Sometimes you wish life had an ‘Undo’ button. If it did, i’d certainly be hitting it to undo this last year, it’s been a washout. About the only good thing that happened was that I got a new job. So, umm, yay.

Robyn: Should Have Known

I should have seen it coming,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play me,
I don’t even know

I should have seen it coming,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play with me,
I don’t even know.

I’m such a fool,
I can’t believe I let you in my life.
You broke the rules,
but I should have known you do it all the time.

Thought we were cool but then again who am I kidding
It’s every players favourite crime,
to make you feel,
like it’s all real,
when it’s a lie,
and I should have known

I should have seen it coming,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play me,
I don´t even know.

I should have seen it coming down,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play with me,
I don´t even know.

I should have known,
my family they never did pretend.
My mama felt,
she never liked you neither did my friends.
And when you blamed it all on me I should have known that’s what liars always try to do.
It wasn’t me,
It was you,
you’re the fool,
and I should have known.

I should have seen it coming down,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play with me,
I don´t even know.

I should have seen it coming down,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play with me,
I don´t even know.

I should have seen it coming down,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play with me,
I don´t even know.

I should have seen it coming down,
I should have fucking known.
How could I let you play with me,
I don´t even know.

If your heart was simple just like mine is,
then you would know just how it feels,
When someone takes advantage of your kindness,
you think you’re never gonna heal
If your soul was deep just like mine is,
then you would know not to give up,
Keep my faith, even through the darkness,
yeah I still believe in love.

I still believe, I still believe, I still believe.

How could I let you play with me,
I don´t even know.

It seems that with each Upper, there’s a Downer just around the corner. Which really sucks.

(No offense, Alexander. Heh heh heh.)

I can see why people consult psychics, clairvoyants, tarot readers and all manner of other future seers. It’s not that these people are any good at what they do, and it’s not that the client is a gullible fool (though depending on how much you pay for your fortune, yes you may be a total douche), it’s that they give you something you can rationalize to be a truth, in some dysfunctional way.

We humans like things that are tangible. Solid. Stuff we can hold onto. Stuff we can believe in.

Tangent: Ooh, how’s this for a pun: Depending on how much you pay for your fortune to be told, you may not even have a fortune anymore. No? Oh well. There is no spoon either, you daft bastard.

Our interaction with others is what makes the world go round and our lives so enriched, but it’s also what makes those shrinks with their comfy couches so rich, too.

I think we’d all be better off if we could be more straightforward, say exactly what we think, do exactly what we say, and stop hoping for what may be. But then we wouldn’t be human anymore, would we?

Wow, this is all just too deep for this hour of the day, I better go do something inane and unthinking. Like work, maybe.

Or I might dust off my Magic8ball.exe and give it a whirl, but i’m sure as hell not TXTing some 1900 number for random computer generated guidance. And shove that cookie up your ass, grandma. It’s burnt.

Some of the people you meet may be potential boyfriends, others you might have things in common with but no romantic interests in (ie just friends), and others… you quickly eliminate altogether, and not waste any more time on.

MaX: I’m going to see kylie with a friend tonight
MaX: should be interesting
mr chee - 齐俊: kylie??
MaX: you know, the singer?
mr chee - 齐俊: ooo
MaX: lol
MaX: are you sure you’re gay?
mr chee - 齐俊: y asking?
MaX: you didn’t seem to know who kylie is
MaX: lol
mr chee - 齐俊: is kylie gay?
MaX: no, but she’s a gay icon
MaX: like madonna
mr chee - 齐俊: oooo
MaX: you do know who madonna is, rite?
mr chee - 齐俊: yea
mr chee - 齐俊: u have pic here??
MaX: I sent you two pics last night
MaX: which are the same ones as on my fridae profile, to which you msgd
MaX: remember now?
mr chee - 齐俊: oooo

Reminds me of a Homer Simpson quote… “Me lose brain? Uh oh.” (All laugh..) “Why I laugh?”…

If you do find someone interesting enough to fall into the potential boyfriend category, there are a couple of shortcuts you can take which might save you some time.

