Confession

I have a confession to make. Even though I've been trying to ditch A in any possible way, I had to admit one thing. When we sat down face to face and talked, the competitive bitch side of me just vanished. (Maybe that's why after our first rendezvous, he texted me saying: "You are actually much more sedate in person than I expected.") It's rather strange that I didn't feel that usual urge to outsmart him or try to look like I know more things than he does. In front of him, I was just me with my limited human brains. And yet, still I could live another day with it.

He: I've been to Japan several times but have never been to Kyoto.
I: What's so special there?
He: Kyoto is what Jogja to Indonesia - the city of culture.

With J, I might have just mumbled "hmmm' or 'uh-uh' right after he said the first sentence. I didn't wanna look like a stupid girl from a third world country who didn't know anything about Kyoto. So I would just shut my mouth up to create the impression that I know things about it. I could just browse and find out about the city at the soonest chance I faced a computer with a broadband. With him, I had to be a talking Encyclopedia or I would end up hating myself.

Basically J and I are two of a kind. We both tend to look down on people having lower level of knowledge and tastes than ours. That's perhaps some sort of karma for me. All this time I might do to others, whose knowledge and tastes aren't in my league, what J did to me. I'm a horrible person, indeed!

I still can recall how I felt like wanting to disappear beneath the ground I was on when he ruined a nice evening by saying: 'Yeah, besides what you know! You dont know anything about your own country's cultures!' (A bartender has just told us about an ancient tradition in a village of Karangasem where old people contributing to the society by painting cloths with their own blood. I had never heard such a unique, heroic act before, of course!)