Lust - never growing up.

 ...she has a way with me. She knows how to lead me on. I find it difficult to resist her. She comes by many names. Amongst the many names I have come to know her, her original name is lust. 

Lust grew up with me. She was never far from me. She knows where to press my buttons. She knows how to take over. She knows how to steer me on. 

Over the years, she has got me to do what I do not want to do. She is always in my mind. However hard I try, I could not shake her off. Ironically, the only way to keep her at bay is to shake it off. But that would mean I have given in. Some may call it a harmless release. Others, a risk or an obsession we can’t dismiss. There is never any clarity or resolution with lust.

Ours is often an unhealthy relationship, because nothing is ever enough for her. When she wants my attention, she knows how to get it, draw it, and demand it. Lust knows my soft spot. Somehow, I often give in to her, even without knowing it. I harbour this belief that she operates better in my subconscious. Her constant presence is that subtle to me. She is at her best in the dark. She is the shadow of my conscience, the fire of my desire. 

We often conspire to justify our relationship. Don’t ask me why I am a willing participant to it. It’s like a suicide pact but it is not about the death of a life. It is however about the slow death of self-control. Yet, I am putty in her hands. I often do her bidding. 

I know it takes two to make it work. Her agenda is open and clear. She has nothing to hide from me. Lust wants to draw me into her world. She dreads being alone in hers. She wants my company, for as long as it takes, for as long as the heat burns.

Though I do not want to admit it, I can’t stop thinking about her. She has a pull on me I often struggle with. The reality is, there are times I have the upper hand. I managed to say no to her. I refused to step into her world. Those times, I sensed the rising pride. I was back in the driver’s seat. 

Yet, my “no” never lasts. The resolve never holds. It is a momentary victory but it’s funny how every victory only makes the next struggle harder. It is like finishing a race, sweat and all, hoping to rest on my laurel. But, the next race is even longer. The terrain is tougher. The sky darker. The shadow looms larger. 

There is just a certain vexing disproportionality when it comes to battling it out with lust. It’s a one-sided bargain, a Faustian gambit. It’s like she had let me win on purpose just to give me that false sense of buoyancy. My rising pride was nothing more than a conniving partner with lust. 

I believe she takes pleasure in stringing me along. She knows how to play with my feelings. She knows me too well. She is a mind reader and a heart discerner all rolled into one. 

I always ask, what is lust’s ultimate purpose in my life? Where is her seat of consciousness or conscience? Does she have one to begin with? What would become of us if creation comes without it?

And will pleasure be any less enjoyable without her? Will guilt be eliminated without her? Will marriage work better without lust? Does marriage even need her? Are they mutually exclusive? 

And within the sacred boundaries of marriage, is lust even necessary? Can’t marriage be enough to drive us on, make us desire, show us the way to unbridled, lasting consummation?

Alas, if marriage has any competitor, it is novelty. Lust is never in want of that. She is an old hand when it comes to that. Novelty is her middle name. Mind you, she is not called the forbidden fruit for nothing. It’s that forbidden-ness that makes her hard to resist. She seems new every morning, when you wake up with her.

Lust may be superficial but superficial makes the perfect partner for a fling, a tyrst, because she demands nothing from us. It is a pact for that season, and once that season is over, we depart, no strings attached. That is, a clean break, until a hook up later. That’s the hook right? For how does a fish imprisoned in lust’s pool resist the only bait that hides the hook?

Let me end with an imagery. 

I see lust as a childhood friend. She has been with me from the start. I also see a long corridor. Some call it the corridor of life. It is a narrow and dark corridor. But lust would not have it any other way. She says she likes the silence. She says light makes her uncomfortable. 

This corridor has many doors. Lust always holds me by the hand and we would open each door to see what’s in store. Every door opened has me inside. It shows a world with me and someone else, or at a place with other people. They are familiar faces. 

One door leads to a room of my childhood. Another door to a room with my dad and mom, my siblings. Yet, another to a room of celebration, some graduation, promotion and awards reception. 

As lust takes me by the hand, giggling, she even allows me to enter these rooms, to be with the people in the rooms. But it will not be for long though. After a while, she beckons. By the door, she sulks if I resist. I know I have to leave to join her to journey down the corridor. Don’t ask me why.

