Confessions I

Well, my girl's in the next room
Sometimes I wish she was you
I guess we never really moved on
Hearing those words make we weak
I never wanted to say goodbye

But girl you make it hard to be faithful
With the lips of an Angel.

Listening to Hinder's "Lips of An Angel". Though there's not exactly anyone to be unfaithful to, and it's not as though I'm tempted by her, it's just that, she does have the lips of an angel.

***

"Were you in love with Cheryl?"

"I guess I did. That's why it's all coming back to me now. As in, if i didn't love her, i guess i wouldn't be feeling this way? A deep regretful melancholy."

"Hmm. Regretful because?"

"For hurting her. For taking three years away from her. For... many things unexplained."

Then these pictures of me confessing to her about my homosexuality, and her crying over the phone, and me saying sorry, a deep sorry to her. Why, she said. Why?

"Are you still missing her?"

"Yes of course. Sometimes."

"Missing in the I want you back sense?"

"No lah. Missing in the "you're a great memory which i'd choose to live again" sense."

***

I just said something, to me, was rather bad, considering she really wants to leave it behind, she felt uncomfortable with me calling her dear/darling, to Cheryl, from my sec school, I don't call her my ex, since that sounds frivolous, but well, I said, when she said that she missed sec school, and I replied, I hardly miss zhonghua, guess she had a better zhonghua than I did, and the best thing that happened was us, nothing else, and she gave me a smiley, which came across awkward, but hell, it's been so long I can hardly feel her anymore, but it just felt like it was awkward and... forced? .

She just said, "it's no harm thinking back" after I said "we shouldn't be doing this" after we talked about lots of memories like watching the world cup together, which memory is faded in my mind, and waiting at a station together and me showing her a picture I took of my sister's plush dog and a sheep that I won for her in the arcade after hammering some gameboard, and hence it's name, "pengpeng".then I thought and replied, "guess it ain't always no harm."
cuz it hurts.

***

Are you going to get on with life, without a care?
Will you get what you want from this world?
Then I watched the old couple dance;
"Step on my old size nines and I'll take you round."

Stereophonics. I love them. And truly enough, those skates were my old size nines.

I kept repeating her name; guess it was rather irritating for the rest? but I felt so much like I was in the times where we excitedly went to the rink to test the ice, just trying our best to balance, and she trying her best to guide me. Then I guess she gave up, and before that I could at least move a little, and she grabbed my hand and took me around. Around the rink, the strong cold breeze across her hair, over my probably distorted face, just smoothing the ice and feeling like we're in love. Stepped in my old size nines, and this time, I went around myself. (and of course, with my other friends, who were sometimes struggling, which reminds me of me, once again.)

"WE'RE IN LOVE!"

Yes, that was what we shouted on the overhead bridge near our secondary school, we shouted that over the pink bouganvillae, which I plucked, for her to keep, a momento I knew she would dry between the pages of her diary, like all the things she loved, and that reminds me of the sunflowers, the smiling sunflowers, the smiling her.

"Those are daisies! Sunflowers don't come in purple."

Stupid me. Thought those daisies were the sunflowers she always liked, and well, guess the thought counts. She laughed. Happily.

***

"How is it with Chris?"

"Cool. You? How's everything?"

"It's all good except for the exam stress."

"Sparkling love life? Still close to the gang?"

"Yes to both. Just celebrated Jason's birthday yesterday."

She missed Meifang, her good friend, and Jason, her boyfriend's, birthdays because she was mugging at home for exams. And she paid it back for Jason and not yet Meifang :D I feel happy, she found someone she's obviously in love with, 'cept for the fact she said she's become more cynical; I think everyone gets cynical as we grow up; and I got a little worried, nothing to do with the boyfriend, but I just wondered, she's really changing, not for any worse, just that, there's not exactly the innocent girl I used to know, not that innocence was lost; guess it was tainted, like how mine did, 'cept I lost my innocence with it, and I guess I can't change, there's this part of me that really doesn't want to be gay anymore, yet it's so hard for me not to, and the sacrifice to put in, the effort, I guess that lazy part of me really gets lazy, I just feel like not challenging that gay ego of mine, there's Chris, which I'd hurt, there's Phillippe, there's my
friends whom know me as gay, there's strangers who know immediately that I am gay, so this is how hard it is to change, and:

"That was why I hurt you."

It came out. As much as I want to erase that memory for myself and more importantly for her, I guess I couldn't, it resurfaces, and this time I really think I told it to her for real, instead of a sorry, or a whimper of it, and leaving her not knowing that entire picture, which she accepted and still continued to forgive me for, which I feel guilty for, which I feel small for, which I feel makes it never possible ever again for any 'us'.

"Nah. It's over, and I moved on. Doesn't really affect me anymore."

I guess what I said at Delifrance opposite the St.Andrew's Cathedral to my dearest Priya one fine night wasn't true, I realised it wasn't true only now, and I still do think, nonwithstanding, that she has moved on; even if we both didn't move on, I guess she's moved further than I did on this track with U-turns on both ends.

I sent Lips of an Angel to her, and I made sure I made it really clear that I wasn't meaning anything by doing it, I guess it's good to make things clear to her. Suddenly I just get reminded of her telling me how she likes to talk on the phone, instead of IM or SMS, it was hard to read me, it was hard for me to read her, and I guess it's so true now, she really didn't feel the pain on my side, which ... I prefer.

