Sunday, November 25, 2007

Butterfly Gets Punched

If you think consequence hasn’t caught up with my actions, then you are wrong. For all the bullshit I’ve thrown at people at the clubs, to get away entirely unscathed over the last three years would have been nothing short of a miracle. Much like Butterfly finding a girlfriend or a Singapore Olympic gold.

For my club antics, lesser men would have had ashtrays flung at them or stabbed in the ass with a barstool, but being me and blessed with an impunity for backlashes, I’ve only ever had one reaction which completely caught me off guard. I was punched.

If you know me and what alcohol does to my tongue, you’d also know that as much as I’m hilariously entertaining when I start insulting people, I’m also a liability to be around. As Reznor puts,

If you put him in a room with alcohol, he will start a bar fight. And if there isn’t anyone around, he’d probably start insulting himself.”

Yes, you read it right. I was punched. Square in the face by a girl who didn’t take too kindly to my flirting (with another girl) and riposted my attempts to pacify her with a Tyson worthy jab.

Her name was Fiona. An icy bitch that never believed in the merits of smiling but it didn’t matter since she looked great at being fierce. She was also hugely possessive and believed strongly that men should be put on a leashed and kept at a proximity where she could monitor their every activity. If she could, she’d probably have them wear a chastity belt.

Naturally this ideology didn’t digest well with me, but this was years ago, when I still had tolerance, so long as they provided me with visual pleasures. The clash was inevitable and I was just pushing her limit buttons a little too hard till it finally bukaked right into my face, with a sting.

While I already knew she was pissed, I didn’t know she was also,

1. Violent and short-tempered
2. A boxer with a good right master handed jab.

It was harmless flirting on my part but it was gross intolerance on hers and as much as I can be nonchalantly insensitive, I’m also blessed with Spider Senses to know when trouble is brewing around the corner.

I went back to see her face darker than doomsday. If she was a chameleon and had on an afro, she would have qualified to be Macy Grey. I knew she was pissed and since it usually takes little for me to cheer people up, I decided to play out my tease.

It started with a circling round her, breathing into the small of her back and slowly progressing to her ears. Then I grinned at her,

Me: “Something wrong? Angry?”

A normal reaction would have been some eye rolling or complete ignorance. Maybe to look away from me and lie as most people do when they say, “no” or “nothing”. But this girl defied normalcy. Entirely.

What greeted me instead as a stinging jab that caught me straight in the mouth just as I was about to deliver my second line of pacification. It caught me with a sting and mouthful of surprise. I was at Zouk and I just got punched. This was going to look great on my dating resume.

I immediately clutched my mouth, then dabbed it with my fingers to check for bleeding.

Me: “What the fuck!”

She looked away. She apparently had the whole procedure wrong. You are supposed to look away first and retaliate only when the person continues to piss you off. In that instance, a knee to the gut would have been perfectly legitimate. Or an eye gorge maybe.

I immediately turned to LB and did the only mature thing possible.

Me: “Let’s go! The bitch just punched me.”

So I stormed off without so much as a goodbye and left her entirely rooted to the table. Along the way I also bitched incessantly about it and I might have spewed enough expletives to dialogue for a rap concert.

She called me shortly after while I was waiting for the valet to get my car.

She:Am I going home with you?”
Me: “ARE YOU CRAZY?! YOU JUST FUCKING PUNCHED ME!”
She: “But I want to go home with you..”
Me: “YOU JUST PUNCHED ME! WHAT DO YOU THINK?!”

Apparently, I’m wrong about her. In addition to her being violent and a boxer, she is also palpably a psycho.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The Cake Story

If you ever run out of romantic things to say to your significant other, you can turn to me for help. My inbox is flooded with idyllic sweet nothings, so much so that I’m surprised it isn’t diabetic yet. Meet Cake, the honeyed perpetrator and the source behind my increasing repertoire of romantic bullshits.

