Residue
There’s a song by Iggy Pop called I’m Bored and it goes, I’m bored, I’m the chairman of the ‘bored’, I’m a lengthy monologue, I’m living like a dog, I’m bored, I bore myself to sleep at night, I bore myself in broad daylight cause I’m bored. If anyone is ever dumb enough to make a TV show of my life, I want this to be the theme song. It’s either this or a low, droning sound. Whichever one is cheaper and easier to acquire the rights to.
A friend in the vaguest sense of the word is suffering from a catastrophe of apocalyptical proportions, “Oh my god, I can’t go to Maison this Thursday. I’ve been there every Thursday night for the past three weeks! People are going to think I’m such a loser if I show up there again!”
I feel my eyes rolling to the back of my head. My head is a magic 8 ball but instead of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ it says ‘uh-huh’ which means I’m not really listening and I don’t really care either way and ‘please..’ which is an abbreviation of pleaseshutup. I’ve known her since secondary school and she was always a stickler for rules. She did everything she was supposed to in school; everything that people told her would look good on a college application.
Well, the rules have changed since school but she hasn’t - still a stickler for rules that aren’t entirely based on logic. Now apparently, you must not be seen at the same club on 3 Thursday nights in a row or loser be thy name. Please, it’s dark in there and everyone is drunk. Do you think anyone is going to remember you were there last week, let alone be thinking that you’re a failure in life based on your repeated patronage of a nightspot? Do you really think anyone would be doing anything that can qualify as ‘thinking’?
We’re having dinner with a few mutual friends and they’re all talking about guys – “Blablabla is cute, blablabla was so into you. Is he really into me? No, I don’t like him. But oh, he’s so cute, if he’s going, I’ll go but I don’t like him, oh, maybe I do but only if he likes me, I don’t think he likes me, why doesn’t he like me? Not that I like him but he has to like me. So what if I have a boyfriend? I’m not going to play him, oh, I just want to play around with him, should I play him? Oh, I like him if he likes me blablablablabla..”
I’m starting to wonder why I’m here. I feel like the Mouth of Hell opened up and I’ve been plunged into its deepest depths which just so happens to be an episode of
The restaurant is closing and we’re now heading to a 24 hour mamak, 250 metres down the road.
“We’re not going to walk there, are we? Why can’t we take the car?” says one friend.
I start off on a rant about how half the world’s problems are due to oil and petroleum and we would do well by trying to consume less. I’m partly serious; the other part is merely alluding to Mark Wahlberg’s character in I Heart Huckabees.
“Oh my god, what happened to you?!!” says Vague Friend in shock-horror, “You’ve turned into a hippie.”
Hippie. She’s not the first person to inaccurately slap me with the label. What if I tell her that inside; beats the mechanical blood-pumping device of a yuppie? And look, look at the people on the streets of this city, looking like yuppies but broke as a hippie.
Labels and image. Image and labels. What’s your style? What am I? No, What’s your style? This. That.
Midnight. A male acquaintance calls. I met him a few years ago through a mutual friend. He was trying to get into mutual friend’s pants at the time, right before he actually got into another mutual friend’s pants. What is he doing calling me at midnight? Attempting a booty call? Ugh. Find someone else. Or does he want to cure my insomnia, just like he used to, by whinging about the latest girl who ditched his poor, sleazy soul? Ugggh. I don’t pick up his call. He won’t stop calling. But I won’t stop to answer.
I’m hanging out with someone I used to know from college. She works six nights a week and hasn’t gotten any sleep since 2003. She announces she just got paid today. “Now, I can buy drugs!” she whimpers with joy. Yes, one can whimper joy. All she wants to talk about are the days when I used to get high with her and getting high in the present and getting high in the future. No matter what I say, I can’t steer her away from the topic. “Oh my god, my friend had like 15 pills on him yesterday. Man, today’s my first day without batu, it sucks, weiii but I’m getting some tonight…. I’ve got a whole set of K on me. Wanna powder your nose with me, just like old times? Why not? Why are you so uptight these days? You know what would loosen you up? Some horse tranquilizers.……”
I thought she had quit. It was not so long ago that she overdosed on Ecstasy pills and landed in the ICU .
