Nonsensical

   The others were already putting on their socks and shoes when Kamal finally came out of the bathroom. He was dripping wet neck-to-nuts from the shower and oddly smelling very nice from the bubble soap. When he saw that the others were busy getting ready to leave for downtown, he said "Wait for me, gringos!" and rushed to his bedroom. As he struggled to wipe himself dry with a towel, Kamal flipped through his closet to find a clean pair of clothes, preferably one of his favorite FUBU pants and that oversized Green Bay Packers jersey. He threw a checkered boxer and a pair of mismatched socks onto the bed and began rapping incoherently chorus lines from a posthumous Tupac album.

   Kamal was more excited than usual, for that day was his 21st birthday, and the night's trip downtown was his plan for celebration. With Zack, Fazrul and Adha, three of his best friends and roommates he had known for more than a decade, they will take Fazrul’s new secondhand car for a spin through the livelier parts of nighttime Minneapolis. It was not particularly interesting or special that Kamal finally hit the twenty-one years old mark, an age when many vices are deemed legal by the state; it was just a cause for celebration that rewarded wonderful adult benefits unknown to a male child at the age of twenty.

   In that sense, Kamal felt some sort of a liberation rarely found in the typical, relaxed kampung Melayu environment that he grew up from. In Malacca, there was a feeling of backwardness that was constantly nagging him and keeping him in check, but that he truly loved. And he truly loved it, this hometown atmosphere. Here, however, Kamal felt like he was a part of the global society and on top of everything else that Malacca would not have cared about. Of this land of milk and honey, he once said that coming to Minneapolis had changed him for the better, that living here turned him into a sophisticated young professional, and that here Kamal truly felt like a progressive, new Malay in touch with modernity and culture.

   Impatient, the others stepped out of the apartment and waited in the hallway.

   “What’s taking Kamal so long?”
   “He’s getting dressed. He’ll be out in a minute.”
   “Why did he have to shower for so long?”
   “Probably he jerked off in the shower.”
   “Most probably, yeah.”

   In the normal context of a bachelor’s life, such a conversation on the topic of shower masturbation would have brought along with it an uncontrolled amount of childish giggles and playful ribnudgings –- but as they stood there waiting for Kamal, the traditionally taboo matter was briefly mentioned and discussed without much humor or slight show of disgust. At the end of the conversation and with a straight face, they each went into a projectile of silent self-reflection, launching off at where the topic hit them on a very personal level. It was as if it was as valid an excusable sin as eating non-halal meat.

   “I wonder why he did that, considering we’re going to the club.”
   “Did what? Spank the monkey?”
   “Yeah.”
   “So that he won’t accidentally embarrass himself, I think.”
   “Oh yeah, the birthday lapdance.”

    Up to a point in their mental discourse, as lonely, unattractive male individuals that they were, shower masturbation seemed like a harmless sport that everybody was once an athlete, but decided to not let themselves stand on stage holding their trophies and bathe in the golden shower of that sport’s glory. The religious taboo on the free mixing of boys and girls and the social structure of marriage that must come only after the achievement of a certain age and financial status -- on these two pillars that they grew up on, even now at a faraway place from home as Minneapolis, sex and everything else sexual were still such confusing, directionless balancing acts.

   The current state of things and the rules that govern them were nonsensical.

   “He’s so fucking late –- we’re gonna miss Happy Hour.”
   “You can't go to a birthday bash and leave the birthday boy behind.”

   Finally, Kamal came out of his bedroom, all dressed up in his usual ghetto getup and smelling very nice for a man who always smells of cigarette smoke and Chinese food. But he was shocked to see that the others were not in the apartment. He looked around once more and in a near panic, bolted out through the apartment door -- only to find that the three bastards were already outside waiting for him. When he saw them lounging around in the hallway already with their shoes on, having an idle conversation about masturbation and such and were ready to go, Kamal burst into a fit of profanity heavily accented with the black man's English he picked up from gangsta rap.

   “Damn, niggers! I thought you’d gone left without the brother, foo!”
   To that, one of them retaliated: “Will you fucking hurry up or what?”

   Kamal looked at his wristwatch and noticed that he had delayed the night’s program by a half-hour and had put them into the possibility of running too late to enter the club during its Happy Hour, when the entry and the first-drink charges are discounted at 50% the usual price. It would not have been a major problem for him if he were to go there all by himself. But since he had no transport of his own and was unwilling to pay for a fucking ride on a fucking MetroTransit bus to and fro the city in the middle of the fucking night on his fucking birthday –- Kamal simply had to endure asking his roommates for a free ride downtown and bringing them along as guests.

   “Why don’t you guys start the car and wait for me there. I’ll be out soon.”
   “How soon is now, eh?”
   “One minute, just one minute. Okay, Zack?”
   “What else are you gonna do? Put them shoes on and let’s go!”
   “I’m gonna take wudhu and do solat maghrib first. Go wait in the car!”

   Immediately at the end of his angry reply, Kamal slammed the heavy apartment door onto their faces and ran to the kitchen sink to perform his ablution. The others, stunned by the recklessness at which Kamal threw the door at them, stood there in a dazed and confused manner and looked at each other’s bewildered faces. The letters ‘W’, ‘T’ and ‘F’ were printed largely, like real estate billboard signs, on their small, brown foreheads: they could not believe the words that came out of his mouth.

   “Maghrib first before going to a strip club? What fucking nonsense!”

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