Frankie and I

  Hi, my name is Elaine, 24 this year. My father is Chinese but my mother is Brazilian. Well, that's what my dad told me. My mother died when I was a baby.

  My father left me when I was 8. He realized having another mouth to feed was too troublesome. I would never forget the rainy night when we slept by the roadside, cold and starving. I fell asleep listening to my father telling me the story of the boy who cried wolf. When I woke up I was alone. 

  

 I met Frankie when I was chased out of an eatery while begging for leftover food. He handed me a sausage roll which I wolfed down within seconds.

"Begging won't work. Just steal," he laughed as he wiped away the mustard at the corner of my mouth.

Bread and sausage are the best thing in the world. Second best thing. First would be Frankie.

Frankie taught me how to steal so I won't starve to death. He also taught me how to perform on streets so we could get more money for sausage rolls - for days when stealing was too difficult. 

If I remember correctly, it was a Friday. A bad Friday when we didn't manage to steal any food and no one paid for our performances. 

We were sitting on the roadside when two actors in fancy outfits passed by, arguing. The woman was shouting at the man, saying that he was responsible for her blisters because he won't carry her, and how he won't help her with the chores. 

"Why don't you hire someone to do the chores for you?"

"How am I supposed to find a person who's willing to work for free? We don't have much money, we can only afford to pay them bread and sausages."

Frankie and I volunteered ourselves and we spent a few years sweeping floors and washing clothes for Royce and Jennifer. Jennifer yelled at me all the time for the smallest mistake I did; so I was really happy when the audience shooed her in the middle of Romeo and Juliet, complaining that Royce and her were too old for the roles.

The next day Frankie and I took over the performance. After we successfully caused Royce and Jennifer to suffer from a mild case of food poisoning that was severe enough for them to stay away from the stage for a couple of hours, of course.

  Royce and Jennifer never had a say in anything since then; and as we performed more we found two more young servants, Wendy and Bobby, like how we were once found.

*

Andrew came to us uninvited. He said he would make our performances better. More people would watch us. More money for us.

 That was interesting. 

  He said he would be our new leader. I had to pull Frankie hard to stop him from punching Andrew.

  Frankie chased him away but every now and then he would appear out of nowhere to interrupt our plays. I noticed that whenever he appeared we sold more tickets.

 Having performed solo for so many years, I suppose he had figure out a way to command audience's attention.

 I persuaded Frankie to let him stay.

*

Frankie and Andrew disagree with each other all the time. From where to go to where to perform to how to adapt Odette into a comedy.

I shouted at Andrew while standing behind Frankie; though secretly agreeing with Andrew that Frankie's idea would never work. No one wanted to watch ballerinas doing something disgracefully ridiculous on stage.

Andrew was right. Audience wanted to see cleavage. Sexy women. Like the roles I had been doing all these while - breaking the fourth wall to do lap dance for the male audience.

  That was the only way to make money. Male performers were only needed to carry props.

  I wanted to laugh when I saw Frankie practicing hard. He missed the point completely.

  His heart was in the right place, I thought as we kissed. But he's losing it.

  Andrew, on the other hand...

*

For what happened next come watch Seringgit @ DPAC:

http://www.dpac.com.my/page/ticket/bookTicket/view/271.html

Me and You and the Doggie

A fictional piece inspired by real life conversation written for The Writer's Tower, August 2014, Theme : Name.

*

Sometimes you fall in a bucket of shit and come out smelling like a rose.

I can’t remember which friend tells me that. Maybe it’s Iman. Or maybe it is something I read online. You know, when I’m so bored and start googling everything and anything under the sun like “sex”, resulting in a sarcastic remark from Urban Dictionary “What kind of moron are you that you look up sex in the urban dictionary?”

(and yes, I actually googled shit and was very entertained by the resulting list.)

Anyway, it sounds like something Iman will say. After all, he is the one who talk dirty to me all the time - literally.

We usually start our dirty talks in the morning over breakfast.

“Eh, my shit looks like the curry you’re eating now. I name it Curry,” he’ll say.

“Thank you for helping me to cut down fitness and gym expenses,” I lost my appetite for my favorite Japanese curry rice completely. Lelouch, our pug will be getting second serving for breakfast as usual.

