Seriously. She?

Haven’t you heard it? She’s got a disease.  -Guy A-

There was an undertone of assertion in his words as he whispered me a rumor about you. I’m not telling you who exactly this person is. You know him and chances are he would no longer be in your friend list had you hear the full version of the story.

The words reached me long after the last time you and I had seen each other at Cory’s farewell party, where we reserved a three room suite that offered half of the company to pack inside its spacious living room. We were busy putting up dance floor out of real loose bunch, spontaneous pantry bar and DJ booth. It felt as though everyone was born with a bottle in hand and grew up by rolling joints, surging laughters and physical movements that lacked of etiquette we called dance. Unlike you, I had no guts to just dive in and get wasted. There was a qualm came over me, reminded me I’ve had enough of a sorry college story of passing out and struggling to guess which one was up or down. To some extent, some kind of social anxiety has prohibited me from getting too much of a party.

My attention was split between the scene inside the room and you, who were sitting on the couch loosely, smoking, throwing lewd jokes everybody could possibly appreciate. There I was, with a digital camera as my only solace, enjoying the winning sensation of humiliating people in silence until someone told me to be careful not to capture too much of dangerous actions — whatever that meant. If it hadn’t been because of the video I shot, I could have never remembered that moment when I slouched myself on that same couch, that time when you lit your cigarette and sticked another one into my mouth.

As ante meridiem came in, everybody started to take apart their manners and got lost in the move. I pressed the shutter button more often, capturing the guys who did out of control air steps or gays and girls who struck poses or cleavage show-offs. You were getting really cheerful, in unusual friendly manner. The moment we were going to take a group photograph — I wasn’t the one in charge of it — I was sucked into the couch with you leaning closer and cupping my shoulder before burying your face inside the crook of my neck and licked it. I could never forget those lips that brushed my skin with such intention, the ones that were said to have got it on with so many people. I placed my hand on your black dress and smoothed the wrinkles on it because I couldn’t think about a more creative hand placement.

I couldn’t quite remember when the others went home, leaving only few of us. You emptied up glass by glass before started talking nonsense, and got up from the couch. Your weary look was incapable of any emotion, but did I see you exhaling breath in anguish? I helped you putting your plastic glass on the table, leaving your self-prepared cocktail exposed to the air.

And then the five of us, still in clamorous laughters, left the living room looking for you, whom we caught sitting at the window sill with your cell phone. With that lovely drunk expression, you giggled and jumped to the single bed, followed by us. We rolled together like little kids, but you were the drunkest one with tantrums. Lying at the side edge of the bed, you frowned very closely at your cell phone, muttering some words while dandling your black bob head, before tripping on the tangle of bed sheet and finally plopped down to the carpet. You rolled over the floor, kicked shamelessly and let everyone watched you drunk dialing somebody. I heard the ‘ex’ word. You won’t remember how hard you hit the carpet, but somehow I still have the bruised feeling inside.

Close to breakfst hour, you went home with three others. As you headed for the front door, you took me by my arm and asked if I was leaving too. I said I was going to stay, but I couldn’t resist to drop you by the elevator door.

About the rumor.

She has gone a little tamer these days. Well, she’s learned her lesson. -Guy B-

When somebody told me the rumor about you, I wasn’t paying too much attention to the disease part. I was instead centralizing on the person’s prejudice. But just like any other rumors, it was not about truth, nor it was about something that have spread with regard for its origin. People managed to stay around rumors to be the informal centers of power. The whole concept was, if you want to avoid the loss of influence and prestige, just adore the shining power of drama and pass it on as vast as you can. Only, for some reasons I had a hard time associating this one with anything that felt prestigious.

I sucked at enunciating things when people imply something rather the opposite of my view. I tended to be the silent lamb, the one who had been molested. And then I would secretly wish I could give my opponent an intriguing response, or a scoff, with some enlightening arguments that reflect my opinions and feelings. But at the same moment, I also wished I could talk to someone else who did so much better about this so I too could be noble and wise. Just before my mad thoughts brought me to endless chain of speculations, the gossip guy shifted the topic. He then yakked about his boss who was being bitchy and all. I looked at his nose, which was slightly bigger than average, and suddenly felt sorry for everything happened to his life.

I wondered if you thought about our company the way I did. A workplace that prided itself on having persistent office gossips as achievement, where everyone owned Hollywood conflicts but none of them had a salary worth envying. But you have never looked so worry about the layoffs, terminations, or promotions and the like, and you were always oblivious about me. Did you know that we’ve had known each other before we actually met in persons? We have been anonymously connected—years ago—on web journal where we commented on each other’s notes with pseudonyms about our overlapping tastes and interests. But you might just never noticed me with the ever altered adolescence personalities. You couldn’t even remember that we went to the same college, where you were browheaded back then, with some awkward highlights and bad piercing, a look that ought to be out of style by now. Though I knew you had a potential of a rebel, not of a girl I would date, somehow I thought you were more interesting than my girlfriend.

About the disease.

Every year, thousands of STD singles find love on STDFriends.com

One morning you passed behind my chair, with a faint hint of cappucino. I pressed ctrl+tab quickly to close my focused window, worried that you’d see what was on my screen. When I praised your boots to deter that, you only moved the corner of your lips condescendly and disappeared behind the milky acrylic divider between our desks that were facing each other. I pushed down my feet flat on the floor. I did it every so often to subside the need to fidget.

I couldn’t see our relationship, sometimes we passed each other nonchalantly, sometimes we cracked jokes together as if you had realized we have met each other long time ago. While I knew it was obvious: we were just office colleagues who knew a little about each other and liked some parts of each other, and shared a space where apathy and little curiosity were parts of the inventory.

Her nature is as contagious as her disease so you better treat her the same way. -Guy C-

The next day a rumor has spread about you going out with Cory’s ex boyfriend, and again I didn’t say a word. Each time the thought about disease visited me, it wasn’t only about needles, tattoos, drugs, or unprotected sex. There were also some occurrences in my head about many people out there who didn’t get a proper medical treatment, and millions of them who got it from their cheating partners, blood transfusions, and the ones who were raped. I thought about cautious people that could still be the victim. And I didn’t think anyone deserved it. And I just couldn’t imagine that thing actually happened to you. Why would people enjoy passing on such kind of story—or—why would people wish that on someone?

I tell you what. Just before her boss resigned from this office, she fucked him. And no, you’re not telling me he’s lucky enough for not getting infected. -Guy A-

I was silence. I somehow told myself heroically that this behind-the-scene nastiness has to stop. But I never dared to do anything. I felt helpless, without being able to morally legislate anything.

About you.

The day you deleted your Facebook account, everyone was probing questions before giving conclusion that you were just looking for instant popularity, which only empowered the rumor mill.

Then I wondered how did you go about this? If you wanted to temporarily disappear, where would you go? Was it sort of like going on a long vacation? I wonder if I could get away with that, what would I do? There were so much to think about. And I couldn’t help but imagining yourself cutting the wires, spending more time just laying on your apartment floor, reading novels or watching some horrors, indulging yourself in useless tripe. And if you felt lonely, there would be a friend-in-need knocking your door. Then you would leave the novel to fill the sandwich with peanut butter spread before spreading your legs.

I imagined the rumour fading away, people resuming their lives, works starting right back up, and myself leaving for another company. And then I fell asleep while scrolling down my old web journal, submerging in electronic flirting and fantasy.

We had an office party that evening. Dimly outlined at the far corner of the bar I saw you raising your glass up in the air between the girls. The thought about sharing glass with you really got my adrenaline going, while I was unsure if it was your black bob hair or your tainted blood that gave me the thrill. I was on another table with the guys who told me rumor about you, I didn’t notice myself struggling to keep in the better spot when you were around. What was I thinking?

I drove you home that night. Without any preamble I told you everything about the rumors.

And then I heard your feeble response,

Do you feel sorry for me? 

I swallowed. Your words were both warning and grunt of pain. I waited for the dark sky to send me any word to say, anything.

Take care of what you say. My life is perfect and I’m not killing myself over it. 

I continued driving past your neighborhood alone. I put my iPod up to listen to nothing, then realized that everything I just said was honestly self-mocking. I suddenly felt like congratulating the gossipers on how much a more moral person they are. But what good does that do me anyway?

I stared at the passenger seat to check if it had a blood on it. You have a disease. And I’m in love with it.

I was never good at telling difference between certain sounds. I frequently mistook a screeching train brake for a piercing scream, no matter how the flashing scenes outside have so often reminded me that I was sitting inside a subway car. Sometimes the screech went unheard, except when a deep muse got me carried away. Just after the shock, I saw my imperfectly transparent reflection in the window gazing back at me impassively.

The mundane wall inside the tunnel gave a strange tranquility, something the private railway above could not. I was sitting in the corner, on the priority seat I usually avoid. The evening train than rushed through Marunouchi line was not very packed that day, yet there I was, like any other underground civilians sitting in every chair they could possibly cram inside. Just across my seat there were school girls, boys, ladies, and workers with their eyes locked on their sleek or decorated cell phones. Same as other people next to me, whom I realized later were not the elderly, expecting mother; nor they were the disabled.

They were too busy connecting themselves with the world above to care for the red spots on the whites of my eyes.

I glanced at the mirror on my left, watching red spots swimming in my eyes. They were all questions, a tsunami of questions overflowing that couldn’t express an encounter I just had.

It was the third winter since I made the capital city of Tokyo my new home. A new home that was one-eighty to the home we have left six thousand miles behind. A new home that came upon my husband’s industry’s habit of sending people all over the world, that may have caused us to leave what we had to follow his transfer.

II

I climbed outside the station, where huge crowds of businessmen were milling in the color of black and grey. I would usually blend into them, unobtrusively passing those who would give second glances to foreigners, some would have the corner of their eyes checking secretly; yet I have gotten used to them, those neutral eyes, which were never eager to judge. Despite of the people’s strangeness, there was nothing such like street harassment that would get so serious here. For 27 months, I have been striding this new world, studying their curious customs, figuring their political showdowns, using a new kind of moisturizer cream, I was easily in love with everything here.

Back in the earlier days, my husband had only permitted me to go around by taxi. His habitual xenophobic reactions have gotten softer after I told him that, aside from its unreasonable fare, I missed the subway. It did help me a little to remember our hometown, without the angry people and fearful street corners. It has always been safe here in Tokyo, a place where there seemed to be only a thin gap between the commoners and the highly sophisticated ones. And to my unfathomable sense of profiling, the winter culture simply filled this gap. It was the similarly distinctive ‘winter’ scent these people shared through the season. Almost visibly similar scent, as though beneath every different layer they put on, they all emitted the similar substance.

III

It was a rather colder evening after I went to drink with friends at Roppongi Hills. I was crossing under the spider statue when a poster stole my attention. The image lingered until my feet got too heavy to step into the escalator. At the same second, I received my husband’s text saying that he was going home late. Then I decided to stay and wait for the evening by myself, after a fit of cheerfulness. I routed back to the Mori building front gate where I found the poster of solo exhibition by a mix media sculptor.

