If I may paraphrase a line from Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: strange memories on this somewhat-sleepless night in Kelana Jaya.
(That sentence sounds wrong, somehow, but I'll keep it in anyway.)
I was trying to sleep (for the second time tonight) just now, and things were going well until I suddenly—and inexplicably—was reminded of some slightly-strange childhood memories, back when I was still short, fat (I'm still fat, mind you, but no longer that short) and pretty pathetic. Back when I wasn't even in school yet (or maybe I was, I can't remember. If I was, then it was definitely before I was in standard 3).
I was friends with a few older boys and we used to enjoy just hanging out and cycling and playing about. I can't remember how I got to know them, but that's not really important. Important thing is that I did. There was this one particular boy: I forget his name (Wan?), but I do remember being pretty close with him. He used to hang out at my house and we'd watch TV and indulge in some random videogaming. Notably Doom. Oh god, Doom.
Honestly, I don't remember many specifics of what we used to do.
Except, well:
Him pulling me (or, most probably, enticing me to join him) under my (as I recall, very heavy) blanket and, as the uncomfortability (fuck, is that even a word?) of being under a blanket with another human being on a hot, typically Malaysian evening began to get to me, kissing me, full on the lips. I tried to resist, but, really what was I to do? Stuck his tongue in my mouth, too. I could feel it, roaming around as if he was licking the insides of my mouth. He was totally dominant, and all I did was just . . . submit. And, all the while, he was moaning with apparent pleasure. Probably just an act.
This one other time, we were in the bathroom together (back then, I guess inhibitions hadn't totally developed: we used to piss together) and he cornered me. Backed me up against the wall and, once again, kissed me. Hands on the side of my head, playing with my hair, locked lips, his tongue in my mouth. We had gone from lying down to standing up, and we had traded the hot, uncomfortable and dark confines of being under a blanket for the cool, slightly-wet confines of a bathroom, but the experience was the same.
Oral rape?
I couldn't do anything. And, even if I could, I'm not sure if I would have done it. I was meek and naive. A perfect target, basically.
It was just those two times, and we were still friends afterwards, but I'm pretty sure my mother regarded him with much, much more suspicion after that (my brother had apparently walked in on the under-the-blanket scene and blew the whistle), constantly checking up whenever we were in the bathroom together. He began showing up less frequently, too. And in the end I didn't even get the chance to say "bye" to him when he moved (particularly as he came to my house during the fasting month just before we were supposed to be breaking fast and my mother "shoo"ed him away). I still feel a bit bad about that, to be honest.
I don't know why I felt like I had to get this out in the open. In all honesty it's not something I think about often (for, I'm sure, understandable reasons) but there are moments when I'm reminded of those memories and I can't help but, well, just . . . freeze. It does get to me, even if I doubt it's made any sort of real lasting impression on my psyche. Certainly it's not some sort of huge dark, depressing secret . . . but, and I think you'll agree, it's not particularly comforting either. Strange memories indeed.
I don't think I've ever blushed while writing a blog post until I wrote this one. I admit, this isn't something you tell just anyone but, well . . . I've made a habit of not really keeping many secrets about myself. And I'm somehow keeping it up.
Being violated: I know how it feels. Do you?
(I wanted to put a snide, sarcastic remark at the end here about how people will hate me now for, possibly, due to those experiences, being some sort of latent homosexual, but I'm not up to it. This was more taxing than I thought it would be.)
And, now . . . destination: sleep.
Latest obsession. Two rolls down, one to go. Going to Pertama Complex tomorrow, will be packing the OM-2n instead of the A200. May be able to send off three rolls to be developed/scanned by Friday. We shall see.
And, unless I royally fucked up, expect to be graced with my first film shots in quite a while.
It was raining when I woke up today. It hasn't rained for quite a while, so you can guess how happy I was at that fact. So much so that I guess "waking up" wouldn't be the proper term, since I went back to sleep pretty much nearly instantly. Curled up and drifted away once again.
Was 1 in the afternoon when I finally got myself out of bed. Staggered out into the living room and sat down in front of the TV, watching some Olympics highlights while I slowly acclimated myself to being awake. Offhand, my mother tells me that a kitten died outside the house and that she can't bear to throw away the corpse. She can't even look at it.
Enlists the help of my dad, who's a man. And men aren't supposed to feel that way. Men are supposed to be strong and shit. Body disposed with little fuss. Back to normal, life moves on, where's lunch? I retreat to my room and fire up this computer of mine. Time to surf the 'Net and listen to music. Check Facebook. Gmail. MySpace. Flickr. The usual bollocks. Settle in for an uneventful day.
