Embracing Your Ugliness
by YBLalat

His class will start in another fifteen minutes according to the alarm clock near the head of his bed, and ten minutes according to the one on the wall. The others had already left the apartment for their classes in the earlier hour of the morning. Slightly plagued by a headache from last night’s excessive late night stand up comedy shows, he walked towards the towel rack and reached for his green one. Still not fully revived but very much aware of the time, he pushed the bathroom door open and switched the lights on. He stopped before the sink and lashed his towel onto his shoulder and stared into marble cup filled with his and his roommates’ four toothbrushes. A quick glance and he reached for the one with the green-white bristles.

“He bought himself this new toothbrush I see.”

After applying the Colgate toothpaste the size of a green pea onto Mamat’s new toothbrush, he brushed his back teeth slowly and to the pace of the MP3 player blasting at the background. With his eyes half closed and one hand scratching his left butt cheek, he hummed along to the driving and catchy bassline of the Stone Roses’ I Wanna Be Adored. He moved the toothbrush from the left back and onto the right and around the upper jaw and then the smiling two rows up front and finishing off with a back scrub of the two fang teeth.

“I’ve been skipping classes for far too many times last week. I must attend today’s recitation to start off good this week. Next week is already the finals’ week”.

He discharged the excess white bubbly toothpaste gob from out of his mouth and onto the sink’s hole before gargling in the rest of it to finish off washing his mouth. He’s heard of scraping your tongue with a funny-looking flat piece of plastic tool before, but the thought of such disgusting things coming out of his tongue was so revolting that he decided not to incorporate that into his every morning mouth washing ritual. He wetted his toothbrushing hand under the tap and splashed a puddle of icy cold water onto his face. A quick rub and then he stared into the bathroom mirror for visible skin pores on and around his nose. Unfortunately, he didn’t spot any pores though.

“My hairline is receding faster than I thought it would.”

He ran his fingers through the front hemisphere of his skull rapidly and passionately at the same time, dragging a few clumps of hair in between his fingers. The forehead viewed from a certain angle from the front looked like the dying boundary of a single-canopy tropical jungle: dense only at the top and not the bottom, big old trees growing out to branching without the company of the smaller and shorter younger foliage. If left unattended and uncared for another five years or so, this whole mighty plantation of awe is going to be a glistening desert of ridicule.

*********

“Dad…”
“Hm?”
“How did you meet mom?”
“Your mom? When we were in the teaching maktab.”
“You wanted to become a teacher back then?”
“That was the easiest job to get back then for us Malays.”
“You met mom there as classmates?”
“No – we actually met on the badminton court.”
“Yeah, I heard of the badminton story.”
“Of our meeting?”
“No, about you being a badminton enthusiast.”
“Oh, well, I guess I was pretty good at it.”
“You liar – you won the intercollegiate championship!”
“Who told you that?”
“Uncle Im.”
“He knew too much, that buffoon.”
“So, was mom a big fan of yours then?”
“We met long before I won the tournament. I came to the court early one evening and saw that she was playing badminton all by herself.”
“How is that possible – playing badminton alone?”
“She balanced the shuttlecock by running around, hitting to keep it on air. Pretty pathetic, I say.”
“Then?”
“I asked her if she wanted to play a set.”
“And she said yes, right?”
“No, not at first. She told me that she was waiting for a friend of hers to arrive, just as they had promised to each other.”
“Playing it hard to get, or she was simply shy?”
“Not really. She was telling the truth. I know that friend of hers – his name was Ramzi, a classmate of mine.”
“Her boyfriend?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then?”
“What else can I do but to respect her decision?”
“Were you with a friend then when you went to the court?”
“No.”
“So, there was just the two of you?”
“It was pretty early, yes.”
“And yet both were not playing a game together?”
“We just sat there idle. Pretty silly, wasn’t it?”
“You bet.”
“Only after a while that she said she would be willing to play a set with me and so we did. We ended up playing the whole evening, in fact.”
“That Ramzi guy stood her up?”
“He never came. Your mom said he had totally forgotten about it.”
“Mom had had her share of dating jerks back in her days.”
“I don’t know – maybe.”
“And after that badminton match, you two got close?”
“Not really. In fact, we never meet again after some time.”
“Did you exchange names? Introduced to each other?”
“No – we ended the game and said thanks and left.”
“That was it?”
“U-huh.”
“So, when did you two actually get to know each other?”
“I don’t recall the actual time and date, but it was in some friend’s farewell party. We were introduced to each other formally through that male friend, who was also a badminton enthusiast like me. A few months afterwards.”
“You both just smiled when he introduced you two?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“How old were you then?”
“I was 26, your mom was 20.”

