EW9

Disclaimer: please read this series of posts starting from EW29, then backwards.

Let me take you back to one of the days I fetched you at Choa Chu Kang. It just happened last night, I swear, not three years ago.

Me in my pink Converse tee, you in your bookout uniform. You didn't have hair, while I had the same short hair that I do now, except it was dyed with insecurity. It was a coping mechanism for my loss, while now it acts as a symbol for all things impulsive.

We were standing by the escalators, I swear I can feel the cold metallic of the railing below my left arm. You touched my waist and said under your breath, Saturday, wanna go hotel? You weren't looking your best then, with your face so tanned and shaven head exposing the moles I didn't know you had. But I said yes, because you were all I knew.

It was early September, because I remember my first tattoo being fresh. At first we went to Mayo Inn, but you saw a hijabi at the reception so we went to Haising, a few units down. You gave up $100 in exchange for a receipt with your name and IC number on it, and a tiny room on the second floor.

But you're right. That was Bugis. What's it got to do with this station?

That was the start of our hotel habits. In the beginning we went Haising a couple more times, dropping a hundred bucks just for four hours, five. What a waste of money, we both know. But we didn't think about it because we were a pair of new adults who wanted nothing more than to take each other.

Then we discovered hotels that charged hourly. Two places became our haunt, I'm sure you know their names. They became a regular thing, sometimes spontaneous and sometimes planned for days. Christmas 2015, when you didn't have your IC and pleaded, I've come here before, don't you remember? 

It became a routine in late 2015 and never stopped until well into 2017. Hell, after we got back together three months after the break-up it happened again, with my personal favourite being the day I'd brought my dress.

So many sets of four walls have heard and seen enough of us. It's a stark contrast to your poor memory, but it rings clear in my head like it was all just yesterday.

Watching you unlock the door and me, knocking on it; you flipping my body over and gasping when you're in; my legs starting to shake. The sights, the sounds, the touches. I wish I can get it out of my system but it's impossible. I wish I'm not the one who has to suffer like this every time.

I wish you had been more firm with me, instead of letting your lust take control. Your willingness made me think we could do anything that came our way, that it would always be us against the world.

I kept giving you hints but you didn't take them seriously, you said during one of our last arguments, when you finally had enough of me being completely different from your mother's expectations. It was my fault for driving you there in the first place, I was the one who would never change, I was the one who went against your family on purpose.

Ironic, because most of the time it was your idea. You long stopped dragging me to staircase alleys in malls, but it was you who slipped your hand beneath my waistband in a crowded train, who brushed your fingers against my breast in the cinema, whispering Lepas ni nak pergi hotel?

Hotels only stopped being routine when you rented your own room in Singapore. But there was no 'hint' from you for me to change our ways, for me to mould myself into the perfect daughter-in-law. Your last reason for leaving was a contrast to your own actions, always bringing me home and exclaiming we would have sex everyday when you realised your roommate was rarely home.

These things stayed in Aljunied; the shady hotels and roadside tables selling viagra, our lack of shame when we bought condoms and passed our ICs to the receptionists. But the rebellion against your mother followed us out, which you would later turn against me. Your selfishness comes with your fear, running away with your tail between your legs and saving only yourself.