Becoming Ah Lan Toh: Chow Kit Chronicles, #1

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is coincidental.

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Cover image: Shades of emotions by Sharon Christina Rørvik/Unsplash

About the book

It is the swinging 60s in seedy Chow Kit, Kuala Lumpur, in recently renamed South East Asian country of Malaysia. Nightclub singer Ah Lan can make the whole room stand up, in more ways than one. Her musical coach Sammi is looking for love from a GI on R&R from the war in Vietnam.  Elderly neighbors the Tans are trying to fix her up with Affendi, and he does not really bartend at a nightclub. While Ah Lan puzzles over the subtle changes happening to her body, her dressmaker Madam Chan invokes the spirits. All these people brought together in an explosive ending witness Ah Lan becoming Ah Lan Toh.

Epigraph

The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman's grace.

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From ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf

Chapter 1

When her falsetto went up to a certain pitch, something under their flies suddenly kicked up. For the older men with not so perfect hearing, it felt like a length of balloon rising up in their trousers.

The period was the 60s. The fashion was long hair, for men and women. The clothes were crazy—groovy—colors and wide bell bottoms. But tonight the audience didn't see any of these on the stage, in this nightclub in the hustle and bustle of Chow Kit Road, right in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, in the recently renamed south east Asian country of Malaysia.

The aged musicians, behind her, looked as if they were squatting. Their stools rendered them discreet. As did their nondescript—brown, grey, or black—Chinese pajamas, with white cuffs peeping under the shirt sleeves. And their inert faces, eyes down, belied the nimble and professional manner they fingered, plucked, blew, and thrummed these quaint instruments—erhu, gushing, dizi, laba, pipa, and a big drum.

The audience didn’t care about the musicians. Their attention was drawn to the heavily rouged singer in a tight cheongsam. A fulgent spotlight trained on her. Like a lighthouse beacon finding a banshee singing across rough seas to lure sailors. Rather, more like a Shanghai songstress. She wore a tight corset that squeezed her waist, and a brassiere a size or two bigger, to hide her inchoate breasts.

Whatever the shortcomings some would say about her breasts—if they knew—one could not about her voice. It was pristine, and unlike her chest, not at all flat. Any musical director from any West End theater—if they intended to make a Mandarin version of Funny Girl—would kill to have such a pitch perfect sound projected onto their much bigger halls. But Ah Lan didn't have the luck, or happenstance, to be exposed to people from that western entertainment industry. At best, the closest in the way of a western audience was singing in front of these groups of American GIs.

At this moment in time some war was still being fought north and outside of the country, in far away Vietnam. But no matter the gore, the horror, and depravity there, the soldiers, the ones on the side of democracy, these Americans, they still had time to plan their R&R to Ah Lan's country. It was not so much to drink Tiger beer but to attend musical events they heard about from other GIs who returned fully satisfied, if one could justify that word for an experience beyond their wildest expectations.

By this token, Ah Lan could draw the toughest and the bravest American GI soldiers on R&R all the way from Vietnam to this place. A couple of them were now sitting watching and listening, gripping their beers in their big hands. They didn’t care that they couldn't understand a word of what was coming out of Ah Lan's mouth. Beneath their flies, some of them were straining over the biggest and hardest boners they had ever gotten in the presence of any female.

At the ending notes of the song, Ah Lan bowed, her fringe of hair falling forward. She remained in this submissive attitude for some moments, kholed eyes lowered. The floor of the stage was speckled with stains, with spilled stuff—the cleaning staff hadn't done their job thoroughly. The coyness she was mimicking seemed to go down well with foreigners. She was very pleased—no, happy—with the applause before her. But the clapping could have risen louder still, if some of the male clientele were not so preoccupied with trying to shield or press down their bulging crotches. All through her rendition of the piece of Shanghai musical, some of them had been entertaining images of themselves and her in some manner of entanglement.

The lighting was dim at the tables, almost dark if not for the low reddish ambience. Only after the applause subsided did Ah Lan lift up her head. She managed to catch a glimpse of Sammi among the audience. He sat at a table close to the front of the stage, with big white man across from him. The man was clapping but not as enthusiastically as the others around him. Unlike them, he wasn't whooping, with fists punching the air, as if hitting at some Vietcong above him. She could see Sammi watching his sedate neighbor, with a shadow of a smile. She wondered if the big man was some new friend.

*

Sammi, her music tutor, worked for the local television station TV Malaysia, directing  musicals numbers, mostly in the Malay language, occasionally with performing artistes from other races, Chinese and Indian. He was employed on some freelance basis by her manager, Ah Chong, a fat nasty looking chinaman. He was protective of his girls, but she had seen him acting like a real dog at times. But so far it was only with his other girls, not her. Probably because he thought they were less talented than her. They couldn't sing as well as her, and draw such a crowd. Before tonight, Ah Lan knew she could sing but by Chong's estimate she still wasn’t that good enough to draw a regular audience night after night. Which was why he brought in Sammi to teach her the finer points of the art of singing.

