Your Secret Embarrassing Behaviour Revealed! (Part 1)

That's right. The secret things you do that would span the emotional range of shame from "slightly sheepish" to "horribly mortified" if discovered. You know who and what I'm talking about, you sock-sniffing motherfucker.

Everyone knows the thrill of having that shameful habit, even if it is unhygienic/socially unacceptable/visually horrifying/may cause emotional scarring in young children. You know it's weird and disgusting, yet you inexplicably gain pleasure from doing it, and justify the deviant dose of dopamine by blatantly ignoring its source and its effect on your conscience and subconscious. Some take it to the extreme of pretending to deride and heckle those who have questionable behaviour while enjoying it in secret. Notice I use the word YOU, because as everyone but the most ignorant neophytes know, I have exquisite social and personal habits, and am therefore exempt from the above discussion. Here's what YOU are secretly doing:

1. Reading Dear Thelma and Big Bro for your weekly fix of 'emo'.
Stop snickering. I'm talking about you. Yes, you self-righteous little boy/girl, YOU. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with reading the agony aunt column, but everyone tries to avoid letting everyone else know that they're doing it. It's like sex, actually.

Anyway, everyone surreptitiously eyes the blatant "Raped by Cousin!", "Am I a lesbian?" and "Used by Older Woman" headlines on the back page of the Sunday pullout whenever the Sunday paper arrives and the various sections are divvied up among the family. Whoever can resist it the least will grab that section, getting a knowing eye from his/her siblings, while staring back defiantly with a "What? Can't you see the main story about the Jakun? I'm an anthropologist!" look in his eyes. He then proceeds to a corner of the couch and surreptitiously(I'll be using this word a lot in this post) scans the back page for the juiciest stories.

If they took away the advice part(which no one reads anyway), it would be nothing more than a public forum for erotic stories, featuring alphabets instead of people ("I think I'm in love with A, but B has a bigger penis, while C likes to cuddle.") and published in a national newspaper, no less. They should employ me to give advice, instead of forcing me to research this topic by asking reluctant strangers about the aforesaid behaviour(I have perfect behaviour, remember?). My advice to the women 'sufferers' would be, "You're a slut. Stop sleeping with A, B, C and the entire Penang football team. Of course they're cold and distant when you want to talk about your feelings. *scoff scoff* Dumb cunt whore. Hope you get syphillis and die." and my advice to the men would be,"Faggot pussy. Can't get it up just because your wife shouted at you? Are you the bitch? Are you the bitch? Huh? Huh? *all the while bitch-slapping him while he hangs his sorry head* You should slap your woman around. Keep 'em keen. Alternatively, slit your wrist with a rusty razor. Hope you die painfully from blood poisoning. We don't want your faggot genes messing up our gene pool".

2. Violently digging your nose in traffic jams and at red lights.
Hello? Heh-low-oooow.... Are you blind? Stupid, maybe? Or does your brain go into 'retarded' mode whenever there's no movement of your vehicle? FYI, the double-glazed, tempered glass that so effectively shuts out sound is still glass, Einstein. You know glass? Made from silicon, feels solid, and most crucially, is TRANSPARENT? If it's not tinted, it's clear. If it's not silvered, it's clear. If you're driving a regular car, it is CLEAR. People can see you.

Why do you have to dig your nose in the car? It's a horrible equal opportunity filthy habit. It doesn't discriminate between the rich or poor , young or old, beautiful or ugly, educated or otherwise. Every possible demographic does it, from the harassed-looking office lady in the kancil, to the young indian lorry driver, to the little chinese girl staring back at you from the car in front, index finger stuck decisively up her nose. Everyone knows that you shouldn't dig your nose in public. Now tell me, is being stuck in a jam with vehicles within touching distance not considered public? You'd think so wouldn't you?

But nooooooooo... The moment traffic slows to a standstill, fingers automatically leave the windowsill(male, right handed automatic-transmission drivers), gearstick(manual-transmission drivers), or mobile phone (young driver who wants to stay connected) and venture upwards in a blind orgy of gratuitous digging. Some dig in controlled movements, efficiently finding the offending deposits with their fingertips and flicking them onto the floorboards, repeating until traffic starts moving. Others violently penetrate in and proceed to korek with such unabashed gusto that they would be charged with rape if it was someone else's nasal orifice.

Once, when I was driving around in Kluang, I stopped at a traffic light beside a beautiful monster of a Mitsubishi Storm, polished to a sheen, riding on jacked-up suspension and outfitted with oversize tyres and tons of chrome. I whistled in appreciation when it stopped beside my car....... and went "WOW" when I turned up and saw the driver: a stunning, long-haired creature of such beauty that I literally caught my breath. She was even hotter because she was driving that beautiful Storm, you guys know what I mean. And then....

and then she started to dig her nose, stuffing a slim, feminine finger up her left nostril and started violating the hole in obvious pleasure. I jerked my head back so violently in disgust that I almost got whiplash, shouting a full-blown "CIIIBAII!!......" into the dashboard without even thinking. It was like getting into bed with Faye Wong and finding out that she has a penis.

