In Continuum.

Melted Candy Bars

Her face is a map of the world, is a map of the world
You can see she's a beautiful girl, she's a beautiful girl
And everything around her is a silver pool of light
The people who surround her feel the benefit of it
It makes you calm
She holds you captivated in her palm

Almost two years ago, it was a blazing hot weekday afternoon when thousands of students and army boys, combined with a bunch of people from different social groups and organizations, were joined together for a rehearsal for the National Day Parade in the Heartlands. The army boys - including myself - all had a tan line on our foreheads because of the cap we were wearing, and it wasn't helped that the tarpaulin beneath our feet felt like the surface of a frying pan. The heat came upwards from the dirty white plastic that smelled like rotten eggs, and the scorching heat from the sun sandwiched us in the middle. It wasn't the most lovable day to be caught in the middle of. And as if it wasn't bad enough, it started to rain halfway through the rehearsal and everybody had to be evacuated into tents only enough to fill a quarter of the total population on the fields. So it felt like an re-enactment of a scene from Titanic, with three quarter of the 'passengers' drowning in the raining, freezing their asses off.

It wasn't the greatest day of our army lives, and the boys knew it. Hiding under the tent with our wet uniforms hung over our shivering bodies and our boots soaked knee deep in mud, we started talking about anything but the horrible day so far. We left the topic of bad tasting chicken wings aside, the coated mud upon our boots was left out as well. Not to mention everything the tan lines on our forehead as well as the wet uniforms. All of those were left out, and our conversation was inevitably reduced to the only topic that interested all red blooded male: Female.

Suddenly I see
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me

We were there sitting on the chairs with the four legs sinking deep into the mud. We talked about the young girls that were present at the venue that day. They were of all ages then, from Primary School all the way up to the University level. So everybody - no matter what your taste or preference might be - had something to talk about. I remember there was this particular girl that everybody went crazy about. Though the superiors did warn us about not trying to get phone numbers from those school girls, the words went into one ear and came out the other like the passing wind. I remember the way she looked, dressed in that blue and yellow outfit - standard for the motivators - and stood at the bottom of the stage towards the right hand side. She wore dangling earrings throughout the time we saw her, and the boys went hysterical.

I for one was rather controlled. Sure she was cute, and she was - in her innocent ways - attractive. But at least I wasn't foolish enough to ask for her phone number in front of everybody. After all, she was just an eye-candy and nothing more than that. Besides, with the sun blazing hot above our heads and our brains being incubated within the cap, it was no wonder why the boys weren't thinking straight at all. I heard rumors about boys treating her more than just an eye-candy. Some attempted to ask for her number, while others offered her bottled drinks and stuff like that to impress her. One of my friends wrote his phone number on the wrapper around the bottle, while another took off his glasses and wore contacts for the actual day. Not to mention the can of deodorant he bought to make himself smell better - which sort of made things worse. Even Martin broke out of his reserved shell and asked for her number in the middle of a song, and the lot of us stared on in embarrassment as he was rejected - point blank - in the face.

I feel like walking the world, like walking the world
You can hear she's a beautiful girl, she's a beautiful girl
She fills up every corner like she's born in black and white
Makes you feel warmer when you're trying to remember
What you heard
She likes to leave you hanging on her word

We've all had our fair share of eye-candies around, and usually in school since I am still very much a student. But like the boys on that particular afternoon, things may sometimes get out of hand and you do certain things out of your own accord. And these acts of stupidity usually stays with you until...well, there isn't a word after 'until'. It basically stays with you for ever. Ten, twenty years down the road, and we are still going to make fun of Martin and how he made his move on the girl and failed miserably. It's mean and evil, but I guess it is all about choices and consequences. When you do reckless things like that, this is what you get in the aftermath.

Eye-candies are eye-candies, and no more than that. They look sweet, but they might not necessarily taste the same. I am sure Martin can justify to that by telling you just how much that rejection stung his heart. For sure, bitterness plague most eye-candies anyway, and one should be wary of making a move, or taking the next step when it comes to these people. They are like the framed up dress at an exhibition, or hookers in a strip club where you can only look and not touch. That is the rule for eye-candies too, and you can only own them in the space of your imagination. That sounded wrong, but what the hell. It is 2.19am, I have the right to sound suggestive.

