Inventory
A couple of weeks ago, I had one of those quiet Sundays. The kind that triggers my stock-taking habit.
* * *
Loup left the country a while back. Online conversations took a bizarre turn a a couple of months later. He began interrogating me about my plans for the future, became frustrated when I didn’t have a firm answer, asked me again and again what he had meant to me (and I mean again and again, despite repeated assurances). He would tell me he had fallen desperately in love with me and grown dependent on me, once declaring he wanted me to be the mother of his children — sending me into panic mode. Yet a breath later, he’d throw snide and hurtful barbs, the argument would inevitably escalate (we used to fight terribly even face-to-face, so no surprise) and he would become enraged when I tried to end the conversation — threatening once to strangle me.
Huh. I remember one of our early exchanges I’d documented, when I was lulled by his power, when I’d wanted him to be bad. But he triggered my flight response with his parasitic neediness and erratic impulses. Finally, when he told me he was planning to come back to Malaysia (again without a job offer), I told him: “Don’t look me up.”
* * *
Jai sent me an SMS just before he headed back off to Melbourne. “Didn’t get to hang out much,” he said, “but I’ll see you at the end of the year. Hopefully Ed will be around too. Take care.” Ed’s a mutual friend — I’ve known him since childhood and Jai seems to be in cahoots with him. Strange recognizing that the two of us are closer to Ed than each other, despite the whole fuck buddy thing. Yet, while I may hold Jai’s drug-soaked perception of the world in some disdain, it eases knowing that at least he’s not, you know… insane. And I’m quietly satisfied with that, for some reason. So I reply: “Have fun and take care of yourself too. See you when you get back. Drop me an email sometime.”
* * *
Khui is still Khui. I offered to send him some recipes the last time he went on safari. He never stops joking that he has to keep a close eye on us Chinese tourists, since one or two will inevitably hop back into the van with a turtle or penguin in tow. In those moments before sleep, he’s in my thoughts more than any other.
* * *
Gar is in the background, pops into my gchat window from time to time, or comes over to say hi when I’m at Baroque. But for the most part, I’ve lost interest. When things aren’t going well, I still get angry thinking about what happened. But the inexplicable yearning is gone. And it happened so quietly that I hardly noticed it leave.
A few nights ago, I was standing with one of the Baroque regulars when he asked Gar if he was going to the singles’ night. Gar said: “Um, yes… but only for a little while”. Hah. I’m so glad I didn’t come up with that ending myself. It would have ruined the surprise.
