that I learnt in secondary school. A bit more formal when asking someone "where can I ease myself", compared to "where is the wc?" I can understand wc is not commonly used nowadays but back then wc is understood to be the place someone go to pee and Shxt.

Mr Pickles,

I am glad you enjoy reading my stories. Do share some of yours too.

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 7) The Bathroom

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Chronologically, I have been writing these recollections badly. I have been jumping a bit in and out and I hope I have not confused you guys.

Lets back tracked a bit before the incidence with Thomas. Like I said earlier, I had discovered a peeping opportunity under the door of the wc. However, the genitals of the men were bunched up like one small banana and two rambutans and well the smell was not great either. After a while, I became quite tired of looking at just anyone, and reserved my observation to people I like.

The bathroom on the ground floor is located between the room with the loft that no one ever rent, and the two rooms rented out to the Malaysian seamen. Come to think of it, Singapore and Malaysia were one country at that time. It was just the seamen were born in Malaya and had came to Singapore to work.

The bathroom was about 1.8m x 1.8m. As you enter, you will noticed that a concrete partition of about 1m height had been built 60 cm away from the opposite wall creating a concrete “bathtub” 1.8m long, 60cm wide and 1m deep. Of course the intention was not to create a bathtub but to create a huge above ground “tub” to store water for bathing.

Back then, there were frequent water rationings for reasons unknown to me. For cooking, my mother would store some water in metal pails (plastic pails were not available yet) and for bathing, the concrete tub in the bathroom would suffice. Of course, if there were no rationing, everyone would use fresh tap water for bathing and cooking.

Next to the concrete tub would be a huge beige/green ceramic jar with a dragon motif on its exterior. These kinds of jars were quite common last time but I think it is pretty difficult to find one now. We would normally scooped water from the jar to bathe and wash ourselves.

I had been bathing myself since I was maybe 4 or 5 years old. At that time, my mother would not let me lock the door, so I could not accidentally drown myself in the jar or the concrete tub. Later on, when I was slightly older I would lock it to maintain my modesty.

Being a mischievous and naughty boy, I would occasionally climb into the concrete “tub” and pretend that it was a small swimming pool. I would lock the bathroom door and make sure no one see me doing that. I am quite sure I never pee inside that tub. Because the water inside the tub is quite stagnant, once a while you can find mosquitos’ larvae near the bottom of the tub. As such, there is actually an outlet at the bottom of the tub; stuffed by some blocking material, to let the stagnant water out after it had been there a couple of days. My mom will most probably let the water out after a few days even though there weren’t any mosquitoes larvae, because she knew her youngest son was learning to swim inside the tub and comtaminating the water.

It was through one of my bathing session when I realized the bathroom door is rotting badly at its base. Because it was wet all the time and also because it was an old door, the base was rotting away quite badly. The rest of the door was quite all right because it was painted and the splashing water could not get into the wood as easily. However, the water would dribble to the base of the door, collecting there and over time get absorbed into the wood, rotting it. The rot was not even – in some places it was minor, in other places especially where the planks of wood were joined together to create the door, it was quite bad. The rot at the joint crept upwards from the base of the door maybe 20 cm. The rotting wood was soft and I realized it could be broken off easily. One day, I broke off a small piece at the joint and wondered if viewed from the bottom outside, could I see anything inside the bathroom?

Later that night, I had a chance to check this out. It was my usual practice of doing my homework at night on the kitchen table. To many other people, especially my parents, this habit of mine – doing my homework alone without having to be prompted proves that I was a good kid. Little did they know it was a show, the real reason was I want to find out who will be using the wc and bathroom. Because of the frequency of the human traffic through the kitchen, tenants going out and coming back, people going to the bathroom and wc, I soon realized trying to take a peep into the bathroom was not going to be an easy task. If I were careful when I were looking under the door of the wc, I have to be 10 times more careful when I peep into the bathroom.

So it was maybe until 10.30 pm that I finally decide it was safe enough to take a peek. Most people would normally be in bed by then. As a child, I should have been sleeping already but my mother never bothered me with a schedule even at that age. Look at the dear child, she probably thought, still up at that hour reading and studying, next time sure grow up to be a judge, why should I bother him and ask him to go and sleep? If your grades were good and you do not get into trouble, you can stay up all night for all they (my parents) care.

One of the seamen tenants came back late, probably from drinking with friends. He commented that I was so hard working in my studies and then walked to his room. I was hoping he would take a bath and he did. He walked into the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist. He turned on the light in the bathroom, closed the door and soon I could hear water being scooped and poured over his body. The area outside the bathroom was quite dark, the only light coming from kitchen.

A bathing session using this scooping and pouring method consist of a few main steps. 1) Wet the body and head, 2) use hands or wash towel to scrubbed off grime and dirt from body and face, 3) rinse whole body with water, 4) wash head and body thoroughly with soap (at that time no one can afford shampoo), 5) rinse repeatedly and 6) toweled dry. Just by listening outside the door, one can usually tell at which step the person taking the shower is at. I will have to say that these bath sequences are for men only. I really don’t know and never want to know how women take their baths.

During the middle of step 2, after making sure no one is around, I quickly dropped down on all fours, lowered my head to the ground and peeped into the bathroom. Since this was my first time doing this, my heart was pounding like crazy. At first I can’t see much but as I adjust my head I suddenly caught a glimpse of the seaman’s feet. I wanted to see more. I moved my head closer to the door and try and looked in and up at a more acute angle at the hole I had made. The best I could see was his feet up to his knees and that was if my head was on the ground, my face tilted to one side at an acute angle and my right eye peering into the small hole. I quickly got up, knowing that this was not going to work. The whole thing did not take more than twenty seconds. Although disappointed, I was also glad to know at least I will get a better view if I were to create another hole slightly higher up from the bottom of the door.

Peeping holes into bathroom cannot be conspicuous or else everyone standing outside would be able to tell there is a hole there. For instance, in my case there can’t be a hole waist high on the door. Anyone outside the door will be able to see the hole and will not go into the bathroom to bathe. However, if there are small broken gaps, created by the rotting wood with the help of a small boy, at the bottom of the door, it would not be so conspicuous. After my initial failure, I figured a small little rotting gap 20cm from the bottom of the door would be enough for me look up and see the groin of the bather.

The very next day when I was bathing, I carefully broke off another sliver of rotting wood from one of the joined panels, this time slightly higher. From inside the bathroom, I dropped down to all fours to see through my new creation. Yup, I could easily see through the gap and up at the wall outside the bathroom. Getting up and grinning to myself, I could feel two little horns starting to grow from my head and the emergence of a pointed tail growing from my tailbone. The best is yet to come.

