Things I Don't Wanna Talk About.

There's a town north of the border where women will laugh silly at your dirty jokes if you pay them good money so they can keep going with the charade way past midnight until your eyes droop into a deep slumber that nothing can wake you up. Not even if your missus is standing right next to you pointing a machine-gun right up your face, the barrel right into your nose. I don't wanna talk about this town. It's the kinda town where men wanna stay for another night, have another drink, draw another Ace from a stack of cards fresh out of a box. It's the kinda town a man can stand on his good feet feeling like a million dollars, tall as a mountain, his head in the clouds, the brains in the gutter.

It's a border town where you don't ask too many questions about how come there are more Mitsubishi Storm Evo than the male population put together. You don't go around asking questions pretending to be a hotshot investigating officer hired by some rich missus who has a luxury apartment in downtown KL so she can find out for sure if hubby is out here riding superbikes with the boys, chatting up every waitress with too much lipstick too much perfume that it clogs up your nostrils like nerve gas to paralyze your senses, thinking to yourself that in the end, the world is a room no bigger than your cupboard with a single bed and a table lamp.

It's not Las Vegas but close enough to be Tijuana. It's not Bangkok but as good as the real thing if you don't mind the sad eyes of every girl you meet. It's not my town. But I'm staying for another day so the boys can repeat the dirty jokes they told the night before to a motley bunch of women dressed in jeans two sizes smaller and shoes caked with mud.

I don't wanna talk about it.

There's a tight corner in Kampar with my name on it. It curves to the right with wild bushes on both sides that past by you in a fast blur before the road straights up to a run about two miles before you meet another curve. I love this corner. It's the kinda corner I know I can handle very well coming in at full throttle before I need to downshift to fifth gear, bringing down the bike in a hug to watch the white marks on the road past by you in a straight line. Half way the corner you bring the bike back up to race a full throttle before shifting up to sixth gear. Half way on a straight run, I turn the bike back to where I came from so I can take this corner again. I'd take the corner the third time in a row if the boys weren't in a hurry to reach the border town before dark.

I play this over and over in my mind hoping that one day I can just take off on my own so I can go to this place called Kampar where the town has a tight corner with my name on it.

I'm home now thinking about what if I had a missus. Will she wait for me by the door feeling annoyed for having gone missing to ride the stupid bikes that cost too much. Or will she say something like, dinner's on the table.

I don't have no missus so I won't know for sure. Maybe it is not a good idea to be imagining things especially when you are all alone in this apartment.

A Woman's Place Is...

A woman's place, when hubby is out riding superbikes with the boys, is in the living room watching Korean or Spanish serial on plasma TV the size of a billboard highway.
And she can curl herself up on Homelife or Ikea couch thinking and missing her hubby like crazy now that she's all alone in a nice house in a middle-class neighborhood where every home is fitted to the roof with sensor alarm, every window barricaded with enough iron grille to built a medium-sized derrick barge. She doesn't know what to do. She doesn't have to cook. Or does the dishes. Or the laundry. She can call one pizza parlour after another if she's hungry. She can even ask the kids to walk or hitch a ride to school for a change. A little sunshine, rain, haze, smoke and diesel won't kill nobody. She's confused because hubby ain't home.

Of course she can call up old friends from the good old boarding school days. They can go eat a nice lunch at a fancy restaurant. Maybe flirt a glance at the maitre'd to break into an innocent laugh like they used to when the world was a nice place to live with only three channels on TV. But she's confused because hubby ain't home.

A missus wouldn't be a good idea to have at the moment when all I need is to be in bed for at least two hours to get back to being a resident of an empty apartment I used to share with a wonderful person I called Aunt Su. But she's not here right now. She has probably had enough of me and decided to walk out and not come back to this place ever again.

I hate this feeling. I hate it when all the fun is had, all the laughing done, and all the riding over with. After all this you are left with nothing but a big empty feeling that you have no one in the world to even talk about a town north of the border where every women looked the same as if they had all came from a biscuit factory.

I am so lonely.

And so you sit on a couch until the sky is all dark and heavy with clouds. And then it rains. Every drop is like all the tears you have ever cried, coming down hard from behind the hills as if all the memories of why you ever cried are coming back to make you cry even more. But you can't cry. Aunt says, real men don't cry. You believe her. You don't want to let her know that you are weak. You always want to be strong and tough. Remember, you are the only man in the house. We depend on you so you had better don't ever ever cry because when a man cry, he is as good as a sissy. Useless. A weakling. And you forget what's so good about wanting to cry. Besides, you can't. Even if you want to. And so you forget about it to go make a list of things you need to get from Tesco first thing tomorrow.

Tough men don't cry.
I ain't cryin', Aunt. I won't.

A macho talk won't get me nowhere.