Many years ago, I was at a cocktail party where a Singaporean gentleman was regaling us with an astonishing tale that was more than the usual risqué stuff induced by a generous flow of wine.

He was telling us about a friend of his who was regularly enticed by a special attraction of a brothel in Bangkok—the provision of young virgins who actually provided proof of their pristine state, in the form of a virginity certificate signed by two doctors! This was the unfailing lure for hundreds of sex tourists from Japan and other Asian countries that still held to the old traditional belief about how the ageing yang could be revived, even strengthened, by fresh, untouched ying.

In the course of his lively story-telling, after his sixth glass of wine, the gentleman narrator, obviously without realising it, began to use the personal pronoun ‘I’ instead of the third person ‘he’, thereby revealing that it was he himself, not the fictional friend, who had been frequenting the Bangkok brothel.

He described an experience that everyone listened to with intense interest, including myself.

So there he was, well-known businessman, respected member of his community and father of two school-going children, on one of his secret visits to Bangkok that his wife believed to be purely business trips. Upon entering his hotel room, he was, as usual, offered a virgin who came with the necessary certification. She looked no more than fourteen. As usual, he made his demand of having her in the room with him for the whole night.

In the middle of the night, he woke up to find that she was no longer beside him on the bed. His first thought was: ‘She’s run away with my Rolex and my wallet,’ but saw that the items were still on the bedside table. Then he noticed that the bathroom door was slightly ajar, and heard soft sounds coming from inside, as of a child singing to herself. He went to investigate, and found, to his astonishment, the girl squatting on the bathroom floor, playing Five Stones, the simple game played by village children who throw the stones high into the air and then try to deftly catch them with one hand. As she played, the girl hummed some native song to herself.

That was the end of the narrator’s story, and everyone laughed uproariously at the quaintness—someone even said ‘cuteness’—of it all. I remember I felt a wave of nausea and anger sweep over me. I saw a child with her childhood brutally stolen from her. She had probably been sold to the hotel by her own parents living in wretched poverty. Confused by her new role but not daring to cry out as her young body was mauled on the bed, she could only think of those five stones hidden in the pocket of her dress. As soon as the ‘Sir’ fell asleep, she got up noiselessly, took the stones out of her dress pocket, went to the bathroom and claimed back some of the stolen childhood.

Many years later, in a novel, I re-created the whole scene, and made my heroine do what I was too cowardly to do then—go up to the storyteller and tell him to his face what I thought of him. ‘You bastard,’ says my heroine. She stalks out of the room, and then realizes no term could suffice to convey what should have been the world’s outrage against the exploitation of the poor, defenceless children on this earth.

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About Vignettes...

A continuing flow of little, readable pieces that will constitute what I feel is an important 'legacy of values' to leave behind. Read more about Vignettes...