Luzzio

“Where’s the nasi lemak?” she asked. We were standing outside Little Fusion, a tidy little asian restaurant for students. I held back back a smirk and watched as all 5′3″ of her scanned the wallmenu, the bronze letters she was hunting at the very top. It was good to be tall sometimes.

-

“No offense, Mervyn, but you can’t go on like this. You need to mix with more guys.” she said matter of factly as we crossed the street. It wasn’t exactly something I didn’t realize. I swatted the comment aside and stated how boring most males were. Which was true. There are less than five males back home which I’d consider a ‘friend’. Females make up the bulk of my peers, and even then most of them did not belong to the same clique. I enjoyed the pseudo-platonic company of a single female, and that was how I spent most of my social time, if ever.

I suppose its because I’m not particularly fond of the company of males. Most of them are greeted purely out of courtesy. The childish thoughts of male comparison creep into my head, and I begin to distance myself from the group whenever another emerges. Hated the basketball days, losing out on testosterone levels and physical superiority. My exercise involved solo badminton games with a female teacher, and gym.

But she had a point. Four days ago Janet told me that her parents weren’t too kindly on the idea of her and Pearl sharing a flat with me next year, the reasoning being somewhere along the lines of keywords such as ‘male’ and ‘rape’. Firstly, I’d never rape a person. I do believe that the thoughts and temptations of grabbing a girl and submitting her do occur (one which I advocated last year in university, stating it as a general male nature, with resistance being the civilized differentiating factor, but a Christian boy said “No, I’ve never felt that way before.” I raised and eyebrow, “You’re special then.”), but I’m a perfectly civilized person. Can’t blame the parents of course. I’d give the same advice if I were them. And the two girls had boyfriends, so even with their parents’ consent, there was still the protective partners to receive very reluctant nods from. Which made Janet’s “I mean… you didn’t really think it would work out in the end, did you?” make sense.

No, I really didn’t. But I did wish it happened.

My flatmates are an… interesting bunch. The noise they make from their side of the wall annoys the fuck out of me, but I hang out with them quite abit, and I can’t say that if I were to leave I wouldn’t miss them. But oh, the mess. Trips to the kitchen are a daily barrage of depression and tests on my inherited asian patience. I’m not an oafish person of confrontation, so the most I’d do is politely ask them to clean if the mess got out of hand (it usually does). I could never start shouting at another person with a stern voice telling them what to do (I hope I develop that skill one day. Need it for work) like this one girl who used to live with us. Used to. She couldn’t handle the mess, and left for the opposite end of the building.

Let me describe it: As you wake from your comfortable bed, happy that an hour is due before class begins, and you may have time to whip up a quick toast-sausage-n-eggs, reality comes crashing down upon your mood like a mighty hammer because swinging open the common room door reveals a decrepit living environment. Saucepans which you were sure were there a week ago remain where it was left alone, on top of the stove. Pasta was still in it. Flour (”It’s just flour!”) lines the kitchen counters. You cannot see the base of the sink beyond the evergrowing possibly-sentient organism that is known as Mount Potsandpans. The carpet has cigarette filters all over, and the dining tables occupied by tons of half-consumed alcohol bottles left by incredulous people you felt like landing a punch on because most of the perpetrators weren’t even living here.

“See their pile there, mate? Yeah. Don’t clean it. If we do, they’d just expect it every time, and we lose.”

I thank the Lord everyday for a rent-budget which allowed me an ensuite room. Sharing bathrooms would’ve been a nightmare.

The solution to this problem was destroyed by the mere fact that jingle bells rang between my legs every time I walked.

Pearl and Janet were ideal housemates because I knew their tolerance for mess, though perhaps more than mine, was at an acceptably low level. It helped that I actually knew them personally. What would the point be then in moving into a private accommodation with some new strangers this year, people who might be just as impossible, or worse, and still have to re-enact the entire ice-breaking phase between flatmates?

In this context then, I admit. Sometimes I wished I was a girl.