Last Tang Standing
“Yup!” Helen said cheerfully. “Straight as an arrow.”
“Is he … is he aware of your sexual orientation?”
Helen giggled. “Please, Magnus wasn’t born yesterday. Of course he is! Don’t feel too sorry for him though: he gets to move into Le Grand Maison Tang in Bukit Timah, he gets an outsize allowance and access to the family pool of luxury cars, and anyway, I have this whole open marriage arrangement with Magnus and we have a prenup, so both of us will be fine.” She winked. “But hey, the things that private bankers would do to keep their top clients, eh?”
“He’s your private banker?” I gasped.
Helen nodded. “Yup, he’s been managing my money for years. That’s how I got to know him.”
“How is this ethical?” I said, scandalized, realizing how naive I sounded as soon as I’d finished.
“Well, it’s not like I’m forcing him to marry me. He’s a consenting adult.” She rolled her eyes and leaned forward to grasp my hand. “You’re still single after Ivan, aren’t you, poor dear?”
I glared at her. “Yes.”
“Are you still waiting for your knight in shining armor?” she said mockingly. That’s the problem with family: they know all your sore spots.
“Nope. I’m not looking,” I said through gritted teeth.
She held up her hands in mock surrender. “Chill, I just thought maybe I could offer some advice to beat the system, which is still rigged against us women, unfortunately.” She gestured to a passing waiter for the bill. “Look, even if you’re happy being single, it is very practical at our age to find a partner—there’s security and comfort in having someone around, especially if they are your equal. So why not? It doesn’t have to be the One, la-di-da—we’re past that bollocks. My mother had an arranged marriage, and didn’t that work out fine for her! And your parents had a love marriage that went belly-up in the end, didn’t they?”
I grunted.
“My point is, waiting around for the One is not sound investment advice, so why not try to be more transactional like me? Think Big Picture. Also everyone knows that in Asia, being married gives you extra cachet. Single women in this part of the world can be slayers and still not command the respect they deserve. I should know.” She sighed. “It really is the smart thing to do if you want your mother and the world off your back. Take my advice, Andrea: be pragmatic and shop for a man. You can still be a hotshot career woman like me, but at least you’ll cover all your bases.”
“You make some interesting points. If only I had your money,” I said, one eye on passing servers, one hand on my wallet.
She shrugged. “Honey, there are tons of solid men out there who are looking for a good companion. You just need to be intentional and get professional help if necessary. Be open-minded and the universe will provide. Oh, by the way”—a silvery, fake laugh—“put your grubby paws away, old girl, it’s my little treat. I gave them my card on my way in.”
I took my time to get back to work after Helen’s gloating session, meandering along the pristine Singapore River and watching people eye it longingly after a long day of pointless work (I know that look well). Maybe she was right. Maybe I was approaching love and relationships all wrong, ascribing foolish romantic notions to what was essentially a very quantifiable commodity. Maybe I should take a leaf out of her book and just find someone Good Enough. It was, after all, a very Chinese way to go about things. If I cut down on nonessential activities, like exercise, I could maybe carve out some time to manage this aspect of my life. Embrace technology; use the platforms, apps, whatever. The search for a Good Enough Fella would surely be a breeze if I had a very targeted, simple criteria for a suitable match.
6:10 p.m. Back at my desk. Have no work but must outlast Suresh in time logged in the office. Emailed Linda about convo with Helen. Linda is full of admiration for Helen. Apparently, there is a similar arrangement chez Reyes with Papa. Linda, who claims to have never fallen in love, thinks Helen is on the right track, but she’s adamant that it would never work for me because I’m a “big sap with unrealistic expectations when it comes to love.” Well, people can change.
11:45 p.m. Back home. Had to wait till Suresh gave up and left the office. I win!
12:55 a.m. Have made a decision. Aside from the fact I stand to lose a chance at inheriting, I don’t want to be the odd unmarried one of my generation. It’s very much a status thing. If Helen, who’s the definition of unconventional (she has taken work sabbaticals, plural, on a voluntary basis!), is bowing down to social conventions and getting married, why should I be any different? If you can’t beat them—join ’em.
