Sex Tourist

By XerXes Xu

Trevor, a dull and disillusioned council officer, divorced and lonely, takes one last desperate gamble to salvage his life as he approaches retirement .
On a quest to find a respectable wife, he finds himself, by accident, in the bar district of Angeles City. Appalled, he is determined to avoid the
bar scene, but befriended by a sex tourist, an innocent invitation to eat leads to a drink, then drunkenness, then a tour of the bars. One girl, one night, and he is infatuated. He can give up his fantasy and keep his dignity, or give up his dignity and keep his fantasy
When Trevor loses his moral footing, is he falling or is he flying?
His life will never again be dull.
But, can he find happiness with a bar-girl?

• Language: English
• Publisher: XerXes Xu
• Release date: Dec 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311301451

XerXes Xu

Remember Mutually Assured Destruction? At age five,when the four minute warning sounded, my teachers took twenty minutes to evacuate the class to the nuclear bomb shelter. That troubled me. The next time the siren cranked up, I left the classroom and ran. When the four minutes were up I was sitting alone in the shelter. I’d let everybody down, I was a disgrace, a very naughty boy. Yes, I was naughty, but I was no fool. Did I need to be a fool to be good? I wondered. After that early lesson in self-sufficieny I plowed a lonely furrow, as the one who would break ranks and question rules. Along the way I’ve accrued a wife, two children, two degrees, lots of experience, very little money – but a triple A credit rating, because I always pay my way. I’ve travelled with a backpack, run two businesses, practised in the law courts, worked in a lunatic asylum and laboured in construction. Seventy years on I’m running out of ranks to break and rules to question, so I have to make them up. At five, I couldn’t make my case. My stories are a late comeback, picking at the foundations of of the big rules, the moral foundations, and exploring what might result when they fall. As a child I read voraciously – everything. At fifteen every new novel I picked up was "stale", by the end of the first page I had that feeling of "deja lu", so, with nothing "fresh" to read, I gave up. Now, I understand there is only one story, the struggle between my version of good and your version of good, maybe His version of good - the battle of moral perspectives - of moral relativity. There are no white hats or black hats, all hats are grey, and by a moral illusion look white against a black background and black against a white background. When the background changes, the colour of the hat changes. Now that I want to tell stories myself, I try to dress them in new clothes, but set them in reality, untanted and uninfluenced by the last fifty years of literary fashion, in the hope of achieving that elusive quality - “freshness.” As death impends I write furiously in the hope that, if I hurry, I may finish two or three more “fresh” stories before I’m timed out.

Book preview

Chapter 1.

It’s a Grey, Grey World.

The hair of man turns grey with age, his soul, the vibrant colours of forest leaves before they fall … the souls of most men do.

Trevor was lonely, desolate, and the dread of an empty life after retirement caused him palpitations. The palpitations were worst, shortly after waking, on cold, grey mornings in bleak winter.

Comforting cup of warming, sweet tea in hand, he stared through his kitchen window at the darkness of an early December morning. Already his navy-blue gabardine raincoat was pulled over his grey work-suit in readiness to leave. Morosely illuminated by the dull glow from street lamps, and revealed by their refracted light, flecks of snow driven by a wind from the north western Arctic gusted across the road. A car drove slowly by, its probing headlights picking out the tracks of a previous vehicle in the film of slurry formed by melting snowflakes. Lifting his foot, Trevor examined the sole of his scuffed, creased Oxford lace-ups. No holes. His feet may get cold, but at least they would not get wet.

His life, he reflected, was like his shoes, secure against the worst, but worn, cold and joyless. As he contemplated the unpleasant journey to his office, the thought that his soul had turned an unnatural grey tortured him. A dank walk through chilly blasts to the tube station would be followed by an hour-long journey in underground tunnels, on a stuffy train, being careful to avoid eye contact with fellow commuters, before emerging once more above ground for the short walk through a dark, cold, grey, concrete and glass canyon, to Westminster Town Hall Annexe. A local government employee earned too little to buy a house in a central London borough, which is why he lived so far from his place of work. But his employment was secure, his pension generous and inflation-proofed.

In his air-conditioned office Trevor would be neither too hot nor too cold; his work-surface would be appropriately lit, and his ergonomically adjustable chair would support him in comfort for the next eight hours. But he would not see the dawn.

