Dance & Drink & Screw

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It would have to be Suede's first album. This was the album that changed my entire taste in music when I was 17 years old. Up until that point I was happy to hop around from one genre to the next - one day listening to The Clash, the next happily spinning around to Madonna's Immaculate Collection. But nothing ever meant anything to me, or who I wanted to be, as much as Suede. They were the ones responsible for plunging me head first into indie music, in particular Britpop.

I was still in the closet at this stage, living in Singapore with my family. "Animal Nitrate", the third single from the album, was a big hit - perhaps because it hinted at gay life in a country where homosexuality was illegal, where young Singaporeans had to create codes in order to show each other they were "that way". When "So Young", the fourth single, was released I went to a CD store on Orchard Road and bought the album.

In life, I'm a fairly laid back, slightly melancholic character. It takes extra energy for me to get excited about things, and perhaps that matches perfectly the mood of the album. A few songs stomp their boots, like "The Drowners" and "Metal Mickey", but the whole affair is in general a very dreamy, romantic haze - my ideal state of being. It was thanks to Suede that I discovered Morrissey (they named their band after his single "Suedehead"). I investigated this character called Morrissey, who had inspired such a great album, and discovered that one of my childhood songs "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" was by his band The Smiths. Cupid had added extra poison to his arrows that day; I was a step away from an obsession.

* Once in a while, the usual rumour ran the school's cafeteria: a new ship was in town. Sometimes you outstripped the rumour by seeing the sailors wander down the city's packed streets before anyone else, their "plain" clothes making them look so alike: tight jeans, buzz cuts, fitted shirts or T-shirts tucked in, pristine sneakers. At night, they descended upon Wan Chai, looking for Cantonese hookers and alcohol. To their surprise they would find themselves sharing clubs and bars with us, teenage gweilos who also liked a bit of cheap booze and a good time wherever ecstasy tabs were easily found.

* She called my phone to tell me she wasn't waiting by the bookshop but by the longbar. When I saw her, she was sitting beside a mother and her child, waving at the baby. In the crowded supermarket, I confessed that I was reading a trashy novel called "Labyrinth". Kevin and I made her watch Twin Peaks' pilot episode that night because she'd never seen it. I wanted to take her to Elbow's Cafe, just on the other side of Victoria Park, but the weekend was far too fast for us.

* We spent the turn of the millenium pushing a car up Saint Domingo's mountain, our feet caked with cow shit, cold rain running down our backs, the night so dark that the only thing we could see were the pine trees caught by the headlights. Then, once we had reached the top, we crammed inside the car and opened the bottle of champagne. we smoked some pot and laughed at our miserable new year's as the rain showed no sign of abating.

* Friday night and everyone from school has plans. Even my brother has gone out with his skateboard friends. I sit in my bedroom, surrounded by cheap paperbacks, computer games and a good-for-nothing TV. I have a million hours to kill and the worst company of all: myself. I haven't discovered The Smiths yet. My parents sit in the living room with my brother Nicholas and his nurse, watching television. I don't wish to join them, but I give breaks to my solitude by walking past them on my way to the kitchen.

* It's my birthday and all my friends have been asked to dress as superheroes. I am Superman and my brother is Spiderman. Another Superman arrives, taller and stronger than me, then a couple of Spideys too -- costumes from the same supermarket I'm sure. When Bianca arrives, wearing a red polka dot dress, I rush to explain away her embarrassment at having forgotten the theme, how she didn't fuck up, how there is a heroine out there, printed on a comic page, wearing the same dress and saving the world.

* The first apartment I lived on my own. A semi-basement beneath Mechtilde, the landlady with a large collection of books on Hitler. When the ice storm hit Montreal, the stairs leading to my door became a slide. I broke one of my suitcase's wheels sliding to my door after arriving from the airport. The city had been in darkness for weeks, with people sharing apartments in order to generate heat (the year of Montreal's baby boom). Mechtilde gave me boxes of chocolate in exchange for shoveling the snow off her entrance. And I, in turn, got Holly once to help me do the job. I told her it would be fun and she believed it. Then it was too late to back out when the shovel was already in her hands.

- inspired by rag_and_bone.

When I was 15 years old, my dad informed us that he had been promoted and we were moving to Singapore. I had no idea where Singapore was, or how long we would live there. He brought home some books so we could begin studying the new country we were moving to. There were some tears shed because we were leaving our childhood friends behind. Still, the mystery of the place intrigued me.

I poured over those books everyday. I showed them to my friends and shrugged my shoulders when they asked me if I could learn an asian language. The one thing that surprised me were how many strict laws Singapore had:

- It is against the law to use a public toilet and not flush it.
- It is against the law to spit in public.
- It is against the law to cross a street outside of the pedestrian's access.

There were many more rules. The "infamous" banning of chewing gum only occured when I was already living in Singapore. I don't remember being bothered by it. Other kids at my school (International School of Singapore) prided themselves in smuggling chewing gum into the country, and stories were passed around of glum-looking tourists (they were usually American) being stopped by the police because they were breaking the law.

From then onwards I stopped chewing gum and I've never looked back.

Today, I'm starting my march for the banning of chewing gum in Britain. Singaporeans were right: chewing gum is evil and everyone who indulges in it is a criminal.

I am drafting a letter to my local MP with the suggestion that anyone who chews gum should be put to death - especially the ones who leave chewing gum on park benches so they will get stuck on people's office trousers and completely ruin them.