memories

underwater

she was rather pretty, i think. nothing brilliant but she had nice hair. it was long and brown, and glinted in the summer sun as she ducked her head into the pool. i imagined writing poems about that, the shine of it, and how it stuck to her shoulders like they were moulded for her. beautiful. i suppose she must have caught me staring because she did the blinking thing and smiled without showing her teeth, which i recognised by then, as an attempt at coyness. now that, was horrible. i hated coy, i hated the shifty glances and the fluttery fingers as they smoothed the hair behind her ears. it ruined the entire image i was captured with, the simplicity, the way it stuck to her because of the water, not because she arranged it so.

‘hey join us would ya?’

she asks, all shy eyes and gleaming straight teeth now. well she couldn’t exactly not show her teeth when she’s speaking can she. anyway, so there she was, and her gaggle of girls, looking at me expectantly, and it was very unnerving to see all of them glancing at me shyly and giggly, rearranging their hair(what is up with that?!) bobbing about the glittering pool amongst the brightly coloured floats. i couldn’t possibly bring myself voluntarily to fit into this grotesque picture. no. everything was just too shiny.

‘no,’

‘aren’t you lonely sitting there all by ya self?’

i stood up. the way she said ‘ya’ and the collective twitters of laughter, the shininess, was getting into my skin, so itching that it defies human description. her neck was tilted then, just in time for a line of water emerge from the end of her fringe and cling onto her eyelashes. i considered that for a moment, but then she blinked again and everything was gone. i sighed, and may have had a wan smile on my face, i don’t remember exactly. but i was sure a second later, i collected my book and towel, and left.

result: liking boys

television

alex was going away, typical college leaving, and before that he gave me his television, which was amazing, for a 13 year old then. wasn’t anything special, pretty old model, but coloured nonetheless, and the sound still worked and it didn’t get wonky if i placed anything heavy on top of it. it was amazing, because my mother basically gave me the okay for it to be in my room and told me to honour it by doing the proper thing, as in watching it. and not, as my brain would have told me, to dismantle it and experiment with the things inside. the television and i had a wonderful relationship for the next year or so, i didn’t smash it open with my father’s screwdriver and it showed me hour long space exploration features and naked people. and then came the day it just wouldn’t switch on.

‘we have to throw it away. no shop’s gonna fix this,’

‘why?’

‘too old. the model’s too old. sorry, maybe we’ll save up for another one?’

‘no,’

‘we can’t fix it, there’s no point. we have to dump it,’

‘no,’

‘why?’

why indeed. it took me the entire morning to get around the question and when i realised why, it made me sad and confused and terrible all over. the television was what i had to remind me of alex and quite simply, i didn’t want to lose this last connection. because there was huge chance that would never meet alex, ever again in my entire life and i’ve grown, to miss him because, because when he was here, he affected me subconsciously i think. i certainly didn’t give him permission to affect me like this! it was the most horrible feeling i’ve ever had, and i faked a headache so that my mother would give me one of those drowsy pills, and i’ll sleep all of this away. yes. but i woke up 2 hours later with the television screen in front of me, taunting me, even when its technically gone, spoiled, and how dare it make me feel this way! angry, i pushed it off the table and the screen broke, and it made a loud noise, loud enough for my father to scurry up to my room.

‘get it out! get rid of it! now now!’

and my father carried it out and onto his truck to dump it properly. i just watched it leave the driveway, cursing the bloody fucking thing to death until the truck turned and i couldn’t see it anymore.

result: refusal to acknowledge affection, indifference of people for fear of connection.

balloons

i think i was a little older than 8, maybe 10-ish when i heard about Zeppelin, the mother of airships. airships. wonderful, floating entities so high up there in the sky, so unreachable and special. by then we were on to blimps, and it was rare to catch them in action, so to speak. it wasn’t so much that it was the floating and flying that amazed me. those were easily answered questions, science explained most of it, and it was rather strange that most of the kids kept asking how it stayed, you know, up there. when the teacher got tired of repeating the answer, she left the class and they attacked me like bleeding hyenas because they knew that i knew, probably from my perennial smirk. but i digress. the reason i loved, adored, idolised blimps so much, was because it was up there, in the sky.

‘if i got on a blimp, i can touch the sky right?’

‘sure,’

i blame it entirely on my mother, then, for my silly little ritual that decreased in frequency only when derrick asked me that one time what the hell i was doing(his exact words) when i was preparing, and he said something like ‘okaaay’ which just simply means that it was absolutely not okay. i’ve always had an obessesion with the sky, and how it felt and stuff, and imagined it to be satiny soft threads swirled around so densely to create something that huge and all encompassing. so naturally, i had an idea. but i was still practical. i knew, i couldn’t, literally, touch the sky, and so i sort of worked around the logic.

i dabbed my fingers in paint, and pressed them onto helium filled ballons, multicolored and always round, as much as i could and left a little space at the top to scrawl Zeppelin in permanent ink(in case it rained), a dedication, a prayer of sorts to help me in my mission. i always did it at night, so my balloons would reach up there by morning, and my finger prints could touch the sky at its brightest.

it was childish, hopeful, pathetic. and i still do it sometimes, when i feel too tired and i need something bigger than me to rest on.

result: misguided hopefulness, annoying wonderment at the most common things.

derrick

derrick was older than me, maybe about 16 at that time. he was the perpetuum totem of coolness, he was kinda smart and kinda popular. different people would go over to his yard all the time and ask him out for football, or volleyball or a cycle and he would always say yes, with that smile and two fists in the air, like punching victory, like ‘yeah! i’m wanted!’. i think at that time, i thought that i could relate to this innocence, my being a pre-teen and all, the whole i’m-always-up-for-anything attentiveness, and i thought it charming. it didn’t occur to me that derrick was just the sort of person who had an indeterminate amount of energy that had to be spent some way more tasteful than say, shagging or beating people up. it was a teenage thing that i have yet to realise at that point. whichever, the part of me that liked his smile was urging me to do something about it, and the other parts were trying to quiet down that stubborn, petulant voice and failed rather spectacularly.

