The Attack of the Double-Headed Poker Face (Ma-ma-ma-maaw!)

I used to find playing face cards rather creepy when I was a kid. I imagined them lurking in the shadows with their grim expressions, and as they have no feet I imagine them hopping alternately on their double heads toward me. It didn't help that our home's security men I often visited played those cards in the dark of night, somehow tickling my juvenile subconscious that the "barahas" are indeed immoral spawns of Satan.

I could still remember the vague musk I smell each time I pestered the men. Sometimes a red or blue underwear would be hanging on a nail along with the jeans. While I find the face cards unnerving, I found the underwear fascinating. On days the men's hut is deserted, I would steal a pair and wear it. And feel good wearing it down there. At a tender age of 5, I wouldn't know it was perverted to do so. I just found it fun.

Perhaps my fascination with male underwear caught the twisted mind of one of those men. We'd start to get close, telling me the story of a "magic milk" which if I drank would give me supermagical powers, like the genie in Disney's Aladdin. The only thing was I cannot tell anybody about it, otherwise the "magic" of the "milk" will disappear.

He would lay down on the folding nylon bed, then take out a piece of flesh inside his pants which I was told to lick and suck. It was how I could drink the "magic milk". I would find the exercise particularly silly, but the promise of having supermagic powers would keep me doing the ritual. Alas, I would never get to taste the "magic milk" he so talked about. He'd often tell me that the "magic milk" wasn't there that time, or it was shy, and he'd tell me to come back some other time. Which I always did.

One afternoon I came back would be the turning point of the ruckus. I saw him, completely naked while hurrying to wear his clothes. It was the first time I'd seen a completely naked adult man. And it disturbed me. So much that I would tell my family about it over lunch. And then tell them about the story of the "magic milk" on the side, since I was a rather talkative English-mumbling brat, which my family would nod along in amazement and wonder. That was the last day I would ever see that man in the hut.

A year later as a Grade 1 kid, I would remember how he would jiggle his male flesh up and down, wondering why he would do that. Even then, I still couldn't picture that flesh to be his "bird". That didn't stop me though from trying it out on mine.

That day, I'd have a supermagical power.