jesselton tonight?

The prospect of road tripping alone for 4 hours back to my shanty ass college town did not sit as well as I had planned for that day.On my way out of the city, I drove up to a fork on the road. One turn headed North and would take me directly back to campus while the other detoured conveniently to the place where she works.

I did not think for that moment and blindly heeded the desperate faint tugging in my heart. In those dying seconds, I pulled hard at the wheel- swerving towards the latter turn and almost took out a very angry Indian man on an old battered mo-ped at that.

*********************************************

We each had two Heinekens over lunch that never came. I have always enjoyed my Heine’s and never considered it as a yuppie beer until I came home from the States and met up with dear Pooi San who brands for Carlsberg. Over the years it had always been a Bud or Miller all the damn time over lunch.

That short-lived, spontaneous lunch meeting with her skewed the way my Heinekens would taste in the not too distant future. The beer will now leave an even more bitter aftertaste than her makers ever intended to.

We talked about everything but Nothing. Respectively trying to keep our poker faces straight and cautiously avoided any references that could provoke an awkward soliloquy about the other night . We took the easy way out and pretended it never happened at all.

“So what did you do last Saturday?”

“How’s work coming along?”

“What’s going to happen in school when you return?”

“My granny asked about you but I was too tired from work to explain”

“Yeah, so and so are getting married. I don’t think I am going to be there”

It did not take an African Studies major to recognize two confused grown ups who were trying their best to dance their way around the bush while remained seated at the bar over beers in the middle of broad day afternoon.

I got sick of being stuck in the pretentiousness of the whole moment that made a mockery of my genuine feelings for the one woman whom I love in my life now.

I looked at her, drew some cash to cover the tab for both of us, stood and turned to leave.

“Are you going to call?”

Finally, her voice rang with the familiar sincerity that I was used to.

“I don’t know”

That was easily one of the stupidest thing I’ve said out of my emotionally-challenged convoluted ego before I started my stuttered steps towards the exit that loomed so small now. A part of me wanted to just bolt the fuck out yet the rest of me wanted to stay on and hope that things would somehow take an unexpected turn for the better.; pretty much like how I took that detour turn expecting to sort things out with her only to unexpectedly conclude that things between us are more bungled than ever.

Burdened by the weight of a million pound from my heavy heart, my anxious footsteps soon slowed to a halt before I turned around to face her.

“Do you love me?”

Those words just rolled out uncontrollably. It wasn’t like I really needed to know. Perhaps I was seeking an affirmation for existing. For Our shared existence.

The soft light from the bar top cascaded upon her beautiful face reflecting a deep glistening lovely glow that seemed to mock my silent hope that hangs precariously upon the sword of Damocles.

“I don’t know”

The sword dropped and slashed my vulnerability into pieces.

If there was a moment that I felt a genuine need to cry in this evil rotten heart of mine, it was then. I felt like she had just stabbed me with a chainsaw, ripped out my heart and then promptly proceeded to dumping it into the toilet before shitting all over it.

But I held back my tears that soon turned into rage that one would expect from someone who felt unappreciated. I gathered all my strength and afforded her a faint smile before I finally exited that fuckin’ fucked up shit hole for torn lovers that took the disguise of a friendly neighborhood bar.

Words of wisdom from my best friend kept on ringing loud and clear on auto-repeat in my mind with her cold frozen gaze piercing thru the back of my head as I made my dignified exit from that place of broken dreams.

“Now you know how Rejection feels. You rejected her all the damn time. Now it’s your fuckin’ turn. Now you can think about how SHE felt before this”

motorcycle drive by

No man is an island. Or so they say.Funny how all conversational engagements with people in my life will always take a turn back to the all-encompassing discussion in regard to matters of the heart, pertaining to love and relationships with that of the fairer, most wonderfully sweet gender.

Funny how I always discover the most about myself thru little discussions about love.

This time it was with Steph, my long time high school buddy.

People always ask why I am not going out with anyone. Obviously they overlook the health implications that I would be facing should I withdraw cold-turkey from my acute addiction to acts of physical self-gratification i.e. Masturbation.