‘derrick hi,’

i was shy, and he was reading a book.

‘hey! you live next door right?’

‘yeah. uhm. what are you reading?’

i was genuinely interested, i didn’t like to engage in small talk when no longer necessary. but he couldn’t answer because a whale suddenly bounded upon us and sat on him.

‘this is ray. he’s my mate’s brother. little younger than you i think,’ and smiled at that thing.

i was upset. NNHGUH. i exclaimed rather sputteringly in my brain. stupid cow. whale. pig. truck. i cursed him endlessly in my head until derrick’s voice brought me back.

‘i’m going inside for awhile. i’ll get you both juice yeah?’

and he was gone, leaving me with this block of expiring cheese. ray was younger than me and he smelled, i noticed, completely unworthy of derrick at any cost. i raised my eyebrows at him and he just watched me with those piggy eyes and said the perfect words as though he knew exactly, exactly and precisely why i was talking to derrick that fateful afternoon.

‘he likes me more. so go away,’

‘ray, you’re so stupid,’

i took the pair of scissors that was lying on the foldable table beside the chair, and the letters and papers underneath it flew around, no longer held down by its weight but i didn’t care, and ray was looking tad white now, watching me hold the scissors open in front of him. he thought i was going cut him i think, but i didn’t and cut my own finger instead, just a small straight one, and dropped the scissors on the grass, and stared at ray bleakly.

‘what happened here?’

then, derrick’s fingers hold on to my weeping, bloody index finger. he was back from the kitchen.

‘i cut myself,’

‘ouch, come on. i’ll clean this up for you okay? come on,’

we walked hand in hand to the house, my skin flushed, my eyes gleaming as derrick kept glancing back at ray, giving him narrowed, suspicious looks. it was wonderful.

result: attention-seeking, using easily manipulated people to achieve own means, general bastardness.

grandma

it was my birthday the last night, and my mum got together some people that i didn’t mind. we had cake and we ate together, talked like we were happy, and pretended that we truly liked each other. my grandma was there, which was odd since i always thought she never honestly liked me, because she didn’t like mum, and i liked mum better than i did my dad. anyway, she was there, in all of her wrinkled skin, clashing mumu glory, squished into those tacky plastic backyard chairs holding this equally tacky plastic basket of some sort.

me being young as i was, rude and curious, made grabby hands at it and demanded it be handed over. it was after all, my birthday, and i was used to getting everything. my parents loved me then, a lot, much, much more than they loved each other. well, so it seemed that like there was a living breathing thing in it, moving around and for all the rabid energy that i had then despite it being past my bed time, i couldn’t really hold it up so i shoved it back onto her lap and asked her to open the damn thing.

‘you be polite. and nice first. then i’ll open it,’

‘no. open it,’

‘no. no no,’

‘its a puppy. i can see it. just open the basket,’

grandma smirked at me like she was bloody holding something above my head, which she metaphorically was, and it angered me beyond everything. my head felt so hot, and there was this like stinging liquid in my stomach. and a natural reaction for me, it seemed, was to somehow inflict this similar pain and hurt back at her, which i did. i tried to push her chair back so she’d fall and hit her head. being fat however, she was practically unmovable, and she laughed at me, so i threw my cup at her mouth to stop her from laughing. she stopped alright, and stared. then i kicked her, and kicked her and kicked her until my dad came and scooped me up and all i could do was stretch my neck out and scream into her face. her eyes widened at that and she lifted the basket and opened it, and the puppy just jumped out, all waggy and tongue lolling out. i fought out of my dad’s arms and went to meet Young, as he soon came to be named.

result: violent, emotive reactions to any injustice, disregarding the harm to any object or person. disrespect for authority.

ms moon

it was insanely noisy, i remembered, as the teacher told us that the moon was really a sphere, round, and has been so since God could remember. there were people shouting ‘the moon is a c, a c, i see it every night’ and protesting stupidly that there are actually a lot of moons and they take turns, like some kind of duty roster. i have never felt so embarrassed for being young as i have then. the moon was round and one, and sometimes night hides a part of it so we can’t see the realty of it, and wasn’t it just something for a moon to be shy. noisy, very very noisy and heated, childish exclaimations and me, wide eyed and a little confused, in the middle of it all. the teacher doesn’t do much, leans on the whiteboard smiling with crossed arms. condescending, more than anything, like it was our fault for being born a thousand million days after she was.

‘ms ms! please ms! is the moon really round?’

‘of course andrew. round. and singular,’

that was the end of the class, because she said so and we had to believe. and my friends leave school quoting ‘the moon is round and singular’ to the cooing parents and their maids who pretend to be charmed. all under the sunny afternoon sky, waiting for all those astronomical show offs that only appear later, after their homeworking and their stew dinners. while i stay inside, writing a paragraph about respect and tact for that infuriating woman because when she said to andrew that the moon was round and singular, my pented up sense of knowing and the frustration directed at my classmates had exploded into “LIKE YOU!” in a burst of pubescent angst.

result: thought/opinion immodesty for fear of petty explosions