The United Altered States of Maryam

Revolutionaries, self important children of Independence, a cat whisperer, struggling writers, struggling Coke-fiend writers, an Egyptian family – oh, the people you get to know through books. Some of the books I’ve read in recent (+not so recent) times:

1. The Bolivian Diary by Ernesto “Che” Guevara (+The Motorcycle Diaries)
The prose itself is nothing to shout about. Of course, if you were holed up somewhere in the Bolivian jungle, leading a guerilla army, you too would have little time to wax poetic about the moon and the stars, the sand between your toes and the bullet between your shoulder blades. This is the diary of Che Guevara right before he was captured and shot thirty something times and went on to grace the front of many t-shirts. If you happen to own of these t-shirts and find yourself confusing Guevara’s iconic mug with that of Zach de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine (and trust me, I’ve met someone like you before), I’m sure Zach is flattered but you might want to try reading this.
A few years ago, I read Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries – his personal journal from when he was 23 years old, before he became “El Che” and an icon of the Cuban revolution, when he was just a young medical student on a road trip around Latin America with his buddy. While the American media often portrays Guevara as a cold, hard, executioner and The Bolivian Diary doesn’t do much for making the guy seem more affable, the Motorcycle Diaries presents quite a different story. It’s not a book about revolution or guerilla warfare but instead, it’s more of a coming-of-age account of a young adult, someone not much different from you and I, coming out of his largely comfortable, middle class bubble for the first time and is awakened to the realities and injustices of the world. He sees the harsh treatment of mine workers, the ruins of a once great civilization destroyed by corruption and gunpowder, he feels plain hunger, and he quite nobly, volunteers his services to a leper colony without treating the patients well, like lepers. At the same time, he’s no shiny, superhuman hero; he’s not infallible to the stupidity of young love nor the follies of idealism. It makes him well, relatable. And he writes well. He really does. Reading both journals, I started out thinking that I was going to be learning about how a man changed the world but what I actually discovered instead, was how the world can change a man. From that nice boy next door that you think you could’ve comfortably hung out with, to the historical icon that is hero to some and villain to others and well, the lead vocalist of Rage Against the Machine to a misinformed few.

*Note: I came home to find that my copy of The Motorcycle Diaries has been booknapped by a phantom reader. If I ever find you, I’m torn between wanting to hit you for spiriting away one of my favorite reads and wanting to congratulate you for making such an excellent version from my bookshelf. You could’ve done a lot worse for yourself by stealing one of those crappy Anne Rice novels buried somewhere in the back of the shelf. Well, at least they won’t be missed by me. Oh, and the movie based on The Motorcycle Diaries, directed by brilliant director, Walter Salles and starring the equally brilliant, Gael Garcia Bernal is an excellent watch. And not because I think Bernal is the sexiest short man alive. That’s not the point.

2. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
It’s typical of Murakami isn’t it? Something starts out seeming like some kind of murder mystery with a cat-killing figure called Johnnie Walker and ends up really being a meditation/ exploration of the nature of existence, life, etc…yadida. Don’t let my yadidas fool you, I’m actually a fan of Murakami, I’m just a terrible book-reviewer. Yes indeed, more important than ‘who-killed-who’ is ‘why are we here?!!’

3. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
My first experience of Rushdie’s work was The Ground Beneath Her Feet and I was taken by how Rushdie managed to use a fantastical, fairy tale-like narrative to tell a story that is deeply rooted and concerned with history and social realities. Still, I was told that it isn’t one of his best works and I should try reading Midnight’s Children which is an interesting way of looking at the birth of Modern India and Pakistan. So I did. I went to a second-hand bookstore on the Gold Coast and bought myself a copy for 6 Aussie Dollars right before I was due to return home to KL for the summer holidays. And then what do I find out? I could’ve saved AU$6 (approx RM18) and fished the book out for free from the Johor Straits. Apparently, this book is on the list of banned/restricted/we-think-it-is-but-it’s-not-for-sure-because-no-one-knows-what-the-fuck-exactly-they’re-doing books in Malaysia. Apparently, it has been deemed a threat to our morality by the good people at our Kementerian Keselamatan Dalam Negeri. Uhm, excuse me, a threat to whose morality, exactly? Morality is subjective and relative and one would have to have a certain degree of intelligence to discern what is right and what is wrong. By dictating to the people what they can and cannot read as if they were still trying to learn the alphabet and struggling to boost their IQ into double digits, you become a threat to our intelligence and thus, can it be said that you are a threat to our morality and we’d have to throw you into the sea? Oh yes, some things are banned/restricted on the basis that they might alarm public opinion so shouldn’t we then restrict our ministers, government officials and authority figures from saying the alarmingly inane things they do in the press? Put a duct tape over their mouth and throw them into the sea? Oooh, don’t tempt me.

4. Ideas that Changed the World by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto
This book is really more of an Idiot’s Guide to Everything Anyone Has Ever Thought Of. It contains a brief overview of nearly all the bright ideas Humankind has had since the dawn of history – from cannibalism to cultural pluralism which most also accept the idea of anti-pluralism – it’s a good place to start learning a little about everything but not a whole lot about anything. Useful to have around for: a) boring someone to tears with your fun facts during small talk so they’ll leave you alone b) fooling people into thinking that you know more than you actually do and c) when your niece and nephew is at that age when they want to know about historical dialectic and you can’t remember anything you’ve learned in uni because you’ve become a mindless drone who yaps on about that artist who had a scandal with Datuk SoandSo all the time, you can just hand them this book and tell them to turn to page XYZ and leave you alone.

5. Down & Out in Paris & London by George Orwell (+1984)
I have a confession to make: it took me ages to get through Orwell’s 1984 when I read it awhile back because I kept falling asleep after every three pages. Not because it lacked any interesting, thought-provoking ideas (quite the contrary) but because I found Orwell’s style of writing like a charcoal suit left out in the desert – dull and dry. But when you’re writing about Dystopia, fanciful and flowery prose would just ruin the effect, wouldn’t it? I suppose the same can be said for Down & Out which is basically, about poverty and as Orwell clearly demonstrates, there’s nothing pretty or romantic about poverty. It’s true that life kicks you when you’re down, then bitch slaps you twice and flicks your nose. It’s all too easy to keep staying down when you’re down. Poverty and homelessness doesn’t only affect the lazy, the junkies and the crazed. Through a few cruel twists of fate, you might find your relatively hard-working, relatively sane self in dire consequences. Aspiring artists and writers be warned, maybe you should’ve listened to your momma when she told you to be a lawyer. Oh, bah! Screw that. Oh, by the way, I found an old, interesting article from the New York Times about Orwell’s 1984: click (here) if you’re interested in reading a few excerpts from the article.

6. Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Like in Orwell’s Down & Out, here is another story about a struggling/aspiring writer. Except, while Orwell’s depression was largely economic, the narrator of this book’s depression is really all in his cocaine-fuelled head. Set in New York City in the heady, glitzy 80s, the narrator works as a fact-checker in the Department of Factual Verification at a well-known magazine and whinges about wanting to work in Fiction instead, his supermodel wife just left him which results in more whingeing and coke snorting with a nightlife-loving, freewheeling friend called Tad Allagash, whom the narrator describes as either reminding him of his best self or his worst self, a character and description that reminds me of a few of my own real life friends. The book starts out funny, in a cynical, tragic way but by the end, you find out the narrator’s doing all this cause his mommy died the year before and he misses her. Boo-hoo. Uh. Alright, alright, I might have missed the point entirely. The book has been dubbed the ‘80s version of The Great Gatsby but I don’t recall being overcome by a feeling of ‘Meh’ at the end of The Great Gatsby.

7. Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
Eh, I just bought this book and am only halfway through it. Check back with me later.

8. Projek: Elarti (December 06 – “Majalah Kulturpop yang Plural Lagi Liberal”)
A non-profit project and an interesting and refreshing magazine read because Off the Edge is “Arts and Culture for the Business Person” and you’re thinking – What?! The Business Person is interested in arts and culture?!! And Cleo and all those girlie mags about 10 Ways to Wank A Man and 100 Pants that Flatter Your Fat Ass only If You’re Willing to Lose About a 100 pounds and spend 1000 ringgit is poison to your system. I’m probably a bit late in pimping this magazine but I think we’ve established a while ago that I’m slow, alright? For more info, click “Dubuk Dekaden” in the links section and find your way from there.

