BIRTHDAY IS AS BIRTHDAY DOES

If all were fair, I shouldn’t have been let live another day past 30. Or past 20. Or past 8. Or another day past whatever age I started turning into a menacing human being who degraded people who were too cheerful. And people who honestly thought their English was perfect while actually saying “its mean” when what they really meant was “it means.” And people who talk too much and smile too much baring their decaying teeth. God have mercy on me.

But all weren’t fair, like everything in the world, so here I am, fully exist past 30, a menacing human being still, degrading people with fake smiles and bad English and dirty teeth still.

If all were fair, I would have gotten a daughter for my birthday, a menacing tiny feminist with a flair for calculus, straight teeth unlike her mother’s, perfect English, and a deep passion for writing and fighting with her mother.

But all weren’t fair, so I got books, earrings, and chocolates instead. “You like my presents?” was what N asked, and I tearfully said, “You always know what I want.” Of course I know that he didn’t know what I wanted. All weren’t fair: that loving patriarch always thought I wanted a son.

If all were fair, I would have slept through that morning and the morning after and the morning after, I would’ve slept all through eternity; therefore preventing more people getting hurt by my menacing words and judgments.

But all weren’t fair, like everything else in this world. Yours truly is still alive.

So here’s a warning to everybody who crosses my path: please save yourself from degradation. Do not display to my face your bad English, your dirty and/or protruding teeth, your too-cheerful disgusting smile, and your inability to stop yourself from talking about such a pathetically unimportant thing as your life story.

This year, I will forgive you for all your goblokness as long as you don’t be too goblok to display it to my face. And you should forgive me for – yes, for having lived past another year.

ON SLEEPING WITH A GIRL

The vision doesn’t come often.
Not nowadays.
Once it was when you asked me whether I was a lesbian, and I decided to laugh it off. The other time was somewhere between awake and asleep, when I was fast drowning into the world where my reality was as pretty as my fantasy.

***
“I didn’t use to be this stupid,” I had laughingly told X, “Do you remember? School used to be so easy for me.”
My voice was hoarse, because of the laugh, and the tears that came right after.
“You aren’t becoming stupid,” X consoled me. It was a hot day; we were at her bedroom watching TV. And drinking something I can’t recall. Probably iced tea, because she loved iced tea so much. “You,” she continued, “you just have too many things on your mind.”

Nevertheless, my grades weren’t as good as they used to be, and if you knew me, you’d understand why this kind of things bothered me. X was of course one the few people that really knew me. She knew me so well that when we were 12 years old, she already predicted what I would do for a living. I also knew her well: I too predicted what she would become when she grew up. Turns out that we both were right. That is, I’m telling you, how well we knew each other.

In my jealous mind, she grew more and more intelligent: she went to the best university in the country, while I grew stupider by the hour and ended up in a university nowhere near her league. My heart was getting heavier when the first semester’s result was out: it was so bad, I even got one ‘D’. Me, I don’t flunk my exams. I simply don’t.

I told her that, for about a gazillion times. (I didn’t use to be this stupid. Look how stupid I am now. I didn’t use to be this stupid. Look how stupid I am now. I didn’t –)

What prompted her to hold me tightly against her heart, I’m not quite sure of. Maybe because I looked so wretched, so nearing nervous breakdown, and she hated seeing me that way. Maybe because she knew it wasn’t about bad grades after all, for it was really about that “too many things in my mind.” Maybe because girls simply hug each other in troubled times.

Whether girls simply kiss each other in troubled times, I don’t know. Yet X and I did.
At that time I had a very innocent relationship with a guy, and when he kissed me, it wasn’t nearly quite like how X kissed me.

Hers were soft kisses that grew fiery by the minute. I had my doubts when her soft lips first touched mine, but when it happened for the second time, I didn’t want anything other than giving in to her sugary mouth. I kissed her back, searching for the soul inside her. Soon she parted her lips, and I hungrily searched deeper for her soul. I realised that day that the velvety tongue that was caressing mine might as well be where her soul resided.

But I didn’t stop there.

We didn’t stop there.

She kissed my neck, and my breasts, and I was overwhelmed by the idea that her soul was maybe in that beating heart of hers. I couldn’t stop kissing her left chest, feeling the centre of her existence banging against the walls of her chest. I was pained with the need to caress her skin. I knew she was too. We both lay skin to skin in each other’s arms, trembling and trying to ease that pain. I had felt the urge to plant my lips all over her body. I kissed her breasts and yes: I kissed, licked, and sucked her tender nipples.