At some point he would walk to the coffee machine to refresh his cup and from there see, above the roofs of adjacent buildings, the dull, grey, morning sky. He might even stroll to the window to look down on the figures hurrying back and forth in the cold, damp gloom, and feel gratitude that he was ensconced in the warmth. That would be the highpoint of his day. Worse yet, as he contemplated his future, that would be the highpoint of his remaining life. With no exceptional fortune of which to boast to his colleagues, he would shamefully confess to himself that his only consolation came from comparing his comfort to the relative discomfort of others.

For eight hours he would receive paper, sort, collate, complete, then file, or, with appropriate recommendations forward it. His position with a local authority was responsible and indispensable, though it was not his own local authority. Of course he needed the income, but it was the opportunity for human contact, the excuse to talk, the occasional smile, the odd joke, even sometimes a shared intimacy, that drew him to the office on time, every day. That was what sustained his life, and soon this prop would be removed; what would follow was too horrible for him to contemplate.

At this time of year he would not know that dusk had fallen before, at five-pm, he put on his raincoat and walked into the gaudily illuminated darkness of a city centre for the reverse journey home.

Unpleasantness as he travelled to work.

Boredom spiced faintly with human warmth, when he arrived.

Unpleasantness as he travelled home.

Lonely comfort, home alone.

Sleep.

This five-layer sandwich described the routine of his life.

Today was no different.

By quarter-to-seven Trevor was at home in his kitchen, sitting at the table nursing his first glass of wine, his dinner spinning slowly, right then left, in his microwave oven.

On arriving home he had switched on the central-heating and it would be another hour before the living room warmed through, so he lingered in the kitchen which quickly heated from the gas burners of the hotplate. For many years he ate his main meal by himself, a tasty and filling meal seasoned with loneliness, then sat before his large, state-of-the-art television and watched fantasy lives filled with drama, hope, despair, danger and love.

He remembered drama; he remembered hope; he even remembered fondly his times of danger, and those memories evoked echoes of the accompanying emotion. But he could not evoke the sensations of loving and being loved.

He knew there had been love. He had married, he had had children, but his relationships turned sour, then painful, and when he remembered, he could not pick out the love above the pain. However, if he did not try to remember he felt no pain.

Later, as he sat watching television sipping from a comforting glass of red wine, he gloomily ruminated on his prematurely grey life.

At fifty-nine the turbulence of love, marriage, and raising children was behind him but, unforeseeably, he was denied the cosy afterglow he had earlier in life expected to sustain him through old age, up to death.

Why his relationship with his wife, Sarah, had turned poisonous he never completely understood. Was it only money? He could never earn as much as his brother-in-law, or the husbands of Sarah's friends. Their home was never in the right area, the car not new enough, the holidays not in a sufficiently plush hotel.

Trevor’s salary was never extravagant, but his employment was secure, in the public sector, and he had never expected Sarah to work, an expectation she shared. His plan had been to live comfortably but modestly within his adequate and predictable income, which he felt fairly rewarded his talent and worth. Sarah wanted him to strive harder, take risks, seek better-paid employment, and expand his means to finance the more expensive lifestyle to which she believed she was entitled. Her envy of her siblings and friends corroded and destroyed their relationship. Separation and divorce followed.

Trevor financed Sarah's reduced circumstances until she remarried, and he continued to finance his children, Dan and Timmy, until they reached adulthood. Despite his assiduous endeavours to maintain contact with his children, their stepfather became Dad, and Trevor was relegated to the status of a dull and distant benefactor to whom courtesy visits were dutifully made.

Looking forward, he could see his life clearly marked out. In eight weeks or so, on 5th February 2001, he would reach sixty and begin to subside into the death embrace of the Welfare State. His Freedom Pass would be issued, enabling him to travel free on public transport, a saving to him of £3000 a year. And next autumn a Winter Fuel Allowance would appear in his bank account to defray the cost of keeping himself warm through dismal winter. For five more years he would travel to work and process paper then, on 5th February 2006, he would retire – not just from work, but from social intercourse, also.

His pension would be two thirds of his final salary; however his endowment insurance would pay off his mortgage which would almost offset the drop in salary. There would be a large cash gratuity, possibly used to buy a new car to last into old age, then finance a dream holiday and, in addition still leave a nice little nest-egg to sit in a bank account, as security against a rainy day.

