In the end, in the very, very end, I had to end it where it began. Why ask tarot what I can ask him in person? Why wear myself out with questions I can make him answer?
Certain I would catch him at home on a Sunday night, I cabbed to his block. At his door I was nervous. I thought I heard the television in the house. I tried the doorbell, then the door. No one answered. I went around the block to get a look at the house. It was dark and all the windows of all the rooms were closed. But a man opened the living room windows – someone was in then, not him, but someone – and I tried the door again. A man who looked like a thin teddy bear came to the door and when I asked for “Max” he said, “There is no Max who lives here. Is your address correct?”
I said I was sure I had the right house. “I’ve been in there.”
He said he had lived there on his own for years.
I said I had been in there with a Max in April.
“What has he done?”
“So Max is here?”
He said he did have a housemate but it wasn’t a Max. “I want to help you but tell me what he has done. Has he done anything criminal?”
I almost laughed. “No. It isn’t criminal not to call a girl.”
He said he had a housemate named Gotham, Gautham or something (“As in Batman?” I said but he didn’t get it and gave me a weak smile) who was out but would be back soon.
“Is he from the Maldives? Does he work for a bank?”
“Gotham” works for a tech company, his friend said. Thrown by the unfamiliar name and job, I thanked him and was ready to leave. Maybe my “Max” had left. Or he had lied. Or he had asked his friend to lie. What more did I need to know?
As soon as I was downstairs I had a new plan, however. My inner policewoman thought, why don’t I get the dating app again, go to the suspect’s photo page, show it to the man upstairs and see how he reacts? The app was slow, super slow. By the time I had the pics on the phone, the suspect was walking by me with loads of shopping and a fair and plump woman. (So that is his type. Someone like me.) I followed them, a few steps behind, and they didn’t see me until they got to his door and I went, “Hey…can I talk to you? Two minutes?”
Looking at him again after six months, I saw an uneven colouring on his face, a splatter of vanilla on caramel, that I didn’t recall. It was still a good face but all I felt was…nothing. He said, sure, he could talk. As his girlfriend went into the house he got me to walk with him to the lawn near the block. He said he remembered me, although he hadn’t recognised me immediately; it had been that long. He said he was surprised by my visit, although he didn’t sound it. He was as smooth as I remembered.
“New girlfriend?”
“Girlfriend.”
“Good for you.”
Finally, we were at a pavilion and he asked me what I wanted to talk about. I said he had not responded to my texts since May. (I was trying to be factual and to let him have his say, to be fairer to him.) He said he had gone abroad in May and got a new phone number in June. He said he thought he had told me to “get over” that afternoon.
“No you didn’t and you should have. I’m not a psychic.”
He said he had made a mistake. “It wasn’t planned, it just happened, it can’t be reversed. But we knew afterwards we were not two people who would get along.”
He knew. Did I? Did I know it and wishfully unknow it?
“I thought there was nothing to talk about and we would get over it. But seeing you here now, I know I made a mistake.”
He asked me to blame him. “You have to blame someone. Then one day you can forgive even if you don’t forget,” he said. Or he did not say it and I misheard. I had heard enough, though. His words cost him nothing and I didn’t want more. As I left he wished me good luck. I said bye.
It was windy – a night as nice as that day – when I walked to the road and caught a cab home.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Thursday, October 24, 2013
ORANGE JUICE | Six
Finally, I saw an actual tarot reader in Bylands Building, a couple of steps from Guanyin in the country’s most fabled temple; a no-nonsense woman I paid to tell me to let it go. She said he had moved on. She said he hadn’t been ready. I had drawn a King of Cups and she said, “I don’t trust this king. He tells white lies. He’s a sweet-talker.” Move on, she said. Don’t miss your boat. Don’t wait for him and miss your Mr Right.
Even then I had to come home and press the virtual tarot card reader for more answers, a story to tell myself to give him up. Whether or not the cards spoke true, I drew comfort from them (as I took refuge in flu and K-drama, two things which allow me to go around the house with a gooey face, no questions asked).
Even then I had to come home and press the virtual tarot card reader for more answers, a story to tell myself to give him up. Whether or not the cards spoke true, I drew comfort from them (as I took refuge in flu and K-drama, two things which allow me to go around the house with a gooey face, no questions asked).
Sunday, August 25, 2013
ORANGE JUICE | Five
The last words he said to you as he stepped off the train were, “Text me.” And you have revisited that moment so many times since that afternoon, wishing you had stepped off the train too and said to him like a cool woman, “When you say, text me, do you mean goodbye? Then say what you mean, okay, and kiss me goodbye.”
