So you’ve always brushed off “love drives you crazy” as a figure of speech.
Well, so have I. Until I met X.
X is the son of one of the elders that in the ward that I service, a towering giant who can’t be that much older than I am.
When I first started helping out at the Hougang ward, X obviously stood out amongst the sea of silver haired folks, especially with his height. He looks like your boy-next-door on all counts, except that his hair was a tad long and unkempt, and that he smokes. Reds, to be exact.
And oh, he has a long sinewy fingernail on his left pinkie. Classy.
I’ve never spoken to him before then, but there was something about him that made me sense that something was quite amiss. Apart from his undulating stare that he fixes upon me and the rest of the younger female volunteers, there was a hint of his misplaced mental soundness underneath his odd, unnatural swagger and child-like traits, like how he would suddenly wander far away from the group like a little boy lost, only returning after much cajoling from his aged mother.
Perhaps he’s autistic, I thought.
I finally had the chance to speak to him last week, reluctantly I must admit. A dinner hosted by an external party was ongoing, and everyone was quietly feasting on what must be a lavish affair for them. Watching over the folks like a mother hen, I noticed X unceremoniously leaving the table and ambling outside with a Lucky Strike hanging from his lips. I ran after him, and said, “X, you can’t just smoke here you know. Please go back, you can always smoke after dinner.”
He wasn’t listening, but instead was unapologetically ogling at my chest.
“You have to go back in.” I persisted.
The host was already looking at us. It didn’t help that the dinner was hosted at his place, a castle of sorts with its own driveway, the kind of property that obviously doesn’t tolerate smoking, especially not from pariah-looking-what-is-this-man-doing-here-at-a-dinner-I-organised-for-the-elderly kind of people.
“It’s hot inside lah.” X finally managed.
“Please, I don’t think you should smoke here. Come back in when you feel cooler okay?”
I headed back into the house, and X followed me in. Instead of sitting down, he started his own little expedition of the house, touching photo frames, helping himself to the tidbits on the coffee table and finally making himself at home on the plush velvet settee.
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After dinner, I had a chat with three gossipy sisters whose sole enjoyment in life is to discuss the lives of others – didn’t matter that they were almost a century old.
“Did you see how X embarrassed his mother just now? Buay tahan lah!”
“Ya lah, horrible lah he. Mother so old liao still have to support him and his smoking habit!”
“I heard his mother fell down last week lor!”
The three sisters were animatedly bitching about X in Hokkien, and I was only merely present as a spectator until one of them said
“It’s too bad he’s like that now. He used to be such a nice boy.”
My curiosity was immediately piqued.
“What do you mean, used to?” I quizzed them.
The trio almost fell over each other to trying to give me an answer.
“He used to be normal lah! Until like five years ago.” Second Sis offered.
Then Third Sis cut in “Ya lor, so poor thing.”
Elder Sis finally explained, “X was a normal man back then, until he met this girl.”
Wow, this was getting interesting. A girl?
“They were engaged, and just a few days shy of their wedding before the girl broke up with him. Then he went berserk lor.”
Berserk? How so, I asked.
“Not sure lah, but I think he couldn’t take it and his mind just went crazy. I think he really loved her a lot that’s why.”
And I thought such stories happen only in reel-life.
His bizarre behaviour suddenly explained itself.
I concur that Love is too fucking scary.