I am posting this segment first because this is going to be a lengthy post. The next segment, I will describe some of the people I saw in the bathroom, including Thomas, and some of the things they did inside. I will try not to let you guys wait too long. Thanks.

[Guest Christchen]

Adam,I will be the first audience to purchase ticket to follow your story.You are cool,man!

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 8) Live Acts

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Back in the very early 1970’s there were basically only three locations in Singapore one can see topless niteclub show. They were Tropicana (now occupied by Pacific Plaza), Neptune Niteclub (still around) and Golden Million Niteclub (niteclub closed) at the Peninsula Hotel.

All were big Chinese restaurants until about 10 pm, then the staff would hurriedly cleared the tables of the leftovers from dinner, changed the tablecloths and convert the place into a niteclub (ktv and karaoke not invented yet). The niteclub crowd would start coming in at about 10.30pm and the place would close only at about 3 am. Besides loads of local and Taiwanese singers, the main attraction was the topless shows performed usually by Europeans or Japanese girls.

I was only 16, when during a lengthy school holiday; I got myself hired as a waiter at Golden Million. It was funny because I was not old enough to go to a niteclub to see the topless shows, but old enough to work there and see the topless shows. I guess it could be considered erotic then, since all the girls had fantastic figures and nice breasts. One night, I even saw my third brother with Thomas and some of their friends there. As a teenager I should be thrilled to see these live acts, but really my preference for live acts is somewhat different and they started many years before when I was in Primary 2.

OK, where were we? After creating the new hole, I had to wait again for the opportunity to see inside the bathroom. Beside the living room, I think the kitchen is the busiest place in the whole house. Mom was always there preparing the food, cooking and cleaning. Also the washing area is nearby and if not cooking, mom is always washing clothes. The kitchen table where we ate is also there. So the only time I can realistically look into the bathroom is late at night usually after 10 pm.

It was the same night or the night after that I got the chance to peep at someone. It was one of the seamen returning late. I was as usual at the kitchen table reading. He walked to his room and a little later went to the bathroom. I waited until he was scrubbing himself before dropping to me knees to look through the sliver of gap I created into the bathroom. EUREKA!!

This time, I could see the seaman’s body up till his groin! He was turned slightly away from the door so I could only see his buttock and not his genitals. After a few seconds, I quickly got up again fearing that I might be caught. I was so excited to see a naked grown-up’s body, my heart was pounding like crazy. I felt faint also from the increased heartbeat and my getting up and down from the floor. I heard the water splashing and knew that the seaman would be soaping himself soon. I looked around to make sure the coast was cleared, and quickly dropped down to look up through the hole again.

This time, the man was soaping himself and I caught a glimpse of his genitals. He was soaping himself quickly and it was a thrill to me when he soaped and washed his penis and balls. Most of the time I had only a side view of his genitals since he was turned towards the ceramic jar which contained the water he rinsed his body with. After just a few more seconds, I got up and returned to the kitchen table. I have seen this seaman’s genitals before in the wc. He was not someone I was particularly fond of so I wasn’t going to take too much risk looking at him. There will be many men I could look at in the future.

I was quite pleased with myself. Mission accomplished. I have created a new outlet for my growing interest to see the male body. The view into the bathroom is totally different from the view into the wc and looking at Ah Chek. The man in the bathroom was standing up with his genitals hanging loose and free. Men I saw in the wc were usually squatting down with their genitals bunched up together, or if they were standing up, all I could see were moving shadows. So this is the best view yet of a man’s penis and balls. Real, live, unrestricted and un-noticed.

My focus started shifting from the wc to the toilet. Not that I don’t look at men in the wc anymore. There are some men like my father’s friends, adult male relatives that come only for a brief visit in the night. Some of these men, if I find them interesting and if they happened to use the wc, I would try to see what their genitals look like. Other than that, looking at men in the bathroom was much more interesting and exciting.

The danger of getting caught peeping into the bathroom was much greater too. It basically required me to change my routine. Instead of previously hanging out at the kitchen table from 8 to 10 pm, I started to hang out there starting from 9.30 pm onwards. No point monitoring the bathroom earlier, it was just too dangerous. Anyone coming to the kitchen, going to the bathroom or the wc, or any of the seamen going to their room can catch me down on my knees on all fours peering into the bathroom. It was just too risky. As such, the number of times I was able to look into the bathroom safely was quite limited. The fear just out weighs the desires.

There were two persons I particularly like to watch bathing. One was Ah Kow, the fat jolly seaman. And the other was Thomas. However it was another person, a quiet, dark and tough looking seaman, named Ah Or (Black) that I one day saw masturbating himself in the bathroom.

After the first time I peeped at someone bathing, I have seen a few other people, all men or older boys, bathing. Other than catching glimpses of their genitals, it was boring. Remember the 6 main steps of bathing I described earlier? If done quickly, it takes no more than 10 minutes for a man to bathe. In the army, we sometime did it in less than 3 minutes. Unlike in the Japanese videos, where the actor takes a long sensuous bath for the benefits of the camera/audience, real baths scenes are fast and boring and the genitals of the bathers are shriveled up! Cold water and there was no water heater at that time. After watching these bathers with their shriveled penises, I started asking myself “What’s the big deal?” Is this worth the risk? The big deal of course is to secretly look at someone bathing, something absolutely forbidden and wrong. So when one day, I caught Ah Or playing with himself, it all became doubly worth it.

The four seamen staying at the last two rented room s in the house may or may not be sailors. I was too young to know what they actually do for a living but it had something to do with the sea. Also, a few of them, including Ah Kow, seemed to disappear for weeks at a stretch. Ah Or is the only one that come and go daily. Maybe he works at Clifford Pier, or maybe at a shipyard, or maybe even on a tongkang at the Singapore River which was then a central point for tongkangs (big sampans). Tongkangs will pick up goods from bigger ships that cannot berth at the river, and bring it to the riverside to be unloaded. It was Ah Or among the 4 seamen that I see more regularly.

Ah Or was neither a tall or short man. The only thing about him was he was really dark and tough looking. He had short hairs, thick eyebrows and something overgrown facial hairs when he did not shaved. He was coarse and rough in his speech and I was sure he did not children at all. He sometimes returned to the house drunk and unsteady in his walk. The kind of person your mom asked you to stay away from when you were young.

Ah Or returned late one night, totally ignoring me at the kitchen table, and proceeded to his room. A little while later, he walked out and entered the bathroom. Since this is better than nothing, I decided to take a quick peek at Ah Or bathing. I had peeped at him bathing before. There was nothing much to describe except he definitely wasn’t dark at his groin area. In fact his groin area from his belly to halfway down his thigh was very fair. Something like Ah Chek. These men are tan and dark from working outside under the sun.

