Mary

Mary was the kind of girl who wouldn't strike you as a Mary. In fact, she thought of herself as more like a Marian, or a Marilyn, but she didn't get to choose her own name. (Her late father's uncle thought that Mary was a fashionable sounding name.) To her, "Mary" was just a name which begot the other kids in school to ask her if she had a little lamb. At first, she would think of snide witty remarks to reply with, like "no, I have a goat, though", or "I do love lamb chops" (which was true); but when they started to ask "then, how does your garden grow?", Mary grew to dislike her name, because she realised that these corny mary-jokes would never come to end.

Mary was the kind of girl who would constantly remind herself to watch "Breakfast at Tiffany's" if she would ever have the chance, so she could quote it as her favourite movie, and whose dream was to drive a Mazda 3, and to marry a guy whose income could be combined with to afford them a Nissan Cefiro, and they could ideally eventually live in a condominium.

She was the kind of girl, who would want to name her daughter, "Kimberly", and she and her cefiro-prince would speak only English to "Kimmy", to give her a strong foundation in the language and in giving people the impression that she's more high-classed. "Kimberly" was symbolic of Mary's favourite food, which was kimchi. Her favourite cuisine was Japanese, with the occasional craving for north Indian food, because they made her feel like a sophisticated metropolitan.

Kimchi, in turn, was symbolic of Mary's graduation trip to Korea, which sparked off her professed love or passion that was travelling. In recent years, she had taken to planning her two to three holiday destinations at the start of every financial year aligned to the mission, vision, and values of her life. It was similar to how organisations made annual business plans, which were what she worked on for a living - as an annual business planning executive - for the past seven years with the same company. Like the company she worked at, she too, did not include tangible steps for attaining her life goals in her plans. She just planned her travels, and largely ignored developments in other aspects of her life.

Mary had several relationships that looked promising to everyone, except that she had always known somehow that they wouldn't have worked out; so she managed to somehow let the guys lead the relationships astray. She told herself that she just did not feel that any of them were close to the type of guy she could spend the rest of her life with anyway. It was either because they did not have the cefiro potential income, or that they did not approve of Mary's travelling (expenses) as a "constructive" way of life.

Mary, however, was in denial of the true reason why these relationships didn't work out. It was because of a deep, dark secret that she had, and she did not dare to share it with anyone, even her boyfriends, some with whom she slept, which led to an impenetrable emotional isolation. A person in a relationship with Mary might have an impression that they were very close, but it was really like holding hands with somebody in the dark and not knowing of a grand canyon of a chasm in the space between.

Mary's secret was that she secretly loved the smell of shit.

She loved to smell the smell of shit like how a pimply overweight teenage girl would secretly love to smell the smell of the cologne of the teacher she had a secret crush on, or like how a durian fanatic, who married a petty angmor wife who hated durian, secretly loved the smell of a delicious durian during durian season and thought his wife stupid for hating it even though he vowed to denounce durian at their wedding. She loved the smell of her own shit, and how it differed from the smell of other people's shit, which she also loved to smell. She loved to distinguish how different diets would affect the smell of shit that eventually got shat out.

If only Mary would be honest with herself, she would recognise that smelling shit was the real reason behind why she seemingly loved to travel, to go to different places, and to eat different things. She had just wanted to smell how the change in diet and physical location affected her shit and if the people from different countries shat shit of different smells. She also liked shitting in the airplanes, because she was thrilled by the intensity of the smell mixed with the excitement of the embarrassment when she opens the door to greet the next toilet user.

If only Mary would be honest with herself, she would confess that she loved the smell of Korean shit the most, because of the way shit smell with eating kimchi, and that Japanese shit was her second favourite, although it sometimes smelled a bit too sweet for her liking, especially during winter when shit usually smelled a little like ice-cream. The smell of baby's shit was like japanese shit in winter. On rainy days, shit usually smelled a little muddy, like the smell of wet muddy sneakers from playing in a wet muddy soccer field on a rainy day. Shit was typically the most pungent on sunny days, and it was easily affected by spicy food, which was most spicy on sunny days. It could be due to how chillies grown in the dry season are more spicy than chillies grown in the rainy season.

If only Mary would be honest with herself, she would then realise that it was not so shameful or despicable to love to smell shit, and she would be able to laugh a little about it, or write a little book with all her gathered knowledge, and be unabashed and tell her next boyfriend who may find it a little odd and overall cute and endearing and indulge her a little and love her and marry her and live the Cefiro-Kimberly dream with her, and remember to leave the toilet door open when he shits his shit for her.

(sneak.)