...and i'd say

"Well-Hung"

2010-11-10T03:50:00.000-08:00

One thing that I really like in a woman is nice hands. Well, “nice” is a pretty subjective word, especially in my case. Some people – like my friend Helen, who loves hands (male hands, that is) in a way that I wouldn’t even be able to compete with – think that great hands are hands with long, tapered fingers, with fingernails that aren’t cut too short. Anyway, for her, long fingers are a must-have criteria.
Put it down to my sexuality, but for one thing, I don’t really give a shit about long, male fingers, with fingernails that are too short. I like nice hands; nice women hands. Actually, the shorter her nails are, the better! Since, you know, long fingernails are dangerous and all that (imagine my utter mortification when I had to explain to my friends why lesbians and short fingernails should go together, which is another story).
As usual, I digress. This post is an anecdote about fingernails, my “disgusting habit” (according to Helen), and how that fits in with being a lesbian. Hey, everybody wins, on this blog!
So, there we were, sitting at our table in the college foyer, Challenge and Change in Society textbooks spread out across the table, attempting to study for the quiz. I lifted a finger to my mouth and stuck the nail between my teeth, ignoring the fact that it was too short for me to bite (you see, I thought that if I cut my nails really short, whenever I tried to bite them, I just wouldn’t be able to). Before I could rip my nail out of my index finger and drip O-type blood all over my textbook, like something from a movie scene, Helen reached over and yanked my hand out of my mouth.
“You know, you could have really nice hands, if you only tried,” she said, imploringly, smacking a plastic ruler down onto my fingers. “Stop biting your nails.”
“That’s why I’m brilliant!” I exclaimed happily, and extended my hand to her. “See, I cut my fingernails so short, that I couldn’t bite my fingernails, even if I wanted to, and not just out of a habit that I’ve had ever since I can remember!” I grinned – sheer genius. “I, um, also probably shouldn’t grow my fingernails out. Ever.”
“Jesus, why?!” Helen exclaimed, looking utterly horrified at this revelation.
“I already explained this,” I told her, rolling my eyes. “You know, the whole—”
“Well, do you have to use your hands for that?” she asked. “And, you’re not doing it with anyone right now, are you? See, therefore, you can grow out your nails.”
And that was that with Helen, who is still waiting for me to grow out my fingernails so that she can stare with honor at the beauty of my hands (well, in her opinion, that is). However, with my mom, things went a little differently. We were getting a pair of Converse sneakers, since she decided that, having all the colors of the rainbow sitting in my shoe rack, under sneakers, that I should have a black pair, for my more formal occasions. So, there we were, in the Mid Valley outlet, with me trying on a pair of black Jack Purcell ones, which I’m partial to.
“These are actually a little on the small side,” I said, prying a pair of size six sneakers that didn’t even manage to house my whole foot, and handing them back to the salesman by their laces. “Could I get a seven… maybe even an eight?”
“Again, I swear, you should have been a boy,” my mother said, huffing. “You’d have been the perfect boy. And can you imagine how much less discrimination I’d have to deal with, if my son were the perfect gentleman, and my daughter were not a lesbian.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I raised an eyebrow and tried on the size eight sneakers, into which my feet fit snugly – perfect.
“Look at your big hands and feet,” my mother replied. “You know what they say about men with big feet… Well, no, you probably wouldn’t. You’re a lesbian.”
“Size doesn’t matter,” I replied, smirking to myself. “And, anyway, I have big hands. I guess maybe size does matter, in the lesbian universe.”
My mother looked confused for a second. “Big hands? What does that have to do – oh!”
I grinned, taking off the sneakers and putting on my Reeboks. “Yeah. Hands. And I happen to have pretty big ones. Strong ones, too. From all that violin-playing.”
“I can’t believe you just said that to me,” my mother said, sounding very shocked, and slightly faint. “You had better not be actually using those big hands, Stephanie, on anyone… anyone who is not yourself, that is.”
I paused for a moment, letting the impact of her words sink in and sear my brain, burn disgusting images onto the back of my eyelids and cost me another year in the psychiatric ward of a non-insurance-covered hospital that would keep me in debt till my dying day.
“I can’t believe you just said that to me,” I retorted, shuddering heavily, picking up the shopping bag and marching on ahead of her, traumatized beyond salvation.

"Day 10: 1 Confession"

2010-10-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

This is fairly straightforward;
Whenever I see someone who looks like you — about the same height, the same body type, the same hair and the same laugh Whenever I see someone who looks like you — about the same height, the same body type, the same hair and the same laugh — I do a double-take. I do a double-take.

—

In other news, I am on formspring, so click the link and send over your questions!

"Day 9: 2 Smileys that Describe Your Life Right Now"

2010-10-05T05:23:00.000-07:00

1. 0_o

2. XD

"Day 8: 3 Turn-Ons"

2010-10-04T05:17:00.000-07:00

1. Good jawline, and/or side profile, and/or nice feet, and/or great smile, and/or beautiful collarbones.
I don’t have an explanation for why I’m attracted to these body parts, but I just find them so amazingly sexy. I haven’t met anyone with all five, except Amelie Mauresmo, which is why all five aren’t requirements, because apparently, it’s impossible (unless you're the aforementioned Amelie Mauresmo, in which case, you should call me!).
But hell, if you have even one of these, I’m probably drooling over it secretly, and you just don’t know it.

2. Smelling good.
I love that. When you smell good, I just want to hold you and smell you forever, especially resting my nose in that space between your jawline and shoulder.
Yeah, okay, that’s starting to sound a little creepy, even to me.

3. Gramatically-correct spoken and written English.
This has to be the sexiest thing in the history of sexy things. Whenever I meet someone who speaks and writes great English without forcing it, I automatically have this urge to jump them.
Yum.

"Day 7: 4 Turn-Offs"

2010-09-28T08:38:00.000-07:00

1. Skinny-ness.
~~Is that even a word?~~ I mean, yeah, it’s nice to look at and all, but seriously, what is there to cuddle? Just, don’t be skinny, okay?
Also, if you’re skinny; most of the time, it means you watch what you eat, and I’ll feel weird eating around you, and I really like food.

2. Wiseasses.
This is different from smartasses, who are actually funny.
Sometimes.
Wiseasses are people who think they’re being smart and funny and sarcastic and cryptic when they’re really not.
I have three classes a day, and one person like that in my second class, and two people like that in my third class. Honestly, I just get really annoyed and stressed out with these people.

3. Listening to hip-hop all/most of the time.
Which means you automatically have bad taste in music. Which means, I don’t like you.
Yes, I am a seriously pretentious music fuck, and I judge people based on their taste in music.

4. Taking off your shoes and having bad-smelling feet.
I take off my shoes and my feet smell fine. There is a way to get your feet to smell good, okay? Wash your feet, get some foot powder, put on a pair of socks with your sneakers, do whatever it takes.
Because stinky feet are just disgusting.

"Day 6: 5 People Who Mean A Lot"

2010-09-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

This is in no particular order.
—

1. Cadbury.
I know, he’s a dog, my dog, and technically not a person, but my mom refers to him as my “brother”, he sleeps in my bed a lot of the time, and has meant so much to me from the moment my dad set him down in my arms, when he measured from the tip of my finger to just before the middle of my forearm.

2. My parents.
Yes, that’s two people — contrary to popular belief, I can count — but hey, since they’re married, and two become one and all that crap and blahblahblah, so that’s supposed to make sense.
Make of it what you will.

3. Helen and Alwy.
They complete me, because they both sit next to me in Challenge and Change in Society, and Alwy is like a male version of Helen (or maybe Helen’s like a female version of Alwy?) but they’re both awesome, and they complete me, — not in a perverted way, so that counts as one.

4. Amy and Vivien.
I’m aware that I’m flat-out cheating now, but honestly — Amy and Vivien are constantly together; they tweet each other pretty much hourly, and whenever I see them, it’s always together, so that probably counts as one.
For example, Vivien might say, “Amy and I are taking you shopping for a dress!”, or I might say, “Amy, let’s kidnap Vivien and go out!”
See how that works? Anyway, it’s not like the Numbered Day Challenge Police are going to come all the way to KL and arrest me.

5. Nick.
Because I feel like he’s the only person in my family who truly knows and understands me, despite how bitchy we get with each other.

"Day 5: 6 Things You Wish You'd Never Done"

2010-09-19T06:47:00.000-07:00

1. Fucked up my friendship with him.
Everyone else doesn’t seem to think much of him, and I’ll admit he has his crappy, terrorist days. Still, I remember the good times we had together, and the jokes he used to tell me. I still can’t listen to “Madman Over the Water” without laughing my ass off.
And I miss having that closeness with him, because I could be stupid around him, and vice versa.

2. Made that first cut.
I don’t know why I did it, in the first place. Actually, I do know why. I’m so sick of fighting it. Over and over and over again.
And I don’t even know who I’m supposed to apologize to.

3. Met you.
And I know it’s pretty harsh, coming from me, but I honestly wish I hadn’t. You know that song by Blink-182, the one where Tom sings, “You fucked up my life.”? I pretty much feel this way all the time.
I would give almost anything not to feel like this anymore.

4. Drank that glass of milk when I was six.
It tasted funny, but it was milk and I drank it anyway. And I was sick for a week, and I couldn’t eat or drink any dairy-based products, which was when my family decided to go on a dairy-product binge.

5. Allowed myself to be Confirmed as a Catholic.
And now, whenever someone from church sees me in somewhere that’s not church (that usually happens, because I don’t go to church), they’re like, “How come I don’t see you in church anymore?”
When this happens, I have this irrepressible urge to punch them in the face.

6. Made a lot of noise in high school, and for the past nine months, college.
I don’t know, I just feel like making a lot of noise and being so happy and hyper and loud all the time kind of ~~made~~ makes it hard for me to be emotional and depressed sometimes, because everyone expects me to be happy.
Even if I’m upset, it usually comes off as bitchy, so my moods in college swing between extremely happy/hyper and loud, or bitchy and sarcastic.
I feel like I can’t even hang on to my grief in peace.

"Day 4: 7 Things that Cross Your Mind A Lot"

2010-09-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

1. You. Me. Us.
I know that these are technically three things, but it’s in the context of you, so I suppose it counts as one. This is something that’s on my mind pretty much 70% of the time.

2. My family.
If we’ll all actually ever come to terms with each other, and if everything will ever work out. If I’ll always feel the way I do about them. If they’ll ever have the clarity to accept me. If I’ll ever want to come back home after I leave.

3. Sex, sexual innuendos, and how I always manage to pick up on anything that even vaguely sounds dirty in a conversation.
Hey, I’m an eighteen-year-old with raging hormones and a creative mind… give me a break!

4. Storylines.
That I’ll never end up writing, or stopping halfway, until a few months later, when I pull it out again and stare at it for hours, not realizing that half the day has gone while I’ve written… approximately two pages.
Yeah, pathetic.

5. How I’m going to bullshit my way through the next presentation.
Granted, I could graduate with the highest honors and get my Ph.D in Bullshitology, but it has to be planned. Half the time, it works. The other half, I’m not so lucky, and my lecturer catches me out.

6. “Holy fucking hell, I am so tired.”
And then, I wonder why I pronounce “tired” the way I do. Of all people, my grandma’s caregiver asked me why, when I say, “tired”, all the letters kind of slur together, so it just sounds like, “trrrd”.
Still, it makes my mouth feel awkward to say, “tye-erd”, so I stick with what I got. :)

7. What’s for breakfast/lunch/dinner.
I turned 18, and I’m hungry all the time.

"Day 3: 8 Ways to Win Your Heart"

2010-09-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

1. Be funny. Stupid funny, sarcastic funny, sexual funny (which is personally my favorite), random funny; just be funny when you talk to me on a personal level, and I am yours.

2. Smile a lot! Look over and smile at me; you know those big smiles that can induce internal melting? Yeah. I love those, so just smile at me a lot in that way.
That’s awesome.

3. Confidence. Confidence brings on that screams — for me — “YOU KNOW YOU WANNA DO ME!” and half the time, yeah, I do!
But. Be confident and not cocky. :) I frigging hate that.

4. Introduce me to new and amazing food. And teach me how to eat it, don’t just sit there and watch me make a fool out of myself trying to figure out what to do with the butter when there’s nothing but rice to put it on.
Or, bake me brownies or red velvet cupcakes. I will propose marriage immediately.

5. Must love animals. I love it when I sometimes see girls stop to play with animals that aren’t their own, and they don’t do it because they want you to think they like animals, because it’s a sexy quality, but they do it because they genuinely like animals.
I cannot even begin to emphasize how much I love that.

6. Give good hugs. Simple as that. :)

7. Share funny childhood stories of yourself with me. That way, we can exchange, and see who did more stupid things, because I have almost everyone beat with the story of getting my head stuck in the square-patterned fence of my grandmother’s house.
Also, I love kids, and if you were a cute and/or funny kid, then I’m sold.

8. I love it when I get to watch movies and cuddle with someone throughout the movie, especially the depressing parts.
Hold me while we watch Lost & Delirious, and we’ll be together forever. :)

"Day 2: 9 Things About Yourself"

2010-09-04T02:29:00.000-07:00

1. I have approximately 20 alphabets in my full name. This is something that never fails to amuse me when I have to write it down.

2. When I was younger, I used to tell people I was all-Indian, because I didn’t understand my racial background, until my mom sat me down and explained very carefully that I was half-Portuguese. After that, I got very worried about whether my top half or my bottom half, or my left half or my right half, was my Portuguese one.
I guess she didn’t explain it quite so carefully, after all.

3. The only extremely-neat bookshelf row in my room is the one that houses my collection of LGBT books. Big ol’ queer right here, you guys.
And even bigger bookworm!

4. I seldom lose my temper, but when I do, it can be triggered with the slightest thing — say, a touch from the person who pissed me off. If he’s a guy, I don’t hesitate in shoving him away from me; in any other case, I’ll say something really cutting that I end up regretting later.
I’m working on that, though; learning to pick my battles and stay quiet when I’m pissed off. And learning that I'm only human.

5. However, I’m usually reasonably nice, and I like hugs. I think everyone would be better off if they had a hug. Therefore, cuddling during movies is great, too.
But I don’t like holding hands (unless you’re really special), because it makes me feel weird, and possessive and owned. And not in the fun way.

6. I still haven’t figured out why people think I’m funny; I think Borat is one of the best movies ever, so I probably have a terrible sense of humor. People also tend to associate “Steph” with “loud”, right before “funny”.
I swear, I really don’t get this. Personally, I think I’m very bitter and sarcastic. Maybe it’s the wanna/gonnabe-writer thing.

7. Whenever my mom brings my laundry into my room, the first thing I do, even before putting my clothes away, is roll up the sleeves on my button-down shirts, so they’re always ready to go.
Also, my closet space consists mainly of hoodies, button-downs, t-shirts and pajamas. Yeah, I frigging love pajamas! And don’t get me started on sneakers.

8. I have a list. Brandi Carlile, Freja Beha, Amelie Mauresmo, Ellen Page, Andrea Gibson and Sara Quin are on that list.
Now you tell me what kind of list you think it is. ;)

9. According to my friend Erin, I am the lamest person in the world because I know all the words to Tangled Up in Blue and Hallelujah, two songs which she personally can’t stand because they’re “too long”.
Whatever, Erin. :)

"Day 1: 10 Different Things You Want to Say to 10 Different People Right Now"

2010-08-21T06:28:00.000-07:00

1. I miss you so much sometimes, it’s been two years and I still go to bed crying about it.
I feel like I need you around to explain things to me like you used to, and laugh at my jokes, and tell me things you’d heard on your satellite radio, and even scold me when I was out of order. I hope you’re not in pain anymore, because if you’re not in pain for the rest of forever, I’d say that my pain doesn’t matter, and that the trade-off is fairly equal.
Still, it won’t ever stop me from loving or missing you terribly. I wish I could have told you all this to see what you’d think of it.
I know that on my wedding day, I’ll wish you were here. And on the day when I hold my first child in my arms and think how much I would have liked my baby to know you.

2. Hey, um, just so you know, I’m actually not as thick as I/we/they/you make me out to be. We can stop being so awkward around each other already because I can’t stand it. Also, I’m afraid you’ll read this and know it’s for you.

3. I’m sorry, but I think you’re just a really big fucking bitch, and I hope karma comes around and bites you in the ass one day. You deserve a gigantic FUCK YOU up the ass. And, um, so there. Slutfaced whore.

4. You probably don’t know this, but talking to you and spending time with you is the only thing keeping me sane on a daily basis.
You’re honest, you’re funny and so deadpan; you’re like my mental therapy and peace of mind without the extensive costs, and I am so glad we’re friends. Also, it wouldn’t occur to you that this one is for you, because you don’t have a huge ego — which I really like about you and is one of the reasons why we’re still friends and I feel so comfortable talking to you about anything in the universe.
We’re friends even though I’m a huge weirdo and you’ve told me so in various ways, and I really appreciate having you in my life. Any girl would be lucky to have you in her life. I know I truly am.

5. I was looking at you, and I know this sounds really weird, but you looked really good. Like, “I-could-totally-tap-that” good. Mmhmm. And I kept thinking about that one time when you jokingly went, “You. Me. Bed. Now.” which I know is really weird. But, uh, you’re pretty damn hot. I think it was those glasses.
Also, I apologize for being eighteen and still having raging hormones.

6. Whenever I see you all, I somehow feel that the awkwardness is all my fault, because I’ve grown up and changed, and it’s either that you’ve already done that, or you haven’t. And it’s not your fault because you can’t relate to me, so if it’s not your fault, then it has to be mine.
So, yeah. I’m sorry for being so… extreme, and intense, and awkward. Don’t worry, I’m not going to come back very often once I leave, so we won’t have to subject ourselves to that infernal trauma of seeing each other four times a year. And please don’t feel bad about it, it’s really not your fault; I know we all still love each other the same.
It’s just communicating that’s gotten so hard.

7. If I could have a body like anyone’s, it would be like yours. Only with more boobs. Also, note that I said body. I’d like to keep my own face, thanks very much.

8. All I need for you to do is close your eyes and trust me. I know it’s a stupid thing to say, but seeing as we haven’t met yet, this is all you have to go by on… Sorry.
Anyway, just know that even if we haven’t met, I’ll find you, or you’ll find me, when the time is right, and I promise that I’m going to amaze/startle/shock/surprise the living daylights out of you. In a good way.
And I’ll always, always make you laugh.

9. I love you two, so fucking much. And we’ve come so far in eighteen years. Still, I wonder, if I laid it — me — all out, tried to explain myself to the both of you, I wonder if you’ll understand.

10. You should really eat more. And I mean that in the best way possible, because I’m worried about you, and because I love you. Also, thoughts of you turning into a typical “member of society” who thinks women should wear tight clothes and make-up to impress men, and behave a certain way, thinking that speaking your mind and standing up for yourself is bad, just like she is turning out to be, those thoughts keep me up at night.

"Sorry Excuses; Literally"

2010-08-20T06:16:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't been updating my blog for the most part lately, and for that, I am truly sorry. I've been busy regarding a number of things; college, my cousin's upcoming wedding (where I'm a bridesmaid and have to wear a dress), and dealing with some intense personal issues that seem to be draining the life out of me – I swear I'm going fucking crazy! That's why this post is titled Sorry Excuses; Literally, because I know it's a sorry excuse, and for that, I am sorry. So, it's kind of a pun, get it? Heh.
Anyway, as a kind-of apology, I've decided that I'm going to do this numbered day challenge that I found on tumblr. (Also, I am on tumblr, click here to find/follow/read my stupid ramblings there). Here's the list of things I'll be posting on here for the next ten days. To me, some of it will be more than a little stupid and embarrassing, but hey, I'm finally blogging here again, right?
And, if you've kept coming to my blog to look for an update that isn't there... well, consider this my apology. :)
–
The challenge:
Day One: Ten things you want to say to ten different people right now.
Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
Day Three: Eight ways to win your heart.
Day Four: Seven things that cross your mind a lot.
Day Five: Six things you wish you’d never done.
Day Six: Five people who mean a lot (in no order whatsoever).
Day Seven: Four turn offs.
Day Eight: Three turn ons.
Day Nine: Two smileys that describe your life right now.
Day Ten: One confession.

"World View Reflections"

2010-06-17T06:59:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post that may come under a lot of fire, but it’s something I think I should share during this time.
Blame it on my Catholic upbringing, which makes me want to stand up for the oppressed.
Blame it on my father, who is more into politics than anyone I’ve ever met.
Blame it on any number of things; religion, discussions, world views, the people who have been nothing but nice to me for the two weeks mom, dad and I spent in Jerusalem, on our pilgrimage.
You can keep shoving the blame off on anyone whom you’d like to, as people seem to be doing quite freely during this period. I can’t blame you, it’s your world view; I’m not even going to try and change it, because you can have yours, and I’ll have mine.
It comes down to so many things, the Jewish-Indian lady who has been a family friend ever since I can remember, who has wiped my tears when I cracked my head on her living-room table, whose children I have played with, becoming as close to them as if they were my brother and sister; time spent playing tennis, sunny afternoons by the pool at their apartment.
It comes down to silly things, like drinking Borscht and sour cream with my dad’s Russian-Jewish friend, uncle Mikael, over Christmas, when he made it. Like reading “When We Were Bad” by Charlotte Mendelssohn. Like being taken out for strudels with uncle Mikael’s son. Like getting calls during Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, to be wished a very happy new year, with lots of luck for my first year at college.
From learning their culture, to being accepted as part of their community, and being accepted for who I am among them, telling uncle Mikael’s son, Shai, that I’m gay, and being accepted, with a gentle smile and a nod of his head, for it, when I would probably have been persecuted by anyone else so religious.
Because Shai and I used to challenge each other to see who could hold out for longer, keeping Kosher and not eating pork, even though there was delicious Malaysian bak kut teh all around us, stewed pork, roasted pork dumplings and the like (that was one challenge which I lost and will accept it, fair and square). For being allowed, last year, to pluck Shai’s eyebrows and poke him randomly in the nose. If I were straight – or even bisexual – he would be one boy whom I would definitely go for.
Because of this, despite the fact that almost everyone’s been die-hard in supporting them, especially my Muslim friends, I have to say that I cannot bring myself to side with Palestine on this one. Say what you will, I'm sticking by what I feel, because as an eighteen-year-old lesbian who's part of the minority, and as a woman, as a dyke, as a person of mixed-parentage, I can honestly say that I don't think; I feel.

"The Games People Play"

2010-03-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

"She's a cold one and it hurts me so."

"Pushing and pulling wait,

It's the hard part but the true love way,

Girl, you're wanted; like wanted man,

With your smart mouth and your killer hand."

- Kings of Leon; True Love Way.

***

I don't get why she thinks it's okay to screw with my brain like this. It's pretty much hell for me to stand next to her, and hear her say these things to me, and want and want and want to believe it, because I want it so much.

Because I want her so much.

But, you know what?

I know it sounds really stupid, and pathetic, but if it's all I can get, then I'll take it.

***

Note: This blogger will stop being emo by the time her next post is up. Please be patient.

"Work it!"