Checking around to make sure it was safe, and waiting for Ah Or to proceed to step 2 of the bathing sequence, I kneeled down and lowered my head to the floor to look inside the bathroom. Ah Or was scrubbing himself with a small wash cloth. He quickly scrubbed all over his body and then started scrubbing his penis and balls. Was I mistaken or was his penis getting bigger? He quickly finished and while he rinsed himself of the initial dirt and grime, I got up and pretend to walk around outside the door pacing a little. I knew he was going to soap himself next after the sound of the rinsing and splashing had stopped. I waited for a little while for Ah Or to start soaping himself first before going down to look at him again. He was already soaping his genitals and for some reason his penis had become a lot bigger. He was masturbating himself using the suds from the soap as lubricant!

Writing this now, I can realized what I actually saw that night was Ah Or masturbating himself in the bathroom, but honestly back then as a kid, all I saw was Ah Or relentlessly washing/playing with his suddenly enlarged penis. I already knew it was quite fun to play with my penis but at that age, but I did not know it will lead to orgasm. So, to me, watching Ah Or, he was just playing with his penis while bathing and using the soap to wash it thoroughly as well.

It did not last more than a few seconds and he suddenly rinsed himself again. I continued to look through the hole, getting a few drops of water on my face as it splashed through the hole, hoping to see Ah Or’s big penis when he toweled himself dry. But something strange happened. He did not start toweling himself. In fact he started soaping his penis again and his penis was still hard and big! He was pulling and stretching his foreskin and exposing his penis head. Sometime he did it slow, and sometimes he did it faster. Occasionally he would pour some water over his genitals and start soaping it all over again.

I was totally and completely astounded and mesmerized. This is the first time I have seen anyone playing with their penis. And Ah Or’s penis was huge! I was feeling really excited and a little light headed. I knew I had stumbled into something totally different this time. Ah Or was doing something that was terribly exciting and probably pleasurable to himself.

I had kneeled down for maybe 2 minutes already – too long to be safe. Ah Or was still washing his penis when I stood up to check if the coast is clear. I couldn’t really think straight then. I knew I had just seen something special. How special and what is the significance I will not be able to know until I was in Primary 5. Suddenly I heard Ah Or rinsing himself again, this time a bit longer. I waited for him to stop then kneeled down to look if he was playing with his penis again. He wasn’t. In fact he was already toweling himself dry. What had probably happened was he ejaculated just after I got up and then quickly rinsed himself before toweling dry. I quickly got up again and tip toed back to the kitchen table.

It was not exactly a life changing experience but it was close. Prior to this, all that I have seen as a child were bunched up penises and testicles, or penises shriveled up by the cold water in the bathroom. That day was the first day I saw a man fully naked masturbating, although at that moment I did not know what masturbation was. I had no idea it would be so pleasurable and would later end up with an orgasmic experience later. All I knew was that grown up also play with their penises, their penises was very big (well not everyone which I found out later) and I love watching them playing with their penises.

I also knew what I just saw was wrong. It was not right to look at other people when they are bathing. It was forbidden. If anyone saw me peeping into the bathroom, I’ll be punished. The greatest punishment though would be they would change the doors to the wc and the bathroom and I cannot indulge in my hobby anymore. Like the saying goes, “forbidden fruits taste sweetest,” I just became more and more drawn to my voyeuristic instincts simply because it was so forbidden. Not exactly normal for a young boy aged 8, but then I was never a normal boy.

[Adam]

Part 8 had been proof read and re-submitted. Hope it sound more sensible now.

Any more comments? Or perhaps stories to share? You guys do know you need not be a member to post right. So come on people, share here how and when you knew you were gay.

Maybe someone should start a new thread...

Good Night!

[oralb]

what can i say adam, the old forum we can give you stars (definitely max of 5 star) but not on this new place.

thus i will reply to thank you for your posting.

nice and refreshing to read something erotic but yet not hard corn, in your face type of story.

keep it up (both your stories and your sex life!)

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 9) Sumatras and Race Riots of 1964

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What are Sumatras? Sumatras are line of thunderstorms which usually occur during the Southwest Monsoon season from May to October each year. These squalls develop at night over Sumatra or the Malacca Straits and move east towards Singapore and the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia during the night and early morning. They are often characterized by sudden onset of strong gusty surface winds and heavy rain lasting from 1 to 2 hours as they move across the island. Maximum gusts of up to 50 knots have been recorded during the passage of a Sumatra squall.

I love the nights, always had, even when I was young. Nights are cooler and always quieter. Despite usually being a naughty, rowdy and noisy kid during the daytime, after the sun had gone down, a totally different child emerged. I became quieter, more bookish and somewhat introspective even at that young age.

If someone were to ask if the real Adam is a really a day person or a nocturnal person, the answer would definitely be I was and am a night creature. I seemed to become more alive and also think better during the night. If given a choice I would rather work at night, preferably starting from 10 pm onwards.

I love reading since I was a child. I don’t know where I picked up the habit; it just came natural to me. From very young, I read almost all of Enid Blyton’s books and all the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. By primary 4, I moved up to Readers Digest and Life magazines which I borrowed from a friendly elderly neighbor a couple of houses away. He had kept them over the years, and I finished reading all of them within a couple of months. To be honest, I think I learn more things reading from outside resources rather than from my school books. If I ran out of things to read, I’ll just grab what’s lying around belonging to my sisters or brothers to read. In another post, I will share what some of the naughty things belonging to my elder brothers that I had read.

Most of the reading was done at night, especially on the kitchen table. To my parents, reading equates studying. I think their hearts must be glad that their youngest child was so hard working. They did not know I had to do something while waiting for things to happen in the bathroom or wc. Maybe that’s how I developed a reading habit. Read and you’ll be rewarded. I seriously do not think that is how they are motivating kids to read nowadays. “READ and your reward is seeing naked men in the bathroom” is a slogan I don’t think our national library will be adopting anytime soon.

I love the rainy days. Quite often after the rain, I would make small boats from scrap papers and let them loose in the open drain outside my house. I loved watching them sailing away pushed along by the flowing water. I wonder if children nowadays still make paper boats and dropped them into open drains.

It was however a combination of night and rain that I love the best. Rainy nights…I can almost get an erection whenever that happened. Best time to make love and hold your love one. Thunder, rain and cold outside but you are inside warm under the blanket holding your love one. Isn’t that romantic?