But a lesbian I was not. I am not. And, who are you to say otherwise?

***
The vision doesn’t come often.
Not nowadays.
Once it was when you asked me whether I was a lesbian, and I decided to laugh it off. The other time was somewhere between awake and asleep, when I was fast drowning into the world where my reality was as pretty as my fantasy.

I have no idea whether the vision comes from a dream, or a reality.
It’s not important anyway. All I’m sure of is that I know how it feels to sleep with a girl, as precisely as I know how to make a girl realise the magnificence of being loved by another girl.

THIS WON'T START WITH AN "ANJRIT"

There, I promise.

This post won't be full of fury. Har har. It's gonna be a dolce leggiero tune. Oh I had meant to start with anjrit and write this whole thing in Indonesian but I think writing in dolce leggiero will be a good exercise. I will not dare calling myself a writer if I cannot write anything any other way than full of fury.

So here goes:

**
I arrived home about two weeks ago, tired inside and out. It felt like I had spent the entire day ambitiously trying to give Error Detection Methods lecture to a roomful of monkeys ignorant young learners.

Then I saw it: a letter from the tax office. Stating that I hadn't paid my personal tax for the year 2003 and therefore was given a penalty. True, the penalty wasn't a big sum. But: I had paid my tax. I had filled out those goddamn numerous forms, honestly writing down how much I made, all the way thinking the government owed me money and not the other way around. I had paid the due amount in January 2004.

I was unlucky, to say the least, to have an NPWP of my own. That means I have to report my financial situation to the tax office yearly. How I got that NPWP was a tragic story of itself. Anyway, in 2003 I was more of a freelancer, the companies I worked for didn't cut off my salary for tax purposes, and being a goody-two-shoes I reported that to the tax office. Goddamnit. By golly.

With all good intentions I went to the tax office the following Friday, explained my situation and was told to pay the penalty anyway. I wasn't angry at that time. I just wanted it to get over with. So I filled out yet other forms, and get ready to part with the rest of my allowance for that week. The only problem is: no banks in the vicinity of the tax office can accept tax payment.

Can you imagine? I walked back and forth, and back, and forth, I went into all banks within 800 metres radius of the tax office, and none would accept my money. I walked and walked on the non-existent pavement, fighting for each step against what seemed like a billions of motorcycles. I had smartly left my car at the tax office, thinking the banks were within my walking distance anyway. When the sixth or seventh bank refused my money, I wanted to roll on the floor laughing, along with God.

But the matter was finally settled yesterday, thank God, I'll live happily in my safe little world until they feel like sending me a letter again, I guess. And there was one other thing that happened yesterday that made me so deliriously happy I thought I found the sun inside my purse.
**

There I wrote it. No anjrits in the whole passage. I have just finished re-reading it for the umpteenth time and would like to herewith confirm that I will not dare calling myself a writer.

BUT HOW DO YOU DEFINE SEX?

Now that I look back at the ruins of our relationship, N, it becomes apparent that we both had been testing each other all along, although none of us would admit that in this lifetime.
My test went like this: “if you really care for me, you will not pressure me into having sex with you”, while your test went: “if you really care for me, you will make love to me.”
I really don’t have the heart to say this, but I’ll say it anyway: we both fail each other miserably.


You cannot blame me for remembering every detail of that day, Dear.
Did you know?
I used to memorise your words. I told my skin to memorise yours. Every time I lay in bed, I would start aching for you. Even when I was too busy to call you, my body would always miss you.
Did you know all that?

You cannot blame me for remembering how scorching hot that day was.
My legs were in pain: I had been driving 45 kilometres, away from everybody, to find a secluded place, to be with you.
My words were scarce: you understood my laughs, my touches, my every gesture, and I was thankful for that. I was thankful that I didn’t have to talk too much whenever I was with you, that serenity of the time spent with you was the one thing that I miss so much now.
My heart was heavy: I had grown tired of keeping you a secret from everybody. I knew you were tired of keeping me a secret too. I knew that the days without you were lurking near. We both didn’t dare pointing it out to each other. To this day, I still can’t figure out how exactly we agreed on the decision to disappear from each other’s life and pretend that nothing has ever happened.

You cannot blame me for remembering how long we were locked in a hug, how words stopped being important, how warm your skin felt to my touch. You cannot blame me for remembering: your lips were sweet, your breathing was deep, your hair as smooth as a baby’s, you kept opening your mouth to say something but couldn’t get the words out. You cannot blame me for remembering how deep we were lost in those kisses.

