He’s kissing me like a dog lapping up water from a water bowl. I wonder if he can taste the spot on my tongue that is burnt from last night’s cup of slim belly tea. Did he search up how to make out like the rest of us did—on wikiHow? The television is turned on to the local news channel and there is rising water in Chiang Rai and also my mouth. I think about men with oral herpes and if they taste like Blueberry Ice. Breaking news: a bus full of school children died in an inferno.
Today, Co-Star tells me that I am an ox in need of a yoke. It’s flooding in Vietnam. It’s flooding in North Carolina. It’s flooding everywhere. The world is ending and I am on a date with a man who thinks he is Hunter S. Thompson. What does the “S” stand for anyway? He doesn’t know. Shrugs like he has never ever thought about it. Drop five tabs of acid and get on the back of a motorcycle going eighty km/hr without a helmet on, how’s that sound? Trust me this is nothing to write poetry about.
It began with a 3 a.m. match on Bumble. How do great romances ever begin? Out of desperation, deciding to mutually ghost one another only to circle back a few weeks later with a hey sorry schools been busy, do u want to grab a drink on sat? By this point, all your other matches are either too ugly or too attractive or digital nomads, so you agree with a nonchalant sure sounds good. You don’t want to be eager. Just a girl in search of a pastime. Smear conditioner on your bikini line. You’re not a heathen.
We meet at a contemporary art gallery in River City. Make small talk in front of a painting of tits and ribs. There is no escaping from A.I. porn. Or Western descent toward fascism. I loiter in front of each piece more than I usually do, if only to communicate to him that I am cultured and therefore worth keeping alive. Though the truth is that I walk through museums too fast and have no interest in portraits of the motherland. But most of all it’s because I cannot relate to things that do not happen to me first.
I am getting to the age where it is no longer sexy to hate other women. Or have daddy issues. Or wear black mini skirts. Or go to bars on Thursdays. Or skip breakfast. Or have a crush on my gynecologist. Or be seduced by a man with a ponytail playing the guitar. Or to cross state lines for an abortion. Or give blow jobs. Or to be unemployed. Or stand in the pit area of a concert. Or wear bras without an underwire. Or to experiment sexually with my girl friends. All of it lingers like piss on panties.
Rumor has it that the person who had the job before me got himself off watching episodes of My Little Pony. And the person who had the job before him got caught touching children in the graphic novel section of the library. You’re all set, was his great conclusion. More tits and ribs. Did you hear that the former owner of that famous department store allegedly sexually abused his female employees? He shrugs and says, I mean I don’t know about that. Like we are talking about book-to-movie adaptations or a thing that flies.
The entire counseling team has an eating disorder. I hear them in the break room, slitting their wrists over triangular cut sandwiches of ham and cheese. Then afterward at a school-wide assembly on pastoral care. One hand typing an email to parents, the other fingering an infected nose piercing. We express our sincerest condolences to all affected by the tragic bus accident yesterday. The vehicle involved was very old and ran on gas. However, our entire bus fleet runs on diesel fuel. So what happened to those children should not affect the stock price or image of our school.
S is for Stockton, he tells me on Khao San road, over a bucket full of cheap vodka. When I reveal to him that I don’t drink anymore, he responds by offering me a cigarette. I don’t want cancer, I say. But don’t you want to die? There’s a difference. He says I am a writer too, as I free-bleed onto the wooden stool. They are coming out with a new in vitro treatment where women can have a baby without a man. I don’t think I’ve written a poem since my Zoloft dosage was upped to 150 mg.
Two days later, and there is a name for it all. The Lam Luk Ka bus crash. I wonder if it will be bolded in textbooks next to other tragedies like the Vietnam War and the 1973 Oil Crisis. Or maybe it will just fade into the background like smog from an Indonesian forest fire. So big that there’s nothing left to say or do except choke on it. A shipping boat catches fire in the Gulf of Thailand or the coast of Phuket. It’s rainy season, how can anything catch fire down there, is what everyone’s asking.
“You are in my heavenly dream” playing two keys too low in a jazz bar in Bangkok or New Orleans. He wants to make love in the staff room, underneath the table with the triangular cut sandwiches of ham and cheese, and listen to the badges of our lanyards slapping against skin. It is risky enough to be seen together outside of school—what if we run into one of your students? They’re seven years old, they don’t drink. Neither do I. Well, they can’t. Did you know the youngest kid on that bus was three, and the oldest nine?
Anyu Ching is a Singaporean writer and journalist based between Southeast Asia and wherever her soul flees to. Her work can be found at anyuching.com or on Instagram (@anyuching).