I paid for one ticket and entered a room, where the neatly decapitated body parts, taxidermy, bones, teeth, hairs, wax, woods, video screen, and mirror illusion were. I stopped in front of them to read the titles and found the muse for every dramatic explanation they suggested. As I wandered inside, I was bewildered having to explain about everything to myself. I could not understand why did I find all of the objects easy to relate to—was it because of their closeness to living creatures and the life itself? I couldn’t figure further than imagining myself coordinating the humanly, the Godly, and the ghastly aura that emitted from my own bodies.

A strange revulsion stirred inside me in the way the artist acted like God. The whole senses were so familiar yet new to me—I just could not identify the particular sensation that sparked off my mind and body, I was perplexed. It haunted me in amorphous shape, through the intimidating white spaces with high ceilings.

I read the brochure on my hand.: Jan 22 // Closing and Q & A with Artist.

IV

I came back that day. I found it a bit upsetting to know the artist was way younger than I imagined him to be, and 8 years younger than me. He also didn’t cut the artfully disheveled person I imagined him to be. Sitting there in leather jacket and boots and black framed tinted glasses, with a fair effort in grooming, he looked like someone who knew much less about arts, but would talk about them incessantly whenever given the chance. Despite this swanky annoying appearance, his explanation was, apparently, admirable. As I grew to realize the nature of this attitude was important when you are a branded artist, I decided to stay longer in the room.

The interview stretched no longer than an hour and his works were demystified. He has admirable sense of humor, making his rather mainstream options for lifestyle—as in music, foods, or choice of clothing—finally unbraided, even though he never actually stated any of them. I alternately laughed and fell into silence between the audience, where our eyes met twice.

Just about two hours later, we sat inside the same lounge I went to with my friends last week in the 52nd floor. He opened the door for me, ordered me the cosmopolitan, and for the first time in my life, I let a stranger paid my bill. I told him that when I was younger, all those chivalrous gestures used to smell highly of sexism to me.

He chuckled and told me that I have the kind of funny accent when I speak Japanese. He then apologized for having been staring at me during the Q and A, simply because he wanted to make sure if we’ve met each other before. The he told me he was interested in my questions and wanted to hear more of my words.

He said as he laced his fingers, “You know.. the art world somehow can be very insular and pretentious. It makes me want to distance myself from public pressures—”,  and though I didn’t mean to cut his sentence, I continued, “—by talking to a random stranger because they can be more objective?”. He couldn’t resist smiling.

He asked me about my doings. But I didn’t seem to find interesting aspect of the activities of a foreign women association who have been brought here through their partners career, in which nothing much than strolling around for cultural observations, attending evening lectures, or writing for the bulletin; so I told him I was just a housewife who had also worked as occasional writer.

Just before we parted at the station, I asked him, “So. If you think working with dead trees is just the same with dead animals, is there anything carvingwise you haven’t tried?”. He nodded, matter-of-fact. “I’d like to carve human.”

V

The same day next week, I was browsing through a bookstore near the exhibition gallery. I was surprised to find my book in a shelf with my name embedded on it, I myself have never even think about reading it again. A man’s voice appeared from behind my shoulder, “300 pages of allegory about Asian mythology in art? That’s pretty ambitious.”. He adjusted his glasses, smiling, as his other hand requested me for the book politely. I was surprised. I never expected to see him there, or anywhere.

“So you wrote this?”

“No, I don’t know—I mean, well, artists and writers came to me with their resources, I re-wrote them, they picked them up and sent it to publisher. So, in a way, it was sort of a fluke.”

“That’s how it goes with the arts. Oh, you know it.”, he nodded at my book.

I told him, with a little embarrassment, if he was disappointed by the fact I knew a little about his world. He said he was going to work in his studio, if I’d care to join him, while putting the book into his shopping basket, between  tape measure and some other tools I could never understand.

It was an unheated studio littered with work in progress. The smell of paraffin and wood flakes roamed, making a cold, comforting mixture inside the room. Junks were piled in the corner near the staircase, mostly chunks of wood, wax and sketches. There was almost nothing on the enormous, rustic, peeled wall. After he showed me the other much neater rooms, he put on his gloves and started to work in silence. The energy in the room was extreme. It didn’t take too much time, for a single ting of tool that tickled my ear or the raging sound of chainsaw, to get oddly familiar to me. I picked my pen and wrote for the association’s bulletin on an industrial, cold, iron desk. That way, I could feel some kind of resonance.

Those were the days where my husband was regularly invited to conferences in Milan. I had been showing up at the young artist’s studio constantly and he had never forgot to invite me to watch him working. We had always made ourselves available for each other. We shared good conversations about many things and we spent more of time together. When my husband asked me what sounds good for a fine dining, I was thinking about future Tuesdays I would spend with a younger man who might have his chainsaw and knives.

VI

One night in his studio, I asked him a question I had been mulling over, about the winter scent. “That’s probably.. a chlorine bleach. Because most people in Tokyo use the same detergent.”. I actually laughed in disbelief as I heard his reply. The next morning I woke up with an uncommon stream of daylight, through the window that wasn’t mine, and I got my winter smell redefined as the mix of of chlorine and faint undertones of cement and semen emitted from Uniqlo fabric I was wearing.

The bodily bonding had always felt transdimensional to us, and none of us loved to talk about it. We could not remember who initiated it and when it started. Strangely, it was rather compelling, as though we did it to save each other’s life. I surely knew both of us felt that way all along. And strangely enough, I found other physical connections as satisfying, like just lying on the winter smelled sheets, listening to his chainsaw song, and anything else I could only passively accept.

