The Miserablist View

To him, birthdays are like changing taxis.

On the shoulder of the tarmac, he hails, from the top of his pink lungs, for a cab. A few passes him by, swerving left and right much to the terror of the pedestrians, and a few speeds off, like wild bushfires, as soon as they get to see the massive luggage that he wishes to commute in a taxi with. Sure, he gets disappointed by such taxis, but he recovers from it fast, for he is in no hurry. He waits there some more, patient, until a willing taxi finally comes by to his side. The driver invites him in, and he smiles, and he pulls the crank that opens the door to the back trunk of the car. As he loads the luggage, the cab driver resets the meter for a lunch hour rush traffic fare and extra luggage fee. Then, he waits for the customer.

From the curb, he half-jumps into the car and onto the back seat. The driver looks back, and asks: "Where are you heading to, mister?"

When he was eighteen, he said:
"Political Awareness, at the junction of Religious Fervor."

When he was nineteen, his request was:
"Hedonist Decadence, after the corner of Blissful Ignorance."

When he was twenty, he went:
"The building between Responsibility and Desire. Ah, yes! Guilt!"

When he was twenty-one, he replied:
"I don't care. Just take me away from here, quick."

On the morning he turns a year older, he sees himself waking up to a day that is no different than the day before. He wakes up, but he does not immediately get up. He looks around, but there was not much to look at. He rubs his eyelids, but it was merely a gesture out of routine; they have had enough of nice dreams, they will not fall back to sleep. He stares into the darkness of dawn, at the ceiling that holds him down from floating up to the Heavens. He realizes now how long he has been fast asleep: his whole life.

I'm twenty-two today.

Up to this point in his life, he has done nothing that he is proud of. He has nothing to offer; not to anyone, not even to himself. He sees his existence as a lame excuse to suffer a slow-motion idleness, a defect in the space-time continuum that gives birth to the cause of his pain: boredom. He strives for meaning, but finds himself caught between the pull of keeping on living as he is now and the push for having found his greater purpose to the inner workings of the cosmos. Oftentimes, he just sits there, unaware that time flies.

He is envious of the previous generations for having the best era of their life be the most well spent and the most well lived; had he the same three years of theirs to be trade with his total twenty-two of laze and apathy, he would have regretted not a speck of the deal. He would loved it to experience and survive the Japanese occupation of Malaya as a kempetai officer, or to join the siege of Singapura on the side of the Japanese artillery regiment, or to terrorize the British barracks at the countryside during the Bintang Tiga communist campaign, or to wage guerilla warfare with Force 136 from the dense jungle of Pahang. He would have been just as satisfied to rally against the Malayan Union with a homemade placard at hand. Instead of all that glory and excitement in the historical fastlane, he is now stuck to his study desk waging a war against petty midterms and jerking off on a slow Sunday afternoon to VH1's marathon of ‘50 Sexiest Women in Hollywood’. It is just bad karma that he was born into a dull, peaceful period of history.

Twenty-two years of the worst karma, I say.

As he gets older, he loathes being greeted with a 'Happy Birthday'. He used to not care if he gets any of such remarks, sometimes bordering to feeling quite okay with it. But now, he takes the greeting to be somewhat of a mild insult, an unintended insult, perhaps; like when you have accidentally told a receding hairline joke to a group of your best friends in a social gathering, only to turn around and realize that you have offended that one and only bald person in the room who was just sitting behind you, enjoying his food quietly, minding his own business. This time, instead of male pattern baldness, it is aging, and instead of being accidental and meant not to offend, it is to-his-face and meant with the utmost sincerity.

Happy birthday, Lalat!
Yeah, sure, thanks.

He checks his inbox for any outstanding emails, but he finds none. He opens the junk mail filter to see if it was up and running the last time he rebooted the laptop. It's operational, as he suspects it to be. The spam list goes on and on: does he feel like buying ink cartridges for the printer at a bundle cost, does he feel like celebrating the age legality of Chloe Cummings of California by visiting her new webcam, does he feel like loaning a Nigerian royalty a transfer fee for his offshore banking account, does he feel like applying for a second mortgage through an online financer that is fast and easy, does he feel like pleasing his lover in the sack with a naturally enlarged penis, does he feel like signing up for a bargain package trip to Disneyland with the whole family, does he feel like making loads of money fast through a pyramid scheme that costs a few dollars to join, does he feel like working at home and earn enough cash to start a small business, does he feel like helping a little girl in Vermont who has a brain tumor by forwarding that email to as many people as he can, does he feel like buying 12 CDs for the price of one.

It tells the world a lot when the first person to remember his birthday and send him a wishful regard the first thing in the morning is a mailing-list moderator that he subscribes his porn-by-email services to. Suddenly, it does not feel to be such an appropriate thing to do to celebrate one's twenty-second birthday by browsing through a free-access gallery of Japanese school girls in full Sailormoon uniform being tied up and gagged as two or more of their male classmates take turn to masturbate onto their naked young bodies. Nevertheless, that morning, he downloads a few hentai movies unto his hard disk.

Life's gifts are in the little things,
Like porn and tits and caffeine,
Taken in small to moderate doses;
It comes unwrapped, out of the box,
With a silly Hallmark and a note:
"For Death comes sooner now!"

He reads the morning news while he waits for the water to boil. No interesting headlines that day but the usual: terrorist bombings of packed marketplaces, child molestations by family members, young girls raped and killed on their way back from a mengaji class, Kancil crashing into and squashing under an eight-wheeler and instantly killing whole family back from a kenduri kahwin, stolen Tabung Haji funds, death of political protestors in lock-ups by the batons of police officers, cluster bombs and jumping landmines maiming little children, tribal genocide by the hundreds of thousands in the poorest African countries, US soldiers killed in retaliatory grenade ambush, border clashes in disputed Kashmir and Korean peninsula’s DMZ, deposed dictator vying for a last minute gamble for political resurrection through electoral sabotage, bloody communist coup d'etat foiled by loyalist paramilitary death squads and militant Hindus burning down villages to make room for temples worshipping the goddess of peace.

Funny, I am not in a celebrative mood much today.

He sits there, with his cup of coffee, and he waits for the feeling to come.