That being said, the prospect of rejoining the dating pool is a bit unnerving. I mean, have you seen some of the men out there? Gross.
The other day I saw a man in his late twenties, a good-looking guy in an immaculately tailored shirt and dark gray trousers, placing his iced kopi in not one, but two small plastic bags, before daintily carrying the bags by the handles away from his pants. I followed him, which is a totally legit reaction. He walked a grand total of 150 meters, then he lifted his drink out of the plastic bags and threw them into a trash bin outside his office block.
You see what I’m dealing with?
I’m not saying I am flawless. I am not. I binge-watch trash TV. I’ve eaten cereal for dinner, after having it for breakfast and lunch the same day. And just last week, in order to shave precious minutes of prep time before work, I dumped some talc onto the roots of my unwashed (for the second day) hair, pulled it into an “elegant” knot, washed my grease trap of a fringe, blow-dried said fringe, and called myself fit to show up as such to work. And I did. It was not my first time doing the ol’ Just-Wash-Your-Fringe-in-a-Pinch routine. But at least by being a little lax with my personal care I saved water. What’s Mr. Turtle-Killer’s excuse?
I know it sounds like I’m making excuses so I don’t have to put myself out there. I am. I’d been together with my ex, Ivan, for a little over five years after all. That’s more than a sixth of my life. The breakup really affected me, even though somewhere along the line we just kind of drifted apart and we eventually decided, after a mature, calm discussion where nothing was broken or hurled at the wall, that we had to Consciously Uncouple.
That’s the official version of the story, anyway.
Ivan and I met during my first year in Singapore at a Malaysians-working-in-Singapore mixer. Someone had introduced us, which was a good thing since I was not prone to striking up conversations with random men, especially attractive and articulate ones like Ivan, who was working in a private equity firm. Men like Ivan seemed to favor a certain type that I wasn’t: models. Yet twenty minutes after being introduced he was still flattering me with his undivided attention.
I decided that if he was still talking to me then maybe I should try to make real conversation. I was intrigued by him, beyond his qualifications (he’d worked for six years in London with Lazard after graduating from Imperial College with a first-class degree in finance, and was now VP at Warburg Pincus—yes, he’d casually mentioned this, just as I’d casually mentioned my own qualifications. Welcome to Asian Speed-Dating 101.) There was just something magnetic about his confidence. He knew where he was going in life, he loved what he was doing, and he was performing at the highest echelon. Ivan was inspirational, aspirational. I felt like I’d met my match, a kindred spirit.
I was so comfortable around him that when he asked me what brought me back from London, where I had been working as a solicitor at Slaughter & May, I told him.
“My dad passed away two years ago, and my mother hasn’t been the same since then. Her health isn’t good; she had a mental breakdown, just went into this total fugue state for weeks and scared the crap out of me. I couldn’t leave her alone, and my sister was unreachable, taking a gap year in South America.” I rolled my eyes to show how silly I thought the concept of a gap year was. I could tell he was exactly the kind of person who would get it.
“Oh,” he said, looking discomfited, “I’m sorry to hear that. Were they very close?”
I laughed. “Hardly. Maybe never. My parents are, were, divorced and they parted on terrible terms. They were always fighting, but my mother was still devastated when she heard about his passing. I figure that you can only hate someone so much if you had once loved them in equal measure.”
He sighed. “I wish my parents were divorced. All they do is fight when they’re in the same room, on the rare occasion when they leave the operating theater to see each other and their offspring.” He knocked back the rest of his drink and winced. “I think they love me, but what do I know?”
I think that sealed the deal for me, right then and there—the fact that his parents barely communicated with him. Score!
Naturally, when he asked for my number at the end of the night, I said yes. He was very much the type of man that any Chinese parent would approve of, with his clean-cut looks, impeccable manners, solid career prospects, good family, and legit Chinese ancestry. On paper, Ivan Lim was prima facie perfect boyfriend, even husband, material.
On paper.
Anyway, as I was saying, I am very bad with men. And now, apparently everyone who’s single was On The Apps. Linda, for one, had been urging me to try them for some time since the Breakup.
Maybe I should just do it. What did I have to lose? How hard could it be? I mean, I use LinkedIn, and isn’t that a goddamn minefield?