Posted by Maryam at 2:17 PM | Permalink |

Ladies and gentleman, all 2.1 readers of my blog, meet your new blogger-in law, Dean Winchester:

Okay, okay, so the delectable face and body really belongs to actor and real-life person, Jensen Ackles. Kudos to his gene pool. His mama must be so proud that she popped such a hot bun out of the oven. And yes, part of my attraction to the character of Dean Winchester is due to his physical attributes like:

a) the pretty doll-like eyes and the pouty I-think-I’ll-Have-That-For-Lunch lips. I like girlie features. Because deep down, you know I swing that way.

b) the mancung nose.

c) the chiseled bone structure.

d) the thick hair

e) The 6’1” hunka Texan beefcakeness. My own 5’7”ness and the four-inch bright red, patent-leather heels that I recently bought and unconvincingly swear that I will actually wear out some day will require a male arm accessory that is at least 6 feet tall. I’m not dainty, willowy or particularly fragile-looking so it’s a plus point that Dean with his badan sasa isn’t either. I want someone that doesn’t make me feel like Chynna standing next to David Spade. Judging by Jensen Ackles’ bulging biceps, I think it’s safe to say that I don’t look like I can beat him up. I’d like to be able to if the need shall arise but I don’t want to look it. Ever.

f) The nice, solid butt. I like butts and I cannot lie. I’ve had enough of ass-less guys. You know when you move to grab a guy’s bum and all you end up feeling is the wallet in his back pocket? Well yeah, that kinda sucks. Unless you’re a pickpocket.

g) The slightly sharp canines. Sharp canines are sexy. They suggest that a person eats meat. Meat lovers are sexy. Eating meat is what helped human beings evolved from simple, ape-like stupidity to a more complex, advanced form of stupidity. God help me if I ever have to put up with a vegetarian. Don’t get me wrong, I love animals. They’re tasty. Mmmm….bite me.

h) The light dusting of freckles on his nose. Because I’m actually in love with myself.

Right. But there’s also all those other aspects of Dean that I love that can’t be attributed to Jensen Ackles because lets face it, I don’t really know what this Jensen guy is like. How is my attraction to Dean more than just physical? Let me count the ways..

1) He’s funny, full of quotable witty one-liners. Call me delusional or full of myself, but I think I’m the funniest person I know which makes it hard for me to laugh at other people’s jokes. Ha-Ha. A guy that I consider to be as funny as me is good. But not funnier. He’ll steal the show. I don’t like people stealing my show.

2) He’s a trusty sidekick, unlike his “I’m so special, I’m a psychic demon spawn and I’m all my Daddy thinks about” younger brother, Sam. I don’t like people stealing my show. I’m an egomaniac. I come from a big family. I have issues. Of course, by sidekick, I don’t mean someone who doesn’t know how to take charge and make decisions when time calls for it. The operative word here is ‘sidekick’ not spineless. You can’t do any kicking, side or front without a spine.

3) He’s the best older brother ever. You’ve got to love a guy who watches out for his brother.

4) He’s an orphan. No, I’m not exactly popping out balloons and streamers over the fact that his childhood was tragic and his parents are dead. And no, I’m not wishing anyone’s parents dead. But the lack of a mother-in-law-type character in the picture isn’t a bad deal. Because my own mother is a handful. She’s 10 mothers, 3 mother-in-laws, half a stepmother and 1 grandmother rolled into one and she’s pretty much all the mother I can handle. Anymore and I think I might have a serious mental breakdown. Also, the fact that Dean grew up without a mom and a demon-hunting-work obsessed dad means that he knows how to take care of himself. Good. Who needs a guy that has to be constantly mothered? I don’t want kids. There can only be one baby and that’s me. Actually, I’m not that bad. I can open jars, carry heavy things and have no qualms about killing nasty cockroaches. Yes I’m both a baby and the Man of the House. Is there a difference?

5) He doesn’t seem to have any friends other than his brother. He hates small talk with strangers. He makes being anti-social look like it’s what all the cool kids are doing. Because at the rate my mother is cutting into my time with friends, I will have hardly any friends left by the time I’m 25. The few that remain will be the ones that fully understand what it’s like to have a mother like mine. And they will only understand because their moms are a lot like mine, in fact, their mom is mine. Hello, sisters (no, no hugs!). As for small talk with strangers, yes, I love a guy that doesn’t feel the need to constantly act like some Yang Berhormat MP walking about his constituency two weeks before the election. I myself find small talk with most (though not all) strangers not only awkward and uncomfortable but most importantly, boring and highly annoying. I’d rather chew my own foot off. And swallow it.

6) …..But can be charming when it’s required of him. While you don’t want to associate yourself with a budding politician, you’re not prepared to kick it with a complete social retard either. You need someone yang boleh dibawa majlis because some social occasions just can’t be avoided unless you’re dead.

7) He’s a hero. He saves precious human lives by working as a demon/ghost/evil supernatural creatures-hunter for free. I think I mentioned before that I wanted to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer when I was 14. Well there you go, Vampire Slayer and Demon Hunter – perfect.

8) He’s adept at committing credit card fraud. Yes, money doesn’t matter. But stuff does. You can’t live on air. He has sacrificed a lot to save lives, goddammit! What’s a little credit card scam if it helps the greater good?

9) He knows how to use a crossbow because err…..bowhunting is an important skill.

10) He’s serious about work but knows how to kick back and have fun. You’ve got to play hard when you work hard to save the world from a demon-led takeover.

11) He’s streetwise. Nevermind that he confuses American history with School House Rock or that he finds the use of the word ‘corporeal’ pompous. I’ll read the books, he can read the maps.

12) He knows how to fix cars. My hand in err….yes, just hand to the first valiant suitor that can restore my beat-up, problem child of a car back to full health, maybe even pimp it – put in a hot tub and LCD TV or three. But seriously, the fact that Dean can fix up his ‘67 Chevy Impala as if it had never been hit by a giant truck is impressive. Also, he makes being smothered in black oil look so sexy, you almost convince yourself that black oil is edible. And that car, ah, that car is a punctuation mark at the end of a long line of hotness.

13) He’s not a metrosexual. Ugh. Metrosexuals. A little scruffiness is attractive. Dirrrty is even better. Heh.

14) He likes “frisky women”. Good. I’m frisky….A little repressed and insecure but “frisky”, nonetheless. Besides, all that repression and insecurity just makes a girl a whole lot friskier deep down, doesn’t it? Isn’t that right, sisters? Hahaha.

15) He likes classic rock. I believe you can tell a lot about a person by their taste in music. Also, anyone that still uses a cassette player over one of those shiny, new, hi-tech fancy mp3/camera/phone/microwave/GPS/WMD/mini-UFO gadgets must have an appreciation for old things and I’m only going to get older.

16) He has masqueraded as an FBI agent, a fireman, a CDC doctor, etc - he doesn’t mind a little role playing. Ooo….tee hee…eh, wait, what was I saying? I got distracted……….

17) He’s a bad boy with a heart of gold. Like fried chicken, men are best served crispy on the outside, tender on the inside…….and hot. New Age heart-on-the-sleeve sensitive types please exit stage left and take your sniffling and weeping to a therapist who cares.

For these virtues, I’m willing to overlook the fact that Dean

- sometimes suffer from the atypically American affliction of shoot-first-ask-questions-later-itis. The shot-in-the-head don’t tend to answer, man.

- can sometimes look a little puffy when he’s not well rested. So do I. Well, you can’t do a lot of sleeping when you’re…… what was I saying? I got distracted.

- wears too many layers of clothing. Honey, don’t be selfish. Why keep those treasures to yourself?!!

- has a younger brother with a hot body. Eh, wait, why is this a bad thing?

And oh, alright, so Dean Winchester is really a fictional character from the TV show, Supernatural. Still, if writers mostly right about what they know then surely the creators must base the character of Dean Winchester on someone they know in real life, right? Right? Yes? No? The Cosmic Order has been trying to teach me that all men, no matter in what form – husbands, fathers, brothers, lovers, friends, acquaintances with benefits, rock stars, lecturers, waiters, random passing stranger on the street – are disappointing. And while I’ve tried my very best to be an apt pupil, I sometimes find my commitment to pessimism wavering.

I just wrote 4 pages on a fantasy man. I must be coming down with something. Shame on me, shaaaaaame, shame.

Ah, well. Give me a break. I’m on holiday and my brain has a flashing, neon ‘Vacancy’ sign up-front. An idle mind is a fictional demon hunter’s playground.

He can ride my see-saw. Anytime.

Ugh.

I need to go get a hobby or something. But, I already know what I’d like to do……

Err….I’ll shut up now.

