To Grab or Not To Grab A Knife

Citylights drenched in mild acid rain when we were standing against the window of a room on the 16th floor. Your hands were cupping my face drenched in tears.

Oh well, on my defense, I don't normally lower my guard and break down in front of someone I just met - if that whatsoever answers your curiosity why I did the thing I did. It's because you kept on telling me I was the best thing ever happened to you. I actually didn't know what to react that I then imitated corny, so-called romantic movies I've ever watched, so I was just sort of sobbing. I could've laughed, which would've been so much easier, but on the second thought, a forced laugh would only sound horrible.

I saw your eyes when you said it. I half anticipated they were icy cold like so many people before you who had paraphrased your words. But all I could find in your pair of dark eyes was warmth. So warm that it melted your tears. You were so fragile and damn valiant risking your pride by saying such thing right to my face.

I was instantly and strongly driven to push you away. I was tempted to rush you to pack up your suitcase and get the hell out of my life. To stab that sharp knife right into your heart for all and for once. For a split second I thought it would be divine to treat myself an act of vengeance.

But I couldn't find my knife. Even when I finally saw it between the ruins of my walls of defense, I didn't have enough strength to grab it. Let alone lifting it. Since you were so very weak before my eyes, I was not supposed to exterminate an unarmed opponent, was I?

Horoscope Me

A free sample reading of how I relate to other people according to my horoscope says:

"Something in your relationship with your father aroused in you either fear or anger or both. Your relationships with men - personally or professionally - are not comfortable and when you are feeling vulnerable, you can be overly defensive or challenging."

My hands were trembling and sweat was breaking profusely as I read it. I've never really thought that my relationship with my father had actually provoked a pattern of my behaviour towards men until I read that horoscope reading.

* * *

I was always a daddy's girl, especially after my sister was born. At the age of 4, mother sort of gave all the responsibility for taking care of me to father so that she could focus more on my kid sister. Besides, being a career woman, she didn't have all the time in the world to take care of both me and my sister. It was hurt, though, because I suddenly felt my mother was being snatched away from me by my own sibling.

Since that time on, father and I were inseparable. I wouldn't sleep before I rubbed my fingers along his thick eyebrows as he read me stories from any children's books of my choice. I also didn't mind his making up stories, as long as he was there by my bed till I closed my eyes. I wouldn't eat if he didn't sit and watch me eat at the dining table. I wouldn't do my homework before he drew me any animals I requested him to draw. Those activities included a lot of hugging and kissing.

In short, father was the hero in my sky. But all that changed when my puberty started. Ever since my first menstrual blood came dripping all over my panties at the age of 12, I gradually realized that I no longer had my father hugging me. Let alone kissing me or letting me sleep alone with him without mother in his bed.

I didn't mind my sister took away my mother. But if stupid blood which I never wanted could easily take my father away, well that's too much.

I never dared to ask why father stopped hugging and kissing me other than birthdays or Christmases, though. As a girl-not-yet-a-woman, initially I thought I did something so horrible that father stopped loving me. But little did I know it was strictly cultural reasons why father didn't show me that much affection anymore as I involuntarily joined the womanhood troop. According to the culture I come from, grown up men shouldn't be too attached or explicitly show affection towards women other than his wife.

Years passed by and I silently moved on with limited amount of my father's affection until I got used to living without it at all. I rarely spent my birthday at home and since I don't practice Christianity, for the past 5 years I had always gone somewhere either with friends or a boyfriend on Christmas onwards.

Looking back, there were times I could feel father just wanted to hug me or rain kisses me more than he should. Like on my graduation day, when he read my articles on a newspaper, when I brought him gifts from my trips, when he hadn't seen me for days, when he knew I had a rough day at work, when I was sick, when he somehow sensed I just got my heart broken by a man, when it was just another ordinary day and we didn't have anything to celebrate or to congratulate.

Realizing it, I think it's not fair to blame him why I ended up making stupid jokes whenever men told me "I love you". "I love you" is too much for me, because somehow I know they would only go away. Or at least they would eventually stop kissing and hugging me without I know what I did or didn't do. Sooner or later.