But you are not cool, you are just crazy. You texted him, though you said you wouldn’t, then you had the longest two weeks of your life waiting for him to text you again. (He said he would be busy “these two weeks”, another of his roundabout goodbyes.) Then you wrote him a long letter, your rationale being: He started a fire, why should you spare him the smoke? (Listen to yourself. You talk like you are an avenging haze from Indonesia.)
You have stopped saying to your friends you are over him because you can’t seem to stay over him. You live in a dreamland with tarot as your new friend because who else can you trouble with impossible questions like: Did he read the letter? Will you see him again? (You did go to the Guanyin temple to get a divination but why did she say you were “carrying a ferocious tiger and climbing a steep mountain”? What did she mean exactly? But you couldn’t bring yourself to bother her again with your sesame-size crisis when so many other living beings need her.)
And so you wait on and on and on… Some days you are alone yet strong in your certainty that your encounter wasn’t random, that you will see him again. Other days you are alone and anxious…
But you are not cool, you are just crazy. You texted him, though you said you wouldn’t, then you had the longest two weeks of your life waiting for him to text you again. (He said he would be busy “these two weeks”, another of his roundabout goodbyes.) Then you wrote him a long letter, your rationale being: He started a fire, why should you spare him the smoke? (Listen to yourself. You talk like you are an avenging haze from Indonesia.)
You have stopped saying to your friends you are over him because you can’t seem to stay over him. You live in a dreamland with tarot as your new friend because who else can you trouble with impossible questions like: Did he read the letter? Will you see him again? (You did go to the Guanyin temple to get a divination but why did she say you were “carrying a ferocious tiger and climbing a steep mountain”? What did she mean exactly? But you couldn’t bring yourself to bother her again with your sesame-size crisis when so many other living beings need her.)
And so you wait on and on and on… Some days you are alone yet strong in your certainty that your encounter wasn’t random, that you will see him again. Other days you are alone and anxious…
ORANGE JUICE | Four
In my 20s I was actively looking for love – promiscuously chatting on IRC on a computer I fought over with my brothers, the one and only computer we had – and I found disaster. That might have been why I blotted it out later, the fact that you have to go and look for love, that it won’t come and find you. That might have been why I stopped looking.
But around Chinese New Year, going on a junket to Seoul again, it all came back to me. My first South Korea junket had been eight years ago, one day after I became single. Because it was too soon to speak of the break-up I didn’t; I passed the trip working, shopping and hearing E speak of her Korean guy. Only on the second Seoul junket four years later did I tell her. This year, on the way there with her again, I realised South Korea had become a bookmark in the blank notebook that was my love life, an eight-year blank, before she even asked me to update her.
I realised I hadn’t been doing enough about it, not as much as I had the last time. Signing up for OKCupid and Match.com and deleting messages from men wasn’t enough. I would have to get out and go out with some of them, which I resolved to do the morning I woke up in Seoul and found a blanket of snow outside the window, a landscape of hope.
Dating got quickly disheartening, though. Two promising guys – sporty, articulate Chinese Singaporeans, the sort who never ever asked me out at school – had written me before I went to Seoul and after I came back I asked to meet them. One of them was keener and we pencilled in a date. Then he said he would have sex with me in front of my family and that was the end of the discussion. The other kept saying he would meet me and that was all he was, talk.
The first guy I eventually met, a Taurean, was into sex or talking about it. By way of flirtation, he regaled me with his sexual history, proposed an open marriage and repeated a Russell Peters joke about overstretched sweaters and vaginas. I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t offended but he just wasn’t funny. Like, if I were to tell a woman a vagina joke 10 minutes into a first date, I would blow her away with my timing. (As I told Ms S about the date later she named the guy before I could repeat the whole joke. She also told me he had been named in an underage-sex case.)
The second guy, a Scorpian, was into cycling and sailing. He was sweet but I was bored.
The third guy, a Libran, I never intended to meet. Young, foreign, hot, he didn’t seem suitable. If I met him, I figured, it would be a break from the business of meeting potential marriage partners; a date with him would be a holiday from my life. But I didn’t say yes. A fourth guy wrote me, who was in Britain but would soon move to Singapore. A fifth guy asked to meet me at the weekend but stopped writing me one day before the weekend. Updating S on how I had been left high and dry, I said, “Then there’s a Libran but he’s 28.” And she said, “What’s wrong with 28?” And she had a point and still, I didn’t take him seriously.
