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by comrade commissar | Thomas | @ Monday, December 12, 2005, 8:10:00 PM

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I hate booking back in camp on Sunday night. And why did I take those long naps earlier in the day anyways. You are a genius Mr. Tan, now let's sit back and watch me try to catch the Zs. Body and limbs sprawled on the bed, eyes on the dark ceiling fan spinning.

We're not scaremongering this is really happening.

And I'm strolling down Orchard Road, holding someone else's hand... my own.

If I was locking hands with any other male person this would be weird and gay. And me he's just talking and talking on and on as we walked, our hands in one another's, leisurely pacing past HMV and slicing through the weekend crowd like an extended scythe. He's happy, I'm happy, tra la la, la la. And then he gripped my hand tighter, and I strained my neck to look at his one-head-taller-than-me bespectacled face. He saw Edmund, (if I think I'm someone else, how do I know his name?) who walked on by with his own group of friends and stared at us with this startled strickened face like he had been dissected clean with a Japanese blade.

I watched my own expression flinched for a moment, then returned to a more composed one, and he said guess now we have to let the cat out of the bag, I'm happy to finally do it anyways. I feel warm and fuzzy. He smiled at me. I smiled too.

We're at his favourite rock climbing place at what appeared on the outside to be a dankly old ex-shophouse interrupted from dying a slow forgotten death and fifteen minutes later we're standing before these splintered wooden walls with artificial rock holds drilled onto them. He's rattling off like a machine gun and his eyes look like they're excited enough to jump right out their sockets.

He kept on trying to persuade me and I see all these gaudy rough rocks jutted out from everywhere, (I don't want to try) that dusty thin layer of climbing chalk just coating every available surface and (I just want to go home and faraway from) the heavy smell of stale sweat hitting me. And someone just fell down onto the mat with a THUMP behind me. I just don't have an interest in pebbling or bouldering or whatever. They even have rock holds drilled in onto the ceiling, I tell him. YEAH he replies like its the most beautiful thing on Earth with these big bright puppy eyes. He sort of whimpered and limped on a paw when I made it clear no means NO.

Thomas never listens. He always tries to have things his way, one method or another.

He thinks more about life and stuff than most guys. Well slightly more I guess. We had long conversations over breakfast at Macdonald's, coffee at Starbucks reclined and snugged warm in those warm comfy sofas they have, word upon word upon wordplay upon innuendo upon word typed out back and forth on cyberspace right into the wee hours and the poor guy can only type with his two index fingers and middle fingers.

There are magical moments when by his words I'm led closer, phrases and sentences like steps and I look into my own eyes, peering through those clear metaphysical doors and I connect right to the soul that resides within.

But he is so bloody dense at other times, I can hardly convince him on an issue if he already made up his mind, locked down like a clockwork mechanism with a monkey wrench thrown in. And sometimes I type my heart out and wait in vain for an answer and twenty minutes later he returns from his unannounced absence and sheepishly confesses his chronically short attention span got lured away by Milo in the kitchen or whatever was on TV when he walked past the living room.

His family adores crappy Channel 8 programs.

And he calls me at uncannily inconvenient moments, some days so often his voice jarring to the ears, other times he just disappears. "Some sort of signal or sign would be nice you know," I said slowly with emphasis, that one time he only turned up (still alive) after two days, "I was beginning to prepare myself to expect a telephone notice from your next-of-kin to attend your wake. You don't exactly have a mobile phone which I can reach."

Thomas says he's sorry and he's a dick. In all sense of the word yes. I don't know whether he does these things on purpose or accident. Should I be angrier one way or another? Those eyes are so opaque at these moments.

I felt ecstatic at first, the 20¢ coin tinkling onto the floor. This initial euphoria cooled off giving way to a more reserved elation in later months. We poked fun at the every other lifespan-30-days-only couple, smug and confident in our system of intellect and rationalism against the whole world. He says this reign we're building will last a millenia, and he meant it when he said he was gunning for a relationship aimed for the long haul. Well which girl wouldn't fall for that?

But there are these huge dividing differences on crucial issues, which are about as likely to resolved as North Korea is likely to give up its rabid militarism and integrate into the global community. Thomas has strong unshakable views in certain things, his religious beliefs for instance. I don't want him to change for my sake but his stance at it stands makes any likelihood for amicable settlement impossible. You know, Catch 22.

We'll work it out somehow he says but don't know how. I caught him out on this. "How?" An awkward silence begins. That half-hearted attempt at appeasement doesn't work, there's no peace in our time.

And memories start to pop up like folded paper from a children's book, numerous overwhelming individual fleeting memories after moments, himself and I go thorugh joy and grief and again, unbearably rapid and replayed over and over recurring. I made up my mind and stepped out of this ever suffering carousel. I choose not to go through it yet again. Not one more time, not another chance. I've seen and heard it all before, I am sorry.

I sat up in my bed choking and coughing as if almost drowning, my body awashed with water from cold sweat and tear ducts. Where the hell does dreams come from? What has my subconscious been doing regurgitating and percolating all these? What's God hinting at?

I could hardly see with my eyes brimming and overflowing, returning from reality set in a dream to the even more surreal true present, a sight like everything is blurred and foggy. But my mind transported me through almost two years within minutes and hours and now I agonisingly understand and I see. Remorse and regrets like a thick lead blanket weighing me down, I'm so sorry even though saying it then was utterly pointless. Struggling to return air to my lungs through deep gasps and sobs I'm told by someone in the somber bunk to shut the fuck up go to sleep and stop making so much noise you mofo.

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