Chapter 1

Chapter One

The clock strikes midnight and the Friday night crowd has just hit their stride here in this club in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. On the floor, there is bumping, xgrinding and shaking and the gyrating of asses and breasts (of both sexes, might I add). The music is thumping through the gigantic speakers, left-right-up-down-all-around. The atmosphere is hot and dank, an uneasy mixture of alcohol vapor, sweat and the panting and breathing of people.

I stand by the bar, sipping a club soda: always a club soda. I am dressed in a black sport-jacket over a plaint white crewneck t-shirt, and skinny blue Levi’s. My red Onitsuka Tigers complete the look I was going for: young, subtly stylish… definitely not a poseur. I sip my drink as I watch these people dance.

Or to be more accurate, as I watch the girls dance. There are a lot of them; Chinese, Malay, Indian, everything in between. Most are dressed to kill. Some seem to have lost their inhibitions already, at this ‘early’ hour. They’re beautiful, most of them.

And they’re the reason why I’m here on this Friday night.

I watch as a pretty, tanned girl walks up to the bar. She is breathing in short stitches, clearly catching a breath after dancing her heels off on the floor. She is wearing a blue V-neck sleeveless top that shows just enough cleavage to indicate she’s well stacked up top, and a white mini-skirt that barely covers her rather flat buttocks. Her hair is cropped into an imitation of Audrey Hepburn.

I pretend not to notice her while I enjoyed my club soda. She orders a Mojito from the tired-looking bartender, and moves her head to the beat of the music while she waits for her drink. She glances at me, quickly, but also long enough for me to notice she does a double-take. I made a mental note of the time, and decided this was the one that would do tonight.

“Great night, kan?” she says, smiling, showing off the pink-accented braces on her teeth.

“Excuse me?” I say, acting surprised.

The girl laughed. “I said, it’s a great night. I love this place.”

I shifted my body to face her and leaned on the bar a bit. “It is.” I gave her a smile.

“Are you all alone?” she asks.

“No,” I shake my head. “I’m here with you.”

She laughs again. “Cheeky.”

“I must be,” I said, “because it’s not often girls start a conversation with me. Especially pretty ones like you. So when one does come up to me and says something… well, cheeky is somewhat charming, as a response.”

The girl lifts an eyebrow. “Is that a pick-up line? Calling me pretty?”

“If it was, it is working because you haven’t left yet despite your drink having been ready about 2 minutes ago. So it must be something other than thirst that is keeping you here.”

She glanced to see that yes, indeed, the bartender had set her drink in front of her. She looks at me again, trying to be skeptical. “So you just sit at the bar and try to chat girls up? People still do that?”

This time I took a nonchalant swig of my beverage. “I wasn’t the one that began this conversation.”

The girl looks at me again, as if in disbelief.

Three hours later, the girl is lying comfortably on my king-size bed and she looks at me with smoldering eyes as I take off her lime-colored panties.

 ***

 At five o’clock I wake up. The girl is sleeping beside me, snoring lightly. Spent condoms (four of them) are in the small wastebasket beside my bed.

It is time to cleanse myself.

In the bathroom I turn on a hot shower and let the steam permeate within the tiled walls. Before the wall-to-wall mirror fogs up, I look at myself and stretch out my arms and shoulders. I crack my neck a few times, ironing out the kinks, and run my hands through my hair. I was proud of my body. I work out four times a week; not to be buff, but to remain lean and to look irreristable. I am proud of my abdominals with its hint of a six-pack, and my broad shoulders that tapered down to long, lean arms. My legs are those of a runner. I lean forward towards the mirror and see a stubble has formed; but that was okay as I only shave during weekdays.

But first, shower. I step below the cascading water and scrub myself clean with a loofah and designer brand soap (that cost me more than I cared to admit), to expofliate and get rid of all impurities. Then the moisturizing body wash Next I wash my short, neatly barbered hair with a designer shampoo and finish with conditioner. Finally I wash my face with an exfoliating, moisturizing and anti-bacterial cleanser. I step out of the shower and dry myself, putting on deodorant and one of my seventeen favorite eau de toilettes.

I walk out with only a towel wrapped, and I see the girl has woken up. Her hair is all over the place, and she makes a half-assed attempt to cover up her nude body. She is smiling at me, and wags a finger to beckon me over, which I do.

The girl, of whom I had met at the club earlier in the night and had talked to and casually invited over to my condominium here in Mont Kiara and of whom I don’t even remember the name (must be Shiela or Shira or something) opened up her arms as if to hug me, letting the blanket drop and exposing her breasts.

“Come here,” she says. I walk over to her and she smiles with anticipation. I lean close to her face, and she is about to kiss me when I say, “I’m sending you home.”

***

After I drop the girl (who sulked all along the journey but tried to make me promise to call her) off at her house, I drive back home.

It is still very early. I fix myself a cup of strong coffee from the machine and drink it at my balcony. Here, on the sixteenth floor of this luxurious condominium, a cool breeze is blowing. It is quiet, the silence broken only by the occasional taxi or motorbike.

The girl I had spent the night with, Shiela or Shira something-something, was a 25-year old front office executive with a five-star hotel. She had said something about clubbing to ‘release stress’ when we had began talking at the club, but I couldn’t care less. I only wanted my nightly fuck, and I had gotten it. I had her number, she has ‘a number’. But I rarely call these girls more than once. It was touch and go all the way for me. Shiela-or—Shira was not the first girl I’ve bedded so far this month.

And she won’t be the last.

I’ve been living this glorious, glorious life for the past four years; pretty much the moment I stepped foot into this cut-throat city.

I should introduce myself by now. My name is Dhani. Dhani Ibrahim. I’m 181 centimetres tall, 75 kilograms in weight. I am in my late twenties (how late, your guess). I earn five-figures a month as an investment banker for a renowned private equity firm, primarily because my talent is charm, and I use charm to convince people to employ me and pay me good money. I eat three balanced meals a day, I drive a BMW Z4 (in metallic black, with a red leather interior) or, on some days, a Ducati Streetfighter S. I live in the already mentioned condominium in Mont Kiara, that I’m paying for myself.

I date a different girl every alternate night. I bed a different girl once every three days. Or two days. Or a different one everyday for a few days, if I’m not too tired and am feeling especially randy. But once every three days is the norm.The clubs and bars of Kuala Lumpur are my hunting grounds and the beautiful, incredibly willing girls my prey.

Last year, one of my Chinese ‘girlfriends’, who I went out with for a few weeks, called me a ‘flower heart’ when she found out I wasn’t interested to pursue a meaningful relationship with her, and that I wanted to date but I didn’t want commitments. She accused me of using her for sex. I didn’t disagree. She had spat in my face.

 But what she called me lingered in my mind for a long, long time. I grew to like it. I liked being called a ‘flower heart’.

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