Over the years, lust and I opened many doors. I had also joined the many activities in the room, in the lives of the people in the room. I recall one room I just can’t forget. It is a room with someone I had walked down the aisle with. I recall I said I do to her and she to me. 

We really like each other. We spent many intimate moments together. But, even during those times, I can feel lust watching me by the shadows. She was not too happy; sometimes, seething. 

That particular room was special because together we had kids. They were so special to me. I felt a true connection. I was actually happy. 

But yes, lust beckoned again. This time, I resisted her. I wanted to fight. I wanted to turn away. But every night, when I am all alone, I would find her in my dreams, in my thoughts and even in my waking hours. She was relentless. She pursued me with flaming desire. She wanted me back, into her arms. 

I recall it came to a point I started to live a double life. In the room, I was there, physically present and participating. But, I would also sneak out to be with lust, to journey down the corridor. There are still many surprises along the corridor, and with lust the surprises never end. When I am done, I would return to that special room, to be with those familiar faces, faces that I miss so much. 

But, before long, my resolve gave in and I held on to the hand of lust for good. I also left the room for good too. I rather chose to travel with lust. 

Yet, at the end of the journey, traversing down the long corridor of life, I finally reached the end of it. There was a mirror at the end. It was a dead end. Lust then invited me to look into the mirror and I did. What I saw shocked me. What I saw in the mirror was a child. It was me never growing up. I was totally naked. 

The years and decades may have gone by, but I was left behind. I never grew up. I was a child. I thought I have grown up, achieving so much, but I was still a child. I then looked at lust, that is, her image in the mirror. And I saw her as opposite of me. She was old, really old. Her skin was not as flawless as the mirror was revealing it to me. It was heavily wrinkled, worn down, and she didn’t age well at all. 

At this time, something within me beckoned me to look back. I turned around and looked behind me, where all the doors were - all the doors I had walked past. They were all tightly shut, closed. I left them that way. 

Alas, I was never fully present in those rooms. I was never really invested. At that point, I came to realise that I had spent my time, my life, running down the dark corridor, with my hands led by lust. I was never fully in control. I had spent my life chasing that which has taken me away from the things and people that mattered to me, people I am happy with. 

Standing there, with aged lust, facing my end, I just could not recognise myself in the mirror. My life was never my own. I never took control.

 

Sammi, Andy and one named Jacqueline.

Forbidden fruit is always sweeter? But sobriety can turn that bite into a nightmare.

For Andy Hui, the aftertaste left him in tatters, broken to be exact. 

His dalliance with actress and former Miss Hong Kong Jacqueline Wong in a taxi ride and beyond was captured on camera. That 16 mins video will sadly mar his marriage to Sammi Cheng, 46, for a long time to come.

The leak showed Andy, Jacqueline and another man sharing a cab. When the man alighted, Andy assured the man that he and Jacqueline will go home separately. 

“After the man leaves, however, (Andy) and (Jacqueline) provide only one location to the driver and begin holding hands. At one point, (Jacqueline) leans over to kiss (Andy) as his hand rests on her thigh.”

They then left the cab together - End of leaked video. 

A little background here. Andy and Sammi’s love affair and marriage (no kids yet) is touted by Comedian Dato Wong as “Hong Kong’s Last fairy tale.”

It was a 30-year fairy tale. They met and dated as far back as 1991, after they recorded the duet “Actually, Do You Have Me in Your Heart.” 

They broke up in 2004 and after seven years apart, they got back together in 2011. They then married in 2014. 

As for Jacqueline, she has been openly dating another TVB actor Kenneth Ma. 

After the leak yesterday afternoon, Andy was emotionally devastated. He must have felt exposed. Hours later, he showed up in a tear-ful seven-minute appearance. 

Andy’s head was bowed and he said: “Sorry, Sammi.”

“I want to apologise to my family. Sammi’s family, friends and people who love me. Because I did what I cannot make up for, something that will not be forgotten.”

Andy then cried and continued: “I drank a lot that night but I feel that being drunk is definitely not an excuse to do something so wrong, very bad, very disgusting and very unfamiliar. I reflected on why I could not control my lust.”

Lesson? Actually, the duet “Actually, Do You Have Me in Your Heart?” is the question all wives occasionally asked of their husband. Indeed, the heart is a strange place for married men. 