Cake was the kind that would send you a message only to reply her own message with another message. If I left my phone untouched, she was well capable of writing a whole dialogue for a sitcom. I would then title it, “I think I’m an idiot in love”. It was like lyrical sycophancies and if I actually pieced together four of the messages together, I would have enough for a chorus that will put The Backstreet Boys to same.

She was like a walking Hallmark dictionary with an aptitude for putting across a message as simple as ‘I miss you” in a plethora of ways. It started out cheesy and I largely believed she might have been reading some ‘Your dad must be the thief who stole all the stars in the sky and put them in your eyes’ book and decided to surreptitiously pluck some lines out of it to let me know that, not only does she miss me, but she’s also creative and original.

Then it exacerbated into a soliloquy, where she would confess her interest in me and follow it up three minutes later with a question, only to answer that a couple minutes later by formulating her own theory. If you are planning to watch some Shakespearean play, you can save your money and I can introduce you to Hamlet right away.

This would go on for a couple of days till I eventually ignored it all together. And when you leave insanity unchecked, you’re only putting your life at risk. Every time we got down to meeting, she would besiege me with a thesaurus worthy of ‘I love you’ and I would peddle myself out with a consortium of equivocations on ‘No’, which usually starts with ‘I like your company’ and ends with her in tears.

She’d message me stuff like,

Why I love you, I don’t know. Why you don’t love me? I know..”

And when I left that unchecked, the next message in would be,

I know..”

Like, What the fuck, bitch?! If you’re going to kill me, just say it already!

Then there are the times she just truly amazes me with the sweet bullshit she manages to conjure and when I doubt the authenticity of it, she reminds me that, “the sweetest things come from the heart”. If you are diabetic, you’d better take a shot of insulin now, because if you collapse and die now, you will make a lot of ants in the toilet bowl very sad.

My happiest time is sending you an SMS

6 minutes later,

But I’ll be happier to receive message from you..”

I replied, “ok” and she didn’t reply after that. I believe she might have collapsed from heighten happiness.

My total happiness is to be thinking of you.”

I don’t remember if I replied to that, but I remember giggling alot.

Reznor had a go at her about how bad a taste in men she had by picking me and how I constantly surround myself with women and how she was a singular in my life of plurality.

Me: “You think you’re being funny? Wait till you see her start crying.”
Reznor: “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I sent her back after that and I woke up the next morning with the fucking phone buzzing incessantly near my ear.

You see me cry, you happy?”

I nearly pissed my pants.

I always believe there is a limit as to how much adulation a person can accept before that threshold is breeched and any excessive professing thereafter is cast in doubt and eventually, ignored.

If you want to tell a person you miss them, say it after you are done talking. ‘I miss you’ is best used as a punctuation, not a conjunction. And you shut up after saying that, because as little as it seems, it’s effect takes time to set in. The moment you commence a force absorption on the other party with, ‘I keep thinking about you all day and night, you know?’, you will,

1. Qualify to be a stalker. Or at least have potential traits to be one. All you need now is to add ‘determined individual’ to your resume and you might turn out to be a successful stalker.

2. Get slapped with a restraining order.

Yes, you miss us. WE get it. We might not say it back because we don’t feel the same way, but we get it. Reality is, not everyone you say you miss, is going to be overjoyed, drop to their knees and blow you off. Sometimes, they don’t respond and you never hear from them ever again, so it’s ok for you to wish they get run over by a truck when that happens.

And because I’m an asshole, I generally disregard another person’s emotions with my insensitivity and closet love for trouble.

She: “I’m jealous… of the someone you are thinking of.”
Me: “You can start with Lydia, and when you’re done with her I’ll let you know the next person to be jealous of..”

I thought it was funny, she obviously didn’t. I guess I’m not that funny after all.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

How Men And Women Differ Pt1

For the large part of my life, I’ve never really believed in the characteristic divides between men and women. For one, my social sanctuary has a prolific line up of androgyny.

