In Continuum.

The Drunkard

There was a bang on the front door,followed by the metallic sound of the door chain,pulled tight to the force of the pull upon the door knob.The doorbell rings,the sound of scrambling feet down the corridor,echoing off the walls and through my bedroom door.'He's back',i thought to myself.My father was back,at 1.30am,drunk.

It's not an unusual thing to be totally honest,to see him stumble through the door,smelling like dead cat and vomit.My father never was a smoker,but drinking seems to be a problem for him.I wouldnt consider it serious enough to be life-threatening.But then again,this sort of this is rather hard to say,dont you think?

Unlike cigarettes,i think alchohol is the root of so many family violence.You see children being beaten up,bruised and a leg broken,crawling their way to the nearest police station just because their father had a bad day,and decided to beat the hell out of his kids,as if they were some remedy to his pathetic problems.That is the typical story of a dysfunctional family,something you always see in typical Hong Kong drama serials,or the replicas of those on Mediacorp television,with certain aspect of the plot changed of course.

My father is certainly not the kind of person who would do such a thing of course.I think he is the kind of man who loves his family so deep enough you wonder if he loves us at all.It's funny,because my father is probably the most inaccessible person in terms of emotions.And yet,he has an offspring: Me.Such a drastic difference there,and i wonder which part of the DNA structure went wrong(or went right).

He came banging on my door again,a ritual or sorts after he comes home all drunk.I dont think he had a lot this time,at least i couldnt smell it through the gaps of the door.He kept knocking,and it pissed the hell out of me.For some reason drunkards like to find people to talk to when they are deep in the spell of alcohol.The strangest part is really not the content of the conversation,but rather the act of finding a conversation partner,with that fragile state of mind.Hell,you cant even walk straight.And you want a decent conversation?You might as well throw yourself out of the window and expect to fly to Johor.Oh,and buy me a hotdog while you are at it.

I turned 'Gold Lion' by Yeah Yeah Yeahs way up then,blocking out the sound of his fist upon my door.I used to be afraid of these,post-drunking side of my father.But right then i wasnt afraid,but frustrated at the stupidity of my father.I am dubious at times,wondering if it hadnt been my looks,would people actually relate me to this man?The same man banging on my door,probably with his shirt buttoned down and smelling like dead cats and vomit?I doubt so,because if my father is Adolf Hitler,i am Mohammed Ghandi,if that's the case.

In my childhood,i had a phobia of my father like that.I remember back in my old room,before my father comes home all drunk and flustered,i would build barricades at the door of my room with chairs and pillows,hoping to keep that hideous alcohol smelling creature out of my room.It's not like he abuses me by throwing punches to my head anyway.Most of the time he would come in and ask for a high five,a friendly whack in the back,or simply falls asleep on my bed.But i guess in a way,i just hated the sight of my father like that,defeated and worn out.I start to miss that same guy on the cover of that magazine long ago,in that business suit looking confident and proud,standing before the office building under the blazing hot sun.The glorious days,those glorious days,where have they gone?I thought to myself,as i looked upon the corpse upon my bed,making strange noises from its nostrils and smelling like...for the third time,dead cats and vomit.

I think it is all about self-respect.I see it as such an important thing in life,because respect for self is such a great motivation for anybody,to constantly improve on yourself and at the same time,keep a watch over your actions.It is the basis of the righteousness of oneself.And i think my father lacks that self-respect,when he downs those shots with his friends in some forgotten pubs in town.It's not like i dont drink father,but i have control.I have self-respect.I cant imagine myself appearing in front of anybody i know,with my top down and dinner all over the place,and hollering nonsense and then falling asleep in the middle of the road.No,i cant imagine myself doing that,and never will.That's because i respect myself,and life is such a beautiful thing to be wasted on such things.

So after a series of banging to no avail,he left the door alone with a final blow,and disappeared quietly into the night.It's not as bad as a couple of years ago,when he used to come back in the middle of the night and wake everybody up.He did so once,and i punched him in the face for it,literally.I was thinner than a flagpole then,and he being pure fats and muscles,all 1.75m of him,i was crushed under his blows.But afterwards everything toned down,as if my punch actually worked on that numb skull.

In case anybody finds me on the street one day with my pants down and my puke all over,please leave me there and make sure you film it with your camera phone.I wouldnt want to be caught like that,because the least that i have,if not for everything else,is this inch of me called self-respect.I am not going to depreciate me down to that level,where your crawl amongst other fellow drunkards amidst broken glasses and vomit.I,unlike you my dear drunkard,I intend to respect the beauty that is in me.