You cannot blame me for remembering how you tasted exactly. It was the first time I took somebody to my mouth, and the taste of you stayed on my tongue for so long.

Do you know?
Food tastes funny to me since then, as if they lack something I cannot put my finger on. I try to curb my longing for a fuller taste by adding salt to everything.
Until it dawned recently on me: nothing tastes right to me because my life is lacking you.

LEGAL BUT HURTFUL NONETHELESS: LEGAL ABORTION, THE 'MUI' WAY

Let me make one thing clear: I don't run around blindly saying that abortions should be legal at all costs. It's just that, as a 10-year-old girl I came up to my mom once and asked: "If a 13-year-old girl was raped by a school janitor and got pregnant, wouldn't it be very urgent to terminate her pregnancy? At least, to save her sanity?"

As my mom stood there gaping, I saw the answer dawning in her eyes: yes, her answer was yes.

And isn't it supposed to be it? To be yes?

If you terminate your pregnancy because you have been irresponsible, or you can't bear the responsibilities that will surely come with a new-life you bring, then I guess the guilty feeling will haunt you right to your deathbed. But nobody in her right mind will let a rape victim live face to face with a creature forced into her womb via a very degrading, inhumane crime. Isn't it as crystal-clear as the mind of a 10-year-old child who thinks all bad people will go to jail and all good people will succeed in life?

So when I read recently that MUI had stipulated abortion as legal, I was torn between surprise and excitement. Further down with my reading, though, I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth.

The stipulation said abortion was legal if it was done within the first 40 days of pregnancy. That leaves a woman with only 10 days to make her decision: when you are 10 days late, you are already roughly 38 to 40 days pregnant. If you aren't as regular as a clockwork, I'd say missing that 10-days timeframe is as easy as missing the next bus home.

The legal reasons for abortion, the stipulation said, were rapes, incests, and genetic-related diseases. Whoa. Genetic-related diseases can't be detected within the first 40 days of pregnancy. Tests for that purpose can only be done when you are 4 months along.

But that's not all. The one that really threw me to the wall was this: a rape victim must have a recommendation letter from her family, a doctor, AND an ulama, stating that indeed she is a rape victim, to be able to have a legal abortion. As if the crime itself isn't humiliating enough....must she really degrade herself further by begging that goddam recommendation letter from practically everybody around her? Must a woman always let other people make decisions for her? By God, she has her own mind!

I can just picture it: the clinics which practice illegal abortions are unsafe. The clinic which practice legal ones will demand recommendation letters. Who, if I might ask, will be the ones to pay the real price here? For every single mispronounced word in the world, it seems to me, women will have to pay the consequence.

Oh how I picture it: the advanced female ulamas in MUI fought hard to bring about the 'fatwa aborsi legal', battling with cynical male ulamas, and finally could only come up with this insufficient stipulation. How hurtful it is to see a slap disguised as a help.

I don't know where women have to turn, even counting on fellow females often proves to be fruitless. Because it is a men's world still: men with blackties, and men with lipsticks and stilletos too.

On a more general term, legal-abortion aside, I hope I'll be forever out of the circumstances where I have to let others meddling with my life. Where I have to make others make the decisions for my life. Where, alas, I have to put my life into somebody else's palm.

It is a hard life, but it is my own, and I am more than willing to pull through its end without begging for a recommendation letter from anyone.

MID-YEAR RECAP

Ah. Mid-year is here. Seven months have passed without any significances. Or have they?

Sometime back I read that the only way not to fail your new-year resolution is by not having any. But that sounded too safe for me, the true risk-taker. Har har.

So yes, I made some resolution for 2005. I wrote them down, because I read somewhere that the best way to commit to your goals is by starting right: put them in writing. According to this weird article I read, there was even a research that showed you'd be more likely to succeed if you put your goals in writing, and you have the chance to read what you wrote often.

With all good intentions I wrote my goals down neatly, and then did a critical mistake: I never re-read what I wrote.

A few days ago I came across that list, and was mildly surprised that I have accomplished several goals I wrote down. As for several others that I'm not even close to, well, obviously I haven't accomplished them not because I am insufficient. It's due to the fact that I don't see that list often.

Because we still have 4 months left of 2005, why don't you start listing down some goals and make sure that you read them everyday? It works! Really! I now wear matching underwear every single day! (Yes, that was somewhere in my list.)

As for me, err, I have torn apart that list, because, errr, I am happy with what I have accomplished this far. Err, yes. Really.