Happy Birthday to Me. Thanks For Asking.

by Ah Kiat on Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 9:24am

 'The Big Bang Theory' is about four genius geeks and celebrates social awkwardness and the ultimate nerdage. At twenty seven and held Masters and PHDs; they worshiped Star Trek and invented Klingon Boogle, they swore their weekends on Wii Bowling Nite, Halo Nite and War Of Warcraft Nite, they debated furiously on superheroes and supervillians and they had gotten rejections from every single ladies they met.

Their story speaks to me.

I'm twenty seven. Though I did nothing paramount like driving a Mars Rover 65 million miles away, discovering a planetary body and named it 'Planet Bollywood' or solved subatomic particle equations and string theory and dark matter. I'm still a geek in so many ways.

Top of the head I can fight you to the death on why Superman is wussy, deconstruction the science and magic of Marvel and DC and how The Matrix is the most important movie in Nineties. I'm a huge fan of Doremon in which I can prove it with my double library of all it's running series and long stories collections. The most expensive and useless stuff I bought was Vertigo tarot cards. (I don't even believe in tarot reading, yet the pack is so bloody cool to miss) I've squandered at least four of my best years in LAN gaming (and they were the best years). My secret dream house accessory is to build a bat signal at my balcony, my secret to-do-list is to learn hadoken and my secret identity when I'm drunk is 'I am the Batman!'

As meek is conventionally inheriting the world or in other words, the market is increasingly targeting nerds as a dynamic spender with results from Comic-Con, Superhero Films and gadgets, it is their social awkwardness that very much still appeal to me.

I'm squarish, loop sided, myopic and look like something you would sweep out at spring cleaning. It's so much worse in secondary school. Raging hormones and unmanageable curly hair is not a good mix. Girls became a large part of my life and the saddest part was they don't even bother to look at me. I remembered telling my first crush I like her and her first instinctive response to girlfriends was 'eew'. Things go pretty much downhill from there. Girls orbit around me so that they can know my better looking friends or they will tell me in the end that 'Oh, but I see you only as a brother'...

But like all lucky nerds, I have some fond memories of 'The Goddess', 'The Fling' and 'The Sun'. Then again, that's tale for another time perhaps.

The bone of this entry in reference to the future is not about girls (I'm married), or how much I could mind-wrestle you with comic book details and trivial, it's about embracing geek personality whole-heartedly. Because no matter how much you shake down a geek, lecture him about severity of reality and dress him up as a jock wannabe or even married him, you cannot take the geekiness out of him. The ultimate geekiness is about losing interest in reality, friendship and embrace solitude with a bitter but self-assuredness.

You can condemn me about my deprivation of the matter and I'm simply returning to my roots. This birthday onwards I resolve to stop pretending to be the person I am not, or want to go to places I don't belong, or submit to the lifestyles I should be having. Most importantly, I will not longer take a interest in what you like, in who breaks your heart, in what lame excuse when you blow me off or bother to conceal the fact that your taste in music, movies and books are so shitty that you might as well wear a toilet as a hat.

The Draft 1

'Ington.'

A boy, no more than ten looked up from his robot he was holding. He looked no different from the children in the hospital's playroom. Quiet and reserved. There were hardly playing in the small room of dollhouses, plastic trucks and jigsaws. They were the children of their malignant parents.

'Are you Ington Khiang?' A thin man in navy army uniform approached Ington at eye level. Ington couldn't stop noticing the Tree emblem on the serviceman's sleeve, even as Ington nodded, he wanted to reach out and touch the Tree.

'How old are you?' The serviceman asked. His voice was tender with kindness.

It's a Lantern Tree. Ington decided. His mother had always informed him about the need for Lantern trees in this world. According to her, lantern trees were different things to different people. But they were essentially the anchors of the world.

'Are you alright, boy?' The voice concerned.

Ington decided that his own Lantern tree would like a lot like the one on the sleeve of the serviceman. Not the part about "Kingdom First" which was bold in golden threads under the Tree, but the shape that embodied it. The Tree was shaped like a fish. A diving fish head-down, with flaming tails in every directions upwards.

'Do you know your mother is sick?' The serviceman asked, looking closer at Ington, hoping to jolt a response from the boy.

Lantern Trees are the anchors of the world. Their roots held the ocean floors together.