He would have hobbies and activities to fill his life until his decline, when his primary relationship would be with the National Health Service. His days then would consist in a routine of retrieving pills from his Dosette Box at the right time, and keeping appointments with his GP, various consultants, physiotherapist, phlebotomist, and so on.

Social Services would support him at home until he became incapable of looking after himself, when he would be transferred to a Care Home, there to sit in a rank with the other frail, old-folk, silently staring into the middle distance. As his organs began to fail he would be transferred to hospital while his condition was stabilised, and from there to a Nursing Home where he would be maintained somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness by sedative drugs. The deep pocket of the taxpayer would be tapped to preserve him in this condition until the inevitable could be staved of no longer and some bacterial infection, beyond the power of his immune system to resist, would carry him off.

In this his life and death would be more secure than most of the World's people could hope to enjoy, more secure, more pampered and better managed than the lives and deaths of almost all the kings in history. This knowledge did not bring him the contentment or reassurance for which the founders of the Welfare State may have hoped.

Staving off the worst hardly secures the best; it doesn't even secure the half-decent he thought, nor had it secured the half-decent for him.

He had been the recipient of the State's benevolence all his life and it had brought him great security, but the State provided neither happiness nor pleasure in any measure; even a Welfare State left a man to find these for himself.

When Trevor contemplated the idea of dying after such a life, he was appalled. In that moment of painful self-appraisal he concluded that there was nothing to be done now. His life had been squandered, and he asked himself what would have made him content to accept his accelerating decline into death? What now could inject such happiness into his life that he would die feeling un-cheated? What would fill his cup?

The prosaic answer came easily:

More love,

More sex,

More excitement.

But he knew that the quest for love, sex, and excitement, was the prerogative of the young, and he was six weeks from receiving his first badge of senility, his Freedom Pass.

If I had my life over again ....

He strangled the thought, which could only bring anguish. One man gets one life. He had lived his and was now on the conveyor belt to death. In all the circumstances, the absence of insecurity and pain was as much as he though he deserved.

Later, when his living room had warmed and the wine had charmed up an artificial glow of well being, as he flicked through the channels seeking something to match his squiffily fatuous mood, he came across a re-run of an old TV movie starring Charlie Drake and Bill Maynard.

Filipina Dreamgirls was a tragicomic story of five assorted English arseholes - two silly old men included – off to the other side of the world to seek young brides ordered from a catalogue. He felt their foolishness would amuse him for ninety minutes, and in the back of his mind he felt he would also find consolation in comparing their unbecoming behaviour to his own respectable dignity. Lights out, he recharged his glass and relaxed back into the sofa, ready to float alone like an amused superior over the Son et Lumière of farce warmly radiating the comical aspect of human folly from the corner of his living room.

At its climax, Trout - Bill Maynard's character - drunkenly ridiculed the ‘arseholes.’ Charlie and Bill were masters of the undignified, and Trevor could, at his age, with gratitude say to himself ....There but for the Grace of God go I.

However, Trevor noted that though the fictional arseholes lived, some with fear of failure, some with the consequences, all, despite the tawdriness of their lives, had loved and been loved; more than a small victory.

He retired to bed, his spirits uplifted by the good wine and the triumph of human aspiration over the banality of real life. His ninety minutes of escapism were followed by seven hours of oblivion.

The alarm sounded at five-thirty am, and on waking his first thought was that he must, before he was granted further respite, again endure the banality of reality for the next sixteen hours. A slight mugginess in his head was the price banality exacted for his elevated mood the previous evening; a little salt on his greyness to bring out the fullness of the colour. Then out of the shower, into his grey suit, into the cold, dark morning, into the stuffy tunnels, into his climate controlled and ergonomically engineered office and back to his indispensable paperwork. Indispensable; but neither interesting nor challenging.

Trevor was a veteran of thirty-five years shuffling, an acknowledged expert. His whole department shuffled paper, and the dramas of his life centred on errors in paperwork, revisions to forms, and use of the photocopier. Emotions could run high, alliances be brokered, betrayals hatched, hatreds formed, careers built and destroyed, a microcosm of artificial life fed and sustained by the torrent of paper. Through long-service and the ability to remember where records had been archived, Trevor had risen to the lowest level of middle management.