2010-03-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

“Wear those damn heels!” Amy said, rolling her eyes as she tried to convince me to abandon my plans to wear sneakers.
“I don’t have any,” I said miserably. “And I want Coooooooooonverseeee.”
“Doesn’t mean we don’t,” Amy said cheerfully, referring to the heels. “Steph – people will change, and it’s time to change for the better good.”
“But I’m a shoe size 8!” I yelped, imagining my feet stuffed into smaller shoes.
“So?” Amy sighed. “I’m a size 8, too.”
“And I don’t know how to walk in heels,” I muttered, sounding about three years old.
“Learn,” Amy said determinedly, a steely glint in her eye.
“In a couple of hours…?” I whined, my bottom lip sticking out in a pout.
“Yes.” Amy’s tone left no room for argument. “During the dinner or lunch, or whatever the hell it is, it’s not like you’re gonna walk around that much.”
“But then,” I started. “What if I fall?”
“You won’t, okay?” Amy tried reassuring me. “Do you think you’re a klutz?”
“I’m a klutz,” I said sincerely. “Graceful is so not me.”
“Right,” Amy said sarcastically. “I believe you. It’s not gonna kill you, Steph. You’re supposed to be graceful. If not, you won’t be able to turn heads – like I do, when I walk in heels!” She laughed, noting her own vanity, before continuing. “But seriously. People will look at you longer. Good-looking people will look at you longer,” she said, laughing loudly, again.
“I’m not vain,” I said, running a hand through my hair (sometimes I wonder why I don’t cut it, then I remember I love it too much). “I’m, like, klutzy. If you asked me to describe myself in one word, I’d say adorkable.”
“But your ego’s huge!” Amy argued. “Steph, just wear it, and make all of us happy. I’m not asking you to kill yourself – just wear the heels and make yourself look like you’re supposed to look at a lunch or a dinner.”
“Lunch?” I said, suddenly perking up. “But I usually just wear shorts, flip-flops and go.”
Amy sighed, exasperated. “You’re not eating at a Mamak stall now,” she said, while I ran around, screaming for a Mamak stall as Amy went on. “If I ate there, I wouldn’t wear heels. I’d wear flip-flops, shorts, big t-shirts. We’re talking hotel now. Please dress well.”
“Ooooh,” I said suddenly. “Um. You mean, like Ana Ivanovic or one of them.”
“Yes, yes,” Amy said patiently. “Steph, the only reason we ask you to dress properly is because we want you to look good, okay? If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have said anything else. So, yeah – listen to Vivien, Helen and I. Just wear it, it’ll make your mom happy and surprise everyone else.”
I sighed. “You know, you’re actually getting to me.”
“Come on, Steph,” Amy said gently, like she was coaxing a puppy to roll over.
“I’ll try,” I said, mentally slapping myself as soon as I’d said it – I am such a goddamn stupid sucker to let them talk me into these things. “No promises, okay? If it’s comfortable, then I’ll wear it.”
“Wear it!” Amy exclaimed, then louder. “Wear it! It’s a challenge. You must; do one of your 1000 things to do before you die, then you can strike that off your list.”
“I already struck a lot of things off,” I said defensively, staring sullenly into my Coke.
Amy smiled humorlessly. “This is one of the things that you’re gonna strike off,” she said in a monotone. “Do it tomorrow, or I’ll make you wear heels on your wedding day.”
“What?” I gasped, my eyes wide in shock. “You mean, my wedding day with Amelie?”
“Yes, that wedding day,” Amy said. “I bet Amelie would be happy, because at least her bride looks like a bride!”
I rolled my eyes. “Um, nooo,” I said, sounding like a sullen child. “Wouldn’t she want to be the bride?”
“Are you paying for her everything?” Amy asked, then answered her own question. “No! You’re not the… man, is it? Whatever. You’re not the man, Steph.”
“I will, eventually,” I said, referring to paying for Amelie’s everything, not the fact that I’ll eventually be a man – penises are pretty gross, if you ask me. “When my book, The Best Book Ever, sells a million copies, then I’ll pay for her everything.”
“Right,” Amy said, smirking. “That’ll be the day. There are millions of authors out there, your Best Book Ever has to be twice as best – if there’s such a thing – as The Best Book Ever, Steph.”
“Of course, of course,” I said reassuringly, nodding, as I secretly tried to change the subject from heels to anything else.
“Yes,” Amy said, then continued. “Just wear it, Steph. Like I said, if it wasn’t for you to look good, we wouldn’t even give two shits about asking you to do it,” she concluded, smiling like a champion debater.
“Okay,” I muttered, just to appease her. “I’ll try, okay? I’m already doing the stupid dress, for god’s sake.”
“Okay!” Amy smiled. “Go, Steph! Look at your legs – they’re absolutely the sex. You’ll get compliments. Walk like a lady, not like a man.”
“Um, Amy?” I frowned, the cogs in my brain turning slowly. “You mean, there’s actually a difference?”
“What difference?” Amy asked impatiently, frowning at my collection of sneakers.
“In the way men and women walk, I mean.” I shut the door to my sneakers in the shoe-cupboard, protecting them from Amy’s glare.
“Yes, there is,” Amy said, smacking herself on the forehead. “You mean you didn’t know or you didn’t notice?”
“Nope.” I shrugged. “I mean, come on – it’s not like I watch the way Amali walks, like Adriana Lima or something, or Chow (this really butch girl who used to be in our class) walks like The Rock. I don’t really care how people walk.”
“Okay.” Amy drew in a breath, ready to explain. “It’s not to say that people walk like models or stuff like that, but to see whether you can walk confidently – as a lady. Don’t tell me you don’t like the attention, which would be the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”
“No,” I said slowly. “The biggest lie I’ve ever told would be, ‘Yes, mom, I like that dress’.”
Amy laughed. “To hear that from you would be normal, so it’s not considered. And you haven’t answered my question yet, either.”
“Um…” I scratched my head, ADD kicking in. “What was the question, again?”
“Steph,” Amy said seriously. “We’re not six or seven years old. You know what I’m talking about, so please, don’t be a dumbfuck, okay?”
“Okay, okay,” I replied, holding my hands up in surrender. “But Amy, I don’t know if I can even walk like… a woman, was it, you said?”
“You can,” Amy told me confidently. “Just practice.”
I rolled my eyes behind Amy’s back. “Right,” I muttered, breathing in deeply, as if I was stuck doing yoga (and I would’ve chosen yoga over this). “I can do this.”
Not, my brain screamed, like something out of Borat (which is my favorite movie of all time).
Amy snapped her fingers at me. “Well, what are you waiting for? Borrow one of your mom’s heels and start walking in it. Oh, and no offence, but you normally walk in a completely unladylike manner.”
I snorted, trying to hide my laughter as I went to get a pair of my mom’s heels, being careful not to select her favorite pair of Jimmy Choo shoes (like they would even fit me – I’m like, a size 8 or even 9 sometimes – but I have good feet, I like them).
“Don’t hunch!” Amy barked at me.
“Dude, what do you expect from someone who’s been wearing sneakers all her life?” I blurted defensively, looking wistfully at my pair of Reeboks in the corner.
“Still,” Amy said calmly, drawing in a breath. “I said, don’t hunch!”
“Okay.” I teetered precariously on the shoes, grabbing the wall for balance.
“Good,” Amy replied, nodding her approval. “You’re doing it for yourself, to look good – always remember that.”
“Okay,” I echoed, my mind already shutting down to go to my happy place. “Look good; I want to look good, right?”
“Do you want to look like hunchback of Notre Dame?” Amy said pointedly. “If no, then yes – you do want to look good.”
“Well, no,” I said, thinking about this. “As long as we’re on the topic of animated characters, I’d much rather be the She-Hulk! Killer body on that green chick, no?”
Amy smacked her forehead against the wall. “Oh, god.”

"Girls = Confusion"

2010-03-14T22:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, though very rarely, I wish I was straight. I mean, come on – it’d be so nice to not have to worry about what the neighbors will think when no guys turn up at your house, but a legion of very physical, gropetastic, hot girls do (granted, I haven’t ever had a really hot girl show up at my house, but you get what I mean). It’d be nice to not have to wonder what people are saying about you because of who you hang out with, and because of the way you dress. Also, I sometimes wish that I was straight simply because girls are confusing. With guys, you know exactly what they want – guys aren’t exactly the best at being subtle, but with girls, they have to go around about a million different ways before you’re able to wrap your mind around what they want… and even then, most of the time, your guess is way, way off from what they want.
Here’s an example. I had a crush on one of my friends, and I told her, because she’s liked me, on and off, for about three years now. I thought I was all mature and grown-up and ready for a relationship… only to get shot down because apparently, she didn’t want to be in a relationship with me and ruin the friendship if we ever broke up (talk about being pessimistic, right, give me some credit – I wasn’t going to ruin it). I didn’t want to push for it (my parents and practically the rest of my family didn’t like her, and I didn’t want to be the gay and prodigal child), so I did my best to get over her. And yeah, eventually, it happened, and I had someone new – Chewable, to be exact – walk into my life and get the smile back on my face and find a place in my heart, which is no easy task; I feel like a wall sometimes.
Anyway, I decided that yeah, okay, I’ll try and be friends with the other girl, so we hung out a couple of times, and we strongly avoided the topic of what had happened, or almost-happened, or never-happened (pick whichever you want) between us. Needless to say, since I was (am!) insanely hung up on Chewable, she was (is!) the subject of all I had to say (and my tweets, and my blog posts, and my thoughts, and my poems and my – well, you get what I’m trying to say here), I talked about her quite a bit, admittedly. The other girl acted like it was perfectly fine, up until one night when she sent me a text saying, “You know what you’re a fucking asshole screw you don’t ever speak to me again” – what amazing grammar, don’t you think? But I digress, I was pretty pissed about it, but now I realize not to be bothered by stupid people.
Okay, so after reading the text, and garnering my initial reaction of anger and blood pounding in my ears and my hands shaking – just kidding, it wasn’t that bad, but I was angry – and reading another e-mail she sent me in the morning, saying that she felt that way because I talked about Chewable so much after telling her that I liked her. As you can probably imagine; try putting yourself in my shoes – gay and 18 and having absolutely no prior experience – I was confused, and then I thought to myself, “Well, if you’d wanted me to fight for us, you should’ve told me that in the first place!” because if someone tells you that they don’t want to be your girlfriend, and that you should get over them, then, if you don’t want to look like a stalker and/or a wannabe-rapist, then you probably should work towards, like they said, getting over them.
If she’d been a guy, and I’d been straight, she – or he, as a boy, probably would’ve said, “Oh, hey, you like me? Dude, that’s so cool – I like you too. Um, so. Wanna make out?” or something along those lines, because boys, unlike girls, are very up-front and uncomplicated creatures (and also pretty dumb, for the most part; or at least the straight, teenage ones are). Girls, on the other hand, will make you think that it’s not okay to like them, and that you must get over them, and after that, you must like someone else, but that’s not what they actually, really mean. And this is why I find girls extremely confusing, and why I wish I was straight, sometimes, having to deal with stupid boys instead. But then, some amazingly hot girl will walk by me, and give me a smile or something, and I’ll thank the higher powers for making me queer.

"First-Bras, Ice-Cream and Thinking in Fitting Rooms"

2010-03-02T00:10:00.000-08:00

As I’m turning 18 this year, with a small country’s population of little cousins who are at least three years younger than I am, I get asked quite a few questions (lately, it’s been, “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” but we’ll deal with that in another post) and put up to many tasks by my cousins’ parents; take them shopping, drive them here, pick them up, explain stuff to them and an insane number of other things – some of which are actually quite stupid, and which I’ll get into later in the post. Most recently, my little cousin Felicia’s mom, Aunty Beth, came up to me over the Chinese New Year holidays and practically begged me to take Felicia (who is twelve this year, and a disturbingly skinny little girl – ah, those were the days – and has no curves whatsoever) shopping for her first bra. I’m sure you can imagine my shock.
“But, um, Aunty Beth, my mom told you about me last year!” I exclaimed, a little confused at the request. “You know, that I’m… I’m not into boys? I think maybe someone else should take her bra-shopping. It could turn into a very uncomfortable issue for the both of us, don’t you think?”
Aunty Beth shrugged, grasping my cheeks in between her hands. “Stephie, I’ve known you since you were born. I know that you are a truly wonderful and patient girl, and that Felicia loves you. I trust you, Steph. You take her, and I know you’ll do good.”
“Well,” I replied, running a hand through my hair and down my face is one smooth motion, which is pretty much my I-don’t-know-what-to-say physical response. “How can I say no to that, Aunty Beth? That’s completely unfair.”
Anyway, that’s how I found myself at Mid Valley with Felicia and Bianca in tow the next day, quieted with the promise of ice-cream after the whole ordeal was over (for those of you who have little cousins, siblings or nieces and nephews, the ice-cream bribe works every single time – and keep an eye out for my childcare book). Bianca, as usual, was teasing Felicia, although quietly, and Felicia was hanging onto my hand, nervous and apprehensive about buying her first-ever bra. I’d promised myself that I’d try my best not to embarrass her, since I remembered my first-bra-shopping-experience (which is definitely a post for another time), which would keep me in therapy till I turned 65. We went into the first place I could think of for little kids – Cottonshop, viola! – and I got a few for her to try on and gently shoved her into a fitting room, alone.
Needless to say, this was a terrible idea. Felicia had no idea how to put a bra on – and even though I’d picked practically the smallest size, it wouldn’t fit her. So there I was, sitting outside the fitting room with a magazine, as Felicia stood inside, on the verge of tears. Bianca was doing her little happy-dance outside the fitting room, obviously pleased at Felicia’s frustration. The other customers were looking at us suspiciously, so…
“Felicia, what’s wrong?” I sighed, putting down the magazine and going up to the door of the fitting room. “Here, you know what – put a shirt on and let me in.”
“I want to come too!” Bianca shoved her foot into the door, but I kneed her none-too-gently in the stomach, abandoning her outside the door. “Fuck you, Steph. You suck.”
“Whatever.” I rolled my eyes, turning to Felicia. “Okay, what now?”
“I can’t get the bra on!” Felicia wailed, flagging the lacy, miniscule undergarment in my face. “And I have to do this every day? I hate being a girl!”
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” I attempted, trying to be comforting. “Okay… How, I wonder, should we go about this?”
“Wait, I’ll take my t-shirt off,” Felicia offered, stretching to get it off.
“NO!” I hollered, reeling back so fast that I bumped my head against the mirror. “No, don’t take your shirt off. I’ll… figure something out. Then we’ll buy your bras and go for ice-cream, okay? Yeah, that sounds like a good plan. Okay. That’s it. Don’t rush me.”
I was mumbling by this time, and I bet it looked like I was trying harder to convince myself not to go crazy than get Felicia into her bra.
Felicia slumped over, picking at the shoulder-straps of the bras with her fingers. I leaned against the wall, wondering how I was going to do this.
“Okay, I’ve got an idea,” I said suddenly. “Just, take your t-shirt off, and I’ll close my eyes… No, that’s not going to work.”
Felicia moaned in despair and resumed brooding. I continued to think. There was no way in hell I wanted my little cousin exposing herself – especially not to me. I’d get enough of that in a few years, when I’d become rich and successful (and hot, hopefully) and have myself a harem as a stick-it to homophobes everywhere (and this dream of mine is actually a blog post for another day). I stared at the bras – they were pink and leopard-print, perfect for a little kid, and not something I’d be caught dead in.
“Shit, I’ve got it.” I grabbed Felicia’s skinny shoulders, clasping the bra around her waist, over her t-shirt. “This is gonna take some acrobatics, gymnastics, whatever you want, but I’ve got it.”
Slowly, we managed to maneuver the bra, clasp it over her t-shirt and get it under, all without me getting flashed. By the time we finished, I was sweating and Felicia was in a much better mood. And, most importantly, we’d got the bra on. Felicia agreed that it was a good fit, and we picked out two more of the same type, so we wouldn’t have to go through the whole ordeal all over again, since my patience was seriously being tried and I looked like I’d just finished having a shower, bathed in a thin layer of sweat (that could be mistaken for shower-water) that dripped into my eyes irritatingly.
“Okay, ice-cream,” I announced to Bianca as we left Cottonshop, Felicia hanging on to her bag of bras.
“Jesus, Steph, you look like you just got slimed,” Bianca said, rubbing a finger down my face, then giving me a disgusted look and wiping her finger down my shirt. “What did you do in there – play tennis?”
“Go to hell, Bianca,” I mumbled, walking into the McDonald’s there and ordering an ice-cream. “You just try getting a little kid into a bra. You wouldn’t have got half as far as I did!”
“Don’t bug Steph,” Felicia said, watching me press a cold cardboard-cup of Coke against my face. “She helped me a lot. I know it was hard for her.”
She grinned at me, giving me a high-five. “And Steph is the best big cousin ever.”
I grinned back, stealing an M&M out of her McFlurry, all the trauma suddenly worth it, for the title of “Best Big Cousin Ever”.

"Pajamas and Shorts"

2010-02-17T21:39:00.000-08:00

At lunch last weekend, Amali thought up this situation. I’d just finished listening to Missy Higgins’ On a Clear Night, and I’d absolutely loved it, and was getting pretty worked up about Missy. Amali understands this, because he spent some years in Australia and listens to Missy, too. We were also talking about what we wanted to do after college, and I mentioned that I really want to be a writer, simply because by being a writer, I can sit around in my pajamas all day and not have to worry about anything except writing, which is something I love (not to mention, I think lots of lesbians wanted to stalk Aiobheann Sweeney after reading her Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking – I know I did, and I had a crush on Miranda from the book, too). Amali thought the part about pajamas was fairly hilarious, thought a while and came up with this.
“Okay, imagine you’re… twenty-five,” Amali said. “And you walk into a bookstore in your pajamas. Where do you go?”
“Information counter, easy,” I replied. “I want more queer literature.”
“Right – now, the girl behind the information desk looks at you and says, “How may I help you?”, and then it dawns on her. “Are you Missy Higgins’ girlfriend? Is this your book?” she asks, and you say, “Yes, of course!” and she asks for your autograph, and you give it to her.” Amali paused to steal one of my French-fries and get stabbed in the hand by my fork – I love my French-fries. “Anyway, as you’re signing autographs for you legion of adoring fans, someone pops out from behind the bookshelves, leans into your ear and says, “Pajamas girl!” and disappears.”
Honestly, I didn’t understand what the heck Amali was blathering about with my pajamas – except for the fact that there was Missy Higgins somewhere in the story. But I digress; this post actually has nothing to do with Amali, Missy Higgins, or me wanting to be a writer. All it has to do with is actually just my pajamas – the red plaid-print, seriously comfortable, baggy ones from La Senza that I got for Christmas last year, to be exact, because every Sunday is my sleeping day. I go to sleep at about 3a.m. on Sunday morning, and I get up at 5:30a.m. to go to church. I get back around 8a.m., and then it’s back into my pajamas and into bed for me, until about 4p.m. in the afternoon, when I’m forced out of bed to suffer through various visits to random members of my family who probably can’t even remember my name.
Anyway, I sort of thought every Sunday would be the same – sleep, church, sleep, which is one cycle that I could never get sick of. Sadly, right after church one Sunday, my mom announced that we would be going to visit my grandma right after mass. I moaned and groaned, but went along – after all, I do love my grandma (though I stretched out on the couch in her living room and dozed through the visit, waking up enough to throw in a random comment here and there). Halfway through the visit, my mom got a call from her sister, saying that their aunt, my maternal grandmother’s second sister, was in critical condition over in Malacca, and pretty much about to kick the bucket. We rushed back home so that my mom could go with two of her sisters and one sister-in-law to Malacca to pay her last respects.
Back home, I didn’t bother much about this grandaunt who was going to die. I mean, I wasn’t close to her, and she was always a little mean to my mother’s mom, who is a totally amazing grandmother, so I didn’t like her very much. I decided to go through with my schedule as usual – I put on my pajamas and went to sleep. This didn’t last very long, because about an hour later, my mom burst into my room like she was the gay-busters or something and announced to me at the top of her voice that the grandaunt had passed away. I think I might have yawned, pulled the pillow back over my head and said something intelligent and non-committal, like, “Mmm…” and gone back to dreaming about Amelie Mauresmo. I was so sleepy that I almost didn’t catch the last part of my mother’s spiel about the grandaunt. Almost.
She wanted me to go to Malacca with her and my aunts. On my Sunday, meant for rest, just as the Bible says (I think that’s pretty much the only thing I actually give a shit about, regarding the Bible). Um, no. But as some people might know – only children are meant to be bullied and pushed around by their parents. Somehow, about fifteen minutes or so later, with barely enough time to change out of my pajamas into a pair of board shorts, I found myself stuffed into the back of my aunt’s (Bianca’s mom) car. I felt like a frigging captive – kind of like way back in Hitler’s time, when people were persecuted for being gay. It’s just that I felt like I was being persecuted for being gay and wanting to sleep. As you probably know, the drive to Malacca takes hours. Being in a car with three aunts, my mother and a little cousin made it feel like years.
I mostly slept in the car, and by the time we got to Malacca, I’d been jostled, poked in the ribs accidentally (or so the culprits said), and basically moved around in the back seat a hell of a lot, enough to disrupt my precious sleep every five minutes or so. I was wide awake and ready to murder the first person to ask me a stupid question. We stepped out of the car and walked into the deceased grandaunt’s house. Everyone stood around in dark clothing, semi-formal. Instantly, I knew I was out of place – my board shorts were white, with brown Hawaiian-print flowers all over them, and though I was wearing a black shirt, it didn’t do much good, since it had the slogan, “Get a new perspective!” printed on it in white-and-gold letters. My brain came up with two words:
Whoops. Fuck.
People stared at me. By people, I mean relatives, who didn’t know I existed (and vice versa, definitely) up until the moment I showed up to their mother/aunt/grandmother/whoever she was to them; her wake in board shorts and a slogan t-shirt. Obviously, I never meant any disrespect whatsoever, since I’d been bundled out of the house and into the car like I was being kidnapped. I proceeded to sit down outside the house, texting, listening to The Corrs on my MP3 player, ignoring the strange looks my so-called relatives were giving me, and all in all, being a typical, anti-social teenager, only more gay than usual. The typical box filled with cartons of fruit juice and water was right beside me, so I helped myself, trying very hard to blend in with the red plastic chair I was sitting on – EPIC FAIL.
After finishing their visit, my grandma, aunts and cousin finally came out of the house. Bianca gasped at the sight of me – flowered board shorts hanging off my hips, a bottle of water in my hand, as I fielded texts from my friends while listening to music.
“Steph!” she exclaimed, attempting to smack me. “How can you be so disrespectful? It’s grandma’s sister’s wake! How could you come here in shorts?!”
My grandma sat next to me, patting me on the head – which is a task and a half for her, since I’m about a foot taller than she is. “Actually, Bianca, I think Steph is fine in shorts. People should understand, that it’s extremely hot in the afternoon in Malaysia.”
Bianca gaped at me as my grandma pressed a kiss to my cheek.
I smirked back – I rest my case.

"You Know You're a Queer Teenager in Like When..."

