Dream Lover

One of the most common question I am asked, especially by people whom I know from the internet, is the one about what kind of guy is my type. Well ideally, he should look should look like this:

Don't even ask me who that is because I don't know. I don't even remember how this guy's picture came to be in my possession. I just recalled saving it into my Photobucket account so I could one day use it to illustrate on this topic. So if the person reading this is the person in the picture above, I apologise in advance but I did not intend to turn you into an object of my fevered fantasies. Just trying to illustrate a point here. That aside, you can now proceed to get in touch with me... just kidding.

I will not begin to even deny that I prefer a good looking guy. Years ago when I was still a idealistic teenager in denial I will probably say that looks don't matter. Now that I am old enough to be a little more shameless, I will say looks matters above all else when it comes to first impression. Whatever our intelligence or human superiority, we're just in the end biological creatures who will consciously or unconsciously desire a mate which is strong and physically attractive. But having said that, being gay renders that notion obsolete because technically we don't mate.

However that doesn't mean that I am all for being shallow. Personally I have settled for a lot less than my version of ideal. For what it is worth, I am not someone with looks that could launch a thousand ships anyway so I am not about to go about commenting who is good looking and who is ugly like the comical bunch in Hotshots (refer to Axcest) or Hotbods (refer to Trevvy) or declare I deserve someone who is physically attractive. And strangely, I had a dream once where Jacky Cheung was interested in pursuing me and I was pretty enamoured by the notion and by my standards, he is barely half of where the guy above is ranked. Perhaps it was how he was so charmingly likable when I chanced to have met him in person once. So I guess besides a pretty face, personality and chemistry accounts for a major part of acceptance.

When it comes to dating, I think I'm proud to say that I have dated a pretty wide variation of people of different age groups and physical appearances - younger and older, skinny and... the not so skinny. I have even dated a Malay guy once whom today I still have fond memories of (which is more than what I can say for most of my exes and past dates), so I can't be said to be racially discriminative either when it comes to preferences. Unfortunately I am not too proud by the numbers which rather paints a pathetic picture of the state of my love life, but that aside...

No, I guess I can't really describe my "type" because physical appearances hardly paint a whole picture of what a person is, though reluctantly I would agree that good looks certainly bypass a lot of my barriers. Having said that, a handsome guy would not necessarily find an easy path into my heart either. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) I never have to worry about that because I am never lucky enough to warrant such attention.

It is a kind of paradox since I usually never have good impression of good looking people in the sense I always find such types fickle, arrogant and well... above me. If there is one thing I find in common with these types are how they know of their physical attractiveness and are prone to psychological games to get more attention. The more appearance challenged are not exactly guiltless either and I have seen my fair share of such who feels, no BELIEVE, they deserve to be paired off with an Adonis (read: the comical bunch of commentators at Hotbods and Hotshots). Maybe it's the whole Cinderella complex, or something more associated with the ego or just plain denial.

We are all brought up to believe we deserve the best in life but reality would have it that only a handful will ever get to live their dreams. If anyone have seen that Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet movie, The Holiday, would have heard of how there are two sorts or role in life, the lead and the best friend. Like it or not, a majority of us would be spending a lifetime playing the best friend, including yours truly. But hey... one can always dream.

Starry Starry Night

There's nothing much to say really except it's Chinese New Year. I think I have said all there is to be said about this season of the year. The usual fare, annoying relatives asking the same old questions ("Where is your girlfriend?", "When is it your turn?", "When can I stop giving angpow to you?"), eat, sleep and watch TV. This time around I didn't even bother with trying to exercise so I will probably be paying for it. Four days of sedentary lifestyle and my body has begun to deteriorate. Seems there is no way I can go back to that life anymore. And oh yeah... driving home in a jam in the dead of the night is not a pleasant experience, especially if your companion is fast asleep and you're fighting fatigue. Starting at 11 pm and reaching home at around 5am is not funny.

Less than 6 hours later I was up and about again to run chores and do the ancestral worship thing. It begs to question, how is it I am doing this when it is more of the duty of the eldest son. After all, theoretically I am the one who has shamed the ancestors for abdicating my duties in continuing the family line. Besides I have a love-hate relationship with the columbarium. The cremains of my grandaunt is there and every year it seems there are more and more new additions among the old dead who grows more increasingly forgotten. The old wing especially seemed like a testimony to how death and decay makes anonymous beings of us all. Rows and rows of long deceased lined the walls. Their dusty, cobwebbed urns sometimes behind broken glass and missing name plates. Many have photographs staring out blankly among a jumble of the deceased's personal artifacts. Reminds me of a line from Don MacLean's Vincent.

"Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless heads on nameless walls, with eyes that watch the world and can't forget"

Old and young all together for an eternity which doesn't even seem permanent. In the central courtyard is a bodhi tree. Continued root growths have begun to tear up the cement floor while drain pipes clogged with its leaves sag and leak from the weight. Beneath the tree is where converted Christians abandon their pagan idols so they could alleviate their guilt that perhaps those who still believe will continue to honor their former gods. It's strange really, why even bother with this last act of belief if you have abandon your faith? On any other day, the columbarium looks even more sad with the lack of human life lingering around save maybe the distant drone of monks chanting. There's a certain allure to the sadness, but yet it is not something many of us would want to think about often.

Supernova

Few weeks ago I found myself watching one of those old Chinese New Year themed Hong Kong movies which starred the late Leslie Cheung. For some reason I found it highly depressing, though like all Chinese New Year themed movies, it was meant to be a feel-good comedy. I think part of it stemmed from the fact... well... that Leslie Cheung is dead. I mean of course it's no big deal right? We watch movies all the time with someone who is already dead in it, like Gladiator (the late Richard Harris was in it) which I watched over the weekend in a spanky Hilton KL penthouse suite, courtesy of Ben Tang from Singapore.

Anyway, coming back to the topic, the fact that I grew up around the same time Leslie Cheung rose to stardom made the movie kind of depressive. I saw him climb the ladder of success, watched his so-called retirement concert (on TV of course), observed him make a comeback on motion pictures, and just when you thought the guy had everything going for him, he goes and make a bloody mess of himself on a sidewalk. Perhaps it's not really fair that I describe his tragic death that way, after all none of us will really know what was going through his mind when he decided to call life quits. I guess one gets more easily affected by the tragic death of a star if you grew up in the latter's heydays, much like Princess Diana. I remembered being irrationally saddened by her rather dramatic exit, much like the most of the world I suppose. And of course what did she mean to me? Obviously I have never even set eyes on her in the flesh, much less know her.

I also find myself half-heartedly contemplating on Anna Nicole Smith's recent demise. By all means she was hardly what anyone would describe as an examplary star. Every single bit of her life was of questionable morals but it would be also fair to say she was a victim of her own fame. I remembered liking her so I could spite a friend of mine who was a fan of Pamela Anderson. I illustrated her once in this rather provocative pose for a school project on the subject, of all things, MORAL. The teacher was like, "Aiyoo~~ so gatal!". Hey, at least in Anna Nicole, you saw the real ups and downs of a celebrity. She had her fat days and tragedies, and I think in a way we all sympathised and loved her for it, gold-digger or not. She was real in a kooky sense of irony.

Above all, maybe who the celebrity or how they die doesn't really matter. Perhaps what we see in their demise is more of a milestone for the end of an era in our own lives. In their deaths we see our own growth and the innocence we had lost along the way. Perhaps in a way, it reflects on our own personal tragedies, on the choices that we made which has brought us here.

Perhaps it's just in human nature to be morbidly fascinated...

In Memoriam

Anna Nicole Smith
1967 - 2007