Get to know their friends. As the saying goes, “birds of a feather flock together”. In simple terms, If most of his friends are tools, chances are you’re not going to like him after you get to know him well either.

When I say well, sometimes you only really get to know someone well when they move in with you. It’s only then that you see them as a whole, rather than what they want you to see when you’re together.

If they don’t have many friends, it’s harder to gauge what they’re like. In that case, you can just dive in and hope for the best, and hope you’re not wasting the next couple of years getting to know them.

I’m not sure which side of the fence i’m on with this one, but I think I may be a BAD MAN.

But then again, you can’t control the perceptions or hopes of other people. I never promised anything that I didn’t deliver. So maybe it’s not my fault. But i’m probably still a BAD MAN all the same.

Spank me!

The usual denials came out, and evidently Kazuhito Tadano is not gay, and just did a gay porno as a one off thing when he was young and needed the money. (Sounds like a line out of Southpark!)

Have a look at the pics in this link, and ask yourself: How would a guy with no gay sexual experience seem to be doing so well in this porno. Hell, he’s got it in every hole and loving it.

What’s so wrong about admitting you love cock is beyond me.

We make the trek upto Old Raffles most Fridays, where we get passable to decent Singaporean / Malaysian food, which is pretty authentic Singapore coffee-shop type fare. No plastic stools though, thankfully.

To that end, my workplace has a canteen, upstairs. Well it’s pretty much a fully fledged mixed business, really. When I started here I was warned that their quality too, is of a low standard. I think the word used was ‘crap’. Or maybe ’shit’. Can’t remember.

I rarely venture up there for my lunch, but sometimes i’ve eaten out the night before and have no leftovers to bring to work, or the leftovers I have aren’t suited to nuking (microwaving).

Today was one such day.

The toasted sandwich press in our kitchenette decided it was time for it to be ‘toast’, and stopped working yesterday, so toasties aren’t an option at the moment, so up to the Canteen I ventured.

THINGS MY CANTEEN DOES WELL (and by ‘well’, I mean borderline edible)

• Four n Twenty Pie - Put it in the pie warmer. Can’t fuck that up.
• Hot Chips - Fairly crispy, taste ok.
• Hot Dog (with mustard, onion and sauce) - Nice, but at $4.50 it’s a ripoff.
• Pasta Salad - Follow the recipe on the mayo bottle.
• Potato Cakes - Same as the chips, crispy and not oily.
• Garden Salad - Probably bought pre-done like the safeway packets.
• Penne Carbonara - Lacking a bit in the sauce, but still has taste.

THINGS MY CANTEEN DOES NOT DO WELL (and by ‘not well’ I mean borderline edible down to curry time in 30 minutes)

• Pizza Slices - Think of a McCain’s Pizza, cut into quarters, and you get 1 quarter for $7.00.
• Chicken Schnitzel Foccacia - For $8 I expect a whole schnitzel, not 3 slices (probably a quarter) of schnitzel!
• Penne Amatriciana - WTF, didn’t even have hot salami in it, let alone any chilli..
• Japanese Okonomiyaki - This was just a mistake. It didn’t even taste like one. Quite an interesting word really.. ‘Okonomi (Economy) - yaki (Yucky).. says it all! Har har!
• Coffee - They make a really bad Latte, Flat White, Cappuccino, whatever… but we all know i’m very picky with my coffee. (2in1? 3in1?.. DIE!)
• Sweet ‘n’ Sour Pork with Rice - How they fuck up steamed rice is beyond me, and the Pork bits are just as bad. They water down the sauce, too.

The Sweet n Sour Pork was today’s lunch. It’s got about 14 minutes left I think.. rumblings already.

