Being Anti-Social Read online

  Amber likes to go to bars and clubs, where I no longer go, because men clamor for her attention and she is able to choose from a wide range of options. This may have something to do with a reflection she shares with Elle Macpherson, and is often mistaken for her more famous look-a-like.

  Amber is not happy that I refuse to go out these days, which I do not understand—Erin is keen to kick up her married heels so Amber does not need me for a wingman to be discarded the minute a man of interest is in her orbit. Maybe I do understand—I would not want to spend a whole night out with Erin either. She is fine in small doses in a group setting, just as Oscar Wilde once said of George Bernard Shaw, “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” So why is she my friend, you and I might ask? I do not know, except to say, this is how it has always been.

  Erin was standing alone on that first day of high school, which is the worst place to be when you are twelve. Amber and I passed by her and Amber said something not so funny to which Erin laughed hysterically, and that’s how she became one of us—Amber likes people to laugh at her jokes, and most people do whether it is funny or not, but Erin seemed genuinely amused. If it was not for us, I do not know what would have become of Erin since it is impossible to imagine her in any of the other friend combos at our school. I am pretty sure that we did come to like Erin back then—she was amusing in a non-humorous sort of way, always saying something inappropriate or irrelevant, and laughing at everything we said, which made me and Amber appear clever and witty.

  Erin may well have survived high school without us because she was the fastest girl on two legs and being a winner at anything always brings one in out of the cold, although it was not popularity as Amber knows it. Erin spent a lot of time on a podium during athletic season, and on stage at school award nights (for sport), but curiously, she did not use this God-given gift by becoming an Olympian, choosing instead to study public administration for a career in bureaucracy. As it turned out, this was a good path for Erin—stability and predictability being more her scene than ambition and dedication.

  Erin married a fellow bureaucrat, has two children, two cars, a nice house, and the job security she sought. You might be wondering why then she would be keen to go nightclubbing with Amber while on approach to forty—because she can, and because she has only just come to appreciate the concept of fun. When and how this happened, no one knows for sure. Her husband, Bob, The Bobmeister, as we call him, is himself lethargic about life albeit completely content. Clearly, he is also secure, for he has no problem with Erin wanting to dance up a windmill (this best describes her ‘style’) until early morning hours so long as it does not involve him, or affect him.

  Sophie would not dare to propose such an outing to Adam as it would surely result in another of their renowned blow-ups. They have been trying to save their marriage for eight years now after three initial years of relative happiness. The baby was one strategy, but that only delivered more conflict as they could not, cannot, agree on any aspect of the child’s rearing. Sophie is an intelligent woman yet her marriage confounds her. To leave is to fail, she says, and she will not fail, even if it means a life of excruciating misery for all of them, and us. They have a lot of sex though, because they are always making up, and they love each other very much—that is obvious, but they have found no way to live together or apart.

  I knew Adam before Sophie as he was friends with Ben back in their university days. Adam did not speak to me for a long time after the affair with Joshua came to light, but Sophie stayed loyal and supported me through what I thought was the end of my days. I could not desert her now even though she has nothing good to say about the world, ever. At times, a night with Sophie leaves me almost suicidal and at the very least, in a drunken stupor.

  Of all of us, Kimba is the closest to functional. She has only just married for the first time at thirty-eight and only now because she wants a child in wedlock. It was not a whimsical decision, to marry Kenneth—they have lived together for five years and have known each other for a longer time before that.

  Kimba has never had a holiday doing nothing but drinking cocktails and laying in the sun. Last year, she and Kenneth went on an elephant conservation holiday in the south of Thailand. This ‘holiday’ involved going into the forest at 6:30AM to collect the elephants to walk them back to the Wildlife Rescue Centre. Then there was feeding, hosing and cleaning the elephant enclosure, shoveling bowling balls of dung. Twice a week they picked pineapples and bananas for the elephants. Another year, Kimba and Kenneth spent six weeks at the Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu, China helping to rescue bears from bile farms. Kimba asked the rest of us to join them, but Amber and I had already paid for our yachting holiday in the Whitsundays otherwise we might have gone. Kimba and Kenneth have also spent holidays at orphanages in Cambodia, Ghana and Brazil. Amber and I did join them on the Brazil excursion, expecting beaches, buff men in thongs, and sun, but that was a mistake and another story.

