Month: September 2017

I lay on my futon in Asahikawa, Hokkaido. An unlit cigarette between my lips. I looked up at the peeling ceiling paint. Pale white, uneven and light. A small fan rotated and pushed the air around the room. The Airbnb host had warned against smoking in the apartment. I light up anyway.

Thirty four going on thirty five years old this year. This week, in fact. I deserved a break. A birthday treat. I exhaled the cigarette smoke slowly.

My phone lay screen facing down beside me. Unread messages from the wife vibrating away. I try to forget the child I left disappointed in Singapore. Who I had promised to bring to the zoo that weekend and who I had broken many promises to. My child.

I think back about 2004. Thirteen years ago.

It would snow heavily the night before my twenty first birthday. I would wake up twenty one years of age to witness a white out for the first time. Snow covered every surface outside my dorm room window. I felt awe. A pang of sadness. A future unwritten then.

I can no longer see her face in my mind. That girl.

I have forgotten that I once helped her with her luggage.

All I ever said to her was “Hi”.

“I do not love you.”

Those were the last words I said to her. On New Year’s Eve. 1982.

It must be her, I thought.

Thirty years had passed since I last saw her. In a basement in London. At a session of Liars Anonymous.

I walked closer. Feeling warm coffee slosh about in the paper cup I held. I spied the self-same style of spectacles she favoured. That bob cut hair. That smile. It must be her.

“Sylvia?”

She looked up. Confusion flickered in her eyes before recognition set in. She allowed the hint of a smile before hiding it.

“Do I know you?” she said.

“Yes. Yes, I think you do.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

I sat myself beside her. I could not help smiling. The sequence felt familiar despite the years. Lie, assertion, lie. Ping pong, but with words. I reached for her hand. This old woman almost sixty. She did not retract under my touch.

We sat in silence. Old bodies on an old wooden bench. In autumn light, almost winter.

Finally, she said.

“I do not love you too.”

The year was 2004. My freshman year in college. Cornell University. Ithaca. A college town in upstate New York that I could not place on a map then. That I still cannot place on a map now.

FRIENDS would screen its last episode after a ten season run. A real cultural event. People gathered to watch, cry, say goodbye. To Ross, Rachel, Joey, Phoebe, Monica and Chandler.

The US would admit that there were no weapons of mass destruction to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Bush would still beat Kerry to gain a second term. Students cried foul in Cornell. We were in the solidly blue state of New York after all.

Britney Spears would get married twice in 2004. The first marriage lasted only 55 hours. Neither marriage would be to Justin Timberlake, her one time love. Justin would cause Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction later that year. The jury remains out on whether it was a publicity stunt.

It was my first time away from home. Like really away from home. Half the world, twelve time zones away.

I stuck a poster of Elva Hsiao on my side of the shared dorm room. Next to a preciously procured poster of Noriko Sakai. My Ichiban. I look out my large almost floor to ceiling dorm room window. The buildings were modern like in Singapore, but the nature surrounding the buildings was different.

Familiar, yet unfamiliar. 2004 was that type of year.