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WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT?
Not just, How did it feel? Who has the biggest cock? That sort of thing. To move to my motivations and the implications of the event. What it could mean and what it meant in a wider social context. Talk about these things and maintain a certain distance from it.
LET'S TALK ABOUT MOTIVATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. YOU SAID IN THE DOCUMENTARY THAT YOU THINK SEX IS WORTH DYING FOR BUT YOU WERE CRYING WHEN YOU SAID IT AS IF YOU WEREN'T REALLY SURE.
I think that statement was taken grossly out of context. I meant, in the context of that gangbang event, I went in knowing what the risks were. If I died I was responsible for my own body. Basically, I was saying that I deserved to die, right, because I knew what the risks were. But then again, I really wanted to have that experience. It was such a unique experience for me — to really push my boundaries that far and see how far I could go — as a female, who is supposed to be somebody in that whole stereotype who likes vanilla sex, likes to be seduced, kissed and cuddled, and is basically biologically monogamous. [Laughs]
SO IS IT THE SEX THAT'S WORTH DYING FOR IN THIS CONTEXT OR IS IT SOMETHING ELSE?
The sexual experience, I would say, in this specific event. I mean, I wouldn't die for a five minute fuck in the toilet. I really wouldn't.
THERE ARE TWO EVENTS IN YOUR LIFE THAT WE SPOKE ABOUT WHEN WE FIRST MET AT SUNDANCE — I'M SPEAKING ABOUT THE EXORCISM AND THE GANG RAPE — THAT HAVE TO DO WITH PAIN BEING INFLICTED ON YOU. IN BOTH CASES, THE PAIN WAS INITIALLY INVITED. YOU WENT WILLINGLY TO THE EXORCISM AND THE PRIEST ENDED UP BEATING YOU UP; WHAT ENDED UP BEING A GANG RAPE STARTED WITH A CONSENSUAL DECISION TO HAVE SEX. DO YOU FEEL LIKE THIS IS A PATTERN IN YOUR LIFE — YOU'RE UP FOR SOMETHING, YOU INVITE IT, AND THEN IT TURNS INTO SOMETHING THAT YOU END UP REGRETTING?
Well, in a philosophical sort of sense I do not regret the exorcism because otherwise I would have never been able to detach myself from my religion, and make a clean break from Singapore.
WILL YOU EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED?
I think there's still a part of my brain that's in complete denial of the event so I can't remember everything. But it started off with me joining this group of friends and we were doing the whole Bible study thing and sharing our problems so we could pray about them.
CHRISTIANITY IS VERY POPULAR AMONG SINGAPOREAN YOUTH, ISN'T IT? WHAT KIND OF CHRISTIANITY WAS IT?
Yes. Middle-class, born-again Christianity. Yeah, it's very popular, very middle-class. A lot of people become Christians to upgrade their social status. It's specifically very Singaporean, very Chinese. During one of the sessions, I was like, "Does anybody masturbate?" and they were like, "Oh God, no! That's disgusting!" I was like, "Well I masturbate every day." They said, "Oh that's terrible. That's so terrible. We have to pray about Grace and her masturbation." And so I was made to feel really, really bad about it. At some point they said, "You're, like, possessed by demons, Satan's doing this, so you have to go for an exorcism." So they took me to this exorcist woman. I was feeling, you know, touchy about it. I didn't completely go willingly but I didn't see any harm in it. I was like, "If it works it works. If it doesn't work, I'll just continue praying." And there was some part of me that didn't want to let go of that sexual side of me that went in completely skeptical. And that was the part of me that reacted strongly to the exorcism, causing her to beat me up. I'm not sure if I started the fight first, is what I'm trying to say. She made me confess to everything and . . .
WHAT DID YOU CONFESS TO?
To having sexual desires, to masturbating and to wanting to have sex with people, and to having had sex with women and so on and so forth. The full nine yards.
HOW OLD WERE YOU?
I was sixteen going on seventeen.
WHEN DID YOU LEAVE FOR LONDON?
When I was eighteen, after I graduated from junior college.
AND WHAT DID YOU DO WHEN YOU WENT TO LONDON?