While a woman’s desire is the desire of her man, the man’s desire is at most times just desires - period. That is why that last confession is quite familiar to us men, “I reflected on why I could not control my lust.”

It is strange (and I would not say as Andy said, “very unfamiliar”) that the institution of marriage always has a dark and wet basement leading to a secret backdoor of extramarital indiscretions. 

Alas, it is hard to define cheating in a marriage, especially in a world of virtual experiences. When Bill Clinton said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” was he cheating. 

Jimmy Carter once admitted in a Playboy magazine interview that by Jesus’ standard of lusting in the eye, even he has “cheated” in his marriage. 

Author Esther Perel wrote: “Is chatting cheating? What about sexting, watching porn, joining a fetish community, remaining secretly active on dating apps, paying for sex, lap dances, messages with happy endings, girl-on-girl hookups, staying in touch with one’s ex?”

One frequent visitor of strip club said, “I watch, I talk, I pay, but I don’t touch. Where’s the cheating?” 

And nowadays, with virtual platforms like Second Life, for example, where you can play out your alternate-fantasy of another life with another man in virtual worlds of your creation, is that cheating? 

One commentator called it “customized pornography.”

So, I return to the heart, the only organ in our body that bears the greatest responsibility (or culpability) for and of our conduct since we metaphorically blame it for all the extramarital indiscretions (and other immoral deviations) we commit, when its only role (and wholly vital one no doubt) is to be no more than a dumb pump, circulating and renewing blood in our body to keep us alive. 

When we fall, we don’t hear people accusing us of a bad or corrupt liver or deceitful kidney or an immoral spleen. It’s always the heart which gets all the bad press when the two organs truly responsible for our actions should have been the brain (impulsivity, emotionalism) and the only extendable and retractable organ in our body (and mind you, I am not talking about the tongue).

Let me end with Andy’s own heart-rending words: -“I have no soul. I am a broken man. I hope everyone can give me time to find myself.”

Well, I wish Andy well. I hope he can find himself, to find his soul again. 

As for their marriage, it is a personal and private affair, and it’s really none of anyone’s business. They must be given their own time to confront, confess and reconcile in whatever ways that the offender and the victim can live with. 

Like Andy said, he needs time to find himself and I am sure Sammi needs hers too, that is, to process the betrayal, a broken promise (that risks triggering the breaking of all other promises after that). 

My takeaway from this is that in the institution of marriage, you can’t bolt-shut all the doors and pull the blinds over the windows. 

A straying heart is not one who sees no evil, hears no evil or speaks no evil. That’s not possible, and it’s surely not a marital institution. It’s a mental and emotional asylum of two distrusting souls living together in a panopticon tower of high and insecure 24-hour mutual survelliance. 

Before long, it will suffocate love, eviscerate trust and eliminate all hope. 

A resilient marriage, even after a betrayal where one is genuinely remorseful and prepared to make amends, is an institution where the doors and windows are always clear and opened. 

At the center of this institution is trust, which may be vulnerable but it is not inconsolable or irreparable. At its boundary is hope, which may be lost at times, blurry even, but it is not lost forever if the couple are prepared to forgive, heal and move forward. 

And at its foundation is love. This love is not perfect, for we are human after all. But what makes this love exceptional, even in our failings, is its willingness to go beyond oneself to heal and bridge the gap. 

In the end, let’s not be too quick to be over-indignant about our own state of the heart after reading about Andy’s fall. 

We should always guard our heart because at times, it is not about how much we can boast to others about our invulnerability to fall like Andy did. 

But it is about what it takes for us to fall, and for some of us, if not most of us, it may just take far lesser than what we think is necessary to trip us over. Cheerz.

DeepNude. Have we lost our young to lust?

Funny how my daughter used to run to us and mispronounce YouTube as “NudeTube”. When my wife and I recall that, we can’t help but feel amused by her innocence. 

Today’s papers however give no cause for amusement. It is about an app that allows users to virtually “undress” women using artificial intelligence. The app is entitled most candidly, “DeepNude”.

How it works is almost ingenuous due to the simplicity of the idea with the help of technology. 

All you have to do is to take a photo of a clothed woman “and transform that into a nude image.” The technology embedded will help you strip the object of your fantasy according to your baser instinct. You basically turn yourself into a fledgling director of your own private striptease show. 

