How can I forget that night, the first time he called me his horse?

Did I want to be ridden? Over, or on top?

Me? Be ridden?

Maybe.

Maybe I did want it.

Maybe I did desire it, that other people in years and ages past called that sin of the devil. The Kristang people…they like their sayings about the ass, sacred sayings to them. They have their own secret freedom. With words, with the body, with all parts of the real world around us. What does real mean to them? I cannot say. I can only tell you why their personified collective, their eldil, is one heck of a holy, sacred, non-binary rascal. One heck of a generous soul. One heck of a collection of all kinds of knowledge, and action, and behaviour that have been buried in the trash cans and landfills and cemeteries of all the different worlds. They bring it all back to life.

They brought me back to life too, even though I am not Kristang.

And so my thoughts, my memories, my story and histories I once thought I forgot – all have returned. Now, all might actually be spoken of.

Maybe, there really is a personified collective, an eldil watching over me. Because there were definitely personified collectives, eldila watching over him, that legendary rascal who taught me how to become like a horse. How to open my mouth, and grunt and scream like a bull, and to speak forbidden truths that were hidden in the deepest wells of my heart:

Maybe I do like to ride in the middle of the body of another man, smelling the transparent energy of every force rolling off and around his chest and armpits, his fingers gripping pieces of the stars that have fallen onto fields and longkangs…

Maybe I am not a person.

Maybe I really am his horse.

Maybe he, and all of his Kristang people, are actually the ones I am in love with.

*

The first time I met him? Seven years ago. Seven long, rambling years; seven years filled with trauma and abuse, with projection, with the worst kind of yearning and wistfulness, that sort of yearning and wistfulness that drags its fingernails suddenly across the inner skin of your soul, until you are practically begging for Death –

– he, too, gave me such a first introduction to Death.

Maybe he taught me how to dance, how to walk, how to speak with Them.

In any case, They have walked me for so long, without my knowledge.

Seven years ago, I arrived in Singapore, looking for money, for a job, for a direction in life that could give me just that little bit of security and safety. My country of origin? Of course you would want to know. My mother tongue? Of course you would want to know. My name?

Migrant, my dear Singaporeans. I think that just this word is sufficient for all of you who are reading. He also taught me this truth: your real name has no meaning in this place. Your heritage language, no one will want to know about. Your country of origin, less than even an infinitesimal number of people want to visit or want to give face to.

If you can build their roads; if you can complete their structures and scaffolds; if you can fill in their sense of emptiness without end – you must not have a name. You must not have a country of origin. You must not have your own language.

Hence I have slowly learned Kristang instead. For the same reason: his culture, his language, his history, all have been attacked, all have been abused to the point of death – so, so close to death. But because no one wants to understand them. But because no one wants to recognise the Kristang collective.

Because of him, because of all of his friends and compatriots, I have taken on their name, their place of origin, their language, and have become who they wanted me to be.

Cowboy.

I had to live in a dormitory, in a Singaporean neighbourhood very far from most other parts of the city. Can you guess the name of the neighbourhood? Tagore. Tagore the writer is also like me, captured into a particular life, a particular field, a world that is not real, not true to its own essence, its own symmetrical balance that every sentient person will have. But on this island, migrant is sufficient. You are not real; you and all your actions, your love, your desires, your curiosities must be hidden. You must protect yourself well, because when they know that you, in your own country, are a writer famous to the point of being more marvellous than the sky –

This he also taught me: they will come and kill you. I know. Because they would have killed me, many years earlier. Very slowly and very quietly, they will batter away your spirit. Tear apart your mind. Smash apart your hope. Because of jealousy. Because of fear. Because they do not want to know that they are not the most superior people in the world. Because inside their hearts, there is no kind of real, true thing.

I recognised his own real, true things that day, seven years prior, when I was sitting and lying on the back of a great and wide hill between Tagore and Lentor.

The major part of Singapore is consumed and devoured by buildings, and steel, and fear. But between the factories and dormitories of the neighbourhood of Tagore, and the rich houses and bungalows of the neighbourhood of Lentor, there are is still a wild space, a field where wretched creatures, like myself in that primordial time, can also find a little bit of calm and tranquility, outside of the Singapore collective’s own pain and hate. It appears as a tiny valley, with a back that slides toward a little longkang that cuts the field into two. On the other side: the twinkling lights of Lentor, with another hill that has just a little bundle of solitary, released trees on top, a leftover crown of an earlier, more ancient island with more healthy self-regard and bravery. At the base of the hill, a wide and empty road, going toward the Lentor train station.

