I Almost Slept With a Woman Who Was High On Ecstasy

I felt nothing at first.

Sure, I was in a beautiful room with a beautiful girl, the girl of my dreams dressed in a tight white tank top and slim-fit yoga pants, but the pill, the MDMA pill we had just swallowed failed to elicit for me any immediate reaction. Sure, the lights were a little brighter, and the air-condition a little warmer, but all in all, I was less than impressed by Molly’s supposed exuberance. Feeling less than impressed I stood up and paced around the room. I paced and I paced―and say, why is the room so hot? Can’t Lady Pearl, the host of this three-hundred-dollar-a-night shophouse, afford even a functioning thermostat? And say, why do I feel so pumped up and energetic all of a sudden, like what I had been doing was not sitting in an air-conditioned room but running in circles under the sun? And hey, why do I feel like running around in circles right about now?

Still pacing, I glanced at my watch and noticed that 30 minutes had passed since I first ingested the drug. Or at least, I think 30 minutes had passed. Because my watch, the hands of my G-shock watch that was usually so clear and readable, was now anything but. They wobbled and jiggled in a frenetic dance, and as I watched they seemed to surge forward then backward then forward again, leaving a trail of many little watch-hands in their wake. Then I looked up from my watch and around the room, and I knew that it was not my watch but my very eyes that were deceiving me.

The room, the room that was so real and unmalleable just a moment ago, was now swerving, wobbling like it was not built out of solid concrete and wood but pliant gelatine and glue. The walls of the room were glittering like they were not walls at all, but four shimmering stalagmites growing up and towards the roof. Yet at the same time, everything was imbued with a sense of realness. Everything, in fact, looked realer than real, like the old world I had been living in was but a low-quality simulation, a YouTube video of the very real thing.

As I was watching the walls swerve it hit me. I felt a surging, a sense of swelling in my chest, and all at once the swelling-feeling exploded and shot through the length of my entire body. My toes were tingling, my face was flushing, and when I held up my hand to feel my eyes I could feel them wiggling, back and forth, like two cosmic comets caught in a wild and frenetic dance.

“Oh my god, I’m tripping!” I yelled.

“You’re not tripping, silly,” said Linda said with a laugh. “You’re just high. MDMA doesn’t make you trip. It’s an entheogen, not a psychedelic. It just makes you feel things!”

And feel things I did. All the love I ever felt for Linda, all the love I ever felt for this world, it exploded out of me, poured out of my pores in a brilliant shining flood. Giddily, I walked over to one of the potted plants decorating the room. It was an eucalyptus, its leaves dark green and waxy with oil. Taking a leaf in my finger, I caressed it, stroked at it, and at that moment the leaf felt not like a leaf but the silk and satin of a woman’s skin, and there was no denying it: I was high. Utterly, inexorably, and beautifully high.

Perhaps that was why I did what I did next. Perhaps that was why I dropped the leaf, walked over to Linda, and took her chin in my hands. Cupping her face delicately between the points of my fingers, I looked at Linda, and Linda, Laughing Linda with the world in her eyes, looked up at me and smiled. She batted her long lashes. “Yes?” She asked. And Calvin, Casanova Calvin, he who used to fight grown men in the ring for a living, he who waltzed around so confident and insouciant all the time, rustled around in his mental toolbox, reached down deep to the core of his vocabularic roots, foraged for the appropriate words for the moment, and in the end, all he could come up with was, “Hello.”

“Hello?” Said Linda with an arch of her eyebrow. “Why, hello there. It’s nice to meet you. My name is Linda.” Flashing me an unreadable smile, she peeled my fingers gently but firmly away from her face. And at that moment I felt ashamed, ashamed and so foolish at my ineptitude, at my inability to be witty on command. For what was the point of reading so many books if you can’t even make a girl laugh, and what was the point of being a pugilist if you can’t even get laid? I should’ve quit fighting and learned how to dance instead, I should sell all my books and learn how to do handstands and backflips, because that’s what girls like, because I could beat Nick, Nick in a fistfight and quote Voltaire atop the pile of his steaming bones, but what was the point of that if he was the one with the girl and not me?