“You’re welcome,” in total contrast to his actual personality, Iman bows elegantly and sits down opposite me to gobble down the portion I reserved for Lelouch before attacking his own plate.

Iman is my house mate. Initially I was uncomfortable over the fact that I have to sleep under the same roof with a guy. I later learned that he felt the same (of course I didn’t realise it back then. Any guy looks like a potential rapist to a small town girl) but we did not have a choice - we needed jobs in KL and this was the only cheap apartment unit we could find.

I feared of being violently assaulted, molested and raped whenever I walked out of my room, imagining Iman’s long hands tightly around me and that no matter how hard I struggled I just couldn’t break free. I made sure I locked my door all the time and I became a very religious atheist. I prayed to Jesus in the morning, Buddha during my lunch time and Allah before I slept, hoping that the combined power of three Gods would be greater than the power of one. I also prayed that the Gods I prayed to would not end up ignoring my prayers because they were too busy fighting with each other over who has the righter right to protect me.

For the first few months I didn’t think we had talked at all, except exchanging quick scared smiles and barely audible “hi” when we occasionally bumped into each other while leaving for work or walking to the kitchen or the toilet.

The ice was broken when we met each other at Batman 75th Anniversary at Pavillion. I was cosplaying Catwoman and Iman - Two Face.

“I don’t know that you cosplay!” we exclaimed and took off our masks simultaneously.

“Cosplayers are the awesomest bunch,” we laughed and high-fived, finally becoming friends after living together with zero conversation for three or four months.

Having a mutual interest is a great way to start off a friendship. We spent nights watching movies, debating over whether Emma Watson or Taylor Swift is sexier but usually ended up deciding that Angelina Jolie will always be the one (be it before or after the surgery that removed the greatest gift to mankind) no matter how many long-legged female K-pop singers emerge, crying over matters of utmost importance that greatly affects human race such as the death of our favourite actor Robin Williams, making costumes for the next cosplay event, talking excitedly about how our next cosplay will make us the center of attention before concluding that we would not like the trouble of having to apply tons of makeup and wearing fashionable clothing just to grab a Ramli burger downstairs when we become too famous and popular, but still dreamed about how our pictures will appear in newspapers and magazines and of course, as we got more comfortable and more used to each other’s presence, we learned of each other’s bad habits, like all the smelly fart, loud burping, breasts rubbing, loin scratching and shit naming.

Iman has a peculiar habit of naming and examining shit.

“I used to have constipation,” he explained to an uninterested audience, namely me. “So now I am very grateful that I can shit every day. So grateful that I have to name them.”

“How did you end up with constipation?” he eats plenty of fruits and vegetables, and he’s a yogurt lover. Like all other Malaysian, he also eats roti canai and keropok lekor between proper meals of nasi lemak and but that bears no relevance to what I’m trying to say here.

“I used to find shitting really disgusting and I refuse to go to the toilet because it is so smelly…” His voice got softer and softer and by the time he reached the word “smelly”, he was looking at me like how a kindergarten kid who forgot to do his homework would look at his displeased teacher.

“Oh. So you have shitzophrenia,” his shit-naming habit is infectious.

“Please, there is a proper name for it. It’s called toilet phobia.”

Also, Iman’s habit of shit-naming and irrational enthusiasm for shit was the reason how we ended up with Lelouch. Somewhat.

We hate pugs. That muzzled face is just too unnerving to look at. I rather watch Silent Hill than to look at a pug for more than three seconds, and I am a coward who vowed to never watch horror film.

We love dogs. We just don’t consider pug as a species of dog.

The story of Lelouch starts with our bi-weekly volunteering at SPCA. We feed the dogs, clean them, and after two or three tiring hours, I will be chilling indoors with 100 Plus while Iman investigates the shape, colour and odour of different dogs’ poo.

“Look Serina! That giant Golden Retriever just came up with this. I call it Lincoln Log,” he said excitedly, showing me a long, thick, dark brown log-shaped poo placed on layers of tissue paper while I was eating chocolate Swiss roll.

Was it too much to ask for a normal house mate?