Posted by Maryam at 3:24 PM | Permalink |

Neverland & Unicorns

I went to Sunway Lagoon the other day with a couple of old friends. We’ve been having trouble coping with being young adults and feeling grey (we’re passed being blue) and were trying to recreate our childhood. Except, despite Sunway Lagoon being the most over-hyped theme park in the history of Malaysia and only 15 minutes away from my parents’ house, I never went there as a kid. My friends all got to go as kids. My mother was against the principle of it all. She didn’t want to support anything that made money out of giving people the illusion of danger and the sense that they’re about to die. She also thought the people behind the Sunway development made a bloody mess of the place and shouldn’t be made rich. Still, Sunway Lagoon featured greatly in my childhood because I remembered seeing countless of ads for it and wishing that my mother would let me risk my life and make lousy project developers rich every once in a while, just like all the other kids I knew. The older I get, the more people tell me that I’m turning into my mother. God, I’m not ready to turn into my mother. Not before I throw myself face first down a giant water slide.

Sunway Lagoon is tacky to the point of being laughable. But it was the most fun I had in a long time. Perhaps, it was sunstroke that made me feel deliriously happy. No, I think it was just the company of old friends that made the experience what it was. Old friends that I don’t get to see as often as I’d like to anymore. We had planned the outing a week in advance. I thought it was funny how we had to officially schedule ‘fun’ in our lives these days. When did Fun start needing to make an appointment before dropping in on you? The night before, I thought I was the only one that was ridiculously excited. But one friend says to me the next morning, “Shit, I’m more excited about today than I was before my first date with my boyfriend! I even planned my outfit and everything. Maybe I’m a lesbian and we’ve been friends all these years because I’m secretly hoping that if I hang around long enough, you’ll one day take your pants off for me.”

“Well, today’s your lucky day!” I said. I warned my friends that there’s a chance that my saggy, old tankini bottoms might accidentally come off on the way down the giant slides. I didn’t end up losing them but it did shift around alot and I’m afraid I might have flashed more bits to the Arab tourists at the park than I would have liked. Masyaallah.

After we had tired ourselves by going up a killer hill just so we can throw ourselves down the giant slides, we waded around the pathetic wave pool and basked in the sun. This is the life, we said. “It’s a Thursday morning and we’re splashing around a pool. Do you think we’ll still be able to get away with this when we’re 30?” asked one friend. Sure, as long as I have an adult holding my hand to make sure that I don’t wander off with some candy-offering stranger.

We then landed into an argument on whether Unicorns should be called Monocorns. I was in favor of Monocorn. Everyone else was a Unicorn supporter until they decided that it should really be called Unihorn. I argued that the thing on its head is more of a cone than it is a horn. So we settled on Unicone. Three years at university and this is the kind of conversation that amuses us most.

On our way home, we stopped by the oldest A&W branch in Malaysia and tucked into a waffle topped with ice cream and strawberry syrup. Just like we did when we were kids. This particular A&W branch used to have a killer playground in the back. It used to be the place to celebrate your 7^th birthday and beat up the poor guy in the A&W Bear Suit. Ah, fond memories. Now half the playground has been paved over to make way for more parking spots.

Joni Mitchell was right. – paved paradise and put up a parking lot. But this wasn’t the time to think of Joni Mitchell and all her worries about the state of the world. On this day, we were in our own world, we were Peter Pan in Neverland and Wendy can go fuck herself, the anal-retentive prude.

By the way, it’s Monocone.

Kidnapping Mister Potato

On second thought, I don’t think I’m turning into my mother. I think my mother used to be something like me before she turned into well, her. “I can see that your mother used to be a punk like you,” said one friend.

“Hey man, first of all, only I am allowed to call my mother a punk-ass and second of all, you’ve got to be kidding, right?!” I had just finished telling her the story of how my mother tried to get me to commit an act of vandalism in Bangsar Village. There was a one foot cut-out of the Mister Po-tah-to chips mascot, with its upturned mustache and Mexican hat, sitting on the parking barrier. I was already entertaining the thought of ripping Mister Potato from his rightful advertising place and taking it home with me, just for laughs when my mother said out loud, “Hey, let’s rip Mister Potato off that thing and take it home with us!” I suddenly found myself getting all uppity, “Mama! Don’t be ridiculous. What on earth are we going to do with it?”

“No idea,” said my mother, “But it would be funny…..You should do it!”

My mother never ceases to shock me. Just when I thought I had her accurately pinned down as a middle-aged, ultra-conservative Ice Queen hermit with full obedience to the outdated social laws of propriety and all-consuming paranoid fear of trouble and danger, she tries to get me to kidnap Mister Potato….because it’s funny.

But then, I should have seen it coming; my family has been producing repressed punk-ass women for generations. For each time we think to ourselves, “Yeah, let’s fuck with ‘em all” a voice long ago genetically encoded into our heads by our First Prude Ancestor says, “What will the neighbors think?” (Nevermind that we currently live in a world where the neighbors hardly notice we exist, let alone give a damn what we do.).

While I don’t doubt that they love eachother, my mother is of the opinion that my grandmother is as maternal and affectionate as a pile of rocks. If I am the Jantan Macho (as the kids in college used to say), then my grandmother, with her tough-as-nails exterior is the original prototype. She would rather give you 100 bucks then give you a hug. I would know; I’ve been made rich from offering to hug her when I’m broke. No chick-flick moments for this lady, thanks. My grandmother often alludes to the fact that she was never really keen on settling down and being stuck at home with a family, like all the girls of her generation were expected to do. She did because she felt there were simply no other options and thus the good love she has for her family is often undermined by a creeping aura of buried resentment and bitterness or simply, a wistful yearning for something else. She would often say, with a mixture of pride and sadness that it’s nice to see girls these days, her granddaughters, being able to drive cars, travel the world on their own, pursue a career, yadida…. My grandmother is a Nazi when it comes to neatness and presentation but when my mother complains to her about me living like a jungle savage and stubbornly insisting on doing what I want, I can almost see a hint of a smile crack through Grandma’s stern face. When I got my belly pierced, my mother blew a fuse but when she calmed down, she warned me not to let Grandma see it in case she gets a heart attack or starts nagging my mother on not being able to keep her daughters in check the way she felt her mother expected her to. Funnily enough, it was my Grandma that insisted I show it to her. No shock, no disapproval, just a whole lot of curiosity, wonder and fascination. “Oooh…aaah…,” she went, “Sakit tak? Cucuk dengan apa? Tu berlian betul ke?” It was only after my mother showed up that my grandmother quickly covered her fascination with a stern, “Ish, macam lembu.”

Coming home from a day at Sunway Lagoon, I half-expected my mother to make some kind of sarky remark along the lines of “Ha, dah puas berlagak macam monyet hari ni?!” After all, a lot of other people that knew of my plans (and weren’t part on it) said, “Geez, how old are guys, man?! 10?” But instead my mother said, “You know, Maryam, sometimes I still feel like I’m still a kid inside...But I see my friends and how they behave and I think that I wouldn’t be a proper adult, a proper mother if I didn’t act like them…..”

Uh? What? Are we sharing here? Awkward. All I could say was, “Err..the slides were fun. Very exhilarating. And a Giant Duck kissed my hand on the way out. Oh, and I flashed a couple of tourists.”

And my mom said wistfully, “I’d still love to do the things you do but then, what would people think of a 56 year old grandmother in a bathing suit screaming and squealing down a giant water slide?”

I can't speak for anyone else but I know what I would think: Awesome.

Posted by Maryam at 1:37 PM | Permalink |

Testify

The other day I yelled at some lady in the BSC parking lot. She was waiting for a parking spot. She could’ve pulled to the side instead of holding up 10 cars behind her, including my own. So I decided to knock on her window and give her a piece of my mind. She said she was waiting for parking. I asked her if she expected the rest of us to join hands around her and pray until she gets a parking spot. She didn’t get it. Move to the side, dumbass, then you can wait for a parking spot till your tits sag down to your ankles and the rest of us can happily get on with our lives. The problem with Malaysians is that they’re only ever considerate to inconsiderate people. Someone blocking traffic, someone cutting queue yadda yadda--- nevermind, that’s just the way things are…Bullshit. It’s the way things are because it’s the way you let them be. If I could just yell at one stranger a day, I think I’d make the world a better place.

Alright, alright, maybe yelling isn’t exactly the solution to all the world’s woes. After all, the lady didn’t end up moving her car but simply clicked her heels three times and said, “I’m waiting for parking. I’m waiting for parking, I’m waiting for parking”. Dear Lady, I hope an entire parking lot falls on your head while you sleep tonight. Warm Wishes and all of my love to you, bitch. By the way, there were plenty of parking spaces available on the floor below. No waiting and hogging traffic required. Oh, I forgot, perhaps going two floors up in an elevator might prove too strenuous for the gentle lady.

Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman but Quite Possibly a Man

“Hey, guess what Auntie L asked me about you, today?” said a friend of mine. This was about two years ago, while I was still studying at my old college.

Auntie L was a fellow student and famous figure at the place. Her fame was partly derived from the fact that she was part of a group of students dubbed the Relics; people who had first enrolled at age 18 and had stayed on for far too long, longer than it would usually take for someone to get a degree, seniors to the seniors (the King of Relics is a guy whose name I can’t remember but I know that he’s been in his freshman year for 8 years. Whenever he passed by, people would say, “That’s the guy who’s been in the same 2+2/ 4 year program for 8 years!”). Auntie L wasn’t really anyone’s aunt, not that I know of anyway but people called her that because she had the demeanor of one. Think of your loudest, most obnoxious Mak Datin aunt with the big ass, stiff RTM newscaster’s bob and a compulsion to stick her nose into everyone else’s business – that was how Auntie L came across as. I had no idea she had any idea who I was. She was an antiquity, I was a freshman (or was I a sophomore? I can’t keep track of these things) and we’ve never said a word to eachother.

“She asked me whether you’re a lesbian. She’s convinced that you are.”

“Why, is she interested? She’s not my type,” I said. I usually prefer someone, more whatyoumccallit, biologically male. If I did have a thing for the ladies, I’d probably go for the playboy bunny or better, beer-ad type. Yeah, I’d like that. Some tease and all-sleaze. “And convinced? How? She’s never even talked to me. She’s talked to you but not me.”

“Well, you do come across as a bit butch, you know. And she’s not the first person to ask me the question either.”

I did run around with the Mardi Gras crowd in college. Half of my friends were gay and the other half were probably just in denial. I was gay by association, I guess. “More like fag-hag,” said my friend. Him and another friend of ours once handed me an article they had found in some dumbass female magazine entitled “Why You’re Still Single” and circled in red was Reason #5: You’re a Fag-Hag. “Don’t worry,” they said, “Who needs to date when you can be our fag-hag?” Just because I’m not entirely worried about being single doesn’t mean I find being your fag-hag a dream come true, pricks.

“Anyway,” my friend said, “I told Auntie L you’re not a lesbian; you’re a man.” He thought this was funny. Me, not so much. I don’t have much of a problem with being mistaken for a lesbian. But a man?! You bitch! “I would say that you’re actually a gay man trapped in a woman’s body but then, even when you seem to like a guy, I’m not sure whether you want him or you want to be him,” continued my friend.

Well, what’s the difference? We’re all attracted to people who remind us of either our best self or our worst self, either way, our most interesting self, a self we could not be bothered to actually be.

I don’t know when I started growing invisible testicles and something dangly between my legs though I have a feeling it started in college. My mother gave birth to 4 daughters and one son. Next to my brother, I always thought I was the girliest one in the family. At the all-girls primary and secondary school I attended, I wasn’t exactly the epitome of femme but I thought I held my own as a member of the female race. Sure, I was a little rough and was a few characteristics short of being ladylike and sure, as a curve-deficient, broad-shouldered, tall-ish, flat-chested 14 year old with a boyband haircut, I would’ve made for a very handsome boy but I was never at any risk at being kicked out to the neighboring boys school across the road. At 18, I grew ass, boobs and my hair out (I’m a late bloomer, alright?) but funnily enough, that was when people started referring to me as a man. Blame it on a co-ed college environment where gender stereotypes are more prevalent than it is in a single-sex environment. It wasn’t enough to just be female; in order to compute in their brains as one, I needed to be something more or something less than what I am, either way, something they thought I should be. But I thought hey buddy, fuck you – if you must insist that men are Martians and women are from Venus then I’ll sit right here on planet Earth thanks.

I remember this one time in class, the lecturer was yakking on about the difference in masculine and feminine communication styles. “Masculine does not automatically mean male. Take Maryam, for example. She’s female but has what you can identify as a largely masculine style of communication,” said The Lecturer and another friend piped up to say, “But Sir, Maryam is a man!” The Lecturer laughed, “Oh, that’s right, my mistake.” Bleh. I flipped the friend a finger salute and went into a sulk. “Maryam, don’t merajuk,” said my friend, “Merajuk-ing only works for girls. It’s unbecoming on a man.” I punched him in the arm in response because I’m juvenile like that and possess the social skills and refinement of a kindergarten kid. The friend came to college the next day with a big, purplish mark at the spot where his arm had collided with my fist. “Oi, look at what you did to me,” he whinged, the sissy, “Why are you laughing? It hurts.”

Padan muka. Who the man now, suckah?! Who the man?! WHO THE MAN?!!

“You are,” he answered and then thought better of it. “Eh, sorry, no, I’m kidding! Please don’t hit me again…”

Footballer’s Crypt

I couldn’t sleep last night so I ended up watching an episode of Footballer’s Cribs on MTV. It was some Italian footballer and boy, do these people make for fascinating TV personalities. Here is an account of the second half of the episode:

1. We see Italian Footballer’s kitchen. Italian Footballer opens the fridge and takes out a clear, plastic Tupperware of what are obviously prawns. “Here are the prawns. I like the prawns,” he says. The wife says, “He likes the prawn very much. Prawn everything.” Italian Footballer takes out a bar of chocolate. “This is chocolate. I like the chocolate.” The wife says, “Yes, he likes the chocolate.”

2. We see Italian Footballer’s balcony. “This is the balcony,” says Italian Footballer. We see a rabbit eating a carrot. “This is my rabbit,” says Italian Footballer. He takes the carrot from the rabbit. “The rabbit likes eat the carrota.”

3. We see Italian Footballer’s closet. He points to the jeans he’s wearing. “I like the jeans.” He points to his jumper and says, “I like the jumper.” He puts on a beanie and a jacket and strikes a pose. “Now I am model!” he says.

4. We see Italian Footballer’s lovely swimming pool. “This is swimming pool. We like the pool.”

5. The end of the show. Italian Footballer says, “You see my crib. Now bye-bye.”

Oh, e troppo interessante! I couldn’t stop laughing. Ok, ok, I get it; the language barrier is a problem. It’s not like I’d sound all that interesting or intelligent in Italian (or in English & Malay for that matter). I took a class in Elementary Italian in college and cheated through half of it. My Italian vocabulary is limited to useful things like Parla Inglese? (Do you speak English?), Sono rimbata, vaffanculo! (I’m stoned, fuck off!) and Sono el Diablo – baciami, pollastrello mio o si va diritto al Inferno! (I am the Devil – kiss me, my little chook or go straight to Hell!). I vaguely remember how to say “I’m 18 years old” in Italian but that line is 3 years passed its due date. Still, I’m amazed at the stuff that qualifies as television entertainment these days. Even more amazed that I’m actually entertained by it.

Posted by Maryam at 10:17 PM | Permalink |

Me So Pretty: Confessions of a Wilted Flower Girl & the Princess That Turned into a Toad

Once upon a time, there lived a girl who used to play the beautiful fairytale princess. But when she grew up, she got fat, got skeletal then got fat again,, grew a mustache, dressed like the love child of a crazed hobo and a discount-priced hooker, sometimes forgot to shower and made combing her hair more of an annual event than a daily ritual. And when she realized that people no longer remembered what a lovely little princess she once was and became very insecure, she started swearing like a sailor on fire and threatened to beat their faces till even their mama won’t recognize, let alone love them anymore. The End.

I must admit, for someone who doesn’t seem to own a hairbrush or a mirror, I’m rather vain in the most common sense of the word. I don’t look like it but I am deep down. Blame it on the fact that I spent the early formative years of my life as a professional flower girl of sorts. The attention and compliments one receives for basically looking pretty and holding a flower does wonders for a little girl’s ego and a whole lot of damage to her psyche. It taught me that you could be a demanding, disrespectful little tyrant just as long as you looked pretty; the world will love you. In other words, it made me think that people valued looks in females more than anything and thus, I learned to treasure it above all else and behold - vanity is thy name! What I didn’t learn was that the older you get, the more effort is required in looking presentable and since I’m also as lazy as they come well….

