Haunts

In a city-state where a colonial-era law still discriminates against gay men, sex and queerness are confined to the periphery. On the surface, “Haunts,” originally published in EXHALE: An Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices, charts Singapore’s queer spaces — and the most delicious supper haunts in a place where, for some people, eating in the transient dark after nightfall is proof of living. Beneath the surface of sensory writing on hunger, Gregory Ng Yong He considers the experience of his freedom in a country that constricts it, and the people on whose backs that freedom is built.

More than a snapshot of the Singapore that exists between midnight and five, “Haunts” looks at how queerness finds space around the ritual of supper. Gregory Ng Yong He questions how he can learn to live with the ghosts who haunt him, which is ultimately a question of what it means to be queer and truly free.

— Alexandra Valahu for Guernica Global Spotlights

here’s something about Singapore that always makes people hungry at night. Take a drive after midnight and you’ll see: uncles sucking on durian seeds and frogs’ legs in Geylang, smells wafting into your car from the baskets of