Or so I thought.
My room's the closest room to the spot where the kitten died (unless someone happens to be sitting at the very front of the living room, something which doesn't happen too often) and so, as I whiled away the hours before class, I kept hearing the kitten's mother and its sibling crying out for it. Mourning it. Their cries occasionally sounded almost human-like, and during the moments where I forgot what it was that was making those noises, I asked aloud (to, as always, no-one in particular): "whose baby is that?". Then I would invariably remember that, no, those sounds aren't coming from a baby's mouth.
If I am allowed to be poetic and perhaps a bit maudlin: those cries, they pierced my soul. I tried not to let them get to me, but they did. Hard not to.
Fast forward a few hours—past spending some time at college waiting for a lecturer that didn't show up—and I found myself at Burger King with my dad, meeting a man about a camera. Nothing of note happened. But when we arrived back home and I was closing the gate and locking up, I saw a (very cute, may I add) kitten sneak past me and head to a spot under the mango tree in front of our house. There was another, larger cat at that same exact spot, and she was sniffing at the ground, looking around and crying out for, as it soon dawned on me, her lost kitten. The aforementioned kitten joined in as well: crying out, mourning a lost sibling.
Or perhaps crying out for it to come back. Trying to find it, or perhaps trying to let it know where they were in the hope that it would be able find them.
They continued sniffing at the spot—I cannot think of a suitably poetic sentence to accompany this statement, namely a sentence that starts out "as if they were . . ."—and lamenting their lost family member. And I stood there watching over the metal gate, and I could feel my heartstrings being pulled. No, I wasn't going to cry, but I will admit that my eyes watered up a bit. And, while this may be my imagination, they then turned their gaze to me. In the night, even with light pollution from a nearby fluorescent light clouding my sight, I could see their eyes. Or, at least, I think I could.
And I could feel the pain. I wanted to cry, as I haven't cried in a long time and I thought it might feel good, but I couldn't. After all, boys don't cry. At least, not about supposedly inconsequential things, and especially not when their seemingly manly father is nearby.
We humans like to say "he's as cruel as an animal!" but, really now, who are the cruel ones? Who are the cold, unfeeling ones? The ones who care not if their offspring die, who care not if their child is drowning in near-freezing water, going about their business playing carnival sideshows like it was an ant drowning and not their own child? Who are the ones that abuse their own children, who burn them with cigarettes and whip them with belts? Who dump them in garbage bins and leave them in shopping complex parking lots?
We think we're so high and mighty, we think we're so much better than the animals just because we can think (or we think we can) and they can't (or we think they can't), just because we can speak and they can't. You know, maybe we're the real animals. Maybe then saying "he's as cruel as an animal!" would be accurate.
In the back seat of a friend's Wira on the Federal Expressway on the way back to Kelana Jaya from Subang Jaya, window rolled down, State of Fear (yes, them again) blasting through the speakers behind me, the wind blowing in my hair and onto my skin. Just finished with a practice session for my other band, the band that hasn't practiced in ages and doesn't know what kind of music they want to play or what direction they want to go to. It's going to be two years fairly soon—I've moved from a foundation to a degree and gotten rejected twice in the mean time, and the drummer's changed jobs so many times he's lost count—and we haven't written more than a handful of original songs, and none of that handful have really sticked. Moved from d-beat to some sort of thrash metal but now we're moving away from that as well. We want to have fun, we want to enjoy ourselves, and thrash metal just doesn't do it. I'm not sure what will, right now.
Decided that we're going to work out at least three songs and then practice the hell out of them before we get our asses into the studio and laying tracks down for a demo of some sort. It's been far too long. We need actual material. We also need to practice more: one hour once a week just isn't good enough. Our drummer's in another band that hasn't been together for anything approaching a year and they've already got an EP recorded. Two hour practice sessions twice a week. Half-an-hour per song.
That's what we need to do.
And, as State of Fear plays and the wind continues blowing my hair every which way, I ask myself: "what the fuck have you gotten yourself in to?". I am somewhat excited when it comes to both bands, that I will admit, yet a feeling of dread is clawing away at me. Can I truly commit myself enough to either band? Am I good enough for either band? Are the songs I'm writing any good? And will I be able to write good ones? Eight songs needed (three + five), and while I'm not the sole songwriter for either band, it's not a light workload by any means.
While I greatly enjoy playing in xLumbrahx, a band which has a specific sound and concept that it's going for, the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the other band and what we're going to play (and how we're going to play it) is, honestly, far too reminiscent of my life as a whole. So much so that it's making me uncomfortable. But, then again, is it really that? I'm not sure. All I know is that, at this very moment, I feel very hesitant and confused.
