I kid you not, Michael West is a writer of erotic tales.
I didn’t find this out until after I went with him checking out that cheap room around the corner.
The room was tiny and the television was stolen from it. Michael was going to rent it for 40 Ringgit.
‘Dirty,’ he says to the receptionist in Chinese.
‘Looks like someone was fucked senseless during menstruation,’ I said.
The sheetless mattress had dried blood stains on it.
Michael played with the flimsy door handle.
‘No television and suspect security,’ he says, ‘so drop the price from 40 Ringgit to 35.’
'I'll have to ask my boss,' says the receptionist, who was Chinese too, in his early fifties.
Michael is the King of bargains, I say.
We walk out of the hotel. The first-floor corridor is about 5 foot 11 inches. I instinctively stoop my head. It's a curious sensation being so close to the ceiling.
'Looks like a corridor for dwarfs,' I say.
'More like hot Indonesian hookers,' says Michael who meets me at The Longhouse Hotel five minutes later.
'Dirty hotel,' he says. I gather he didn't get the discount.
'But I sold the receptionist two books.'
He pulls out the cheaply printed books that he had done in Sibu.
It was series, The Period Stories, 1-7, and he handed me one.
Inside it was erotic cartoons and pictures of the author with trophy shots of the women he has fucked.
'The receptionist really jealous,' he says as he takes out his tea bag from his cup,'only cost ten cents.'
I had already paid for his drink and handed over 5 Ringgit for his book.
'Usually sell for 12 Ringgit,' he says and shows me the price printed on the book.
He says most people only dream of what he does.
And they obviously want to read about his exploits too.
He makes his living roaming the tea houses selling his books.
And I can't read Chinese so 5 Ringgit was the agreed price.
Michael likes the chubby Indonesian who runs the drink counter.
He's got his sights on her.
He didn't check into my hotel, the rooms for full.
'Many government officials in town' says the bubbly Iban of my hotel.
She tells me Michael has checked into The Long House Hotel.
I'll know where to find him.
He should be a happy man.
There's bound to be material for book eight. I'm just hoping that I don't appear in it.
