About a Girl.

As the ugly head of unemployment continues to loom (well, ok, it's been looming so long I've sort of adopted it as a pet and feed it stale cigarrette butts now and then, but never mind), I figured I prolly should take the opportunity to write up the things I've always wanted to but inadvertently put off for more interesting things, like watching my toenails grow. Writing still feels entirely too much like actual work to me, sometimes. Hey, I can't help it. Allergies, y'know?

This is a story 'bout a girl. As are they all, I guess. I actually have a few of them, these stories, corresponding to the sad, sad route most of my romantic life has taken. But they say you never quite forget the first, and I guess sometimes, the bastards are right. To me, she'll always be..The One. Various random-enough monikers will be used throughout the relation, more for my protection than theirs, heh.


She.

Moving from Primary to Secondary school is hard, especially so when one is moving from a chinkypiang neighbourhood school where you finished tops to a premier place like Raffles, where you get relegated to "slightly above pond scum, and thank your stars the Cleaners are around". The subsequent impact on my mental well-being was...detrimental, to say the least. I stuck out, much in the manner of a Japanese man in a porn vid with African Americans. Can you say, inadequacy?

So there I was, thrust into sudden mediocrity. Never having really had the opportunity to speak up for the self, I wasn't exactly the confident kid. Fast foward two to three years to full-blown resentful pimply adolescence proper, because, heck, I want to spare myself the various degrees of 13 and 14 year old drama.

I didn't have, like, actual good friends to hang out, laugh and chill with. I went out with some of them, some of the time, on a hey-we-all-wear-white-so-I-guess-we-can-tolerate-him basis. Having next to no experience with girls prior to this, 13 and 14 year old melodrama aside, I really was quite unprepared for the meeting with Nea.J .

Out, on yet another one of those oh-I-guess-he-can-tag-along things, with the Cooler (read: Boys who had actual female friends omfg) people, she was there. I forget what we did, I forget what we said, but I do remember going up the escalator at City Hall to our (the boys') appropriate train-line, done and parting ways for the day. With the last dregs of conversation exchanged as the escalator chugged us to our seperate ways, I made some disparaging remark, and Nea, the adorably-featured, tinkly-voiced, year-younger pixie I'd just met, gave me the finger from the bottom of the escalator.

Hawt.

So, in typical oh-so-casual schoolboy fashion, I grabbed Gob, the immediate contact with her, and threatened anonymous anthrax sendings to his residence unless details were provided. Softball Captain of her, similarly single-gender school. You don't say.

I can't remember either if we did go out as a group after that. What I do recall was the subsequent hooking up-of and conversation with her on, uh, IRC (look, IRC is teh shit to teenage boys, alright? I suspect it's some yet-undiscovered bit in the human genome). She went by "cloud" back then, I think. Generically girlish enough, in those pre-FF7 days. Maybe it was meant to be, more probably it was an unromantic mix of lack of female contact and schoolboy lust, but I was smitten. Blown over. Head over heels. Meh. Particularly embarrassing was the time we'd both just gotten our Pagers (before your time, kids), and were gushing to each other about it. So we'd try to send each other pages, as sort of tests, y'know? She got mine well enough, yay, but I could never seem to receive hers, no matter how many times we tried. Typical of my usual fumbling, turns out I'd given her the wrong number. Stupid Retard: 1, Charm and Charisma: 0.

As with all really pretty, high profiled girls in single-gender schools, I was of course not the only one with an explicit interest in Nea. J . There was this other guy, Van, who was her age. With typical teenage arrogance, I of course thought nothing of it. Really, I couldn't. For, you see, I'd met Van, and far from dirty looks and the like, he was just such a nice guy it was almost sickening. You coudn't not like this guy. Even knowing we were both after the same girl, he was absolutely friendly with me, and with his braces and cute, disarming smile, heck, -I- could have fallen for him. We cutely called each other "brothers", and talked a bit on IRC as well. I disgust myself.