What was his real, true thing? Soon after, I would learn every part of his real, true body; however, the thing that I first got to recognise was his eyes, also folding and doubling over, also burning in the darkness of the night. Two pinprick orange lights, but of a kind of infinitesimality filled with all the force of every star that astronomers had yet to discover.

The time was nine-thirty; the company wanted us all back in the dormitory at ten o’clock, because we had to have, at the very least, seven hours of sleep – this, we all know, was to excuse them waking us up at five o’clock every day. There were penalties for being outside after ten o’clock, if the company found out that this had happened: hence, at first, I had no desire to break this rule, and just wanted to call my girlfriend who was still in my own country before I went to sleep.

But that night, I was outside until the very early hours of the morning, because of his eyes, his body, and his leadership.

First, his two eyes. Surging through the darkness, looking, and looking, and looking…for me.

Who are you?

Who am I?

He has a name. So do I; but both have no meaning here, after all the parts of his figure have appeared through the muddy ocean of the night.

The shell of recollection is very slippery. I cannot remember what he said to me, or what I said to him. But it has not even been ten minutes when he is already seated at my right; it has not even been one hour when his head is suddenly in my lap.

What attracted me to him? Not the cowboy outfit; not the black shirt and hat and pants. Neither is it his smell, gentle and rich, a paradox of sweat and tears. How can I now recognise the smell of tears? After knowing him, I know. Not even his knife, which he showed me two hours after. That which I touched, and felt, and licked, like after a dinner in the middle of the night.

It was his self-regard. Ireidi. In that time, he had not yet learned how to speak my language, neither had I learned how to understand the arithmetic of his mind. And so as I first experenced that memory, I had no words in any language to describe that sensation, this feeling, that compelled me toward him. Of course now I do: his self-regard. A light that shone without weakness from within his skin, through his blood vessels and orifices, eyes and ears, nose and sweet black hair, like paddy.

Self-regard was the cause of why I could say I was his horse. He taught me that masculine character does not come from respect, or power, or big muscles, or anything else. That my biological sex – the things I had between my legs, and in front of my chest – and sexuality – that attractive self-regard that ignited my mind – and gender – my feelings and heart, and affection – and affinity – who I wanted to accompany me through all my life – that these were all four different things. That these four sorts of things all also had to go together, that there had to be a balance of all four, before one could speak of who one was. Of what one’s identity was.

To know that one is queer is extremely difficult. To tell others of the same is even more difficult. But in his embrace, that first night, I was able to learn that I could actually reply to that eternal question – what my real identity was – with fluidity, assurance, confidence and a heart, soul, body and mind all thrust wide open. There was almost no light or illumination; hence, it became easy to learn the taste of the heroic, and the smell of a life dressed for an archetype coming out of the sea. I learnt the names of salt, and sweat, and anxiety, and lonely, liberating release; I allowed them all to roll around in freedom within my mouth. I learnt the first words of the electric Kristang current; I learnt the first phrases of a more valiant and radiant life.

“A cowboy desires his horse,” he said to me. And so, for the first time, that Kristang magic that all governments seem to have such great fear of. He was not abusive; his words did not come from a place of wrath, anger or ugliness. He knew that I wanted to know more about my own soul; and certainly, at last I could see…

I was throwing away all of my own strength.

I was throwing away all of the parts of me that were healthy.

I was throwing away all of my own charisma.

But not forever.

The second night, a week later, I took my cowboy in-between my legs, into my stomach and my belly, and recognised and observed everything that he said was true: throwing away my own strength, hating all of the best parts of myself, all of my charisma.

And not for forever.

Why can a horse ride its cowboy? This is the world of the Kristang, with the Kristang way of telling stories that go and come. They taught me of that sense of healthy irreverence, of how to give marvellous surprises and a sense of wonder to your audience.

They speak of a sense of catharsis in performances and spectacles: and so my cowboy performed the same. He gave a catharsis and a call from the soul that was both gentle and quiet, rich with every letter of the Kristang alphabet whispered in tenderness, waiting for the right horse to come help their true energies appear for the first time in this sad, lonely world that was falling apart.

Seven years have passed. The bond between us has grown for all of them. Our connection.

Who am I? Who is he?

Aiyoh – at the beginning of the story, I already said.

My name? Never worry. My name is not important.

Him? This cowboy, walking and dancing and appearing and living in every Kristang mind, and the minds of every Singaporean and every person in every other part of the world who want to renew themselves?

His name is easy to know. To call him, all you have to do is to say:

Good evening, Death, my liege: cowboy, and ideal, and secret lover and truth, of every Kristang person’s dreams.