'Your mother, Ington.' The serviceman collected himself and gave, 'Your mother is very sick and will not hold out soon. Do you understand what I'm saying, Ington? Your mother is passing on soon.'

They looked at each other for a while.

The branches of the Lantern Trees held rainbows of dreams. The leaves rustled as the world breathe. Chest to chest, shoulders to shoulders.

'Ington?'

Ington closed his eyes and could no longer identify the questioner. He thought he heard his mother in the light of the canopies. He had asked his mother once, on why were the trees different things to everyone.

Because there are no such things as Lantern Trees. Ington in the eye of his mind, remembered his mother's grin as she said, 'At least, not yet.'

'Ington?'

Ington opened his eyes and stood up from his chair. He held his robot to his chest and asked, 'Where is Mummy?'

The Serviceman bought Ington into another room adjacent to the playroom. A different room from the usual rooms Ington's dying mother was in. This room was filled with equipments and people. The people were formal, tired and have stopped whispering to each other when Ington  entered the room.

Ington found his mother in the bed, eyes staring blankly into the ceiling. He had never seen a corpse before and it frightened him a bit. Mostly because the person on the bed did not look like his mother at all. Colors were drained off from her skin and she looked like an unfinished wax doll. Ington heard the formal people switching off the monitor which was giving a high pitched zinc noise.

'Ington, do you want to say something to her?' The Serviceman brought Ington nearer to the bed. The formal people around his mother appeared having problem closing her eyelids. Her eyelids kept flopping open to the ceiling.

'At least, not yet.' Ington remembered his mother telling him. He placed his robot on his mother and stared blankly on the floor until they bought him away from his mother.

 

raknax.multiply.com

'Is there room?' I asked, eyes darting from my feet back to his pebble sized rings on his knuckles then past the lobe of his left ear ring. I counted four topaz rings, one ivory ear ring and the multiple dews forming on the dust of my boots.

'Members only.' The bouncer snorted and waved me away.

''No. You don't. Are you new. No. You are not new. I..I know, I mean I knew you, Terry, James, no, You are fuck, I can't, I don't.' I heard myself breathe. Rapid and empty breaths. I clutched the book across my chest tightly, clawing them with my nails.

'Shit. You are him.' The bouncer recognised, 'Whatever happened to you? You look like shit.'

'Is there room?' I pushed again.

'I don't know.' The bouncer suddenly unsure of what to do, he swung his wall of torso around for assistance. 'Man, it's been too long. You know how it is. People left and they don't come back.'

I looked at him, stared at his aviator shades and saw my thin eyes webbed with redness, clots and desperation staring at him.

'I just take a seat. I will not be of trouble.' my lips quivered. 'Please.'

'The bouncer looked back at the back of the bar, lighted up, shook his head to himself and went off a bit to smoke in the drizzle.

I let myself in the dark cave of the bar, finding my way with memory of the place. I found a dry spot by a wall of glowing table and sat down.

'Did you come to find me?' A hostess in her apron fished out a 2B pencil from her hair and approached my table. I gripped the spine of my book tighter. 'No?' She puckered her moist lips, 'What a shame. What's your order, boy? Same old?'

I stared down the shit-eating tablecloth and said nothing.

'Let me surprise you then.' She suggested, then turned around, 'Oh. I forgot. You hate surprises. But then again, you hate everything.' She smiled.

'It's not true.' I gritted my teeth. But she didn't hear me.

I put my dog-eared book on my lap and stared at it for a long time. I waited for my heart to catch up.

And I waited for the skies to break. Be it night or day, just break so I can see. I can see the stars or the sun or some light to tell me that I can. I can what? I shut my eyes. My eyelashes scratching my my cheekbones.

So I can write.

The book fell off my lap and onto the black floor. Flipping away 400 pages of whiteness. Nothing was written.

The hostess with a name that I could not remember fetched the book for me and laid a beer across my table. 'There you go.'

'I love you.' I glanced at her timidly.

'No.' She stood with the hip angled and a hand on it. 'You don't.'

'I looked back down and drown my beer.

'I hate you.' I said.

'I can live with it.' She walked off. 'Let me get you some more.'

'I can live with it.' I repeated and opened my book. I felt better. I clicked on my pen and stabbed the page with it's tip.

I'm waiting for my friends, two of them.  I hope they show up soon.