my secret friend

"


I was rather nervous really. It has been a rather long while, since I have built a friendship up from scratch. But more so, because I knew I subconsciously admired her, perhaps bearing almost on platonic infatuation.


I felt the way I felt when I first met H again, and realised he loved art, thus making a new best friendship. But H is a boy. It would never be the same, watching an arts house film with him again. Doing that would also affect four people all at the same time. And then I lost a best friend at the same time.


While I waited for her to arrive, the fact that she was a girl, this time, comforted and frightened me all at the same time. But I will go through with this. I am not going to be afraid for long. After all, I really need someone who loved the same books and movies and the like, someone who will be able to go enjoy them with me too, and talk about it thereafter without making anyone feel emotionally endangered. I need someone like that to befriend me again.


"


Sometimes I wish H was a girl. I crave a friendship like the one described by D H Lawrence in Women in Love, where the two men had an intimate moment of friendship almost comparative to that intimacy they had with women, and yet not being gay in the slightest.


There are people who are like that. You will feel attracted to them, yet not physically. You could never fantasise about them in that way and feel good about it - disgusted, more like. But with every shared interest, that sameness grows.


I made a new acquaintance recently. I also wish he was a girl. Then we could go book shopping together and coo over those we already had and exchanged with each other. But because he is male, I probably cannot make this friendship that way.


Maybe I just miss some people, like Shuyi for instance, because I haven't seen her in so long. Shuyi is someone who asks my permission even before she complains about things. You see, women like to whine and gripe about things. It helps us deal. Some whine to the point of irritation, causing them to have few friends, or when in the presence of any, causing them to think to themselves, "Just smile and bear it, and say, 'never mind lah.,'" just so they can get it on and move the next person, next topic. Shuyi is not that sort. Anyway, I need to re-commence my face-to-face communication with her soon, otherwise something is missing.


I love my other best fem-mate Enid too, because she is mad and she loves art, and we can talk on the phone a long time too. We can even end up wearing the same thing on the same day to the same place. She can be quite cute and silly when high, and she will suan you if you are from SJI - sorry Cal. The unfortunate things in life also happen though - she studies in bloody NIE and it has fucked up her education experience in so many ways, I wish she would graduate tomorrow. I also hope she will find nice friends, and regain her positive outlook and comments, and for the benefit of my other friends, be less tao-seeming, else how I introduce her new, meaningful friends? But Enid - and she will agree - does not enjoy poetry, Murakami, cheem novels and the like, the way I do. Plus, apart from chick-flicks, our tastes in movies differ.


Maybe it is me. I am not a good friend to have, because I don't celebrate my friends' birthdays, I don't share things very much, I have all these bourgeoisie characteristics and seem to see planks in others' eyes rather than my own, and I prioritise my things all differently. Perhaps I slight others with my lack of commitment, or my seeming aloofness, or the fact that I love my job too much, to the point of drop-all relocation. Maybe I attract all the male company unconsciously, so that I can't have all the girly companionship that resonates with what I desire.


As for my secret friend, maybe that new acquaintance would do, or else others yet to be, but then again, I have to stop myself from being subconsciously female and thus do the subconscious flirty actions I cannot help, much to my own despair, because it is my survival instinct in the presence of male company. Or I could seek out new female friends, though it is hard - ever tried to make friends with a woman? Ha.


I need to find another Enid-cum-Shuyi to add to my friendster list, with a dash of Huanjie - female version - into the mix. Where to find her? And even if I did find my secret friend, will the friendship last at all?


I shall just continue to write. At least the words that come out here through me, alive that they are, will be there for a long time, till I die and beyond, hopefully.