I did law. Law school at London's King's College. I did that for a year and then I decided, well, fuck that. Yeah, because it was one of those things where my future seemed to be so mapped out. Before I even went to law school I was guaranteed a job in the top law firm in Singapore. It was just so mapped out, but I was attracted to the idea of risk.
I WANT TO TALK A LITTLE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU WENT TO LONDON. THE GANG RAPE.
Can we not go into this in too much depth because it's kind of painful?
WHATEVER YOU WANT TO SAY ABOUT IT.
I was slightly drunk to begin with. I caught the drinking bug in London. I went for a drink with a bunch of my friends and I was supposed to meet up with my cousin. I was just completely and disgustingly drunk so that things were kind of blurry and I ended up in a rubbish chute getting gang raped by these guys. Well they weren't all fucking me. It was more like I was being forced to give them blow jobs because they ran out of condoms. I had sex with two of them and the rest of them wanted blow jobs.
HOW MANY OF THEM WERE THERE?
I don't know. At the trial there were four defendants, meaning to say that four of them were caught and, you know, the only detail I remember clearly was that there was a twelve-year-old boy standing next to it watching. Isn't that so fucked up? And they were, like, encouraging the young boy to join in. And he was just freaked out. I wasn't crying. I think I was in shock. I was crying when suddenly, for some reason, it just clicked that I should try to get away at the first opportunity and I did. I started yelling at them and they started running away and I got up and was half-naked running down the corridor screaming and this nice family opened the door and took me in and called the cops.
HOW DID YOU FIRST ENCOUNTER THE MEN?
I met one of them on the tube and we decided that we wanted to have sex. I was really drunk and it was just, like, a lapse of judgement. It's like being drunk and randy. Not even completely randy, but drunk and looking for trouble. We just got off the tube at some point, I didn't know where, I only found out where after the fact, and I just followed him drunkenly to the rubbish chute and I think I was so drunk that I blacked out at certain parts of it. It was truly bizarre.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE FACT?
I was taken to the station where I was given various tests and I had to give my statement, which was very painful for me. And then after that I was sent to counseling . . .
HOW WAS THAT?
[Sigh] That . . . that sucked. That was bad. They had this middle-aged lady who would talk to me and she was just very cold, you know. You could tell that she was putting on an act, very fake, trying to perform compassion. It's almost like that part — being processed — was worse than the gang rape. Having read quite a lot before going to counseling and even before all this happened, I knew the lingo and she was using the lingo on me; it was the language of recovery.
TELL ME ABOUT THE FEELING OF BEING PROCESSED.
The entire language of recovery really denies people their individuality, their personhood. Totally going off on a tangent right here, I recently read part of Andrew Morton's Monica's Story and that entire book was written in the language of recovery; you find out nothing about Monica whatsoever. You don't get a sense of her as a person at all. It's all this talk about self-esteem. That's the whole language of recovery. It's got all these really bland little platitudes that reduce the complexity of human experience into all these pat phrases. Ironically, when I was reading that, it reminded me of the rape, and of being raped by language, being depersonalized by language, because rape is really, the way I see it, about depersonalization. You stop seeing the person as a person, and instead as a hole or whatever. I was reading through the book thinking, Andrew Morton really raped her in some bizarre literary sort of way.
CAN YOU ADDRESS THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE GANG RAPE AND THE GANGBANG?
I think on a subconscious level, in retrospect, maybe there is an element of trying to take back control in the gangbang, but it's not something I was thinking about before the event. It was only after that. Looking back at my life, I realized that a lot of things I've done seemed to be totally out of control. All that trying to get away from my coddled life was because I was trying to take back control by being out of control, which is kind of a paradox.
DO YOU FEEL ANY OF THE SHAME THAT YOUR PARENTS EXPRESSED IN THE DOCUMENTARY?
Well, you know, nobody is invincible and there were times when after somebody'd given me a particularly hard time about something, I would feel bad, depressed. But I look back and it really is much preferable for me to be doing this. I'd rather have control over what I do than be like most of my classmates, who are now working as paper pushers and being abused by their superiors and having to deal with office politics.
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©1999 Amy Goodman and Nerve.com
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