"Fathers, be good to your daughters
Daughters will love like you do" (John Mayer)

Adrian and Julian

I did and still do have stories with men named Adrian and Julian : 2 names I've always adored ever since I could remember (maybe since those good, old days back in highschool when I wrote erotic stories in class to cater the whole class' needs of sexual fantasy, that I had to constantly find suitable names for my corny, sex-starving characters)

But never have I thought of crossing paths with the actual persons bearing the much-adored names. Adrian was my first love back in junior high school who is now married to a C-grade actrees in the form of a typical woman often seen at high-end shopping malls in Jakarta - slim, long hair, stupid looking and wears too much make up - with one daughter. While Julian is ... trying to change my mind that being a lesbian isn't that great.

Romancing Paris

When Gwyneth Paltrow was 10, her father took her on a father-daughter trip to France telling her, "I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who will always love you."

(sobbing)

I didn't only sob at that piece of wisdom, for I also worshipped and converted it into my spiritual belief. I don't believe in many things now, but I do believe how tears must have been welled up in Ms Gwyneth "Lucky Bitch" Paltrow's eyes when her father told her that. Having gone to beautiful, new places with people who then only left a bad taste in my mouth, I truly think it's best to go to breathtakingly beautiful places for the first time with those who will always love you, or at least relatively have smaller chances of ever hurting you. Like bestfriends or parents.

First impressions are the most lasting after all.

Being A Psychopath

Shane:
... You know, my entire life people said that I would become a psychopath if I didn't learn how to feel. Now I wanna know, Cher, what's so great about feeling? Because I finally let myself and I feel my heart's been completely ripped out.

(From The L Word)

Food Writer Blues

The following conversation took place during an opening dinner of Egyptian Food Festival in some international chain hotel at a long table set inside a Middle Eastern-style tent where everybody had to sit on the carpeted floor.

I sat next to a lady journalist from some not so elegant publication (I firmly believe that journalists pretty much show the caste of certain publications belong to), who was worried too much of covering the event. Instead of savoring every item on her plate, she kept moving around the buffet tables, walking in front of the Egyptian guest chef without having enough guts to talk to him due to language barrier, and ended up asking the Director of Public Relations: "what time is breakfast here?" (Oh come on! She could've at least asked the room number of the kind of cute Egyptian guest chef!)

And in front of me, there were sitting 2 girls from Circulation Department of a bit more elegant publication than the one the lady journalist worked for, but it was plain to see they were not really into exotic food, for they only ate the mundane steamed rice and beef "rendang", instead of the items being promoted.

I: Have you tried the "pastel"-like appetizer? It's really good with feta cheese inside!
(trying to make a small talk with the lady journalist and the 2 girls)

Lady journalist: No. All the food here tastes weird.

(Even when hearing it, I instantly felt my pulse racing wildly that I had to hold my breath and do the countdown 10 to 1. But it failed that I had to imagine the beautiful, secret place like what's taught in my meditation class whenever the world is just too terrible to deal with.

This is the part I hate the most whenever attending food promotions of foreign, especially exotic countries and sitting with not so elegant journalists. If you're to write about food, please please be aware that most likely you're not assigned to write the staple food you eat everyday that can be found just about everywhere in the place you live! Please.)

One of the girls among the 2: What's feta cheese, anyway?

I: It's a kind of cheese made of goat milk.

(It irritates me sitting at the same table with people at an exotic food promotion who don't even know what feta cheese is! At least they could've done some research on what they're about to get themselves into before leaving for any food promotion. It's high time people knew better things to do with their computer other than logging on Friendster! Besides, they were invited to the event for a purpose, which I believe that does not at all include eating steam rice and beef "rendang"!)

One of the girls among the 2: Wow, you seem to know much about food! You must like eating. I can it see from...

I: The size of my body?

(It was indeed the first time I felt good about myself when someone was referring to my not so Victoria's Secrets lingerie models' curves)

And girls, and you too, too-much stressed-out lady journalist with lack of brains, I can't wait to sit with you all again at next exotic food promotion!