Though I refused the idea so many times, he introduced me as his muse to his friends. What to expect, they looked at me as a woman or a foreign old girl, who didn’t understand anything about their world. So I pretended like one. He was the only one who made me able to critically examine myself outside the marriage and geographic context.

One morning I asked him to make something for me, “Yes, something like memorabilia I could hang on my wall. Something that could accompany my aging journey”.

“You, will never get old. Look at you, this is what you asked for.”, he said, stretching his arms to my shoulder.

Indeed, I was his figurative sculpture. To my keen observation, the way he scooped me in his arms was the same with the way he guided the chisel with his careless hand. And when I was with him, I behaved like somebody else. Only when I was with him, I became someone else who likes to go spend the night at Izakaya, who listens to chamber pop, and has his kind of laughter lines.

VII

One evening while waiting for him before a dinner on Omotesando, I was drawn to make a stopover at a new art space which was just a crammy warehouse only a week before. There were some people inside. A young man in his late 20s came up from the doorway, holding spray paint cans and stopped in front of a medium-sized painting. He used his elbow to adjust the frame. Dust sprinkled down onto his spiked up brownish hair. Unable to use his hands, he tried to blow the dust out of his face. I took the spray paints from his hands to help and he smiled apologetically.

A bearded guy came over and told me that the place was actually closed and they were installing for tomorrow’s exhibition. I apologized and headed to the doorway as I realized a giant mural installed on the wall beside me allowed me a stream of ideas for the bulletin’s writing material. As I turned over to ask, I found the young man fixing his eyes towards my direction, his small lips parted, with either a slight nod of acknowledgement, or bewilderment, as though the obvious telltale of infidelity was written on my face.

A voice came up from my back and I realized the young man wasn’t looking at me. He was dazing at my lover, or should I just say, him.

“I’ve been waiting for you. It’s freezing outside.”, he turned his back and stepped quickly before me.

VIII

Two weeks later, winter has gone a little mad. The prints of association’s bulletin was finally came out, with my article about the young artist’s exhibition at the small art space. I carried it inside my beloved Loewe tote when we had dinner at a newly launched restaurant where a coterie of people in the know were willing to wait in line forever outside. It was the coldest day of my last month in Japan.

“Why are you wearing those?”, he nodded at my trekking boots.

“I like it. Why?”

“You don’t seem like a type who’d wear it. Or let’s say, a woman in her forty doesn’t wear this.”, he laughed.

“Well.. look at what you have there.”

“Well, what am I supposed to be?”, he said with wobbly smile.

I teased him if only he acted more like how his works represented how pain-obsessed he actually was, rather cynical and depressed, with complains about society, he would’ve achieved such image, an image of an artist.

“I bet those are prestigious in the world of art.”, I smiled, as he couldn’t resist laughing.

“I don’t want to. Famous people are usually pretty stupid. First, you have to dress right. You have to hang out with right people, right parties, date some right person—there has to be some oversimplified ideas about everything, I just want to fly below the radar”.

I asked him about the young artist and the new art space on Omotesando. He then mentioned it as an ignorant art, the boring, crummy art everyone can make, and asked me if I was interested in that. He told me that the young man, who was an emerging artist in panting and mix media sculpting, was actually a movie actor, a newbie to the art world, and it was such pretty young age to have a fair experience on them all.

“Then that’s exactly my point, his no-acknowledgement. He might have drawn some startling figures for the audiences to ponder, perhaps without meaning to. At least he does what he likes. If you’re too smart you’ll get bored to death.”

“Are you insinuating something?”

I paused to think.

“No—why? With his age, with the freedom he has now, he’s probably one of them who aren’t entrapped by anyone’s expectation. Now, do you feel jealous about this?”

“Am I being jealous? Impressive. All my life I’ve been trying to live with a broad cross of people to pay for a freedom of creating, but still I can’t escape this boredom of so-called-expectation. If only you could stop expecting me to be someone.“, he looked up, coldness raised in his voice. We continued to drink and eat in silence, except for the spoon and fork which were making sound against the plate, communicating what we couldn’t. It was when I realized that I could never learned his complexity, which was topped off with his obsession for his muses and everything about them.

IX

We arrived at his studio late at night. At first I didn’t bother to show him or talk about the bulletin, but eventually I did.

I told him that some of my friends had been asking me if there was something going on between us. I asked him, if he enjoyed going out with an older woman, a married one, as something like artistic trend, something challenging yet naturally conventional. I asked him how did he enjoy displaying me in front of the public eyes as the quickest way to establish his sexual value. And I asked him a little something along these lines: How did I become your muse—what did you find in me? How does my presence give you the honor to grab the chance of rising above another artists?

I didn’t realize myself panting as the words came out of me. I could not stress my words enough. But I was ready for everything. There was nothing that could have been a better ending. Then again, this may have been a moot experiment since the first time. I startled, and felt my words choking myself. He then took a metal baseball bat near a sculpture he was working on, one that might worth million yen, and bludgeoned it in such way, that if the sculpture were a human, he might have just caused its death so many time. “The fact that I’m acting just like another tortured artists.. Does it make you proud?”.

His voice drained of emotion, “Go.”

The word tasted like frostbite on my ears. There was an impulse, deep inside me, to take his coldness, keep it inside me, and let it stays until it gets warm, but nothing could come out of me. The way he looked at me with now, recalled me the painful sensation I’d once felt in the exhibition, only the painful part. I set my belongings on the couch and walked to the doorway. I once told there was no lucid cure for such kind of artist’s madness than leaving them alone and giving them more time to think forever about himself. I was glad if he was all about himself, I wish I had never been actually part of his life.