Suddenly I see
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me

Personally, there was a girl I remember in JC whom I treated as exactly that. V was a girl from school one year my junior, and she joined the guitar club in the early months of 2004. The moment she stepped into her room, he petite figure somehow filled the rest of the empty spaces around her. I remember Ahmad being fixated on this other girl while I was gravitated towards her. She wore a white hair band that morning, with a pink-colored Roxy bag that looked more like a lunch box with straps. Anyway, she had short hair back then, neatly combed to the side and fastened by black clips. She always hung out with the same group of girls around school, and almost always took the same route home from school. I noticed these because I knew where to draw the line between a potential target and an eye-candy. V - for sure - was somebody like that in my JC life, and I never intended on anything more than that.

In the days that followed, I found out and realized a thing or two about her which turned me off a little. Because the readers on this blog can be so inquisitive, and their imaginations run wild in their minds, there are people out there who might have already guessed who V really is. But of course, they are not sure about their own conclusions and I am certainly not going to reveal it any time soon. But one thing is for sure, and that is the fact that she was known in school to be a flirtatious person. I've seen her in town a couple of times, and it was already with a different boyfriend for some reason. I didn't know if they were together or were they just friends, but that little thing I heard from friends turned me off tremendously.

And she's taller than most
And she's looking at me
I can see her eyes looking from a page in a magazine
Oh she makes me feel like I could be a tower
A big strong tower
She got the power to be
The power to give
The power to see

So the candy melted in the sun, like a stick of cotton candy would on a big grassy field at noon. You don't walk to the middle of that field and pick up the melting candy even if you are really desperate to taste the sweets. Because truth to be told, after being left in the exposure of the sun, everything becomes clear and nothing is beautiful anymore. Whatever that is under the merciless rays of the sun becomes exposed, and it deteriorates at blinding speeds. That is how my eye-candy disintegrated from that status to a mere existence in my life. It was drastic, but that is how eye-candies are anyway. Leave them on the shelf for too long, and they decomposes and rot sooner or later.

Which brings me to my point of this entry really. I understand in the post regarding The Blower's Daughter, I went in-depth when it came to describing this girl that I saw in school, and perhaps went a little overboard too. I am sure - if revealed to the readers - they are going to be utterly disappointed that she isn't as beautiful, as pretty, or as anything that I claimed her to be. In fact, that is probably going to be the case for everybody out there. So to protect her beauty in my head, she is going to remain simply as 'The Blower's Daughter' on my blog, and nothing more. I am sure that the Blower's Daughter, like all the other candies, are going to melt and rot in the sun sooner or later anyway. This is merely a temporary thing, and sweets to the teeth - as long as you have a good habit of brushing - is not going to hurt at all.

So stop asking me about her identity people, because it is not going to work. Perhaps you guys should smuggle a handgun of sorts into the campus and threaten me at gun point. Even then, I might just try to be the hero of it all and not reveal her name. Because in truth, I've been the victim of much rumors and jokes in the past that I'd rather keep such things to myself. Like I told my friends - the curious ones - attached girls are not attractive to me anyway. At least not in the conventional way, and she sure as hell is happily attached. In fact, her boyfriend actually crashed the lecture today during Economics, something my friends were surprised to hear because I knew so much about her despite the fact that we have never conversed.

I know, I know. I am - in fact - considering the job of being a private investigator. There is a website online to hire these people to stalk on cheating husbands or wives in Singapore actually, and I intend to sign up on it when my school ends finally. I have this sixth sense when it comes to stalking people - just look at the amount of information I have on this person whom I have never talked to. It's almost disgusting and obsessive to an extent.

Sooner or later, all candies will melt in the sun. Sooner or later, this particular person is going to mean no more than a person I noticed in the past, and is now a course mate in the same school. So give it a few weeks or months to boil over, because when the time comes I am going to walk away from the middle of the field, away from the pool of melting sugar and say that life goes on to bigger, better things. Because it always does, and you can never penetrate the rock bottom. After all, when it comes to melted candy bars, who is crazy enough to swallow them anyway?

Suddenly I see
This is what I wanna be
Suddenly I see
Why the hell it means so much to me