I first learnt about the Sumatras when I was in primary school. Children are lucky nowadays. When I was in primary school back then, we had to study not 4 but 6 subjects for our PSLE. Beside English, Second language, Maths and Science, we had to study Geography and History as well.

It was in geography class that we learnt about the Sumatras. Sumatras are rain storms that swept through this region usually in the night. For some reasons, it remained in my mind. Maybe it was because it was in the middle of a Sumatras during a race riot curfew that I fell asleep next to Ah Or. I never felt so safe and secured sleeping next to a man since.

All the kids in my family were sleeping on wooden floor back then. When I was very young, I slept on the one wooden bed with my parents. My mom related to me years ago how I started climbing out of bed to sleep with my brothers at the age of 3 or 4 years old. However, as far as I could remember, although I usually slept with my brothers, I never had a permanent sleeping place. We had three bedrooms for ourselves. The first three eldest brothers would sleep in the first bedroom on the ground floor. My parents would take the second bedroom on the same level. Sometime I would sleep with them. The rest of my siblings shared the big bedroom on the second storey. This is supposed to be the sleeping arrangement but of course in actual fact we just sleep wherever we want; me especially.

The reason is because we never had a bed to ourselves. The floors of the bedrooms are all wooden. Even the ones on the ground floor. It was raised about 15 cm from the concrete floor. All the rooms were covered by cheap linoleum. Only pillows, bolsters, blankets (cotton sheets actually) are individualized. Later, much later, did my father purchase a few wooden canvas beds (very much like the army styled canvas beds except the legs was wooden) which my eldest brothers would use.

Sleepovers from relatives, friends and visitors include everyone having to squeeze a little. Very often, the visitors would sleep in the living room on straw mattresses or use the room with the loft next to the kitchen. I remembered one particular period, the race riots of 1964, when there were quite a lot of people staying over. They were friends and relatives I think, staying at places not considered very “safe” so my father brought them over to stay at our place temporarily. I remembered lots of strangers in the house. Mum with a lot of strange ladies helping her was cooking all the time. Curfews were imposed from the evening to the morning. During the curfews, no one, not even the adults were allowed to go out or else they might be shot.

When the curfew was lifted for a few hours each day, my father and some of the male adults would venture out to buy provisions. My father owned a car then and he would also buy provisions for those who did not possess a car. I remembered clearly when his car returned, a few of the neighbors would come running over to get what they had ordered. Staples such as rice, sugar and firewood (for cooking) were always in short supply. However, most people had stocked up on these even before the riots started.

It was particularly frightening in the night. Once the curfew started, everyone had to be inside. The adults would be gossiping about what happened that day, how many people had died, and which neighborhoods were attacked. Kids like me would gather around, listened and be scared out of our wits. Almost all the male adults were sleeping near the main door just in case anything happened. Some crude weapons like parangs, wooden poles and axes were placed nearby just in case they were needed.

Some men, especially Ah Or never seemed to sleep during those nights. I sometime get up in the middle of the night to pee and I’ll walked to the living room to see who was awake doing guard duty and Ah Or would always be around near to the telephone. He would smiled and always asked what I was doing up. Somehow, Ah Or during those times, seemed more friendly. Maybe he was trying not to scare me or maybe he was trying to hide his own fear. There might be someone staying up with him but he seemed to be omnipresent at the house during those dark and frightening days. Also I had seen my father talking and discussing with him things in details during that period.

Now coming to think of it, Ah Or was the only male adult other than my father who was living permanently in the house during that time. I think the rest of the seamen were either out at sea or they had gone back to their families in Malaysia. The rest of the tenants were female seamstresses or bar girls. The rest of the male adults along with their families were staying temporarily because their place was not safe. These people might stay for a day or two and then move somewhere where it is even safer. Back then, Geylang after all, wasn’t a typical Chinese enclave. There were large pockets of Malay Communities in Geylang, especially near Geylang Serai. In fact, at the end of Lorong 16, near to Guillemard Road was a large Malay kampong. I am sure those Malay people staying at the Kampong were as afraid as those Chinese staying in the middle of the Lorong during those frightening days.

It was in the middle of a Sumatras one night during the curfew that I got up. Thunder and lightning were crackling about. I was scared but I need to pee. I was sleeping with my mom and a few other people then. I got up and went to ease myself in the bathroom. No lights were switched on because we were told not to turn on any lights to make ourselves conspicuous. Like during an air bombing raid, all houses were told not to turn on any lights to attract the bombers. I couldn’t sleep so I tip toed to the living room where I knew some people might be awake guarding the entrance to the house.

There was a small kerosene lamp lighted up next to the telephone. I noticed the silhouette of a few people sleeping on the floor or on canvas beds. Ah Or was the only one awake and he greeted as usual in Hokkien, “Why, cannot sleep is it?” I walked to where he was sitting crossed legged on his straw mattress and sat on it myself.

Surveying the surrounding, with the poles and parangs at one corner, and the situation of the curfew at hand, plus the lightning and the thunder, I told Ah Or in a shaky voice tinged with fear, “Ah Or, I am very scared leh.”

Ah Or must have felt my fear and whether out of confidence or whether he was hiding his own fear too, he told me, “No need to be afraid, Ah Or is here.” And with that remark, he pulled me closer to him, grabbed his pillow and put it next to his thigh and laid my head onto it. He threw a light blanket over me and told me to go to sleep. He was still sitting crossed legged on the mattress when I finally felled asleep safe and sound, my head nestle next to his thigh, knowing Ah Or was there to make sure everything was all right.

A few days later the curfew was called off. Nothing happened at our Lorong. Mutual suspicions between the races remained and it would take many months before everything was back to normal. Right after the curfew was lifted; some of the adults of the Lorong discussed and actually formed a neighborhood patrol kind of thing. I knew because they often held meetings in our living room. Ah Or was always in the thick of the discussions.

Funny thing was, from that stormy night onwards, I never look at Ah Or in the bathroom anymore. Perhaps I had elevated him up to a position where I respected and deeply appreciated how he had cared for me, my family and the neighborhood during those frightening days. Looking at him bathing just did not thrill me anymore.

[Adam]

Thousand apologies to those who had written to me. I just found out that I had 14 private messages sent to me.

I usually use this nick to send my postings and I logged out immediately after that. Sorry I did not see the PMs.

Well, I am glad that there are some people that read my postings after all. Thanks for all the encouragement. You know who you are.

Recently some replies here were deleted by the moderators. I have to say I do not blame them. I have read the posts myself and I was quite alarmed. From the onset, I was wary that this thread could stir up controversy due to the nature of the postings.

