James and I worked out an arrangement. In exchange for the rent and utilities, I could stay until after my job probation period and had saved enough to find a new place. I kept to myself in my room while James taught his student twink, innuendo intended. Once as they were showering together, I heard James remark “This is called soap” and threw up a bit in my mouth. I guess I was too smart, too solid, too old to fall in love with.
It was not easy. I was earning less money than I did in Singapore, despite having a graduate degree. I came to realize I was working for a company and boss that took advantage of newcomers; I found out I was earning a third less than my Canadian colleague who was hired after I started, and I heard a story of how another newcomer was forced to accept a salary downgrade because they had purposely given him the contract just before his work permit expired. It was not as if I had a choice. I had to take the job if I wanted to stay. I took the job to move to Toronto because of James. So what was the point of all this?
The company was located in the outskirts so I had to ride to the end of the main subway line and switch. There were usually seats available and I would sit at the ends where I could lean my head against the partition for a nap. Through daily dull repetition, I began to notice and recognize an older distinguished man who rode in the same subway car. He would smile at me when our eyes met. Over the next few commutes together, he began to sit in the row of seats opposite me, then in the same row of seats, then beside me. One morning he folded his coat on his lap, the top of his coat covered the bag on my lap. “I’m sorry, do you mind?” he smiled. “It’s ok” I replied. Still smiling, he held his briefcase on his coat with one hand, and reached under the coat with the other and fondled me. I had no feeling. about that, about everything and life in general; I must have been severely depressed and disassociated. Until I moved and took a different route to work, whenever we were in the same subway car, he would molest me beneath his coat and briefcase till the end of the subway line whereupon we headed off in opposite directions – and I let him. I did not think then it was that terrible, I was an empty vessel. Given my past relationships, some part of me was glad someone liked me enough to molest me. How pathetic. Once I met up with a guy in Singapore on a date who turned out to be a policeman, I was extorted to have repeated rough sex with him because he could arrest me for being gay (as homosexuality is illegal in Singapore). My life is full of such pathetic stories. This is just one more.
One night I went to a piano bar in the gay village, tired of the tedium of a colorless life devoid of my usual outlets of nature, photography and music. It was open mic night, I put my name in the jar. When my turn came, I got up and sang “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess. Tepid applause. Whatever. I sat back at the bar and ordered another drink. Bob came up and sat next to me, he told me he enjoyed the aria and we started chatting.
Bob told me he used to be a self-employed renovator but now he was reduced to doing odd jobs that his friends threw his way, and crashing at a different place each night. The Toronto police did this to him. Seven years ago, Bob had parked his van in the gay village and was about to get intimate with someone in the back when a group of undeclared plainclothes officers smashed the window of his van, pulled him out, kicked him and punched him, while calling him “cocksucker” and “faggot.” before arresting him and detaining him for 3 hours without water or medical attention despite his bleeding wounds. The Toronto police tried to cover-up their gaybashing and the case dragged through the courts for years. As a result Bob became bankruptcy and lost his house but he was determined to fight no matter how long it took. That struck a chord with me, I knew what it was like to struggle against overwhelming odds. I wanted to give him a break that I was denied. I kissed him and said “Why don’t you live with me?”
That was how Bob came to live with me. He would leave to do some odd jobs or other when I left for work, and returned in the evening when I provided him dinner and a place to sleep. We largely stayed in my room and shared my mattress. James and Bob hated each other. After a month of mediating their complaints and arguments, I finally found a cheap apartment and moved out of James’ place. Bob moved in with me. He started to tell other people we were boyfriends. I did not see it that way but I figured it was no different than being forced into an arranged marriage so I let it slide. Love only brought suffering; Eric, Erik, Marcus, James. I did not need love.
I accompanied Bob to court hearings for moral support. I fed him and I kept house. It was a small single room apartment so we shared the bed. He tried to have sex the first night I invited him to stay over, “I don’t have to come” I told him. That was the truth, but not the whole truth. I stopped having orgasms since I was 13, I could not come. Since then sex was something to be endured not enjoyed with partners and flings during my courtesan days and hypersexual manic phases when I pursued that pleasure that always eluded me. Because I had no sexual desire of my own, I allowed others to do things to me. It was inevitably an unpleasant arduous ejaculation. I grew to avoid and fear sex as I knew I would disappoint and be disappointed. With Bob, I finally gave up my schizoid fantasy that I would find someone who would free me from my frigid prison; then I would be able to love and open up and empathize like ‘normal’ people. I don’t need sex, perhaps it would be better without sex and intimacy. After all, I already have the knack for falling into ill-defined wrong-headed relationships.
I was promoted at work and became responsible for managing the company’s global data processing teams. This meant co-ordinating work between teams in Europe, Asia, and North America across time zones, which meant I hardly slept or rested. A few months prior to the expiration of my work permit, I asked my boss for a new letter of employment but he always had an excuse for why HR could not provide me the letter of employment I needed to renew my work permit. The day before my work permit expired, he handed me a letter of employment for a third less than I was currently making. I was furious. After all I have done and given, they dared to pull this shit off. Not only did I take on more responsibility, I had developed new innovative techniques that established the company’s reputation to a global client base. My research projects broke company-wide sales records and I kept quiet when they reneged on the sales-incentive bonus clause in my contract with some lame excuse, capping it at a measly $2K (when my work single-handedly brought in over a million dollars). I accomplished all this at a third less of what they paid Canadians who did far far far less, and they thought they could prey on me to accept an even lower salary. Fuck these ungrateful assholes. “Thank you very much,” I told him as I tossed the letter “I guess today is my last day since my work permit expires tomorrow.” I collected my things off my desk and left.
I tried applying for another work permit but was rejected which meant I had no job and nowhere to go. Then I was notified by immigration that they lost or misplaced some papers related to my Canadian residency. I scrambled to send them replacements and they informed me my application would be delayed for another 3-6 months. My visitor visa would have run out by then and I would have to leave the country. Bob offered to marry me but I turned him down. I did not want to marry him. Besides immigration would not have taken kindly to my marriage to a bankrupt person fighting a court case against the Toronto Police for the past few years.
If my life were a story
Destiny (Sacrificial Trees)
it would surely be tragedy.
Pawn of fickle fates;
my talent and power
all gone to waste
not entirely by choosing.
No matter how I try
I return to the same path
where Sphinx awaits
with questions with no answers
but a certain conclusion
This continual struggle since I left Singapore wore down whatever remaining resources and resolve I had, my bipolar depression began spiraling out of control again. I could not seek treatment even if I wanted to because I was afraid it might show up in the comprehensive medical examination required for Canadian PR application. I had come so far and endured for so long, that I could not risk any potential cause for rejection. Instead I drank until I was unconscious.
I grew even more isolated as I gradually lost touch with the few friends I used to be close to at one time, whom I could confide in to some extent; Marc, Margie, Eric, Erik, John, Robert. I did not tell them what happened, how could I burden them? The chasm between the happiness and milestones of their existence and my neverending nightmare of a life was unbridgeable. I was resigned that I would die alone since adolesence. Silence was preferable to repeating the trajectory of my pain. “Sorry for not being in touch sooner,” I used to write “I wanted to wait until I had some good news to share”. The space between my correspondence grew further apart until I stopped writing altogether when the good news stopped coming. I ran out of options. I ran out of my last shred of desperate hope.
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