Iced Honey Latte

I came out of the house today because I knew if I had stayed at home, time would fly as I sit in front of the TV. I suppose this is a good Sunday. I went here and there, now I’m at a fancy café drinking a $6.90 cup of coffee. That’s just a little less than a beer. I suppose it is also for the rental of the table and chair, and designer serviettes, and coasters...and the iced lemon water served in tea light holders. They make me drink out of this. Or rather, they let me, and I actually do.

Spinning ceiling fans and a pretty waitress with a pony tail delivers my iced honey latte with whipped cream. It is bloody sweet. I hear noise of the traffic and of the coffee crowd.

Bugis is one of my favourite places in Singapore. To spend my afternoon here writing, is one of my favourite past times. Here, I am invisible. I walk around alone like I’m in a bubble, and I see things, and they become forgotten secrets. I tuck them in the back rooms of my head. I refuse to tame my hair and instead, I let my hair fly all over my face to make me more inconspicuous. An act of rebellion.

Frankly, I know nobody cares.

The weather today cannot decide to be cloudy or sunny. Perhaps, it is like how I cannot make up my mind to stir in the whipped cream or not. My coffee is not cold enough. It is humid and warm. It is the third coffee for me today. It will probably make my heart beat harder. Maybe if I can concentrate hard enough, I will feel the emptiness in my heart as it pumps the blood around my body. Bloody blood. Apathetic, poisonous, blood red blood.

Red is the opposite of black. According to me, red is the opposite of black. There is some irrefutable degree of truth in this as one of my friends independently arrived at the same realisation as well. Red is the opposite of black. If you can understand that, then you would surely have the capacity to agree a little, and then it is true enough for you too. Red is the opposite of black. If you can understand that, here is the story of the greyscale girl.

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Once upon a time, not too long ago, there lived a greyscale girl. I would tell you her name if I knew, but I do not. So , if you know and you could tell me, please do so that I may stop wondering.

It happened and began with her eyes. They were initially brown when she was littler. As she grew older, they darkened in colour and gradually changed to black. She didn’t notice them at first, and when she finally did, she got them checked against an old photo by eye doctors. They couldn't tell what's going wrong and encouraged attribution to puberty related hormonal changes. Since she could see fine, she didn’t bother to do much with it. That is considering the relativity of “seeing fine”.

So, she began to have eye bags, which she also thought was normal. Lack of sleep and watching incessant television that continually to disinterest her, but sustained her attention… it wasn’t abnormal either, to have eye bags, so they didn’t bother her to do much except for blaming hormonal change.

It was all for the better and not as if, if she had known the truth, she could have done anything about it at all. The issue is that our girl was bored.

Bored with every molecule, every atom of being. Nothing moved her. Sure, some things can kind of get her attention, or even sort of interest her, except that she would know at the back of her head and heart, or perhaps, hardly at the back of any parts of her body at all, that she was truly and utterly bored.

Death bored her, and sadness bored her, and she felt nothing. Increasingly and thoroughly nothing.

The greyness of her eyes and her eye bags started to spread across her face. She hid the patches of grey with make up. Who would want to look like a freak? People’s unwanted attention would bore her and worse, she’d have to respond to it in order not to be rude. Then, her neck turned grey. By the time she realised that joy and humour bored her, it was when her breasts were grey.

In between, she'd worry and the grey would almost stop spreading or appear to stop. With the passing of time, she would return to boredom, and the grey would grow again. Just about when injustice bored her, her arms and hands turned grey. Her lower torso turned grey when food lost taste. Next were her thighs, in between them, and then her knees. She knew, by then, she would feel ultimately bare and turn totally greyscale. Soon, she was bored by it. Finally, her feet turned grey.

Still, she saw a world of colour and she appreciated that. At least, she could see the blue skies and movies and TV in technicolour. At least she could see which part of her skin was not evenly made up by her liquid foundation. Her appreciation might have sustained the perception.

Also, she remained curious about her red blood shot eyes and that might have helped too. Her blood remained red, and she’d cut herself once in a while to check in case of doubt between the red bloody menses she’d get almost every month. Perhaps she really wanted to keep the colour in her vision or she might have really wanted whatever that she would lose when her blood cease to be red. Maybe she was worried that if her blood lost its colour, she would not see red. She had been apathetic about everything, and maybe she thought she ought to feel some concern. If she had lived, maybe her blood might change colour to yellow, or green, and that would have been interesting. Sadly, before anything else could have happened earlier, she eventually died and her heart remained unbroken. That is the most tragic of all.

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I wonder if any of her family members knew, or if they were worried, or how the story of her got out at all. Did she have any friends? Maybe she knew my friend and that's secretly how he concluded that red is the opposite of black? How did she look like when she blushed?

Today, I saw a skinny black cat jumping across a drain, and pink periwinkles waiting for rain. I saw people, lots and lots of people, scurrying around, in cars, and in shoes, or high heeled slippers, pretending to be cute or cool.

My hair sticks to my face, and I wipe away my perspiration with the inside of my t-shirt collar. There are two mosquito bites on my feet. My left hand rests on the sheet of paper as I write on quite lifelessly. My sweet iced honey latte gets warmer as I write. A breeze confuses the ceiling fan above me. The traffic continues to sound, and I hope for different vehicles to be going around this time. I hear the church bells chime for the second time today. Maybe somebody is getting married, entering a new phase of life? Can you understand?

I bet the greyscale girl liked the smell of jasmine flowers. Then again, perhaps, she did not. Just that if she did we might have something to talk about or maybe recognise something else to mutually understand.

I call the pretty waitress over for me to foot bill. The coffee costs $7.50 including taxes and her company. The trees are green and I feel like shitting. That’s my response to everything nowadays, a feeling like shitting. It's a complicated passive aggressive laxative response. I steal the coaster, because it’s so fancy. I drink some more water from the tea light holder because I have nothing better to do.

There is nothing left in the glass of my iced honey latte but leftover delight.

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(2007. For Don Wong.)