Poem
What happens, when cultural anxieties around sexual and gendered norms collide with the ghost of Pontianak, the vengeful spectre of victims of sexual assault? The writer Marylyn Tan has them meet in a haunted ballroom – and gives us a glimpse of this in a fiery spoken word piece.
Introduction
This spoken word piece was written for a show called Hantu Ballhaus, which merged the twin worlds of everything spooky (‘hantu’ means ‘ghost’ in Indonesian and Malay) with the queer subculture of Ballroom. With my collaborator, Amin Alifin, the piece was conceptualised as a kind of lesbian wedding between two female spirits, playing on the idea that many Southeast Asian, and especially Nusantaran, spirits (several of whom are listed in the poem below) are highly gendered and reflect cultural anxieties around sexual and gendered norms.
We alighted upon the idea of the Pontianak, perhaps Southeast Asia’s most famous ghost, who has evolved through the years from being created from victims of sexual assault, vengeful mothers dying in childbirth, to even women who died virgins, and juxtaposed her with the idea of the ‘pondan’, a pejorative Malay term that is associated with deviation from traditional gender roles. In doing so, our ‘pondantianak’ tries (and mostly fails) to coach a newly dead butch lesbian in the fine art of being both feminine and vengeful.
In conceptualising the nether world as corporate drudgery, highly competitive ballroom and lesbian meet-cute, we interrogate the idea of what it means to be seductive, bloodthirsty, and yet functioning as a warning against walking home alone at night. In doing so, we reclaim and queer the iconic figure of the Pontianak, not just as horror trope or cautionary tale, but as rage, resistance and liberation from the suffocating performance of the normatively feminine.
TILL FLESH DOES US PART
Excerpted for the Heinrich Böll Foundation
- from this day forward
for her to exist is to be believed in.
for her to exist is to be believed.
for you to exist is to be believed in.
for you to exist is to be believed.
for you to exist is to live.
for you to exist is to be.
for you to live is to be.
- for better, for worse
When I first got here,
I tried to cut this damn hair— —
but the barber called an exorcist.
Perhaps the pontianak of the future is a butch lesbian,
an amniotic fluid embolism collapsing her airways
never coming to full term
with her costly IVF baby
Perhaps the pontianak of the future
practices inclusive recruiting.
Our ranks were falling. So now—you’ll do.
No one does a good honest haunting any more.
Change of policy: you now qualify for pontianak status
as long as you died in childbirth,
were a virgin, or the victim of a
pontianak herself—also known as employee referral.
And as a pregnant gold star lesbian
constantly harassed by momok in Bedok,
you might even be overqualified.
Come. We’ve got KPIs to meet.
As a butch lesbian,
you will find many things
about the pontianak lifestyle offensive—
that is, if you can call it a lifestyle—
that is, if you can call yourself a life.
Let’s talk about that hair.
The only people you will find
willing to give you a skin fade
are the same men who will try to stuff the clippings
into the hole at the back of your neck
like they know it better than you do.
Whether it’s trying to get an edge-up
or reasoning with men,
don’t bother.
You’ve got no breath to waste.
Yes, being a fresh-off-the-grave hantu is hard.
I’m here for you, sister.
you can taste if you want, baby.
my tongue is twice as long as it was in life.
I can lick you where it hurts.
I can peel you apart
like the heart of a banana tree.
and if I could just cut these goddamn fingernails
I could definitely hit that G-spot.
- for richer, for poorer
Announcement:
It is against company policy for pontianak, kuntilanak, sundal bolong, langsuir,
and undead of all natures assigned female at birth
to possess any male person. Kindly restrict your
possessions to young females, suitably nubile, virgin,
and over-emotional. Thank you.
certain things don’t change,
such as sexism in the workplace.
the thing about teenage girls and secrets:
you have to be the first to know.
spread them, just don’t be them.
better to scream about something that can’t be silenced,
something immaterial, something
that can’t be killed, because it’s
already dead.
everyone wants to know a secret.
this is the secret:
you must make them want you
without you needing to want them.
hungry ghost? more like thirst trap troll.
for the one we call harlot,
patron saint of the hole,
castrator of johns,
our lady of the orifice,
show unto us the fruit of thy womb
that our mothers did not see fit to.
sundal bolong masterclass starts with
serving face, lush mouth in whore scarlet, teeth
sharp as envy, bone structure
rivalling that of a graveyard’s.
skin translucent enough to
justify blood-drinking.
she pivots with ease, promises
body like the word voluptuous,
tits swaying, nails slaying. it’s giving talon.
her proportions driving you insane with wanting.
legs gliding so poreless, hairless, flawless,
you forget
she has no feet.
standing by the roadside,
she cuts a lone figure.
in the old way she wails flitting tree to tree,
wafting frangipani—
but now, in the new, a woman
must not bark up the wrong tree.
just lean against the lamppost
and give new meaning to
throwing shade.
sundal bolong never takes a night off—
she’s a minah curren, the grind never stops,
I’ll die when I’m dead.
the glass ceiling becomes crushed beads in her mouth.
she is a nenek keropok moonlighting as sex siren.
for some of us, business is pleasure:
spreading legs, taking names, and counting cash
that gaping hole in her back?
that’s her serving
kunt ilanak
both ways
- in sickness and in health
there are several Key Paranormal Indicators (KPI) of a successful haunting.
an inexhaustive list includes:
leaving scratches, draining victims dry, feminine laughter, the cries of infants, the howling of dogs—
as a part-time pontianak,
I go above and beyond in my hauntings
but I’ll never win an employee award.
this industry is invisible. before walking through walls,
we’re slipping through cracks.
butch pontianak emerges from a haunting
wishing someone would burn her a binder.
she wants to cover up,
says she doesn’t understand how hantu tetek can
let it all hang out
long or short or both.
says, even pocong gives only face.
everything else? wrapped for its protection.
to be honest,
being in this form is really giving.
I mean it’s giving me dysphoria.
I failed as woman, as femme,
failed to be a mother.
they asked my partner,
why not date a real man?
you know,
I tried being a girl, but all I got was
tens / men / tens / men / tens—
—MEN thinking they were doing me a favour
letting me give them a hand.
even now I can’t look at myself.
who is that girl I see, staring straight back at me?
to exist is to be believed.
they didn’t believe me as a human—
they won’t believe me as woman.
thank g*d I don’t have a reflection.
as a real woman? I can’t relate.
they always say I pass so well, I pass by.
I pass so well, I pass away.
- to have & to hold
for her to exist is to be believed in.
they speak our names in hushed whispers,
conceal us with euphemisms,
pay us reparations with their fear.
in this way there is no difference
between ravishing and ravaging.
for her to exist is to be believed.
you want to be real?
live in their fear.
men forced their way into our bodies, so
we haunt their minds rent-free.
Do you, Pondantianak, take this body to be your body?
Do you, Pondantianak, take this soul to be your soul?