One day Lelouch came to SPCA. It looked scared. It was shitting when it arrived, and when we placed it in a cage, it got so scared at the unfamiliar surrounding that it stopped shitting. The shit ended up dangling at its butt like its second tail and we spent so much time wiping and washing its butts (and its shit-tainted tail) because every time we cleaned what was dangling outside, Lelouch would shit more and we had to start cleaning again.

“I’m calling this pendulum,” I detected frustration in Iman’s voice but I was not sure if he was actually frustrated, because with his gloved hand he playfully pushed that poo dangling from Lelouch’s butts slightly to make it sway like a pendulum even though he was wearing an annoyed expression.

That night Lelouch followed us home. We wanted to send it back to SPCA but it was a smart dog - it came to us on a rainy, stormy night.

Lelouch was not just smart. It was a genius. When we woke up to a sunny morning it ran back to SPCA on its own and only returned to our apartment on rainy nights. It even had enough intelligence to never ask for food from us; but it would always leave some poo at our doorstep in the morning for Iman’s pleasure.

“This is bad, Serina. Lelouch left us some pebbles,” Iman said one morning as he knocked the hard and brittle poo with a plastic spoon while I was enjoying Choco balls.

That night it rained so we took Lelouch to a vet and it never went back to SPCA after that.

Lelouch would watch movies with us and sit quietly while we sew our costumes; only barking loudly when we accidentally prick ourselves. At first it’s sudden barking frightened us so much that it caused us to prick ourselves even more but eventually we got used to it. Lelouch practises yoga with me and I always laugh at Iman for being less flexible than Lelouch.

We sometimes think that we insulted the animation series, Code Geass by naming a pug Lelouch but we always come to the conclusion that for pug haters like us to take in a pug, this pug must be really good at hypnotizing like the charming, intellectual fictional Lelouch Lamperouge.

Minus the charm.

*

“Call me Kaito Kid,” Iman speaks in a voice he deems cool and aloof as he tries his costume for Animangaki.

“Shut up and fight,” I clench my fists and aim a kick at him with my Tifa Lockhart’s costume on.

This year we started our costume making for Animangaki in August 2014 a little too early that by the time we were done with the final touch up for our Comic Fiesta’s costume which commences in December 2014, there were still two weeks to go before Animangaki officially kick starts.

Out of boredom we decided to make a little Lelouch-style costume for Lelouch, which was a grave mistake. All cameras focus on Lelouch the moment we enter the hall. Photographers and Liui Aquino’s fans run from the other side of the hall to us just to pat Lelouch’s head.

That’s when Lelouch expresses its decision of not wanting to be a superstar by shitting. Mustard coloured, watery shit.

The next day, Lelouch’s cosplay photo (with Iman’s left hand and three fingers of mine) appears in a local newspapers with a headline:

“A Shitty Pug-rty : Animangaki 2014”

Alto

  Tonight I'm kicked out from a school of performing arts. Officially. Sort of. Yay. Let's celebrate.

  Holy shit I want to cry.

  Let's call this school SPA for the remaining of this perfectly ignorable self-pitying prose because it is very similar to a spa and at the same time very different from it. Both this SPA and the real spa make me sweat profusely. Both make me happy. Both need me to pay to enter. The only difference is I can go for spa anytime I want but now I don't think I can ever set foot at SPA again.

  It shouldn't really bother an ex-prefect who used to play truant so often that she gets a warning letter from school but hey, high school is compulsory. SPA is not. It's something I want so there you go, a distinction is made between these two.

  Munita persuaded me to study at SPA twice. Initially I rejected because it was far, the classes end late and most importantly, I have to pay for it.

  Kill me. I have only signed up and paid for one course this year and that was because I could not resist learning from the first actress in this country.

  Speaking of which, I am quite surprised that this actress-teacher of mine has not expel me yet. Weeks passed and I still have not finish reading that short 200-page article on Shakespeare, and my characterization for Lady Macbeth... I'm working on it. In my head.

  Maybe because I made my payment promptly.

Talking about payment. SPA actually refunds me. They don’t have a refund policy. Just goes to show how serious they are about not wanting me. Even if I'm willing to pay (which is rarer than the rarest steak) they still don’t want to have me around.

 I must be quite amazing, to be so incompetent that people are willing to refund me just so they won't have to see me again. Wow.