Don't I always feel like that, though?
It's 2am and, once again, State of Fear is blasting through my speakers. I bought their Discography CD at Ricecooker on Wednesday and, according to a bit of calculation done on my last.fm statistics, I've listened to the album 3(.11-something-something) times over the past 48 hours and a bit (going to be 4.11-something-something times soon). Not enough! 46 minutes of raging d-beat fury, and I love it to bits.
I've been feeling occasionally very angry lately. Occasionally bitter, hateful and misanthropic as well. Am I listening to more crust/d-beat than usual because I'm angry or am I angry because I've been listening to more crust/d-beat than usual? The mind boggles. Possibilities, possibilities.
Had an 8.30 class this morning and didn't get much sleep last night. By all accounts I should be really fucking sleepy right now (and I am, for the record)—particularly as I didn't sleep a wink during the day—but, as evidenced by this post, I'm still not asleep yet. And I don't know why. It's not like I'm saying anything particularly important in this post that I need to say at this very moment.
I'm depriving myself of sleep. For what reason, I don't know.
I know very little, don't I? "I don't know" this, "I don't know" that. And another "I don't know" to come soon:
12-something in the afternoon. In a friend's car, on the LDP. I mention how I've been feeling particularly out of it and out of my depth at college recently, and how I go into class and I "rasa macam taktau apa-apa pun." ("Feel like I don't know anything.")
Her: "Yeah. I noticed that. Don't tell me you're still thinking about . . . what happened?"
And, you know what? I couldn't really answer. Not concretely. Not half as well as I'd like to have answered. Long, drawn-out "I"'s and "uhh"s. An inability to say anything with conviction. Sudden confusion. A feeling of patheticness creeping over me. Making less and less sense the more I tried to speak.
No, no I haven't really been thinking about that. Not much. Occasionally, yes, I do think about it, and I still feel stupid, but most of the time I'm past it. The whole "obsessing" stage, at least. I'm not bitter. I'm not angry. I'm not feeling particularly great about it.
I managed to get words out, hesitantly, and while I forget what I told her exactly, I do remember telling her that I'm ok. That things still hurt, but that I am ok.
But am I, really?
I . . . (complete the sentence, kids!)
The gig went well enough, I suppose. Managed to get nail a good tone that didn't get lost in the mix and pretty much rocked out throughout our seven-song set. I doubt I've played with that much drive and intensity in a while. I certainly haven't sweated as much as I did today in a long time, though! My arms were covered by a layer of sweat by the middle of the first song, and by the end of our set I was pretty much dripping with sweat.
I screamed my head off (occasionally), managed to pull off some of those seemingly-required-in-hardcore jumps/hops and enjoyed playing and being on stage. It was a slight bummer that there were so few people in the audience during our set (we played second) but, well, better than performing to an empty hall or something of the sort.
I wasn't really nervous either, except when we launched into our first song and the moments where I somewhat lost my timing amidst the racket we were cooking up. Thankfully I managed to re-orientate myself without having to stop or anything like that. Once I got into the groove (which didn't take long, really) I think I played (and, most importantly, performed) well enough.
Come to think of it, I wasn't half as nervous as you'd expect, seeing as it was my first time playing a gig and all. Perhaps the fact that today wasn't my first time on stage helped, maybe, but up until today I had never been up on stage to do anything remotely similar to a gig.
It was, however, slightly odd to be on the stage and looking out into the faces of the crowd, rather than the other way around. But even that feeling quickly subsided.
I'm waiting for photos. Sadly the bloke who was doing most of the photographing said he didn't manage to catch me jumping since he accidentally had his camera on "auto" mode . . . but he showed me some decent enough photos of me and the band, so I guess it's all good. Once I get those then maybe time for a photo post. Haha.
I have to say, I could learn to like this, the "whole performing on stage" bit. I already really like the "playing music in a band" bit and I have a feeling that, in time, I'll end up really liking the former bit as well. I'm eagerly awaiting our next gig, actually. I hope that we'll be playing to more people though, next time. Whenever that is.
There's really not much in life that compares to the thrill of being on stage, at least from my experience. Be it playing a gig or acting in a play, it's all good. I'm not sure how to describe the feeling, but I certainly enjoyed doing "my thing" on stage and being the focus of many a pair of eyes. I don't think I'd enjoy, say, being part of an orchestra or anything, at least not as much as being an actor in a small cast or a guitarist in a five-piece band.
Taking up guitar, I have to say, has probably been one of the best decisions I've ever made.