3. Sniffing your dirty socks/underwear after you remove them.
'nuff said. You disgusting people know who you are.

4. Secretly dating/sleeping with/*gasp*making love to an ugly person.
The first two are bad enough, but it can be explained away by blaming alcohol or any other hallucinatory substance. Maybe you really don't care about appearances, maybe she gives really great head, maybe he's so funny you overlook his French looks(Quasimodo was French), whatever - You've got justification, and can sleep soundly at night.

There's an episode of Sex and the City in which Carrie worries about being Mr. Big's secret girlfriend, "the one that you date or sleep with but don't want anyone to know about", and bring to out-of-the-way Chinese restaurants that no one patronises. Her prudish friend Charlotte had a secret boyfriend, an ugly Jew painter that dressed up like a real vintage Maccabi in New York. I actually cringed when I saw the character.

But realising that you've fallen in love with a physically undesirable person( not because of any special attributes) entirely because of the chemistry between the two of you....... Oh, oh. It will cause you to rent your clothes and tear your hair out in desperation and madness. You grapple with your principles(trust me, I once broke my 'perfection rule' and dated a girl who was only a '9'), worry about your free-falling standards, all the while confronted with the cruel, hypocritical hard-wiring in your conscience from your parents and teachers(as if they didn't want the good-looking ones) that you "shouldn't judge a book by its cover". When you're partially(because she's too fat you can't go in all the way in) slamming into her weirdly assymetrical vagina, or when he's on top of you and you've got your legs around his thick waist screaming I love you while looking down on the balding head on his short 4-foot tall body, that's when you realise that you are - in the truest sense of the word - FUCKED.

Think it can't get any worse? Imagine your friends finding out...

5. Smelling your finger after it has gone where no finger has gone before.
.................usually up a mysterious bodily orifice. I don't want to discuss this. There's a Carl Hiassen book I read, describing in great detail from a kid's point of view what happens when he visits a hated family friend and their son has a habit of digging his backside and sniffing his finger. "His finger crept slowly but surely towards the waistband of his jeans..."

6. Happily scratching/fondling your groin/crotch when you think no one is looking.
Not cool, duuuuu....uude. Seriously not cool. I have a good friend who does this while talking to people. It disturbed me when he first did it in front of me, but I'm immune to it by now(shows you just how adaptable humans are, but I digress). Still, I cringe inwardly whenever there's someone else present while he uses the nearest convenient pillow(usually a tiny throw pillow if we're sitting near a couch) to shield his crotch, pretending that he just wants a pillow to keep him warm, while he gratifyingly scratches away like nobody's business.

I honestly believe that he's got a persistent ringworm infection and doesn't do it on purpose to derive sexual pleasure, seeing as he's not choosy of who's around when he scratches and can carry on a normal conversation while he's doing it. If you've got ringworm or some infection there, I feel you dude. I seriously do. But you cannot do that bro. You cannot cover it up with a tiny pillow and force yourself to believe that no one notices your awkwardly positioned elbow, the up-and-down movement of your hand and your splayed legs.

Sometimes I imagine I'm in one of Franz Kafka's absurdist plays whenever I see my friend positioned thus, powerfully scratching away, with his left hand pressing the pillow against his nether regions and discussing actual serious stuff with other people present, while everyone pretends they can't see the (scratching) pink elephant in the room, and continue to do their thing like normal, then escaping out of the room the first instant they can, but NO RUSHING ALLOWED, god forbid anyone suspect that they're running out because my friend looks like he's masturbating in public.

In other examples, there ARE weirdos who attempt to masturbate secretly in public. Check out the porn store clerk blog in my "The Khai Tzer Award" link. She writes about catching people attempting to 'free willy' in the store after getting aroused by all the graphic porn title covers.


7. Sniffing and secretly enjoying the smell of your own fart.
Fucking bastards! This is probably the most disgusting action in the whole universe. Ptooi! I know you. Ohhhh I know you alright. You secretly take a couple of small, fast sniffles whenever a dodgy smell hits the room, hoping no one notices(but not really caring) as you secretly savour the acrid, pungent, sulphuric aroma you produced that is causing everyone else to gag. Some try to protest their innocence, but the look of surprise and guilt in their eyes turn them in. I make it a point to personally beat the shit out of them. Disgusting little prick-turd. Wanna smell your own fart? Why don't you take it to the logical conclusion and eat your own shit too? Why are all of you laughing as you're reading this? How come you know what I'm talking about? You're as guilty as the rest of them, aren't you?