Things get a little hazy around this point, and what you will be reading is probably anachronistic. They all had about equal impact, and eh, it was almost ten years ago. Cut me some slack.


I never knew. I could feel that high.

Nea and I went on a date. Woohoo. I remember what she wore: This slightly off-shoulder, long-sleeved affair, horizontally striped black and white, zebra-style. With a modest black skirt. Horizontal stripes make you look fat? Not on her. I also remember she tried to arrange for some friend of hers to come along, some uninspired, really dark girl whose name I reemmber but is of no importance. I believe we were introduced, and subsequently, the friend had to go off, or something. Newton MRT, was it? Static.

We went for a movie, and it was probably a foretelling of some sort that we watched Mr Bean: The movie, rather than some feel-good fuzzy romance comedy (which I actually like. Uh.). She remarked on being cold in the theatre, and off comes my black jacket, on to her. Now -I- was freezing. This act of schoolboy chivalry would not prove unappreciated, as she brushes my fingertips while reaching for something and realizes I was being retarded, but sweet. She cups my cheek ("You're freezing~!") and coos her appreciation. It was, perhaps, the singular sweetest moment of my life.

Walking along aimlessly after, she suddenly comments that she really liked the song that was in the movie, and asks if I can sing it for her. It was, really, a measure of how taken I was with her that I acceded, having never sung in front of anyone before.

Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe
In Yesterday.

Suddenly
I'm not half the man I used to be
There's a shadow hanging over me
Oh, yesterday
Came suddenly

I now know the rest of the song, but back then, that was all I had. "What, that's all?", was her unimpressed reply. Sigh. Fuck.


Maybe it was before, and hence a precursor to the date. Maybe it was after, and then an indication I hadn't fucked up as bad as I thought. In any case, at some point, Nea. J said something like this to me online:

cloud: "You know, I've only known you for, what, 5 days? And I've known Van for something like 5 months. But I feel so much more comfortable with you. You make me laugh."

I'm at a loss to express how I felt. I was really, really happy. Elated. Hovering 2 feet above the chair I was sitting on on sheer joy alone.


Crash. And burn, motha..., burn.

For every action, equal, opposite reaction, eh? Try tenfold. I doubt she ever was intentionally cruel, or that she had very much of an idea, really, caught up as it were in her own problems.

So, she had a birthday coming up. I think this was after the movie date. We'd caught the movie near the end of its run, and I really, really wanted to get her the Mr Bean bear. I looked high. I looked low. I found it in my Uncle's place via some strange kind of divine intervention, because they were sold out all over town. I forget what I had to promise my uncle to get the bear off him, probably my immortal soul, or close.

So, she being the popularity princess she was, was going to have a celebration at KAP McDonald's. Van and I were both invited, of course. And I found out what his trump was, and it did not take the form of any manner of apparel.

I turn up, either by myself or with someone inconsequential, to find the party already well underway. The place was, uh, thronged with her friends. And his. Hello, who the hell are you? I sat quietly at a table for a bit, I think. Trying to smile. Clutching the bear with one eye in his paper bag. Watching the standard secondary school nudging on of both Nea. J and Van by their respective groups. Watching the standard demure deference of both parties involved. Seen it twenty times before, at twenty other parties. Only I never knew it could cut me up like that.

I forget who I left the damned bear with, or if I even got to speak to her. In a particularly enlightening moment as I walked out the glass doors with the printed Golden Arches, as the doors slowly swung shut to eventually cut off the squeals and revelry behind me, however, I do remember understanding exactly what it felt like, to be a total piece of shit.


Understandably confused, furiously making up self rationalizations, I couldn't find Nea anywhere on the usual channels she frequented. Doing a /find, which pinpoints someone's location, I find she's online, but only in this private, oddly named channel. Translated into real-life terms, it would have been great soap opera material. I join the channel, a million greetings dying on my electronic lips as I see she's in there with just one other person: Van.

"Oh, uh, hello. Just passing by."