Writing as a child does not mean I am saying every child is as sexually precocious as I was. Far from it. Most children are blissfully unaware of the sexual coonotations of what they do. And it should be that way. However, I was different due to a variety of factors, and I do not intend to pretend I am not. I hope you readers can understand and appreciate that. Please, I do not intend for this thread to become a collections of "How I was seduced by an older man when I was young" kind of thread.

May I suggest a yardstick for those of you who are stimulated by what I had written. If you see yourself as Adam, a child going through the trials and tribulations of growing up gay, then it is not too bad. If you see Adam as a precocious child waiting to be seduced by you, then you have a problem. If you see a lively curious child and assume he might be an Adam, and you want to accelerate his sexual discovery, THEN STOP!! You better not act out your fantasy because at this time and age, a long jail term with caning awaits you.

For the rest of you who simply enjoys a nostalgic journey back to the past, I say, "Jump on board mate, and enjoy the ride." I enjoy sharing my experiences as much as I hope you guys enjoy reading them.

One again, I apologise for missing out on all the PMs to me.

[blowingwind]

Ah... flying kites. Those days of endless summer and carefree days. Wonder why people scold "go fly kite" like it's a bad thing?

In keeping with Adam's topic, I remembered that other than flying kites, my favourite activity was actually collecting kites stranded in trees.

Like Adam mentioned, when the kite "putus layang" ( you'll hear them shouting merrily ), there will be bands of street urchins with poles, branches, brooms and what not chasing after it. They formed gangs. Sometimes they'll even rush onto the main roads and gambled their lives for a few kites. However, in all my life I've never heard of anybody being ran down by traffic before. I guess they were nimble enough to do it safely.

The problem with a loose kite is that it had a long string attached that's trailing down before the kite came down. So the best way to collect the kite was to find this string and snag it with long poles and then reel in the kite. Sometimes it's not clear who snagged the string first and fights will break out between gangs with these poles as ready weapons.

Also this method favored the bigger boys. But us younger kids also had a big advantage too. We were smaller and lighter so we can easily climb up trees. At that time I thought I had discovered a secret kungfu technique for climbing trees. I was able to climb higher than any kid and easily collected lots of those kites stranded too high in the trees for others to collect. Those kids with poles cannot get these kites down because they were tangled with the leaves and twigs. Any forced moves will easily break these delicate paper kites.

It was later during trainings for mountain climbing that I discovered it was a actually well known technique called "3 point hold". You see most kids will clamber clumsily up the tree in a hurry and not really watch how they were doing it. I was more careful in making sure I found proper footholds before proceeding further up. Then I found that when I had 3 points of holding on to the tree, I will still be safe when one or 2 accidents happened. That's plenty of safety margins. That leaves one limb free to move upwards to grab another hold before the next.

In fact, I saw 2 accidents of kids falling from trees and taken away by ambulance. After that, most kids were afraid to climb trees. But I had never had any falls before. Only some close calls where I misjudged the strength of a branch and lost a hold point when the branch snapped. But the other 2 holds were more than enough to keep me safe even when swaying about in the high slender branches.

I managed to collect plenty of kites that way. But the irony was that I don't have enough strings to fly them all. Those strings wound on a long tincan can cost a lot of money. So I'll put them up on the wall at home for decoration or give them away to younger friends.

Be Happy

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 10) “Some debts you just have to pay”

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It must have been around 1965 or 1966. One day, out of the blue, my father told us that the big room upstairs that my sisters and some of my brothers were using had to be vacated. Someone is coming to stay with us and that room would be allocated to him.

New sleeping arrangements had to be found for 6 displaced siblings. The girls were moved into the first bedroom on the ground floor. My eldest brothers all decided they were going to sleep in the living room on canvas beds. The rest of the boys were told they could either sleep with the girls in the small bedroom or they could use the room at the kitchen with the loft. To be honest, I don’t know where they ended up sleeping but they definitely did not sleep for any extended period in the room with the loft. It was just too weird. I wasn’t affected because I was sleeping with my parents.

The big room upstairs had two big wooden windows looking out to the small courtyard and the lorong. In terms of ventilation and brightness, it was the best room in the whole house. It was cleaned up; repainted, new linoleum was laid and brand new furniture that we never had ourselves installed. There was a nice single bed with mattress (mattress is like luxury and decadent then), a cupboard, a writing table and at a corner was a small sofa set!!! All in all a very comfortable studio room was being set up for the visitor, whoever he was.

My father, god bless his soul, came to Singapore in the early 1930s. He was the eldest son from a dirt poor farming family near the city of FuQing in Fujian Province in China. His family combined all their savings to send him to NanYang (South East Asia) to make a better living for him and hopefully for the family. He reached Singapore almost penniless and due to the kindness of a towkay from his own hometown, soon found a job as a coolie working for the towkay. Remember those old photos of coolie carrying sacks of rice from the tongkangs at the Singapore River? That’s was my father’s first job.

The towkay’s name was Ong. He came to NanYang years ago from FuQing and had businesses primarily in Indonesia. Another luminary from FuQing who had settled in Indonesia and later became famous was Liem Sioe Liong the founder of Indonesia’s Salim Group.

My father worked hard but he knew he wasn’t going anywhere as a coolie. He later switched job to go into construction. He became a “kepala” a supervisor at a construction site and it was there that he met my mother, a samfu lady (Females working in a site, typically carrying construction materials for mixing or bricks to the bricklayers for laying). My mother had resigned herself to a life of spinsterhood when my father decided she is the lady he wanted to marry. My mother was 29 when she married him – very old when you considered girls were married as young as 15 or 16 that time.

Life was tough during the war. After the Japanese surrendered, my father became a trishaw rider and he told us he saved a tidy sum of money from transporting those crazy and drunk ang mohs celebrating the end of the war. They often pay him in British and American currencies! After a couple of months it was enough for him to set up a small coffee shop at Wayang Street in Chinatown with 3 other friends from FuQing. Later, one by one, they sold their share to him and soon he had a coffee shop all his own. My father eventually became a relatively successful businessman but definitely not in the same league as Liem Sioe Liong. When the government decided to resettle the area in the early 80’s for road widening and conservation; my mother recalled my father “cried like a woman” the day he finally moved out of his first coffee shop.

My father’s work philosophy was to open his coffee shop 364 and a half days out of 365 days a year. His coffee shop was open even during the morning of the first day of Chinese New Year so that “the old lonely people living nearby could have their morning coffee.” Otherwise, they will have no where else to go. It therefore became a ritual of sort to greet my father Kong Hee Fatt Choy only in the afternoon of Chinese New year day after he had returned from the coffee shop. Business return as usual from the second day of Chinese New Year onwards.