Oh, how the flower girls have wilted and fallen! Here is the winter of my adolescent-awkwardness that seems to have amplified, instead of diminish in my young adulthood. My mother thinks I sabotaged myself. Perhaps I did but to make it easier on myself, I choose to believe that my dad and her didn’t give me any kind of supermodel DNA so I really don’t have that much to work with (It’s easy to be cute and pretty when you’re 5, it’s a different story altogether when you’re 21). Some friends say it’s because I’m “not superficial” and have more important things on my mind that I seem to pay little attention to grooming as compared to the hot babes on campus. Oh, they give too much credit. I’m really not that deep. My superficiality is only surpassed by my laziness. A Hot-Babe classmate of mine once mentioned that she would get up at 5 a.m in the morning so she can look good in time for an 8 o’clock class. Fuck that, 5 a.m is the time I go to bed and I need at least some sleep, thanks. I’d be lucky if I even showered before showing up for an 8 o’clock class. I say, “what does it matter what I look like? It’s school/ college, not a fucking beauty pageant.” But secretly and ridiculously enough, I get a little miffed, when people start choosing the word ‘smart’ over ‘hot/pretty’ to describe me. I don’t want to be smart, you damn confederacy of fools! I wanna be hot, damn it!

When I was a lot younger, I used to get the roles of the pretty princess a lot in school stage plays/ shows. But by the time secondary school came around, I somehow found myself being typecast as the brutish male lead (I went to an all-girls school, remember?) – I was Petruchio in Taming of The Shrew when I really wouldn’t mind playing sweet, pretty Bianca or even the shrewish but in the least, female Katrina; I was the male prosecutor in a pantsuit, ridiculous cape and dodgy mustache in the afterlife trial of the aristocratic and elegant Lady Margaret Fontaine, a role which of course, went to the pretty Eurasian girl with the long, tumbling tresses. The one time I got to play a female role, it wasn’t of the hot babe or the darling damsel – it was of a battle-scarred, sword-wielding, religious loon with a bowl-haircut by the name of Joan of Arc who ended up getting flame-grilled on a stake. I can tell you that there was nothing pretty about that role although people did compliment me on “playing crazy really well.” By the time college came around, I had virtually seized to appear on stage or onscreen and instead was relegated to the behind-the-scenes role of writing, directing and barking at cast and crew members, earning myself the nickname of Jantan Macho and Dragon Boss. “Maryam, you’re a quack. You’re more twisted than I realized. Most people would think that writing and directing is a step up. It means you have more substance than the rest of us,” said a friend. Shut up, you fool! Writing and directing is for people that are too ugly to appear onstage – people who have something to say are only making up for being nothing to look at. (Okay, okay, not true. Little girls don’t listen to this crazy lady who has fallen victim to the very thing she often criticizes in society. I’ve just been damaged by my childhood. You can be both smart and beautiful!). As for having more substance, honey, back in my first two years of college the only kind of real substance I had was a substance abuse problem.

A friend recently said that I should try for a job on TV upon graduating. “I think you would do a good job, you’d be really entertaining.” Then another girl who was only there because we were “friends” by association said, “Really? I think Maryam would be better suited to radio because for TV over here they usually look for someone more…….” More? More what, bitch?! More Pan-Asian? More supermodel-like? More of a vacant husk of FHM-worthy features? Yeah, stick a microphone in my mouth and cover the face, won’t you? Sure, I wouldn’t mind working for radio, the public won’t really know or see what I look like so I’d be able to get away looking like a victim of a bear-mauling more than I would if I had a job on TV. And I know that since my flower-girl days, I’ve grown into more of a talker than a looker. Still, that’s no reason to lock me up in some Hitz.FM bell tower somewhere like a mass communications version of Quasimodo. I could always work for RTM. Haha. They’ve got some serious ugly going on there.

Over the years, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not commercially good looking. The older I get, the more obvious it is that I’m not all that gifted in the looks department, average at best, that my Cosmic Order-given gifts lie elsewhere, somewhere, I’m sure it’s somewhere, perhaps in the ability to fool people into thinking that I’m smarter than I really am. Or perhaps, the people have fooled me into thinking that I’m smarter than I really am (but that’s another story altogether). Of course I say that it’s unfair that society seems to heavily judge and evaluate young women based on their appearances as if nothing else about them mattered. So thank you for choosing to describe me as smart or entertaining or “playing crazy really well” or “someone of substance” but sometimes, a person of so-called substance also wants to be a person of style because of late, I feel kind of utilitarian; like a communist-era apartment block in a street filled with glitzy, capitalist architectural marvels – functional and that’s about it with a crazed developer somewhere raring to bulldoze me. It would seem that in an effort to be more than just a cute girl in a pretty dress with a flower, I seemed to have torn the dress, crushed the flower and become a faceless yapping voice or a bunch of rambling words on a page which isn’t really a bad thing. But you know, sometimes a former flower girl/ stage princess also feels the need to be validated and cherished just for looking pretty before she completely forgets that she has some kind of corporeal form.

“If you’re so worried about people not finding you pretty anymore then make the bloody effort to look pretty, ass!” a hundred voices snap back at me. What?! Make the effort?! Dude, I’ve got better things to do, like staring into space for 8 hours running. If Angelina Jolie can roll out of bed looking like Angelina Jolie, then why can’t I roll out of bed looking like Angelina Jolie? Uh…because you’re not, for one.

“There’s no point in being insecure over something you don’t try at,” the voices snap at me.

Okay, okay, they’re right. Bah, I don’t need to be Miss Universe or a fairytale princess! I’ll take over the world and be QUEEN of the FUCKING UNIVERSE – you little people won’t even see me coming. You’ll read something. You see a brain in a jar and hear it yapping away and then I will CRUSH you like a bug. You will have to crawl with your face to the floor in servitude towards me and your inferior eyes will no longer be allowed to look directly upon my face. Yes, call me smart instead of pretty then! You will have no idea what my face looks like then anyway, not with your nose sniffing the back of my ankles.

Uh, do you think this is how tyrants and evil dictators are made? Because people stopped seeing them as ‘pretty’? I’m just saying……….. “Dude, you’re not vain” says a friend, “You’re more than that -you’re a freaking egomaniac!”

Brains without a Brush

The other day, I was re-organizing my bookshelf when I came across my senior yearbook from secondary school. I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of nostalgia and decided to flip through it. I wished I hadn’t. Most of my favorite memories from school weren’t exactly yearbook material. Instead I found photos of me in the dumbest poses ever – one that was a half-hearted Charlie’s Angel thing, the other seemed right out of a cheap deodorant commercial – and a caption provided by my classmates: Maryam- this crazy, messy girl never bothers about work or anything but has quite a brain in there. Really? I have a brain in here? Why, gee whiz Gepetto, I’m a real boy! How insightful. I’ve had my teenage years immortalized as nuts, lazy and unkempt but with a brain, apparently.

Still, I didn’t have it that bad as compared to some of my other friends and classmates. One friend was “tall” and that’s it. Another, a girl called YL had a “just look at her and you’re guaranteed a laugh” while her friend had “makes more sense than YL”. There’s also the girl who “is so quiet, you’ll hardly know she exists” and another one who “we’re all still trying to get to know” except if no one knows you after 5 years, it’s kind of game over isn’t it? Jeebus, kids can be cruel. By the way, if you happen to have a copy of this yearbook, they printed my name as being partly responsible for the class captions but I swear I was only responsible for three not mentioned here. Some other idiot and her gang of verbally-challenged and wit-deficient friends were responsible for the rest, I swear. I sort of flaked out because I couldn’t bear the responsibility of reducing a whole person into a sentence so they took the job over for me.

Anyway, today, I bumped into a former teacher of mine from secondary school while on a mission in PJ State for breakfast and cigarettes. It was too early in the morning and perhaps, the worst time for me to be bumping into anyone that I used to know from school that I had someday hoped to impress so I can watch them eat their words, choke and die. Today just wasn’t the day. And while I think in general, I’ve improved in my grooming a little since my Mowgli Jungle-Savage Days in school, today I suffered a relapse. I hadn’t slept much the night before; I had dark circles and my face was puffy making me look like the result of a cross-breeding program between a raccoon and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I was wearing the same t-shirt I had slept in the night before, a t-shirt which boldly proclaimed in gold that I was “Queen of the Effing Universe” and so busy was I in running the universe that I couldn’t find the time to shower or comb my hair before leaving the house. I did make it a point to brush my teeth, if that counts. Heck, I was hungry alright and hunger beats vanity.

“Maryam!” said The Teacher.

Crap. I had seen her earlier, she of the helmet-head haircut and Mary Poppins-skirted glory but I was hoping that she wouldn’t recognize or remember me. I wasn’t exactly her favorite student in school nor was she my favorite teacher. I pulled out the best forced smile I could muster, a great feat seeing as how I don’t usually smile before lunch.