“Hey, maaan. I don’t pop anymore. Just Ice and K,” she defends herself and vacuums thick lines of white powder up her nostrils.
I tell her it was nice to see her again but I’ve got to be home soon.
“Why, your mother?” she asks.
No.
“I’ll rescue you from your mom,” the friend says and a few more dozing horses sleepwalk up her nostrils. She starts to feel sick and pukes all over her own car. “I don’t know why I’m feeling sick…….”
I can guess.
“It’s the damn smoothie I had earlier. There was milk in it. I’m lactose intolerant!” she says.
You’re probably horse tranquilizer-intolerant too. Seeing how you’re not quite a horse.
She pukes again. “Babe, help me, I’m feeling like shit……”
She was always a lightweight. I give her some water. She curls up into a ball in her car. “Right. That’s it. No more. I’m sending you home,” I say.
The next day, she calls me and asks, “Hey man, how are you?”
I should be asking her that question.
“Hey, I got some more K for today. Snort some with me? Why won’t you snort some with me? Babe, I’ve missed you when you were in Oz! Are you the Queen of K that I used to know or not?” she asks.
No. I’ve not only abdicated, I’m in exile. Long live the plebs.
She calls the next day and the conversation is repeated. She pleads and I say no thanks, not today. She calls the following day. And the next. And the next and her questions never vary and my answer stays the same. I stop picking up her calls and after awhile, she stops calling. I sincerely hope she’s not dead.
I sit at home and watch TV late at night and I realize that I know exactly what’s going to happen in the next 45 minutes within the first 15 minutes of a show. I must be psychic. I’m either that good or they’re really that bad.
Part of my routine since I’ve been home: Monday and Tuesday mornings, I drive my mom to her religious class near Asian Heritage Row, opposite the bars and clubs I used to frequent when my mom was out of the country somewhere and couldn’t keep a leash on me. Like all Promised Lands, those clubs and bars seem now like a waste of time, an absolute mess not worth fighting for. I can never sleep at night but I hate getting up early in the morning and driving through KL rush hour traffic. Still, I figured helping my mom get to her kelas agama is sort of a good deed, isn’t it? I drop my mom off at the front of the building, and her tote holds a copy of the Quran. On the car stereo,
Johnny Cash comes along and he’s singing, “You can run onnnnn for along time, run onnnnnn for a long time, sooner or later, God’ll cut you down, sooner or later, God’ll cut you down……”
I pick my mom up two hours later and Sublime’s Santeria is playing on the stereo. I’m singing along happily. There’s something about Sublime that puts me in a cheerful mood. “If he knows what is good for him, he best go run and hide, Daddy’s got a new 45…and I won’t think twice to stick that foul stick down sancho’s throat, believe me when I say that I got something for his punk-ass……”
“Well, someone’s happy today,” says my mom. “I can never tell when you’re going to be in a good mood and when you’re going to be grumpy. You’re very unstable…”
Unstable? I think of the periodic table or whatever parts of it that I can remember. I think of a horse stable being torn down. Unstable? “I’m not unsta---”
Some car is pulling a lane-changing stunt and nearly runs me off the road. I lose it. I chase him down Jalan Maarof, screaming bloody murder. Okay, maybe a little unstable.
“Maryam, please. You’re not very pretty when you’re angry,” my mom says.
And I say, or was I yelling that the guy’s an idiot and why would I care if an idiot sees me at my prettiest or not? Would he be more considerate and have more concern for my life and safety if I was prettier? Judging by his driving, he’s blind anyhow so it wouldn’t make a bloody lot of difference would it?
My mom shrugs, “You have a lot of anger issues…..”
No, I don’t. I had a lot of anger issues. When I was 13. Now I’m just bored. Bored and sick and tired. Anything else, everything else, is all just residue from shots fired in the past.
This is all just residue.