Suddenly I remember waiting for her while she was in the toilet and me staring out onto the mrt tracks of Bishan; I lost the tickets we bought, we laughed like mad kids, Clemence came and treated us, saving the day; we decided we'll spend the day before I had to go into the army together, embracing; she likes to be hugged from the back, just like me, staring at the sunset, which she loves; us eating together, having to pull Jialing along so that I could go to her house, me forced to sit beside her father; her apple-scented spray which she had, which made me fall even deeper in love with her, which I used too, a little too much for her liking, and she got miffed; the big red towel from Aussino she gave me for bathing after a swim, after a fun time tossing Marcus Jr around in the water; her giving me a cold pill at her door when I was hopelessly sick, and me smiling stupidly as I sauntered out, albeit sniffing, of her condo on the lane; us sending each other off, walking up and down the hill leading to her condo, never really wanting to part first or be the one to say the first goodbye; I guess I'll stop here.

It's a blur now, like how you see nothing when too many transparencies are put together.

***

No, it's not hard to be faithful, there's no one for me to be unfaithful to, maybe Chris, but that's not really being unfaithful, that's me being straight again. No, not "we never really moved on", I think you did, so please move on, I still love you, but it's not the same love anymore, I'd love to hug you again, to hold your hand again, but it's just a fantasy of a boy who deserves fantasies and no longer the realities he threw away. I still keep that orange-penned letter you gave me to encourage me, I still have that, and even thinking about it makes me cry now, makes me feel so hard to talk or breathe, maybe how you felt when you read my letters, which were real and felt, I hope you can still feel me through those sheets of rolled up papers, I still can from that now greyed piece of paper, written in that orange ink.

***

"...given them to a depraved mind, that they do things they shouldn't do."

A rough quote from Romans; read during a YFC BS.

"Parents! You think you have control over your children? I have a youth, my fellow pastor is counselling him, he is only 15 and is engaged in fornication! More and more teenagers are homosexuals!"

A rough quote from the pastor which sermoned in St.Andrew's Cathedral, last Sunday, Evensong.

"Teenagers have much to face, homosexuality, BGRs at such a young age..."

My pastor in my church, when I was interpreting.

***

I told Yeek, I said, I feel like giving up this homosexuality; it was hard to get it across to him, after all he is a budding homosexual, and after all he would never truly understand where I am coming from. I felt it was so hard to tell him about the voice in my head, I told him there were
these voices in my head, and he asked who, he hazarded a few guesses, and I finally spilled that it was my Lord God Jehovah.

"What do they say?"

"They say I'm giving you up. And it's so scary; I don't want to be given up."

He said God won't, and I quoted him Romans. I told him I was bombarded with all these signs that God flashes in my mind, my ears, across my bleedin' face. He's telling me for sure, and He's telling me good. There's signs that come too; I slept with Philippe, this 45yr-old Frenchman, lovely to talk to, patient on the bed, really nice all in all, that made me sleep again with him, and I felt I was really thrown into a depraved mind. What was I thinking? Thing that's scary is, I actually enjoyed it, which I hardly do in sex, and that I'm only half-guilty.

When you no longer feel guilty is when it's all over. And I'm close. Sorry Chris, I've betrayed your trust, I've slept with another man.

I guess this is also what makes it so difficult to part with this gay life I've prepared myself for. I introduce myself as gay; even if I don't people find out; I've pierced my right ear, and to some extent I revel in some "coming out", like a hint to my parents and a confirmation to my friends and strangers; strangers know immediately that I am gay; I leaked, though in a joking manner, that I was gay, to some youth, who kept questioning my piercing, I actually felt attracted to one guy, no, not Derrick, though every time he actually turns up my butterflies flock to my stomach, the guy is Jon, which I felt a lil' vibes from, but he's supposedly with Jessie, and I guess that's great, thank God there's no chance for my depraved mind to deprave others; porn's like a commodity, it's hard to get off; even my only girlfriend knows I am gay and asks me about my boyfriend; I've made so many gay friends through the net; there's Philippe and his expectations of me going back on bed with him, stopping it suddenly seems like betrayal; I've had five sex partners, of which two I've forgotten the names and forgotten their looks and one I can only vaguely remember, one I've actually felt feelings for, first sex on the staircase in a BishanHDB, next ones in their houses, and lost my haha-what-virginity? at 13, masturbated over men, first fantasised a chiseled man on my Human Body children's edubook, guess I was eight, drawing penises on a secret book I kept and trying to draw men, and found 20-odd gayporn websites when I was P6, wrote a list which I only recently discarded, after finding it under my old CPU which had to go.

I'm down at the end of a slippery slope. Skating upwards.

***

I feel for women, for girls, such sweet girls. I want to kiss a girl out of the bearded barley, to walk on the trail on my Father's map, to dance in the moonlit floor. Yet, this huge history I carry on my back makes me reconsider my choices; stuck. I want a boyfriend, I want a girlfriend. And for once, holding the hand of a girl and letting her head rest on my haha-what-chest makes me touched, makes me cry. No longer is there a man there anymore. Yet, how am I to start anything, boy or girl? maybe I should start one with God first?

***

Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones.I will try to fix you.

Please do.
______________
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If tears could, if they just could
blur, wash off, or at least
soften all that I'm feeling, then
I'd cry
if I could, if I just could.