A Bizzare Date

It's not even a date. I call it THAT just to make myself feel better. How can I not feel better that only a week after a break up I can manage to go back to the dating game? That never happened before. No. Not me. Not my style.

It was such a spontaneous date. (Again, bear my calling it a date. OK?) After lunch I asked my writer colleague if he's interested in going to a book discussion with me at a book store. It's a discussion on Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code having a speaker from one of the top notch philosophy schools in the republic. He immediately agreed to go, although he only read the first few chapters of the book a long time ago, that he said he didn't really remember the story anymore. Didn't matter. I didn't even bother to ponder why he wanted to go with me. What mattered was I had a company to go.

As always, we had pleasant conversations about many things here and there: on the way to the book store, when looking for a space to park the car, when walking up the stairs leading to the book store, during the discussion, after the discussion, when queeing at the cashier (he bought 3 photography manuals (he's a great combo of writer cum photographer, by the way!) and I was so happy paying Rp 220,000 for Jenna Jameson's thick autobiography How To Make Love Like A Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale in a hard cover), when walking down the stairs leading to the parking lot, on the way to grab dinner, when waiting for our food, when chewing the food greedily, when closing the meal with a cigarette, when walking back to where the car was parked, and en route so familiar, for it's the road leading me home.

Getting closer to my house, I told him lately I came to think more of suicide. I don't know why I told him that. Perhaps simply to make another conversation. I told him I thought it's cool to be in total control of when and how one wants to end one's life.

"I am my own angel of death!" I quickly composed my own quote and recited it for him in a dramatic way.

Taking sleeping pills has been my favorite way of ending life, but that night I told him that getting hit by an express train would be the best. The best because in split seconds your flesh and brain will scatter around the track. Instant. Painless. What a perfect way to die, isn't it?Responding to that, he said: "Then you should see Peppermint Candy!"

It's a Korean movie showed at the last Jakarta International Film Festival (JiFfest) about a guy who feels his life is a big failure that he commits suicide by getting himself hit by a train. According to him, it has a very unique story telling, as well as cinematography. Very original, if I may conclude what he was trying to tell me.

The car was already in front of my house. But he still kept on talking about the movie which he crowned one of the best movies ever. As an epilogue of that nice evening, before I stepped out of the car and told him I was so gonna search the DVD and watch it, he said: "But if you watch it, I'm afraid you're really gonna commit suicide. And I don't want that to ever happen!"

Suddenly I felt something warm running up both my cold cheeks. The last time I got the same warmth was when that caucasian ex-lover of mine told me he was crazy about me. It was in Bali. The local time was around 2 AM. We were having drinks at the al-fresco club lounge overlooking a swan lake. I swear at that time in Bali my cheeks felt warm for about 2 minutes or so.

Oh what is this crap??!!!