  The union of Kimba and Kenneth, if I know anything at all, will succeed for they are of the same ilk; same values, same priorities, and Kenneth is a rare man able to discuss and communicate his feelings. He is also intuitive, which means Kimba has nothing ever to complain about, as if she would anyway, because Kenneth has already spotted an issue and fixed it before Kimba even knows there is a problem.

  My dad loves Kimba. His face lights up whenever he sees her, which is quite often as she has been a part of our family forever. Our fathers worked together at the electricity board before it was privatized, and before her father died of pancreatic cancer. Then dad stepped in to be a father’s shoulder whenever she needed one, mostly to mourn her loss or because of the world’s injustices, and not because her skin broke out before a school dance, which was the type of crisis dad was most used to. They are very close and Kimba could easily be mistaken for his own daughter. This must be comforting to dad since none of his three real daughters are anything like him, which is a shame.

  When Kimba married Kenneth, dad gave her away and he was a proud man. In some ways, his adoration of Kimba feels like a rejection to me even though I know it is not—there is room in a heart for more than one, apparently. I could not say for sure since my perspective on life and love is warped because Ben died.

  When it comes to my mother however, I believe I see quite clearly as nothing has changed with her for decades, only worsened pursuant to my sinful infidelity. She is critical of most everything I do and do not do. I am not a mother so I do not know if this is still love of sorts, but either way, it doesn’t feel good. She has two other daughters and is different with them, but I only have one mother. Not everything in life is fixable.

  Chapter Three

  WE are all educated to at least bachelor level. Even the bad sister, Shannon, the homemaker, has a degree in business, which she used for a decade at a health care facility for the aged while waiting for motherhood. And just as she was about to begin IVF, her ovaries succumbed and she has been a full-time mother ever since.

  Lauren is still living at home waiting for a break in the fashion industry. Her designs are somewhat unusual and not wearable in my view, in public at least. Oscar says, “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” He makes a good point, and you would certainly agree with an eye cast over Lauren’s creations.

  It is likely to be a while before Lauren is able to move out of home, should she want to—she is the baby after all, and used to coddling, so the arrangement suits her just fine. The parents love having her there and do everything in their power to ensure its continuance. Spoiled rotten is a phrase that comes to mind, although Lauren herself is not rotten, like the bad sister.

  David, predictably, continued to prove his genius by becoming a neurologist. Jason is a finance executive and works as a global investment banker, which probably explains the disappearance of his once flamboyant mop of curly brown hair. Investment bankers are the rock stars of the finance industry, an
d on the finance career spectrum, you would find Jason at one end and me at the other. The life of an investment banker is high profile, high pressure with high status (recognizable by expensive suits, silk ties and fancy cufflinks). It is not a career for the faint of heart, and perhaps he might still have some of his hair if he had chosen another finance stream, as I did, or married someone other than Alexis the cow.

  Jason works long, demanding hours, including some weekends, in a stressful, competitive environment while the cow spins around town in her Mercedes on route to salons, lunch, tennis, Pilates and I do not care to know what else. She complains a lot that Jason is never home, but I expect she would complain a lot more if he settled for a lesser-paying job with more free time.

  They have two children, Cristin and Justin, ‘the two tins’ as I call them, who have two disparate parental examples to follow—one of hard work, drive, success and ambition, and one of leeching and self-indulgence. Every week, Alexis has her hair and nails done along with an array of anti-aging facials and other procedures like eyebrow training and tinting. I do not understand why anyone would voluntarily subject themselves to such a regime; I dread my bi-monthly salon visits, required to maintain my mousey brown hair as auburn with highlights. I dread it because it requires three hours of confinement in a fest of noise and conversations I wish I could not hear. It is worse still if the stylist insists on talking to me so I keep my eyes pinned in a trashy magazine, but still they talk. I have changed salons many times to escape talking stylists no matter how talented he or she might be.

  Both Lauren and David are single and appear unlikely to marry for diametrically opposed reasons—handsome, tall, sophisticated, successful David has no time for anyone or anything, but his career and a stream of like-minded women. Lauren has plenty of time, but has no plans to leave home any time this millennium. Likewise though, she flits in and out of relationships with a stream of like-minded men, many of whom also still live at home with parents even though three decades have passed since they were born. To be a parent in these times must surely be a nightmare.

  It is worth noting at this point that mother appears to have no problem with the fact that David and Lauren are unmarried and childless while I on the other hand, have committed a horrendous crime which, for the record, is not the case—I committed a sin, which is not a crime.

  I had no idea what to do with myself after school so I followed Jason’s path because there was no point trying to follow David, and I would never validate Shannon by doing anything remotely similar to her. This in part might explain why I do not have three children and stay at home caring for a family, not to mention that I have no husband or love interest anyway.

