Fruity Tooty Me

The CD that's been popping in and out most frequently of my trusty ol' discman these past few weeks is SRT's soundtrack for Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress. As much as Dick Lee is grossly untalented as a Singapore Idol judge, you have to admit that he writes some pretty amazing music. This is one soundtrack with lots of lovely songs, but there's just this one particular part in one of them that keeps playing in my head - All. The. Time.

Faces pure as gold
Eyes that shimmer in the light
Jewels that glimmer in the night
Take your time, plenty to behold

Arms to hold you tight
Lips for sating all you need
Pastures waiting for a seed
Make your choice, take me for the night

Look at me
Here I am
Just for you
Look at me
Lying here
What d'you want to do?
Here I am
Make your dreams come true

-extracted from 'Gentle Touch'

That's the part. It's sung by 'Girls', says the lyrics, which I'm sure is just a nicer way of saying 'Prostitutes', because if you don't already know (Forbidden City's had two or three runs already, so I'm sure scores of people must've watched it at least once), the Empress's son, Tung Chih, gets brought to a brothel by his cousin, contracts syphilis (quite sad, how the people of ancient China were sorely lacking in knowledge of STDs, unlike us) and dies. Well, it certainly sounds most scandalous in the song; all these girls singing in high pitched voices with very suggestive undercurrents in their tone, then the men belting out their parts in a freakishly perverted manner - but it's a REALLY nice song. Trust me on that.

You know, I think why the lyrics really stick, is because they remind me very much of my own experience four years back. Wait. Did I just say "my own experience"? Cripes, I didn't mean that. What I intended to say was, that they remind me of those days when I was, ahem, affectionately known as Fruity Tooty Prostituty, back in upper primary.

I can't quite remember now how the name came about, but it wasn't long before nearly everyone in class started calling me that, save for the few who felt it was rather inappropriate language to be uttered from the mouth of a Kim Gek (read: Lee Li-Shan - haha!). What I do remember, was what being a Fruity Tooty Prostituty entailed - flashing seductive looks at others (rather wrong, thinking back about it), doing a whole exaggerated flirting sequence (then again, flirting in itself is always exaggerated), and shaking shoulders. Make that LOTS of shaking shoulders. Shaking shoulders kinda became a trademark for me then, and I recall doing it everywhere, from in the classroom, to along the corridors. I practically got hired to do minute long shoulder shakes, damnit. Now as I smile to myself, thinking about old times, it dawns on me that I was probably quite the tyrant in 6Generosity, despite the prefectship and all that stuff. I mean, my, er, flirtatious ways even scared the likes of Sheryl Tham, who was, and still is, ten thousand times taller than me. During games of captain's ball in PE, she would scream every time I went near her and refused to touch the ball after my hands had settled on it. Thank goodness she's more or less recovered from that phase now, because imagine these Secondary Four girls chasing after each other, the chasER batting her eyelids and the chasEE yelling at the top of her voice. Boy, we can expect a couple of lectures on discipline during assembly period for that. Haha!

To be honest, I really do still miss life in SC primary. I'll never forget my serious adjustment issues in Secondary One - half the time I was sad and silent, like a depressive maniac, which was actually quite silly of me, because my having to adapt to SC secondary was nothing compared to those pouring in from outside schools. Perhaps it was because I was in 1GY, and more than three quarters of the class was not from SC primary, compared to my good friends being in classes like 1SE and 1PE, which were filled with ex-SC primary-ians. What's amazing though, is that had I not been in 1GY'03, I'd never have met my current group of good friends, so it's true, see! That God really does have a plan for us, and indeed, everything happens for a reason (LOST can never be wrong about this).

I think SC primary will always have a special place in my heart, especially 5Generosity'01 and 6Generostiy'02, and I'll never forget all the wonderful times spent with my primary school pals, especially memories involving anything fruity tooty! (:

Well, let me leave you with another highly amusing extract from one of the Forbidden City songs, 'I Need Him'.

A happy Emperor makes a very happy city
And a very happy concubine
As everyone could hear
Every night!
Every single night!
Sometimes twice a night!
Are you sure you've got that right?!
For three months!

Life is a balance between yang and yin
And to build an Emperor's yang, he requires a lot of yin
And the best way for that to happen was for him
To engage in a lot of sex with concubines
And I mean...a...lot...

But without firing his cannon!

Hahaha! And from the part starting 'And I mean...a...lot...', you can hear the Emperor moaning and groaning very loudly in the background, which inevitably brings to mind some pretty interesting images.

Sick, I know.

But I like.

I think it's a fruity tooty thing.