At work, he had made good friends when young, but they rose more rapidly than he, or moved to exploit better opportunities, and now he had only colleagues, most much younger than himself, who saw him as an obstruction to promotion, a pettifogging schoolmaster pointing out pettifogging errors in their homework, never as a person to be invited to the pub after work. In truth, he did not see himself as such, either.

Twenty years had passed since any of the office girls flirted with him. They looked younger and more appealing than ever, but his position meant that the fear of his rebuke, no matter how gently phrased, cast a shadow over every transaction. Deference was no substitute for flirtation. Anyway, he had long ago conceded that their inviting bodies were for enjoyment by younger men, and he had ceased to yearn.

Chapter 2.

Dennis, death, deserts, destiny, desperation and deliverance.

Today would be one of the least numbing. Once a month, the Coordination and Integration Committee convened. Officers of his level would attend. Glitches in the existing paper and IT systems would be ironed out, and plans made to implement improvements. These were the eddies-at-the-bottom created by the dynamism-at-the-top.

Apart from the sheer relief from routine, Trevor looked forward to these two-hour meetings because his old mucker, Dennis, would be there. Dennis would be chairing; he was a high flyer, he networked his way to the top, but he and Trevor had been at the bottom together, they had shared the golden years of their youth before Trevor had married and, although they lived completely separate lives outside work, Dennis would always seek him out during the twenty minute break for refreshment to talk chummily about the old days and catch up.

I don't want to spend the fucking break talking about paper chains, he had told Trevor.

Recently, Dennis had been confiding his retirement plans. Trevor was thrilled to hear them, and envious.

I really can't wait to be shot of this place. I should've gone when Richie and Dave bailed out, but it was the pension, I wanted the pension. Now, I've gone as high as I'll go; I'm bored shit-less and trapped. I go home and plan my retirement. Melanie gives me stick. I'm always calculating my savings and planning adventures. Her pension kicks-in next year, she's sixty in March. She wants me to jump ship now and we can live on her pension 'til I'm sixty-five. I may. But I do want the full pension. I've got to do forty years.

What's the current plan? Trevor had asked the previous month.

Sell the house and downsize to a cheap flat near the kids. Buy a small place in the South of France with the balance … and a yacht. We want to enjoy the grand-kids, so we can babysit them in the winter and take them on sunshine holidays in the summer. We can sail around the Mediterranean. Tight … but do-able on a full pension.

Trevor was certain Dennis would pull it off, and was pleased for him. Dennis was sure-footed, and it was the sort of graceful retirement to which Trevor had once himself aspired. However, even his Christmas cards to his grandchildren now drew no response.

At five-to-two, Trevor arrived in the conference room and found his place. At two, Alice Purbright took the head of the table and brought the meeting to order. She introduced herself. Unhappily I will be chairing today because, this morning on his way to work, Mr Tremaine collapsed. Sadly, by the time he reached hospital he was dead. It was probably a heart attack.

Trevor was instantly wracked by turbulent emotions. He had experienced something similar fifteen years before, when his eldest son, Dan, poisoned by his mother's contempt for his natural father, had told him he preferred him not to visit. The debilitating shock deprived him of the power of speech or action. Other attendees eventually declared him unwell and a volunteer led him back to his office where he was committed to the care of a deferential young girl by the name of Beattie. Beattie did not know what to do with him. Phone calls were made and a kind lady from human resources turned up, led him to a side room, elicited his story, commiserated, and arranged for him to go home immediately.

Sitting in his living room, Trevor's emotions remained in turmoil. He raged on behalf of his friend.

All the shit and none of the icing. Why? Why him? He did all the right things, he deserved the rewards, but they’re suddenly whipped away. Fate is arbitrary and cruel?

A glass of wine steadied his mood; the ability to choose his thoughts started to return. The wine brought emotional numbness, so he drained his glass – several times - and anger on behalf of his friend lapsed into self-pity.

Should I die tomorrow there’s no one to lament my misfortune. And no fortune I would have missed. No one would be bothered to be distressed for me. Even I can’t be distressed at the prospect. Dennis has been robbed: I'd be robbed of nothing. My death would put me out of my misery and spare the taxpayer the cost of preserving a pointless life.

