the naked emperor bestrides the void deck

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Rewind

2006-03-27T00:56:00.000+08:00

The Jan-Feb issue of the 2nd Rule that I guest-edited is out. It’s the memory issue: on how we are remembered, and on the trails we leave behind. And it has an updated version of this old short fiction piece:

Let's start at the end, shall we? Stops you from playing guessing games. The end is "Tracks of My Tears" playing on my stereo, me sitting on the floor of my living room because the couch feels too -- comfortable, I think -- and somehow I feel I have to feel something. Yes, it's a cliche and if someone looked on me right now filming it would be an ordinary scene in a made-for-TV movie; camera starts up from high and goes in, then circles around my head. Take a good look at my face.

***

We met during a heatwave in Boston, in those days when the Curious Liquids cafe was still around. Mercury at 100 -- 35 Celsius, now that I'm back here -- and sun bright enough that it was hard to look at the gold dome of the State House. I'd popped into the cafe for a drink, idly sat myself in one of the nooks downstairs, toying with a backgammon board.

Hot fun, summer in the city.

***

What's on hers? She never did care about music enough to have a breakup song. Unless there was a song that happened to be playing in the background, on the TV, and it could be any song. It could be Al Green, "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?", all apropos; it could be the theme to Green Acres. Darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue.

Travel and Economy Sizes

2006-01-08T22:19:00.000+08:00

After the fifth night in the fifth hotel in the fifth city, he decided to invest in some real toiletries. Only people who weren’t going anywhere got their soap from a big bottle. Or, at least, only people who didn’t want to be moving anywhere. It was about the only thing that smacked of permanence that would fit into his tiny carry-on. Portable furniture, of sorts.

(Utter ridiculousness: bringing along a folding chair everywhere. Middle option: carrying a photo frame with some meaningful picture, like the photo of him and Debbie that he carried in his wallet because, well, she was easy on the eye and he needed to show something if and when people asked about whether he was involved.)

Which was how Tom Callahan (short for Tomas, a name bestowed upon him by a pair of pretentious parents in flagrant disregard for their Boston Irish roots) ended roaming the aisles of an all-night CVS looking for the largest bottle of Dove on sale. Dove was good soap, he reasoned – if he got the generic, it wouldn’t hurt as much when he had to throw it away. Maybe a loofah? But that would be stretching it to the point of ridiculousness.

For some reason he felt like calling his sister Anna. (Pronounced Ahn-na, according to their parents. She called herself Anne, or, in moments of particular disobedience towards parental aspirations to nobility in nomenclature, Annie. It never failed to rile Jim and Erin.)

“I’ve got one for you. Old man in Tucson calls up his son in New York, says ‘son, I can’t take it anymore. For 40 years your mom’s been on my nerves, and we’re divorcing tomorrow. Tell your sister.’ Shocked son replies ‘You’ll do no such thing! I’m calling Nancy in Boston and we’re both coming down and we’ll help you sort things out.” Conversation ends, old man grins and turns to his wife. ‘It worked! The kids are coming to visit, and they’re paying their own way!”

He’d heard it before, he knew, in some permutation– Phoenix for Tucson, DC for Boston, more of the small changes in details that accrete with each inaccurate retelling of the joke –

Another fragment

2005-11-20T00:30:00.000+08:00

Another fragment of writing, circa 2001:

Let’s start at the end, shall we? Stops you from playing guessing games. The end is “Tracks of My Tears” playing on my stereo, me sitting on the floor of my living room because the couch feels too – comfortable, I think – and somehow I feel I have to feel something. Yes, it’s a cliche and if someone looked on me right now filming me it would be an ordinary scene in a B movie; camera starts up from high and goes in, then circles around my head.

What’s on hers? She never did care about music enough to have a breakup song. Unless there was a song that happened to be playing in the background, on the TV, and it could be any song, from . I think. What do we know about someone?

***

We met during a heatwave in Boston, in those days when the Curious Liquids café was still around. Mercury at 100 – 35 Celsius – and sun bright enough that it was hard to look at the gold dome of the State House. I’d popped into the café for a drink, idly sat myself in one of the nooks downstairs, toying with a backgammon board.

Hot fun, summer in the city.

Sleeping

2005-11-06T09:12:00.000+08:00

I can see her sleeping in my bed now. She’s tugging at the front of her lavender nightgown because it feels too small for her. Twisting, turning about, she tries to settle herself but she can’t sleep. I’m not there, though I should be, and something is missing.

(Written in 1997 - might as well etch it into cyberspace now)

Jealousy

2004-11-16T02:47:00.000+08:00

If he even saw them, these women, he usually only saw their heels, the ankle turned to leave the flat. So this much he knew of the women his son brought back: the court shoes, the pumps, the stilettos, with the occasional surprise of a pair of Birkenstocks.

Occasionally he would get to meet one of them, her name hurriedly exhaled as though it was meant to be drawn in again. But these meetings only happened by coincidence, on mornings where either he got up early or the woman got up late.

He didn't know when he started thinking of the people his son brought home as women, not girls. In James's uni days, they were definitely girls. It wasn't just the sandals or the ponytails.

He looked at James. His mother's eyes, which wasn't unexpected: he had the same squinting eyes as all his brothers, but all their sons had their mothers' eyes. But James also had his mother's confident, almost loping, walk. And the easy charm

"The world isn't always out to get you, you know," Erica had said to him once. Despite the endless hours of chemotherapy and despite the nights she spent hunched over the toilet throwing up, or worst, trying to, and despite the thin film of sweat that formed on her body when she slept and seeped onto his arm, she clung to this belief.

Erica was the first person he'd ever dated, and she remained the last. It was London, 1967: he an Imperial College third-year, in those days when South Kensington was run-down and tourists went straight from the Tube station to the museums and back, their eyes fixed on the ground, trying to avoid meeting the gaze of the neighbourhood. She was the daring one, really, this fellow Singaporean over at LSE: she had asked him out, she had taken his hand, and when things got really serious he may have asked the question but she was the one who had bought him the ring to give to her. (The proposal: Regents' Park,with him trying to ignore the tramp in the distant bench.)

But Erica hadn't been around for ten years, and he had changed his sleeping style since,. He sprawled out on a king-size mattress, spread as though trying to stake out the maximum amount of space his body could claim as his own. The air-conditioner remained at full blast, a reminder of how after she fell ill she was always be hot.

He tried talking to James about it, once, about that endless procession of shoes and ankles, and the sound of the apartment door being opened at 3 in the morning. He felt like a fraud: what did he know, what could he tell his son?

"Dad, I'm 24. I'm not saying I will never settle down, but that's for the future; noone's being hurt now."

The Novel

2004-10-21T11:44:00.000+08:00

First entry, since a random perusal of the Blogger homepage convinced to sign up for National Novel Writing Month. Official goal: 50,000 words from scratch, from 1-30 Nov. I just really want to build up my writing portfolio, so I don't need to hit 50,000, but I thought this would be a fun spur.

Other bloggers in NaNoWriMo are listed in Na-No-Blog-Mo.