I stopped playing Candy Crush ironically and downloaded Sponk, since it was the latest, hence the best. Like Happn, which I categorically refuse to use because of its spelling, it uses location-based technology to something something techy, only with way more precision and real-time blah-blah: it’s all very stalker-friendly and, more important, time-saving, since you can meet immediately once you’re matched, like when people used to meet IRL in bars but without the difficult decoding of body language.
When the time comes, which will probably be next quarter, since I have a couple of nasty closings to deal with soon, I just have to launch it in a crowded area and it will send out a Winky Bat Signal of some sort. Or maybe later in Q3 this year. No rush. Although I should probably set up my profile. Every good Chinese knows the proverb: dig your well before you are thirsty.
Within ten minutes I had uploaded my LinkedIn profile photo (very appropriate and professional, giving out the best vibes to future husband, who will be from Ivy League or at least national top ten university) and created a succinct, well-crafted summary of my personality and achievements, especially my recent inclusion in Singapore Business Review’s “40 Most Influential Lawyers Under 40,” which is a list even Helen couldn’t buy her way onto.
When I was finished I read out loud this gleaming manifesto to my desirability. I couldn’t believe no one else was using their LinkedIn profile on dating sites, especially here in Asia. What an oversight. I couldn’t wait to be overwhelmed with requests to be Sponked.
4
Wednesday 17 February
2:05 p.m. Worked through lunch. No respite from the flurry of emails, each titled “URGENT” with a varying number of exclamation marks appended, each for a different closing scheduled in the next two weeks. Cannot afford to dash out and grab sandwich but must eat as stomach is now emitting weird hobbit growls that elicit chuckles from Suresh, who has ordered a healthful vegetarian meal before lunch hour. Can’t believe that I had to eat a candy bar from the office vending machine again. How is anyone supposed to stay slim in this job once you are past your twenties? Everything just congeals in fat rolls stored in the thighs and around the waist, in internal fat purses that your cells now carry. Briefly fantasize about suing law firm for not providing healthful food and snack options, like Google or similar tech companies with their bean bags and sprawling cafeterias where one can order sea bass or other line-caught and gently massaged fish, with a side of organic [insert name of trendy root vegetable] crisps.
Ooh. WhatsApp message from Linda. I surreptitiously grabbed my phone and tried to read it under a binder of case notes.
Linda:
Ladies night at Little Green Aliens. Up for it?
I typed back:
Who else is coming?
Linda:
Just you, me, Ben the investment banker, Filipino Jason, and Valerie from the art gallery
Whenever lawyers hang out with non-lawyers, they feel compelled to flesh out details of said non-lawyers’ occupations, in the manner of someone describing a rare, exotic animal.
Me:
Cool. Am in. C U dere.
Stared at sentence before retyping it to read:
See you there.
Felt very old.
The five of us—Linda, Ben Wallich, Valerie Gomez, Jason Sy Garcia, and I—met after work at Little Green Alien, one of those rare nights when I’m out of the office by 7:30 p.m., surprising even Suresh. Being super competitive, both Suresh and I are facing off in an escalating Office Face-Time Battle, where we stay at work way longer than necessary with no tasks to complete except to score Brownie points with our own overworked and unhappy boss. I think I have a good lead over him, though, since he has a terrible future deficit to make up for in his Face-Time Piggy Bank—Kai told me he had applied for two weeks of leave this September so he can start scouting for locations for his wedding, slated for next August. Which means he must bill like crazy the next two quarters if he wants to beat me for this financial year. Ha! Serves him right for getting married and having someone who loves him!
LGA was one of those hipster “secret” speakeasy cocktail bars with mixologists so sanguinely youthful that you start expressing breast milk at the sight of them. Linda was fond of expensive designer cocktails with exotic ingredients, which obviously cost a lot of money, but since she was able to afford it and doesn’t mind extending that privilege to all of us, we graciously allow her to ply us with drinks. Monday night at LGA meant two-for-one cocktails, and despite the fact that I had a closing in four days, I was downing them like there was no tomorrow. By the second round even I, with my hardened lawyer’s liver, was feeling a pleasant, will-snog-anyone-who-asks-me high. Well, anyone except the man in the suit over there with the sausage lips. Or his friend with the oily comb-over. Reality can be such a literal buzzkill.