I trust you can take photos of strangers in common places like the MRT, malls and even schools, or flip through personal photo albums and glitzy magazine covers, and take furtive shots of the ladies, whether they are fully or scantily dressed, and then let your imagination go wild with them in the privacy of your own room. No one will know. Hush hush. 

Alas, I can really hear the cash register ringing with such app that is based on the three vectors of success: simplicity, accessibility and autonomy. 

But before the creator of the app start planning for a lifestyle change with the cash pouring in, the story doesn’t end there. Like all stories, there is a catch here. It is called conscience. 

After a social media uproar, DeepNude was shut down. CCRI (Cyber Civil Rights Initiatives) said: “This is a horrifically destructive invention and we hope to see you soon suffer consequences for your actions.”

A law professor, Mary Anne Franks added this objection to the chorus of protest: “It’s good that it’s been shut down...the app’s intended use was to indulge the predatory and grotesque sexual fantasies of pathetic men.”

Apparently, and quite unwittingly, the creator from Estonia said: “We never thought it would be viral and (that) we would not be able to control traffic.” 

Never thought it would go viral? Not being able to control traffic? Are you serious? 

In a hyper-sexualized, postmodern world, where liberty has no or little boundaries, and values are what you make of it as long as nobody gets physically hurt, you really think an app like that would not go viral? 

And not to mention, a world where we can’t even remember where we had last buried modesty, possibly in an unmarked grave nobody wants to talk about (because we will be accused of being outdated or holy prude), I think it is safe to say that if you sell something that offers generous runway space to launch our most intimate sexual fantasies to the boundless skies, you can be sure that you have struck gold of the most carnal kind.

You don’t need me to tell you this. Let‘s hear it from this theologian, Frederick Buechner. 

“Lust is the ape that gibbers in our loins. Tame him as we will by day, he rages all the wilder in our dreams by night. Just when we think we’re safe from him, he raises up his ugly head and smirks, and there’s no river in the world flows cold and strong enough to strike him down. Almighty God, why dost thou deck men out with such a loathsome toy?”

And how about Freud? Didn’t he once say that our modern civilisation is driven by “erotic energy”? 

Mm...let’s continue with where we left off...and it is a cautionary word from the creator. 

They added: “Despite the safety measures adopted (watermarks), if 500,000 people use it, the probability that people will issue it is too high. We don’t want to make money this way.”

FYI, DeepNude was launched a few months ago, and the creator has intended it was for pure entertainment. But after the overwhelming response, they said that they have “greatly underestimated” demand for the app. You think? 

With that few months of commercial traction, I am sure many men who have downloaded the app must have had their appetites filled to overflowing with an app that gives them the full autonomy to do as they please with the female body. 

Lesson? Although DeepNude has been taken off the market, I am quite sure it is nevertheless thriving in the black market. 

CCRI said: “The app is out there now and will be used, despite the creator taking it off the market. If only there were a way to disable all the versions out there.”

Alas, you can disable the apps, but you can’t disable the wanton culture that feeds on the minds of our young who are openly defying any boundary and responsibility that seek to treat the opposite sex with respect, honour and protection. 

And if the desire of the man is for the woman, and the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man, then, thanks to our pornified culture, we have turned the desires of our young into one that lusts only after the woman’s body. 

She is nothing more to him than that. And once that is sated, they are on the prowl for the next sexual high. Sadly, it will never satisfy because their future wives can never compete with the many sexual fantasies they can manufacture at a few clicks of the buttons with the aid of technology. And mind you, no one will know. It’s all hush hush, until something leaks, cracks and breaks of course. 

At this juncture, it is tempting to ask, is this the freedom that we have been craving after or fighting for? Is this what it means by living in the modern society, full of technological wonders, and enlightened in every way by the fortification of knowledge that frees us to pursue happiness, progress and prosperity for all and sundry? 

Let me end with this quote for your Sunday morning mental digest: -

“It is a mistake to suppose that all men...want to be free. On the contrary, if freedom entails responsibility, many of them want none of it...The aim of untold millions is to be free to do exactly as they choose and for someone else to pay when things go wrong.”

