Let's Start From The Very Beginning...

It's a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A, B, C; when I write I'll begin with me, me, me. Me, me, me. It just so happens to be all about me...



So one of my very first memories ever is of me sitting on my mum's lap by the living room window in our house in Hong Kong. My mum and I were anxiously awaiting the arrival of our maid my parents had hired from the Philippines: Maryanne E. We called her Mary for short.

Mary was a very petite girl with hair down to her feet that she always maintained in a neatly origamied bun. I loved watching her wind it up into a leather clasp. I warmed up to her immediately. She was always extremely soft spoken in the presence of my parents, but I clearly remember her cackle when she was gossiping with the neighbours' Filipino "domestic helpers" when our parents were at work.

Having a live-in maid didn't make our family special. My parents were comfortably well-off since both of them worked. My dad decided to move our family from a huge house in Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong for a great new job with Shearson Lehman Hutton. Having one maid was not impressive growing up in Hong Kong. It was expected socially. Having more than one maid was impressive among this self-imposed class system. Having no maid was what was frowned upon.

My older brothers were 5 and 6 when Mary joined our household. I don't think they ever got as close to her as I did since I was around 2 when she started to take care of me. When my parents weren't home at work or out at the country club or dining with friends I wanted to spend every second with Mary. She was a second mum to me. We ate lunch together. We played together. She drew with me and told me how talented I was at putting pencil to paper. She sang me lullabies when it was nap time. She made my favourite tea time snacks. She read me my favourite Mr. Men books when it was bed time. She was also the one who brought me to church for the first time and introduced me to the naked man on the cross! I think I found my first ever BFF.

It was years later when our relationship started to bitter. Mary had every Sunday off. Pretty much every maid had Sundays off and the majority of them would meet in Central for picnics or barbeque at Repulse Bay or Deep Water Bay Beach. It was like a portable, transient mini-Manila in pockets of Hong Kong every Sunday.

One Sunday I decided to go into her room and draw her Jesus that she had over her bed. Halfway through I was so bored I looked around her room to find a new muse or subject matter to draw. I started on an ambitious still life of her fake flowers; boring. What else might she have? Now I might call myself inquisitive, but I am sure many might just call me a nosy bastard. I decided to go through her drawers and as I was rummaging through a drawer I found a magazine that was folded in half lengthwise. I unfolded it and tried to read the cover but I did not know any of the words. It must have been in Tagalog. The only thing I could recognise was a photo of a semi-nude couple on the cover. An inner heat somehow came over me. I turned the pages and found photos and illustrations of naked men and women. This was exactly what I would draw!

I started a new page in my sketch book and immediately started to scribble these images that I had never seen before. I can't be certain but it is not entirely impossible that I might have had a mini-woody. In the middle of my masterpiece, I heard the front door and the chatter of my parents. My dad called out, "Where's my baby?" Being the youngest, I knew he was referring to me and without thinking twice I ran to meet him and wrapped my arms around him, proud that I was called first rather than either of my brothers. I spent the rest of the day with my family -- doing what, I can't recall, but something that kept me so engaged I didn't realise what I had forgotten.

The next day, after school, I came home and found my afterschool tea snacks waiting for me on the dining table. I thanked Mary but I got a weird stare from her that I had never really seen before. I think I was too young to fully understand guilt, embarrassment or a mix of the two feelings. I went into my bedroom and found my sketch pad on my desk and something rose up in my throat while my heart sunk and soccer punched my gut. I knew I had done something wrong but we never spoke of this incident. A few weeks later, when Mary was out on her Sunday, I went to the same drawer and found the magazine missing. I knew that I had broken a trust we had.

Still years to come, I never knew how I would get my payback. What child even has the notion of Karma?

When I encountered my first orgasm when I was putzing around in the shower it suddenly became my favourite place to be. I would lock myself inside the bathroom and go to town. While inside, it was never my mum or dad banging on the bathroom door asking me to come out. However, when I'd be home alone with Mary, she'd be the one banging on the door asking, "What are you doing? You've been in there for so long! Come out!" I am certain she knew I was doing exactly what every other adolescent boy was doing... Again, it wasn't my parents who unearthed my Hustler magazines and porn material; but it was Mary. She'd earnestly approach me with them and ask me what they were and where I got them. I tried my best to answer nonchalantly by shrugging my shoulders and said "they must be my brothers." Finally, perhaps the most embarrassing yet, she was the one who finally actually caught me in the act of pulling the monkey. Karma.

Mary stayed with my family until I left for University. My parents let her go when they decided they wanted to leave Hong Kong and move to Singapore since all the boys were overseas at school. It was a very tearful goodbye. But Mary had a husband and a daughter to return to. She's still in touch with my parents and often asks about me. I think of her frequently but have never taken the initiative to get in touch with her. I know she knows I still love her.