Second Chance

I still remember a friend looking at a butterfly caught out in a rainstorm. It was stuck in a puddle that was directly below where the water from the runoff was pouring down on it, and it was taking a terrible beating. We were teenagers then, and this was near the NTUC at Bishan, which was still fairly new. He had this penchant for being pretty melodramatic.

But these days I think that nature is a little cruel when it comes to women. Yes, rape and molest are traumatic events, but if you can imagine, nature factored that into the equation when they designed cavemen. Before we were civilised, men raping women, then raising kids with their victims was relatively common. And when we got civilised, norms changed, and we know that it's not OK. But some small part of us does not change.

I was thinking about this when I saw the Monica Baey case unfold. I've made unwanted advances towards women before. No, I don't think I did anything I could have gone to jail for, although I don't really know what the other party thinks. If they wanted to make a big deal out of it, I could have been in trouble. It happened twice, when I was an undergraduate in Snowy Hill. I don't know if the other party lodged statements. They were attractive women that I had crushes on. Of course it's unrequited, they might not even look at me. There was nothing more than cuddling, but it was uncalled for, and I knew it. They reacted differently: one of them was traumatised, another one got angry. I apologised to both, and I felt guilty that that was that, but I really didn't want anything much more serious to happen to me.

If anything, I was given second chances, and I've used those second chances. I'm a much older person now and basically something of this nature wouldn't ever happen again. I've had the chance to reflect on my experiences and I've decided that not only were they bad experiences for the other party, I actually didn't like it at all. It wasn't the right way to engage in somebody you were interested in, and after that I made it so hard for us to be friends. That's why I never did it again, because I couldn't but know that it was a bad thing.

Now, I don't know about filming somebody in the shower. It's very transgressive, I wouldn't ever do that.