2010-01-28T22:38:00.000-08:00

1. You defend her honor to your friends – even if you don’t know her.
“You know the one?” I asked Helen. “The girl who hangs out with the fat guy. Do you know her name? The very pretty one.”
“She’s not very pretty,” Helen said, casually offhand about the comment.
“Oh, yes she is!” I countered, furrowing my newly-threaded eyebrows in offence. “Hey, I think she’s seriously gorgeous, okay?”
Helen shook her head, not wanting to get into an argument with her best friend; i.e., me over the gorgeousness of my crush. “Well, she’s pretty enough, I guess.” She shrugged.
“She’s really pretty,” I told Helen seriously.
“Okay, yeah, Steph, she’s very pretty.” Helen rolled her eyes and dragged me off to class.
2. You disagree with the things she says – and tell her so.
The sun blazed as I stood on the courts with Sabrina and Ravi. “Why?” I whined.
“Okay, twenty butts,” she commanded, a steely, military glint in her brown eyes.
“What?” I exclaimed, totally incredulous. “Why? How? That’s freaking impossible!”
“Twenty butts,” she repeated, in my direction, and grumbling, I complied.
A little later when our group lost, she smiled (and I melted into a puddle on the hot cement floor of the tennis court). “Okay, guys, clap for the other team,” she said.
“What?! Absolutely not!” I hollered back at her playfully, my brain working overtime.
She shrugged. “Or you could just kill them,” she deadpanned, smiling.
I paused, then laughed. Hot and a sense of warped humor – oh, I am so gone on her.
3. You find weird/strange/different adjectives to describe her – in a good way.
“So, what’s she like?” Viv asked. “That girl you’re so hung up over? Spill, now!”
I thought about it for a while, spreading peanut butter onto my pancakes. “Well, I’d say she’s tall. Taller than me. And she’s got curly, long brown hair, brown eyes. Oh, and she’s funny, and nice. Pretty, too.”
“What else?” Viv pounded the table, smearing strawberry jam all over the place. “I came for the good stuff, so you have to tell me something good! Like, now!”
“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands in surrender, thinking quickly. “If I had to describe her in one word, I’d say she’s… really, I don’t know. She’s chewable.”
Viv closed her eyes. “Chewable? Ohgod, that poor girl does not know what she’s in for.”
4. You climb three flights of stairs in two minutes, with a huge backpack, to see her.
“I’m off,” I told Helen, after World Issues, and took off towards the elevator, which as usual, was stuck at a floor nowhere near Ground, and taking forever.
I took the stairs two at a time, stopping only for fifteen seconds to exchange a thirteen-word conversation with Rebecca on the first flight of stairs. I shoved past a legion of tall Indonesian boys, only to repeat the process again, with Middle Eastern boys. Panting, I fell up the stairs and stumbled headfirst into the corridor of English class, leaning against the wall, gulping down a bottle of water and pretending to be chill, as she walked out of my English class, with a smile aimed at me, unknowingly making my day…
…hey, at least I’m getting a workout this way.
5. Seeing her makes your day.
“Why is there so much bloody work to do?” I mumbled, lowering my head onto the table in English class for a nanosecond before packing up to leave.
“Read half the novel before the next class,” the English lecturer said to us as we filed out.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, rolling my eyes – paired with World Issues and Data Management, this was complete, total hell.
Five minutes later, I walked down the stairs, only to see her sitting at a table, reading. We exchanged smiles as I passed, and my heart sped up faster than Travis Barker on drums.
“How was college?” Dad asked later, when he came to pick me up.
I sighed dreamily, the memory of her in my head. “It was… completely amazing.”
6. Again, you defend her, even if you kind-of agree with your friends, this time.
“Well, she seems alright,” I commented, as Helen and I walked over to my dad’s awaiting car. “Smart enough, I guess. And I suppose she’s nice.”
“Yeah?” Helen raised an eyebrow in my direction. “You really think so?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. No, yeah. I think she’s alright, though.”
“She looks a little judgmental, I think,” Helen said. “Like, she looks like she thinks she’s superior to everyone and she’s mentally surveying us normal people.”
Yeah, she kinda looks like she has a stick up her butt, my brain said; but it stayed right there, in my brain as I mentally filtered it, and smacked myself – slap, slap.
“She’d be okay if we got to know her,” I reasoned quickly before I said anything more.
7. You attempt to impress her, and come off as loud and obnoxious – EPIC FAIL.
“Okay, let’s make a lot of noise,” Sarosh said, as the candidates for the student body election strode up on stage, one by one.
As our pick for the secretarial post walked up, banners waving in the background, the six of us burst into deafening cheers, with Ravi screaming at the top of his voice.
She whirled around in her chair, giving us a steely-eyed look, one that would have made a weaker person crumble – as the five of them did. I, on the other hand, was protected by the shield of my like for her (yes, that was meant to sound cheesy), so I smiled in the sheepish way that usually gets me out of trouble, gave her an apologetic shrug, and – most importantly, pointed at Keith, pinning the blame on him, getting me off scot-free.
8. You join an activity you suck at because she’s there.
“I suck at dancing and not going to sign up for it,” I said firmly, over my morning Red Bull.
Sarosh sighed. “But there’s so many cool people there!” he exclaimed, starting to point them out, one by one. “That girl, and this guy… and that girl.”
I glanced over, feeling my face heat up as I saw her. “Oh, wow. Dancing, huh?”
“Yeah!” Sarosh said eagerly, pounding the table. “Dancing! Will you please sign up for it, Steph? We laugh at everyone and mess around!”
“Dancing.” I pretended to think, knowing in my mind that I was so completely sold on the idea. “Yeah, I think I’ll show up this weekend.”
9. The littlest things mean so much.
I waited outside the elevator after English, my legs about to buckle under the weight of the three plastic files, two hard-cover textbooks, dictionary and huge calculator in my backpack. The elevator was packed with a group of Middle Eastern boys, all trying to shove their way into it, for one last spot. I decided that I’d wait patiently, and I stood there, watching them with a smile on my face, as they reminded me of the guy friends I’d left behind in high school. A female voice said something and the guys gave a unanimous groan and filed out of the elevator, one by one. She stood there, by the buttons. Our eyes met, and she smiled, glanced pointedly at the empty, Steph-sized space beside her.
I took it, smiling sheepishly and kind of awkwardly. “Uh, thanks.”
10. Every love song describes your situation; even the stupid ones.
“…you can bump into person in the middle of the road, look into their eyes and you suddenly know, rocking in the dance hall moving with you…”
I frowned, hearing this song on the radio. I don’t really like hip-hop; I’m usually a folk-rock kind of girl, having grown up with Melissa Etheridge, Joan Jett, The Cranberries and k.d. lang (and yeah, I was surprised to find out their music was that old). But in a way, this song suddenly made sense to me. I know, I know, it’s not the most sensible song in the world, but hey, I thought Michael Franti had a pretty good thing going with it.
I turned to my dad. “Hey, daddy? You know what? This song is deep.”
“Steph.” My dad sighed. “Are you on drugs?”

"Holiday Cheer... Not So Much."

2010-01-14T23:26:00.000-08:00

I marked the page in my book, put it aside and sprawled across the couch on the second floor of my grandma’s house. Peace settled for a few minutes… until Bianca and Felicia burst upstairs, shaking the foundation of the house.
“Vanessa!” I yelled for her. “Can you please help me control these…” I paused, sucking in a deep breath. “…these very lovely children? You’re the oldest, anyway.”
Vanessa climbed the stairs and squished me, laying beside me on the couch and totally ignoring the infernal racket that Bianca and Felicia were making, arguing over a bottle of sparkly nail-polish or something like that.
“Hey, Steph,” Vanessa said, smiling in a way that told me one of those major, long, serious conversations was to be expected.
Not to mention, I was trapped on the couch by Vanessa, and the only way out was to stand up and climb over her, which, with my huge feet, would involve me stepping on her, which I definitely did not want to do to my oldest cousin.
“Hey, Vanessa.” I smiled back, trying to make myself more comfortable on the couch with the miniscule space I had (the women in our family are known for big butts).
“So,” Vanessa said, still smiling. “Are you… you know, seeing anyone? Dating? Playing the lesbian fields of Malaysia?”
I shrugged. “Well, I’m more like playing on the tennis courts. I play every week, it’s a lot of fun. Except the splits I sometimes need to pull on-court; I’ve got pants with rips in.”
Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “Stop changing the subject, Steph.”
“What?” I pulled my most innocent face and looked her right in the eye. “I like tennis, and so far, trying to impress the hot girls who are on the other courts is the only action that I’ve been getting. Come on, I haven’t even kissed a girl yet, except if you try counting that one time, and I’d like to think that doesn’t count, cause I was six.”
“But you know other lesbians, right?” Vanessa asked, lowering her voice as Felicia came closer, bearing a bottle of sparkly nail-polish in one hand, a grin on her face.
“Can I paint your toenails, Steph?” Felicia implored sweetly. “Pleeeeeease?”
“NO!” I scrunched up my feet and turned back to Vanessa. “And of course I know other lesbians. I just have a thing for punishing myself, big-time and falling for straight girls instead. You know, abusing yourself mentally is so in,” I added sarcastically.
Vanessa laughed, reaching over to ruffle my hair. “You know, I don’t understand why you’re so dark, mentally. You read those Francesca Lia Block books, and you think you need to mentally abuse yourself and that you’ll never get a girlfriend. I think you’re too young to be in a relationship, anyway.”
“What?” I blurted, my mouth hanging open. “Are you kidding me? I’m seventeen and a bit, and I’m too young to be in a relationship? Fuck my life, seriously.”
“Okay, well, maybe not,” Vanessa said, reconsidering. “Maybe I’m overreacting a little here, and being slightly overprotective of my little cousin.”
“Overreacting a little?” I smirked, nudging her. “And being slightly overprotective? I think you mean, a lot and extremely.”
“Oh, for the love of god, Steph!” Vanessa sighed, smushing her nose into my neck and inhaling. “Give a girl a break, huh? It seems like it was just yesterday that I was changing your diapers while you smiled at me with those big-ass eyes. And you still have that baby-smell. You had the cutest little button nose…”
“I do not smell like a baby,” I said indignantly, unconsciously feeling out my nose. “And look who’s changing the subject this time!”
Vanessa laughed, but didn’t reply. She studied me, a big smile spreading across her face for some reason before she finally spoke.
“God, Steph, look at you,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re taller than I am now, and you’re so funny and talented and good-looking, not to mention really cute.”
“Vanessa,” I told her, rolling my eyes. “It doesn’t count when you say those things. I mean, you have to say those things, you’re my cousin. You’re probably very biased towards me, and you’ve known me all my life, so duh.”
“I also think you have a big ego and can be an idiot and a complete headcase at times, you know,” Vanessa continued.
I nodded, totally taking this in. “You know what? I agree.”
“…but you’re still too young to be in a serious relationship,” Vanessa finished, smiling proudly at her conclusion. “And if you do bring someone home at this age, I’ll embarrass you.”
I howled, burying my head in the pillow. “Thanks. So much.”
“Aw, Stephykins, you know I love you,” Vanessa replied, giving me a hug and thus, ending the conversation.

"Of Sexuality and Smoking... and Sex."

2009-12-23T23:27:00.000-08:00

I’m a big believer in the fact that if you don’t get involved in the business of others, then others won’t get involved in your business. This is why, most times, I prefer to sit around, perhaps with a book and definitely with my earphones on (so, if you see a girl with an indifferent, I-couldn’t-care-less look on her face, a gay book in her hand and earphones dangling from her ears, chances are, it’s me). Anyway, my family doesn’t seem to see it the way I do; even though I do my best not to get involved with the problems of my family (and pretty much everyone else for that matter), they actually seem to enjoy getting into my business, like it’s some fun activity to do on the side, which irks me like you wouldn’t imagine. Sometimes, I feel like my family life is one big reality TV show, where everything seems to be going insanely wrong.
Let me explain – a couple of weeks ago, my SPM exams came to a close. You will not believe how relaxed I feel. Not to mention, I burned my English Literature notes, with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. Still, after the exams, my mom announced that one of my cousins, Deepa, whom I hadn’t seen in years would be coming down to Malaysia. As a normal teen who has just attained freedom (and the ability to drive, albeit without a license), I freaked out at the idea of having to ~~waste~~ spend my time with my cousin (whom I didn’t even know that well at all), when I could be going out with friends and causing general mayhem, havoc and a little destruction in KL. Still, as much as it embarrasses me to admit it, I’m pretty family-oriented for a 17-year-old and spend a scary amount of time with my family.
Eventually, (here, eventually would mean a few days back), the time came for me to meet my extended family for dinner. I arrived at my grandma’s house early (my grandma has Alzheimer’s and by spending time with her, I get to ensure that she doesn’t forget her one and only totally gay grandchild), only to see that Deepa was there. Obviously, I had to dust off my manners and say hi to her (even if I sometimes may act like it, my mother didn’t raise me to be a Neanderthal). Here, I should probably mention that Deepa has a seriously screwed-up sense of religion, and personally, I think that having a screwed-up sense of religion and believing that you’re right is much, much worse than having no sense of religion at all, but whatever, I’m not trying to justify my sort-of-kind-of-not-believing-in-god, and so, on with the story.
After my grandma was dressed in her sari and ready to go for dinner, we waited for my uncle to come and pick the lot of us up in his van. Immediately in the van, Vanessa, my oldest cousin (and one of the few that I’m out to), turned around to pat my hand and tell me how sorry she was that Amelie Mauresmo, “your girlfriend” – or so Vanessa said, and I can only wish – had retired. Deepa probably had bionic ears, and she probably picked up on the fact that I’m 100% queer. Anyway, nothing much happened till after dinner, when my mom ordered me (yes, ordered, because, according to my mom, people with only children are meant to bully them and boss them around) to walk Deepa to the nearest Hotlink store so she could get herself a local number. She gave me A Look as I started towards the store, in step with her.
“So, you’re um…?” She looked at me as if she expected me to finish the sentence.
“Yeah, I’m seventeen,” I said, refusing to play along – I hate when people refuse to say the l-word, or the g-word, or the q-word, it makes things so awkward, doesn’t it?
“No, I meant, are you, um, g-g-gay?” Deepa asked again, choking on the word in this exceedingly annoying way.
“Oh, that.” I waved a hand lightly and looked her right in the eye. “Gay? Totally.”
“And you have a girlfriend?” Deepa asked again. “I guess you do, I’ve seen lesbians by the dozen when I came to Malaysia. What’s she like?”
“Actually, I don’t have a girlfriend,” I corrected quickly. “I just finished my exams, so I’m looking for one right now.”
Deepa nodded, seemingly content with this explanation, and I thought the conversation was over, so I fished into my pockets and pulled out my MP3 player, which I cannot live without, for more than two hours – my music is almost oxygen!
“So, um, you’re a Catholic, right?” Deepa suddenly said again. “Do you go to church?”
I nodded, lowering the volume. “Um, yeah. I go to church.”
“And you’re a lesbian, and you’re sexually active and you go to church?” Deepa questioned, sounding a lot like what I thought a lawyer would sound like. “Doesn’t that clash with your beliefs?”
“I’m definitely not sexually active,” I replied, not the least ashamed to admit it – it’s become almost a part of me, like Steph doesn’t have sex; sad but true.
“But isn’t homosexuality, or gay sex, wrong in the eyes of the church?” Deepa asked, totally ignoring what I just said, which pissed me off. “It’s not wrong in our belief, but I thought it was wrong with Catholics?”
I shrugged. “I have my own brand of faith. Anyway, you say that sex isn’t wrong with your cult, uh, I mean, faith?”
Just so you know, Deepa and her family belong to The Family, the cult, which you really should Google, if you have the time, because it’s truly disgusting, but enough judgment.
“No, it’s not.” Deepa shook her head proudly. “Anything that harms the body is wrong, like smoking, but sex, it’s something beautiful that should be shared. Don’t you agree?”
“Um, not really.” I ran a hand through my hair. “What about fucking? Is that wrong?”
It was Deepa’s turn to shrug. “Isn’t sex just that – sex? Fucking, making love, sex, it’s all the same, right?”
“Uh, no?” I blurted inadvertently, mentally smacking myself. “Shouldn’t sex be like, I don’t know – I’ve never had sex – but shouldn’t it be totally special, and something to be shared with the one person you’re in love with?”
“It doesn’t even matter,” Deepa said easily. “I don’t think sex is wrong, no matter who it’s with, even if it’s someone you’ve met an hour ago. I wasn’t taught that way.”
“So, um, if you don’t mind me asking, what exactly would be a sin?” I asked, confused and all but scratching my head at this strange way of life.
“Smoking,” Deepa deadpanned. “It damages the body.”
I laughed for a good minute before realizing that she was absolutely serious. We exchanged awkward glances, before she continued to preach her version of the word of god to me – not that I really cared, what with my (lack of) religion and all that.
“Sex is good,” Deepa said. “No matter who you have it with. Maybe you should try it.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “Nah, I think I’ll pass on this one.”
Then a brilliant idea struck me as Deepa babbled on about the goodness of sex and how amazing and whatever else it was, even if it was with a homeless person off the street (I’ll have you know that by this time, I was freaking out).
I stopped at a 7-11 as we passed by, stepping up to the pimply young man who was working the counter. “One packet of Marlboro lights, please.”
I lit up as I fell back into step with Deepa again, silently thanking my friends Reyna and Tasha for teaching me how to smoke properly. Deepa gave me a steely glare as I attempted (and failed) to blow a smoke ring but managed to hold my smoke all the same.
“I’m really sorry,” I said, somewhat sincere. “But I think that if you don’t want people going to this extent, then maybe you should just not get involved in their business, and whether or not they have sex.”
Deepa stalked on, averting her eyes from me. “It’s your life, and if you want to pass up on the good stuff, then you do what you want.”
“I will,” I told her, knowing full-well that it was a rhetorical statement, but that I had shut her up about sex once and for all (or at least for the evening).
And that, my friends, is how I learned to fight sex with fire… or smoke, if you will.

"Pffft, Teen Marriage?"

2009-12-15T21:53:00.000-08:00

Well, as I was blog-surfing today, I came across one of the blogs of my old classmates. This girl went to school with me from form one up till form three, when she dropped out after PMR. We never really kept in touch, but I heard how she was doing through our mutual friends, especially Amy. I saw Amy today, at Mandy’s place, and the first thing Amy said to me was this, “Bitch! Guess what?”
“Mmhmm?” I glanced up from my copy of Far From Xanadu, which I was reading and emo-ing over for probably the millionth time – come on, gay girl falls in love with gorgeous straight friend, what’s not to love and emo over?
“It’s Cherry!” Amy exclaimed, closing my book. “Will you listen?”
“Listening.” I grabbed the book back, but didn’t open it. “What’s up? She’s preggers?”
“She’s getting married!” Amy yelled in my face. “Can you believe it? Isn’t that just insane? My god.”
I felt my confused, “huh?” face taking over. “You’re kidding, right? That’s nuts – I mean, why throw your life away like that at freaking seventeen years of age?”
“Isn’t it romantic?” Amy asked. “She thinks it’ll last forever.”
“Um…” I nodded, trying for seriousness and failing miserably – I sounded sarcastic, like the love-child of Simon Cowell and Bette Porter in a bad mood (okay, that mental image is just plain disturbing). “Yeah, Amy, that sounds really romantic.” I rolled my eyes.
“Why are you so bitter?” Amy asked, frowning. “Don’t you want to get married?”
I snorted. “Amy, I’m extremely flattered that you asked, but I can’t marry you!”
“You are so stupid,” Amy said seriously. “I know you’re totally gay and gay people can’t get married in Malaysia, but don’t you want to get married, eventually?”
“Um, I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Yeah, well, eventually, maybe, yeah, I’d want to get married and start a family with the woman of my dreams, but not now!”
“What if you found the woman of your dreams now?” Amy asked. “You know – a girl who was seriously your type; tall, gorgeous Amazonian, drool-worthy abs…”
“Okay, okay, stop!” I practically yelled, the mental image of that filling my head. “I get it – now, right now, I find my perfect woman. So what?”
“So, wouldn’t you want to marry her?” Amy smiled, like she’d just won Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?. “If she asked you, wouldn’t you do it?”
“Uh, nooo.” I raised an eyebrow. “Not now. It’d be just plain stupid to get married right now. And we all know lesbians are crazy, anyway – they become all obsessed once they start dating someone.” I made a face.
Amy laughed. “You don’t, though.”
“Right, I have commitment-phobia.” I laughed, too. “Hey, remember the girl in Mid Valley and what happened with her?”
We laughed about that for a while, from giggling to flat-out laughing about just how ridiculous it’d been – it’s a long story and perhaps a blog post for another time.
“Okay, okay, shut up and listen,” Amy continued. “Um… What about, if she said that if you didn’t marry her, she’d break it off, forever?”
“Are you kidding me?” I raised an eyebrow. “Let’s get this straight, I mean, let’s get this gay. If she was supposedly the perfect woman for me…” I paused to add suspense to the situation. “Wouldn’t she wait for me? If she doesn’t respect my wishes, then maybe she’s not so perfect, after all.”
“You’re spoiling my situation,” Amy deadpanned. “Seriously, you wouldn’t get married right now?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “Would you? Wait. Don’t answer that if you’re going to give me some stupid answer, like, “Yes, I’d get married if Taylor Lautner asked me.”.”
“Yes,” Amy echoed dramatically. “I’d get married if Taylor Lautner asked me to marry him. It’d be a waste not to.”
“But you’re seventeen!” I exclaimed, throwing a pillow at her. “What if it doesn’t work out? Then what? Divorce and marry someone else. Daniel Henney?” I sniggered.
Amy chucked the pillow back at me. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’d do. Okay, back to you – what if Megan Fox wanted to marry you? Like, if she showed up right here, right now, and proposed to you. If she asked you to marry her immediately.”
I rolled my eyes – I honestly don’t get why straight people always ask me about Megan Fox. It’s always, “Steph, would you sleep with/date/marry/make out with Megan Fox?” How about asking me about Olivia Wilde or Brandi Carlile for once?
“Amy, I keep telling you,” I said patiently. “I will not get married at the age of seventeen because I think it’s fucking crazy, okay? Not to Megan Fox.”
“Not Megan Fox, huh?” Amy said, nodding. “Okay, fair enough, I guess. It’s your life and if you want to pass up Megan Fox, I’m sure many other seventeen-year-old lesbians will take her up on that offer.”
“Okay.” I shrugged nonchalently, picking up my book again.
“Hey, Steph?” Amy asked, five minutes later. “What about… um… Natalie Portman?”
“AMY!” I hollered. “Aren’t we done with this? And no, okay? Not Natalie Portman, not anybody, not now.”
“Okay, okay, okay.” Amy shrugged and went back to playing Guitar Hero while I read my book, only to open her mouth again later. “Missy Higgins?”
“Amy, no,” I said tiredly, closing my eyes and breathing deeply.
“Elina Ivanova from America’s Next Top Model,” Amy suggested. “She’s young, she’s hot, you’d marry her right now, wouldn’t you?”
I didn’t bother looking up from my book this time. “Nope.”
“Sara Quin from Tegan and Sara?” Amy said brightly, not the least put out.
“No,” I rumbled, still trying to block her out.
Amy nodded at this, and seemed to accept the fact that gay or not, I wouldn’t be marrying anyone, anytime soon. I should’ve known the silence was too good to be true.
“Hey, Steph?” Amy said again. “One last one… Amelie. Amelie Mauresmo, your girl, here and now, proposing with that Chinese-embroidered halter-top on that you love. Yes?”
I buried my head in my hands, envisioning this. Of course, in less than a second, I had my head and my heart, screaming, “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!” so, I sighed resignedly, stuck to my promise to always be honest with my friends.
“Yes, Amy, okay?” I blurted. “Of course I’d fucking marry her. In a heartbeat.”
Amy smiled. “Okay, good. I was just testing – you do have a heart.”
I growled in response, not-so-silently struggling with the fact that I’d break my rules for Amelie, and went back to my book.