Ultimately, we as a society pays for it. The script is all too familiar. We try to do right, to prevent the moral haemorrhaging. But in our ennobled pursuit, in our earnest attempt to turn society around to save our future generation from moral decay, family disintegration, broken marriages, and even climate changes, we have ironically acted in ways that have undermined and sabotaged all that earnest efforts. 

In other words, we have taken two steps forward only to find we have previously taken three to four steps back. 

So, God help us, because we sure as hell can’t help ourselves. And if science or reason, technology and the hallowed market-driven capitalism have collectively debunked religion and they are thus deemed as the glowing trinity of our salvation, that is, our new city on the hill, I honestly do not see it emerging anytime soon from the dreaded distant horizon of our modern civilisation. 

Or, is it just me? 

Reality vs. Internet fantasy.

Why would a lady send nude photos of herself to a man online she hardly know?

This is my conundrum this morning triggered by the headline in the Straits Times yesterday: "Man jailed over "nude photos" sex demands."

This is the backdrop.

The offender was a canvas maker named Alvin Yeo Pei Jin. He is 49. He calls himself "Happy Tan" - a self-pleasure-seeking purveyor I guess.

He was a stalker and a sex predator online, more specifically, on Facebook. On his Facebook, he puts up faces of unknown, good-looking Taiwanese men instead of his own face (for the most obvious reason I guess) to sweeten the honey trap.

So, with that deceptive front cover, he goes around looking for specific target, that is, middle-aged women with long hair.

When he finds them, he will befriend them on Facebook, chat up online, move to phone messaging, and then ask the women for nude photos of themselves.

Strange baiting methods, but in the online world, you will be surprised the bites you get when you throw such twisted request out there.

And the first bite was a 52 yr-old in 2015. They chatted for some time before Alvin requested for her nude photos. Curiously, she gave them to him. He then used the nude photos to blackmail her for sex. The victim rejected his advances and reported him to the police.

Then came the second bite in 2016. She was 48 yrs old, and someone Alvin's family knew.

With his identity masked behind a good looking Taiwanese man, Alvin told her he was a widower with two children. Instead of being a honey pot, he went for being a pity pot to win the victim's sympathy.

He then asked her for nude photos of herself and again, she gave them to him. Go figure - wouldn't one be extremely suspicious when another asks for nude photos?

With that, he harassed her for sex. He made numerous threats, and one of the threats was to leave her nude photos "outside her home so that her husband would see them." Yes, she's married.

The victim was shocked and immediately blocked Alvin on Facebook. She also lodged a police report.

A few days later, what she found stuck on the gas meter outside her home was "an A4-sized full frontal nude picture of herself, but with her face torn off." Apparently, Alvin made good his threat.

There was even a message he left at her gas meter with the nude photos. It reads: "Tomorrow, if you don't reply to my message (for sex), I will post your big face at the door there."

Six days later, after being stonewalled, Alvin used a black marker and penned this on the wall outside her home: "Block me, waiting for death."

FYI, Alvin is not a widower with children as claimed. That's false advertising. His lawyer in mitigation said that his client's wife "is suffering from degenerative diseases, and has been using a wheelchair for about four years. They have two children." They are the real victims and my heart goes out to them.

In Court this week, Alvin was sentenced to 13 months for five charges, "including mischief, and insulting the modesty of a woman by filming a colleague in the shower in 2009."

Lesson? Mm...more like a question actually...and it is the question I first started out with: "Why would a lady send nude photos of herself to a man online she hardly know?"

Now, I know to the two adult victims, Alvin is not really a stranger. They have chatted up with him online. They knew each other for some time. But he was nevertheless still someone they hardly knew.

So, for someone you hardly know, why would you want to give photos of the most intimate, private and protected part of yourself to him? Is it because one thinks it is all just for fun, and nothing would come out of it?

I mean, no matter how sweet, "good looking" and charming he is (or appears to be online - and we all know one can easily smoke out a false profile identity by doing a simple background check), why would you risk unnecessary exposure of yourself, my god, with face and all, to someone whom you only know online - a virtual personality?

Is it because he asks politely for them?

And mind you, these are not young teenage girls, whose innocence, ignorance and rebellious streak may have caused them to commit such unthinking folly. You can somehow excuse their conduct on account of their age, naivety and gullibility as a form of personal lamentation.

