His Birthday

We met on his birthday 6 years ago.

I agreed to turn up at his birthday party even though I had already decided that he was not the one for me 6 months before. His lifestyle and attitude towards life were just too different from mine. For one thing, he smokes. But I guess one is blinded by such details when one is lonely. I was going through a difficult period in my life and he was convenient.

He was a good drinker but his friends managed to get him half-drunk by midnight. For some reasons that I cannot recall, everyone decided it was time to relocate the party to Niche, the gay pub on Pagoda Street*.

He knew the bartenders at Niche and got them to make a specially strong long island tea for me. I sipped my tea as I watched his friends teased him with more liquor. It was a Saturday night and the club was packed with 18 year olds jerking to the blaring music. In the dark, I saw him standing intimately close to a man who was seated atop some velvet-covered boxes by the bar counter. His arms were around the man and he looked like he was all over the man.

I knew then that I had been right to give him up 6 months ago because I felt more amusement than jealousy. I knew he was drunk "all-the-way" when he started behaving tartishly. I took my tea and went towards him to see just how drunk he was.

The man looked disinterested but did not try to push him away. Hands by the sides, the man remained uncomfortably motionless. I think the man was unattracted, yet at the same time flattered by the attention.

His hands, however, were all over the man, round the neck, round the waist.

The man looked at me as I walked by and I smiled.

Finally, he was too drunk to stay any longer. I helped him out of Niche only to have him stumbling towards the side of the club where he immediate bent over and puked into the drains. As I stood by him, I realised I was out of tissues. I left him there telling him I would try to get some serviettes from the pub.

In the dark, I bumped into the man he was caressing a few moments back. I asked if the man had any tissue and was given a pack of O'Darling 3-ply, the one with the anime girl's face printed on the packet.

"Thanks," I said.

"Take care of him," you replied.

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*Niche Pub & Cafe on Pagoda Street has since closed down.

No More Bedbugs

We:

• pulled off the bedsheet to uncover the mattress


• scrutinised the mattress especially at the edges


• lifted and turned the mattress over


• scrutinised the other side of the mattress


• scrutinised the divan

but didn't find any bedbugs.

Bedbugs

I woke up with a string of red, itchy lumps down the back of my left hand, wrist and forearm. I don't know what could have possibly caused them and you don't remember seeing them the night before.

"Bedbugs!" you cried out over the phone some days later. "The bed is infested with bedbugs! I got up in the middle of the night to spray Baygon on the mattress."

"Baygon? Is there a special spray for bedbugs?"

"Baygon works. But there is a special spray, probabaly similar to the medicine to get rid of ticks in dogs."

The next weekend I realised you had removed the bedsheets and we would have to sleep directly on top of the mattress. There was a hint of insecticide in the air from the Baygon but it was bearable. Armed with a pair of tweezers and a can of Baygon, we examined the edges of the mattress and divan for any signs of the pest. I found a number which you quickly caught with your tweezer and squashed in a piece of tissue paper.

"There were quite a number on the right side of the bed," you said, matter-of-factly.

"My side?" My first response was to feel guilty that I might have been the medium that had introduced the bedbugs.

"Hey wait a minute," I retorted, after a while. "Do bedbugs avoid the light? Your side is nearer to the window so obviously they will want to hide on my side cause it's darker."

"Perhaps," you said.

The Tissue Lady

We were at Da Lian this morning. We both ordered mee kia dry and were waiting for our orders to come, you sipping your kopi-si-kosong and me my teh-si.

I was wondering aloud why the tissue lady was nowhere in sight. You replied that perhaps it was because she was sleeping late. "I don't remember seeing her the last few times we were here," I said as our noodles were being served.

As I was eating the piece of tur kwa in my mee kia dry, out of the corner of my eyes, I saw that the tissue lady has arrived.

A great bag of packet tissues was slung on her left arm as she strode towards Da Lian. The rising fumes from the lighted cigarette in her right hand mirrored her mass of grey, unkempt swirling hair.

She threw a few packets of her wares on our table and pointed to the fifty cent coin beside your wallet, the change you obtained paying for our kopi-si-kosong and teh-si.

Simultaneously, we both refused, telling her to retrieve her packet tissues.

"Fifty cents would have been enough to buy a stick of cigarette," you said.

"Really?" As a non-smoker, this was new information to me. I had always thought that the cost was nearer to a dollar.

"If she buys one of the cheaper brands," you explained.