If you think being a ‘player’ is a gender biased and circumscribed bracket subscribed to only by males, then you haven’t been properly acquainted with Huixx or Sheena or the dozen others, who have been furtively hunting on the dance floor. Tsk tsk, and you thought you picked them up?

Or the hapless romantics who take forever to resurface from a break-up, that it debunks the myth of men being emotionally superior? Reznor continually reminds me that even with facial hair, comes emotional fragility. And Blaque proves that hen-pecked men can bitch and complain more than pregnant women.

My assessment of this ambiguity has however been more refined of late. It’s not entirely about how men read maps better than women or how women need to use more skin products than men, that really sets us apart as homo-sapiens, but rather, how we actually deal with situations.

Handling Rejections.

If I ever had to write a special power I have down as confession, it would be – Making people cry. It’s either I’m dating too many emotionally brittle women or they are really good actors who can qualify as rain props.

On the numerous occasions where my penchant for honesty in answering “do you love me?” vulgarities with “No. But I like you.”, I’ve seen them degenerate from Shisheido covergirl to Halloween goth chick. I never understand why.

When a woman puts her heart out in the open, professes her love and gets struck with rejection, or scorn, her immediate reaction is to let emotions take over her. Rejection is very much an embarrassing event itself, and now she has to worry about tears ruining her make up. Life is tough.

Women take rejections seriously and it damages their emotional psyche. The cathartic response is naturally to cry, because crying makes the guys panic. And panic is the best way to mind fuck the guys.

Men on the other hand only have one respond to being rejected. They try to rescue their ego. Seriously.

When a woman gets rejected, she blames herself. But when a man gets rejected, he will blame everything but himself. He’ll even blame Albino’s for making him look too tanned, or KFC for the added calories.

You turn a man down and your name will forever be reverberated amongst his friends as “that bitch”. And only two days ago you were to him, the hottest girl ever or ‘THE ONE’, and now the opening sentence to your story will be,

Who the fuck does she think she is…that bitch.”

Women just cry. Men just try to play down everything to save a bruised ego. They’ll tell you that actually it wasn’t so much of ‘love’, but more of ‘like’ and it will keep going until it becomes ‘I just thought you were pretty interesting’. If you push on further, he’ll eventually tell you it was your sneakers that he was really interested in, you were just the free gift with it.

When Cake told me she was in love with me, my immediate response was to tell her how much I was in love with myself as well and hoped that we’d spin a ‘I love Butterfly’ conversation. That didn’t materialize and when I told her,

I don’t love you. But I like your company.”

That didn’t work out either, because she was smart enough to decipher my coded ‘I don’t love you’ message. She started crying so I thought sex would make things better.

It didn’t. We’re apparently not allowed to joke after sex either.

She didn’t bother about how much of an asshole I claimed to be, it only mattered to her that I didn’t love her. On the contrary, when my guy friends recount to me on the times they got rejected, they always seem to ensure me that,

1. The girl wasn’t worth their time
2. The girl was probably a slut and she has a penis dissolving disease.

Men, you just gotta’ love em’.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Butterfly’s Marketing Pt 3

Marketing should always be made with easy association to things people actually have to face. It’s months overdue, but better late than never. You haven’t already read the first and second post, it’s a good time to start.

I give you, Butterfly’s Marketing Pt 3…

1. Generally tends to be male, with cash to spend and very little brains to curb it. All you need is cleavage, a smile and a very witty introduction along the lines of ‘hello’ to get them interested.

He is usually at the bar, checking you out and will buy you a martini at the slightest hint. If he pulls out a credit card, ample cleavage will get you at least a jug. For platinum cards, your bra straps should accidentally snap and if you are really lucky – and he’s drunk and married -, you might get a condominium.

Their vocabulary is generally limited to ‘what do you want to drink’ and believe getting you drunk is the fastest way to get you into bed. They will spend and are more than willing to buy your friends (women only) a round or two of tequila.