“Girl, I haven’t seen you in four years!”

Oh how four years is not long enough.

“What have you been up to these days? Still studying?”

Yes, final year of Communications and all that boring detail.

The Teacher looked disappointed. “Why Mass. Comm? I would think you’d be doing something better…like law. You used to argue with me a lot!”

Hah! Law is better?! Screw you. Like any idiot, my career ambitions have been influenced by TV and I can’t remember one law drama that I liked, just a whole lot of lengthy monologues yelled out at the top of the actor’s lungs. No thanks. I wanted to either be Buffy the Vampire Slayer which was not a feasible option no matter which way you look at it or like CNN chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. But I didn’t go into straight up journalism because I wanted to keep my options open. Mass Comm. it is.

“You look well,” said the teacher. “But still as disheveled as always. Some things never change!” she laughed her evil, little laugh. “You know, we always felt like you were such a bright girl. It’s a pity you took so little care of your appearance; always had messy hair.”

Eh? When did bright have anything to do with neat? Do you see Einstein’s hair nicely tied up in a bow? Sure, I’m not Einstein and working on a weapon of mass destruction. I’m working on a weapon of mass communications. Now stop picking on me, alright? It felt like I was 15 and about to be hauled up to the quack school counselor’s office again. I used to get sent for counseling for all sorts of reasons (most of them dumb) – some lonely, whiny classmate complaining that I was cliquish, wearing red socks instead of regulatory white, making some jibe in an English essay about photographing a Taliban leader for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover, playing Blackjack in class, not doing my homework, defacing an anti-drug poster by changing its motto from ‘Drugs Kill’ to ‘Drugs Thrill’ but guess what was their number one reason for sending me to the counselor’s office? Messy hair. Seriously, I kid you not, they said it themselves.

The Teacher just kept yakking but I realized that I no longer had to take this shit. “Sorry, Miss. It was nice meeting you ,” Liar , “But I’ve really got to go.”

“Busy day?” she asked.

“Yes, very – I made plans to comb my hair.”

Posted by Maryam at 9:02 PM | Permalink |

Round One

In Form One, I celebrated the last day in school before the December holidays by fighting in an impromptu wrestling tournament in class. For some reason, there were no teachers in class, and I decided to mark the occasion by running around with a Malaysian flag tied around my neck, proclaiming to be Captain Boleh, the undiscovered, future superhero of Malaysia. My friend thought it’d be funny if she tried to tie me to the teacher’s desk with my own cape, perhaps as payback for the times in Standard Six when I used to tie her hands and feet to various poles around school with her own shoelaces or perhaps for the time when I flicked an endless barrage of rubber-bands at her while she was nursing a fractured ankle and was helpless to run away (Yes, we’re friends). A struggle ensued; we had gone viciously primal on one another - lots of punching and kicking, arm locks around necks, body slamming and slamming-heads-to-the-wall-tables-and-chairs action ensued. For some reason, some of our other friends and classmates thought what we were doing looked like fun and decided to join in. (I went to an all-girls school and if you think an all-girls environment was all giggles, nail-painting and dainty pillow fighting - think again, sir). By the end of the day or by the time someone who wasn’t in on the fun decided to call a teacher up, all the tables and chairs in class had been overturned and haphazardly pushed against the wall, I had broken two window panes by having my back slammed against it, ripped my uniform/ kain baju kurung from attempting one too many flying kicks and my friend had a bump on her head the size of my fist. The teacher came in and asked why all the tables and chairs were overturned and pushed to the side.

We smiled sweet little girl smiles and answered, “Spring-cleaning the classroom.”

A classmate whispers to me, “I think you hurt my spleen” while trying to control her laughter.

“Don’t make too much noise,” the teacher said before turning on her heels to return to the staff room.

I still can’t believe the teacher fell for it. Or maybe she didn’t but found it hard to believe that a bunch of girls or young ladies would ever start their own young, female Fight Club.

As for us little wrestlers, we could hardly believe how we were feeling. Dirty from being pinned to the floor, sweaty, bruised, aching all over and probably suffering from some mild concussion and minor brain damage, we were also, utterly and inexplicably elated. It was the most exhilarating day in school we had all year. To be able to let out all that pent-up aggression of adolescence in an open and direct manner usually reserved for boys was a welcomed release. They say that boys will be boys but girls, well, it seems that we aren’t encouraged to just be so most of the time girls will appear to be whatever people expect them to be. But when we think no one’s looking, we might just turn out to be no different from our male counterparts, anatomical structures and biological functions aside. Hey man, chicks get aggro too. Society just doesn’t think it’s becoming of us to show it. Boys, well, they can take it outside. But girls, girls are socially taught to be non-confrontational so we plaster on fake smiles when faced with our nemesis while verbally assassinating them when their backs are turned so that the other party will never ever know what the issue is. Or, we learn to take that anger, aggression out on ourselves.

The last bell of the day rang and my friends and I hobbled out of class with wide, deranged smiles on our faces. My friends, my classmates, they say, “Shit, that was fun. Hey, we should do it again next year!”

But we never did. Not ever again.

Round Two

Eight years later, I meet up with my friend for lunch at a café in town filled with dirty yuppies and faux-sophisticates. She’s wearing a pretty, spotless white dress and dainty heels, sitting with her ankles crossed and back straight. She doesn’t have a single hair out of place. We greet eachother with an air-kiss as to not stain each other’s cheeks with our lip-gloss. I apologize for being late – traffic and lack of available parking spaces always slows a girl down. I compliment her on her dress. She compliments me on my haircut. I ask her ‘what’s up?’ She says “Nothing much”. She asks me the same and I say, “Nothing much.” But we both know the other is lying. I ask how her boyfriend of two years is doing. She says fine; they’re planning to move in together soon. She asks if I’m with anyone yet. I say no. She asks why and I say, “Well, it’s not something you can exactly buy off a shelf, is it?” I tell her that a couple of other friends are giving me a hard time for being single, feeling sorry for me when I personally don’t feel like it’s much of a problem. It’s them thinking that they should feel sorry for me that brings me down. I confess that I just want to rub that look of pity off their faces with a cheese grater. I don’t do it, of course. I just tell her that I want to. We talk of the weather. We talk about our separate lives at our respective universities and future job prospects. My friend confesses she wished she hadn’t listened to her parents when they told her to do pharmacy. She hates it, hates it with a passion. She wanted to be an archaeologist. She says more and more, she’s feeling the weight of other people’s expectations crushing her into a splatter of the person she used to be. I tell her I know what she means. Then I commend her for not having a hair out of place while being crushed and reduced to a splatter.

She laughs, not as loudly as she used to, without showing much of her teeth and says, “Hey, you remember the wrestling match we had in Form One?”

I grin. “Yeah, what about it?”

“Why didn’t we ever do it again?”

“Because Gandhi said violence is not the answer.”

“Gandhi got shot.”

“Yeah, sure, go ahead and hold it against the man. It’s not his fault he got shot. Lennon said give peace a chance and he got shot too. Jesus said turn the other cheek and he got crucified.”

“Exactly. So we should just do it again,” my friend says. She looks around. So many people around. She looks at me and says, “Eh, maybe not you’re about a foot taller than me now…But then, you’ve been smoking for the last, what, 4 years, so you’d probably tire pretty quickly now, won’t you?”

“Shut up. I’m fitter than I look. Kinda. Whatever it is, I think the question we should be asking is why we started beating the shit out of eachother in the first place.”

“I don’t know. But it was really, really fun.”

And unlike the many other things we do in our lives, it felt absolutely natural. And we felt free. And when we hurt, the pain had a name, a color, a wound, a scar that was visible for all eyes to see. And if others saw it, then they would finally see that it was real, that it was justified, that it would be something they could remedy. And it felt good. And ironically enough, we’re still better friends with eachother than the people whose stomachs we’ve never kneed, whose backs we’ve never slammed to a window.

“I don’t want to ruin your dress,” I say. “Besides, we’re civilized people now, eh?” We’re 21 not 13 any longer. It isn’t about boys will be boys and girls will be what anymore. They’re young men and we’re young women. It’s about being an adult. You don’t punch people in the face for no reason anymore. You have the right to vote, so instead, you can empower your government to drop bombs on a nation you’ve never visited, whose people you’ve probably never met. It’s the way of the civilized world.

My friend sighs. She shrugs her shoulders. She runs her hand along the bottom of her dress to smooth out the creases. She straightens her back and takes a deep breath in. She exhales and collapses into a defeated hunch over her half-eaten lunch. “Being civilized sucks.” She stabs her food right through with her fork. Stabs it again and again and again. But doesn’t eat it.