The truth is, I have a low self esteem when it comes to having a relationship. I have an insatiable feeling of inadequacy that on one hand it keeps me on my toes, constantly striving for more out of life- the other is actually strangling the life out of me slowly.

People think that I am just an immature irresponsible kid who does not want to be tied down to commitment because my life is all about one night fucks and fleeting mercurial romances.

In truth, I miss all my Emilys. I miss all my Coreys. I miss all my Tammys. With equal tenacity and passion but never fully in love.

I just could not bring myself to love wholeheartedly no longer. I am but a broken man who has been found, measured and found wanting for one too many times by all the wrong people. People who accused me of being an empty romantic without a soul whose love lies only in the recreation of a perfect wonderland that crumbles at first rumble, because apparently- I hath maketh no effort for something deeper.

And the stories run on similar plots every time. After we had cleared out things between us- the other party would admit that our fallout is due to their respective shortcomings, thus validating my beliefs that they were only choosing an easy way out and the easiest would be to look for faults in me.

For they say that vengeance belongs to the Lord- I say Screw You. Let me burn in hell for I have undeservedly inflicted all the unjust pain that I had suffered while blinded by those who did not love me- upon others who loved me with all their hearts. Oh how wrong, how broken, how bleak was the angst that was pent up in the ugly me.

In time, to live in ignorance of love is to dwell in peace.

Until I met Emily. And then Corey.

They both showed me that I was worth all in life. I fell in love with them whom I believe to be god-sent.

That was my life. Those were my issues. In time past.

Carina asked me if I believed that I will ever find my true love. I brushed her aside by saying that I don’t really give a flying feck about it.

To love someone with all our might, to be so consumed in love that we are willing to give and trust everything from our heart, life unto the other person, to wake up every morning next to her and remember that everything is worth fighting for her – is to truly fall in love. Anything lesser falls short and is nothing but just puppy loves that I so espouse.

I believe all of us have issues unresolved within ourselves. To even think of loving someone, we need to resolve them and be at peace within ourselves. We need to be able to accept ourselves before we expect others to do so. We need to be independent individuals before we can be dependent upon or be depended by someone else. People do not understand this, often rush head-on to relationships and end up being totally dependent onto the other person and when shit does not work out- they screamed in agony and threaten death when they can no longer walk on their own twos.

I say “Get yo’ shit right before you want to start any shit like Love, yo!“

That is why I don’t date and only choose to hang out with my women. Hangin’ out is the best and most underrated concept in human relationship since Fuck Buddy. When you hang out, you do not set any commitments with your partner. It is just a simply two person who are attracted to each other, spending time with each other and yet giving each other total freedom, space and time to figure their shit out. Hangin’ out encompasses everything that a conventional relationship entices i.e. doing shits together, discovering each other’s personalities, tolerating each other’s shit, holding hands, making out, sex; but cuts out all the troublesome bullshit that one has to go thru in a committed relationship like ‘sticking together thru thick and thin’ ‘cos I say screw those bullshit- says who that we need to lose our personal liberty as individuals when we had developed feeling for another person?

I say people should just hang out with Everyone and develop themselves from meeting as many personalities from as many walks of lives as possible while figuring themselves out. There are just too many interesting people out there that warrants the precious exciting times of our youth.

Believe me not? Take a look at couples who have been dating for some time. Do you think they are with their partner because they genuinely love them and think that there are no other person on earth like her, Or, is it because they are just afraid that they are not good enough to look for someone better, so they cling on the person of lesser quality, because they are too lazy to move out of their emotional comfort zones?

Let us never live with contention. Let us all believe in love at first sight so that we will never stop looking (this sounds vaguely familiar, I must have ripped it off from some B-Grade movie)

Pray tell that I will wash out the world. Pray tell that I will never find true love too soon. Pray tell that all I will always have is Now.

dan semua menghilang

Emily finally wrote after a hiatus of all communications between us since before last Christmas. There was no apparent reason for us not to talk then, thus there was no need of a communique for us to resume communication as usual. Or so I thought, wrongly.The email came with a large attachment that I could not download, the lyrics to a song that I presumed was the attachment and a short Happy Anniversary note.

