In Continuum.

Decadence

Heaven bend to take my hand
And lead me through the fire
Be the long awaited answer
To a long and painful fight

It was midnight by the time it was over, the lavishly dressed crowd flowed down the curved staircases and the doorways below, in their eyes a glimmer and hint of the play that they just witnessed before, as I have only moments ago before the stage. As the cast bowed and left the stage, the applauses died down into quiet murmurs of shoes rubbing against the carpeted floor, as well as the soft exclamation of amazement all around. The air of excitement lingered in the air still, the kind of air you smell after a life-changing experience of sorts. At least for me, the play last night had that kind of quality inside of me, and the air I breathed was different from the moment it ended and I exited the building itself.

Memories attacked my head once again, as I made my way through the crowd and out into the midnight air. The rain in the afternoon made everything seem a tad bit different, with the puddles of water dotting the gray-tiled atrium, the night sky was cloudless and almost infinite. Making my way along the side street, an Indian woman embraced her husband who complained about her delay, and the cold of the city air was terminated as they warmed each other up in each others' arms. But there I was, staring at the couple like a stalker of sorts, with my hands shoved deep into my pockets and dreamed about the warmth that came and went at the very same place only months ago. It was the last night of everything, the first night of a new beginning. The thought plagued my head once more as I made my way down the sidewalk, with other couples closely cuddled with one another, as if to mock at my lack of warmth and the thoroughness of loneliness.

Truth be told I've tried my best
But somewhere along the way
I got caught up in all there was to offer
And the cost was so much more than I could bear

We crossed the road with the traffic police just on the other side of the lights. Their red and blue lights flickered quietly in the night, as they watched these lavishly dressed people crossing the road before their eyes. The Caucasian man pulled her oriental wife along, while the other couple way in front braved the oncoming traffic, with the wife screaming her head off in excitement. I was there alone, my hands still in my pocket, with my shoulder leaning against the lamp post. I didn't see the need to rush home for anything, or the need to get out of town at all. The sights and sounds at that time, the way the street lights turned red and green again for invisible cars was quite a sight indeed, and I stood on the curb - just breathing in everything there is to breathe in.

I wondered about the situation then, how it'd be like to have somebody to tell my excitement to. It'd be nice to have somebody on the other side of the line then to listen to my excitement, to know how I felt like at that very moment. Like the time after my camp's farewell function, the lonely walk to the train station was made less so because I had a person on the other line to spend my time, to accompany, to love. Those were the days, as I recalled, when I was happy for no apparent reasons, when my mother would smile at me and tell me that I looked contented, that I looked genuinely happy. Those smiles are gone these days, the kind she'd curve her mouth for me for no apparent reasons either. It is perhaps the state that I am in now, the state I am in right now without a partner. To tell you the truth, walking down the sidewalk and sandwiched between couples who were chattering nonstop about how good the play was just minutes ago, made me think about the past when I had somebody to spill my heart out to as well - for a play or for a woe.

Though I've tried, I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here
And tell me I told you so...

The midnight crowd in town has scattered, and understandably so as it was a weekday night. It'd be quite different on a weekend, with the striking of the number 12 on the clock to be the start of everybody's night out. The streets of town on a Thursday night however, was a quiet and lonely. Despite being outdoors, my footsteps could almost be heard echoing off the walls of the Recreation Club. Finding my way to the nearest taxi stand where a queue was already building up, I tried to focus only on the music that was running through my head and not the thoughts I conjured while being sandwiched by two walking pieces of Post-its, trying to remind me of unnecessary memories of the distant past. Running across the street despite the light, I came to the end of the queue and waited for the cab to arrive. I was eager to stay, but more eager to leave at the same time. It was a mental contradiction I wasn't too sure about, and allowed my legs to take me home instead of my logic and emotions. I had a wild thought of staying in town till the morning breaks, to watch as the roads get filled with cars once more. However, that thought was rudely interrupted as the sound of metal tapping against glass invaded my mind.

Next to me, a middle-age man in a light blue button-down shirt was tapping his lighter against the glass wall of Prestat Bar over at Raffles' City. He was kneeling on the sofa then, in between two of his friends and gazing in my direction. Initially, I thought he was calling out to me as I made my way to the end of the line. However, as I looked at his blood shot face and studied the look of his friends, they were all clearly drunk and was probably halfway to the moon by then. He wasn't calling out to me at all, but a lady who was in line with me at that time. The lady however, paid little attention to the drunken men in the bar at that time, though the man who was tapping the glass clearly attracted the attention of everybody else at the scene.

We all begin with good intent
Love was raw and young
We believed that we could change ourselves
The past could be undone

The lady, she was beautiful. Her golden brown hair rested upon her shoulders, those smooth curves like a waterfall was broken only by the contours of her shoulder bones, as they continued their flow down to the fabric across her chest. She was well-prepared for the night, her eyebrows carefully tended to and a subtle layer of makeup enhanced the beauty that was standing before my eyes. She was in a small yellow dress, a dress that reached just below her waist and barely covering her thighs at all, and the cut at the front reached almost to her belly button. Her full breasts revealed themselves under the yellow dress, as they winded around the back of her neck and made a beige-colored oval in between. She was well-endowed, and was clearly somebody of some social class, for her purse and shoes were expensive and branded goods not everybody can afford. The man in the background continued to tap his lighter on the glass, trying to catch her attention. All the time, he muttered something through the class, some drunkard language perhaps, only to be bounced back into his face by the impenetrable glass. But it's not like it would have made a difference if he was standing in front of the lady in yellow as well, for she clearly was in ignorance of his public idiocy.