"Don'tlookdon'tlookdon'tlook."

2009-12-05T19:19:00.000-08:00

The apartment where my cousin Bianca lives is fairly close to my neighborhood – I’ve lived in OUG ever since I can remember, and she lives in Bukit Jalil. Although she’s 14, and about three inches taller than me, being an only child, her parents are anal about having a babysitter around to take care of her when they go out. Most of the time, I’m recruited for this dreary task, but it’s usually pretty easy – watch TV, irritate her tiny dog (I’ve always been a big-dog person and probably always will be) and basically keep her occupied. Of course, being an older cousin, there are times when I psych her out, a lot, especially since at her age, she’s still terrified of ET – yes, I mean the cute, gay little alien with long fingers. Anyway, this post isn’t about babysitting, Bianca, ET or even me babysitting Bianca and ET. I’ll get to the point.
During the SPM break last week, I was supposed to go to my friend AJ’s house after babysitting Bianca, to meet up with everyone for dinner and the typical teenage pastime of shooting the shit. Bianca’s parents were right on time, just as Yap called to tell me that he was waiting for me downstairs. I told him I’d be right there, said my goodbyes and went out into the lobby of the eighteenth floor. Both the elevators seemed to be tied, but hey – it was just Yap, I’ve known him since we were 11, and hell, I might be a lesbian, but I’m still a girl, and he could wait for two minutes or so. I pressed the call buttons on both elevators and took my hand sanitizer out (my mom and my best friend are constantly lecturing me about this, and it’s become a habit). The elevator doors slid open and I surveyed the passengers – no need for me to get raped and murdered.
They were a typical Middle Eastern family – the slightly overweight, older husband, the adorable little daughter (I swear, I have to have a Middle Eastern kid when I’m older and want to adopt)… and the young, gorgeous wife. My eyes widened inadvertently, and I cast my gaze to the floor, studying my Reeboks like they were the most interesting things in the world, one thought running through my mind, since the elevators are tiny – “Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look…”, on and on and on, in case the husband caught me looking and decided to kill me right then and there in the lift, like all those stories you read about in the newspaper (and I might have smiled to myself while thinking this, because one, I realized that I’m much too young to die, and two, I realized that have a massively overactive imagination).
Okay, yeah, I must have looked like a total nutcase, standing there, smiling at my shoes, because I felt eyes on me. So I looked down and smiled at the little girl, who looked like a dark-haired version of Kim Clijsters’ daughter, Jada. She smiled back and hid her face behind her dad’s trouser leg. I snorted a laugh and happened to look up. Up, being at the wife. Goddammit, the woman was insanely gorgeous (someone please remind me again why I don’t know any single, Middle Eastern lesbians?). I stared for a moment longer than necessary, my brain totally frozen. And then it un-froze and I returned to looking at my shoes – oh, there was a scuff-mark on the right one, by the way, some cement powder or dust or something. Again, the “Don’t look!” mantra was playing in my head, this time out of embarrassment than anything else.
…but then, as stupid and cliché as it sounds (and you probably think I was just looking for an excuse to stare at the hot woman, and nothing I say is going to convince you otherwise), I felt someone looking at me. I looked at the little girl, who was now obsessed with trying to reach all the elevator buttons and press them. Okay, no, not her. I looked at the husband, who was keying in something in his PDA. Okay, not him, then – phew! So I looked at the hot woman, who was actually looking at me. She smiled. It could have been because of my alien shirt (I have this gray Giordano t-shirt with an alien face printed on it in white, divided into two by a yellow human face), but hell, the hot woman smiled at me. I smiled back pretty much automatically, wiping my face in case there was anything on it, and I didn’t know.
We smiled stupidly (or rather, I smiled stupidly, while her smile was really nice) for the next few seconds, until the elevator doors slid open on the ground floor. Yap was waiting in his car, and did a double-take when he saw the huge, stupid grin on my face.
“What’s up?” he asked, giving me the look that all confused boys have.
“Is there anything on my face?” I flipped down the passenger seat mirror and checked – nope, it was clean.
Yap nodded (as if he’s the most normal boy on the planet – he knows the steps to the Macarena and does it in school all the time). “What’s the big smile for?”
“Am I smiling?” I asked, looking into the mirror – whoops, yeah, huge grin plastered all over my face, like one of those Smiley balls. “It’s nothing.”
Yap rolled his eyes and started out of the apartment area while I fiddled with the radio, trying to find something halfway decent and eventually settling on Jason Mraz. Just then, I happened to look out the window – the Middle Eastern family was walking down the street, to the huge park next to the apartment. I almost, almost told Yap to drop me off at the park. But I didn’t. And I could feel the grin growing, not to mention, Yap was watching me out of the corner of his eye.
So I opted for the safest escape – “That little girl is so damn cute, right?” I asked him, secretly checking out the woman (and cursing Yap loudly – in my head, of course – for having semi-tinted windows).
Yap laughed. “That woman is hot!” he exclaimed. “Look at her version of Mabel!”
(Mabel, by the way, is Yap’s name for my ass). Anyway, I was amazed that Yap had the same tastes as I did, pertaining to women – we differ greatly on Leona Lewis, Yap says she’s hot, I say she’s not.
Excited, I practically yelled, “I know, right?”
Yap grinned smugly (what is it with teenage boys and acting smug all the time). “Hah, Steph.” He giggled – yes, outright giggled, in my face that was flushed and burning from being gotcha’d by a boy. “Gotcha – I knew you thought she was hot.”
I rolled my eyes and turned around in the passenger seat for one last look at the woman – hey, since Yap knew, might as well go all the way, and in my head, I thanked everything vaguely supernatural that Yap’s car windows were semi-tinted.

"I'll live and learn, but I'd rather just live."

2009-11-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

Forgive me for the extremely quick post, but it's just to tide you over till my SPM's over and done with, and what better way to do it than with lots of pictures, so here we go; graduation and the school's prefect's function, so enjoy. :)

Before graduation. Can't you just see my, "Shit-I-have-to-wear-a-kurung?" face?

AJ and I, the people who're constantly talking about boobs. She's not gay.

The girls, class of '09.

My classmates, the class with the biggest number of queers - two.

The two queers from 5G, representing our, uh, culture.

And at the Prefects' function, where I wore a dress, paired with a pair of Converse. I know, I am so gay. So gay.

Colby. Me.

In a dress, and I still get the girls? Damn, the boys have a lot to learn. I'm just kidding. And available.

Groupshot of the graduating people.

Fear not, my faithful blog readers, for this baby-dyke will be back, right after she conquers the SPM.

"The Goodest and Bestest Stoodunt"

2009-10-27T18:00:00.000-07:00

Follow me on twitter.com here.

"Why Steph Sometimes Should Think Twice Before Reacting"

2009-10-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

Over the holidays, I went over to my grandma’s house for lunch after tuition. My little cousin, Felicia was there – she’s the one who idolizes Ben Ten (and for the record, I still have no idea who the heck that is). Anyway, she came to sit next to me while I was flipping through the TV channels and landed on hitz.tv, since there was nothing else to watch. Strangely, there was a Jessica Simpson video playing – her cover of Take My Breath Away. Now, I’ve always preferred Jessica to Ashlee (and I think Ashlee’s spelling of her name is just stupid, by the way – shouldn’t it just be Ashley?) and I tuned in to the video for a while. As soon as I did, an idea of evil proportions struck me, and so, I turned to Felicia, who was amusing herself by watching Jessica Simpson gyrate on the music-video stage. I hid a smirk, assuming a serious expression.
“Do you know what she’s saying?” I asked Felicia, biting the inside of my cheek so that I wouldn’t giggle and give myself away.
Felicia innocently shook her head. “No. Why? But I like the song.”
“Nah, I just thought you should know – she’s saying take my breast away,” I told her, hiding my mouth behind my hand to hide my grin – I’ve never been very good at being poker-faced. “You see, take my breast away,” I sang, so she wouldn’t hear the real lyrics.
“Huh?” Felicia’s jaw dropped open, then realization dawned on her face. “You’re lying.”
“I swear, those are the words,” I told her seriously. “It’s a song about breast cancer awareness, you know how they remove your breast when you have breast cancer? Yeah, like that – BOOM, and you look like a guy. And those are the lyrics.”
Felicia stared at me a while longer, trying to figure out if I was telling her the truth or not. I fought my emotions and the desire to roll on the floor, laughing my ass off and managed to maintain the poker-face for a longer period of time than I expected. Felicia poked me in the side. I grabbed her hand, narrowing my eyes.
“I’m telling you,” I said, and that was the final straw – now, according to Felicia, the song would be known as Take My Breast Away for the rest of her life – she believed me.
Of course, after talking this much bullshit to my little cousin, I had a warm and fuzzy feeling inside – just like the time when I told my niece that the sky was blue because God was a boy, and the sky would have been pink if God had been a girl (personally, I still hold firm to the notion that God is a girl, and if not, I’ll just worship Sappho instead).
Anyway, the adults (here, I use the term loosely, because had they been real, understanding adults, they would not proclaim, “I’m homophobic.” happily, but that’s a post for another day) decided that they would all go out for supper, and since moody, strange seventeen-year-olds aren’t considered “adults”, I was left behind to take care of Felicia and my grandmother. At once, Felicia jumped up and asked me if I had any DVDs we could watch together (she thinks I’m her DVD supplier because we watched Juno together once – or rather, she watched and I drooled over Ellen Page). I didn’t have my copy of Art School Confidential or anything this time, so Felicia grabbed her own pack of DVDs and suggested we watch… wait for it… Aladdin. I nearly smacked my head against the wall, cursing myself for not bringing a DVD.
So, Felicia watched Aladdin, and I sort of zoned out, big time, occasionally answering a question from my grandma about whether I had any boyfriends or not (my answer? “Yeah, grandma, I have three – one Indian, one Chinese, one Malay. You know, because of 1Malaysia.”) or stuff like that. This went on until Aladdin and Jasmine came on the screen, singing A Whole New World. Now, I hadn’t ever really listened to the lyrics of that song (when I was younger, I actually hated Aladdin and The Jungle Book, but I loved The Lion King), and when someone – I can’t remember if it was Jasmine or Aladdin – sang the lyrics, “A magic carpet ride…”, my eyes flew open, and my dirty little teenage mind (give me a break – I’m a teenager with raging hormones) started working overtime.
“What were the lyrics, again?” I asked Felicia disbelievingly, totally amazed that they would put those lyrics into a movie watched by little kids.
“A magic carpet ride,” Felicia said, obviously not knowing what the lyrics meant.
Inadvertently, I giggled. Yes, I grinned to myself and actually giggled just a little bit, like a quiet, “Heeheehee.”, which grew considerably louder ad I thought more and more about the whole thing. And since Felicia is a perfectly normal, curious 11-year-old, she gave me a suspicious glance. By this time, I was flat-out laughing at the very obvious lesbian-ish lyrics, and by flat-out laughing, I mean, on my back, rolling around on the couch, laughing my ass off (and not to mention, I was already a little punch-high from the Take My Breath Away affair).
Felicia raised her eyebrows in my direction. “What’s so funny?” she asked, already starting to pout, knowing I wouldn’t tell her. “Tell me!”
“Uh…” I bit my lip, trying, very unsuccessfully, to hold back my laughter. “Nothing, really. Nothing’s funny.” But even as I said this, a new burst of giggles was on the way.
“Ste-eph,” Felicia whined. “What’s so funny about a magic carpet ride? Huh?”
My eyes shot open, with one thought running through my brain – oh, shit, had I really been that obvious about the whole magic carpet thing? Then I recollected, grinned, and turned back to Felicia, quickly cooking up a story to tell her, when a better idea struck.
“Okay, I’ll tell you about magic carpets,” I told her. “But only if you behave yourself, then I’ll tell you before I go back today. Alright?”
She agreed and continued watching Aladdin until our parents came back. I happily got into my dad’s car, telling him that, no, I hadn’t eaten dinner yet, and to pick me up a burger along the way home. He and mom agreed to this, probably cursing the fact that their metabolism is much lower than my teenage, weight-lifting, martial-artist, handball-playing one (and even with that, my ass is huge – it almost makes exercising not worth my while). I thought I was safe until I got home and set my phone on silent, so that even if Felicia did call me, I’d have an excuse. Well, let me tell you right now – safety in any situation is just an illusion. About half-an-hour later, I heard the phone ring, thought nothing of it and left it to my mom to answer, thinking it’d be one of her many sisters. At least I was right on that count, it was her sister. Felicia’s mom, to be exact.
“Steph, Felicia wants to speak to you,” Aunty Beth said cheerfully. “I’ll put her on the line.”
“Don’t!” I yelped, but it was too late, Felicia was on the phone with me.
“Steph, what’s a magic carpet?” she whined. “You said you’d tell me…”
“Uh, no I didn’t,” I said, pulling out the annoying, older-cousin card…
…and in the background, I heard Aunty Beth’s bellow at the language of her little, 11-year-old daughter. My face paled and I hung up, but not before I heard…
…“Where did you hear that?” coming from Aunty Beth.
I hung up quickly, one thought running through my head – holy shit, holy shit, holy shit! – but not before hearing Aunty Beth bellow, “STEPH!” over the phone.
Crap-o.

"Affliction!"

2009-10-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

For some reason, I have this huge, stupid curse that afflicts me whenever I see a girl whom I consider gorgeous. My brain tends to jam up and I can’t get any words out of my mouth, which is really irritating, considering that I’m usually a very confident (somewhat cocky) person, who, according to anyone who’s known me for more than two minutes, can talk the sun out of the sky (not that I’ve actually tried – it’d leave us all in darkness). Most of my friends call this burden “Steph’s Gfphskm.” which doesn’t make much sense unless you know that whoever made it up (I can’t remember who it was right now), just typed random alphabets onto their computer keyboard and sent that along to me, and it stuck, so we all decided that this annoyance should be deemed “Steph’s Gfphskm”, or just “Gfphskm” for short.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, I was standing around in Bangsar, waiting for my mom, when these two stunning Hispanic girls came up to me and asked for directions. Now, since my mom’s Portuguese, my spoken-Portuguese/Spanish is pretty okay and understandable (though my written-Portuguese/Spanish absolutely stinks). Anyway, these girls were really pretty – tourists, I guess, and they’d picked me to ask for directions. Not only that, but the prettier of the two was speaking. My mind went blank.
“How do you get to Bangsar Village II?” she asked, smiling at me.
Instantly, my brain froze. I forgot how to speak, and when I opened my mouth, out came… you guessed it – “Gfphskm.” Thankfully, my mother was there, to give me some assistance with the directions (and not with the girls).
“You think they’re both beautiful,” my mom said to me, after directing those two girls on their way to Bangsar Village II.
“I think looked like such an idiot,” I moaned, hiding my face in my hands. “What the fuck was I thinking, mom? You should have stopped me!”
“Don’t curse,” my mother said brusquely, pulling me back into the shade as we walked down the street. “And don’t stand in the sun, you’ll tan!”
“I am half-Indian, you know.” I rolled my eyes. “And I can’t believe you just stood there while I messed up with those hot girls!”
“Pssh.” My mother waved a hand dismissively. “I think you’re too young to be in a relationship, anyway. Mess up your school, your career, your life…”
I looked at her disbelievingly – I swear, this woman changes her mind more often than I do, she’s that fickle. And I thought I was bad.
“I’m not messing up my life over some girl, ma,” I told her, raising my voice slightly.
A little Chinese old lady turned to stare at me when she heard what I’d just said, then gave me a disapproving glare and paced off as fast as her walker would let her (maybe her granddaughter is a lesbian or something, in which case, she should introduce me). Ah, Bangsar – the place for diversity, where you can find a lesbian and her mother arguing, and an old Chinese lady eavesdropping in on it, all in one street.
“You won’t mess up you life?” My mother finally decided on Alexis for lunch and pulled me into the cool comfort of the restaurant. “Look at that Lohan girl.”
“But I don’t want to date Samantha Ronson,” I argued feebly. “And Lindsay was screwing up her life way before Sam came along.”
“Then who do you want to go out with?” my mother asked, giving the waiter her order in that same breath and turning back to me without skipping a beat. “Mauresmo?”
I contemplated ordering a margarita to get me through lunch with the psycho-dragon-lady sitting in front of me. “Mauresmo? Well… yeah. Natalie Portman. Adriana Lima.”
My mother rolled her eyes. “You and your tall girls. What’s wrong with a short girl? I think that blonde girl – she’s pretty cute. Reese Witherspoon?”
“I have nothing against short girls!” I exclaimed, my fist curling around my knife. “Shit, mom, I have a crush on Michelle Rodriguez! I think she’s shorter than me!”
“Who’s Michelle Rodriguez?” my mom asked, rolling the name in her mouth. “Is she Latina? I like her already!”
“You know that movie I was watching the other day? Bloodrayne?” I raised my eyebrows. “And you are such a racist! Hah, I’m more into Frenchwomen, anyway.”
“I don’t know Bloodrayne,” my mother said, shrugging. “You never watch movies with me anymore. We liked The Women, remember? Jada Pinkett-Smith being a lesbian? And what do you mean – Frenchwomen? You like Annabel Medina Garrigues, too!”
“True.” I nodded. “Anyway, Michelle Rodriguez. Uh… The Fast and the Furious: 4! Vin Diesel’s girlfriend, that girl! That’s her, mom.”
“The one who died?” My mom pondered this.
I sighed. “Yeah, that one. I think she’s amazing and she’s pretty short, and I think she’s a lesbian.”
“But you wouldn’t talk to her, if you met her.” My mother smiled knowingly (I despise it when old(er) people do that).
“How do you know?” I yelped. “I’d probably go up to her and ask her out!”
“I’m sure you would,” my mother said, rolling her eyes. “You’d probably choke, like you did with those girls who asked for directions.”
“I would not!” I exclaimed, though I knew she had a point.
“You want a girlfriend?” My mother smiled, and I averted my gaze, embarrassed. “Try getting rid of that brain-freeze – it is not attractive.”
Okay, so maybe, just this one time, the woman who claims to be my mother sort-of, kind-of, might have a point here.
But it’s not going to be easy.

"Parents? Really?"

2009-09-20T09:43:00.000-07:00

“I wanna go out tonight,” I told Ruin, stretching across the table after the teacher had collected the final paper of the week – History II. “Shall we?”
“Aren’t you going to see Reyna?” he asked, picking up his bag.
“I went yesterday.” I shrugged. “Damn, man. Anyway, I need to take my mind off everything that’s been going on. Are we going out or not?”
“Go out and do what?” Fadhli asked, grabbing the crumpled sheets of paper off my desk to recycle them – he’s such a green freak. “You don’t smoke, not even shisha, and I want to go for shisha!”
“So go,” I told him. “I’m not smoking – not now, not ever again. Or doing shisha, since it has hash in it. Gross, dude – you’re gonna get addicted and die at age twenty-two.”
Okay, I know that I totally sounded like a Public Service Announcement at that moment, but seriously – after those few months back when I was 13 (and stupid as shit, I’ll add), I’m not smoking anything ever again.
“Steph,” Fadhli said slowly, as the three of us walked down the corridor, blocking the tiny (okay, so I’m not that tall, but…) juniors from the exit with our greatness. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Nope.” I shook my head. “I thought I told you all about the girl at church and stuff?”
“Oh, yeah.” He scratched his head – Fadhli constantly acts like he’s stoned, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he actually is, the guy smokes up three times a week. “You know what I think?”
“Ruin.” I grabbed his arm, pulling him back into step with us. “Listen – you cannot leave me alone with this freak of nature.”
Ruin smiled placidly. “Actually, we agreed about this, Steph. Fadhli, Amy, Amali, me…”
“You were discussing me?” I yelled, agitated. “Come on, you all know how much I hate that! That’s not fair, okay!”
“Woman.” Fadhli widened his eyes. “Relax and please don’t be a diva – it was just a one-time thing. It’s not like you’re the most interesting lesbian specimen on the planet.”
“Thanks so much.” I flipped them off. “What am I supposed to do – act like Megan Fox and get a stripper to date? No, thanks.” I stalked on, falling into step with Randy up ahead and not caring if I was behaving like Whitney Houston.
“Hey, Steph.” Randy smiled his perverted grin, as usual – what else can you expect from 17-year-old boys, especially one whose favorite word is, “Kinky…”?
“Hey, Kinky,” I replied as we took the stairs together, passing comments on the girls who passed us by (which is precisely why I love spending time with Randy).
One of our teachers, Ms. Wong – this old, unmarried lady whom I think is secretly a lesbian – passed us by on the stairs, and I stood aside to let her go ahead of us. Randy made a strange, humming noise under his breath, and I eyed him curiously.
“What now, Randy?” I balled my fist in his face, which according to him, just makes him want to laugh, because although I have pretty big hands for a teenage girl, compared to Randy’s hands, they’re tiny.
“Nah, I heard Fadhli and Ruin talking to you, y’know, just now,” Randy said, his usual smug grin on his face.
“Shut up,” I told him. “Really, Randy, I am so not in the mood to discuss my nonexistent love life. You know, for such a smug ass, shouldn’t you have a girlfriend?”
“This isn’t about me!” Randy exclaimed. “I just thought of something, which I bet you never thought of before. You wanna know why you don’t have a girlfriend?”
I shrugged. “Not really. Probably because of the affinity for books, strange music and Amelie Mauresmo, huh? Well, that’s what I think, anyway.”
“Could be.” Randy nodded. “But hey – it also could be because you’ve got the parent factor! You know, like the one Helen has, that made Raj like her…?”
“I don’t know what the heck you’re talking about,” I told him. “Are you trying to say that girls don’t like me because I behave like their parents? Ew! I do not do that.”
“No, no,” Randy protested weakly. “I’m trying to say…” He sighed, then brightened considerably. “Okay. Look at it this way – when you want to go out, like remember my birthday? When your parents wouldn’t let you go because they thought I was an unsavory pervert who hit on anything with a pulse and you’d get raped?”
“Huh?” I was even more confused. “You are an unsavory pervert, Randy.”
“Oh, yeah.” Randy waved a hand dismissively. “But that’s not the point. Anyway, the point is… my birthday. You told your parents that Helen would be going, right? And what did they say to that?”
I scratched my head as we walked out of the school compound, up the hill, not knowing where we were going with the conversation. Randy tends to talk more bullshit than I do – and that’s on a good day.
“Well, obviously, they let me go,” I told him. “They like Helen, and they know nothing would’ve happened if she was there, since she’s, y’know, good.”
“Okay, so, here’s why you don’t have a girlfriend.” Randy paused to steal my water-bottle out of my bag, take a long drink and continue. “You, my adorable little lesbian girlfriend, do not have a girlfriend because… You’re like Helen to the lesbians – look, you don’t smoke, you drink on occasion only, your grades are passably good, and hell, woman, you speak English! Their parents will love you!”
“Uh, then shouldn’t I already have a girlfriend?” I asked, even more confused from when we started out. “I mean, big-fucking-whoop, I speak English.”
“No,” Randy answered shortly. “See – between John and Bryan, who do girls fall for?”
“Bryan?” I guessed randomly. “I don’t know, I don’t like boys… Ugh.” I shuddered.
“Now, John is sweet, right?” Randy asked, and I nodded, because it was true, plain and simple. “He’s cute, doing Science, gets good grades, he’s polite. Am I right?”
“Sure.” I nodded again – I really do like John, he’s pretty much the nicest rich boy I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting (not that I’ve taken pleasure in meeting boys).
“Then we have Bryan,” Randy said. “He greets people by yelling, “Hey, bitch!” at the top of his voice. His pants are weird. He doesn’t study much. And yet…”
“Hm.” I thought this over for a full minute, staring at an inkblot on the sleeve of Randy’s white shirt. “So, you’re saying…”
“Woman, you’re just too parent-friendly,” Randy finished, drinking the last of my water.
“So, what am I supposed to do about it?” I asked, grabbing my water-bottle back. “Am I supposed to start acting like Angelina Jolie in Gia, with the drugs? Because I think I have more self-worth than that. No drugs, thank you.”
“You don’t do anything about it,” Randy said, shrugging. “Come on, everyone knows that the stuff you get shit for while going through your teens are the qualities that actually help you out in your twenties. So, yeah, don’t change. Give it a few more years.”
“You just quoted that from Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult,” I told him.
Randy nodded sagely. “Maybe, but we’ll see in a few years, who has a girlfriend.”
“Nicol David?” I asked. “Hah – I knew she was a lesbian!”
“Dumbshit,” Randy said lovingly, as my dad drove up to pick me up from school.
I grinned, hugging him – he’s a sweetheart, for all his bullshit. “Right back at you, dumbfuck. Thanks, though. Love you.”
In the car, dad gave me a strange look. “Was that your boyfriend? Nice-looking boy.”
“Yeah, he is.” I smirked, knowing dad couldn’t figure out which statement I’d answered, and realizing that as much as everyone else’s parents might think I’m awesome, and as much as my own parents love me, they all probably think I’m just a little weird.
But hey, I can live with that.