Dimanakah cinta sejati
Yang memberi ketenangan hati
Sampai kapan ku harus menanti
Kau pergi dan mungkin takkan kembali

Dan aku menangis, dan aku terluka, Bila…
Dan aku menangis, dan aku terluka , Bila…
Engkau menghilang….

Kau pergi dariku, tinggalkanku
Lewati malam tanpa kasihmu
Ku rangkai kata, ku rangkai nada
Yang kuinginkan hanyalah cinta

Dan semua menghilang…

Semua karena cinta kumenangis
Semua karena cinta kutertawa
Semua karena cinta, Semua karena cinta
Yang kau tinggalkan hanyalah luka

Dan semua menghilang…

It must have taken a great deal of time and effort from an American-Chinese to translate an Indonesian song in a predominantly-white city void of people from that part of the world. Especially when her only Asian friend was a stupid Malaysian who is yours truly. All at a time when I was listening to Eason Chen’s Today, Next Year, thinking of her. It was a sad corny day of un-love to be receiving an email from a lost love, I tell you.

Love is such an overused word. So overused. So under appreciated.

Last week was the first time we met at Central Park, NY almost ten thousand miles away from here, some two years ago. As much as I do not allow myself to be one of those soft sentimental sad sods, I did not make it a point to remember that day but March 14th just came naturally to me. It was vivid in my mind and I could feel every moment of that half day we spent together- the cold Spring air, the wet roads from the melting snow, the eye contact, the fear of first words, the dinner at that Hong Kong restaurant, the akward conversation, the walk home, the Everything that felt like it was today, and the silly me who still hope that the day would not end because I had forgotten to get her number! And that secret burn in my heart, wishing that I had dared a kiss as we stood in face of each other at her doorstep before saying goodbye, and hello to a new chapter of us for the next few months that would linger lost like a ghoul ship that could not find her shores, for two years on.

But that day did end. And I did leave her.

I guess it was only fair that she had to remind me of that day with this song. Was I right, to leave? Back then, choice was not even a luxury. We were mere college kids. Now she’s in Med school and I’ll probably be slaving for a major oil conglomerate of the world in a matter of receiving my graduation scroll.

I have grown older, but none the wiser. But isn’t that the thing about humans? We are always at a constant.

How is it that I find it easy to be in love with three women but virtually impossible to love only One of them? In present, choice is not a luxury that I would afford.

Angie, Emily, Corey. The drama never ends. And the funny thing is that I find it getting ever so easier to just dig a hole, push them all into that hole and cover it with my work. Yet, on the full 3 days when I fell sick from overworking, I just wished that any one of them would be there for me.

My heart is so confused. Yet unavailable. Every emotion seems to dissipate the moment I lay my hands on them. I blame this skewed fear to love on having to be the best-man to my best friend who will marry my ex-girlfriend who dumped me while I was in love with her in the US, before I had the chance to love any one of of them.

Alas, it is always easy to point fingers at other but yourself. Especially the middle one.

The truth is I am just a whiny-ass loveless boy who is stuck in the past, couldn’t care less with the present and too overwhelmed by the future.

strangers in the sky

Life is lived by the moment. You have that one moment in that one place in time to make that one moment different from the rest of your life.I spent that one moment in the Itaewon district of Seoul with that one beautiful stranger, before sunset.

She was the silently complicated, neurotically cheery, lovely Asian version of Celine who made heads turned wherever she went. I was the less charming, more introverted, socially awkward mirror of Jesse, whose trade was not in written words but that of the spoken.

It was a match made less than perfect in heaven but in South Korea, with the sense of invincibility afforded by the wilderness of our youth- we had taken everything in stride.

There was our time spent in between lines at the quaint neighborhood cafe; the Korean subway ride substitute of the boat trawl down La Siene; the long walk around everywhere to nowhere; and the nagging time shortage that reminded us of the urgency of then.

I fell head over heels over a beautiful stranger who found me in Seoul.

Alas, this story was not written by Jesse.

In the end of my story, I was left to forever contemplate what if I had a second chance with she who got away?