The Conversation With The Devil (not suitable reading for underaged kids!)

You would have thought that the Devil would appear in flaming red skin, complete with 2 horns and a pointed sharp tail, and holding a 3-headed spear that would have made a lousy challenge to the modern-day shotgun. But the Devil came in the shape of Mister FN, a not-so-fantastic-looking guy who was a foot shorter than me and took pains to gel his hair up straight to make up for his lack of vertical distance. You might have imagined the Devil to select a better body for his reincarnation. This Devil was in disguise.

The appointment was for lunch. And at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mister FN and I gathered at the students' canteen and extended friendly greetings to each other. We got our food and sat down.

"I am going to get married next month!... We bought a condo... must wait for her to finish her exams first... ..."

It was amusing the word marriage could come from the tongue of a man I had long considered to be the Master of flings. Vividly stucked in my memory was Mister FN replying to an SMS of a girl. He had wanted her to get out of his life - vanish like a puff of smoke. She had wanted to be with him forever. It was not uncommon that a guy was trying to break up with a girl; just that, Mister FN already was in a relationship with another person when he got to know this girl. The big problem was he was only looking for sex. He had bedded her umpteen times and had left her in the midst of not knowing whether her first experience of coitus was just pure lusty physical contact or an expression of undeniable love. This girl had been led into a pool of lies by the Devil; she had been wishing this was going to be the man of her life.

Cheated. She had been cheated. She wasn't the only one on the list. There were more, but those were in the past.

Marriage was in the cards of a man like that? Great - maybe now he had finally begun to comprehend the lack of sincere true love in his life and had wanted to redeem a more appropriate livelihood by settling down and setting up a family.

"Look over there."

He pointed to a lady wearing a thin brown sleeveless and collarless top, and a jeans skirt that was worn low so that much of the lower tummy was visible. Her long wavy hair, dyed golden brown, was flowing down lusciously onto her straightened back and ample bosom. He was going to tell me something - something that would deeply offend my senses.

"That girl wants it. Can you feel it? I can feel it. Damn, she is hot..."

He went on to elaborate how he was going for a dinner date tonight with a business undergrad. It was to happen without the knowledge of his fiancée. He didn't have to tell me exactly what he was doing. He was still practicing infidelity wantonly. He wanted to have mistresses after mistresses; one woman was not enough to satisfy his taste for variation. However, this Devil was not practicing polygamy. At least in polygamy, the man truly loves all his wives and works hard to provide for them and protect them from harm. This animal, staring at me over his plate of human food, was nauseating. I felt like I was in a farm.

I cannot believe a person, not even looking half as good as Tom Cruise, could manage to literally snuggle down so many girls behind his belt. What if he were Tom Cruise?

"Come on, Genghis. The girls just want it. Everyone just wants to have a kick once a while... ..."

Mister FN felt that girls, be it whether they were single, attached or married, want to be thrilled by an adulterous love affair every once so often. So, he presented himself as the Hero trying to save every damsel from the distress of not having enough different guys on their beds every night. He is doing them all a favour!

Yes, he is an outrageous tiny young man. But the sad truth is that everything written above occurred without a doubt. And it can be postulated how Mister FN is not the only such man running around seducing woman to allow him to warm their beds and bodies; there must be more out there. If in every 100 man there is one Devil, then in Singapore, from the age of 20 to 40, there must be 1000 of them lurking around the dark corners, waiting to pounce on your girlfriends or wives or daughters.

Thankfully, the world is not lopsided. Mister FN was having lunch with his nemesis today - nope, I wouldn't dare call myself God. There are good men around. But just like the Devil, they are all in disguise. No woman can be certain which guy has a red tail and which guy has a pair of dove wings. She can only guess. On the contrary, the Devil may have rightly pointed out the truth about some woman wanting a fling or two. For that, I think the Devil has found his match. For others, I just hope the damsel can get over the fact that she has trusted the wrong knight.

The Passing of Time

In a couple of days' time, I shall be sitting for the second part of the 2nd MBBS professional exams. And after that, I shall be flying to Melbourne for a month to experience the medical system over there. I am astonished at how time flies, and how within a year, so many things have changed.

The exact physical environment around me has altered substantially. I no longer have a best friend who buys food for me when we go out and gets me things that I desire but have no guts or money to obtain. My favourite karaoke buddy JW has dumped her ex and found a new love whom she affectionately names Jing Ge Ge (Brother Jing). The other buddies M, LP and D are estranged from me too because of my estrangement from J. Right now, all I really have left is a group of "Beng-ish" friends KZ, PH and LL who will never volunteer to buy food or go to the aquarium shop to get me a goldfish.

Of course, I have got my dearest Darling, who never fails to bring a smile to my face whenever I see her. But even she cannot be around all the time when I want her to. The nature of her job has rendered her rather non-existent except perhaps for 7 days in a month. And the only certain and constant affection I get now is from my family members who are always there for me and who will still buy food for me when we go out. And maybe they will never get me the goldfish from the aquarium shop; but, definitely, the Seiko watch that Ekin Cheng is wearing on the life-sized ad is not something too expensive to be expected from them.

My mental self has matured to an extent I can't quite quantify. I thought this process of maturation has stopped as soon as I left the Army, but I was so badly wrong. My moral values were challenged time and again over the past 12 months, and each time, I'd been required to exercise such advanced decision-making skills that I reckoned my hair was turning white because of that! Perhaps I've been too over-protected in the past. I know what lies out there - this I am very sure - but whether I have enough practical experience is truly doubtful.

In fact, I now believe my future is not so certain. Not that I never predicted those changes; just that I never expected them to come true. This possession of prophecy is getting very spooky and it is filling me with ambivalent feelings. A few of my predictions are still waiting to happen. The anticipation is messing up my nerves, but at the same time it prevents me from getting a big shock when they do happen.

And being the pessimistic fellow that I am, my predictions never cover the better things in life. I prefer to let good things happen without prior knowledge.

Why?

Because I love pleasant surprises.