Some ‘outings’ were more planned than others, and likewise, some received a more positive response than others.

A friend popped up on MSN recently. “My dad and I had an argument and the next thing I know… I told him I was gay…”

Not quite the best timing, but 10 points for doing it.

I remember coming out to my parents; being caucasian, it was pretty much a non-event. No hysterics, no dramas.

Mum was doing the washing when I told her. She paused a moment, then asked me who’d be giving her grandchildren. I hate kids, so procreation was never on my list of life goals. (But I do like practicing that, however.) Then she told me to go tell Dad, who was watching TV in the lounge. Being a Catholic who goes to Church every Sunday, Dad was likely to take the news a bit harder. When I told him, he was very quiet, then said that he was ‘very sad to hear that’.

The best thing about not living at home then, was that I announced I was going to head home, and I did. No awkward moments to endure while they were dealing with it. Plenty of space.

I’ve witnessed a varied range of parental reactions with some of my asian friends who came out, although sadly, most were negative.

There was Ryan, a ‘Princess’ from Brunei, who decided to come out when his mum came over for his graduation ceremony. She ordered him to pack up all his stuff out of the flat he and his bf were sharing, then she shipped him home. An easy way to break up I guess.. ‘It’s not my fault.. mum…’ - strangely convenient timing.

There was also Zac, who I dated for a couple of months. He was a half-Malay Singaporean with a Muslim upbringing. His dad was fairly computer savvy, and had found Zac’s blog after looking through the home computer’s IE history.

Zac was a bit camp, so that may have been why his Dad went hunting for confirmation in the first place. What he found detailed in the blog left no room for plausible deniability. Zac had detailed all his exploits - taking drugs, eating non-halal meats, man loving, wagging class, etc.

I’m not sure what his dad was most upset about - whether it was the eating of pork or the action of getting porked, but quicksmart he’d arranged the local Mufti to take Zac under house arrest his wing until the finish of the uni year, and then send him straight home for his National Service.

Another case was Vernon (another ex), who’d just come out and told his siblings he was gay about a month prior to when we started dating. This was October, and things were working out well - we both got along well together and had similar interests, and surprisingly he had no qualms in showing affection in public. I can remember one time where we walked hand-in-hand around Southland Shopping Centre. I think I was more self conscious at that point in time.

The only stumbling point was his sister. She was one of these people who think bashing someone over the head with a bible will cure them of any sin. Heck, if she had access to the tomes the 10 Commandments were written on, she’d bludgeon you with those instead. She’d go to bible class, and invite the class over on the weekend to bake muffins. Needless to say, she didn’t approve of her little brother’s life choice - but she tolerated it. Or so I thought. Rather, she was biding her time.

Christmas was looming, and as most international students do, they head home for Xmas/CNY. Once they were back home in Malaysia, she outed him to the parents, who naturally did the whole Asian shame / save-face thing. And naturally, he complied. “I’ll be straight, i’ll get married and have kids, coz that’s what mum and dad want me to do.” I think that lasted for about 2 months after he got back, but by then, I was history.

Happier stories include one Malaysian friend who told his mum, who didn’t seem too fussed - she just told him not to tell his father.

Probably the most accepting would be the parents of a Filipino friend. He has these bizarre conversations with his mum. Occasionally she’ll check to see if he’s gone straight, by asking ‘Do you like girls yet?’, to which he replies, ‘Mum, you don’t like vagina, do you? No.. Neither do I. I like cock, just like you!’

How Asian parents can sometimes turn a blind eye is amazing. The boy could be the minciest queen around (case and point: my Thai ex-housemate who came out to his mum at his birthday party by parading in drag..), yet somehow these parents can put up this wall of blind denial, that until you say that magic phrase, ‘I AM GAY’, they can delude themselves their son is straight.

My third Ex, Vernon. I hadn’t run into him anywhere in Melbourne, ever, since Jason’s (his friend’s) 21st Birthday party. He looked much the same as he did back then, asian genes and all that.

