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 tube of balloon rising up in their trousers.
The year was the 60s. The fashion statement was long hair, for both men and women alike. The clothes were crazy, in what they called groovy colours - and there were these wide bell bottoms. But tonight the audience here didn't see any of these on the stage, in this night club 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 backing musicians behind her, on wooden stools, donned nondescript - either brown, grey or black - Chinese pajamas, their white cuffs peeping from under the shirt sleeves. Their inert tanned and leathery faces belied the nimble and professional manner they fingered, plucked, blew, and thrummed these quaint instruments - erhu, gushing,dizi, laba, pipa and a big drum. Their handlers managed to make themselves discreet and practically invisible to the audience; as they should be. Though there was sufficient light for them to read the music sheets, it was never as overwhelming as the sodium lamps above them.
These lights were deliberately trained on the singer. That one single round very bright white light - like a beacon from a lighthouse - spotlighted her on the stage like some alluring banshee singing across rough seas to lure sailors; in this case, soldiers. Tonight, in her snug and shimmering cheongsam, and heavily powdered and rouged, Ah Lan was looking more like a Shanghai songstress transported directly from China.
The only thing detracting from this picture was her chest. You couldn't really call those inchoate mounds breasts. Her chest was practically flat if not for the tight corset squeezing her already tiny waist even smaller still. The thing pushed her breasts higher. And this illusion was further enhanced by a wired bra a size or two bigger.
Whatever the shortcomings some would say about her breasts, one could not concerning her voice. It was pristine and unlike her chest, not at all flat. Any musical director from any West End theatre at the time - 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 she was getting in terms of a western audience was singing in front of these groups of American GIs, in a shoddy cramped hall, in a seedy low class club, within a much seedier part of the city.
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 happening there, the soldiers, the ones on the side of democracy, these Americans, they still had time to plan their R and R to Ah Lan's country. It was not so much to drink the excellent and well known Tiger beer but to attend one of these little musical soirée they got to hear 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 and R all the way from Vietnam to this place. A couple of them were now sitting watching and listening attentively. They were gripping their Tiger beers in their big hands. They were not caring that they couldn't understand a word of what was coming out of Ah Lan's mouth. Beneath their khaki 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 bent her neck and lowered her head to face the dirty floor of the stage. She remained in this submissive attitude for some moments, hiding her kohled eyes behind her shiny straight fringe of hair. Her mimicking coyness seemed to always go down well with foreign audience. She was very pleased - no, happy - with the loud 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 throughout her rendition of the piece of Shanghai musical, some of them had also been entertaining images in their heads, of themselves and her in some manner of entanglement.
The lighting was dim at the tables, almost dark if not for the low red glow. Only after the applause subsided did Ah Lan lift up her head. She managed to catch a glimpse of Sammi sitting among the heaving crowd. He was at a table close to the front of the stage, and there was a big white man sitting opposite him. The man was clapping but not as enthusiastically as the others around him. Unlike them, he wasn't whooping, or punching his fists up in the air, as if hitting at some Vietcong above them. She could see Sammi watching his sedate neighbour. He had a shadow of a smile on his lips. She wondered if the big man was some new friend.
Sammi was her music tutor. He worked as some sort of musical director for the local television station TV Malaysia. He helped to direct musicals, 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. He was a fat nasty looking chinaman but in reality a sweet pussycat underneath. Though he could be protective of his girls, he could be a real dog at times. But so far it was only with his other girls, not her. That was probably because he thought they were less talented than her. They couldn't sing as well as her, nor draw such a crowd. Before tonight, Ah Lan knew she could sing but by Chong's standard or estimate she still was not that good enough to draw a regular audience night after night. Which was why he had employed Sammi. Sammi was brought in to teach her the finer points of the art of singing.
On the first day when she was introduced to Sammi, she attempted to soften 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 woman after all. But Sammi proved her wrong there. During one lesson he got her to try singing 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.
***
Sammi was not his actual name; it was what his parents named him at birth and what you would find on his birth certificate: Saminathan s/o Muniandy. Growing up, and reaching his twenties, he began to dislike that name. It was a time when 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 good friend of his 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 now watched Ah Lan finish bowing gracefully and exit the stage like any professional actor in the West End after a resounding applause from her appreciative audience. It was one of those tricks he taught her in one of his lessons. One other trick he also imparted to her was his method of bringing her falsetto to a particular level of frequency. But he didn't tell her that 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 but to confirm this effect. And he was more than happy with what he could observe around him : men astonished at suddenly experiencing an impromptu erection. As for the effect on a man like Sammi, even though he had perfect hearing, his penis remained flaccid.
He now watched Ah Lan descend the stage with mincing steps, like a geisha in a tight dress, before turning back to gaze again at his big neighbour. 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. Sami was also certain that he wasn't aware of Sammi's sidelong gaze. The man was too preoccupied with other things, like Ah Lan probably. Also, as the room was dark, Sammi felt safe, without being caught. So he continued to let his eyes rove over the GI, slowly, from the head downwards.
He approved of the short stubby crop of the man's 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 little light coloured hairs peeping out of the top of the man's opened collar.
He was inured to Ah Lan's singing and its effect, and only his scrutiny of the man could trigger a similar reaction under his slacks. Under the table, he rubbed the flat of his hand lightly over his crotch. 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 skinny thigh. 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 Sammi's hair.
Ah Lan had now left the stage, and he guessed that after that last performance, the Americans - or for that matter, any man in the room - would not be interested in any other act in her wake. It was time for the audience to depart.
The big man got up to leave. Sammi did the same. He decided he would risk tailing him. Who knew, he might get lucky tonight.