   Looking at the money Nick pressed into my hands, I'm not sure if I should be grateful that I don't have to worry about tomorrow's lunch money (or next week’s, or next month’s) or book a bed at the nearest asylum because I am too depressed.

  I met Nick before my first class. During my audition actually. He asked me a number of questions so I thought, of all the people present, he would remember my name. He seemed to be genuinely concerned about me.

  I was so wrong. Like everyone else, he calls me Alto.

  Here at SPA, I am the only student who does not have a name. Everyone goes "yo Nick!", "hey Munita!", "break a leg, Jia Yin!" and so on, but when they need to talk to me they just go "hey, Alto."

  When you are not good enough, you don't have a name. For quite some time I fail to respond when people call me "Harriet" because I'm too alto-fied.

  Tonight Nick calls me by my name for the first time. I suppose he feels guilty for expelling me even though that's the right thing to do.

  It feels strange to remember my name again. Harriet. Is that really my name? It sounds so foreign.

 Harriet. Harriet. H-A-R-R-I-E-T.

  I am Harriet. My name is Harriet. I like to act. I am also a school dropout. Like all school dropout, I am destined to do great things.

  One day, people will  talk about Harriet Jayson like how they talk about Bill Gates. They will remember her as the school dropout that did something so awesome that no one can forget.

  I can see the title in some articles in future history textbooks now.

  "Harriet Jayson : The School Dropout Who Acted As a Tree for 1000 times."

Doraphobia

“Thank you and have a good day,” Nandini says with a standard smile even though the person she is talking to through the phone can’t see it. Sales personnel tend to believe that a person on the phone can hear your smile.

“You choose a right time to be engaged,” her office-neighbour, Ginny says with frustration in her voice.

Nandini feels her blood freezing up.

“Dora called your direct line?”

“Who else?”

“What is it that she wants this time?”

“As usual. Whatever that we did not provide.”

Dora works for CIL, one of their main clients. Also, one of the clients that depresses Nandini mentally that she thinks she needs a place in the asylum. She is easily stressed by the smallest command from her boss such as “coffee please”, and when she is stressed she makes life difficult for Nandini. Or Ginny, when Nandini is fortunate enough to be too busy to tend to Dora’s needs.

Dora might email Nandini for a list of job applicant’s details that she needs at 10.00am and calls her at 10.05am asking Nandini sarcastically why is it that she has not receive the details yet.

“I think this is a very easy task, and I need this. A.S.A.P.,” she says coldly.

To make things worse, she changes her requirements all the time. Yesterday she wanted job applicants with 5 years of working experience. Today she complains about receiving resumes from Nandini where the job applicants have 5 years of working experience because she had told Nandini clearly that she wanted job applicants with 7 years of working experience and she would start complaining about how Nandini never listens. Tomorrow - no idea what she wants - the only thing Nandini and Ginny knows is that she will come up with some way to make their lives more miserable than any characters from Les Miserables.

“I’ll call her back,” Nandini sighs. “But before that, let’s have something nice for lunch.”

“I know what you mean. Let’s have some Japanese food instead of economic mixed rice today. I need Japanese mustard to feel alive again.”

*

Work is a never ending disaster and even a good lunch does not lessen the pain. Dora from Le Smalle calls and speaks in a nervous, worried tone (as usual), requesting two suitable candidates for their hiring needs everyday.

“Two! Everyday! Honestly, what gives her the idea that she is the only client we are serving? We have other clients to service!” Nandini explodes the second she puts down her phone.

Ginny frowns. Her eyebrows almost touch each other.

“We can’t deliver. It’s impossible.”

“If we don’t want to be unemployed, by hook or by crook we have to do it. Sheesh. Why is it that every client named Dora is so annoying?” Nandini mumbles as she slams her keyboard for each alphabet she types.

Both of them walk to the pantry for a coffee break to unwind. At the pantry they catch the smell of animal’s fur.

Nandini and Ginny almost drop their cups of coffee.

The hiring manager from Rocketto is a bossy, anti-PETA lady who loves wearing fur and enjoys visiting Nandini and Ginny from time to time with job orders that make them want to commit suicide.

She is also called Dora.