The special guest that would be staying at our house was Mr. Ong. All the kids knew he was an important guest, not a tenant, and we were told often not to make too much noise so as not to disturb him. He mostly kept to himself and once a while would have visitors. My mum cooked most of his meals, and sometimes we kids had to go and “ta pow” for him. Usually in such cases, he would gave enough money to “ta pow” extra for the rest of us. Having Mr. Ong staying with us had some other benefits. We were the first family in the lorong to have a TV set. It was placed downstairs in the living room and occasionally Mr. Ong would come down and watch it, specially the Chinese News.

Some nights, our living room would be packed with neighbors watching TV together with us. It became a communal kind of thing. I remembered clearly the living room was most crowded when they were showing Malay movies featuring “Pontianak” or “Orang Minyak”. Nightmares were in black and white back then. (Will continue later. Thanks)

[GachiMuchi]

Talking about watching TV, I remember that my brothers and I would run to our neighbours to watched TV shows like 如来神掌，神雕侠吕，十兄弟，Ultraman...etc.

[Adam]

Childhood Days (Part 10) “Some debts you just have to pay”

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It must have been around 1965 or 1966. One day, out of the blue, my father told us that the big room upstairs that my sisters and some of my brothers were using had to be vacated. Someone is coming to stay with us and that room would be allocated to him.

New sleeping arrangements had to be found for 6 displaced siblings. The girls were moved into the first bedroom on the ground floor. My eldest brothers all decided they were going to sleep in the living room on canvas beds. The rest of the boys were told they could either sleep with the girls in the small bedroom or they could use the room at the kitchen with the loft. To be honest, I don’t know where they ended up sleeping but they definitely did not sleep for any extended period in the room with the loft. It was just too weird. I wasn’t affected because I was sleeping with my parents.

The big room upstairs had two big wooden windows looking out to the small courtyard and the lorong. In terms of ventilation and brightness, it was the best room in the whole house. It was cleaned up; repainted, new linoleum was laid and brand new furniture that we never had ourselves installed. There was a nice single bed with mattress (mattress is like luxury and decadent then), a cupboard, a writing table and at a corner was a small sofa set!!! All in all a very comfortable studio room was being set up for the visitor, whoever he was.

My father, god bless his soul, came to Singapore in the early 1930s. He was the eldest son from a dirt poor farming family near the city of FuQing in Fujian Province in China. His family combined all their savings to send him to NanYang (South East Asia) to make a better living for him and hopefully for the family. He reached Singapore almost penniless and due to the kindness of a towkay from his own hometown, soon found a job as a coolie working for the towkay. Remember those old photos of coolie carrying sacks of rice from the tongkangs at the Singapore River? That’s was my father’s first job.

The towkay’s name was Ong. He came to NanYang years ago from FuQing and had businesses primarily in Indonesia. Another luminary from FuQing who had settled in Indonesia and later became famous was Liem Sioe Liong the founder of Indonesia’s Salim Group.

My father worked hard but he knew he wasn’t going anywhere as a coolie. He later switched job to go into construction. He became a “kepala” a supervisor at a construction site and it was there that he met my mother, a samfu lady (Females working in a site, typically carrying construction materials for mixing or bricks to the bricklayers for laying). My mother had resigned herself to a life of spinsterhood when my father decided she is the lady he wanted to marry. My mother was 29 when she married him – very old when you considered girls were married as young as 15 or 16 that time.

Life was tough during the war. After the Japanese surrendered, my father became a trishaw rider and he told us he saved a tidy sum of money from transporting those crazy and drunk ang mohs celebrating the end of the war. They often pay him in British and American currencies! After a couple of months it was enough for him to set up a small coffee shop at Wayang Street in Chinatown with 3 other friends from FuQing. Later, one by one, they sold their share to him and soon he had a coffee shop all his own. My father eventually became a relatively successful businessman but definitely not in the same league as Liem Sioe Liong. When the government decided to resettle the area in the early 80’s for road widening and conservation; my mother recalled my father “cried like a woman” the day he finally moved out of his first coffee shop.

My father’s work philosophy was to open his coffee shop 364 and a half days out of 365 days a year. His coffee shop was open even during the morning of the first day of Chinese New Year so that “the old lonely people living nearby could have their morning coffee.” Otherwise, they will have no where else to go. It therefore became a ritual of sort to greet my father Kong Hee Fatt Choy only in the afternoon of Chinese New year day after he had returned from the coffee shop. Business return as usual from the second day of Chinese New Year onwards.

The special guest that would be staying at our house was Mr. Ong. All the kids knew he was an important guest, not a tenant, and we were told often not to make too much noise so as not to disturb him. He mostly kept to himself and once a while would have visitors. My mum cooked most of his meals, and sometimes we kids had to go and “ta pow” for him. Usually in such cases, he would gave enough money to “ta pow” extra for the rest of us. Having Mr. Ong staying with us had some other benefits. We were the first family in the lorong to have a TV set. It was placed downstairs in the living room and occasionally Mr. Ong would come down and watch it, specially the Chinese News.

Some nights, our living room would be packed with neighbors watching TV together with us. It became a communal kind of thing. I remembered clearly the living room was most crowded when they were showing Malay movies featuring “Pontianak” or “Orang Minyak”. Nightmares were in black and white back then. I think Mr. Ong stayed with us for about 2 years. (Will continue later. Thanks)

My earliest recollection of the implication of Mr. Ong’s stay with us was once, in the middle of the night, I got up to pee and I noticed my mother was not in the room. I walked to the bathroom and noticed the kitchen lights were on. I eased myself and went looking for my mother since she wasn’t in the kitchen preparing breakfast. The living room lights were off but the light outside at the courtyard was on. My mother was outside, kneeling on the ground, joss sticks in hands praying to “Tian Gong”, the god of heaven.

I walked up to her, kneeled down next to her, hands clasped together and prayed as well. We got up together and she placed the joss sticks on a small red urn hung on the wall. I noticed she was crying. I asked her why were she praying at that hour and she turned and told me, “Your father had been arrested by the police and he is in jail.” At that time, I did not really understand the implication of what she said, but since she was crying, I cried too.

A couple of clarifications before I continue: This particular posting (Part 10) actually consists of my personal recollections over the years of the events that led to my father’s incarceration. Included are my research into the history of Indonesia and Singapore during those difficult years. I knew later that my father went to jail because he was harboring an illegal refugee. What I did not know until much later was the historical events that led to Mr. Ong coming over illegally to Singapore to stay.