Her arms were folded across her chest when the cab came, and she bent ever so slightly as she opened the door at the back. Her hair fell to either side of her head, framing it up like a priceless picture in an art gallery. The men in the bar moaned and yelled, and through the glass of the bar I could hear them still trying desperately to catch her attention. However, as the tail lights of the cab disappeared around the corner, so did the hopes of the drunkards fade into the night. The man in the blue shirt sank back into the red sofa, while others took their sips of the spirits that lined the table in a circle. They were dismayed and perhaps disappointed as well, but I wondered to myself just how long those emotions were going to last under the influence of those alcohol. It'd be temporary, it'd be ephemeral. With their sorrows drowned in the drinks, nothing was big enough to trouble their little minds no more.

But we carry on our backs the burden
Time always reveals
In the lonely light of morning
In the wound that would not heal
It's the bitter taste of losing everything
That I've held so dear.

The lights were dim and the bartenders behind the counter were chatting away into the night. The music played softly through the glass, late night customers hung out and were unwilling to leave. Who were to ask them to anyway? They were there not to show off their fancy cellphones or watches, nor were they there to talk politics over a couple of drinks. They were there for company, and they were there for the atmosphere. To be away from their parents, their wives, their children, or their homes, whatever. They were all there to allow themselves to be detached, to forget, to be ignorant for those few brief hours hidden amidst the dim lights from the rest of the world, the same world that reminds them of their own failure, or their own shame. Those men at the table, they talked under their breaths and sulked about the lady in yellow that went away in the cab. A few more bottles of drinks were ordered, and it was clear that they were in for a wild night ahead.

I wondered then, if they thought about the people waiting at home for them, if there were people waiting for them at all. Perhaps those same people gave up waiting a long time ago, because these men never came home as promised. Drinking their souls and conscience away, cup after cup and bottle after bottle. Stumbling out of the exits like half-dead soldiers in a war, only less than a tenth of their bravery and valiance. Those nice suits and their nice ties would smell of alcohol by the end of the night, as they stumble back home through the front doors, wasted and drunk. Someone would welcome them at the doorstep, someone would take them into their arms and hope that the same thing would not happen again. The same kind of love for the man that stumbles through the door as before, though not knowing the kind of thing he does outside while he is away. The same men that the receivers take into their arms, were the same men that tried to grab the attention of an attractive lady on the street with a lighter tapped at the glass window. The same men, who out of desperation, wanted more than what they already have, but the kind of affection associated with disloyalty. They could argue that they were under the influence of alcohol, but no reason could justify the sort of decadence that I witnessed that night.

I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here
And tell me I told you so...

The cab sped down the midnight streets like a straight arrow. Taking the easy way down, the stores were all closed on both sides, and the radio was blaring a familiar Chinese classic played on a saxophone. Thinking back on the scene I just witnessed, I thought about how low men would go in the case of desperation, or the lack of affection. When driven to that kind of mental state, how low would one go to satisfy their own beastly needs? People go out and get drunk, people try to buy their way into the pants of strange women on the streets, hoping to get a one night stand and be done with it by morning. I saw it in the eyes of those men, huddling around one another and were lonely at the same time despite all the company. It was a pathetic sight, but a sight that deserved little pity. I feared, for them and especially for myself. This is the first steps to the last step, this is how the end begins for anybody like myself right now.

To have our hearts hardened to the world, to have no room left to be broken, isn't that a sad thing? I've been thinking about that for the past few days, and placed a measuring tape around the remainder of my heart. To measure what is left to be broken, to see how much hope I still bear within my chest. There is a handful left, still beating to every second of my life, and still moving on until the next great love. However, this issue of being alone has been bugging me for a while now, despite being trivial just next to Samantha's own relationship dry-spell. It is the thing that troubles me the most these days, but the thing that matters to me the least. I am a man of much contradictory, don't mind me.

Heaven bend to take my hand
Nowhere left to turn
I'm lost to those I thought were friends
To everyone I know

What would I become, if I were to take the same route as those men? I fear for myself, to see myself in the future in one of those shady bars in my working clothes that smell of cigarette and alcohol. The passing of a lady would be a small excitement for me, but an excitement nonetheless. To prey upon strange women, hoping that one would provide enough warmth for me to go through the night until the next night of heavy drinking. I feared for my fate to turn out so, though deep inside this conscience remain clear and true. This is how men can sink into their own decadence, the kind that comes along with prolonged period of loneliness. It has only been a little more than four months, and to compare myself with others would be preposterous. However, like I said, I fear for myself ten years down the road. If my heart is going to be worn out and toughened to the elements or reality.

Truth to be told, though it hurts so much, I still want room left to be broken. I still want things to be able to shatter in my chest when the time comes, instead of filling the empty spaces with alcohol. I shan't be the kind of man who pries on lady in yellow at a taxi stand. Deprived and desperate, angry and frustrated. It is a human right to be able to love, and be loved. But do we still retain the right once we sink into the human decadence? What comes of us when we degrade ourselves to such low creatures, like dogs or rats? Do we still deserve, to be loved? Is there hope yet, if I end up like those men one day, preying on random strangers from this side of the glass window?

This is taking too long to heal, far too long for comfort with everything fallen. It isn't hard to pick myself up from the ashes, for I have already done so with my chin held up high. But how long is this going to last, is the question that bugs my mind. The most troubling of thoughts, the least important of thoughts. Together they work against my sanity, eating away until there is nothing left for me to salvage. There is an urge within that wants to be rescued, to be saved from myself. But this road is so long and so limitless. Whence is the end of it all? The warmth that we seek, the one that came and went?

Oh they turn their heads embarrassed
Pretend that they don't see
But it's one missed step
One slip before you know it
And there doesn't seem a way to be redeemed

Though I've tried, I've fallen...
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here
And tell me I told you so...