"Men, Overrated?"

2009-09-10T06:48:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a pretty hard day for a whole lot of us, and I'm just so emotionally exhausted. One of my friend's brothers has just passed away, in a car accident this morning, and I've just come back from visiting the family. While I was listening to her talk about how much her brother meant to her, I instantly thought about the charming, handsome, amazing men (or boys, if you look at it that way) who play such insanely important parts in my life. It would be hilarious to refer to them as my lezbros, or dyke-tykes, so I won't (because that just feels weird), but yeah -- here's to the boys, because they mean so much to me.

ME: My friend's brother passed away today. If you do that to me, I swear I will...

NICK-IE: Haha, don't worry. I'll text you in advance before I do.

---

ME: JD, if you ever put me through that, I will come there and kill you.

JD: I swear I won't. Don't worry. *smiles*

---

ME: Fuckface, I love you so much, if you ever leave me, you'll be sorry.

BEN: I thought you were a lesbian, but, hell -- okay.

---

ME: Her brother passed away today. She's really hurt.

AMALI: Ohmygod, I swear, I'm not gonna die like that! You'll be so sad, won't you?

ME: Self praise is no praise, but yes. Anyway, about that, I will cut off your...

---

ME: You're still my Chinese brother from another mother, right?

ALEX: I'm still here, aren't I?

ME: And if you ever go away forever, Alex, I'm gonna come there and strangle you.

ALEX: Chill, chica. You know I'm not going anywhere.

---

Yeah. As assholic and ~~stupid~~ wonderful as they may be, I love these boys, a whole lot. And they mean so much to me. The way they ~~pretend to~~ listen and don't judge really gets to me (which is something girls never do). So, boys, please don't go joyriding along Jalan Maarof at 5:00 in the morning, high on pot, okay?

The crazy things we get up to in class -- hear no evil (Ruin), speak no evil (me) and see no evil (Amali). The oldest pose in the book.

"Gfphskm"

2009-09-01T23:59:00.000-07:00

The day I talked to Eunice about how amazingly hot her sister was, I sent her a text later in the afternoon, saying, “dnt 4gt 2 tell yr sis tht I think she’s superhawt! XD” (Don’t forget to tell your sister that I think she’s superhot. *smiley face variation*) as a gentle reminder. Little did I know that Eunice actually showed the text to her sister – and the best part is, according to Eunice, her sister smiled, pretended not to smile, blushed and ran off to her room! I honestly didn’t think that I’d be able to evoke this reaction from lovely ladies, since I’m such a dork (which is just in my opinion – I have no idea what Eunice’s sister thinks of me), and I’m not able to maintain the illusion of coolness around girls who I like a lot (I’ll get to that part later and prove what a massive un-cool absolute dork I am).
Eunice didn’t show up at school on Monday (the conversation took place the previous Friday), so I couldn’t ask her how it went. I managed to get through the day by arguing with most of my friends on how my taste in women is not weird and trying to convince them that Eunice’s sister is actually pretty hot (and how she has an amazing aura). My friends reacted how I thought they would, so no surprises – they laughed, asked me what the heck I was thinking, asked if I was crazy and said that Eunice was much hotter than her sister, which I strongly did not agree with, although, yes, I have to say that Eunice is a great person with a brilliant sense of humor, who knows how to come up with and appreciate a good joke, and she’s very pretty – the thing is, she’s just not her sister, so that just doesn’t do it for me.
On Tuesday, though, I managed to skip last period Civics class and hang out in Eunice’s class, talking to my friends, since Civics doesn’t matter very much, anyway, and I’d been good and hadn’t skipped a class in ages. Eunice and I had a conversation about her sister, or something like that.
“I told her that you think she’s hot,” Eunice said.
“And?” I leaned across the table. “What the heck did she say?”
Eunice smirked. “She said – she’s half-Indian, of course she thinks I’m hot since I’m dark!” so I said, “But she’s really cool and you should talk to her.” and she said, “But if she thinks I’m hot, shouldn’t she talk to me first?” and I obviously said, “Puh-lease, we’re your seniors, so you go talk to her.”
Before I could get Eunice to tell me anything else, the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day and getting a collective sigh of relief from students all around the school. I walked out of school with AJ, and as we moved into the crush on students, all hell-bent on one motive – getting home, I bumped into…
…none other than Eunice’s hot sister.
“Hi,” she said, smiling at me.
My eyes shot open. “Gfphskm,” I said, choking, then mentally cursed myself (loudly, but not out loud) for getting like this around hot girls.
“What?” Eunice’s sister said, laughing (she has this insanely cute smile, by the way).
“I mean, hi,” I said smoothly, grinning.
And then, as quickly as it came, the moment was gone. She walked up the slope to my school, giggling away with her friends, and I walked up the slope with AJ, who kept giving me funny looks, like I was a weirdo for talking to Eunice’s sister.
“So…” I smirked, meeting up with Sarah and the rest at the top of the slope. “Guess what, people? Eunice’s hot sister said hi to me. I rock!”
“Eunice is hotter than her sister,” Helen commented, rolling her eyes. “With all due respect for your taste, Steph, really.”
“No…” I grinned to myself, causing AJ to elbow me in the ribs and yell out and inform all and sundry what an absolutely loathsome, self-loving pervert I am (in the next breath, she added, “And she rocks!”)
“Seriously.” Helen shook her head. “Remember your obsession with Natasha Kai? This is just like that – a passing phase.”
“Aw, come on, give her some credit,” AJ said, shrugging. “At least she went for it, which isn’t exactly something she could’ve done with Natasha Kai, y’know?”
“She’s right,” Sarah said. “But I think it’s not Eunice’s sister whom she wants.”
“Then who, Sarah?” I asked, not wanting to be baited but failing miserably at it and asking questions all the same. Sarah grinned, along with Helen and AJ, the silence building momentum. And then, the three of them yelled, in unison, “She wants me!” and laughed crazily.
I sighed, got into my car and went home, wondering how I chose my friends.

"Quoting Faith Hill"

2009-08-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

As I was online today (which seems to be the way to spend the week we have off from school), I saw that the personal message of one of my friends was the lyrics to Faith Hill’s There You’ll Be. I hadn’t heard that one in ages, so I got on Ares and downloaded it. Of course, as is usually the case, I didn’t get around to listening to it till much later – I downloaded it in the afternoon and I didn’t get to listen to it until 12:34 at night, when it came on my playlist, cued up after Emmy the Great, and this time felt different from all the other times I’d listened to Faith Hill on the radio or whatever. I actually shut up, put it on repeat and listened to it and, obviously, I got to thinking. The first thing that came to mind was my Confirmation class, and her. With the post about my friend’s sister up, you probably thought I was over her – hell, I thought I was over her – but looks like I’m not.
One of the things I thought about practically instantly was when the lyrics, “I keep a part of you with me.” came on, and I realized, that she’s literally got a part of me. Technically, not a part of me as in a body part, (I’m still not crazy enough to cut off my ear like Vincent van Gough, sorry), which would be absolutely disgusting, in my opinion, with no offence to those of you who have cut off your ears to present to your girlfriends or boyfriends or whoever, but the way I see it, she’s got a part of me (and I’m not being cliché this time and saying that she has my heart, because even though she pretty much has that, too, this isn’t what we’re talking about here). Anyway, you’re probably getting slightly (or very irritated) at me beating around the bush like this, so here’s the story of what she has of mine.
Five months or so before Confirmation (this was before I’d realized that I liked her), I walked into class, late as usual because I’d decided to catch up on those extra few minutes of sleep (bad, bad decision), with my MP3 playing Kate Walsh in one ear. I slid into a seat one up from her, with another of our friends in the middle and yawned.
She stretched a leg out and kicked me (have I mentioned that she’s extremely tall – even in flats?). “Good morning, sunshine,” she said sarcastically.
“Don’t give me that.” I sleepily rubbed my eye. “I came, didn’t I?”
“Yeah.” She pondered this for a while. “But you’re always late, you know.”
I nodded. “I know. Thank you, sister, I shall attend Confession immediately so that I will not be sent to hell for coming to class late.”
“Extremely late,” she corrected, and the four of us in the row burst out laughing, earning the stink-eye from the teacher.
I stretched, cracking my knuckles, and she grabbed my left hand, studying the band around my wrist (it’s pretty simple – the thing is, I have about a million of those bands that you wind around your wrist about five times and tie, and I match the bands to whatever color Amelie Mauresmo’s wearing on-court, which is my “Support Amelie” ritual, so if you see a girl wearing leather strings in blue right now, that’s probably me).
“Where do you get these?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Anywhere. KLCC, mostly. Why?”
“I want one!” she exclaimed. “Do you have an extra black one?”
Coincidentally, black is the color I wear the most, especially on the off-season when Amelie’s not playing, and since they wear out so quickly and that irritates me, I always insist on having at least three or more spare black ones.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “You want it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Obviously, Steph. Can you bring it next week?”
“Sure. Okay.” Then, I turned and smiled sweetly at the teacher who was staring at us, probably wondering what he was supposed to do with the four extremely talkative teenage girls sitting at the back of his class, who were spreading their disease to the boys in the front row, and having a good laugh, all at the expense of the weird church music he was playing on his laptop.
And so, I brought it the next week, gave it to her, all the while completely oblivious to the fact that I liked her (yeah, yeah, I’m officially a gigantic, brainless idiot, okay, I know what you’re thinking) and actually put it on for her, without knowing anything the whole time.
“Thanks,” she said, holding her wrist next to mine to admire her black band next to the red one I was wearing in support of Amelie.
“No worries.” I shrugged, like it was nothing – which it actually was, at the time.
So, yeah, I have absolutely no idea how I was able to connect a Faith Hill song to a black wristband and her, but amazingly, I can, and there you have it – the whole damn story.
Wow. *amazed*

"Proof that Cutouts Work Better than Textbooks"

2009-08-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

So, as you probably know, with the SPM examination drawing closer, and good results being my only ticket out of here (here, being my parents’ house, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and basically anywhere I might have relatives spying on me and just waiting to tell my family what a big lesbian I am). Since I need good results like Kate Moss needs her cocaine (is she still doing it? I, for one, have no idea), I’ve started studying, roughly two months from probably the most important exam I’ll ever have to sit for in my life (I can almost hear my late grandfather in my head, saying, “Better late than never.”). The motivation behind my eagerness to study is pretty simple. It all started a few weeks ago, when I was reading the Sports section of a local newspaper in the middle of BM class, much to the teacher’s annoyance and dismay.
“Amelie’s in the newspaper!” I exclaimed, poking Amy with my BM grammar exercise book (poking people and throwing it around are pretty much the only things I use the book for – I haven’t handed it in the whole year).
“Oh, okay, cool,” Amy replied, looking up from her copy of Seventeen.
“Stephanie!” the teacher suddenly bellowed from the front of the classroom. “What are you doing? You haven’t changed at all, how are you going to pass BM?”
Of course, she said all this in BM – the BM teacher and I have a peculiar song-and-dance that goes on whenever she yells at me; she speaks to me in BM and I answer in English.
“Uh, reading the newspaper?” I answered innocently, holding up the paper. “General knowledge is good.”
Amy turned around, smirking. “I’m sure who Amelie beat last night is considered very important general knowledge.”
“Of course it is.” I whizzed my grammar book at her, like a frisbee. “And how did you know she was playing last night? I didn’t tell you, did I?”
“Dark circles,” Amy said, pointing to the huge bags under my eyes. “Easy.”
“Amy and Stephanie!” The teacher stalked over to us and picked up my book from Amy’s desk – my very empty book, might I add.
“Um, no, don’t look at that…,” I began, only to be cut off when the teacher slammed the book on my desk.
She glared at me. “You haven’t done anything in my class, ever! You want to fail BM?”
“Not exactly,” I started. “I mean, I’m passing, right? I should be able to get a good grade for SPM, and I’m working at home…”
Wrong move. The teacher’s face slowly started absorbing red pigment (I do pay attention in Science class, at least).
“You work at home!” she fairly yelled into my face. “Then you should stay home! See the principal and ask for leave until SPM! Go!”
“Uh.” I stood there like an idiot for a while, waiting for her to start to speak again – in five, four, three, two…
“You really need to change your attitude,” the teacher said, more softly this time. “You can score – I know that –but you need to change.”
I nodded, sitting down as she walked back to the front of the class. The guy beside me collapsed on his desk, laughing at my poker-face. And then, I saw it… On the top of a stack of old newspapers, was a picture of Amelie, after beating Flavia Penneta in the third round at Wimbledon. I squinted at it – somebody was obviously trying to tell me something. I grabbed the sheet of newspaper and cut Amelie’s picture out, spraying strands of paper everywhere.
The teacher looked up from the front of the class and sighed. “What are you doing now?”
“Changing myself.” I shrugged. “If this lady over here can’t change me, then nobody else can help my lazy ass.” I held up the picture of Amelie, borrowing Amy’s glue stick to stick it on my desk, with the speech bubble, “Study or I’ll fucking dump you.”
And it worked, little by little. I’d take out a book to read and there would be Amelie, threatening to dump me if I didn’t study. So I study (note the present tense), but the problem was – there was no inspiration to study at home. It was then that I decided I needed help. I browsed the internet for pictures of Amelie, got a few and went to my mother, the woman who hears all my ideas out before I go through with them.
“Hi,” I said, sitting next to her on the couch. “What’re you doing?”
“Watching Oprah,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What do you want?”
“What makes you think I want something?” I shot back.
My mother raised her eyebrows, without taking her eyes off the TV screen. “What?”
“Okay, I have an idea,” I said quickly. “I swear, it’ll help me study better.”
“What do you mean, study better?” my mom asked. “You don’t even study.”
“I’ve started!” I said indignantly, rolling my eyes. “Just at school, so you don’t see it.”
“Hm, about school,” my mom started. “I got a call from your BM teacher–”
“Anyway,” I cut her off. “I wanted to tell you that in order to study better, I have to print out these pictures in life-size.” I held up the pictures of Amelie.
My mom laughed, then stopped abruptly, realizing that I was serious. “You want to put pictures of Mauresmo up to help you study?”
“Uh, yeah.” I nodded. “She helps me, mom. We have this thing, I know it sounds–”
“Okay, stop.” My mother rolled her eyes. “Well, if it helps you, do it.”
So that’s how I’ve come to have a few life-size cutouts of Amelie around the house – mainly in my bathroom, in the TV room, in the hall where I study and in my room (okay, I’ll admit it, that one is for my own personal, uh… pleasure), to remind me that I need to study, hard, or Amelie’s going to dump my ass for, I don’t know, Sam Stosur or Svetlana Kuznetsova or someone (and yes, I do know that Amelie and I technically aren’t really together – yet – so she can’t dump me, but yet is the keyword here, but it gives me inspiration, so I’ll keep pretending). Anyway, all you really need to know is that, according to my mom and most of my friends, the cutouts seem to be doing their job better than most textbooks.
Well. Fancy that.

"What Makes Four Flights Up to Art Class Worth it"

2009-08-20T23:41:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, as I was walking around the school on the way to the Art room (which is four flights up) to finish my project – the teachers who don’t like me think that I have this annoying habit of walking around the school as if my father owns it or something, but I don’t, and he doesn’t. On the way there, I passed by one of the classes. A lot of my friends’ little siblings are in these classes, and since I don’t have any little siblings of my own, I tend to spoil these ones rotten, and because of that, I’m pretty popular with them. Half the class came out to talk to me (maybe this was why I got into Art class twenty minutes late), and while we were talking, I noticed this girl sitting in the window. I’m not one to really check out girls openly, especially quiet girls who sit down and do their work, but for some reason, this girl really got my attention.
She had this kind of aura that I was really attracted to, and I swear she pinged my gaydar hardcore! Okay, yeah, she wasn’t the best-looking girl I’d ever crushed on, and I don’t usually like younger women, but this girl was really different. I said my goodbyes and rushed back to class to tell Amy all about her.
“Amy, I saw this hot girl!” I exclaimed, banging the table excitedly and earning a glare from the Art teacher. “Oh, sorry… But, Amy – she was really hot!”
“Steph, is she in the next class?” Amy asked calmly (she’s used to my ADD-spurred outbursts), and I nodded. “You’re such a dumbass,” Amy sighed. “Steph. The girl is thirteen years of age! Don’t tell me…”
Before she could continue, I rolled my eyes. “But she’s hot,” I whined. “And different!”
As Amy did her Art project and I slacked off, pretending to draw stick figures when the Art teacher walked by to check our progress, I told Amy about how different the girl was, earning lots of strange stares from the people around me.
“Okay, Amy, here’s the thing,” I told her, cracking my knuckles. “I think she’s Chinese, but she might be mixed, cause she has a darker skin-tone and her features are really nice and sharp… y’know, for a Chinese girl. I’m sorry!”
The apology was forced out, because Amy is Chinese, too, but being an amazing friend and all-in-all, a wonderful person, she let me continue telling her (and the rest of the people sitting at our table, pretending to do their Art project but really eavesdropping) about the latest object of my obsession.
“And, listen – she had this aura, Amy, I swear to Ellen and Amelie, she had an honest-to-god aura!” I babbled. “Shit, I really liked her aura. It was just so… calm.”
Amy shot me a look that showed she thought that I was officially a nutcase with no hope of getting this girl. “Mmhmm. Yeah, Steph.”
“Really,” I insisted, throwing a sponge into the hair of the nearest boy who was listening in. “I liked it. She was chilled! I have never met a person so calm in my entire life!”
“Technically, you haven’t even met her yet.” Amy studied her drawing-block – total joykill. “Steph. She’s a younger, dark, probably-stoned Chinese girl. Are you crazy?”
And that was only the beginning. I sat down with practically everyone I knew to tell them about the girl with the aura. They looked at me like I was insane.
All day long, I got responses like, “Steph – the girl is thirteen. Let it go, will you?”
And, “Steph – she’s probably not the best-looking girl out there. You have weird taste.”
Not to mention, “Dude, the aura? I can explain – she’s been smoking weed. Easy.”
Others would say, “You don’t even know her name? Excellent. I can tell this is going to go well.” Then sigh and continue with, “Next time, ask her name, Steph.”
And this torture went on until I was sitting down at break, discussing the mystery girl to Mandy and her boyfriend, who kept giving me strange glances.
“What?” I finally asked, after one glance too many from the happy couple.
“That girl…,” Mandy said thoughtfully, strings of pizza cheese hanging from her chin. “I think she possibly might be Eunice’s sister.”
“No way!” I could have kissed Mandy for that, but since her boyfriend was there, it probably wasn’t such a good idea, so I rushed off to find Eunice.
Eunice is one of those straight and taken girls who thinks I’m a hilarious person and that, in her opinion, it’s really fun to flirt with me, since I’m one of the only out queers at school. I slung my arm around her shoulder, smiling at my sister-in-law-to-be.
“Hey, Eunice!” I said cheerfully. “How’re you doing? Biology okay?”
Eunice rolled her eyes through a smile. “Okay, what do you want, Steph?”
“Well.” I cracked my knuckles. “I just thought I’d tell you… I have cancer! Just kidding – you know your sister? Of course you know your sister. Anyway, yeah. Your sister – I think she’s your sister, Mandy said she was – she’s really hot!”
Eunice stared at me for a while, trying to gage if I was serious or being my usual self. “What? You’re joking, right? My sister, Steph? Really?” She giggled. “Fun-ny.”
“Real-ly!” I said, raising my eyebrows. “She’s got such a beautiful nose. Oh, and I think I might be in love with her aura. It’s so calm.”
“What bullshit.” Eunice rolled her eyes, still laughing. “You’re so funny! You. And my sister. What a couple!” And she was off, laughing again.
“What?” I exclaimed, confused. “Why? I think she’s hot, Eunice.”
“But she’s dark! She looks mixed,” Eunice said, as if this didn’t make any sense.
“Uh, that’s kind of the point,” I replied. “And so what if she’s dark? Have you seen Frieda Pinto? I would so do that woman like that.” I snapped my fingers.
Eunice still thought I was messing around, and by this point, I was ready to hit her over the head with Lady Gaga’s disco stick – I swear.
“Wait…,” Eunice said slowly, turning into flirtation mode. “I know why you’re doing this! You’re doing it to make me jealous, and I won’t stand for it anymore!”
We both cracked up at this – her because she thought she was right, me because she couldn’t be more wrong, and us because there was never really any tension in the conversation to begin with. After a while, we stopped and Eunice looked at me.
“You really think she’s hot?” she asked, and I nodded (going for the pathetic puppy-dog look). “But she’s dark. Like some mixed kid!”
“That’s the point, Eunice,” I said impatiently. “Mixed kids are usually gorgeous.”
Eunice paused for a while, then turned to me, frowning. “Do you think she’s hotter than I am?”
“Well…” I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “She is very pretty, you know. And she’s got an amazing nose, Eunice… Not that – well, I, uh…”
“What?” Eunice exclaimed, sticking her hand in my face. “Don’t talk to me!”
“Okay,” I said, nodding devoutly. “So, will you talk to her for me? Please, Eunice? I’ll love you forever, and more, if you become my sister-in-law.”
Eunice rolled her eyes at me, giving her the puppy-dog look, pleading with my eyes, and (against her better judgment, she says), agreed to tell her sister that I thought she was hot.
Score one for me!