You’re only purpose is to exploit. You’ve earned it.

Now that’s a Cash Cow.

2. You are out with a group of friends. Your domain and routine in the club is circumscribed to the table and checking your phone for imaginary messages. Your friends however, are well acquainted with alcohol and are dancing on the podium. The crowd is cheering them on and men are hitting on them.

Your observation turns to envy and you suddenly think dancing on the podium is a great idea. Your friends are advertising and to great effect. You knock back a shot and make your way to join them.

Now that’s Ad Persuasion.

However, you get up to the podium and realize alcohol cannot cure muscle spasms. Your dancing is so horrible, you look like you are going into seizure. People around you start holding up their phones to pre-dial for the ambulance. You realize clubbing is not your tea and spend the remainder of your Saturday nights playing DOTA and making love with your mouse pad.

That may seem like Counter Advertising, but it’s really Product Incompatibility.

3. It’s your birthday but you are too cheap to spend. Your friends are toasting you like it’s your sweet 16. You verbally announce your disdain for tequila and the only thing people in your immediate vicinity will remember, is you saying,

Gawd, I wished I had champagne.”

If you are a guy, people will ignore you. Hopefully, you are a girl with a top that looks to be falling off. Your cries might not have an immediate impact, but if you say it often enough, sooner or later some idiot will take the bait.

Now that’s Broadcasting

4. You have no wingman but you have two girls standing at the bar just waiting for you to flash your Amex Platinum at them. Unfortunately, one of them is ugly and you can’t buy a shotgun in the club at such short notice.

You tell her friend that you will keep her on your drink tab as long as she loses the pig next to her. You offer a bottle of Dom Perignom in exchange and she turns you down. You tell her you will not smash the empty bottle over her friend’s head and post the pictures on http://www.ugly-people-should-stay-home.com/ in addition to free drinks.

She starts to think, so you pick up the nearest beer mug to show that you are at your final offer. She relents and the ugly friend runs off crying. You win.

Now that’s, Aggressive Bargaining.

5. You are ugly, no one cares about you and you almost had problems entering the club because Halloween is over. On ladies night, they have to put you through a DNA test for you to qualify for free entry.

You are fat and the bouncers refuse to let you because we all know letting a whale in is opportunity cost for letting two other normal people in. You are asked to pay double the cover fee and when you refuse, they throw a punch at you.

That’s Quality Control.

6. You pick up some chick at the bar. You are boring, but seasoned enough to know that keeping their glasses filled is a viable option to keep her with you. Your response to her request to go to the dance floor is captioned in,

After this drink.”

The longer you can keep her at the expense of your rising drink tab is a mark of stupidity on your part. You generally fall into the Cash Cow bracket.

But that’s also a measure of Holding Power.

7. You see a hot girl by the bar alone. She has a skirt so short you’d think it was from Osh Kosh Bgosh. She is tall, has long locks out of a Clairol’s commercial and tits that are defying gravity. It no longer matters what she has under her skirt because your immediate assessment of the situation is,

She’s a Ladyboy.”

You do not care about conversation proficiency anymore and you associate all sharp noses, breast implants, stilettos and liberal clothing to Transsexuals.

Now that’s Product Association.

8. You are not hot and you know no one is going to pick you up if you stay by the bar all night. Thankfully, you have redeeming qualities like an ass that would look great gyrating on the podium and also less important attributes like wit and humour.

You know you have to offset your shortfall in the looks department so you play to your strengths. You might look like a pig with tree-trunk trotters, but once you start dancing, people start taking notice of you. Next you know, you are in the lime-light for positive reasons.

That’s Corrective Advertising.

9. You head to a club with one purpose in mind; to hook up with as many girls as possible. Tonight, you aren’t counting calories or pot-marks. ‘Cellulite’ to you is a new mobile network operator and you are forgiving to people who dance like they are victims of polio.