**********

It had then became five more minutes before his class would eventually start, and as he was hastily putting his shirt back on, he had a quick glance at the table mirror to check upon his hairdo. They were messy and long and overwhelmed with dandruff and in dire need of a nice and thorough shampooing, after a near week-long of not showering, but the luxury of time was not at his disposal that morning. He ran over to his other roommates’ bedroom and reached for their hair gel bottle on top of the computer shelf and squirted a healthy dose of the miracle liquid onto his wet palm.

With a single swift stroke, he applied the gel all throughout his hair and back and threw the bottle back onto its original place. Going back to his bedroom, one hand tugging the neck of his backpack while the other flapping yesterday’s dust off of his trusted bowl hat, his instinct reminded him to look at the windows to check if they were still open and unlocked, and then, off he rushed to the apartment door.

His socks were still there tucked inside his shoes and they seemed to be still clean enough to be worn for another long day, and how glad he felt to not have to run back to his drawer to replace them. With his backpack already swung onto his shoulder and his bowl hat already on the head, he quickly tied the shoelaces into a simple knot and then to the other foot and shoe. By this time, his breathing was pacing faster than it normally would, but his worrying over not being able to make it to his class drowned the loudness of the heart’s savage beating.

Immediately after, he stood up on his two feet and brushed off the light layer of dust and dandruff from his shoulders and walked over to the visible sight of the wall mirror next to the door. Looking from up at his always-ridiculed bowl hat and down to his two dirty-looking and hole-ridden canvas shoes, he smiled at the sight of his own early morning stature and tapped the base of his right side pocket to check if he had forgotten once again to bring along his apartment keys. Satisfied with how he looked and how prepared he was for the day, he jerked the doorknob down and swung open the apartment door till it crashed against the wall behind.

“Two and a half minutes to the daily academic bore.”

**********

“Were you good-looking then?”
“Am I not still? (Laugh)”
“No, I mean, were you at your prime then when you two met?”
“Not really though. I had the silliest hairdo then.”
“How was it?”
“During the 60s, long hair at the back was the trend. You know, hippie-like. All the guys were like that.”
“I think I’ve seen your picture with the long hairdo.”
“That one you saw was pretty tame, I had longer ones.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“So, what was so silly about having long hair? I mean, if it were the current trend back then, sufficient to say that you were in the popular in-crowd, correct?”
“Yes, but I was very bald at the front then.”
“Ah! I see! Just like now?”
“Quite. So can you imagine how I was then?”
“You had really wavy, long hair at the back, but nothing at the front and on the top? That is creepy.”
“Very much like that A. Samad Said guy, but without the white hair and the bushy moustache and beard, yes.”
“You started losing your hair when you were 26?”
“Actually earlier than that. As soon as I ended my high school years, my hair started to thin bit by bit.”
“As early as the end of high school?”
“Yeah, it’s a very genetic thing, if you observe your uncles and granddad closely.”
“Yes, I noticed that about us – wide forehead, not so thick hair at the front, and thinning top.”
“Which was why I didn’t encourage you to cut your hair skinhead-style back when you were in Malacca, remember?”
“I was in the punk music thing then.”
“And so was I, but into the pop-yeah-yeah 60s of course.”
“Dad…”
“Hm?”
“Why did mom marry you?”
“(Laugh) I have no idea.”
“Were you two really in love? A loving couple?”
“Before marriage? Not that much compared to now. I remember she doing all the work to get me into marrying her. I was pretty occupied with my studies, I guess.”
“You didn’t become a teacher in the end?”
“My application to UM went through well, but your mom’s didn’t. She stayed at the teaching maktab and finished her teaching training while I transferred to UM for my degree.”
“You two were separated for a long time then?’
“Yes, but your mom would come by at my place for a few times each month for an occasional date, or a badminton match perhaps. At first I thought that, well, since we were to be separated, our close friendship would gradually die out because of the distance between my place at Bangi and hers at Klang.”
“But it didn’t?”
“She kept visiting me for the whole 4 years I studied in UM.”
“Was she the one who suggested marriage?”
“Nope – I did.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, since we had been going out for some time then, I just went, ‘What the heck?’ and asked her if she wanted to get married. I was sure about it. She seemed like a very good girl from a nice family, a good candidate.”
“And, of course, she agreed to it?”
“Yes. Her actual reply was, ‘It was about time you asked me that, you oblivious idiot’.”
“(Laugh) She said that?”
“Yeah – she actually joked about me waiting so long to ask her for marriage by saying that her interest in me was slowly waning proportional to the rate of my hair loss. Some painful joke it was. She had the weirdest sense of humor.”
“Wasn’t it somewhat rather hard to believe?”
“What was?”
“Mom being such a gorgeous girl and falling for you?”
“With all that impending baldness on my part?”
“I am not saying that you were unattractive or anything…”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. I used to think like that when I was your age, you know, this hair loss thing and girls and my appearance. I underwent my puberty and my growing up phase too, you know.”
“Sorry.”
“I’m okay with it. About that hard to believe issue, yes, at first I felt the same way too. I didn’t know your mom even liked me in the first place. All throughout the dating and going out phase, I was scratching my head for answers all the time. Suddenly, it just happened and we got married. But what actually it was that your mom saw in me, I have no idea.”
“Can I just ask mom about this?”
“I’ll kill you if you do, now sit down.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, your mom was some hot babe in her years.”
“I saw her picture at the graduation dinner – nice.”
“Did you go rummaging through my photo albums again?”