For the first time in my life I saw how Man could be driven mad by Woman. I sank my nails into my palms, deep enough to draw blood, and although it was ecstasy that ran through my veins it was self-pity that rang loud in my heart. I bit my lips, trying not to cry, and I usually never cry, but the drug formerly known as Empathy was making me feel emotional, seasick and giddy and very, very sad.

At the height of my sadness, Linda kissed me.

Yes, I didn’t kiss her. It was she who kissed me; me, Calvin Yang, winner of three MMA fights and nurser of a broken heart that was even now beginning to heal. She kissed me and she knew how to kiss, this flower girl from my dreams, and as our lips met and unmet they opened and closed in petals of summer awakening.

I pursed my mouth against hers, and she opened them with her lips. I cupped my hands on her cheeks, and she moved it down to her hips―and my oh my, did she feel good. My fingers drew circles in her hair, over her ears, across the creaminess of her bare back, and everywhere I touched my soul sang alive with young love and meaning.

My fingers found the hem of her pants. I pulled them down. Her panties were black Calvin Kleins. They had multi-colored stars all over them, silver-blue starbursts across the field of an obsidian sky. Before my drug-fuelled eyes they seemed to come alive, to form mute constellations around her loins, north stars guiding me to the promised realm. They yielded as my hands found them.

God, I’ve always been attracted to half-dressed women. There’s something primal in me that rears up, there is something about watching a half-naked woman succumbing to the power of a man, dominated yet clinging desperately on to the last vestiges of decency. It turns me on to no end. With one hand on her back and the other across the stars, I flung Linda gently yet very hard on the carpet. She lay there, gazing at me, lips spread slightly apart. Her eyes were dark and sultry from want. Come to me, Calvin! Those eyes screamed. I did.

And then it happened. When I was on top of her kissing her it happened. Linda suddenly went limp. Her hand, the hand that was on the nape of my neck, stroking me, goading me on, fell down to lie by her side. Her head fell back to strike the carpet. There was a muffled thump.

“Linda,” I asked, concerned. “Linda, are you okay?”

For one long dreadful moment, there was no answer. Then she mumbled, “Sss…I’s okay, Cal…go head…”

“What?” I said.

“I said is okay, Cal…go ahead…I want to. I want you…”

Things were most definitely not okay. I mean, I was on top of Linda, yes. Her underwear was half-off and she was whispering delicious words of desire to me, also yes. Yes, yes, she was half-naked, but at the same time she was also half-conscious, this woman of my dreams, she who only wanted to sleep with me when she was asleep―and fuck, I had been waiting for this moment for months, so why now? And God, I had been a good law-abiding citizen all of my life, so why me? It was the conundrum to end all conundrums. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat back and blamed God. God, you incorrigible prankster, you fun-killing hack in the sky! To bring me here in the arms of this woman only for her to pass out on me, only You would be capable of such a divine, dirty test. For it was a test, no doubt about that, a test to see if I was not a gentleman but a rapist, a test to see whether I would allow my small head to rule over my big one.

I’m not going to lie. For a moment, I thought about it. I thought about going over, sliding the rest of her pants down, and sliding myself in her.

I only wavered when I saw her eyes. Her eyes, those sultry eyes I had seen and fell in love with only a few months ago, were all rolled back. They would wobble for a moment, jiggle, then flicker back to their normal position. Her pupils were massive, dilated. They were so large they looked like saucers that could swallow the world whole.

Something about her, lying there on the carpet, half-naked with her too-large eyes, gave me pause. I didn’t pause because I was scared. I paused because I pitied her.

Yes, pity, that piss-poor incel-inducing emotion. Look at this pitiful little thing, I thought. Look at this poor little bird, all lost and curled up in the cold, wearing nothing but a tight white tank top, pantless because some brute had pulled her pants down. She was half naked and she looked so vulnerable, there in the dying light of the evening―and I wanted to sleep with her, yes, but was this right? She was a beautiful woman, but she was somebody’s daughter too, and somewhere out there some parent was waiting for his daughter to come home, unspoiled and untouched, and was this the best I could do? Take advantage of someone else’s daughter while she was drugged up and half-asleep?

No! No, this cannot do, and cursing myself I grabbed a blanket and threw it over Linda. I didn’t strip her. I cocooned her instead, fool that I am, wrapped her up in so many white layers while she shivered and looked up at me like a burrito with confused eyes full of want. “Linda…” I said gently. “Linda, you’re not feeling yourself right now, okay? Just lie down here for a sec. Things’ll be alright soon…”

She just lay there looking at me. Her eyes were large, dark, and threatening, full of pinpricks of black flame like a god’s.

