Curiouser and curiouser! Will you be witness to a fluctuation between selfrighteous despair and self-effacing elation?
--
You forgot to turn on the light when you walked through the door. It's not that I watched you come in, it's just that I smell you and you smell the same: even though I just met you. You're the type I can't ignore.
---
I'm writhing and contorting,flexing to retain these lifegiving fluids leaking out of me, and I am sapped. I left your house with you trickling down my thighs. A month later I cried into your disembodied voice. Caught a train to the grim surbubia of this island. The heart of This Fashion, a deserted mall with K-pop and shop girls who speak no english. Then a cold room that plays 80's power ballads. Lined with motherhood and gadget magazines, soothing arranegements of smooth rocks. I spell out my name to a mechanically pleasant cake-faced woman in pink overalls. Her painted-on eyebrows are motionless and I look back at an evocative poster for Botox. This is our dystopian future, stiff-upper lips curled back in tight smiles. Show your teeth and betray no emotion. She laughs at an anguished, tired couple.
--
A weepy faced tiny Malay boy in a sarong is being led off by his proud extended family. He's clutching a bag of toys and a "I survived my cicumcision" certificate.
--
A tube appears to suck out a chunk of me and you, and takes with it a chunk of time. "I'm waking up? Is that ok?" and a surrogate sister tells me its over. I align myself to a curious reversal of roles. I held Preeti's hand, now she holds mine. I am as old as her sister. She mistakes my tears for regret. Talks fast and brightly: her Scottish husband who cheats on her, her beautiful 4 year old daughter who she loves to the power of three. The lunch she's going to have. She leaves me sniffling on a damp pillow, woozy headed and clutching her business card.
--
Your voice crackles, you break off and speak in tongues I don't understand. Your world is a world I do not share, and you bridge the gap with smatterings of I-love-you's. I forget how my world too is a world you do not share, and lose myself in hyperimaginative insecurities. A supposedly euro-philic/phobic worldview? In truth it's an innate dissatisfaction, just looking from the outside as the grass gets greener, electrically cyan and teal. I run crooked and I'm bitter about losing the race.
--
But I train myself. For the first time I watch in the mirror as leg muscles contract and thigh fat shudders. The music in my ears is tinny and cacophonic. The flush on my face rushes neck upwards, and I watch the digital numbers moving, agonizingly slow. I notice how my right leg curves outwards. I watch it over and over: awkward duck footed impact as it rises and falls back, always crooked. I tighten thigh muscles and control it.
---
Control, like over tongues. Replacing my hard z of assume. Assyuming I cant control what to others comes effortlessly. It divides us, this fork of tongues. I frequently turn back in crowded places, expecting to see a semi-familiar face in this sea of faces I don't look at. My ears hurt and I lose balance.
--
Father and daughter playing a balancing game on the MRT. They are a universe unto themselves. Insular white people?
--
Awkward acne-ridden indian family. The girl cakes it with white make up. The boy picks at his, and open sores line his nose.
--
Another acne faced lanky indian boy hovers on the outside of an insular group of his chinese class mates. They speak amongst themselves and he looks on, a foot above the rest, an unbridgable gap away. A small girl with oily hair, thick rimmed glasses and gym shorts steals glances at him, and they sway awkwardly to the jerks of the train. How was your exam? Serious nod, small smile. She looks at her group, and back at him. Did you find it easy? He nods. His brain is whizzing, he can't meet her eyes. Her ears are twitching. She looks at her shoes. When do the results come out? She can't hear him, and his face spilts open into another awkward smile. He looks away- she says something in chinese to her friends. They look through him. He waits until she glances back and he asks again, louder with his characteristic hard t's and d's: when Do the results come ouT? In the morning I think. they nod gravely at each other. Are you tired? Flash of teeth, yes woke up at seven, Got six hours of sleep though. Going to be a late night again. Another grave nod.
--
The girls from Seng huat smile at me, and I smile back as widely as I can without being creepy. Almost stop but there's nothing more we can communicate to each other. I saw the one with the dark gums wheeling her bicycle home. She'd stopped to peer at the frothy display window of a jewelery shop.
.
They will eat us alive these display windows will.