But then I thought I would meet him at the weekend and not take him seriously and that was my mistake. Because when I met him I wanted to take him seriously. In the two minutes I walked with him from the train station to his place, I knew I had strolled into a holiday I didn’t want to end. But how could he take me seriously then, when I had sent him a “hey what r u doing today” message that sounded like a booty call, when he asked to meet me at his place and I didn’t say no?
Once I was young and stupid. Now I’m just stupid.
But around Chinese New Year, going on a junket to Seoul again, it all came back to me. My first South Korea junket had been eight years ago, one day after I became single. Because it was too soon to speak of the break-up I didn’t; I passed the trip working, shopping and hearing E speak of her Korean guy. Only on the second Seoul junket four years later did I tell her. This year, on the way there with her again, I realised South Korea had become a bookmark in the blank notebook that was my love life, an eight-year blank, before she even asked me to update her.
I realised I hadn’t been doing enough about it, not as much as I had the last time. Signing up for OKCupid and Match.com and deleting messages from men wasn’t enough. I would have to get out and go out with some of them, which I resolved to do the morning I woke up in Seoul and found a blanket of snow outside the window, a landscape of hope.
Dating got quickly disheartening, though. Two promising guys – sporty, articulate Chinese Singaporeans, the sort who never ever asked me out at school – had written me before I went to Seoul and after I came back I asked to meet them. One of them was keener and we pencilled in a date. Then he said he would have sex with me in front of my family and that was the end of the discussion. The other kept saying he would meet me and that was all he was, talk.
The first guy I eventually met, a Taurean, was into sex or talking about it. By way of flirtation, he regaled me with his sexual history, proposed an open marriage and repeated a Russell Peters joke about overstretched sweaters and vaginas. I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t offended but he just wasn’t funny. Like, if I were to tell a woman a vagina joke 10 minutes into a first date, I would blow her away with my timing. (As I told Ms S about the date later she named the guy before I could repeat the whole joke. She also told me he had been named in an underage-sex case.)
The second guy, a Scorpian, was into cycling and sailing. He was sweet but I was bored.
The third guy, a Libran, I never intended to meet. Young, foreign, hot, he didn’t seem suitable. If I met him, I figured, it would be a break from the business of meeting potential marriage partners; a date with him would be a holiday from my life. But I didn’t say yes. A fourth guy wrote me, who was in Britain but would soon move to Singapore. A fifth guy asked to meet me at the weekend but stopped writing me one day before the weekend. Updating S on how I had been left high and dry, I said, “Then there’s a Libran but he’s 28.” And she said, “What’s wrong with 28?” And she had a point and still, I didn’t take him seriously.
But then I thought I would meet him at the weekend and not take him seriously and that was my mistake. Because when I met him I wanted to take him seriously. In the two minutes I walked with him from the train station to his place, I knew I had strolled into a holiday I didn’t want to end. But how could he take me seriously then, when I had sent him a “hey what r u doing today” message that sounded like a booty call, when he asked to meet me at his place and I didn’t say no?
Once I was young and stupid. Now I’m just stupid.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
ORANGE JUICE | Three
That was a dream, that drizzly, dewy afternoon; she knows now. Even there and then it felt like a fantasy. It felt unreal but she wanted it to be real. She wanted it to be fate.
Guy met girl and he recognised her. She was the one standing at the train station the day before while he was waiting to meet some crazy from some dating app who wouldn’t give him her number. Now she was here again, same woman, same slinky dress. “That was you, I wanted it to be you,” he muttered.
She recognised him too and her heart dropped. Slim caramel man, thin face…he reminded her a little of somebody she had known…and why did he have to look so much better than his photo? Why did he have to speak so well and be so cute even when he didn’t seem so confident? Why did he have to smell so good? He was the type she had never, in her whole life, learnt to run from. No, she didn’t want to run and she walked up to his home with him but no, nothing really happened. Nothing that is real. Nothing that hasn’t evaporated, like dew in daylight. Something she will revisit in a never-ending daydream.
Guy met girl and he recognised her. She was the one standing at the train station the day before while he was waiting to meet some crazy from some dating app who wouldn’t give him her number. Now she was here again, same woman, same slinky dress. “That was you, I wanted it to be you,” he muttered.