Then she whispered, “ccc…”

“Yes?” I said, leaning over so I could hear her.

“I said…come c…closer…”

I did as she asked, and when I was within range she sat up and grabbed my neck with surprising speed. I was caught off guard, and as she pulled me towards her I only struggled half-heartedly, for I knew in my heart of hearts what she had in mind.

She kissed me again, this semi-asleep woman of my dreams, mauled me with a predator’s passion. I was on top of her, dominant but oh so helpless: my hand in her hair, my chest on her chest, her curves against my hard edges, and next to me she felt oh so soft and right. Her eyes were closed against mine, and I thought to myself, oh God oh God oh yes. This is what winners feel, this is what conquerors feel, this was what my ancestors must’ve felt when they conceived me years and years ago in the endless river of love and progeny. I was caught in her, lost in her, drowning blissfully in the streams of her feminine current. I surfaced only to bury my face deep into her hair. I wanted to breathe in the scent of her deep. I wanted to remember this moment forever.

Then Linda bit me.

It wasn’t a love bite, either. She bit me hard, right on the lower lip, hard enough to draw blood. I reared back from her, tried to extricate myself from her, but her teeth had morphed into fangs. I could feel them sinking into my lips, holding fast, and this wasn’t what I had in mind when I chose to lean in. I tried to use The Arm to free myself from her grasp, but she refused to let go. A sense of horror descended upon me. Linda was going to eat me, I thought. She was going to eat me alive.

Then, just as suddenly as she latched on, Linda let go. I fell in a heap on the carpet, one leg still scissored with hers, the other trapped hopelessly in the folds of the blanket.

“Gggooooooow!” I managed to say. “What the fuck, Linda?”

“F…fuck?” She said, her voice lilting, making it a question. “Nooo. No fuck.” She finished, giggling to herself.

What the hell have I gotten myself into? I thought, bringing a hand up to my bruised and battered lip. It came back smeared with red. “Lipstick!” Linda, exclaimed with a bright and child-like laugh. Then her voice turned somber. “Not myself,” Linda said. Then her eyes rolled back, and her head drooped and threatened to strike the hardwood floor once more.

I leapt, and this time The Arm did not fail me. I caught her just before she landed, cushioning her fall with my palm, and with her head in my hands she turned to look at me with eyes all glittery bright. “Mmmm…my hero.” She gushed. Then she turned serious once more. “Will you hold me, Calvin? Just hold me tight for the night?”

Come on Calvin, my small head said. Flirt with her. Tell her something―anything. Sing her some Ed Sheeran songs, feed her some beautiful lies that will make her want to take the rest of her pants off for you. You’re almost there. You’ve almost made it. Don’t you quit on me now!

But I was tired. My lifeblood was leaking from my lips, my lifeforce was sapped by the madness of it all. Sex or no sex, we are all of us dead in the end, so what does it matter? And am I an animal, a servant of my senses, a low-down ape driven by nothing but the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain? And what’s more, I could feel the effects of the drug fading. Linda and I must’ve made out longer than I thought. I looked at my watch. It was still bright and trembly, but I could somewhat make out the time now. It had been two hours since Linda and I had ingested the drug.

“Certainly,” I replied, with as much poise as I could muster.

“My hero.” Linda sighed again. She reached for me, and I flinched, but all Linda did was link her hand in mine. There we lay, and there we spent the night, holding hands like an old and washed-out couple. Linda would stir occasionally, mumble something incomprehensible, then drift into silence one more. Once, she even used my hand as a makeshift computer mouse, moving it around, clicking the back of my wrist like it contained an invisible but very-real-for-her cursor. I didn’t react. I just sat there, looking at her, feeling the hope abandon my body, feeling the Ecstasy within me fade into nothingness. When Linda’s hands fell from mine, I picked her up gently and put her to bed.

I didn’t know what to make of the night, but looking at the passed-out body of Linda beside me, one thing was clear: Calvin Yang was not good for Linda Lee.

-

The above story is an excerpt taken from my memoir Confessions of a Singaporean Weed Smoker. The woman pictured in the photo above has no relation to the story.