It’s 2339. I’ve stepped out of my room, faux-silk pajamas and fresh underwear in arms, shirtless, sweaty, sticky, long-pantsed, unbelted, hunched, squinting, tired.
I’d turned the aircon on, so I bent over slightly to grasp the door handle, preparing to close it. My back stung numbly and stiffly from a strain that seems to have lasted too long, and the first whisps of cold air breezed out of the room, deflected off my pant legs.
I pull the door closed, and it doesn’t clunk this time. So I pull again, harder, putting my sore back into it, and it feels like a bit too much resistance. It goes clunk.
Pause. I straighten my back. I adjust the PJs so they are nestled under one arm. I twist the key.
Stuck. A creeping dread. Another twist. Stuck. This is new.
I am brought back to the same door, decades ago. I’m in Primary school, or older. I’m on the inside. The door and lock and latch are old – as old as the HDB it’s in. The HDB was one of the first few ones built in Singapore. I’m crying, wailing. I don’t know how to open the door and I’m stuck. Mom is on the other side, guiding me through how to open the tough, small knob. I twist, and it opens – I run forth into my mom’s arms and cry.
Present night. I hear sounds from my brother’s room; he’s still awake.
“Kor. My door is fucked.” I speak into his room, at his silhouette.
I hear him sigh. I feel myself creating some mental defences as to why this happened. I think about how strange it is to be defensive about this.
He gets out and tries to twist the stuck key, while I chat with ChatGPT about what lock this even is.
When I’m back, the key can turn, but it’s damaged! It’s loose. I can’t pull it from the keyhole.
I want to be annoyed at him, but I know it was bound to happen in our troubleshooting attempts.
ChatGPT tells me to fiddle with the keyhole which I disregard. ChatGPT tells me to call an emergency locksmith. What? How expensive are those?
Googling it, top5brandssingapore says $250-350 for lock fixing. Fuck.
Brusquely, Kor says to sleep in his room.
I say I’ll decompress outside first before joining him. I slouch on the sofa, elbows resting on my belly, scrolling and scrolling on my phone. I think about the week, about my mind and about how I’m not sure what or who I am any more.
I saw this coming. The closer I was to 30, the more my crisis would foam over the pot.
I’ve been pushing myself to use dating apps again. I know one day this problem will be a distant one, but it’s depressing as hell.
I matched with a girl and we had a great conversation – we chatted for a few days, on and off, she got a bit too personal with some of the things she’d found out of me, and I got spooked. I unconsciously tried to slowly distance myself (funnily enough, something ChatGPT recommends) and she’d get upset, maybe anxious about it, and I’d get spooked and distance myself, and she’d get upset, and I’d apologise and maintain my distance, and she’d get upset.
I went for a “pitch your friend as a date” thing with Yuheng the other day, and we killed it. I got someone’s number (Pitch girl) and had a very awkward and stilted talk with her at the event. She never returned my texts, and everyone says it’s on her, but they’re wrong, right?
There must’ve been something I could’ve done to change things, there must’ve been right lines of dialogue, like in Baldur’s Gate, and maybe her friends who loved me during the pitch might be telling her that “oh, I thought he was funny when he talked about how wacky his job was”.
Or maybe Pitch girl’s friends are saying “you know what? He was kind of a nerd. And a narcissist. Good vibes, girl!”
I called the locksmith this morning and went for breakfast with my aunt. I thought about all of it, all of the dating things, about being a shithead at dating, about how it wasn’t on me that things went South and about how it was on me to own up to it, about how if I’m not present with my aunt, I’m gonna regret it one day, about how the fucking door wouldn’t open, about how the fucking door was a metaphor.
That’s it! The door, it represents my small mindedness, my refusal to admit that things are on me, my need to stand by myself, my “broken” social skills, my nonpresence, the door that won’t open and the woodenness of the metaphor.
The door is a message from the dark night of the soul – you don’t actually need the change of clothes in your room, you have everything you need outside already. You just want to be perceived a certain way, when in fact if you can let go, you will be all the freer for it.
Maybe I should tell myself that the Hinge girl is never going to see me as a good person. Maybe I shouldn’t text the Pitch girl to have a good life ahead, because she is going to have a good life ahead and she isn’t interested in your ability to predict so. Maybe it’s neither your loss nor the Pitch girl’s.
Maybe I can go another day, swiping and texting with faux enthusiasm, learning about my tendency to withdraw, and learning about how better adjusted people manage dating.
The locksmith came in and declared the lock as a fucking old one – he wore a headlamp, slotted a piece of plastic, that seemed specifically sourced and yet randomly found, through the gap between the door and the frame, crammed it at the latch and jiggled it.
Crack!
The cold air invisibly cascaded out onto us, together with the relief of having normal electricity bills, together with the feeling of one problem solved, one big cold fucking reprieve from a psychological miasma.
Now I can have my clothes. Now I can go for improv. Now I can go for DnD. Now I can go back to Pasir Ris.
Now I can continue worrying about the same things I’ve been worrying about…
You can’t see this, but I’m tightening a bandana over my forehead, and gritting my teeth and screaming “let’s do this” at a door that can’t close any more.
Also, it’s 80 bucks. What a steal.
This is the eighth time I’m trying to write something for my 29th birthday post.
I’m doing it over my Le Nu dinner, I’m Pasir Ris Mall. Pasir Ris fucking Mall! It’s new, it’s spanking new, and there’s stuff like a second luckin coffee, the sixth McDonald’s in Pasir Ris…
I’m leaving Jude Studios. It’s been five years. I got into AI Singapore. Mom got stem cell injections. My room has no more latch. There are two more contacts in my telegram app as of Thursday that will never talk to me ever again.
Christ, I’ve been here for an hour and a half. Finally. This post’s done. It’s a shitty, temporal post that likely will not have lasting themes that will resonate with me a few months for now, but who gives a shit? Better better than perfect!