On the first day when she was introduced to Sammi, she attempted to butter him up, but discovered that he was all seriousness and no funny business. He ran a tough regime, teaching her how to project her voice without help from a microphone. And, of course, how to sing in falsetto, even though she figured that she could have easily cut it—she was a female after all. But Sammi proved her wrong there. During one lesson he got her to try a popular Mandarin piece, a hit in China, especially Shanghai. It seemed that any female songstress worth her salt in that country was belting it out and finding willing and enthusiastic audiences. Aware of that, Chong instructed Sammi to teach her that song.

Sammi demonstrated how one sang the piece and astonished her with the purity and authenticity of his falsetto. What struck her was how feminine the sound coming out from him was, especially if she closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes, she only saw a thirty something but still good looking Indian man. He was waving his arms as if he was conducting a symphony.

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Sammi was not the name you’d find in his birth certificate.  His parents named him, at birth, Saminathan s/o Muniandy. Growing up, and reaching his twenties, he began to dislike that name. Being called Saminathan made him cringe. And it was even worse when someone said his entire name out loud, adding for good measure his father's name. It was a mouthful to most of his Malay and Chinese friends at school. Until one day when a close friend teased him and christened him Sammi. He grew to like the name, and encouraged people he met to call him Sammi. It sounded western, and as he wasn't as dark as his parents, he imagined himself as a dark westerner, like some kind of Latin man. He spelt it Sammi, with an 'i', if anyone asked.

*

Sammi watched Ah Lan finish bowing to resounding applause. The low bowing was one of those lessons he taught her. One other trick he also imparted to her was his method of bringing her falsetto to a particular level of frequency. But what he didn't tell her was this would impact upon the primary auditory cortex of the listener's brain and engender an instantaneous erection.

Which was the reason he was here tonight. Well, not to also experience this phenomenon  but to confirm it. And he was satisfied with what he could observe around him: men astonished at suddenly experiencing an impromptu erection.

Sammi had perfect hearing, but he was inured to the effects of Ah Lan's singing. His cock remained flaccid. Only his scrutiny of the big man could trigger a reaction under his slacks.

He turned to gaze at his neighbor. Even though the man wasn't wearing any GI khakis, like the other white guys, but some batik shirt and loose trousers, Sammi was sure he was American.  He was, well, big—huge, in fact. Not that he hadn't come across men of that size before. He had, when he was studying overseas, in England, for his music degree. It was just that this man emanated a rawness, a quality he never found in Englishmen he had met.

He was also certain that the man wasn't aware of his sidelong gaze. The man looked too preoccupied with other things, like Ah Lan, probably. Also, as the room was dark, Sammi felt safe, without being caught looking. So he continued to let his eyes rove over the GI, slowly, from the head downwards.

He approved of the short stubby crop of his blond hair, and there was a day or two worth of facial growth. It enhanced the man's appeal; he appeared more gruff and a little dangerous. And Sammi liked that in a man. He lowered his gaze further, and appreciated the light colored hairs peeping out of the top of his opened collar.  

Confident that it was too dark for anyone to notice, he rubbed the flat of his hand over his crotch, under the table. He squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment, in a swoon. He imagined his hand roving over the camber of the man's chest and grazing over pale pink nipples. He opened his eyes to take in the man's arm, resting on the table. It was meaty and knotted with muscles. He figured that it could be as big as his thighs. He could picture both big arms wrapped around his own lithe body. He was envisioning his head resting on the man's broad shoulder, the man's chin nuzzling his hair.

Ah Lan had now left the stage, and he guessed that the Americans—or for that matter, any man in the room—wouldn’t be interested in any other act after that last performance. There was a lot of scraping of chairs as the audience heaved themselves up, still a bit drunk from the beer and alcohol—after checking their crotches.

The big man got up to leave. Sammi did the same. He decided he would risk tailing the man. Who knew, he smiled, he could get lucky tonight.

Chapter 2

Ah Lan minced down the stage. She threaded, on high heels, through the dark passageway. She headed toward a door with her name on a piece of cardboard. She had to share a room with other girls on different shifts. The nightclub was opened most hours of the day and night, even in the small hours of the morning. The next act was half an hour away. She was the only one occupying the room now.

She pulled her shoes off in two flicks, landing them into a corner. She dropped herself onto a chair. She rucked up the bottom of her dress, and peeled off her nylons. She strewed them amongst other clothing and articles on the floor and over furniture. Among these disembodied pieces of other girls, scattered about were bits of what looked or used to look like food. They were probably days old, by how desiccated they all looked. She shouldn't wonder if some of the stuff down there were squashed dried lizards, or even what used to be a rat.

After the work she had to put into her performance, and the way she had to control her larynx and project her voice to the back of the hall, as how Sammi taught her, she needed a drink. Rather, a sip of hot tea, with a slice of lemon. And something sweet—not sugar—honey. She liked how the liquid ran down her throat, to soothe the bruised tendons.

She unbuttoned, peeled and shrugged herself out of her tight clothes, and then had to contend with the tighter still corset that constricted her waist. As the corset fell off her, she breathed a sigh of relief. She rummaged around for her non-work clothes somewhere among some other girls' belongings. Finding them—most of their non-work clothing looked similar, but she was sure the ones she retrieved from a chair belonged to hers—she started to put them on, but then remembered that she had to wipe the thick rouge off her face.

Still in her underclothing, she looked for some cream. She lowered herself onto the chair,