But the victims here are married (I presume the other victim is). And whether long hair or short, they are "grown-up" adults, above 40, and have children of their own. Shouldn't they practise what they preach to their children about stranger danger or Internet predator?

Don't they know that this is not Vegas, where what happens online doesn't stay "happened" online forever - it readily spills over into the real world.

Because like it or not, the words, thoughts and pictures you mindlessly offer online with naive and hoped-for anonymity (in the name of tease, dare, fun and/or play - even temporary escapism into virtual space) will viciously boomerang back and bite you in the derrière when things turn sour or go down south. 

Trust in the virtual world is like a commodity, it is first "manufactured" by deceptive advertising to lure you to sell it to the highest bidder, and thereafter, it is used by the bidder to extract, exploit and extort.

I know it may seem that I am being unduly unfair to the victims here by focusing on them instead of Alvin. For he is clearly the author of his own misfortune, as well as the misfortune of others.

Alvin's actions are beyond reprehensible, and he is paying the full price for it. He is the one who started it all. He is the main offender, the mastermind. I can't imagine how his disabled wife and children are coping with it.

But there is a bigger picture or lesson here. It is the lesson we always warn our children about, that is, wolves in sheep "online" clothing. And when something seems too good to be true (to be trusted, to be embraced, to be reciprocated, and to behold), it often is - full stop. It is when we add a careless comma to a deceptive line and allow it to bloom into a menacing paragraph, and thereafter, a conniving narrative, that we fall into our own fabled-trap of untold misery.

I guess in general, the Internet infantilizes all of us; regardless of age, culture and race. Our guard is usually down (and our discernment blunted) when what is superficial is being projected and packaged to us as profound, beautiful, trustworthy, authentic and embraceable. Vices are made to look like virtues by a crafted projection of sincerity, compassion and kindness.

In cyberspace, behind the covers of anonymity, where communication is done not face-to-face (literally), but by busy fingers on the keyboard before an impersonal screen, one tends to be more credulous (gullible) with praises, likes and compliments mindlessly offered by another for a devious self-serving purpose. 

Somehow, when one is feeling down and alienated, it is easy to escape (just one or two buttons away) to cyberspace to find acceptance, endorsement, humour, hope, faith and love on the go. It is a fantasy world to make all your worries go away just for that one or two hours, if not more. It is the perfect cocomo getaway in the comfort of your own private bedroom.

The Internet is thus our new therapist by the couch, and it leads us by the hand into the garden path of our emotional and psychological Eden.

In other words, the Internet makes us all vulnerable, because we can always find a (so-called) kinder, happier, warmer and better world there, which is just a quick click of the finger away. Let your fingers do the escaping - so to speak.

But whether we come to our senses or not, it is not reality. The internet is not reality. The millions of people in the net are not your friends. They are not there for you. On the contrary, they just happen to be there when you are most vulnerable. Timing is everything, and there is enough perverts out there to turn coincidences into self-perceived perfect timing to give the troubled mind the impression of specialness and exclusivity. Ultimately, they are not better than the one you are living with because they don't know you and you don't know them enough for that kind of intimacy, trust and relationship.

Mutual ignorance may be what blind dates are based on, but it is a recipe for disaster when you somehow start to believe that the man in the Internet you hardly know understands you, cares for you and devotes to you more than your loved ones and family do. For him, it is a matter of random luck; but to you, he is godsend - perfect timing.

Alas, our reality is where we need to focus on, develop, nurture, fight for, and improve on. And if you are looking for authenticity, trust and love, then you should commit to another for a lifetime rather than go fishing for thousands (of strangers) in cyberspace that neither know you nor are interested to know you.

Let me end by saying that if home is where the heart is, then our home is in a place where we meet daily, feel each other's touch, embrace regularly, share tears with, argue our differences with, and make peace with through face-to-face resolution.

Home is definitely not a place where we sit in front of a screen to listen to a smooth voice we hardly know reading out a slick script meant for whomever is willing to be charmed by it just so that we can feel good about ourselves. Our real world is in the one we have committed our life to, devoted our time and passion in, and not one that comes up in a rectangular screen by a plug of a cable.

At the end of the day, the heart of a home is where we grow together in hope, love and trust over the years, and not in the mindless, faceless and effortless endorsement we get online over a few minutes of interaction before we become victims of empty, if not sinister, affection. Cheerz.