I laugh, probably a little too loudly seeing how the people at the next table turned to glare at me. I light a cigarette and take a long slow drag from it.

The world sees two nicely dressed young women (well, one more than the other), having a nice chat over lunch at a nice little café in a nice part of town, like a poor imitation of a scene from Sex and the City. What the world doesn’t realize is that we’re sitting there in wait of a great, invisible weight to come crushing down upon us; the weight of other people’s expectations that by our own fault, we have made our own. And what the world doesn’t know is that all we really want to do is smash all their heads against a wall. Repeatedly. Instead of our own.

Round 3

I always get a funny if not an outright frightened reaction every time I mention the secondary school I used to attend.

“You’re from Assunta?! Assunta?! Shit……” said one friend I made in college.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. Not that I didn’t already know. Anyone who has ever crossed path with an Assuntarian has some kind of horror story to tell. That is if they’ve managed to live to tell the tale.

“You Assuntarian chicks are ganas. Brutal siioot.” My friend rolled up her pants to her knees and points out the part in her shin where the bone feels sort of misaligned. “One of your Assuntarian hockey players did that to me during a match. On purpose. Still hurts.”

I shrug but didn’t feel the need to apologize. I wasn’t on the hockey team; I was the sissy on the debate team. The hockey team hit balls with sticks. The debaters rip balls with words. Two different worlds. I didn’t even know the girls on the hockey team. I rolled up my jeans to show a similar injury on my left shin. Of course, I didn’t get it from playing hockey. I got it from climbing and jumping out the school fence and falling on pieces of a broken chair some other school-cutting idiot had left there earlier.

“What’s your point?” asked my friend. “Who asked you to cut school in the first place?”

“My point is: shit happens. Assuntarian hockey players or no Assuntarian hockey players.”

I didn’t tell her the story of how one of my classmates lost her virginity at 13 to a plastic skittle. We were playing a game of Rounders, which is basically a dumb-down version of baseball (if it’s at all possible to dumb down baseball). She was bringing our team down by not paying attention to the game so we decided to hit a few balls in her direction. The objective was to scare; we weren’t actually intending for a ball to hit her. But poor classmate must have thought we were out for blood and in an attempt to save herself, she lost her balance and fell backwards, butt-first onto the pointed end of an orange skittle and screamed, “Fuck, I think it went in!!” It was bad enough that she had difficulty in walking for the rest of the day. To add insult to injury, for the next few weeks, every time we went down to the field for P.E. and came across an orange skittle, we would say to her, “Hey man, don’t you want to say hello to your boyfriend?!”

Now that’s brutal.

Posted by Maryam at 5:44 PM | Permalink |

Starting Off 2007 Single Handedly
This past Christmas, I was gorging myself silly on roast lamb, turkey and pineapple tarts at a friend’s open-house when I received a call on my mobile from The Mother which I initially refused to answer seeing that a) my mother had been slowly driving me crazy and back into a pubescent state of passive aggression ever since I arrived home for the holidays and b) it was only 6 o’clock in the afternoon and even by my psychotically over-protective mother’s standards, I was under no obligation to be home.

“Is that your mother?! Don’t tell me she wants you to go home now?!! You’re 21! It’s early! And it’s Christmas!!” said my friend, The Hostess.

Of course, it doesn’t matter to my mother whether I’m 12 or 21 or 210 years old; I was still to abide by her rules as payback for spending 9 months in her womb rent-free. It also didn’t matter to my mother that in 2006, I had proven that I can successfully live away from home on my own without a) getting kidnapped and having my organs forcibly removed and put on sale in the black market; b) being robbed in a dark alley at gunpoint; c) get run over by a rogue pig-transporting lorry; d) having random, promiscuous sex with diseased strangers; e) dying of a drug overdose or f) all of the above – my mother is of the opinion that the best way to keep yourself safe in a dangerous world is to be locked away from it… and only coming out once a week to shop for pesticide-free organic fruits. Little does she realize that this idea of hers, while annoying when I was 12, is turning me into a verifiable pesticide-free fruitcake at 21.

(The other day, she caught me eating non-organic grapes and she yelled, “Don’t eat that! You’re putting poison in your system!!!!” As an act of civil disobedience or err…childish defiance, I slowly popped a non-organic grape in my mouth and said, “Yummmm…” to which my mother responded by saying, “Fine, if you want to die a slow death of pesticide poisoning, go ahead.” The way I see it, I could either die of a slow death from overzealous parental control or a slow death from non-organic grapes. I choose sweet, juicy grapes, thanks. Same goes for cigarettes.)

“These are really good tarts,” I said to The Hostess, eager to change the subject. I’ve hardly had any mother-free time since I got back and I was determined to make this Christmas Open-House one of them. “You Seranis make the loveliest tarts…”

Laughter all around. Clearly, we weren’t talking about tarts of the pineapple kind anymore.

“Why, thank you. I pinched the tarts myself, you know. Spent ALL day pinching tarts yesterday,” said The Hostess. “Serani girls do make the best tarts.”

My phone wouldn’t stop ringing.

“Oi, answer your phone-la before your mother calls the police,” said The Hostess who after 11 years of being friends with yours truly is more than accustomed to my mother’s eccentricities.

“Shut your skankhole and go get more tarts for me,” I tell her.

The Hostess returns with two mutual friends of ours. “Here you go, more tarts.”

The sound of laughter was interrupted by the sound of my phone blasting the stupid Star Wars ring tone. You know, the tune they play every other time Darth Vader appears on screen. I finally answer the call and as expected, my mother was on the line screaming, “Come home, NOW, NOW, NOW !” What I didn’t expect was for her to be saying, “Your dad fell off a ladder! I need you to take him to the hospital!!”

At first I thought, boy, this is the craziest ploy my mom has ever pulled to get me to come home early. And then I realized that it wasn’t a ploy at all. My mistake.

I sped home to find my dad sprawled on the floor, a toppled aluminum ladder next to him. He had clearly broken something but was conscious enough to say that the incident was my mother’s fault.

“Why?!! Did she push you off the ladder?!!!” I asked, thinking that 32 years of marriage had finally gotten to my mother.

“No,” my dad replied. “But she made me stay at home and I got bored, that’s why I decided to fix the ceiling light and that’s when I fell. If she didn’t make me stay at home then I wouldn’t have gotten bored and climbed the ladder in the first place.”

Falling off a ladder can do funny things to one’s sense of logic and personal responsibility. Of course, so can living with my mother. Still, I felt bad for her.

“Don’t worry Mom, it’s not your fault Daddy fell off The Leaning Ladder of PJ,” I said.

And my mom replied, “Why is your dress so short?!! You’re not going to take your Daddy to the hospital wearing that, are you?”

The dress was knee length. Red with tiny white polka-dots. Very retro. And not at all tarty. I was even wearing a bra and all which is an achievement by my standards.

At the hospital, they discovered that my father’s wrist was horribly broken in three places (other than that, he was fine) and decided that surgery had to be performed on the hand as soon as possible.

“You mean, tonight?” my mother asked the attending A&E doctor.

“Possibly. We already called the surgeon. He’s on his way.”

“From a Christmas party? What if he’s drunk?! What if he drank too much wine or eggnog or brandy or champagne at the Christmas party?!! He can’t perform surgery…” my mother rattled off in panic, convinced that they would let a drunken, scalpel-wielding surgeon loose on her husband if she didn’t insist otherwise.

“Don’t worry. This surgeon celebrates Deepavali, not Christmas,” answered the doctor.

“He can still get drunk with his friends on Christmas!!” said my mother. Yes, doctors on call usually consume bottles of whiskey to while away the time between surgeries. Actually, I wouldn’t know. Still…

When my mother finally met the surgeon later that night, he showed absolutely no signs of being inebriated. Of course, my mother still wasn’t sure of his abilities seeing that she found him “Too young, very young, too young.”

Not that he was Doogie Freaking Howser or anything. He looked like he was in his late 40s. Any older and his hands would be shaking, his eyesight would be shit and his memory would be failing. Possibly. Anyhow, they postponed my dad’s surgery to the following morning. Perhaps to give the surgeon time to sober up.