We broke up amidst his coming out - his bitch sister outed him to the parents when he went home to Malaysia for Christmas, wherein all hell broke loose. Upon his return to Melbourne, he’d promised to go straight etc and do what the parents wanted. Hence why we broke up. Maybe?
Barely a few months later, i’d heard he was a regular scene queen at Exchange and wherever else, then becoming attached.

Normally when you ditch a boyfriend and get a new one, you trade up. Maybe the guy I saw today had a nice personality, but wow, talk about trading down. But as long as he’s happy, eh. Lol.

Some ‘anonymous’ pussycuntmotherfucker person had a whinge to my boss, who forwarded it onto my team leader so he could talk to me.

The problem?

The fact I had my own laptop on my desk, which has its own (non-work) broadband connection. Evidently this is a security risk, because I could be copying confidential files and whatnot to somewhere. Like i’d bother!?

If they weren’t so anal retentive about blocking everything on our network, I wouldn’t even need to use my lappie, would I?

For example, I can’t even view the animated weather chart on the Bureau of Meteorology website. Blocked.

USB Sticks would be more of a security risk than my hulking laptop, which i’m certainly not trying to hide. They hold gigs, and are easily lost or easily concealed. Whatever tickles your fancy.

Maybe they should also lock down the printers, coz I dunno, someone might PRINT something sensitive and walk out the door with it.

Fuck me.

In a few posts he’s blogged about in the past few months, I seem to have been painted as the bad guy - simply because I was the one who broke up with him. Not so much in words, but the overall tone/context says as much.

I’ll also add a disclaimer right here - Of course i’m not perfect. But this isn’t about me.

I made a few thinly veiled references to our slow demise, but here it is. We broke up back in July, and even that was delayed - i’d pretty much made up my mind in January, but was hoping upon hope that something would happen and everything would fix itself - which of course didn’t happen. I’d tried talking to him a few times too, but unsurprisingly, it fell on deaf ears.

Even in February, when we were in Malaysia, Clayton noticed things weren’t right.

From about a week after Louis moved in with me, I started getting surprises. Unpleasant little surprises at how he’d just start expecting and assuming things, or eating, using and wearing things. As time went on, these liberties only increased. I KNOW when you’re in a relationship with someone that you share a lot of things, but this wasn’t simply a case of that. This was beyond anything i’ve experienced with any of my previous partners. You’re probably thinking i’m getting petty, and you might be right if it was just me thinking these things. But other people actually commented to me as well.

I’m not rich, and definitely no sugar daddy (not old enough for a start!). Nor did I have any intention of being in that kind of situation. When he moved in, we agreed on a figure of $300 a month, plus a share of the bills & groceries. A couple of weeks later when his whole family crashed at our my place for his graduation, he agreed to them stopping his living allowance. He’d get a job to support himself, and pay his bills.

That never happened. He made some loose change by buying and selling Playstation 3’s on eBay, but the amount of effort required vs the remuneration was just laughable. Not to mention every time a deal went bad, i’d have to issue a dispute on my credit card - those things take months to resolve. The point is, he never even made the effort to get a job and pay his way - though he’ll deny that, so i’ll rephrase. He never made a proper decent visible effort.

There were a few times where things he did left me seething, as well.

The first one I can recollect right now was how he needed to pay for two subjects he retook in the semester before his graduation. He couldn’t graduate unless they were paid for. The student loan he applied for was declined. And then there was some kind of expectation that i’d help him out ’short term’, which I begrudgingly did - with the understanding it would be paid back, pronto. I should have learnt my lesson there and then, because he didn’t follow that promise. The repayments were on dribble feed, and moneys accumulated went up more than down.

