Share my joy with you…

Today, I received an email from an ex-girlfriend. She is Chinese and has married a Chinese man. They moved to America to work and live. She had just given birth to a baby girl and wanted to share the baby’s photo with all her friends. Strangely, the email included me – an ex-boyfriend (I think it was blind spam). She mentioned, in the email, that she was ‘sharing my joy with friends’.

I got the email this morning and it went into the trash bin immediately. On reflection, I realized that I wasn’t really bothered by it. My ego deleted the email because it was still sore at being dumped. Thus, I replied with a one-liner, "Cute kid. Good luck in raising her." Nice, bland and hopeful.

I hear screams now. "YOU INSENSITIVE bastard! Can’t you see it from their point of view!?? She spent nine months waddling like a penguin to bring the child into this world! Be happy for her! Be effusive in your congratulations!"

 

How to?

 

I really don’t care. Here’s why: it’s selfish to expect happiness from me. If neccessary, exclaim your joy to people who will fawn over you – your new child is your business and no-one else’s.

 

Another case: I had a friend who wanted to share the ‘joy’ of her marriage with her old classmates. She wanted us to go to her wedding. I agreed but never turned up. I imagined that she was unhappy but how was she going to share her ‘joy’ with us? Would she let us fuck her? I guess not. Also, I would have to fork out an ang bao (a red envelope with substantial amounts of money as a symbol of luck) as well. 

 

How would that be joyful for me? I suspect that she needed help to pay for her wedding dinner. Hopefully, she is now free of debt.

 

Still, it puzzles me why they insist on using that phrase: ‘share their joy with you’? Is it because they’re temporarily insane with relief from hard labours? Is it because they lack the words to express themselves (thesauri are handy tools)? Perhaps it’s because (I know compulsive joy-sharers will love this) I’ve never tasted marriage or parenthood and I do not know what I’m missing out on.

 

Regardless, joy need not to be shared with me as if I lack it. I ask you – does an amputee need pity for their lost limb?

Sentences…

We fucked our brains out. 

Let us analyse this sentence.

There are two or people here (we). There is an action (fucked). It happened in the past (fucked –past tense of fuck). The sentence suggests sex (meaning of fucked). It uses five words. The sentence conveys feelings of wildness and abandon. Generally, we think the subjects had a great time.

However, the sentence is potentially ambiguous. It could mean:

1. we had a lot of great sex.
   OR
2. we drilled a hole in each other’s heads and somehow had sex with that hole. As a consequence, brains are displaced from the craniums.

This ambiguity raises further questions:

1. Who are the participants: all men, all women or a mix?
2. How many are fucking: a pair or more than a pair?
3. What kind of fucking happened: doggy, missionary, someone on top?
4. Is it really sex that we’re talking here? A quick look at the dictionary turned up the following definitions:
   1. Vti to have sexual intercourse, or have sexual intercourse with a specified person
   2. vt used like a command to express anger, contempt, or rejection
   3. vt to ruin, botch, or destroy something
   4. vt to treat somebody unjustly or harshly

Sex is only one of the definitions of ‘fucked’ which begs the question, “What does this ‘fucked’ refer to?” While definitions b and c do not fit into the sentence, definition d might. Thus, the sentence could mean ‘we treated our brains roughly.’

As a preliminary conclusion, this sentence requires much improvement on its precision and accuracy.

We, a man and a woman, fucked – in the missionary position – our brains out.

This sentence, unlike its predecessor, tells us exactly how many participated, the nature of the participants, the kind of action and refers explicitly to one definition of ‘fucked’. Unfortunately, one is required to be a lawyer or a bureaucrat to truly appreciate the beauty in this sentence.

Author’s note: the scary part was the ease which I wrote out the above crap.

Sick…

Down with a case of flu. The antibiotics made me loopy and high. Coughing inccesantly; thank god I haven’t coughed out my lung yet. Mid-day heat at home. Three seconds ago, the sky roared thunder. I hoped for rain. The kind that howls and batters against sturdy concrete. Unlikely to be able do anything coherently now. Even reading is a chore. I glimpse the Buddha god-head, realize a story’s place in my life. Euphoria came – I have broken through the barriers!

 

Then I forget it all.

 

Such are flu meds and their false promises.

Rainy morning

I wrote this when waiting for the bus to come. It was a rainy day and I was captured by the different sounds and smells permeating the morning.

***

Cars slice through slick roads. Whoosh! Swoosh! The poets are wrong about the after-rain air; it’s not a hot and huffy lover’s breath. Instead it cleanses like mint. Someone’s doing early morning washing. Scrubbing detergent mingles with day-break smells; it energizes with fresh washing. The grey sky is a downer; moody and lulls commuters to sleep. The bus comes. I get on. It reeks of tired leather which causes me to lose my appetite for breakfast.

Thus the day begins.

Home is most insidious

Home is a most insidious prison. Traps are laid there with love and care. The jailers educate with this aim, “You can have a dream. But you must live in reality, not in dreams.” I have been following the same daily routine since I came home. It is comforting. No more information-overload by experience; instead I witness it second-hand. I do not speak to new people; the same few suffice. I do not try fresh things; instead I stick to well-worn tastes.  

A shell slowly forms around me. It is invisible and cocoons me in its sickly embrace. It is called responsibility – the kind that others want me to have. Family want me to obtain a girlfriend, fuck, marry and have a kid. That’s success. Relatives measure success by monthly bank statements. Friends measure with the same yardstick and how I can advance them. Naturally, they deny culpability.

So I cross my arms across my chest. Growl at them so deeply that the roots of their shoes blush. But the shell remains: I see – everything sama-sama. I hear – words, birdcalls, beeps, blips and scritks gush in one way, out another. I taste – it’s always the same foods. I feel – nope, I’m wrong again. I smell – after-rain lawns and oven-born breads are mute.  

When again will the air taste young and cleaned of mud?

I know! I know!

When I am on the road again.

You told! You told!

Little boy – what does he see?

I was on the way to Library@Orchard. The buses took their own sweet time. I sat infront of a billboard advertising bus routes and schedules. The bus-stop was packed with predominantly young people: sun-burnt schoolkids who had finished their ECAs; trendy and ‘emo’ teenaged girls who leaned over me to peer at the billboard; 30-ish aunties with little children in tow; migrant Indian workers who have been let out of their construction sites for the weekend.

If I was not plugged in, I would have been overwhelmed by the noise that they made. “I tell you the stroke should be… Wah lau, where’s the bus?!… You’re there already?” And there were more in a smattering of other languages. I didn’t look up and around me.

Instead, I stared at the ground. It’s fascinating. I’ve never seen so many types of footwear before – open-toed slippers, fancy basketball shoes, leather strap sandals imitating old Chinese foot-binders. A set of toes where the nails were clean except for the big toe which had a line of black squiggled on it passed under my eyes. Her friend’s toe-nails were all bloody red. A skinny boy leaning against a guard pillar stared at me. His eyes were level to mine. So this is what he sees: a forest of flesh and clothes with chittering tops; symphonies of crunchy shoes and clickety heels.

Does he strain his neck from looking upwards? Does he talk to bare ankles and incite revolts?