“Challenge for today: name the most unfortunate adopted English names you have ever come across,” Jason was saying. “Winner gets a cocktail on me.”
Jason was Linda’s friend, a paralegal, and one of the six Jasons we knew. If I recall correctly, I think she went into a gym one day and chatted with him at the drinking fountain, and he grafted himself onto her on the way out and never really left; she had that effect on men, especially gay men. To distinguish him from the rest, somehow instead of calling him “Paralegal Jason” we went with “Filipino Jason” and now it’s too late and it has stuck as a rather unfortunate nickname (although “Paralegal Jason” was perhaps worse, all things considered—I am quoting Linda here). He’s quite a bit younger and single, which is surprising considering that he’s gorgeous, charming, cultured, and very well put-together in the vein of a Ken doll or one of the leads from Suits, all lean Muay Thai muscles and beautifully tailored clothes. Linda theorized that he’s gay or asexual since women are routinely throwing themselves at him and getting rebuffed, but the group as a whole is giving him the space to tell us in his own time, or never—we’re not fussed.
“Syphilis Tan!” Linda shouted, unconcerned with decorum.
I snorted. “Urban legend, surely.”
“I’m dead serious. My friend from Hong Kong taught an ESL student with that very name.”
Jason shrugged. “Meh. Next.”
“Colleague in Shanghai once told me about a Milky Chin,” said Ben, another drinking buddy of ours who flirted with Linda so shamelessly that it was amusing. Ben was Welsh, mousy-haired, bug-eyed, and a partner in a large investment bank; he was a little bizarre on most days, eager as he was to discuss conspiracy theories on every subject under the sun, but he was entertaining enough that we kept him on as our Token White Friend.
“Ouch, poor woman,” Jason said.
“Milky Chin belonged to a guy, oi oi oi!” Ben said.
Jason groaned. “That is a good one, I’ll give you that. Ben is in the lead!”
“I’ve seen Teorem being used,” Valerie Gomez said. “And Gemini!”
“Refrigerator Chan,” Linda said, her eyes bulging in competition.
“I’ve got one,” Valerie cried. “Ivanna Wang.”
“Now you’re just making shit up,” Jason said.
“Like hell I am,” Valerie said, indignant. Or as much as she could show indignity. Valerie, who is Singaporean and of Peranakan-Indian descent, was in her forties (we’re guessing—her real age remains a mystery as tightly guarded as the Vatican secret archives); her main goal in life was to look like a twenty-five-year-old, something she managed to do only under dim, hipster cocktail bar lighting, which was precisely the kind LGA had. The woman was more than a tad addicted to Botox and fillers. According to Linda, Valerie’s mom was a former beauty queen and Valerie had been raised to think that beauty was to be worshipped above all, in women and men. Other than that, she was a fun person to hang out with, though I’d forbidden Linda from inviting her along for any of our daylight jaunts; it would be too traumatizing, like finding out the pop star you idolized in your teens has become a grandmother. “I swear it on my mother’s life.”
“Please don’t,” Jason said, wincing. Catholic and half-Chinese, Jason was extremely superstitious.
“OK, fine, on my future children’s lives,” Valerie said gamely.
The group pretended not to hear this. It got awkward when Valerie said things like this. She was so excited when Fann Wong, a local celebrity, conceived after forty, and was happier than a dog with two tails when she found out Sophie B. Hawkins had a child at age fifty. The way Valerie saw it, this meant that it was entirely possible that she would be able to replicate that result. It was optimism in its purest form—the scary, untethered-to-reality kind. The kind that can make you a good dictator.
Not having a very good poker face, I made my excuses and fled. As is my fate, the queue to the single, unisex toilet was seven deep and all female. Thank goodness I always gave myself some “wee-way” (yes, I know, I went there). I slumped against the wall, pulled out my phone, and launched Sponk, just to see who was around. I scrolled through the available profiles, chose a few non-serial-killer-looking types without expecting results, then grew bored and began to play Candy Crush, which, by the way, I am in no way addicted to.
“Do you come here often?” someone said, startling me before I could finish a level.