He crystallised his dreadful condition:

I have nothing that makes life worth living. I expect nothing to make my life worth continuing, no plans, no expectations. No one would think me cheated by a life cut short. Why should they?

He recoiled from the thought. His chest tightened and panic rose at the prospect of existing, but not living. He gulped down another glass of wine, just enough alcohol to tip him out of his condition of learned helplessness into a condition where he could react, drunkenly aspire, and absurdly dare to live. He resolved that things would change from that moment. He would make himself a future. He would seize his share of life. He would make a plan. For an hour he was purposeful, but as the alcohol subsided so did his resolve, his emotions returned to rest and he fell into an intoxicated sleep.

Next morning the alarm clock could not penetrate his alcogenic slumber, and by mid-morning he had rung the office to call in sick. They were understanding. Aspirin and coffee took the edge off his hangover, and he climbed back into bed and ruminated.

By early afternoon, he sat at the kitchen table with a blank sheet of paper before him, and wrote a heading. The mood of resolve, driven by last night’s anger and despair had dissipated, but the anguish of a wasted life lingered. Now, a fearful Trevor, spurred to action by his dreadful insight, wrote a heading:

My future life.

He sat in silence for a long time, staring at this heading, unable to write more, until it occurred to him that if he wrote nothing, that was what the rest of his life would be, an empty sheet. Deterred by self-derision at the notion of change, with courage born purely of desperation, he entered that dark room at the bottom of his soul where all his youthful aspirations were locked away like disused lumber, and turned on the light. Instantly, he recognised what he sought, but still hesitated, knowing that when those aspirations were set down on that page they would cease to be fantasies, his foolish dreams; they would become ambitions, targets, objectives requiring action, like the relentless memos he penned at work - and become the object of ridicule. His hand moved reluctantly; this act, a difficult, shameful admission of what he was, and what he had been, and the same words appeared on paper:

More love.

More sex.

More excitement.

Once written down the words could not be unwritten; they were burned on his soul and would glow behind his eyelids when he closed his eyes. He now had no hiding place. No excuses. No more papering over the truth. He wanted to live his life again. He wanted a second chance. The admission was painful. He began to sob.

You get no second go. If you chase dreams, you end up an undignified, old fool, a laughingstock, the fodder for satire, like those in Filipina Dreamgirls.

Yet a fragment from an old adage drifted into his head,

- greater fools look on wishing they could do the same-

He had looked on and laughed, but secretly had envied them and wished he could do the same. In this instance, he now saw he was the greater fool.

One way or another I’m the fool. Must I be a greater fool?

Simple choice. The next line he wrote on the paper was,

- a lesser fool - let them look and laugh -

His life to date had been characterised by conformity, adherence to rules and procedures. All he knew was how to be the greater fool. He understood immediately that to be a lesser fool he must free himself from the invisible strings manipulated by unascertained persons, with the authority of an ill-defined ‘society’ that had controlled him like a puppet. He must stray from the secure-and-certain path ‘society’ had lain before him, leading into his future and up to his death. He must now beat his own path towards a dream and accept the hazards of the journey; he must brave his self-derision and the derision of others.

This was how Trevor's journey began; by admitting to himself what he wanted from life, and recognising that the reassuring embrace of ‘society’ came at a very high cost - a cost he no longer wanted to pay.

An action plan was required, the steps towards his goals. He cast about for possibilities. Small-adds would elicit responses from ladies of similar vintage to himself, to provide companionship and homeliness; but that would not be enough, their affection would not be satisfying. He craved the intense physical passion that only a young body can provide. Liaisons with prostitutes might compliment a relationship with an older woman, but would be an unsatisfactory compromise. Affection and physical fulfilment bundled in the same body, to be enjoyed together as a package, at the same time, in the same place, was his goal. As he pondered, the catchy title of his previous evening's entertainment came back to him. Bracketing items one and two on his list, he wrote:

???A Filipina Dream-Girl???

Item three, more excitement, was equally problematic. A hobby maybe? Dangerous sports would provide an adrenalin rush, but he doubted his body, at his age, could sustain the rigour of rock climbing, bungee jumping, or scuba diving. It must be a sport with limited physical demands, a powered sport. Dennis planned to sail. That was a possibility, or some form of car racing, or flying.

Flying … Yes.

He would do more than rise from his knees; he would soar above the earth.