Just before the spring came, he texted me, joking about a real-time sculpting, how exciting it would be if he could perform himself juggling with chainsaws and gambling which hand would be cut off, then attach it to his masterwork.

I stated that it sounded like a high risk.

He replied: I guess. But you know, high risk, high return. Sounds pretty boring actually. Ah, I’ve always been a boring person.

For the first time, I failed to remember the sound of his voice. Have I lost him? I didn’t bother to find out.

X

Ten months had passed, when I saw an uncommon event in the city. That day, snow fell down. From our balcony, I could look out over all snowy Milan. Everything was even more gorgeous surrounded by the snow: the cathedrals, street lights, everything looked like white sculptures. I was writing reports for a theater, when I ran into online news and found an article gushing over an art exhibition opening in New York. And then I saw the picture of him, posing in front of a human sized sculpture.

Both of his hands were intact.

I left my desk. I’ve always been able to distract myself with the stuffs. Housecleaning, in particular, was helpful. As I was listening to the comforting sound of vacuum cleaner, I was sure I have forgotten what does the squawking sound of chainsaw like. I went to the washing room and inhaled the washing powder deeply. Something like chlorine, and, I sensed some significant details being omitted from the scent. Something I didn’t force to recall.

It started on Saturday evening, one of those warm days of June, when we had the team building night out. I was one of the sophomores who were preparing for specific study programs next year. By joining the team organizing the trip, I shared the golden chance of enjoying superiority in mediocrity, where we could sneer over the juniors since the seniors were on their exam prep. And most specially, we invited a group of alumni the girls would cheer for.

It wasn’t a very long trip to get there from our school. The cottage was deep in the forests, lying so incredibly beautiful with a lake to look over where sunrises would peek back to you. It was a perfect temperature for circling around the balcony over fire, guitar, crack, booze, and everything else illegal through the night. We spent most of the Sunday morning lazying around and playing around the cottage until the dusk called. We dropped by a steak house before heading back to town almost midnight because the dinner had ran late. And so my unforgettable adventure began.

Jon was someone among the alumni. Tall, dark, lanky, nine years older, spruce, and studious. He was in a band, which was a big deal for me who was in a flimsy stage of rockstardome. He drove my car for us to get to the cottage, and now he insisted to drive us home. Three of our previous passengers had caught up in lovestruck during the trip and decided to join the other cars, thus left the two of us together alone.

I saw Jon taking off his black leather jacket and laying it down on the driver’s seat. The moment he closed the driver’s door, I caught a whiff of something awful I couldn’t forget. The smell got stronger when we drove down the hill to the main road and somehow I was sure it was coming from something inside the car. So I encouraged myself to ask.

He replied,

Yeah, some kind of..  woody smell, right? I guess Lisa might’ve left something behind?

I checked the backseat. Nothing.

I remembered Lisa collecting branches along the ride back then but the nerdy girl has already left the car with a stack of dead stems hours ago and it kind of nonsense the smell would stay that long. Then again, the smell wasn’t even close to something like plant. It smelled like something I refused to think about.

There was a brief silence before he told me a long story about this left wing youth group gathering he went to when he left at the last minutes of our dinner. I could see how crazy he was about it. Well, it seemed like nobody was immune to it at that time. Suddenly, somewhere between a clear sense of loathing and a sheer sense of logic, my mind wondered wild and quick: if there was any kind of a youth group that encouraged cultic act that involves sodomitical practice? Because somehow in that moment I had a feeling that someone must have had done him a sacred communion of body and soul, so unpleasant that he crapped his pants.

Yes, for heaven’s sake, the car smelled like crap. So sickening I teared my eyes.

I didn’t say anything, I didn’t know how to respond either. He sounded so fiery but the thoughts that filled my head was even more extremely burning. I was barely listening. And if I had a question, it would have been: If you are so devoted to the Big Brother, wasn’t there always a way to cope that doesn’t have to end in suffering?

Yea! It was time to unfreeze.

It was Bowie’s “Watch That Man” playing on my car audio.

You like old music so much, aren’t you?, He asked

Just some, I replied.

Good Lord. The smell. I remembered the smell of vomit, dog shit, rotten toe, anything, I remembered how they twist my head abominably. But this one topped everything I’ve sniffed under the sun. What was exactly this lingering stench in my car? And what if I was wrong, what if it was smell of corpse, instead of human crap? I haven’t smelled the corpse but I heard it’s also the kind smell you won’t forget. However, I doubted anyone could actually put a corpse in my car during the trip, and from what I heard it supposed to be moderate in 24 hours after death. Now nothing could get any worse than this. I wasn’t sure what it was, except it was very disturbing that it gave me more horrors than any scarier aspects in this world. Oh. I couldn’t stay in uncertainty like this. I meant, how am I gonna tell my Mom, that my — her car, just got shitted.

The car reeked like a tomb. I wished I could get knocked out and faint immediately. I was feeling mentally assaulted. And for the first time in my life I thought I was speaking for all the victims in the world.

Part Two

Bowie sang, watch that man!

We were racing through the highway with 20 miles to go when the severe urge to pee had me. There were times where I had this little pee holding mantra of mine that could work its charm right away. It was by dispensing all the force and urgency to a sex dream. We all have quirks, right. And mine was this strange feeling of arousal I had when I have my bladder full. Once I got into it, it felt like the huge water balloon that was sitting in my abdomen just gone. And maybe, focusing on it could get rid the smell off the reality. I crossed my legs, imagined and imagined something sensual. I adjusted my sit upright, tried to get relaxed and concentrated on the next track coming from the player. It was “Complete Control” by The Clash.

