Best of Asian Erotica, Volume 2

Dinner done, I tried to get up and clear the plates, but she shook her head. ‘Leave them,’ and dumped mine on top of hers at the end of the coffee-table.

‘Let’s drink,’ she said. We poured again for each other, said ‘One shot’

and downed our cups … again and again.

From then on, we passed the night hardly speaking but nestled together in our matching robes, watching the dance of the pretty fish and becoming tipsier and tipsier until I passed out on her shoulder.

I woke mid-morning and found myself nestled nakedly against an equally naked mountain. She had somehow transferred me to her bed and she was still snoring lightly beside me. I pulled back the sheet and looked at the whole side of her bulging body. She looked beautiful, still.

Beauty, I thought, is just a mental construction of emotions felt for its object. Beauty shifts and changes like weather, according to the eye of the beholder. Beauty is electricity lighting the lamp and illuminating the fish tank.

I would never be able to think of a fat person in the old light again, I realized, and ran my hand over her rump to reassure myself that this realization was indeed real and would last.

The touch of my hand climbing up and down June’s sleeping coastline began to tickle her and, suddenly, she woke with a start.

‘Oh, Gerald, are you still here? What happened? What time is it?’

‘I think we’ve overslept.’ There was a digital alarm clock on my side of the bed. ‘It’s 11.45.’

‘What? Mr Wang will kill me! What time is your flight?’

‘One-thirty,’ I answered.

‘Hurry up. Get dressed. We must go to the hotel and pack your things.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I could stay on a day longer.’

‘No, no. You cannot. Mr Wang is not available. You must get up. We have to get your papers signed, remember?’

Conscience struck. ‘Oh yes, the contract. I had completely forgotten that.’

‘Quick now. Jump in the shower.’ Reluctantly I obeyed orders, showered and shaved when I saw an electric razor there, and then splashed on some cologne from June’s shelf.

Aphrodite

Suzanna Kusuma, Indonesia

Scene 1: Sunset

Under corrugated roofs, silky bed sheets, her whispers and sounds are carried off in the hiss of traffic from nightfall towards dawn. Sun falls.

With it, streaks of fog lurk and hover over quiet alleyways. Mice skitter around plundering morsels of leftovers. The wasted moon overlooks. A drooping silent witness to the frolics … A watchful tower to the jealousies and rivalries spurred by her whimsical gestures that entice and provoke men who find in her both the goddess they worship and the witch they would torture and kill.

Kali Jodoh is rows of unlicensed shag houses along the heavily polluted Ciliwung River, somewhere in West Jakarta district. The river stench mingled with cheap alcohol lures bystanders and travellers alike. Curiously drawn to the bright yellow spots of kerosene lamps burning through gaps of asymmetrical doors (invitingly loose and fragile), motorcyclists buzz in and out of the alleyways while quietly picking up and dropping off passengers.

Further into the alley, in some hidden nooks and corners, are glimpsed silhouettes of luxury cars which at the sign of dawn would swerve quietly away, leaving their spots empty for food peddlers. It is also not uncommon to find police cars among these luxury cars.

The dense flow and murmur of old Ciliwung River permeates the night .

And as the moon wanes, the inhabitants of Kali Jodoh ready themselves for the judgment of daylight bursting through.

Scene 2: Domesticated

At night, he seeks the woman who tantalizes his cock with her tongue. He likes to fix his gaze to the clouds as she makes her way up and down, up and down.

His children call him ‘daddy’ the way Americans do to sweet, doting fathers. He bought them a puppy one occasion-less day, despite his wife’s approval of pets. He had come thrice inside her mouth that day. They named him Bruno.

He convinced his wife his wife children should learn the blessings of having other living creatures to add on to the joy of living. The same night he made love to his wife and unselfishly took him time waiting for her orgasm while all along reliving the memories of the tongue teasing, and teasing, and teasing. His explosions rapidly approach as her swift, unyielding embrace commands. He has nowhere to go, nowhere to be, but inside her.

Scene 3: Conquest