Confessions of a Cat-holic (13)

But meeting a qualified bachelor was never on my agenda. I thought it was conspicuous that I was not interested in opposite sex. I had always been the ugly betty among my girl friends. My beauty was ranked among the low 80th in a class of 140 students. Mediocre, definitely not appealing whatsoever. If you counted the staff and teachers in too, I should rank around 500th in my school. I also liked to dress down myself to evade any evil eyes or unneccessary jealousy. I knew how to survive among females.

I always had short hair. I was not a tomboy, even though I sometimes enjoyed lesbian porns. I did not try to be a Gigi Leung or Stephanie Sun per se but my unconventional styles still caught the attention of my new friends. It was never my intention to stand out with my not so enticing looks. Actually, I thought I could pass as a boy, except that I had no penis. My favorite outfit would just be a shirt with straight pants, plus a pair of Dr. Martens. I liked Calvin Klein a lot, for its middle sex appeal obviously. My chest was as flat as a man's and I didn't even need to wear any bras to school until I reached puberty at 16. Yes, my period came later than most of the peers in my school. So technically, I was not a woman until almost high school.

My sexual orientation was a mystery to some, especially among my close friends who knew there was always some unspeakable admiration going on between Angel Mok and me. We both belonged to St Patrick's House. I was not athletic enough to play any sports for my house so I became a cheerleader. I never kissed or made out with Angel but I loved being around her in school. Was it double rainbow? I was not sure but I had to admit that, prior to meeting my husband in college, I did not believe in sexual reproduction. I wanted to major in Biology, specifically genetics, to hopefully clone myself and my dog.

I did not like penises at all and I was not even curious about men. I used to think that I would grow up to be some career woman with a decent job, never needing a man. That was the thing about going to an all girl's school. We did not have a chance to meet any opposite sex. It could do funny tricks on our minds, making us believe that we could be adequately alright without any guys to mess things up.

In middle school, I hated cookery lessons and my home economics teacher, Mrs Yung. I sat next to Flora Yip in F.1. I was not sure whether Mrs Yung hated Flora first or the other way round but there was some mutual dislike between the two of them. I was Flora's friend so Mrs Yung kind of held some grudges against me too. I scored last in my needlework class so I stopped knitting scarfs and told my mother to finish my homework for me. That just stirred up the hostility between me and my least favorite teacher.

I was not as radical as Flora, though. Flora liked to upend her tables and chairs in Mrs Yung's class, and vent out her anger towards the education system in Hong Kong through savage violence. She would curse the teachers in class and secretly sprinkled chalk onto Mrs Yung's shoulder as a prank. As a newbie from some band 5 no-name school, Flora was already 17 when we were classmates in F.1. Obviously, she was eternally stuck in that grade for more than 5 years because she failed to catch up with our standards. As soon as Flora reached 18, she dropped out of school to become a single mother. Being around students like her always made me think that I was always the good student and prime example for my friends.

Did I tell you that Mother's Choice was next to our school in Wanchai? I always knew that women had a choice in case we got pregnant prematurely. But rest assured, it was not the norm to become single mothers in my school. I would say the percentage of teen pregnancy in St Francis was roughly the same as over-masturbation and subsequent kidney failures in St Paul's Co-ed. These issues were not prevalent but they were not uncommon either. You could take me as an example. I became a single mother in college; there was a guy named Joe from St Paul's Co-ed who ended up at Yale despite his kidney failures as a result of over-indulgence in pornographics in middle school. Again, it was all about personal preferences. No offence particularly to any sex addicts in town.

With all that being said, I did not intend to become a single mother or a housewife when I was growing up, if you could take my words for it. Having witnessed too many tragic marriages from the news and from the love stories I overheard from my relatives, I thought I could do better than that so I studied hard in my teenage years. I just somehow changed my trajectory after meeting my husband. Could you say that was true love?