Way to go, Tarzan.


If only that had been the end, really. Of course, to the broken shell of whatever was left of me back then, it was. I still tried to say hi when I saw her online, of course. Stony silence, no surprise. Or so I thought. I saw Van again, subsequently. Whether on the streets or online, I forget. I was that much of a nerd the distinction blurs, heh. I bore him no animosity, really; like I said, you can not not like this guy. Cautious enquiry as to the well-being of Nea. J was met with surprise: He thought I'd be in a better position to judge, seeing as how they didn't talk much anymore.

Double. You. Tee. Eff?

A little out of my depth, I make a similar threat to Gob, who reluctantly reveals that Nea. J had gone into recluse, and had cut off all contact with all potentially amorous men, allowing only encrypted messages slipped under her door by eunuchs with a previous history of beastiality. In other words, he was in contact with Nea. I was not.

I didn't quite know what to make of this. Had she been sexually assualted by Banglas? By Van? Initiated into some secret witching sect that drank the blood of young virgin boys? What? Despite my best efforts, I could hardly not let the long-dark ember of hope glow a little...ok fine, burn the damned forest down. I redoubled my efforts at contacting her and things got mildly paranormal. She didn't respond to pages like she'd stopped since the walk-in. She'd stopped signing on to IRC as her previous moniker, and the sight of a pimply, dark-circled teenager in staring blankly at the screen, once in a while entering "Does...anybody know Nea. J? I'd like to speak to her." in her school channel every once in a while is in a class of its own.

I managed to speak to some people, though, who guardedly asked me who I was, and then ignored me. I must have solicited every Nea-sounding name on the channel, and at times, I was sure she was somewhere in the channel, watching. I traced a strong trail to the name "crapcrud", once, which promptly disappeared upon contact. My teenage obsession had become the Abominable Snowman, only much cuter and infinitely more desirable.

I forget, once again, how long I kept up at it, on and off. I gave up eventually, for it was much akin to humping a brick wall: The potential of gratification is there, but it just hurts. So we move on with life, eventually filing the memory of the singular most joyful sentence in my life, the sweet electrical jolt of her touch and the soft, gentle curves of her face away under "BIOHAZARD. DO NOT TOUCH." .

That was when she called me.

It was a mildly late hour, I was engaged in something forgettable. The phone rings, arousing gentle curiosity.

"Hello?", the caller, hesitation tinging mundanity, says.

I believe that was when I learnt the meaning of "heart skipped a beat".

It was an innocuous enough call: she wanted advice on Literature homework. Giving her what I could, my own attempts at finding out what exactly had happened met with verbal dead ends. All in all, it was much like a perfunctory business communication. She took what she needed, thanked me, and said she had to go. Never mind that her voice unravelled stitches painfully sewn, and never mind the re-living of every poignant moment, staring at the ceiling, thereafter. I don't know what she thought she was doing; I didn't care. She called me. Naturally she vanished once again into the mist after.

I saw her one last time, in person, much later, in a chance encounter. She was with Gob and some friends, and I was in the arcade. Someone tapping at the glass panel - Couldn't be for me. I turn anyway, simultaneously piqued and mildly irritated at losing concentration in my frivolous activity. Chirpily smiling girl. Familiarity. Dawning. Realization. She gestures for me to come outside, and I do. This is when I see Gob and various unnameds at a distance, ceremonially waving.

She asks if I am well, and for the sake of argument, I reply in the positive. Well, yes, I am still smoking. I know I should quit -mock rolling of eyes, self-deprecating smile-. It was good to see you, too (really, really good) and yeah, I know they're all waiting. Take care, now.

I didn't ask for a number, or anything, and neither did she. Maybe we both understood. Maybe only I did. Definitely, and at risk of sounding like every moronic boyband out there, I'll never forget her. Her features, now, are indistinct. The things we did and shared, in that relatively short, intense time have vagued a little. But were Nea. J to walk in that door now...

That beat would definitely skip.