She recognised him too and her heart dropped. Slim caramel man, thin face…he reminded her a little of somebody she had known…and why did he have to look so much better than his photo? Why did he have to speak so well and be so cute even when he didn’t seem so confident? Why did he have to smell so good? He was the type she had never, in her whole life, learnt to run from. No, she didn’t want to run and she walked up to his home with him but no, nothing really happened. Nothing that is real. Nothing that hasn’t evaporated, like dew in daylight. Something she will revisit in a never-ending daydream.
Saturday, May 04, 2013
ORANGE JUICE | Two
When you have been in a car crash, you try to be careful about being back on the road again.
You have rules: Be paranoid but not too paranoid. Look, really look, before you leap. Find out what someone is like, really like. Find out if he is reliable. Don’t jump into anything.
You have been careful for eight years now, and then in one afternoon you break most of your rules. You’re crazy after all. Who measures out her life with coffee spoons – thousands and thousands and thousands of spoonfuls – and then tosses all her spoons aside in one hour?
You’re a fool but you try to be a philosopher. You think – but you know you aren’t thinking and you aren’t a philosopher – what is one afternoon? What will it matter in a thousand years, when you have all turned to dust? Maybe nothing matters beyond this moment: this man, this woman, this moment.
Afterwards – because there will always be an afterwards, because some afternoons are eternal and fleeting, because some things are ending as they start – you’re happy, unhappy, loony, moony, hopeful, fretful, heartened, heartsick. You want him. You want him to keep wanting you. You believe things, you suppose things, few of which you dare say out loud, for fear they will disintegrate in contact with oxygen, sunshine and common sense. You’re flying at breakneck speed, you don’t know where you will land and you might break your bones. Yet some part of you which has been dead for years is, rightly or wrongly, beautifully or painfully, alive now; you’re alive, so alive.
You have rules: Be paranoid but not too paranoid. Look, really look, before you leap. Find out what someone is like, really like. Find out if he is reliable. Don’t jump into anything.
You have been careful for eight years now, and then in one afternoon you break most of your rules. You’re crazy after all. Who measures out her life with coffee spoons – thousands and thousands and thousands of spoonfuls – and then tosses all her spoons aside in one hour?
You’re a fool but you try to be a philosopher. You think – but you know you aren’t thinking and you aren’t a philosopher – what is one afternoon? What will it matter in a thousand years, when you have all turned to dust? Maybe nothing matters beyond this moment: this man, this woman, this moment.
Afterwards – because there will always be an afterwards, because some afternoons are eternal and fleeting, because some things are ending as they start – you’re happy, unhappy, loony, moony, hopeful, fretful, heartened, heartsick. You want him. You want him to keep wanting you. You believe things, you suppose things, few of which you dare say out loud, for fear they will disintegrate in contact with oxygen, sunshine and common sense. You’re flying at breakneck speed, you don’t know where you will land and you might break your bones. Yet some part of you which has been dead for years is, rightly or wrongly, beautifully or painfully, alive now; you’re alive, so alive.
ORANGE JUICE | One
Dinner with the girls is over; I haven’t had a drop to drink but I feel mellow, so mellow; I’m snug in a woven seat at Fei’s door, waiting for him to come home and pass me a spare set of house keys; the silence of the night is sweet, so sweet, and I seem to have slipped into a Korean show, where everything is more intense and I’m more present.
But here they come – I hear them before I see them – Fei as high as a kite, singing “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Mama” at the top of his lungs, Z gurgling and P giggling, pinker in the cheeks and prettier than I have ever seen her. Fei sees me and starts scolding me for forgetting my keys again but he sounds so happy, it comes out like a joke. Going in, he passes Z to me to fuss over a small birthday cake for P and as the birthday song is sung again, I’m so happy that I forgot my keys and got to see them so, so happy together.
Ambling home afterwards, I’m alone and yet it’s like I’m being hugged; I’m sober and yet it’s like I’ve had champagne. Which maybe I kinda did, hours before dinner.
But here they come – I hear them before I see them – Fei as high as a kite, singing “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to Mama” at the top of his lungs, Z gurgling and P giggling, pinker in the cheeks and prettier than I have ever seen her. Fei sees me and starts scolding me for forgetting my keys again but he sounds so happy, it comes out like a joke. Going in, he passes Z to me to fuss over a small birthday cake for P and as the birthday song is sung again, I’m so happy that I forgot my keys and got to see them so, so happy together.
Ambling home afterwards, I’m alone and yet it’s like I’m being hugged; I’m sober and yet it’s like I’ve had champagne. Which maybe I kinda did, hours before dinner.
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