I looked up, annoyed, to find a young man smiling at me. This is how you know you’re old: when you see anyone younger than you and you think “this young *expletive*” instead of the standard adjective-free form. Thinking that he had mistaken me for someone else, I scowled and said, “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, s-sorry,” the poor sod stammered. “I just meant—I mean, I just … I mean, er, we Sponked?”
I looked down at my screen and there he was, my Sponk partner. I froze. I hadn’t actually thought it would happen so quickly.
He gathered himself and pointed at the queue. “Do you come here often?” he blurted again.
I raised my eyebrow. “You mean, do I go to the toilet often?” I didn’t bother lowering my voice. Several women snickered.
“Ah,” said the boy, because that’s what he was, a sleek, sparkly eyed kid who looked like he’d been poured into his tight jeans and slim-cut shirt. He had the shaved sides and longish top haircut and ironic clear-lensed, tortoiseshell round glasses all boys seemed to sport like uniforms these days, although I had to admit he was not bad-looking, with a lean, toned swimmer’s body. With good height, too. “I see how that can be confusing. Let me try again.” Holding my eyes, he took two giant steps back, away from the direction of the toilet. “There. So. Hi there. I couldn’t help noticing we matched on Sponk. Do you come to LGA, in the general sense and not the toilet per se, often?”
Ack. So he was really trying to pick me up. One of the girls was not very discreetly pointing her phone in my direction, filming the whole thing, for fuck’s sake. I turned my back on her and moved directly in front of teenage Casanova to save him the embarrassment of being the unwitting subject of a viral video. “Look, kid, I’m too old for you, so, you know, go find some other age-appropriate target through Pounder or whatever hookup app you people use these days,” I said shortly, before dropping my gaze back to my beloved, the phone.
I pretended to scroll through the Daily Mail, scanning celebrity headlines intently and hoping he would go away. After several seconds of scrolling, I looked up again to find him still smiling at me in his oblique way. What was his problem? I was old enough to be his mom. Wasn’t there anyone else his age to chat up? “What do you want?” I said, with some exasperation. I now needed the loo—I mean, toilet. Badly.
“Can I buy you a drink?” he said through his never-faltering, Edward Cullen–esque smile.
“Not interested.”
“Doesn’t matter. Let me buy you a drink anyway. What would you like? Gin? No, let me guess. Whisky, single malt. A Highlander.” He squinted at me. “No, an Islay. Peaty and smoky.”
Ooh, yum, that did sound good. I mentally slapped myself and focused on the task at hand. “Let me get this straight: you want to spend money on an older woman who is not interested in you?”
He shrugged. “I’ll never say die[fn1] until I’m dead.”
“That’s just … that’s illogi—Never mind. Go wait by the bar. Let the lady use the toilet first.”
He actually bowed a little before he left. I turned back to face the queue. The women in it were looking at me with respect or jealousy. “Kids, right?” I said to no one in particular, to icy stares all around.
I was whistling as I walked back across the crowded room to the bar when I saw something that stopped me dead in my tracks.
Ivan. By the bar. Wearing a white polo and slim-cut dark-wash jeans. With his arm around what could only be described as someone other than me, a stick figure girl in a bad wig, if that was her real hair.
WTF.
I mean, Ivan never wore jeans when he was with me: he considered them an abomination of the fashion industry (neither formal nor casual enough, plus too hot for Singaporean weather).
He looked agonizingly happy.
I ducked behind a passing waiter, held his arms to pin him to the spot, and peered around him. “Stop moving,” I hissed.
“Erm, ma’am”—which is the polite, formal equivalent of “auntie”—“I have to serve dr—”
“I’ll give you twenty dollars if you stay still for five minutes,” I pleaded.
He shrugged and stood there, while I observed my prey as nonchalantly as I could.
Fucking H. She was young.
Some of the things Ivan said to me the night we agreed, mutually, to break up, boomed in my head: You can’t tell me you didn’t see this coming. How can you blame me when you’re never around? I want a fam—
The Slimy Young Thing touched his arm and I was gripped by an overwhelming desire to pick her up and dunk her into the nearest dumpster. Now I am a pacifist, of course. But try telling that to my heart.