The second was when we were at a (campy gay) friend’s apartment one night, and the housemate of another friend was there as well. I was chatting to him. He’s straight, and I mentioned something about Louis being my partner. Louis heard from across the room, and felt the need to come over and interrupt, ‘clarifying’ that he’s not gay, he’s bi-sexual. I was dumbfounded, and I could see the guy suddenly felt very awkward. He didn’t know what to say. It’s not that he cared one way or the other, he just didn’t realise we were together. So what the fuck?

The third time was where we went to some house party in Southbank, and he introduced me as his ‘friend’. Not boyfriend. Fair enough if it was some straight party, but this was to the very gay host at a gay party. Ashamed? Keeping options open?

The fourth was where I turned up to his surprise birthday party recently (post break up, pre moving out), only I was the one surprised. He was wearing my new jacket, as well as one of my long sleeve tees. Did he ask to wear them? No, because I wasn’t around. That makes it yes by default, no?

He also commented once how cute a gay couple were because they were holding hands in public. Then he said not for me to expect us to ever do that though, because he’s ’straight acting’. Don’t mention it then, rather than rub my nose in it, hmm?

I waited until Louis finished his studies in June - just incase he went off the rails - so I wouldn’t get blamed for him failing his Masters. Inbetween when our relationship reached such a low point that I accepted it wasn’t working in Jan, and actually telling him in July, I stopped caring about many things. I think maybe it was a coping mechanism of sorts, or maybe my subconscious refused to waste any more thought power deliberating on something it’d already decided. After all, emotions are rather draining.

That and also during June, we met another friend. Unless Louis has deleted the posts, you can read all about how Kin evidently drove the final wedge between us. In reality, it was a last ditch effort on my part for us to get out more and socialise with other people with similar interests, as interacting with most of my existing friends didn’t interest Louis in the slightest.

Kin is very outgoing, smiley, talkative, and quick-minded. I thought this might bring Louis out of his shell a bit. (Strangely enough it has, post break-up.) As we met up with Kin quite often over the next month, Louis ended up being more of a spectator on the sidelines. The interaction was mainly between Kin and myself.

It was plain to see - Louis and I had nothing in common anymore. Besides watching a few shows on TV and deciding what to have for dinner, there was very little interaction. E.g., stone cold silence for half an hour whilst driving back home from Box Hill. ‘Comfortable’ silence, my ass.

Besides noticing that meeting up with Kin wasn’t bringing us together, I noticed i’d started developing feelings for him. What was not to like? He was everything that Louis was missing, and more. Most importantly, he wasn’t afraid to be himself. Maybe Lady Luck was handing me an ace card.

I told Kin I was breaking up with Louis, and asked if he’d be interested in getting to know me better - no timeline. Not perfect timing but fair question I thought - from one straightforward person to another.

We seemed to enjoy eachother’s company, and I also sensed there was interest beyond just being friends; but he declined, saying that as he’d met Louis and I as a couple, he’d always see us that way. It’s times like those where you wish you could read minds, to figure out what someone’s really thinking. Even to a best friend, what they think and what they say can be totally different.

I actually wonder that if I had broken up with Louis before I met Kin, if things would have worked out differently between us. But i’ll never know, because it didn’t happen that way. And now, even though Kin says we’re still friends, it’s obviously a bullshit line. I asked him out, he felt weird about it, and now he’s best friends with Louis. Never calls. Never messages. Never replies. Just call a spade a spade, eh? We were passing acquaintances.

It was weird… the day Louis moved everything out.. once all his stuff was gone, I actually felt sad. Up until that point, nothing. But then.. sad. For a minute.

Louis and I _might_ be friends again at some stage in the future, but there’s gonna have to be some lag time inbetween. Too much water under the bridge, and all that. And if we meet for dinner, we will be going dutch on the bill. Or maybe he can just pay the lot. For once.

—————-

Some of the things i’ve described will obviously be how I perceive and feel about things. He’ll see things totally differently. The objective truth is probably a bit of both, or somewhere inbetween.

Currently Playing: Placebo - Blind