Like People Like Me. By Unknown He looked at the words — clean like a buzz-cut, clean like an
spurring on yet another sanctimonious contemplation — this
electric shock, tremor shooting ever so slightly through the
time on the chopping board in his judgmental mind, was peo-
phone nestled in his palm — until they were scorched behind
ple’s great disguise at being affable, pleasant and agreeable
his strained eyelids.
social animals.
Praises packaged as appreciation for the poetic expression,
Why isn’t there a sliver of decency in each of us to be whoever
deep, earth-shattering, soulful, even, churned out from peo-
we want to be, hugging shame closed to our chest, cherishing
ple’s factory of phoniness, made his stomach somersault,
the heart-thrumming before we speak, like we’re in treading
his heart aflame. Genuinity was dead, he thought to him-
rapidly deepening waters? Presently these thoughts plunged
self, chuckled as he realized how the word itself was never
him into a bottomless hole; There might just be great food
a dictionary entry, soon, his thoughts leaked as muttering;
to be enjoyed and better company once we clamber onto the
a heavy-set man, feeling his personal space was intruded by
bank, if only each of us had been genuine; they had him in a
this loony-like murmuring, scurried away.
tight clutch now. Why can’t we say things we wish to say, in ways we wish to say them? His head was at the moment per-
Genuinity was slowly but surely replaced by generosity — he
vaded by snapshots from last family dinner.
arrived at this conclusion as the train approached Fo Tan; the former is inward-looking, a gouging of one’s flaws and faults
“…My youngest son,” ripples foreign to his sun-spotted face,
and the ensuing tidal emotions of deflation, imperfection
were grooves of age and pretenses stored up over the years,
and humanness, it’s the embracing of all that unworthiness
and as had been watching this smile blossom on his father’s
about yourself then deciding against every fiber in your body,
face, he knew deep down, it was one of relief rather than hap-
to present those things, anyway, to the gaze of strangers and
piness, unleashed like pent-up emotions, or, caged circus li-
friends alike; the latter, he decided, in this day and age where
ons, on this family-name-earning, face-retrieving night, “got
people liked people to be liked, was nothing but a veneer for
into University. The Chinese University.”
the entrenched feelings of self-importance, of decided belittling of others’ existence spurred on by one’s sense of entitled
His father had been a few seats away but his shoulder tensed,
specialness. Praises were engendered by generosity — also
as if charged with electric current, as if they had prematurely
known as, phoniness — and he, body swaying in rhythmic
felt the pats that were sure to come.
unison to that of the train carrying him to a temporary homeliness, would never again yearn for people’s praises.
He’d felt something move inside his body as the crowd around him — his brother, whose own strained grin marred his dark
Fed up with humanity’s vacuousness and above all angry at
face; uncles, aunts, whose children’s eyes averted, lips twisted
its invasion in his online life, he stopped following the poetry
to withhold gossips which would spring out in a minute in
accounts and with that, #instapoetry. He thrusted his phone
the security of deafening chatter; all these people, arranged
into the pocket of his jeans, with more than slight aggression
neatly at a round table, had reached for their glasses, the con-
that the fabric seemed to protest, making it hard for a smooth
tents of which were red-rimmed dark wine, some with bub-
deposition. He fumed, swung his backpack in front and threw
bles, gurgling.
in the phone. They had toasted to him. Jolt out of his absorbed observaThe announcer chimed in its singsong voice familiar in pleas-
tion by his mother’s elbow nudge, a smile had broken onto
antries, mechanical and sonorous, “Next stop, University,”
the barren terrain of his face. When things were loud inside
Student Contribution
27
