Chapter 9

The journey was completely uneventful and boring to say the least. Sitting fourteen hours in a plane was just about the most boring way I had ever spent my time. I found out that I'm not good at sleeping in a plane. First of all, I hate sleeping in an upright position. Second, the air was dry and I had to drink all the time. Third, I ended up next to a huge guy who did sleep and snored like a sawmill. I was pretty tired when we landed.

I called Lisa from the hotel. It was funny that she had just got out of bed while it was afternoon in Singapore. The time difference was going to make communication a little difficult. Although I was tired I knew it would be crazy to go to bed. I had to get used to Singapore time as fast as possible, so I went for a walk to look at the city. It was clean, as expected, considering the fines for littering. I was amazed at how green it was. Plants everywhere and apparently an army of people to water and weed the huge containers and borders. All in all, my first impression was good.

Close to seven o'clock it suddenly went pitch dark. Coming from up north I'm used to a slow sunset and it came as a surprise. I headed back to the hotel. It was about time to get something to eat but I'd eaten plenty on the plane and settled for a sandwich, which I ate on the way back.

Back at the hotel I went into the hotel bar. It was huge and almost empty. I could see a middle-aged man sitting at the counter, talking a barmaid, and two businessmen talking in the far end of the room. A band was setting up their equipment on the podium. I ordered a beer from the waitress.

Sitting down alone with a beer made me realise how tired I really was, but it was half past eight and way too early to go to bed. Fortunately the band began to play and that helped me.

I have never cared much about Elvis, and Elvis impersonators are in my opinion comical at best, but usually a horrible nuisance. Statistics are great for a lot of things and I'm sure that statistically, Elvis should have been Chinese, but something must have made God, Buddha, Allah - make your own choice - change his mind. My guess was that God heard this bloke.

Try to imagine a skinny Chinese guy, not an inch over five feet tall, dressed up as Elvis in the seventies when he was literally a big man. He wore the full attire, complete with white Las Vegas style suit and matching haircut. That alone could convince anybody that Elvis was never meant to be Chinese.

Now, Elvis had a deep, smooth voice and imitating that when your voice is one or two octaves higher must be very difficult if not impossible. I'm sure he thought he sounded like Elvis; perhaps his mother or girlfriend could be fooled as well, but that was it. Add to this the fact that his Chinese accent made it virtually impossible to decide whether he was singing in English, Chinese or a third language.

It was hilarious and at the same time unbearable to listen to. Since there were only four people in the bar he looked at me all the time and I had to concentrate very hard not to break down in tears, laughing. Still, he kept me awake for one and a half hours and two beers, but when the band stopped playing I was tired, really tired. I went to my room, took a shower and went to bed.

It was quite relaxing only having to concentrate on one job and only for eight hours a day. On top of that I didn't have to worry about my other problem and that gave me time to think. I came to the conclusion that I was impotent, kind of; there was no reason trying to fool myself. Funny, but it sort of helped. The next question was what to do about it. With no pressure I had plenty of time to think things over.

The big question was: why had I become impotent? I loved Lisa very much and the recent development in our relationship up to the time I became impotent, especially the sexual part of it, had made our relationship closer and sexually more exciting that ever before. Somehow it made no sense to me that it had happened and had happened at the time it did. Lisa was by all standards a very attractive woman and to me she was the sexiest thing ever to walk the earth.

The obvious reason was stress. I'd been too tired and too concerned about the things that had happened at work but it still didn't explain everything. If it was just that, I should have been "cured" after I'd spoken to my manager and landed this assignment. There had to something else as well.

The fear of it happening was the most plausible reason for my present condition. I thought about it as soon as Lisa took off her clothes, sometimes before we had got that far. Fear had to be the reason. The next big question was how to beat it? Even with my newly acquired acceptance of my problem and a possible understanding of the causes, I was still a long way from the cure. One possibility was the medical cure, the blue pills, but it didn't appeal to me. My impotence had no physical causes and subsequently a physical cure was not what I needed.

Lisa was affected by my problem, too. It didn't take a scientist to work out that the reason it suddenly took so long for her to come had to do with my condition. Restoring my ability to get an erection was hopefully enough to get her back on track.

All in all, my conclusion was that we had to work something out together. If only I'd reached that conclusion before I left. It was a bit difficult to work something out while I was here and she was back home. Talking about it would be difficult enough and I figured it would be even harder on the phone, so I decided to postpone the inevitable until she was here. Up until the last week before her visit we didn't talk about my problem at all.

Because we were seven hours apart we mainly talked on the weekends, but then we often talked for half an hour, sometimes an hour. I was glad the company paid the bill. Lisa was due to arrive on Thursday afternoon, it was Sunday and we talked like it was never going to be Thursday at all. In the middle of our conversation Lisa said that she missed me in bed at night. I replied that I probably wouldn't be of much use. She was quiet for a moment.

"I guess it's my fault, because I wanted to be... more active," she said.

I was stunned. I simply could not understand how she could think that it was her fault.

"No! What on earth gave you that idea?"

"I read this article in Woman's Weekly and it said that some men were intimidated by women who were active, you know, sexually."

"On the contrary. I loved it. I think it's much more exciting that way."

"You do?"

She sounded so relieved. I told her what I thought was the reason and that I thought it would be easier to talk about it once she was here. She agreed, but we kept talking about it for another fifteen minutes. It was as if she wanted to make sure that it had nothing to do with her and I reassured her. We touched on a couple of interesting things during that conversation. Among other things, Lisa suggested that I could tell her what I thought was exciting. I agreed on the condition that she would do the same. At the end of the conversation she told me not to worry. She'd apparently read a lot in that article and she had several ideas about how to cure my impotence. Now I was really looking forward to her visit.