"Questions, Dresses, Boyfriends, Wine and a Very Queer Confirmation Dinner"

2009-08-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

The question going around at my Confirmation dinner party was, “Wow, Steph, you’re getting so big now, the last time I saw you was when you were barely up to my elbow! You’ve gotten so mature and gorgeous! So, do you have a boyfriend yet?”
What I noticed about this was that old people tend to exaggerate every single word. Also, this statement makes me want to grab them by the shoulders and yell in their faces, “Hello, do you not see what’s in front of you? How can you bullshit to my face that I’m gorgeous? Do you not see my humongous directly-Hispanic ass and thighs?”, and not to mention that I really wanted to say – “Dude. I wore a pair of white bootleg pants, an Oxford shirt, a pair of Jack Purcell Converse and barely a smattering of eyeliner to my Confirmation. Read between the lines.”
In fact, this one lady whom my mom invited (she’s in her mid-40s, a passably-modern Indian lady, and a fairly nice person), actually came up to me and said, “Aw, Steph, what a pity we didn’t get to see you in a dress for your Confirmation.”
I sipped my wine, buzzing a little. “But I’m not comfortable in a dress, and it’s against my principals and religion.”
“Oh, really?” the lady said, laughing. “And what religion might that be?”
“Ellen-ism,” I replied, pouring myself a fifth glass of wine (I had about eight before my cousin, Vanessa, took it away). “Ellen Degeneres, I mean. To me, she’s more than god.”
“But she’s so… dyke-ish,” the lady said sincerely. “Why her?”
I finished my wine and got the sixth. “Because she’s a lesbian and doesn’t wear skirts.”
Needless to say, by the end of the night, I was really high. Not so high that I was considered drunk, but passably high. I sprawled on the couch in my grandmother’s living room, sitting upright, but in the way that all teenagers do – taking up as much space as humanely possible.
“Hey,” I said to my cousin, Felicia, who was resting her head on my shoulder as she watched a late-night episode of Ben-10 (she’s going on eleven this month). “I know a hot girl called Felicia, too. She’s gorgeous.”
Felicia, being young, hero-worships me and thinks I’m only second to Ben-10 (I still don’t know who he is), so she pays attention to what I say, which is nice, since I don’t get that very often and would go on a power-trip if I did. “You’re drunk,” she said, giggling.
“Perhaps.” I nodded in a very Zen-like way, messed up my hair and proceeded to imitate a large-sized lady, a family friend, who had come for my Confirmation dinner.
The mid-40-year-old lady was in stitches (I’ll give her this – she has a great sense of humor), although my mother didn’t approve of my imitation.
“I don’t understand why you don’t have a boyfriend,” she told me. “Any guy would be crazy not to fall for your wit and humor.”
But I don’t even want a boyfriend, I thought to myself as I sat there, looking rather stoned, I think. My brain tends to slow down with alcohol. Thankfully, it cleared up enough to hear Bianca say, “Steph so does have a boyfriend! His name is Amali!”
I stared at her, not believing that she’d just said that.
The whole family present (and all the family friends – or moochers who just refused to go home) stared at me, shocked. I bit into my thumbnail, messing up my compulsory Confirmation manicure (gee, thanks, mom) as they continued to stare.
“Well, thank god,” the mid-40-year-old lady exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air gratefully. “I was starting to have serious doubts about you! So, this Amali boy… tell me about him.”
“I’m extremely buzzed, you know?” I told her, staring back, wide-eyed at my shocked-beyond-belief family, and extended family, and weird people.
“That’s the point!” The mid-40-year-old psycho cackled.Uh-oh, looks like I have some serious explaining to do when I come out.

"Dating with Stephanie"

2009-08-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

My friend Amali is a gay guy with a perpetual string of boyfriends (and a longtime crush on me, but that’s a story for another post) whom he drags along, getting them to buy him stuff and then changing them as and when he needs to. I have to admit that I’m a little jealous of his ability to pick a random man off myspace.com and, start IMing him, have the guts to text-message him, get together – as in, boyfriends and eventually meet up. I, for one, would never be brave enough to do something like that. In my opinion, I have to know the woman of interest personally and have a relationship with her beyond the Internet before I actually fall for her. But that’s probably because I’m such a damn chicken. I’ve never had a girlfriend before, or a serious relationship, and heck – I’m a hormone-stuffed teenager and I want one, dammit!
Needless to say, when I went to KLCC today, to get myself the 6th Strangers in Paradise pocketbook (which, for your information, isn’t a comic book, but a graphic novel), I kept my eyes peeled for anyone who could be potential girlfriend material (I told you I was desperate). Anyway, stop #1 was the Gender Studies section in the Kinokuniya bookstore. I always feel really flaming when I stand there, browsing, but hey, some sacrifices have to be made, and I’ve found some really good books there, like The Full Spectrum. So, yeah, I was standing there, browsing, and some old Chinese man was browsing the shelves next to me. He stared at me with this weird look, a little like, “What the heck are you doing here, kid?” so I smiled back, all, “I know exactly what I’m doing.” but he didn’t smile, so I ignored him.
I stayed there for a while and found Cris Beam’s Transparent, and Nancy Garden’s Hear Us Out, which I bought. While I was browsing, a Malay girl stood around the section, too, but she didn’t exactly seem interested in making conversation (Why is it that gay people in Malaysia never want to make conversation in public places?), so I went to meet my mom, who was in Herrod’s, her new heaven. While she browsed and forgot to ask me what cheese I wanted (I’m a sucker for cheese, I’ll eat it with anything), I sat down and tried to read one of my new books, but that plan failed miserably when a group of the most gorgeous Middle-Eastern girls walked into the store. I swear to Ellen DeGeneres, my jaw hit the floor, and my mother noticed. She looked up from the marmalade selection, gave me a wink and continued browsing.
We hit Dome for lunch later (with me carrying my mom’s shopping bags), and my mom decided that it was time for A Talk. This time, it was about (cue the suspenseful music) drugs, of all things.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said, looking at me pointedly.
I looked up from my menu, confused. “Huh? Why? That was so… random.”
“You don’t do drugs,” mother dearest told me confidently, before nudging me with her shoe under the table. “Ooh. Cute waitress, six o’clock.”
“Mo-ther!” I exclaimed, mortified. “Can we please not do this? I’ll find someone when The Powers that Be give me someone I really like, okay? Thank you.”
“You mean like that girl at church?” she asked slyly.
My jaw dropped for the millionth time that afternoon, although it wasn’t for a hot girl this time (so sue me, there were lots of hot girls at KLCC today, so much so that the moment I stepped in, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven, and this was The Powers that Be’s reward for me being such a good little baby-dyke, and then I saw the boyfriends… damn! But moving on…).
“How do you know about her?” I asked, lowering my voice like we were in a Mafia movie.
My mom waved a delicate hand in front of her face (making me wonder, once again, how we could be so different). “Pssh. Please, you’ve never been this interested in church gatherings before, so it’s not hard. So, who is it?” She dropped a few names.
I denied each vehemently, over a turkey-ham-and-cheese sandwich with a side-order of crappy salad in dressing that looked like drain-water (swear to Ellen), even though the name of my crush was slipped in there, somewhere.
“Anyway.” My mother ran though the list of names one last time, wiping her lips with a serviette before applying a new coat of lipstick. “Are you going to tell her?”
“Um…” I studied the remainder of my dessert, like it was about to reveal the meaning of my pathetic, date-less, teenage life to me. “No. I won’t.”
“And that poem you wrote was about her?” my mother asked, waiting for clarification.
“I cannot believe you snooped, ma!” I said loudly, startling the baby at the next table – whoops – and offering an apologetic grin to the frazzled-looking mother who ignored me.
I spent the rest of lunch in a huff, pretending not to check out the blonde girl a few tables away who looked like a shorter, slimmer version of Svetlana Kuznetsova – color me interested – up until this weird Malay guy with a lip piercing sat next to her.
“You’re such an… What do you call those?” My mother glanced at me as we took the escalator down. “An emo kid, or something like that? A lesbian emo kid, you are.”
“Mmhmm.” I bit my lip and lifted her shopping bags higher. “Whatever, mom. Don’t be surprised if you see me on one of those reality shows where the person in question has some weird personality defect and can’t get a date, ever.”
My mother laughed. “You’re such a drama queen… There’s some of me! Oh, what about that girl over there? She’s cute enough. Short, though. You like the tall ones.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I told her. “And I don’t want some random girl. I want a hybrid of Mauresmo (my mom still can’t get over me referring to her as “Amelie” with undertones of passion in my voice – please note sarcasm), Natalie Portman, Olivia Wilde, Brandi Carlile, Missy Higgins, Frieda Pinto…” I trailed off, daydreaming.
“You really like the tall ones,” my mother said. “There’s the romance talking – that’s your father, Isweartogod. You know, I saw this girl just now. She was with one of those… scary ones. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t just try dating my daughter.”
“I’m glad you didn’t, ma. Will you never learn?” I shook my head – my right ear was a little blocked. “Her girlfriend would’ve come after me or something!”
“I didn’t,” my mother said quickly. “But I should have, because I’m proud of you.” She smiled, trying to put an arm around my shoulders (which was pretty hard, because she was in flats and I was wearing lifted Timberland sneakers).
“Thanks, ma.” I grinned, which is kind of a half-grin (way back, when I was seven, one of my friends asked me, “Why’s your smile crooked?”, which is now a running family joke, since I kept the smile).
Mom ruffled my hair and told me she was proud of me again, even if I couldn’t get a date. Maybe her being proud of me, gay or not, isn’t such a bad thing, after all.
But I won’t stand for any more of her suggestions.
Really.

"Makeover Madness"

2009-08-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

I could look you in the eye right now and tell you that the 30 hours before my Confirmation was truly nerve-wracking and crazy. I was pulled, rubbed, cut, plucked, threaded and basically manhandled into submission with all the care of a long-running BDSM relationship (the thought of which still freaks me out, even after discussing it thoroughly with Amali, I am telling you that is just sick, but moving on…). Anyway, 30 hours before my Confirmation, I found myself stuck in Mid Valley with my mom, my cousin Bianca, Bianca’s mom, and this neighbor lady who’s somehow become a family friend, waiting to get our nails done. I’ll admit that I’m usually a little slack with my nails, letting them grow out until a teacher in school makes me cut it, or it breaks or tears, or I accidentally scratch someone. Wouldn’t want to scare any potential girlfriends off.
The manicure lady took one look at my nails and decided that she’d go with a French manicure (which I found hilarious and another part of my destiny, since Amelie Mauresmo’s French, you see?). She grabbed my hands, anchoring them down as she worked her way through ten long, passably clean fingernails. Drying was another part of hell. I’d worn a pair of board-shorts, not knowing that the nail studio would be freezing. My hands went under these tiny fans, turned on at full-blast, for about half-an-hour or so. We continued with my toenails. If I’m slack with my fingernails, my toenails are a disaster. I practically never cut them, and just leave them to grow long and free, a habit which pisses my mom (and aunts, and older female cousins, and grandmas) off no end. I swear, every single time I see them, I get nagged to cut my toenails.
Here I should note, that as long as my toenails are, they’re definitely not disgusting (give me some credit, I do know how to take care of my appearance, you know). As I was picking a color for my toenails, my mother, sitting back and having her toenails painted bright-red, turned around in her chair to look at me.
“No dark colors,” she said sternly. “Not this time – it’s your Confirmation.”
Like people are going to see my toenails, I thought to myself.
“Okay,” I said, nodding obediently. “No dark colors. Confirmation.”
I waited until her back was turned before deciding on black. So much for no dark colors, and I don’t understand how a color scheme affects my Confirmation outlook. Maybe it’d make me think like Marilyn Manson and I’d bite people. Ew.
As soon as the nail ordeal was over and the nail-artist was satisfied with poking and tugging my cuticles into shape, everyone (except me) decided that it was time to get our eyebrows done – yay! Not. I have to admit that although I hate the pain of getting my eyebrows done, I love how they look right after; all clean and shaped beautifully and they just make me happy… granted, this is only if they’ve been done by someone who’s only been doing it for over two years, three months and six days. The thing is, I always get lumped with some girl who’s only been doing it for six days, or if I’m lucky, three months. As we drove into Bangsar, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that this time around wouldn’t be much better than the last – and I was abso-freaking-lutely right about it.
There was an immensely cute girl in the threading parlor (I couldn’t tell if she was Malay or Chinese or a mix of something). I was physically messing around with Bianca – my grandmother likes to say that we mess around like puppies – and this girl seemed to think it was funny, though I have no idea why. She was smiling at me, and I gave her the half-grin back, which prompted a nudge from Bianca to continue tussling (Bianca’s taller and bigger than I am, but I’m stronger – thank you, hardcore-handball-training). I sat down in the threading chair, telling myself, “Come on, Steph, you’ve done this before, so don’t freak out. There’s a hot girl over there!” but by the time the young Indian lady from India (these people are married and some of them are only two years older than I am, which is something to ponder) started, I realized that she fit into the “Six-Day” category.
As she was doing my left eyebrow, she was leaning over me at such an angle that her knuckle was in my right eye, which was actually more irritating than the concept of threading itself. I had to sit up a few times, and in the end, I ended up covering my right eye, then my left, as she finished up. Of course, this wouldn’t matter so much if the threading girl (the thread-er, maybe?) resembled Lara Dutta, but with my luck, she looked more like Mahatma Gandhi, and had little time for my nonsense. By the time she was done, I sat up, looking around for the hot girl (who, by this time, was pinging my gay-dar, since she’d smile at me every single time I sat up and whined about the thread-er poking my eye), but she was nowhere to be found. Ah, well, easy come, easy go, so I got up and proceeded to the waxing area to poke fun at Bianca…
…And there she was, getting her legs waxed. So, she was probably shorter than me, but that didn’t matter. I was so engrossed that I almost didn’t hear Bianca yelling, “Aaaaaughhhh!”, followed by, “Steeeeeeph! Help meeeee!” as they ripped the hair off her legs. Instead of staying engrossed, I pottered over to Bianca, rubbing toner over my newly-trimmed, sore eyebrows, since one thing my cousin Vanessa has drilled (yes, like an actual, military sergeant-in-arms) into us is that it’s family before girlfriend/boyfriend/crush. Bianca grabbed my hand, squeezed it hard and screamed so loudly that you’d think she was going into labor. I looked around the tiny space and pretended not to know the girl who was hanging onto my hand for dear life (if you have younger cousins or siblings, I bet this happens a lot to you, too).
In the midst of all Bianca’s screaming, in walked this metrosexual-looking, clean-shaven young guy in his early 20s – spiked fauxhawk, crisp black polo t-shirt, skinny jeans… but upon close inspection, it wasn’t a guy at all. It was the hot girl’s girlfriend (I’m not really butch to begin with – I don’t even have the mentality, for one thing – and I honestly can’t even begin to understand why the Malaysian butch butches insist on fauxhawks; what’s wrong with actually having hair au natural?). As the hot girl walked out, she smiled at me, and I snuck a look at her girlfriend, who looked like she wanted to bite me… and not in a good way. It didn’t bother me too much, though, since like I said, easy come, easy go. My main focus wasn’t really the hot girl at the threading parlor, anyway, since it was Confirmation.
Later on at church, after about six hours of slathering my eyebrows in my grandmother’s naturally-planted aloe vera to reduce the swelling and puffy red color, she turned around from her seat in front of me and smiled. I couldn’t help it, I smiled back, the half-grin, as always.
“You might kill me for saying this, Steph,” she started. “But you look so cute right now.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle the biggest smile I’ve ever smiled (okay, yes, I know it sounds lame and cliché, but bear with me), feigning indifference. “Uh-huh.”
Cute – I was cute. Not amazingly hot and “Whoa!”, like Shane from The L Word, probably more like Alice Pieszecki, or Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Tegan Quin.
But “cute”, from her? I can definitely live with that.

"You Can Call Me a Fool... I Only Wanna be with You"

2009-08-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

Confirmation pictures, and more about the outcome later, just because I'm way too tired.

The object of my obsession, just to prove she's gorgeous.

The most awesome friends at Confirmation class I could ask for.

"The Beginning of the End... or Something"

2009-07-31T09:34:00.000-07:00

Confirmation is tomorrow. As I sit here, typing this out, with Coldplay’s The Scientist playing on my iTunes, I honestly don’t know what to do with myself. There are so many things I want to say and do, but I obviously won’t be able to bring myself to say and do them. I mean, this is me we’re talking about. It’s not like I’ll be able to go up to her and say, “Hey, guess what? Over the course of these two weeks, I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with you. Please, pick me over your boyfriend, and if you do, I swear I’ll make you the happiest girlfriend ever, happier than Portia de Rossi. Just don’t leave me hanging now.” I won’t even try. It’s like my cousin Nick says – I have to get over her. It’s that, or tell her, which I am totally against doing. I’m more against telling her than I was against Sarah Palin becoming VP of the USA.
It’s just that I so, so want this. I want an us, as much as I know that I’ll probably never have one with her. Maybe that’s what love is all about, the whole damned concept of love, is wanting to make someone happy, regardless of what you have to do to get that reaction from them – hey, look, now I’m cracking the codes of emotions! At the same time, though, if you asked me what I’d do if she had to choose between being happy with some guy and being unhappy with me, I’d be totally stuck for an answer. I know it sounds really assholic (I’m sorry – I make up words on a whim) and even downright selfish, but I honestly don’t know what I’d want her to do. Of course, I’d want her to be happy, but is it really so bad to want her to be happy with me, even if she is undeniably straight and into Wentworth Miller.
Thing is, I can talk and moan and groan and bitch about it all I want, but I’m the kind of person who takes a backseat during these times. I’m just so downright passive that it even pisses me off sometimes, but what am I supposed to do about it? I was laying in bed last night, on my back, my hands folded behind my head and it dawned on me that the only one who can help me now is the Big Dude Up There. I’m not turning into a religious bible-thumper (because I simply despise those people – with a few exceptions, of course – and it would be hypocritical of me to do that), but what I did was I continued laying there and I winged a few words to the Whoever in heaven, because what I’ve learned so far is that if you’re in dire need of help – and believe me, I am – you can ask, and most of the time, you get help.
So, yeah – I lay there and drafted a few “prayers”, if you could even call them that, since it wasn’t anything I’ve ever been taught in church or Sunday School, but gave up drafting them and just told the Whoever Up There (I think I’ll now refer to anything faintly god-ish like this, since I like it) how I feel.
And now, this crush… Well, it’s not in my hands anymore, but somehow, just this one time, it’s in the hands of a higher power. There’s nothing I can do about it anymore, except stress myself out, which I seem to be absolutely brilliant at doing, so I’ll end this post fairly simply…
Whoever’s up there – just find it in your heart to help me, okay?
If anything, please?

"The Best/Worst Day Ever"

2009-07-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

We had a very interesting Confirmation class course today. Classes are usually held on a Sunday morning, but this time, for some strange reason, the teachers thought that it should be held on a Saturday, from 9am till 9:30pm. Okay, stuck in a room with stupid people who live to love and serve god for twelve-and-a-half-hours is not my idea of a fun Saturday. I would’ve skipped out on it (I skipped out on a two-day Confirmation class seminar late last year to go to Bangkok and buy stuff, but this was before I liked her, so it was perfectly acceptable), but as you probably guessed, I’m pretty damn deeply in love with this girl, so I went when she said, “You have to go, Steph. Please? If you don’t, I’ll be so bored!” and she has me wrapped around her little finger, so obviously I said I’d go and oblige her.
The thing is, the course started at 9am, sharp, and I – living about a half-an-hour drive from my church – woke up at 8:24 in the morning, and thought I had time to spare, so I went back to sleep for another six minutes, until I realized… (insert suspenseful music here) …I was so damn late for the course! It was about 9:20am when I got there, hungry from not having breakfast (the things I do for love). She, of course, was already there (all 5”7’ of her gorgeousness), crammed into a plastic chair.
She smiled, glared, chastised me for being late, and went, “Why are your eyes so puffy?”
“Mpshgwtd.” I yawned, muttering something inaudible. “I’m really sorry; it’s just that I got to sleep pretty late last night. But I’m here for you now, right?” Then, I leaned my head and pretending to pray, went to sleep for a while longer.
Naturally, she was the one who woke me up, when she couldn’t stand the boredom, by reaching over and pinching my cheek.
“What?” I said, rubbing my eyes and yawning, getting a glare from the teacher – I’m sorry your course is so boring, Mrs. Whatever.
She held on to my cheek, squishing it. “Ooh. Squishy, Steph.” She grinned. “I’m bored.”
“I was sleeping, you know,” I muttered, yawning again. “God, I’m exhausted.”
“Okay, okay, you sleep,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Sorry.”
“Nah, I’m fine now,” I said – like I was going back to sleep when I had twelve-and-a-half hours with her – which was suddenly not seeming as much of a death sentence as it had been the previous night.
They split us up into groups and I fell asleep again until lunch. During lunch, she decided that we should skip the crappy church lunch (chicken with oyster sauce – need I say more?) and go to 7-11 to get sandwiches. Since we weren’t allowed to leave the compound (“Heaven help us! Who knows what teenagers on the loose will do?” said one of the teachers, when we asked her if we could go), we basically bullshitted one of the other male teachers into letting us go, with her telling the teacher, “Uh… I, um, got my… You know.” and he let us go. So, the three of us set off to 7-11 and got sandwiches. On the way there, I kept cracking jokes, since these two were really upset that this was to be our last Confirmation class – ever. In actual fact, I was pretty upset about it, too (hello, no more her, okay, and I don’t think I can handle that).
When the other girl went back into 7-11 to get a Coke, she grabbed me by the shoulders and said – totally deadpan – “I’m really going to miss you, Steph, you know that?” and I just about choked on my tuna sandwich. Here, I should probably tell you that she doesn’t go to church very often, since her parents are divorced and her dad just isn’t that into going to a place where they pray and get high from it (sounds like my kinda guy, I think he’d be the perfect father-in-law for me). I swear, I was about to tell her how I felt about her (right after I finished choking on the soggy tuna sandwich), but then the other girl came out of 7-11, and the moment was lost. Maybe that was for the best, though, since most of the people whom I love and respect deeply say that everything happens for a reason – although I don’t quite think so, myself.
And then, on the way back to church, came the killer moment (or one of the killer moments, since there were quite a few that day).
“How’s your boyfriend?” the other girl who was with us asked her.
She sighed. “Fine. Yours?”
My jaw dropped open at this exchange, and I almost didn’t hear them when they turned to ask me about my nonexistent boyfriend.
“Don’t have, want or need one,” I replied numbly, trying to cover the look on my face, while cursing inwardly.
I’d seen this coming. There was no way she’d be queer, and be willing to date me, so why did it affect me so much? Needless to say, I was pretty pissed at myself.
I kept a low profile for the rest of the day, sleeping, listening to my MP3 player, and making fun of the speakers with the fourth girl in our little group. That is, up until dinner, when one of the girls who used to (does? I don’t know, really, and have no interest in finding out) came up to me and slung her arm around my shoulder, which I found a little funny, since she’s shorter than me.
“Walk with me,” she said, and proceeded to ask me why I’d been “ignoring her”.
I explained that I hadn’t, and that she was the one who was pissed at me. My day just kept getting progressively worse – she was in tears, I felt like ripping my hair our by the roots, the girl of my dreams had a boyfriend. What’s a girl to do in a situation like this, eh? Pardon the pun, but I couldn’t think straight by the end of the day!
After another awful Praise and Worship session (with all the factors combined, I had a headache bigger than Serena Williams’ butt), we were all shepherded to church for confession – another Catholic practice that I absolutely despise. In my opinion, sins should be kept to the individual and to the individual alone.
“Steph!” she exclaimed as we lined up for confession. “I don’t know how to confess!”
That started off a crash course in confession, and she gave me a quick hug before going into the confessional, making a throat-slitting gesture. I turned to the Chinese guy behind me (who can do that hilarious man-boob-moving thing) and struck up a conversation while he wiggled his man-boobs at me, and I tried to be serious in church, since one of the teachers stood there to keep an eye on us (so I’m a little noisy – so what?).
“Okay. I’m done.” The confessional opened and she stepped outside, pale.
I laughed, earning a dirty look from the teacher (who was pretty young – maybe in her mid-20s – and would actually be hot if she lost some weight and grew a sense of humor), and snuck into the confessional, telling the Chinese guy to time me, and that I’d be done in less than two minutes (he did, and I was). Maybe god was looking out for me that day, because she was right there, beside the confessional, waiting for me.
“Thanks,” she said, after I finished my penance. “You know, for teaching me what to say and everything. I love you, Steph. Seriously. You’re awesome.”
That was three days ago, and I can honestly say that watching her walk away after that is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
I spent the night sleepless, cursing myself, and wondering what I could have done differently (absolutely nothing). Four days till our Confirmation, and I’ll probably never ever see her again.
Fuck.

