Three Favourite Snaps


June this year was a strange month for me.
After experiencing a really dry season
of being date-less for almost two years,
I finally hooked up with three guys online:
they were some of the most photogenic people
I’ve ever chatted with. After numerous
webcam sessions of wanking way past
midnight, curiosity got the better of me.

I felt the urge to date them all dressed up.
The dinners went well but the odd thing
was that they asked me at the end
of each first date that I snap a photo
of each of their dicks to keep in my mobile.
I continued to date them the next two months,
though promising fidelity to none.
The dates kept coming till I finally

set my heart on the youngest of the three.
As for the other two, I became wayward
in their affections by inviting both
out on a farewell date, together.
The last photos I took of them were
of their bemused faces, thankfully.
I deleted them soon after. Six months
down the line, I’ve already given up

on the one I thought was the one I wanted;
the other two I was told have become
fuckbuddies (I saw them locking lips
at Dome the other day). But still stashed
away in my memory stick are the three photos
of those three guys I used to date. Strange mojos,
I’ve often thought they were, for someone
as exceptionally unlucky at love as me.


________________________________________
This poem is really a throwback to Philip Larkin’s "Wild Oats". I like to think that this is the gay Malaysian version of his perverse love triangle.

Foreword


I know that some of you are going to say:
Good grief! He’s written about his friends in his poetry!
But, don’t panic, let me just say that if the grief is good
then it has a place in these blogs of mine.

Out of the ashes of our singular lives I’ve tried to transform
some of our tormenting demons into textual metaphor
and, like the phoenix, see our private selves burn
and transfigure into the stuff of unrealised myth.