**********

Upon reaching the building door, he stretched his right hand’s palm outward and carefully drew it closer and closer to the glass wall. He wanted to know how freezing cold it was outside, so that if it really were cold, he could still make a run back to the closet and grab his winter jacket. From the look of things and people outside, the weather seemed like it was really breezy. Canadian icecap winds can be very tricky sometimes, even with all the glory of the April sun flooding the sky and the earth, the temperature can still drop to a single-digit torturous walk to school.

Through the glass screen, he could see two young people of the opposite sexes walking across the sidewalk and towards the other end of the road. They were holding each other’s hand and smiling and laughing and hugging – how obvious their eyes reflected their current state of love and bliss for one another. The sight of such youthful happiness would normally make peace and bring serenity to another man’s heart, but he just stood there watching without blinking. He showed not a single speck of delight or envy from his face. He just stood and trailed the couple from the far end corners of his eyes.

Suddenly, from the back of his head, the chorus of the previous Stone Roses song echoed in and made its way into the audible range of his two ears. As he listened to the words being thrown away at him by his own subconscious mind and sung at the melancholic melody set by his own cold heart, his outward-stretched palm stopped and dropped down to his side.

I don’t have to sell my soul,
(Because) He’s already in me.
I don’t need to have my soul,
I (simply) want to be adored.

**********

“Why are you asking me these things?”
“Nothing – just curious.”
“Have you given your thoughts about this?”
“About what?”
“About your future, about meeting people.”
“Not of my current concern.”
“You’d better put effort in it somehow soon.”
“Why?”
“Oh, nothing. Just like your mom used to joke at me, ‘…with every drop of hair, interest will wane significantly’.”
“I don’t believe I am actually hearing this from you.”
“(Laugh) I’m just joking, relax.”
“Easy for you to say, you already got mom.”
“That’s why I am asking you to start thinking about this.”
“Right now, all of my focus is surviving my degree program.”
“That’s good, that’s good.”
“I have no time or energy for girls. They can just wait until I am done with what I am doing. Priority matters.”
“You know, although I used to champion that ideal of just focusing on what I think is more important for myself, looking back at it now with you, I just feel that things may have gone really different with me and your mom, if she didn’t actually work the effort to kick me out of my ideals.”
“What are you saying here?”
“Well, for your day and age, today’s girls are a lot more, well, how should I put this, they grow up in world where you see the value of material and money first, you see. Not necessarily all of them, but the current popular culture is based on that value; so, you should know how that would affect their upbringing. Compared to the days of your mom, relatively, not many were from affluent background then. They valued boys differently then, you see.”
“I think I know where you are getting here.”
“So, while you are still young and your hairline is still visible, why don’t you try to make a run at it, eh?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“You know, I was pretty lucky to have met your mom when I was just beginning to get really bald at 26. With you and girls nowadays, I can’t guarantee things will go smoothly.”
“I’ll give a deep thought, Dad.”
“You promise? Because me and your mom are not getting any younger you know?”
“I promise, yes.”
“I don’t want you to think of me as being really pushy about this, but from my own experience, this is for your own good too. Maybe it’s much better to settle down first, before building up your own life and future. Maybe with a company at your side who is loving you and supporting you all the way, your future might be easier to build.”
“Dad, stop it please, you are making me feel like some destined third generation loser or something.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. But you promise to think about it?”
“Yes, I reluctantly promise.”

**********

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’ll just have to get myself really rich first and then, lure the beautiful girls from out of their mom’s greedy closet. Our premature baldness is curse, yes, but I will not let it, or the pursuit of any girl, to run my life. I’m not willing to be loved out of sympathy.”

With a frustrated look on his face, he let out a deep sigh and grabbed the doorknob at its neck. He assumed that the weather would be fine for him to walk to class that day. He assumed that the current layers of clothing that he had on would be sufficient enough to withstand any sudden change, both to the colder and hotter extremes of Minnesota weather. After a quick breath had been lashed out onto the glass wall, and with one hand tugging the strap of his bag, he swung open the building door and let in the spinning cool breeze of the morning to hit his face. In a single hop, he threw the big wooden door back to its noisy hinges and raced down the sidewalk towards the traffic light junction in front of his apartment building and managed himself cordially to the other side of the three-lane road. By then, his focused mind was already fixed on making it to his lecture, and yes, he did, in fact, reached it on time that day, and every single day after that.