Mixed Feelings

Like facial age lines, silently they creep into you, causing no big commotion yet surely they leave their marks. Perhaps the comfort of routine, weekend after weekend, pass without us keeping track or making any effort to justify the relationship, allowed it. Perhaps the distractions of work and the need for life to be more exciting excused it. And we find ourselves familiar with each other yet at the same time strange to any feelings of romance.

Is it enough for us to be best friends to each other?

I can't bring myself to end it. Yet, surely this isn't a romantic relationship anymore? Do other couples allow themselves to live thus?

Then again. There isn't any real reason to end it. Except for the utterly predictable patterns and answers in our lives.

But it continues. Without direction. Where else can this go? Where is the next level?

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.

Castro, San Francisco

Sis and I took mom to Castro.

Mom was noticably uncomfortable walking down Castro street after we told her that it was a gay district. She refused to acknowledged that same sex couples were holding hands freely. She grumbled when I bought souvenir rainbow flags with stands. She preferred to wait outside the boutiques while we shopped.

I was noticably more impatient with mom for I felt sad that she was still unaccepting of my being gay.

Then she asked if I had called you on the telephone since we left Singapore and I knew I had misunderstood her. For whatever reasons she was uncomfortable with Castro, it wasn't because I was gay.

My Brokeback Mountain

For months and months, you've been working 7 days a week. I stay by you and try to be as understanding as I can. Though I yearn to go on a holiday with you, just a short one, or go shopping, or even spend a day doing nothing except to watch a dvd, I make no requests.

Then out of the blue, you tell me you are going on a fishing holiday with your buddy. You cannot imagine the disappointment I feel right now. I almost need to throw up...

Your Birthday

It's your birthday tomorrow. Dinner reservations have been made, our guest has been invited; but we are not speaking to each other. Once more, we find ourselves in the familiar position we were in last September.

Should I send you a birthday sms tonight at midnight as is our tradition? Or should I just strike off the dinner appointment tomorrow?

Do I need to start rezipping my life all over again?

Perhaps it's best not to ask, not to tell.