"Clothes and the Both of Us"

2009-07-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

To say that I constantly dress down is an understatement. If possible, I’d live in my multitudes of board shorts. Hey – it’s Malaysia and blazing hot almost 99.9% of the time, so in my opinion, shorts are a perfectly acceptable piece of apparel. This proved to be a little bit of a problem when I was chosen by my Sunday School teacher to do the reading on Sunday, since our Confirmation class was animating mass. I agreed, not realizing that this little agreement disallowed shorts (damn!), cargos, and slogan tees, which make up 98% of my t-shirt population. After I was chosen, I dug through my closet the second I reached home, trying on and discarding clothes that didn’t make the Sunday cut. Skirts were a definite no-no, as were frilly blouses, and the rest of my “normal” clothes, which left me with…
Pants and a white Oxford shirt. These pants aren’t quite so bad – they’re baby blue, kind of like washed-out jeans, bootleg cut and have three pockets for my phones and my MP3 player. I had to leave my billfold behind, though, along with my keys. Anyway, they’re comfortable, which is pretty much all that matters with me. Oh, I’ve almost forgotten to mention this – I made my wardrobe selection based on what I thought she’d like. And surprisingly, she did. I was struck dumb, like those people in the bible.
“You look so cute!” she exclaimed, when she saw me. “Damn, girl, you clean up nicely.” She held me up to our friends. “Doesn’t Steph clean up nicely? God, she looks so suave!”
The rest of the girls nodded and mumbled their assent in unison and she kept at it until she got a clear reply, upping me on the embarrassment scale.
“Stephanie!” this other girl exclaimed – I think she has a crush on me but she’s so definitely not my type, since I like girls who don’t sit on their asses all day and do nothing, and she kind of does. “You look so different today!”
I seriously have no idea what to do when people say these things to me and it makes me feel all awkward and out-of-place, so all I could do was mutter something that qualified as a thank you, sit my butt down and hope that the actual Confirmation class would start soon and I could stare at my crush like some stoned, deranged stalker while I listened to Norah Jones in one ear (Oh, did I mention that Norah’s been my current music diet, lately? She’s really good, and pretty gorgeous, herself, I think, not to mention she has those beautiful, piano-playing fingers).
And then, thankfully, the class started. The Confirmation classes here change teachers every three months or so, so our teacher this time around is this middle-aged man who, I swear, reminds me of Goofy from Walt Disney cartoons. He’s tall and gawky and has those teeth that stick out in front. Anyway, he started the class, obviously not knowing that people talking about me when I’m there and saying nice things about me in high-pitched exaggerated tones makes me feel awkward, by saying, “First off, I’d like everyone to give a big hand to the readers today. They made no mistakes.” and I had to sit there, while my friends (not to mention, and her as well), gave me these “Aw-Steph-We’re-So-Proud-of-You” looks as they clapped. If anything, I tried to sink down lower in my seat, which didn’t exactly work, thanks to limited space.
Also, the guy who’d done the second reading after I did the first seemed to have a crush on me or something of the sort and just wouldn’t leave me alone. He came right up to me, took the seat next to me quietly, tried to give me chocolate (I turned him down only because I already had a piece of gum, which is a staple part of my diet, though you, like my mother, might not agree) and stared at me in the way that I assume I stare at her. Yes, I tried to be nice and make small-talk with him (I’ve known him since I was 11, after all, and I think he’s a truly great guy – when he’s not crushing on me), but hey, my Sundays stuck at church are reserved for one person and one person alone – and I don’t mean God, if God is considered a person (even if she doesn’t know it yet, but such is always the sad case, is it not?).
When I got home later, after lunch with Bianca – who, as usual, brought the worst out in me by trying to set me up with some older guy friend of hers – I thought about it as I was about to take my afternoon nap. It being the clothes I wore, and I came to the conclusion that all this happened simply because I broke the cycle of cargo pants and t-shirts! These occurrences (the strange, awkward comments, the weird other girl and the guy with the crush on me) probably could have been avoided if only I’d stuck to my faithful old outfit of cargos and slogan tee, which is what I’ll happily go back to next week – and it’s for the best.
Still, though, I’m exceedingly happy (okay, that’s a huge understatement) that she thinks I clean up nicely!

"And the Ladies Say..."

2009-07-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, my mother, aunt, cousin and I were having lunch in a restaurant after watching a movie, when my cousin, Bianca, suddenly pointed to something right behind me, or sort-of-kind-of behind me.
“Look, Steph, a cute guy!” she said, squirming in her seat and bouncing up and down on her butt. “Look, look, look. He looks like Sanjaya!”
“No more chocolate cake for you,” I told her, raising my eyebrows. “Please, calm down.”
Swiveling around in my seat, I turned around to look for the cute guy, and instead came face-to-face (or something like that – I was sitting down and she was standing up) with this butch waitress, complete with spiky hair and a Sanjaya smile. No wonder Bianca thought she looked like Sanjaya.
“Bianca, that is a girl,” I said pointedly, turning around in my chair. “And since I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in making her angry with me, I suggest you focus on your chicken salad and soup.”
“It’s a guy,” Bianca argued – she’s fourteen, so I usually just tend to ignore her arguments and get on with my life (I’ll explain why later). “And he’s a cute guy, Steph.”
“Mmhmm.” I studied my burger as if it would reveal the meaning of life to me, then nudged my mother. “Hey, ma? That person over there – it’s a girl, right?”
My mother sighed, along with Bianca’s mother – they obviously wanted no part in our debate about that waitress’ gender. “Yes, Stephanie, it is a girl.”
“Hah!” I smirked at Bianca, triumphant. “I told you.”
I truly apologize, because Bianca and her mother seem to bring out the worst in me. Bianca’s fits herself right into the norm easily, whether it’s the good or bad part of it. One of her favorite sayings is, “That’s so gay!” for something she doesn’t like, or doesn’t think much of. I, on the other hand, prefer to think that “That’s so gay!” should be reserved for something amazing, creative, new, special and absolutely fantastic, just like gay people! I swear, I can’t even remember how many times I’ve told Bianca not to call things she doesn’t like “gay” (what is “gay”, anyway, and why does it have to be derogatory? Like I said, it should be awesome.), to which she doesn’t even bother to listen to. When I remind her about this, she asks me why I care so much about it, since the only people I’m out to in my family are my mom, my dog and one of my cousins.
It’s not that I blame Bianca. She obviously takes after her mother, who’s loves speculating sexualities almost as much as she loves acting half her age (for those of you who haven’t realized it, a forty-seven-year-old woman who wants to hang out in Zouk is not cool, so tell your mothers). Think about it – you know there’s something wrong when you go clubbing and you see your aunt there, dancing along to Akon. On one incident, where I was talking to one of my uncles who works in UNICEF about writing something for them, my aunt came along to stick her nose in.
“What if it’s about lesbians and gays?” she asked my uncle, leaning over me from behind and squeezing my shoulders. “I think Steph would be really good at that.”
“No matter,” my uncle said, refusing to be baited. “We support that.”
The look on my aunt’s face was like she’d swallowed a lemon and the taste just wouldn’t go away, and this uncle remained my favorite until he told me that he used to be a Martina Hingis fan (she was the one who talked crap about Amelie Mauresmo when Amelie came out at the tender age of 19). But it’s okay – we’re still pretty close, my uncle and I.
He turned back to me, totally blowing off my aunt. “So, what do you think? You really should take a year off school and come help out writing out UNICEF campaigns.”
I said I’d think about it, and I did. Maybe not now, since I’ve got so much going on this year and the next, but writing for UNICEF is definitely a challenge and something I’d like to consider doing in the near future.
Anyway, as I was saying – back to the lunch with my mom, my aunt and my cousin. As I ate my burger, I noticed my mother surreptitiously sneaking glances at the butch waitress girl (I have no idea why, but this strikes me as being a sort-of oxymoron butch waitress girl. See? Get it? No? Okay, fine, never mind, forget I said anything about her.) and I couldn’t think what the reason could be. Even if my mother thought she was hot, our tastes were greatly different, and just the thought of my mother finding a female of the homosapien species “hot” was (and is) greatly disturbing to me mentally and will cause me a large amount of psychological damage (not to mention, a large therapy fee when I grow up.). I mean, come on – the woman’s my mother. She’s supposed to like Barack Obama and Donny Osmond and Michael Jackson. Old men.
“Why are you staring?” I asked her eventually, cautiously looking up from my burger to peek at the waitress (most of the butch lesbians that I have encountered in Malaysia have been vaguely hostile towards me, and I was not about to go around looking for little accidents.). “Are you trying to get me beaten up, mother?”
My mother actually laughed in my face. “Don’t be silly. I’m here, she won’t touch you.”
“Oh, yeah, very cool for me to have my mom defending me,” I said sarcastically. “You know, because you’re so big and scary, right, mom?”
Just so you know, my mother stands at the vastly unremarkable height of 5”2.5’ and is one of the most feminine and sensitive people I know.
“Sarcasm is unbecoming,” my mother said, standing up to leave.
As we strolled down the street, away from the restaurant, with me carrying my mother’s shopping bags, my mother made small talk until – in my opinion (which actually mattered to her, after all) we were a safe distance away from the restaurant.
“Stephanie,” my mother said seriously, studying me. “I really hope, girls like that aren’t your type and that you don’t bring any home for me to meet. Ever.”
I looked at her incredulously, not believing that we actually agreed on something for once. “You are not serious,” I told her, then put on my defensive-rebellious-difficult-teenager front. “Mom, I’ll bring home whomever I want.”
My mother smiled knowingly – I don’t know how she can read me so easily. “Okay, Steph. Whatever you say.”
I rolled my eyes in annoyance and quickly walked on ahead of her, not watching where I was going and nearly bumping into this mountain of a butch girl, who growled at me, frowning, with her sharp fangs and spiked fauxhawk glistening (the fauxhawk was glistening with hair-gel) in the afternoon sunlight. I squealed like a little girl, or the lovechild of Jay Alexander and Elton John and scrambled away, retreating to try to hide behind my mother, completely terrified and shaking like a leaf or a Parkinson’s patient. My mother smiled to herself, knowing that this time around, I was totally and completely whipped.
Hey, like she said – if she’s there, they won’t touch me!
Round one officially goes to my mom – all hail the queen.

"Aliens/Lesbians, Magic Jeans and Sundaes"

2009-07-16T00:21:00.000-07:00

“Let’s go out on Saturday,” Amali proposed as we sat in Math class, bored, as Mrs. Pavarthy (or Pervertski – as we fondly referred to her) taught about angles.
I nodded, snapping out of the stupor that Math brought on. “Where to?”
“Pavilion!” Amali practically screamed, earning a glare from Mrs. Pevertski.
Amy turned around in her seat. “Bitches, did I just hear you say Pavilion?”
“I believe you did,” Amali said smugly. “And you’re not invited. Only gays.”
“Aw, let her come,” I told him, patting his head. “She’s good at sushi, remember?”
“Thanks, Steph,” Amy said sarcastically, rolling her eyes before turning around to study angles before Mrs. Pervertski could come to back of the class to yell at us lazy-as-heck slackers who’d fail Math, anyway.
That Saturday, we started off for Pavilion bright and early – 11:45 am – on the LRT train to KL city. Amali, Amy and I wouldn’t stop giggling (yes, I said giggling, which is strange, since I almost never giggle – I swear), especially since Amali was doing his awful Mariah Carey impersonation (Amali quote: “You can tell if a guy is gay in KL if there’s Mariah on his list – that’s such a giveaway). I kept falling asleep on the train and Amali kept poking me in the armpit, or whispering, “Look, Amelie!” in my ear – something which never fails to get me up good and proper. Amy, on the other hand, was trying to practice her terrible gaydar by randomly pointing to people who she thought would be queer. The best part was when she pointed to this middle-aged old Malay lady in a head-scarf on a whim and whispered loudly, “She is so a lesbian.”
I usually love Pavilion. It’s gay central. That is, gay central for men. I couldn’t spot one stinkin’ lesbian there for over two hours, or maybe that was just because they were avoiding me, since my friends and I – lovingly referred to as the Terrible Threesome since that day – were acting really immature and snorting McDonald’s sundaes out through our noses, especially when Amy and I dared Amali to grab the ass of the mannequin in the Paris Hilton store window. And he did it. After attempting to get a certain “cute” salesboy’s number for Amy and discovering that he was more interested in getting Amali’s number, Amy insisted that she needed some “shopping therapy” and hustled us into store after store after store, in search for the perfect pair of jeans. Or something along those lines.
“Those jeans,” Amy exclaimed, for what felt like the millionth time in half-an-hour, and that has to be a record.
She bodily dragged Amali and I into the department where she’d spotted her “magic jeans” from where we’d been standing, gawking at the gay guy at the perfume counter and his hot straight (doesn’t that sound like an ad for a hair straightener?) best girlfriend. Amy snatched the jeans off their hanger after finding one in her size and disappeared into the fitting room. Amali and I dutifully traipsed after her, waiting outside. After digging into his man-bag (even I don’t carry a handbag), Amali produced a slip of receipt and a pen, and – viola! Instant Hangman to pass the time, while Amy grunted uncomfortably in the dressing room as she tried on the pair of jeans.
Our answers, for the record were: Taylor Lautner, Amelie Mauresmo, Queer as Folk, stupid jeans and I was about to guess the winning answer to “El_o_ _o_n”, which was obviously “Elton John”. Amali and I were giggling – as usual – about something or the other, when suddenly… he dropped the pen. Yes, that pen. The precious, one-and-only Hangmen pen. The pen rolled under a closed door of one of the fitting rooms. Oh, shit. Gallantly jumping to his feet, Amali offered to get the pen. I offered to let him get it – it always looks more convincing when the gay guy looks under the fitting room door instead of the lesbian. Amali peeked under the door and I watched in amazement as his eyes widened in surprise/horror/amazement and he jerked back from the door, scrambling over to where I was sitting.
“Steph!” he gasped, pulling himself up beside me, a look of genuine fear on his chubby face. “Aliens, Steph! It had four legs! Holy shit.”
I stared at him. “Yeah, right. Bullshit, Amali. Four legs? No friggin’ way, man.”
“See for yourself, Ms. Disbelieving,” Amali said, raising his eyebrows in a prissy, pissed-off expression as he led me toward the fated fitting room door, and we crouched down to the gap. “Behold… the alien.”
I lowered my eyes cautiously to the gap in the door, curiosity getting the better of me just this one time. As much as I like Tom DeLonge from Blink-182 and think he’s a brilliant singer-songwriter, I just couldn’t be taken in, to believe in aliens. Those things belonged in Disney movies – as much as I enjoyed Monsters, Inc.
Seeing four legs (and what the owners of the legs were doing to each other) from the tiny gap under the fitting room door gave me the shock of my life, causing me to jerk back and bump heads with Amali. I’ll bet anything we looked like some lovestruck couple in a romantic comedy. Possibly Knocked Up because Amali’s a little chubby and I’m extremely focused (like, crazy focused) when I want something. Anyway, Amali gasped in shock as he pressed his face closer to the gap and bit back a scream.
“Steph! Not aliens! Lesbians, Steph, lesbians!” he exclaimed, shocked out of his wits.
I massaged my bumped skull, moving away from the fitting room. “Shhhut up! They’re gonna hear you, and what if they’re like Rosie O’Donnell and Rennae Stubbs? They’ll beat our asses like you won’t believe!” I shouted-whispered at him.
“Okay, okay.” Amali allowed me to pull him to his feet. “Let’s go see if Amy’s done yet.” Then he proceeded to holler, “Amy? Where are you?” loudly, so that everyone who was using the fitting rooms could hear us.
“Hang on, you gays,” Amy yelled back from her fitting room, way over the other side of the row of fitting rooms.
Just then, the door of the “alien’s” dressing room opened, and out stepped a femme girl and her scary butch girlfriend (I realize that a lot of lesbian couples in Malaysia do this whole butch-femme thing – one of them is really super-butch and scary looking; i.e., not nice butch like Ellen, while the other is ultra-femme who flirts with anything) who glared murder at Amali and I as she stalked by us. Amali and I clutched at each other in terror.
We stayed clutching at each other, carefully avoiding the butch girl who looked like she wanted to beat us up for just existing in her dimension of the big ol’ gay universe. Amy gave us a weird look when she came out of the fitting room, having decided that she was going to buy the “magic jeans”.
“Wait!” Amali yelled, when Amy moved toward the counter, earning a disapproving look from an old lady who was trying on a flowered dress. “Okay, the coast is clear.”
“Shit-o.” I wiped my sweaty palms on my cargo pants. “Listen Ames – it’s a long story, so you might as well sit down…”
And so we sat at McDonald’s, and over ice-cream sundaes, told Amy – exaggerating a little – how Amali had seen aliens in the fitting room.

"Why I Love Church (Now)"

2009-07-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

Picture this: I’m sitting in my Sunday School class, in the tiny room that we’ve passed off as the temporary class this week. I’m literally sitting in the doorway, yelling excitedly (I told you I have ADD) over my shoulder into the room behind me at two of my friends who are in the room already. Turning my head the right way around, my eyes meet a pair of long legs encased in jeans. I look up and smile at the girl in front of me, and she smiles back, making my pulse race and my palms sweat. She’s a goddess, without a doubt. One of my friends grabs me and bodily hauls me back into the class, and just like that, the moment’s gone. But that’s alright, since she sits next to me during class.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” I say, smirking at her.
She snorts. “If I cut classes, I don’t get Confirmed. Stupid, no?” she asks, and I nod.
She’s wearing a white tank top over blue jeans, and flip-flops which I keep trying to take off with my Reebok-clad foot. Half the time, I’m talking to her, just so I can look at her and not have to stare at the strange, middle-aged, potbellied teacher in front of the classroom, who’s talking about something really not important – god.
“You have to sit next to me at mass next week!” she exclaims, smacking my thigh.
I roll my eyes. “You’ll have to put up with my comments, you know. Since you believe in god and all, and I don’t.” I grin mischievously, baiting her. “Pray for me.”
“I can’t pray for you,” she deadpans. “You have to believe that god exists, by yourself.”
“Mmhmm.” I nod, like I actually care about god. “But if you pray for me, I might want to change, no?”
“Aw, don’t bullshit.” She smiles, nudging my foot with hers (not that her flip-flop has any effect on my four-day-old sneaker). “You’ll never change.”
“Okay, you have to sing with your lungs and sing with your heart,” the teacher says, obviously not noticing my about-to-vomit face.
“My heart can’t sing,” I remark to her, raising an eyebrow.
“Steph.” She pokes me in the shoulder. “You have no heart.”
I want to say, “Yeah, cause it belongs to you!”, but that might freak her out, in a big way, so I settle for the lame: “If I had one, it wouldn’t be able to sing.”
It’s alright, though, because she seems to think it’s funny (no, she’s not a bimbo or anything, just really high), so I settle in my seat.
In case you haven’t noticed or realized it yet, this girl is my latest crush. She’s tall(er than I am), standing at 5”7’, with amazing legs and the most beautiful hands I’ve ever seen on a girl, in real life (the award goes to Dinara Safina, for women I’d love to, but never get to date). I didn’t even know I liked her up until last week, when I got into Sunday School late, which worked out crappily for me, since I had to sit at the back of the class, a few rows down from her – which worked out to be a few miles to me. The teacher gave me this look because I had interrupted his talk on – you guessed it – god, and said, “You’re late, Stephanie.”
I nodded, fiddling with my MP3 player. “Yeah, I know, okay.”
The class laughed, and she smiled and said, “Stepha-nie.” and I just knew.
Yes, it sounds really cliché, but pardon me here. I am a girl in love (or lust, or what, I don’t know exactly, but I’ll blog about it once I figure it out). She was giving me the look I get from my elder cousins when I’ve misbehaved but have said something really funny, so they don’t know whether to scold me or laugh. And I was thinking, “Damn. This girl is gorgeous!” I couldn’t take my eyes off her for the whole lesson, so I was pretty much staring at the back of her head like some weird, stoned stalker. At least, that must have been what everyone was thinking – “Oh, Steph’s probably on weed or something. Whatever, she’s weird, anyway.” It didn’t matter, even though I was stuck sitting behind some homophobic stupidass (which reminds me why I don’t like guys). I got a perfect view of the back of her head, which beats nothing. I think.
Really, I know that I shouldn’t get away with the idealistic dream-state that often follows a crush. Ah, what am I talking about – I’m a romantic (albeit, a closet one, but a romantic all the same). I’ll obsess about this all I want.
“But she’s straight,” my friends who know never fail to tell me.
“Yeah, I know.” I run my hands through my hair, confused and despairing (and it’s over a girl, can you believe that?). “Okay, shut up, I’m getting really depressed.”
“Confirmation classes end in three weeks.” The obnoxious ones just won’t shut up – I have no idea why I call these people my friends. “Your timing sure is perfect.”
I flip them off elegantly and retreat into my head, all the while knowing that they’re right – my timing absolutely just plain sucks.
Not to mention that, according to my friends who go to her school, she’s straight as, well, Hope Solo (cue the disappointed groans from the soccer fans). I, on the other hand, was hoping for someone slightly more changeable, like Lindsay Lohan or Megan Fox, for instance. Hell, it doesn’t matter if I’m the only girl on her “To-Date” list, all that matters is that I’m on her list. That is, if she was bisexual or actually even had a list like that, which I’m sure she doesn’t. Bah.
“So, what’re you going to do about it?” you may ask, smirking at me and this post as I sit here, upset and blogging about my dilemma.
Well, here’s the indefinite answer to the million-dollar question – I don’t even know yet. I don’t know if I should tell her, or just shut up about it, or drop hints. I’m such a loser.
“Then what, you blubbering lovestruck fool?” you might ask, irritated at my complete inability to be decisive. “What do you know, apart from the fact that your timing completely sucks?”
I’d scratch my head, thinking for a while. “What do I know? Hm. Good question, actually. Well, then – I happen to know that she likes my hair and she thinks my eyes are beautiful, although obviously not in the way I want her to, she enjoys my sense of humor, she’s got a pretty good outlook on what’s right and wrong, she believes in god and would appreciate it if I did, too, because she wants me in heaven, she thinks I’m weird and a little crazy, but we still hang out, and she’d take Lily Allen over Katy Perry any day, which is something I do, but don’t know many people who admit to it.”
“Who is this idiot in love?” you’d demand. “Bring back the real blogger! What have you done with her, you knave?”
I’d sigh, biting my lower lip sadly, not knowing how to deliver the news to you. “To be perfectly honest, I haven’t done anything with her.”
You’d glare at me, or at these words filling your computer screen. “Oh, that’s bullshit and you know it, Stephanie!”
“Wait, wait!” I’d hold up my hands in surrender. “I swear, I haven’t done anything to her, and she’ll be back. Don’t freak out. Seriously. Calm yourselves.”
You’d raise your eyebrows and I’d continue, offering solace. “She’ll be back in three weeks. Right after Sunday School’s over and she’s over the church girl.”
I promise.

