Confessions of a Cat-holic (10)

It was a muddle. It was a mess. Coming of age was never easy but it was particularly difficult for me. I wanted to tell my parents about the jeopardy I was in. I couldn't because my lines were tapped, my computer was hacked and my message history was raided by my rivals. I suspected that there could be some spyware in my house. Who knew what? It could be a drone or a hidden camera somewhere. I felt like a big brother was watching over me. After all, I was born in 1984.

So I told my mom to buy a bulletproof-looking quilted blue vest from Mexx. We were only allowed to wear navy blue pullovers without any tags or brand logos in school. That jacket still qualified. Amidst the fight scenes in school, I equipped myself with that little witch cloak, hopefully to ward off any aggression towards me and my gang. I looked like a CID police officer, almost needing my baton from home.

Then my friends started social distancing and refused to talk to me. I used to be the gabby gemini in my school and I never had a problem talking to anyone for as lengthy as hours in and out of school. It started with Tammy, then Catherine, Karen and a few others. Vicki saw that and she asked others to also stop talking to me on the school bus too, a childish act to balance her loneliness she experienced when she was singled out in elementary school years. She was a folly. She was a phony. She was a wannabe. She tried hard to talk and dress like us, just to prove that she could be one of us. She cut her hair short purposedly so that she could look like Vanessa, my other best friend who also resided in Heng Fa Chuen. Vanessa attended a boarding school in the UK before the commencement of middle school. She was recently a practicing dentist, happily married to a Caucasian.

There had always been something queer and peculiar about Vicki. I always suspected that she had some cognitive problems, possibly a case of early psychosis? The way she chatted about others was sometimes a source of our ridicule. Apparently, she said that I was a Russian spy and that I was also a Japanese by blood at the same time. Come on, a Japanese Russian spy? I could be a Russian spy or I could be Japanese. But I could not be both. It wouldn't take that much common sense to figure that out, I supposed.

Another thing that bugged me a lot about Vicki was her over-concerns about boob size. She was the only one who wore a pushup bra to an all girls' school. Most of us just got by with a Calvin Klein sports bra for its comfort and athletic elements. But Vicki's mind was like no other's. She was all over the place. She offered sex to almost all of the guys who showed interests around me, every single one of them. Not surprisingly, she slept with Edmond and Derek and tried to seduce the rest of my ex-boyfriends, as a typical Venus.

Why did I talk to her and hang out with her? God knew why. Like Conan O'Brien, I must have needed a friend. What about Vicki? Why did she hang out with me? She needed a guy, very desperately. So badly. Good job, Vicki. She was more desperate than the desperate housewives. As of now, I had not spoken to her for more than 7 years after her wedding. She disappeared among our group of friends mysteriously. I figured if she was that desperate to get married, she really had no intention to keep in touch with her friends anymore anyways. To her, friendship was just a way to get the attention of opposite sex and a piece of evidence to prove that she was not an alien.

There were always some common traits about the unpopular people in our school. They were ostracized. They were ostracized because they were all obsessed with something. Jane was obsessed with grades and her legal career; Vicki was obsessed with being a housewife, if only she could live happily every after; Sharon was obsessed with marrying rich, breaking into the vanity fair. Neither of them cared about what was going on in this planet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVSbGMWOoE