Saturday, January 22, 2011

1000Words - Little Sins


Just because this piece has been sitting in my PC forever, and it needs to get out and get a life.

Little Sins
Word count: 1000
Note: I never had a conversation as remotely interesting as the one below.



She said to me one day, “He didn’t text back.”

Knowing perfectly well who ‘he’ was, I thought it was normal and within realm of possibilities. And I said so.

“No, he’s good at these things.”

What things?

“You know, like replying and stuff. Keeping in touch. Saying hi, how are you’s.”

Oh, making friends.

“Yeah. That. And you know if he’s not texting back, something’s happened. He may have disliked me by now.”

Nonsense. Rubbish thoughts. Keep a lid on it.

“You don’t understand.”

Yes, I do. Human gets tired. Perhaps he’s just tired of always being good at making friends. Perhaps he’s hibernating. Taking a break. Chasing cars. (Or other girls, I didn’t say.)

“He’s angry with me, I know it.”

I looked for the mental bridge that connects her islands of thoughts, but after failing miserably, I asked how in the world she came up with that foregone conclusion.

“Because he didn’t text back!” was the reply.

Of course. Her mind was a fertile place, inhabited by imagination and wondrous things. But among them, logic was playing truant at the moment. Or was I being insensitive? Unfeeling, like a psychopath? Was it my fault there was a sense of my wasting time hearing her hark on-going with despair? Because of an XY chromosome with faulty timing? Oh, please.

Let’s talk about social codes here. Person A texts Person B. Person B has the Shakespearean option to either reply or not to reply. If Person B chooses the former, Person A has another option to respond or not to respond. And the cycle goes on. But when one party stops, then it’s broken. As simple as that.

It just so happened that he had chosen to stop the back and forth.

“You don’t understand!” she said, again telling me how out of touch I am with her reality. “I’ve never been the one whom people don’t respond to!”

What?

“When somebody doesn’t text you back, that means they hate you!”

Okay, logic just died. Probably murdered by too much ROFL, LMAO, and TTYLs. Gutted and hung to dry, along with the rest of proper language.

Since when did texting become linked to popularity contest? What if there’s nothing to respond to? I mean, how do you respond to: “Tee hee! :D” ?

She was looking smug. I decided I didn’t really like that look, so I pressed the hurt button.

I told her. You know, I was at the mall earlier today…

“Really? I thought you hate that place.”

I do. Malls, to me, are worship temples where freon replaces incense and neon lamps are poor substitutes of candles; where a smaller piece of cloth that barely conceals fetches a higher price than a child bride in certain countries. Where people go to satisfy their wants instead of needs, where plastic lives become reality and everybody is as happy as if they are living in a sitcom.

But that wasn’t the point. I was at the mall today, and guess who I saw?

Being a smart girl, she asked the right questions after a series of gasps and eye-bulging. “Who was he with?”

Your arch-nemesis. The blondie with D-cups from next door. They were sipping lattes.

“Those are not real!” she replied. “And one of them is actually smaller than the other. Besides, what would that tart know about lattes?!”

I don’t know about that, but I’m quite sure she knew how to position her assets regardless of the disparity in size.

(Anyway, I was beginning to wonder if my friend here had a habit of measuring cup sizes—and if she’d ever directed her observation prowess to my own. That would be disturbing.)

“Everybody knows she’s had a job done on them.”

Who would actually enhance one boob and forego the other?

“Maybe her doctor wasn’t that good. Or maybe she thinks just doing one is good enough, to fool people into thinking that those are au naturel.”

No wonder when she walks she leans to the right.

“Is he blind? Can’t he see how much of a tramp she is?”

Whoa, okay now. Her resentment was starting to rub on me, so I asked her what the connection on having big bossom and modesty was.

She looked at me in disgust. I stared back, feigning patience.

“Don’t be stupid,” she started, “you don’t know her as well as I do.”

What, she ate your cheese?

“Why are you taking her side? I thought we were friends!”

I thought so too, but I was beginning to regret that fact.

“I hope her boobs drop,” she said suddenly.

All of this because he didn’t text back?

Okay, this got to stop. As much as I enjoyed goading her to such a state, it was always a rather sad thing to see her degrade this fast. I watched her free-falling, but I wouldn’t provide the safety net. I wasn’t going to do it. Her moral education wasn’t my problem.

“I really, really don’t like her. Don’t you know that she’s been around? Like, you know what I mean, around?”

No, I don’t know.

“Yeah, everybody’s been talking about it. What does he see in her? Even that blonde comes from a bottle.” She sniffled, looking for pity.

I had none, naturally. All I wanted to do was just to escape from this conversation so I did the most logical thing. I dropped another bomb.

I saw them kissing, I said. Kissing and kissing like they were about to eat each other’s face whole. In front of everybody, can you imagine that?

“You lied!” she wailed, burst into tears, and flung her mini cellphone across the room, where it smashed against the wall and broke into pieces. Bits of metallic plastic showered the floor and the hot pink fuzz-ball that used to adorn the phone died an unceremonious death.

She sobbed.

As I got up to leave, I couldn’t help a smile.

Perhaps I enjoyed that a bit too much.






No comments:

Post a Comment