"Tennis and Self-Discovery"

2009-07-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

On the event of her 30th birthday, I thought I’d blog about Amelie Mauresmo, and what she means to me, to all in all, wish her a very happy birthday and to let her know how much she means to me, not only as my number one crush, but as a tennis player and as a role-model. It may not be the best, or the funniest thing I’ve posted, but yeah – here goes, anyway. I think I can be serious at times, or I can try really hard to be! Back to Amelie now – Amelie’s the kind of woman I associate with my coming out, to myself that is, back when I was fourteen, and way in denial about liking girls, though I guess I knew it, deep down. Hey, don’t we all know it, deep down? I didn’t want to admit it to myself, much less anyone else, and the thought of anyone finding out was completely cringe-making. I’ll say it – I’m thankful for Amelie.
During Wimbledon 2006, I walked into the TV room to try and commandeer the TV to play Grand Theft Auto on my PlayStation 2. This was not to be as my mother was watching Wimbledon, where Amelie Mauresmo was playing Justine Henin in the final. I grabbed the TV remote to switch channels, but my mom was quicker, and smacked the remote down on my tiny, fourteen-year-old fingers (okay, I’m lying, I have pretty big hands – always have and probably always will). I turned to her with a hurt expression on my face, but she ignored me, staring at the TV screen with a look of intense concentration. I glanced at the TV screen by accident (since I couldn’t play on my PlayStation, I was seriously anti-tennis), only to be taken in by the most beautiful jawline I’d ever seen, silky honey-brown locks of hair and green eyes.
“Uh, mom? Who’s that?” I asked, not taking my eyes off the TV screen, totally transfixed by the tall woman with the great legs and racquet.
My mother rolled her eyes, not taking her eyes off the TV screen, either. “Your girlfriend,” she said, attempting to be sarcastic, but falling flat, as it so often happens with her.
“Huh?” I raised an eyebrow, somehow still managing to keep my eyes on the woman on TV – I didn’t know if she was Mauresmo or Henin yet. “She’s a lesbian?”
“She’s Mauresmo, and yes, she’s a lesbian, now don’t talk.” My mother shushed me, waving a hand in front of my face. “Support Henin, okay?”
I snorted, rolling my eyes. “Henin? And not Mauresmo? No way, mom, sorry.”
Since then, I guess you could say that was the start of my one-sided love affair with Amelie Mauresmo, and coming to terms with myself. I knew, from first glance, that this is the woman who’d keep me watching tennis and be the one to garner my support. The guys at school teased me for supporting the only famous out-lesbian on the WTA tour, but hell, they could keep their Ivanovics, Dementievas and their Venus Williamses (I still haven’t met a guy with a crush on Serena, though – sorry). It didn’t matter, because I’m definitely – to this day – a little bit of an Indie chick, and I try really hard to go against the norm. I googled, wikipedia’d, and used countless search engines to find out more about the gorgeous Frenchwoman from uh, France (in case you didn’t know, Frenchwomen are usually from there). My day wasn’t complete if Amelie wasn’t in it.
She was the one I’d support during her ups and downs, regardless of whether she won or lost terribly. Just seeing her smile as she walked off the court, knowing that she’d done her best, was enough to make me happy for the rest of the week, or until her next tournament. You could ask me, at any moment, what the highlight of my 2009 year was, and I’d tell you in a shot – forget my birthday, forget being Confirmed and not having to go to Sunday School anymore, I’d tell you that the highlight of my year was way back in February, when I woke up at 4am on a school night, to watch Amelie play the GDF final against Elena Dementieva, to watch her win in three sets, then cry tears of joy and relief that she finally, finally won something. In a way, that’s taught a slacker like me to have perseverance and keep doing something, if you believe in it.
So, on her special day, to conclude, I’d like to thank Amelie for teaching me such valuable life lessons, lessons that I probably wouldn’t have learned if I hadn’t seen her on that fateful day in 2006, when I actually wanted to kick some gangsta butt on GTA: San Andreas. After eleven years on the tennis circuit, and two Grand Slams, I hope she has what she taught me – perseverance to keep on playing, and to give me many more great memories of her, not only as my favorite tennis player, crush and idol, but as a person, as a human being who makes mistakes and loses her temper and then is able to get back on her feet. Today, I’d like to wish her a very happy birthday, and many more years and championships to come. I guess what I’m just trying to say is, thank you, Amelie, for everything.
Oh, and please will you marry me?

"Femmeboi"

2009-07-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

One of the things that most my older female cousins absolutely love to tell me is, “Steph, you’d make such a beautiful boy.”
This both makes me want to laugh and confuses me. These girls never fail to tell me how stunning I’d look in a dress, if I were to wear one, and constantly chastise me when I come out wearing my usual outfit of cargo pants and a slogan tee, or a pair of dress pants and a shirt to formal functions. And in the same breath of, “Steph, why don’t you dress more like a girl?”, they come up with, “But damn, you make a gorgeous boy. Those eyes, chica, my god!” so it turns into something along the lines of this: “Stephanie, I don’t understand why you can’t seem to embrace your femininity! Put a pair of pants made for girls on, for the love of god! Oh, oh, wait. You’d make such a beautiful boy!”
I can’t seem to wrap my head around what exactly it is they want me to do. Even if I knew, I probably would do the opposite, anyway, because that’s just the kind of girl I am. Honestly, I don’t consider or would label myself as “butch”. Okay, yeah, I’ll admit it, maybe I do have a penchant for pants that hang off my hips at dangerous angles and threaten to fall down at any second, with lots of pockets so I don’t have to carry a handbag – which I’d probably lose in a heartbeat and that wouldn’t be good –, but I balance that out with fitted tees! Not to mention, no straight boy would be caught dead with my collection of sneakers (yes, in addition to being a homosexual, I’m also a shoesexual and a sneaker freak). And there’s the slight matter regarding my hair, which I have absolutely no intention ever of cutting off.
These comments on my appearance don’t end with my cousins, who take a scary amount of pleasure in squishing my cheeks and embarrassing me in assorted ways in front of gorgeous girls. My friends make comments, too, and for the record, some of the comments can come off quite awkwardly. For instance, this was what took place in school a couple of weeks ago when we were all sitting around the prefects’ room.
“You know, I’d date you, if you were a boy,” said Helen, my best friend.
Murmurs of assent were heard from all around the room as most of the girls nodded their agreement to Helen’s statement.I stared at them all, a horrified look on my face. “Holy shit, people, it’s so freaky that I’ve never thought of you in that way, but you’ve thought of me in that way!”
My friends gave me a look – one that my mother uses, that usually means, “Yeah, right, Stephanie.”, but I just stared back at them. Um, ew? I’ve known most of these girls since before we all “blossomed” (if we have blossomed, that is) and no matter what lewd comments random guys (they’re just plain disrespectful, the straight guys – see why I don’t like them?) made about my friends, I refused to see them differently.
“But you’re such a gentleman!” Charmaine wailed, flailing her hands in the air dramatically. “Why weren’t you born a guy? Your mom would be so proud!”
“I actually kinda think she is,” I said thoughtfully, ignoring her outburst as I scratched my chin with a pencil. “I’ve actually become the person she’s wanted me to be all along! How’s that for scary?” I laughed to myself just thinking about it.
I’d like to think that my mother would be proud of me for what I do. I think, for the most part, I treat women with a lot of respect. Come to think about it, it’s not for the most part – it’s all the time! I hold the doors open, I offer to help, I do the whole “ladies first” thing, the works! It applies to all human females, no exceptions, and it drives my friends completely wild that I do these things for them – things, they say, that no man in his right mind ever will. According to these group of girls, whom I’ve known since I was much, much younger, it’s crazy that I don’t have a girlfriend.
“I would date you, if you were a boy,” Helen said again (maybe she thought that I was suffering from short-term memory loss – I wasn’t). “Or if I was a lesbian.”
“If I was a lesbian, I’d want to date Natalie Portman!” Sarah exclaimed.
I nodded, for the first time that day, agreeing with someone in the group. "Back off, Sarah. Natalie's mine."
The discussion about me being a good boyfriend was terminated, soon replaced by a heated debate on who was to stake a claim on the undeniable hotness that lived and breathed as Natalie Portman.
Took them long enough.

"Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow"

2009-06-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

"You have such beautiful hair!" Aunty Beth exclaimed, running her fingers through my hair. "You can wear it up, down, do whatever you want with it!"
She was obviously thinking of my hair at proms and weddings, with me clamped onto the arm of some charming handsome man, who would fit in perfectly with my family. I, on the other and, was thinking of my dark locks mingled with Amelie Mauresmo's lighter, sun-streaked strands of hair as we lay on a beach in the French Caribbean. I am so gay.
"Um, okay, aunty Beth." I squirmed away from her grasp before she could pick up a comb and scrunchy to put my hair up in some ridiculous way.
By this time, all the other aunts (and my mother) were on my case about my hair, begging me to let Aunty Beth put it up. I did not relent.
I had always wanted long hair. When I was a little girl with a cropped headful of curls (hence the name "Curlyfries" bestowed on me by various members of my family), I would beg my mom to let me grow my hair out, but eventually, when she did, I had absolutely no idea what to do with my hair -- it grew out in locks! It was like; instant dreadlocks, just add hair! Because of this, I did the next best thing. I straightened the locks, allowing them to fall evenly in a cascade of black down my shoulders, instead of keeping them in spiralling black locks that I often kept hidden under a baseball cap up until I was fourteen. This made my hair more manageable. Seriously, though, even if I complain about my hair constantly, I have to admit that on a good day, I quite like my hair.
But enough about my hair. The point I was trying to get across is simply -- what does hair have to do with wanting to attend a prom/wedding/funeral/whatever with some random guy? Do people automatically assume that you want a guy based on what kind of hairstyle you have?
"Oh, she has cornrows, she must want an African guy."
"That girl has a Mohawk, she must want a rocker boy."
"She has short hair, I guess she's a lesbian."
Um, hello? Does this mean that I should shave my head on a daily basis, in order for people to realize that I do not want a boy? I'm sorry, but that is just not happening. Not now, not ever, not even if I'm put in a concentration camp where people have to shave their heads. No way. Sorry.
Now, if you'll excuse me, this dyke has to go get her straightened, layered fourteen-inch-at-longest cascade of black hair washed.

"Family Dinners: Boyfriend Needed"

2009-06-13T00:57:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, one of my cousins brought his girlfriend to a family dinner to go through the whole damn retarded "meet the family" thing. This cousin of mine, JD, is the cousin who was born before me, and now, since he'd achieved that fan-freaking-tastic rite of passage, he decided that it was time to have a little chat with me. He pulled up a chair, wrapped an arm around his girlfriend's waist and leaned back, giving me a huge grin.
I looked up from Affinity, which I'd been watching on my phone. "What?" I asked suspiciously, raising an eyebrow in his direction.
"Oh, nothing," JD said, shaking his head. "I was just wondering, Steph, who you'll bring to the next family dinner as a date."
It sounded like a bad line from an equally bad soap opera. I choked on my Coke, trying to hold in my laughter. Someone had watched too many bad Mafia movies.
"Well, whenever the next family dinner is," I said, studying the piece of chicken on my plate. "I think a date isn't happening, JD."
JD looked confused. "Why the heck not, Steph? I did it! It's fun!"
"Uh, sure it is." I rolled my eyes. "It's not happening because -- one, I think it's stupid as hell. Two, because probably no one would like my date, anyway. And three, because Natalie Portman isn't free on that night."
JD spluttered and his date (I forgot her name -- oh, well) nearly fell off her perch on his knee in surprise. I giggled.
Somewhere across the room, my mother glared at me -- the same glare she gave me when I was five and had broken the neighbour's fishtank with my slingshot (I hadn't shot at it, simply chucked my slingshot in its general direction in exasperation). The glare was a look that I would get for many years to come.
I snorted. "Kidding. Kidding, JD, and uh, Mrs JD, I guess?"
The nameless girlfriend swooned. I sighed -- someone shoot me if I ever bring home a Paris-Hilton-wannabe like that.
"So, you're never bringing home a date?" the girlfriend asked, shocked.
"Nope." I leaned back, locking my hands behind my head. "Nuh-uh. No. Nah. Never. Not ever. Oh, do you speak Spanish? No."
Cass, JD's sister, broke away from her lip-lock with her boyfriend to stare at me. "How can you not want that? We want to meet your boy, Steph!"
I pondered this for a moment, thinking of various escape routes -- I could get an awful boyfriend and then nobody would want to see him ever again. I could insult one of my uncles and be banned from attending future family functions. I could commit suicide. Nah, scratch that last one, I haven't even met Amelie Mauresmo yet.
"So?" Cass said, barging in on my thoughts. "Are you bringing the boy, Steph?"
"There is no boy!" I said, trying to sound reassuring (most times, this backfires miserably). "I swear to Ellen DeGeneres, Cass. Ew."
JD snorted. "No way. You're sixteen! Do you know what Cass was getting up to when she was sixteen?"
I waved a hand in front of my face. "I don't want to know. Listen, you guys, I'll try and find someone to bring along for the next family reunion. You'll probably be surprised and piss your pants, but I'll try, okay?"
"There is a boy!" Cass said, rejoicing. "I knew you weren't a dyke. Cargo pants do not make a lesbian, huh, Steph?"
I muttered something inaudible and stood up, brushing the breadcrumbs off my cargo pants. My phone buzzed and I flipped it open, staring openmouthed and drooling at the wallpaper of Amelie Mauresmo. Maybe she'd be free at the next family reunion.
Later, in the car on the way home, I told my mom that I wouldn't attend any other reunion until and unless the terrible twosome would stop bugging me about getting a boyfriend. My mom shook her head calmly and asked, "What if you got yourself a girlfriend instead?"
I stared at her. "You mean, I should show up with a girlfriend at the next family reunion?"
"Or you don't have to go till you have one, if you feel uncomfortable," mom said, as though we were discussing the weather.
I've taken her up on that, and haven't been to any reunions since December last year, when this took place. The great girlfriend search ensues (or so my mom thinks, when I'm actually going out to play tennis) for my ticket back into family reunions. Keep reading for updates!

"English Queer 101"

2009-06-10T20:29:00.000-07:00

"So you're not gay, just a faggot?" Mrs. Tan said to Amali, one of my best gay guy friends since I was 10, in her English class.
Amali stared at her, a confused look spreading across his chubby face. I looked up from where I was slumped in back of the class, blatantly ignoring the bitchy English teacher, since she hated me and the feeling was mutual.
"Get your facts right," I snapped -- if nobody would defend Amali (and he obviously wasn't going to defend himself), then why shouldn't I?
Amali's face colored a light pink. "Gay, faggot, it's all the same thing," he mumbled.
"What do you mean?" Mrs. Tan asked, ignoring my mild outburst.
I slumped back in my seat, tuning out again.
That was last year in English class. For some reason, I got the most manipulative teacher in the school to bestow her knowledge of verbs and adjectives on our class. Within months, we had started a verbal duel (her combating my foul language with warning letters) and she had gotten Amali to come out to her... and in the process of this, he had outed me! Needless to say, the news travelled around the school (hey, it's a small school) faster than flatulence after a good session of foot reflexology. All of a sudden, girls I had never even talked to before were staring at me in strange, perverted-looking ways (hey, looks like there are more Malaysian lesbians than I thought!). One short-haired, biker-chick, pot-smoking senior went so far as to slap me on the ass with her towel during handball practice! Touch not the ass. What did I do? I freaked out.
Amali, on the other hand, was relishing being the first-ever, pink-loving, girly-boy gay at school. He pranced around like a transgender Tinkerbell on crack.
"I can't take it any more!" I exclaimed to him, rubbing my sore butt as he preened in front of the hallway mirror, prettying himself up for Mr. Hamidi, the Math teacher.
"Embrace the spotlight, Steph," Amali said dramatically, fluffing his hair.
I rolled my eyes, threw his tube of hair gel at him and stalked back to class, where Mr. Hamidi was explaining tangents and cosines and whatnot (Math is like Greek to me -- I just don't get it) to the class, wearing a pink striped shirt. Hamidi and Amali were a match made in heaven. It's just too bad that Mr. Hamidi transferred schools the next year. He smiled knowingly when he saw me walk in, and didn't card me. I shuddered, traumatized.
Surprisingly enough, after all my trauma at being the only female out queer at school, things got better over the year. A lot more people (maybe three or four -- like I said, it's a small school) started coming out as queer, my friends started accepting the fact that my crush on Amelie Mauresmo wasn't just a passing fance (though how they finally accepted it is a post for another day), and as more and more people started coming out (here I'll quote my good friend Aisyah; "The world is turning gay before my eyes!), the daily perverted looks started to decrease in number. Sadly, the ass-slapping didn't stop (but she was a senior, so she's out of school this year). Of course, there was the occasional "Ohmygod, she's so good at handball -- she's such a dyke!" comment, but with that, I learned to stick up for myself and say that not all handball players are lesbians -- only Gro Hammerseng, Katja Nyberg and me.
Thankfully, this year is going much smoother. got to go to school and talk to my friends about that cute girl on some reality TV show, I get to walk the hallways fearlessly, without worrying about perverted looks or ass-smacking, I get to roll my eyes at stupid homophobic comments and argue the importance of gay rights. More importantly, this year, our class got assigned to the coolest English teacher on the face of the planet. Early on in the year, I wrote an essay about how much Amelie Mauresmo means to me. Mrs. Chin sent the essay back with a note saying, "Very good, Stephanie, but I marked you down for not writing about my favorite, Martina Navratilova."
I cracked up.

"To help me take my life less seriously."

2009-06-04T22:57:00.000-07:00

Every Sunday, my parents drag me to church. To put it frankly, I fucking hate church. I'm a Roman Catholic by name and by name alone. In a Catholic church, there are homophobes. There are priests who are constantly telling me that I'm wrong and I'm not supposed to want to get married (to a woman) or want kids.
Um, okay.
So, what do I do, during the one hour where I'm supposed to sit in church and focus on god? I listen to music. Right before my dad drops mom and I outside the church compound, I slip a earbud into my left ear and turn up the volume on my Indigo Girls playlist on my trusty MP3 player. Ah, there we go -- the church of Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, absolutely brilliant.
The only problem with this brilliant plan of mine is that I tend to jiggle my legs at the most inappropriate moments during the more upbeat songs (think "Closer to Fine" while the priest is blessing the host). This has led my parents to believe that I suffer from Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS). To top it off, my mom insists that we sit in the front pew of the church every single Sunday, so the priest usually has a beautiful view of me and my restless legs. Needless to say, it goes like this:
"Blahblahblah..." *stops to glare at me and my jiggling legs* "Somethingjesussomething..." *raises eyebrows* "Whateverforgivenessfromgod...," from the priest.
It usually comes down to one of my parents nudging me, or someone else stepping on my sneaker to stop me. The priest continues praising god.
But all this is nothing compared to Sunday School. Early on, when I didn't know how to handle my MP3 player, I'd come up short when the teacher would call on me to answer a question about -- you guessed it -- god. Hallelujah.
"Stephanie, who is god?" the teacher would ask.
I would do battle with my MP3 player in an attempt to turn it off. "Sorry, what?"
"Who is god?" the teacher would repeat, sounding annoyed -- hey, isn't patience a virtue.
"What?" I would bellow at her, as the volume of my MP3 player suddenly increased, deafening me.
"Who! Is! God!" she would holler right back at me, thinking I was purposely being insolent (I wasn't).
"Oh." I would finally resort to yanking my earphones out of my ears. "God is Jesus' father."

"It's because you're gay, isn't it?"

2009-05-29T10:25:00.000-07:00

The thought of my mother discovering my sexuality along with me is a truly terrifying thought. It's not that I don't love her -- I do -- and want to keep to myself the experience of being a gay Asian teenager in a country where it's against the law, but come on. My mother? No way am I taking her with me to underground gay clubs. She might get hit on. At five feet, two inches, with her "tastefully-dyed" hair and big butt (that sadly got transferred genetically to me), according to most of mine and my dad's buddies, mom is a "stunner". She's also very modern for a woman her age, and always answers anything vaguely gay I have to say with, "It's because you're gay, isn't it?" as if being gay is something she can psych me out of. She also then goes on to say, "Not that there's anything wrong with it..."
Whenever my mom brings these topics up, my ears tend to burn. The lady just does not seem to understand how embarrassing it is for me to be discussing these things with her. In fact, I try to keep as much of it from her as possible, in the hope that she'll forget all about it, and I can move way away from Malaysia, and eventually she'll forget about me, too. This doesn't seem to be happening, however, since I have this really bad habit of slipping up, mostly when we're watching tennis on TV and Amelie Mauresmo's playing. The last time that happened, I saw Amelie hand her wristband to a little boy and blurted, "Ohmygod, I just love her so much!" with the stupidest goofy, in-love grin on my face. Mother dearest just stared at me, and I deflected with a comment about Rafael Nadal. Phew.
But of course, there was the time with Olivia Wilde, Natasha Kai, Natalie Portman, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Frieda Pinto, and who could forget the time with Brandi Carlile -- where I blurted that Brandi could have my babies, or I would have hers, anytime she wanted. And, of course, there were slip ups I brought on myself through sheer carelessness; leaving queer literature lying around the house, forgetting to take my copy of the "Puccini for Beginners" DVD out of the DVD player after watching it, leaving my laptop on with the absolutely adorable, incriminating picture of Amelie Mauresmo as my wallpaper, and obviously, the wardrobe filled with cargo pants and sneakers (I don't even own a pair of heels or a skirt) bears the most evidence. Seriously, though, I'm sixteen and very possibly ADD-positive. People like me tend to make mistakes. A lot.
To give her credit, I didn't have to come out to my mother. She just asked, once, I said yes, and she took it in stride from that day on. Except for the whole, "It's because you're gay, isn't it?" thing, which is starting to freak me out a little. For example, when I came home from school the other day, traumatized when our History teacher had told us in detail about pregnancy, and said, "Okay, I don't want my own kids. I'm adopting!"
Mom looked at me, as usual, and came up with, "Why? Because you're gay?"
My face flushed. Grandma stared at me, a confused look crossing her face (she's this sweet old Portuguese woman -- you can imagine what was going through her mind). Then she looked up at me, smiling.
"I'm so glad you're happy, Steph," she said, beaming.
I breathed a sigh of relief -- so not ready to come out to grandma. Ever since then, mom's shut up about it a little more, especially when other people are around. She doesn't want them to know, and well, she isn't the only one. I mean, imagine if the people in church found out about it, mom. How'd you like that? But hey, I turn 17 in a couple of weeks, and after the school year lets out, I'm off to college.
Preferably far, far, far away from mom and her, "It's because you're gay, isn't it?"
Well, seriously? It's much better than the question she used to ask me, which was, "How come all the women you're obsessed with are lesbians?" which she never asked in front of my dad.
Coming out to my dad? Well, that's a blog post for another day, or what about never?