The Intoxicating Smell of Breeze

Today it struck me again, with a force so powerful that I literally felt my chest compress and start aching. I was sitting on my bed, devouring Wilbur Smith's "Warlock" in a greedy read-fest of page flipping, with the comforting sounds of my family (auntie, uncle and Bob the Builder, my devil of a cousin) outside reading and chatting.

All of a sudden I felt this pounding feeling in my chest and the incredibly familiar, intoxicating smell of Breeze rose unbidden within my nostrils. The world greyed out and the good memories started crashing down with ferocious realism: How tiny, soft and loving she once was, how I learnt the true meaning of the word 'intimate', how I could smell her Breeze-laundered clothing forever, how perfectly connected we once were, and finally, achingly, how her tiny body fit perfectly in mine when we slept under the covers of a thick blanket. Those were the only times that I ever felt perfectly at peace in my entire life. She was my soulmate. Probably still is.

It was good. It was the experience of a lovetime(god what a Freudian slip! That really was what I typed). Sure it ended acrimoniously, but I've cleared the uglier things up recently and decided to at least be civil. I've kept my distance all the same, even though she wants to be friends. That could be all she really wants, but why take the risk?

Under the pretense of being the tough son of a bitch ladykiller that my friends think I am, my official stand is that I'm a man. I'll never go back and be made a fool of by the same person twice, but the truth is it hurt so badly the first time it happened there was an actual physical ache in my chest (I suppose that's where the term heartache comes from). It hurt so bad that I was paralysed for a few weeks, unable to think or function straight, drowning in that foul morass while going through the motions in everything I did, and I'm deathly concerned at what would happen if I really did go back. Imagine the fragility of the emotions involved and what would happen if it failed yet again.

What if she wants to be friends under the pretense of trying to get back with me? Imagine my confusion then. Despite the many beautiful girls that have crossed my life, she's still the only girl I've ever really loved. In hindsight, I realise that she and me fit perfectly. Family aside, she was the only one who appreciated the subtle jokes I told, understood me more than even I did, and even her tiny body fit amazingly with mine. I once told her that I'd love her forever, and the craziest thing is that I still do. That realisation and my firm decision never to look back managed to co-exist peacefully after I realised they weren't mutually exclusive.

I want her back. The old her. The one that I first laid my eyes on. The kindest girl in the world, the one who didn't bother hiding her crush on me, the one that impressed me with her wit and ability to crack really intelligent jokes and laugh without restraint until her belly hurt, the one whose waist I encircled and knew for THAT moment, that life was amazingly, wonderfully glorious...

*sigh* What an empty dream.

The Khai Tzer Award

I'm starting a tribute to great writing. Anyone, anywhere who writes a sentence, paragraph, entire essay, or very very rarely, an entire book of exceptional prose will be highlighted and celebrated. Here's the first, from a very very funny blog by a porn store clerk.

*****
since it's all, you know, cartoons, and some of it is charming fare like My Neighbor Totoro. But a lot of it is incredibly hardcore stuff - way worse than we'll allow in the real-people porn downstairs. My position on porn is that I'm fine with whatever floats your boat, as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult. Manga throws both of those rules out the window. Sure, all the boxes claim that all the characters are at least 18, but a lot of them are clearly drawn to look about 12. And there's a lot of raping. Not just run-of-the-mill raping, either - we're talking about triple-penetration rape by demons.

*****

Show-off eats Humble Pie

Friends, here is a friendly tip: If you are fit, healthy and in shape, do not, I repeat DO NOT under any circumstances show off and tell anyone that you never get sick.
If you do, you are guaranteed to fall ill within the month. I distinctly remember this happening to me 3 times in the past, the ONLY 3 times in the past 7 years I've fallen sick to a bug, and ONLY after I proudly told people that with my healthy lifestyle I never fall sick. The last time this happened was about 4 years ago.

Then one day my friend called me with this nasal twang in her voice "cobblainig aboud havig flu". Over dinner and while I was teasing her mercilessly aboud her vunny way ov talking, I superciliously announced that I NEVER got sick.

2 weeks later I had a minor bout of fever(nothing to worry about, still can function normally) but NOW I'm sneezing like a motherfucker. Seriously, I have never sneezed this much in my life. I've never had asthma(touch wood) and don't sneeze even when it's cold. Now I look at a fluorescent light and my nose decides it wants to explode repeatedly like a phlegm-filled double-barrelled blunderbuss(those old style shotguns that look like trumpets).

I get the message God. Please spare me your cosmic joke.