Next to the third item he wrote,

???Sailing??? or ???Flying???

When he re-read the sheet he was so embarrassed by his impertinence that he left it on the table, went into his living room, dropped onto the sofa, flicked on the TV, and within moments fell asleep.

Next morning Trevor returned to his normal self and on re-reading the ridiculous, private admissions precipitated by extreme and unfamiliar emotion, blushed. His first thought was to screw up the sheet and throw it in the bin, but recognising the truth in the ridiculous, he placed it on the sideboard for less hurried consideration. That evening, he again blushed on seeing it, and, unwilling to consign it to the bin yet unable yet to endure its ridicule, he slid it into a drawer where it would remain for several days

The weekend came.

Trevor's weekends were characterised by the absence of work rather than the presence of joyful recreation. The tedium of the working-week was broken by a different type of tedium, one of his own choosing, a routine of lying-in until late, shopping, watching TV, reading newspapers, cooking himself an ambitious meal, and indulging in fine wine and beers. What it lacked was people. Outside the house he was genial with neighbours and shop staff, but once he closed his door behind him he was cosy, and alone. By Sunday evening he was again warmed by good food and good wine, and in reflective mood. The ridiculous sheet was taken from the drawer and placed back on the table. He sat before it and submitted to the ridicule, ready to accept the truth and finally take his heart's desires seriously.

Fetching the newspapers, he began to trawl through the classifieds. Amongst the ‘Personals’ he found several agencies offering introductions to beautiful young Filipinas. He wrote half a dozen letters of enquiry, for dispatch next day to the indicated PO Boxes. Elsewhere he found adverts for sailing holidays, but clearly aimed at children. There was nothing related to flying.

On Monday he went out for lunch, posted the letters, and picked up an aviation magazine from the newsagents. There were scores to choose from. It seemed many people shared a fascination with flying, so he picked by cover, and took one with a cover-shot of the sort of light aircraft he would like to fly.

Travelling home on the tube he looked inside. Reading the articles infected him with the bug, a fascination with specifications, with views of earth taken from a few thousand feet, and sights of places inaccessible at ground level.

After dinner, he settled in front of the TV and began to flick through the small-adds. Sure enough, there were adverts from flying schools seeking would be aviators, and these were definitely not aimed at children. It was noticeable that many were situated in the USA, and those seemed the most affordable, offering all-inclusive courses, quite expensive, but affordable.

By Thursday, when he returned from work there were responses from the introduction agencies in his letterbox. On reading each carefully, he was surprised at the indifference to age claimed by even teenage girls in the specimen bios. Many were very pretty, but all seemed from their profiles, to be impossibly humble and domestic. The agency that appealed, offered to effect introductions in Manila, and since little could be ascertained through an artificial correspondence, he determined on this one. The agency also offered to arrange inexpensive flights and budget accommodation. He called.

Good Morning, Mabuhay Travel. Imelda speaking. How can I help you?

Trevor re-checked the number.

Errr … Good Morning. I was hoping to speak with Filipina Dreambrides.

Sir, that is us also. Are you our new customer?

Yes. I’m making any enquiry about your service.

Sir, we arrange introductions for marriage-minded gentlemen with our Filipina ladies. Sir, with our agency there is no correspondence; we believe the best match is made by meeting with the ladies and talking your plans together. To make this happen, we will arrange all travel and hotels for you to have an enjoyable holiday in the Philippines, and to meet our lady clients in our Manila facility.

And who will these ladies be, exactly.

We have many ladies on our book, many hundred at any one time. They are of all ages, backgrounds and occupations, but most of our ladies are eighteen to twenty-six years old, of good character and are marriage and family-minded.

Quite young then. I’m fifty-nine, Do you have special arrangements for older gentlemen like myself?

Imelda laughed. Sir, fifty-nine is not old. Most of our ladies prefer the older man because he is more settled. Your age will not be a problem at all; our ladies will want to meet you.

And how are the introductions arranged?

When you arrive in Manila, we will give you our current catalogue, with photographs and bios. You can choose ladies from our catalogue?

How many ladies will you have on your books? You said hundreds?

Maybe a thousand, a little bit more sometimes, a little bit less sometimes.

That sounds good. I have in mind late January, early February. Will that be a problem.

"No, Sir. Just bear in mind that the longer our notice,