He broke my meditation for talking about the group again, giving me strong suspicion that he was actually trying to recruit me into a cult group. I thought he was trying to stretch his left hand to me, but apparently it was the dashboard in front of me. He opened it and checked what was inside the drawer. Some were my Mom’s.

So, how did you start to stem to prog bands?

Em.. I actually got this one from someone on the internet, he mentioned it. Well. Spending half of your school in room listening to one album doesn’t necessarily mean you’re rooting for the band’s ideology, right?

I chuckled. He didn’t.

I just like the music. Just liking it—I don’t really care whether it’s FM friendly, or something that has obscure taste or anything. What was in my playlist is nothing about sitting there being a left wing extremist or a mad artist, neither about succumbing to the frivolous movement and being hip. It’s up to my personal taste, it’s a condemnation to my current state and mood. I don’t really care actually. Speaking of which, I wonder if letting out your waste and leaving it to dry inside your pants could be counted as condemnation?

But all that came out of my mouth was only the first two sentences. I didn’t like the fact he responded with such emotionless face.

And then I saw a chance of swerving to take one or two deep breaths at the rest area. So I asked it anyway,

Can we stop by..? There was a sign saying it’s in half mile about.

Hm, is it okay for you hold it a bit more? I guess we’ll make it home in 15 minutes.

It wasn’t really surprising that he refused and sped up. And it was also kinda too late. The idea of having trapped for two hours inside this car had already scared the pee out of me. And as I got carried away with exterminating those anxious feelings, I got constantly adapted to the growing pain. The cars on the right lane were pulled away. We were driving so fast.

Yeah.. I’m good.

He didn’t know how not being able to do anything made me feel so pathetic. In fact, I was always that pathetic. I never made the most of the chances I was given, that’s why I always ended up suffocating. In one moment, I noticed that I didn’t speak idle chit chat much.

He asked me what do I like from the glam scene. He asked me if I was sexually interested in men with glitters. He asked me about my dreams and obsessions. He asked me about my choice of study program. I never understood why did he want to know so much. I was barely eighteen back then. Is it worth to consider a seventeen years old? But I thought he wouldn’t give a fuck, however, I was a kid back then, who had a dream, once, about becoming a social activist and leading a bohemian life. I was never fond of anyone who asks me questions about my life. Before he could scoff at me, and without wanting to be heard as though I was retorting, I told him a little about my family and school. That was before he scoffed at me, remember that. Not that it would mean anything, but I just couldn’t get myself to say my point so I spoke gibberish and wrapped it up by insisting that glam was nothing about libido. He nodded.

I glanced up at him to address my answers politely, only to find just how bad the idea was. It turned out that specific position really mattered to deeply intensify the sensation. Before the smell grew even stronger and hurting, I looked away, facing the road in front of us.

And then I looked back over my life and I realized that I never made my own decision. I was a weak person, I was really gullible and easily swayed. I didn’t know what brought me so uptight and defensive. That time, I watched my hopes and dreams fleeting across my window, fading away with the lights along the lane.

Ooh ooh ooh have we done something wrong? Ooh ooh ooh complete control, even over this song, said Joe Strummer.

My sigh broke a long silence. I skipped the next song before he could ask anything else. I started to think that he was deliberately trying to drive the conversation this way to distract me from the uncanny smell, not to judge me. Then why did I keep feeling it as a threat to my identity, an insult to my choice? Although I knew it couldn’t be. Since I’ve got his secret, I didn’t see his words had the power to do so.

One of the car light was dead, so I pretended to be aware of everything in front of us although it seemed kind of useless. My eyesight have always been severely limited after the sundown, thanks to some weird virus. I told him just to chill and keep a distance. He seemed to ignore me and accelerated through the highway. He was never easy on the gas.

At 01:16 AM we arrived at my house. He took his jacket from the seat but he didn’t wear it on. He said he would take a cab. I didn’t say much but ‘thanks‘.

Outside the garage, I saw the street lights flickering on and off as he walked to the end of the street and disappeared like a phantom. With my head spinning around, I went back to the garage, into the car, which I proceeded to climb, and braced myself to smell the driver’s seat. And just like a phantom, the smell was gone.

It must be staying on his skinny jeans forever.

June 2008.

And here goes the conventional pencil sketch, because I never finish things I started :B

She was looking at me as I noticed a familiar sound came closer.

When I looked back, a truck appeared from the other side of the curve and pulled directly into my path. Before my reflex told me to jump aside, it had drifted away senselessly and screeched in burning sound on the road’s surface. My body was intact except I could feel my heart hitting my throat, but thanks to the strong heart I have elaborated through working in social care. Ten years ago, this place was almost nothing. People were friendly and life was very laid back far from the downtown. The only machinations were urban legends among kids told by the older ones. And one of them was standing in front of me.

There was this ivory house stood  near our house. There lived two old ladies who often seen in the yard of  lush verdure, the one watering flowers, and the other one knitting or playing with cats on the front porch. People rarely saw them setting foot outside the fine white gate, that spanned elegantly as high as my father’s chin. Most people assumed they were sisters, some thought they were twins, but more vigilant ones would say that they had no blood relation at all. After a very brief encounter, I’ve perceived myself as one of the latter.

Nobody knew how long they had been living in our neighborhood, nobody knew their ages. When we were little, our older brothers and sisters told us that Asians eat rodents, bats and snakes; and they aren’t fond of locals, and everything else that made them the very personification of evil. But today, my coming back to hometown was a disclosure that the two women who came to my life along my holiday season were far nobler ladies that the ones I had previously imagined.

