Confessions of a Cat-holic (16)

That was not the end of my horror love stories, I could guarantee you.

After the phone prank incident, Rita asked me to go to the La Salle ball with me. My gut feelings told me that I should not go. I really didn't want to have any more drama with an opposite sex. But Rita insisted me to go with her. I told her I was not curious about boys, despite my coming of age. The only thing that occupied my mind was, like Wednesday Addams said, homicide.

But deep down I knew I should at least be my friend's company. After all, I could be departing the school in a few months' time. Chances were I might never see my friends again. Throughout the eight, almost nine, years of my time in St Francis, I had never heard of any joint-school event or the likes with another boy's school, or any school even. We didn't even invite our affiliates, such as Sacred Heart or St Mary's, to our 125th anniversary open day. I knew the general public always put us together in a box with Wah Yan. But as far as I know, we never acknowledged or approved of this urban fantasy. La Salle was the only official partner school that St Francis had ever accepted in our history.

My uncle went to La Salle. So not surprisingly, I heard of its brand before I learned to write my name in kindergarten. More or less, I wanted to get to know about this school a little more. I had been to my uncle's house when I was 6. I was living in a packed apartment in Wan Chai with my parents and 2 dogs. Life was not easy and I struggled in school quite early on in my elementary years. The richest person I knew was not a remote friend or classmate I overheard in gossips. It was my uncle's family. They lived in a mansion of over 4000 square feet with just three people in. They had an audio-visual room and my cousin did not even reside in Hong Kong most of the time. Just the two of them, my uncle and my auntie, were sharing residence in a house with lawns and garden. Their living room and dining room alone were bigger than my entire apartment. Then I thought to myself, my uncle must have been some sort of a genius to deserve this entire place for his own. From my grandmother's repeated nagging and overstatements, I found out that my uncle 's way of winning in an employer's interview was just downplaying his family's wealth and emphasizing the brand of his high school. He didn't have a college degree, despite being a Lasallian. And he blamed it on his brother. Yes, that would be my father. He said that he gave up the tuition for college to secure my dad to study abroad. That sounded just so legitimately right when he was chartered as a professional accountant in a vocational school and later secured a CFO position in the Tai Po Industrial Estate as a civil servant.

So after giving some thoughts, I said yes to Rita's invitation and attended my alma mater's first joint-school event at the campus of La Salle College in Ho Man Tin. That night, I dressed up like a lad. In fact, after some twenty years now, I could still remember what I wore that day. I was flat-chested without the need of a bra. With an undershirt, I topped myself with a Bossini beige shirt all buckled up. For the bottom, I was wearing a pair of Calvin Klein straight cut brown pants. To make it worse, I actually wore a pair of Dr. Martens black leather shoes, which did not quite match my outfits. I even gelled my pixie cut hairstyle with a pair of glasses on. That was just plain disastrous.

Now that I thought about it, I might have been overreacting in somewhat counter-intuitive ways. Maybe I was just not a believer of fairy tales? Not for a second I believed in the existence of a Santa Claus and I made it clear enough to not replicate Mother Mary's virgin love story. It was never my intention to be considered a Cinderella.