Mr. Ong was a successful Chinese businessman with his base in Jakarta. Before the war, immigration controls were nearly non-existent or if there were any, a small amount of money will solve any problem. Mr. Ong, and many traders like him were allowed in and out of Singapore easily. In fact, Mr. Ong considered Singapore his second home and had many friends here.

Fast track to 1963. Indonesia President Sukarno had for many years been leaning towards other Asian communist states. In 1963, he was vehemently opposed to the formation of the Malaysian Federation, consisting of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak and Sabah. From 1963 to 1965, Indonesia adopted a policy of “Konfrontasi” or confrontation against the Malaysian Federation. This event is best known by the bombing of Macdonald House in Singapore in March 1965, where 3 people died.

For the Chinese, doing business in Indonesia always involved aligning and bribing the right people. Mr. Ong, I guess had aligned himself with the people loyal to Sukarno. However, in September 1965, Suharto, backed by the western powers, took over and started a reign of terror against the communists and their sympathizers in Indonesia. A note from wikipedia “History of Indonesia”:

The scale of the massacre is unknown. The CIA estimates 250,000

killed. The head of the Indonesia state security system later estimated

the toll at over half a million; Amnesty International gave the figure

of "many more than one million." Whatever the numbers, no one

doubts that there was incredible butchery. Seven-hundred-fifty-

thousand more were arrested, according to official figures, many of

them kept for years under miserable conditions without trial.

President Sukarno was overthrown and the military ruled

unchallenged. Meanwhile the country was opened to Western

exploitation, hindered only by the rapacity of the rulers.

Bottom line was: In Indonesia from 1965 to 1966, they were slaughtering Chinese people by the tens of thousands, especially those aligned with Sukarno. Mr. Ong fearing for his life, took cover in Singapore.

There was just one problem. Singapore had became newly independent in August 1965, and was still extremely wary of Indonesia. Konfrontasi was still going on. I would not be surprised if at that time, it would be extremely difficult if not impossible for Indonesians to visit Singapore. And so, Mr. Ong probably entered Singapore illegally and was harbored by my father.

Years later, my father would reflect on that period and rused over the fact that Mr. Ong had a lot of other friends back then in Singapore, probably much more successful ones too, but no one would dare to harbor him. It took him, a coolie turned small businessman, from the same hometown that would stuck out his neck for him. For that, he spent 8 months in Changi prison.

And the reason he did it? It was because of the very first break Mr. Ong gave him when he came from China. Mr. Ong gave him a job. It was simply obligation. The one and only time my father said this to me, he looked at me with a faraway look in his eyes, “My youngest son, some debts in life you just have to pay.”

[Adam]

Below is a message sent to me by a gentleman, probably old enough to be my contemporary. It was so good, I just had to share it with you guys. I am leaving out his name for obvious reasons. He titled his message "Thanks for the memories." Well, my friend, same to you too.

*****************************************************************

Hi Adam

I have been reading your postings with immense interest. It was like a ride on the Time Machine fast backward and I could relate historically with all your narrations. In the process, I am behooved how far we have arrived.

What distinguishes you is your uncanny ability to recollect your childhood period and how you were more mature in the sexual sense.

Randomly, my recollection of games or activities children engaged in then are:

1. playing 5 stones (yes, no gender discrimination then because there were, if ever, any toys in sight)

2. digging a hold in the soil or ground to play marbles

3. foraging the leaves for a particular species of spiders

4. keeping beetles in matchboxes

5. catching guppies in the drains

6. drawing a certain pattern on the ground and skipping or hopping on it

7. skipping robes (this was not a solitary game that one does for aerobic for fitness nowadays)

8. flying kites (which you so vividly related)

9. keeping Saimese fishs

10. the dexterity of playing with rubber bands

11. (I can’t find the word for this object. It had 3 birds feathers held at the base by round rubber sheets or paper as weight and you hit it with your feet for as many counts as possible)

12. spinning wooden knots

The sounds of yesteryears no longer heard in urban life are the incessant chirping of crickets at night and the hoarse crocking of frogs during the wet season.

You mentioned Enid Blyton. The most precious possession I had was I book I won in my first year of school for attaining a certain number of stars at the end the school term. “Noddy Goes To Town” was significant in that I never own anything until then, my parents being very poor.

I also remember having to attend two school sessions for the first year of schooling, English in the morning session at Kallang Primary and Chinese in the afternoon session at Geylang Chinese. I was shown my way to school only once and after that I had to make it on my own.

Speaking of being poor, I remember my elder brother got a sever whipping from my father with a belt for being caught holding on to a lorry with one hand while bicycling behind the vehicle with the other hand. You see, there was a fine to be paid.

When the race riots of 1964 that you touched on broke out, I was too young to know comprehend the event. I only recall how my mother trembles with fear because father was out country. Three years before this, I had witnessed a similar fear in my mother when the Bukit Ho Swee fire continued to burn. This time however I shared her fear because the angry glow of the fire could be seen in the sky and we are living in an attap house. Father was away and my sisters were clutching wooden stools for comfort.

Perhaps you have something to reminisce on about the fire for the interest of BW readers?

The latest post by blowingwind about the bands of urchins “rioting” down the streets in pursuit of kites without any regard for their lives is oh so true that only people who have lived through this period of time will tell you. Come to think of it… it is sheer madness.

Please spare yourself replying me as you understandably have many other PMs.

Regards

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Game #11 is call Chatek. #12, is spinning a top. I am quite good at it actually.

I do not have personal recollection of the fire at Bukit Ho Swee. I guess I was too young to know. My grandmother was staying in an attap house in Tiong Bahru at the time. I guess it would be close enough for her to be affected too although I could not recalled my parents talking this. Perhaps you can share it with us what happened from your own personal perspective. It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Guest stick]

For so long I have never read a good essay like what you have wrote here. It just like reading a story book, watching a series moive. Picture and motion keep coming out of my brain, I can't tell whether those thing you mention here is thing happening to me or other already. I was here last night chasing and reading your story until mid-night 2am. Story of what you say keep coming out of my mind even when I an at work today. All and all I just wanted to thank you for keeping me late at night.

Just wonder you will wrote a book or not, hehehe...

[Pickles]

Well, Adam, you asked your readers to pen their early experiences. My circumstances were very different to yours. So different that I will keep them short as they will be boring to others.

When I was aged 8 I was bundled off to a boarding school of 50 boys and a few schoolmasters in the heart of the English countryside in an 18th century mansion set in 350 acres of land. The War had just ended and almost everything was either not available or rationed. I still have my brown ration book. We had electricity but water was so scarce that in one term of 12 weeks I had only one bath. I got into trouble for standing up in front of the school to ask the head when we would get a clean shirt as we had worn the same one for 6 weeks. We must have been a smelly lot.

Every meal was a sausage is my recollection, but I enjoyed almost every minute of the stay in that school. Discipline was strict and the head would cane us for doing almost anything wrong. The usual punishment though was the bad mark system. If you scored 5 or more in a week your name was read out at lunch on Saturdays. The headmaster would then with a grave voice say: ”All those go and stand outside my study door after lunch”. We were terrified. The rest of us would then rush out to the basement locker room which was under the head’s study. There we would hear the whish of the cane and the sharp strike on the backside while the boy was bent over a chair. The head used either a sawn off cricket bat, or -- for the worst cases – a horse whip which was much more painful. He gave either four or six strokes. Some boys screamed which made it much worse for those waiting outside his study to be caned.

One night when I was 12 the head came up to my dormitory in which there were eight of us boys about to sleep. He turned on the lights and sat on my bed. There followed the most terrifying few minutes of my stay at that school. The head, in a slow and quiet voice, intoned: “I’m going to tell you a story. One person in this room has taken it upon himself to punish junior boys by taking them to the stables. There he thrashed them with a conveyor belt until their buttocks were black and blue. I am going to give that person the hardest thrashing I have ever given in my life, and he will never forget it.” He paused for effect as we all wondered who it was. Then he said” RxxxxxxT – get down to my study at once”. We were petrified as we stood outside the door to hear what was happening downstairs. R got 12 strokes with the horsecrop. He came back to the dorm crying and we were too frightened to ask to see his bum. His parents came the next day to take him away for good.

It was in that dorm that I had my first awakening. I found a strange attraction towards bulging biceps. Yes, even at that age we had nice rounded firm biceps. The lad in the next bed to me would flex his for me every night and I would fall asleep stroking it. I became famous for that and people would queue up to show me their arms as the effect on me was apparent.

That obsession carried on with me as I moved to the next boarding school where I stayed until I was 18, always finding lads willing to flex their increasingly large arms for me. The attraction remains with me to this day but now I go for hunkier men. Yummy!

[Adam]

Thank you Mr. Stick for your compliments. I am glad you enjoyed my recollections. I was beginning to be afraid that no one is reading this thread due to the paucity of related comments. And no, I am not writing a book...though I might compile it later. I am writing these postings fresh from my memory exclusively for this forum. I have an on-line journal which I use to archive these postings. Nothing extra there that you can't read here.

Mr. Pickles, what can I say? You are obviously an excellent story teller. I think I speak for others when I say your recollection of your boarding school days was definitely not boring. For those people like me who are unfamiliar with the British education system, your story was very interesting. Please keep on sharing. It is very refreshing to read about another person's growing-up experience, especially when it happened in another country. A bit of Enid Blyton there I shoud say.

Thanks again for sharing and keep it coming.

[xiix]

Hi Adam,

I read the thread about activities children played with and how you kept saying how old you are. I am 31 and by God! I am familiar with ALL the things listed. Unless I am in a time warp or you are not honest with your age?

By the way, Game #6 is call Hop scotch. A variation of marbles is where you draw a cirle and then try and knock your opponent's marbles out of the ring. Also, there are 2 types of marble, the glass patterned ones and the rock hard white ones (some comes with ball bearing!) Oh yes, who can forget zero point with the rubber band rope.

How come nobody mention the 10cents paper ball? and the sticky gooey thing that comes with a stick and you can blow a balloon out of it? My Mom banned us from playing it after an urban legend of cancer scare...oh and the 20cecnts black bag smorgasbord. If you are really lucky, you actually get a dollar note inside! The best I ever managed was 50 cents.

I also remembered in 1984 when there was a horrifying urban legend of a ponti anak doing her rounds in AMK Ave 10. According to the white heated gossip, 2 boys and 2 girls were sucked dry of their blood and man, did that story help keep us kids in for a good 6 months.

As for layang (kites), I recall how my Mom taught us how to make one with coconut sticks (ya lum sao - the fine vermicelli like sticks) and news paper cos we were so poor (perils of a large family). Still, I think as compared to the PS2/ XBOX/ Ipod/ Mobile Phone generation aka selfish Gen Y, my childhood is much more colourful. I think in 10 yearstime, children in highly urbanised countries will get a shock when they realised that pork chop is from an animal and not a clingwrap tray from NTUC...

Sigh, man, I do feel like a dinosaur at 31 now!

[Blog]

Below is a message sent to me by a gentleman, probably old enough to be my contemporary.  It was so good, I just had to share it with you guys.  I am leaving out his name for obvious reasons.  He titled his message "Thanks for the memories."  Well, my friend, same to you too.

Hi Adam

I am flattered that you incorporated it in your thread. I had reservation about posting it because has no relevance to sexual awakening. As for the Bukit Ho Swee fire as well as other historical events of that time, I was, like you, too young to have any lasting impressions of them and cannot shed any personal perspective.

[Blog]

I read the thread about activities children played with and how you kept saying how old you are. I am 31 and by God! I am familiar with ALL the things listed. Unless I am in a time warp or you are not honest with your age? 

How come nobody mention the 10cents paper ball? and the sticky gooey thing that comes with a stick and you can blow a balloon out of it? My Mom banned us from playing it after an urban legend of cancer scare...oh and the 20cecnts black bag smorgasbord. If you are really lucky, you actually get a dollar note inside! The best I ever managed was 50 cents.

Hard to believe that xiix at 31 is familiar with all those things while I don't. Not that I doubt him.

Yes, the second paragraph jolts my memory, but only a little. Maybe for me it is good not to remember too much.

[StrikeEagle]

I am also in this age group where mention of such games brings back recollections.

I pasted together this picture of Paper-Ball, Five-Stone, Chatek, Beh-long, KutiKuti.

Thanks for the memory.

[Adam]

Thanks for all the replies!

I had been neglecting some things I should be doing so I had been a little busy this week. Nothing that is going to kill me.

Mr Xiix, yes, I remebered those games that you mention. Especially the gooey stuff you can make ballons from. I think it was made of glue and sniffing them can be addictive. But back then, nobody knew. One fun thing to do was to make lots of smaller ballons and sticking them together to make something. My ballon snowman looked good.

Mr. Blog, you are most welcome. Please continue to add to this thread. It need not be anything fancy or even sexual. I think people here like to read about realistic growing up experiences of others.

And finally Mr StrikeEagle, I love your montage! How did you ever do that? Haha. It is lovely. I wonder if it was a boy or girl playing 5 stones? Thanks.

Will start on my next story soon. Give me a bit of time. Thanks for accompanying me on this journey back to the past.