It was that next day after my arrival when I decided to assist Miss Amya upon Miss Anahi’s request. My Dad said it was a very decent action when I told him that his only son would be visiting the ivory house more often.

That dim afternoon was the moment we first talked to each other. The one who stood between the gate was Miss Amya. I knew it later after Miss Anahi, whose hair was shorter and straighter showed up from the main door in grey sweater and peach dress. She held Miss Amya’s by the hand to lead her in and asked me to join for a talk over tea on the porch. She told me how Miss Amya’s condition was getting worse. That was when Miss Anahi asked me, earnestly with her bleary red eyes, to take care of her loved one.

It’s called the sundown syndrome, I told her.

We watched golden sun sunk silently at the far side of the white gate.

*  *  *

When I came back the other day I noticed that “Ahn”, the surname they shared, was engraved on the door name plates. I came across the front porch and entered the living room. A repertoire of photographs and souvenirs from all around the world where they modeled like the forgotten stars you adore, was meticulously put together. Some hung on the richly colored walls, some stood on the pale wooden furniture. All of those ornate furniture in the house, the decorative carvings, the paintings of bamboo, fish and bird; transferred me to the other hemisphere.

All those photographs and statement pieces lent a touch to something not too opulent, but rich of story, the kind of live they had left far behind. It seemed like they had jetted around the world to go to thousand places and crush themselves to thousand engagements with thousand people, like they had spent all of their social time together without anyone knowing the secret language of their own that made them look so much after another. To me, they didn’t look like twins, even sisters. They were just strangers with such kind of bonding that even blood relation is disregarded.

It didn’t surprised me that Miss Amya asked for things a thousand times, and told us that she had already eaten every time I tried to persuade her at the dinner time. When I almost gave myself up, Miss Anahi did nothing to her but brushing the strings of the supple silver waves that fell to Miss Amya’s shoulders. Now, their hair were mostly white and silver, leaving the vigorous images from over fifty years ago caged inside the picture frames. While young Miss Amya mostly left her wavy bedhead black at different lengths and cuts, young Miss Anahi seemed like a living mood ring with her continuous alteration of color scheme. With every other precise and abundant details from the photographs, the difference between the two was unsubtle yet perfect. They were a completion for one another. So impeccable that in the world of todays, they would be those avant-pop sensation and psychedelic philosopher.

Both of us had hoped that we might someday go somewhere and just vanish. But when we found this house to keep us inside in peace, suddenly our wishes gone forever.

Miss Anahi told me as I hold a picture frame where the two were captured waving from a doorless little airplane, both looked loose, weightless in the air. Words written on it,

‘Our lights scattered, makes the sky looks blue.’

It was when we explored Peru. And this.. Amya took this picture.

She pointed at an aerial photograph of Nazca lines, it was the bird one.

It’s actually a song. My mother had hoped me to become an entertainer, but as she discovered that I hadn’t inherited the talent, she’d switched me to join the choir..

I helped her pulling the piano bench across the rug, and she taught me about half of the song, or should I say, chants. A story unraveled from that one line written on the photograph. As her fingers moved in rhythm, another statement piece circled on her left wrist stole my attention. Faith was declared from the silver plate of the bracelet. And that night I didn’t sleep. I was drowned and daunted by their world of interdependency. I tried to speculate the fractures and turbulence in their lives like many other people generally. I tried to figure out any of world’s radical change they had witnessed, which turned out in vain because such things could only be ascribed to them. Before I realized, a bird perched on my window, giving me a blank, uncertain moment before I fell asleep.

*  *  *

On that grey evening, Miss Amya was standing midway the gate, like the first day I met her. This time the gate was slid open to a full exposure of the ivory house. She had one foot out, and the other one was closely parted, behind the rail. She smiled at me, and with that smile I knew that she still remembered me. I asked her if she was okay, because I knew that the gate was very heavy since it hadn’t been used for years. She didn’t bother anything from me. Instead, she talked with a gentle smile on her face,

There was this lady inside the house.. She was so gentle and nice, she reminded me to put on my sleepers. I wonder who she is.

I saw Miss Anahi on the front door, her hand resting on on side of the door jamb. She touched the knitwear around her wrist. I wished I could brave myself more before I talk to Miss Anahi, I wished I could hide this uncertain feeling, but all I could do was to pin my eyes to the emotionless facade of the ivory house. I didn’t want to stop there. I shifted my mind to take Miss Amya’s illness and Miss Anahi’s sufferings with all its pungent details professionally, and entered the house.

Another day, it was raining outside of the window. In the bedroom full of portrait paintings, Miss Amya was lying on an ivory bed where she spent days of prolonged sleep without any intakes. We coaxed her to eat for the thousandth times, but she insisted that she had dinner many times and now that she was ready to go home.

This is already home, I heard Miss Anahi behind me in the raspy silkiness of her voice. She sat by Miss Amya’s side, held the weary hand and started to chant,

‘Our lights scattered.. makes the sky looks blue..’

But Miss Amya was halfway out the gate, and the rain outside was moving into the bedroom.

That moment, I was very certain that they were immortal.

2nd of February,

13,000 feet above,

edited on the 7th.

0 people die every year from smoking pot. 115 die in vehicle crash.

I wouldn’t look away, I would stay here forever.

But a view from my window had braved me. A boy was spotted playing guitar. His hair was dark, his shirt was grey, and he was in black and white.

The posters behind him were black and white. He was sitting in the center of a black and white room surrounded by a hundred years of music history and hundred dollars of black and white music objects. At least that was what his guitar, posters, condenser microphone, midi keyboard, and macbook told me.