The operation went well – they inserted some metal thingamajigs to hold the bones in place. My dad came out of anesthesia pretty quick – perhaps because he was ‘bored’- and the first thing he said was, “Where’s my handphone?! and proceeded to spend the rest of the day text messaging with his one good hand and mostly ignoring us. When the lovely nurse told him that his blood pressure was up and that it was best that he rested, he said, “Okay, but don’t move my handphone away from me!” When we did, he nearly burst his stitches trying to grab it back. When the doctor came in to check on my dad’s post-surgery progress, my dad asked, “Doc, how will this affect my golf game? Will this metal thing make me into Bionic Man?” and to every person that visited him in the hospital for the next four days, he said, “I’m the Bionic Man now! The Bionic Man!” and when he wasn’t claiming to be the Bionic Man, he was…you guessed it, text messaging. He was like a teenager stuck with a 57 year old’s body and sense of humor.

Of course, by the time he was discharged, he had found a new statement to repeat over and over and over again. “Now I have to handle things single-handedly! Literally. You know mean? (this is what my dad says in place of ‘you know what I mean’. I don’t know why.) Handle things single-handedly! Single-handedly! Because I only have one working hand, you know mean?! Single-handedly! I have to handle things single-handedly because I only have one working hand, you know mean? So it’s literal. I literally have to handle things single-handedly! Single-handedly!”

In 2007, I’ve heard this ‘single-handed’ comment 72 times. And it’s only the 4^th of January. It doesn’t help that ever since I came home (but especially since the great ladder accident), I’ve ended up spending almost every hour of every day with my parents- some by choice and by my own personal sense of familial obligation, other days I was carefully manipulated into doing so (guilt trip!) but most days, by forceful coercion from Mother Paranoia and Daddy One Arm. At my parents’ behest, I cancel plans with friends over and over again which is fine for now, I owe it to my parents to devote some of my time to them but I also need air and contact with people my age that did not contribute to my genetic make-up. Of course, my dad says, “I’m your father, ALL your time is MY time if I say so! Especially now that I have to do things single-handedly! You know mean? Single-handedly! Because one hand is broken so I literally have to do things single-handedly! You want me to do things single-handedly?!” “

No, sir. Here, take my arm so you can successfully strangle me with it. It’s hard to strangle someone single-handedly.

That’s where my mother comes in, “And this is MY house. I can’t control what you do when you’re elsewhere but as long as you’re staying in MY house, you do as I say! You can spend time with your friends when we’re dead.”

Yup, that’s right. I’m ashamed to say it but I’ve been parentally-whipped. It hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when I used to, as the Beastie Boys put it, ‘fight for my right to paaaartaaay’. But that was back when I was younger and had more energy to argue, when my hearing could be switched off on command and my skull was thicker, when my dad still had two hands and my mother, three.

A friend calls to say, “Hey, I’ve got a gig at Laundry tonight, 9 P.M. Come see me play. Haven’t seen you in ages- we’re all beginning to think that you died or something! If you don’t support the Malaysian music scene than at least support your friend. Don’t die on us, woman!”

Dear friends, I’m sorry to tell you this but I am dead. Socially, at least. (I would tell you to come by my house to pay your respects but my dad would immediately hijack our conversation and whisk you off to give you a Grand Tour of The Great Ladder Accident which caused him to have to do things, “Single-handedly!”). My mother says, “No, no going out so late at night! All these music-people with their sex, drugs...” Right. This friend’s a singer-songwriter who loves his mom and sings wimpy John Mayer-like music, probably still a virgin and the one time he took a puff from a joint that I, during my days of being the kid my own mama warned me not to be friends with, cajoled him into trying, he nearly collapsed from an asthma-attack. Hardly sex, drugs and rock and roll. “It’s so unsafe at night. Why can’t you go during the day?” Yes, go during the day to a gig that’s going on at night. Great idea. “I’m your mother and if I say no, it means no. You’re no longer a teenager. You’re 21! So be an adult and stop arguing with me. You can’t go out because I said so.”

Then my dad asks, “Maryam, when are you planning to go back to the Gold Coast?”

Yesterday.

“I hope not so soon…”he says.

And so I began to think that maybe my parents appreciated having me around; maybe they actually enjoyed my company.

But then my dad says, “Because, we’re moving to a new place in February and we need you to move and carry all the things. Besides, with a daughter around, your mother doesn’t pick on me so much.”

I am a fool.

Then he added, “If you go back, I’d have to handle things single-handedly. You know mean? Single-handedly! Because my left wrist is broken! So it’s literal. I have to handle things single-handedly! Single-handedly! You know mean, single-handedly!”

Okay, okay I get it. One arm = Single handed = no carrying boxes, climbing ladders or changing lightbulbs = daughter will help out.

“SINGLE-HANDEDLY!!”

Oh, hell. Shoot me in the head already. Shoot me. That is, if you can handle a gun single-handedly. You know what I mean?

Music I’m Starting 2007 with: (Yeah, I’m going old-skool)

1. Strange Face of Love by Tito & Tarantula – Makes me think of slinking around in tight leather pants with a dangerously sexy, mysterious stranger in some smoky, whiskey-soaked bar in the Middle of Nowhere. Nevermind that I’m currently in the world’s ugliest, Pasar Malam shorts at home in The Sterile Depths of Suburbia with no sexy anything in sight. Where there is music, one can dream.
2. Speaking in Tongues by Eagles of Death Metal – Even after a 100 listens, I have no idea what is being said in this song. Hence, the title, I suppose.
3. In A Gadda Da Vida by Iron Butterfly – Who has the time to listen to a song that lasts for 17 minutes, half of which is quite possibly, the world’s wankiest drum solo? Well, I do and I love it. Love It.
4. Carry on My Wayward Son by Kansas – Kinda cheesy but a little cheese is good for you.
5. Poison Whiskey by Lynyrd Skynyrd – Because deep down, you know I’m just a lazy hillbilly with a mullet.
6. Laugh, I Nearly Died by The Rolling Stones – If someone forced me at gunpoint to list my top ten favorite bands, The Stones would be one of them. If someone forced me at gunpoint to list my top ten favorite songs of The Rolling Stones, this would be up there with Paint It Black and Gimme Shelter. I think Mick is complaining about how fame doesn’t bring happiness here. I don’t get the fame part but the misery, estrangement and lack of fulfillment connects. Funny, how a dirty old man with hip spasms would connect with me. “I’m living for the city, but I’m all alone, I’ve been travellin but I don’t know where, I’ve been wonderin’ but I just don’t care……Livin’ in a fantasy but it’s way too far, this kind of loneliness is way too hard, I’ve been wonderin’, feelin’ all alone, I lost my direction and I lost my home, oh, I’m so sick and tired, now I’m on the slide…” Oh you say it, Mick, you say it in your simple, rhyming words! And I like the gospel choir thing going on in the chorus. Who knew a bunch of pasty Brits could have so much soul.
7. Back in Black/ Highway to Hell by ACDC – There’s something about ACDC that seems custom made to be listened to while driving. And since I’ve been doing a lot of driving lately, well, there you go. There’s also something about listening to ACDC while driving that earns you a lot of speeding tickets. Bitches, speed doesn’t kill (ask Germany!); stupidity does.
8. Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult – When I was a kid, I watched a crappy Michael J. Fox movie called The Frighteners (or something) which featured this song and I fell in like with it. Still like it, I do.
9. Paranoid by Black Sabbath – The first time, Sharon Osbourne met Ozzy, he wore a water tap around his neck. When asked why, Ozzy replied, “In case I get thirsty.” Yeah, this little anecdote has nothing to do with the song but I’m just saying; how can you hate a song sung by a dwarf-hanging, bat-eating, tap-wearing loon?
10. All Right Now by Free – another song perfect for driving along a highway to. Watch for speed traps, cops and idiot drivers.
11. Bad Company by Bad Company – This song makes me think of a lone vigilante gunman in the desert, beneath an orange sky. Perhaps, crushing a cigar with his worn cowboy boots and squinting like a young Clint Eastwood. Leather pants recommended. *Bandito mustache not included.
12. Me & The Devil Blues by Robert Johnson – Robert Johnson is like the David Copperfield of Blues Musicians. No, not because he once dated a German supermodel that was way out of his league (because he didn’t) or can make a building vanish into thin air (because he didn’t). It’s because there were rumors that he apparently, made a pact with the devil to acquire his skills/ talents. It didn’t help that most of Robert Johnson’s songs had to do with Hell and the Devil. In this song, he sings, “Me and the Devil, we’re walking side by side….” Of course, unlike Mr. Copperfield who is currently alive and well somewhere in Washed-Out land, Robert Johnson died young, screaming that there were black dogs coming to drag him down to Hell. But then he did also sing, “Man, I don’t care where you take my body when I’m dead and gone..” Uh-kay. While the story is creepy, the music is brill, if you like old-skool blues.

Posted by Maryam at 12:17 PM | Permalink |