You want to fill your phone book with as many numbers and grab as many asses before that pre-party mix of whiskey and stout wears off. You will entertain anyone and hit on anything. If the beer mug has a skirt on, you will be chatting it up.

Now that’s Quantitative Research.

You head to a club and eye everyone without a Swimsuit Illustrated worthy body with contempt. You refer to girls in any outfit that looks suspiciously off the shelf from the Wardrobe Malfunction discount store as that ‘wanton whore’.

Your friends are grabbing asses but you prefer to say stupid things “Let’s talk, I want to get to know you” to the girls you are interested in. You believe in a hearty conversation at the club and feel the chivalrous need to first know the person before your hands come in contact.

You are either gay or stupid. Usually both.

But that’s called, Qualitative Research.

11. You blatantly tell anyone that picks you up that you are drunk and that for the next hour, every drink they get you comes with a kiss.

Now that’s a Promotion.

Monday, November 05, 2007

Finding The Conscience

Do you think you have a conscience?”

I’ve been asked it so many times, that I’m beginning to wonder if I really don’t. Perhaps it’s been lost for so long that the search for it has become too tedious for me to pursue. I am Butterfly, the somnambulistic vessel, the antagonist for your preachings on love and the voice of logic and reality.

I’ve never really bothered to understand the whole concept of having a conscience or a heart, since it only served to make people vulnerable. If only they commodified emotions and sold it at the mini mart, then I could buy ‘conscience’ off the shelf, and maybe during a promotion, I could get ‘orgasm’ at half the price.

The weekend with MS subsided from the pillage of vodka and champagne on Saturday’s Halloween bash, to a lazy Sunday confined strictly to the bedroom. It was the very kind that would have passed every Christian doctrine, except of some instances where we might need to go to confession for.

It was the very kind of weekend I needed. One that was more emotional than it was physical. You see, the problem I have is that my heart is so inured by nonchalance and disregard for everything except to live life accelerated by carnal pleasantries, that I no longer understand why love makes people vulnerable.

Slowly, and in a very masochistically warped derivative of love, I actually find a lot of pleasure in being vulnerable. Which also explains why I have a penchant for impermanence and find the need to attribute a time expiry on things capable of bringing me happiness.

I love that final countdown against the clock. To know that everything we had, will soon be accolades of memories. To feel sadness gripping your throat. To not have words come out your mouth, even when your heart desires a prose of honesty. To know that your moment of silence with them, will last an eternity in your mind.

Where men fall at this vulnerability, I thrive at it. Perhaps, this is the one time I’m allowed to feel, human again. For the ones that have come and gone, – and the few who have had enjoyable comebacks – my lack of conscience has prevented me from feeling anything more than gratitude to their deeds.

I’ve never needed to feel indebted because I’ve always believed my philosophy was well capable of apologizing for my actions. I’ve never needed to lie to anyone to have had them lie on my bed and I’ve always been perfectly honest with how our story was going to end. As such, I granted myself impunity against all subsequent pacifying and guilt.

I’ve always been well capable of censuring myself if I ever allowed myself to wade too deeply into vulnerability. Yet, MS peeled off too many layers too quickly that she had my ‘I am an asshole’ t-shirt and my ‘love is a waste of time’ boxers on the floor before I could even say stop.

In the finality of it all, past the points where I stop and look for redemption in showering people with verbal pleasantries, I don’t see how the wild will be tamed. Perhaps I’m tickled with a weekend indulgent, but beyond the concepts of companionship and sex, is still a ambiguous horizon that I’m not convinced is for me.

I’m finding it. The conscience.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

this should be you...

They say a picture is a word. That's for the common idiots, cos when I post a picture, it usually means one thing,

Butterfly.Is.Lazy


The human pinball.



This should be you hugging me. Seriously.
Unless you're a whale and you're stupid...
I will punch you