He might be rehearsing for a gig, he might be the dead rock star whose rough demo we would listen to in next 30 years, after the looney founded greyscaled alone in his bedroom. He might be the trend of the future. He might bring us out of this boredom. We could be fearless with him in this world.

I shifted closer to the hollow square of my room, a cage where world could force its diaphragm into my room and eat me anytime. But from there, I could watch him sitting rather side-angled, rattling those strings. I watched him and listened to him playing the song for a minute and fifty six seconds.

Isn’t it good to be lost in the wood
isn’t it bad so quiet there, in the wood

For the first time I was half in love with the tendency of jumping across my window. And so with the intensity of taking that 115% risk of stepping outside.

His voice reached out to me and broke into my window, I thought I heard him telling me that his country has the best music and for a split second I thought he was beckoning me. He took me by my hand I wasn’t sure how. He took me by my ears and I was sure I was functioning, because I could still hear him singing and talking at the same time and I realized the dope was enough to get it all going.

I would throw myself into his window and tell him how I wished to jump there as the fragments are ready to hurt him. Or was he already inside my room, my mad frame of mind. Who was he, what was he, where was he actually. Or were we actually in the same room.

But my window was still opened.

That mind-melting experience was only a click away from me. It was only a window, flammable, breakable. I could close it anytime, I could crash and burn it down, I could fist fight it, I could shove my PC to it. We could have been closer without the hassle and bulk of this window.

It was only a window, I could nail it down, I told my mind to get a grip. Where’s the grip?

I seized some grasses near my window and set the only bridge between us on fire.

My wrecking spree, free me.

February 2009.

Thank you Roger Keith Barrett, for showing us one of the experiential approach to life.

Oh and I was so bashful about this idea.

At mid day, the serpent will creep up to the end of mother earth’s ridge, to savor some celestial delusions, to worship all over her highness’ humble but pert breasts. It will then edge down to watch her bathing in the waterfall. The cold-blooded creature will glide out all the rocks to make way for channel and paddle its white, sleek body inside mother earth’s fluid substance to cure its thirst.

At the end of the day, it will crawl up to the very cold top of the mother earth, and lie to watch her highness’ sky changes color. After lushing out on her hair of green foliage, the serpent will whisper out loud amid the untrodden depths of her wilderness, a dry tundra, a small, haunting part at the center of mother earth’s heart. Being a limbless creature, the serpent can only caress the surface with its scales and cry along in secrecy.

At night, the serpent will return home. A tree it is, its very own tree, even stronger one with thick, deep roots and plentiful of healthy fruits. The great tree cares not for the serpent’s absence, cares not for any evidence of small deception, for it only care to grow straight high to the outer space. And nothing can separate the two except the death of one. In truth, the serpent was born and live for the great tree.

And at midnight, the sly serpent will sneak out to adore the mother earth for the last time before the day repeats. It will hiss to the moon about how it yearns a shelter inside her cave, how it yearns to lure her skin with venomous bites. But all it can get in return is a glimpse of scene from the mother earth and the gracefully slim tree, their bodies in a thousand ways of sacred connection, inseparable, unremovable, so close, so merciless! The serpent will suffer from unnatural pain in its hollow heart, like a dying breed, a broken third wheel, a solitary creature without limbs, without reason, but a split tongue. And then it will slither back, and lie in circle biting its own tail under one of the sturdy armpits of the great tree, who has a plentiful of healthy fruits.

I just moved into a new house, my boy’s house actually. 33 kilometers away from the city’s heart (that’s twice the course from my parent’s house), 4 kilometers from the highway gate, a warm house with high ceilings and stairs which has made any activity a sport. The surroundings are very nice, and recreational areas are seen everywhere such like freshwater fishing, agro-park, golf, and else. It also has the best, cleanest running water around town.

Why would you leave such perfect home?

But maybe you do, when you can rent a room where your workplace is at a walking distance. And you can have all the cash for a Euro-trip by selling your car to join the bike snob club. And you can live more relax, by having the biggest pleasure of being on time (you know you can’t trust punctuality on other people but you). Extra time to eat something healthier, to throw in a load of laundry, to write a note to yourself to remember coming home and see your parents in quality time, plus extra money to save. So sadly I have to say bye bye suburb, and welcome a laborious work for lungs. I’m walking to the office aka place where I’m having this on-off relationship with.

Basically because I’m no more a permanent employee since almost a year ago but I’m still sticking around here as a freelancer. My closest friends have already left for good, and lotsa new faces to encounter. The shoe-business is running well, other chances appear now and then and I can’t help but dealing with other things to feel irregularly established. Maybe that’s the reason I don’t want to ‘get hooked’ at an early age to something, I want to chase various destinations (well not for my entire life), and of course that includes spending more times with the loved ones. So I don’t spend too much time thinking about career path since I’m determined in my every single short-term goal. Aren’t we all about destination addiction?

Learning to manage being in big crowds of people
Doing yoga regularly
Working as a Public Relation Manager
Developing a business
Resigning from permanent job in advertising industry
Accepted for three programs at Central Saint Martin College
Rejected by The Embassy of UK
Planning a Euro trip
Forgetting it
Coming back to the industry as a freelancer
Changing hairstyle
Losing weight
Gaining it back again in 6 months
Falling in love
Getting married
Moving out
Moving in
Becoming less hysterical
Allocating the manic side on other stuffs
Earning more positive outlook

I’ve found a lot to be thankful along the way. And though I didn’t celebrate the New Year Eve like the previous raucous years, I felt grateful with the recent successes of (me) and other people around me. Those are beyond tangible reasons to wish everyone a happy new year. Enjoy 2011!