  It seemed safest to follow Jason rather than choosing a career for myself, for at every crossroad there would always be someone who had tread the path first who could then guide me. This has worked out rather well—I have risen through the ranks of finance, from associate support analyst to financial analyst to senior financial analyst to my current role as Director of Finance for a well-known corporation that produces superior household appliances (which shall remain nameless to protect colleagues, past and present, who might appear later in these pages). I have been with my current employer for almost six years having left my former company for career advancement reasons, but more honestly, to escape Joshua.

  Joshua was the marketing director and unfortunately, therefore, our paths crossed because finance people must spend an inordinate amount of time with marketing people in a desperate bid to un-sparkle the stars in their eyes. Marketing people struggle to understand that grandiose, creative ideas cost money and require substantiation with evidence of an anticipated benefit to the company, all of which might actually outweigh the cost.

  I despised Joshua at the outset, partly because he spent too much time in fluffy, white clouds where finance people do not venture, but also because he was annoying and up himself. He once submitted a proposal to me in person, and I’m still aghast to say, he fluttered his eyelashes while sitting on the corner of my desk seductively. This ploy does not usually work for either of the sexes, and it certainly was never going to work on me. I threw his proposal on a pile of papers never to be seen again, and returned to what I was doing.

  It is therefore curious that our nauseating business connection led to an affair that lasted six months, especially since I was happily married to a perfect man. I treated Joshua with complete disdain—a genuine and honest portrayal of my truest sentiments. The more I did so though, the more he seemed to worship me. I worked harder at offending him, but he did not see this for what it was, and I heard it repeated throughout the office that he valued my quick, derisive wit even though it was aimed at him. Eventually I tired—it was relentless work with no reward. I thawed and started to see him then as others did—as a rather exuberant individual who was seemingly incapable of malice (not so, I learned too late).

  Oscar Wilde says, “There is no sin except stupidity.” Stupidity is what reins when stressed co-workers gather on a Friday night at the close of the working day. I used to enjoy Monday mornings, watching the regretful meek slink into their offices to avoid the café bar expose of their most recent exploits. Most of my co-workers had spent time on both sides of the bar, except for me, until Joshua and the firm’s annual retreat.

  It was like any other retreat day—an early morning start and a long day filled with disputes and compromise, ending late, usually the next morning, after an earned reward of fine food and wine, and too much of both. Someone ended up in the pool that morning and the rest of us followed, voluntarily or otherwise, clothes, shoes, watches and all. As our co-workers dispersed, Joshua cornered me at the deep end and planted his wet lips all over my face and neck then other things started to happen in a tidal wave kind of way. At this point, I should have scorned my mentor, Oscar, who says, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”

  When I woke in my bed a few hours later realizing it was no dream, I was completely and utterly aghast.

  The day ahead was as horrendous as one in my shoes might expect. The guilt was debilitating. I could not concentrate. I could not think about anything, but the night before. I avoided Joshua as best I could, but he was like the Cheshire cat, appearing and disappearing at will, attempting to engage me with amusing and sometimes vexing conversation. In spite of myself, I found myself anticipating the night ahead for the man did possess a certain talent.

  One might think the guilt and shame might escalate after each occurrence, but the reverse was true—it tapered away, but never died.

  I genuinely believed the liaison would end with the retreat, to be classified as a mere weekend fling. Trying to manage such a deception at home with Ben would have been beyond me—lying to Ben, to his face, would have been impossible, or so I thought. But then there was a late night at the office and nobody around except Joshua, and my office desk was christened. We had sex on his desk also, and in the men’s room, ladies room, and occasionally in the lunch room when caution started flying out the window, which is where we were caught late one night by a junior analyst trying to make an impression. He did, and so did we. I slinked into my office the next morning anxious to avoid the café bar expose of my evening exploit, news of which had spread faster than lice at a kindergarten. Joshua strutted in unperturbed.

  The end was inevitable then, humiliation bringing with it a brutal dose of realism. Joshua did not handle the break-up well, and not just because I did it via email. It seems he actually labored under the misapprehension that our relationship was more than an extended period of uncontrolled self-indulgence. It was not, and sooner or later, every fool comes to rediscover good sense, as did I.

  And the rest is my history as you know it—revelation, separation, divorce, death, and a living death for me.

  After Ben left, there were debts and bills to pay designed for a double income professional couple, so as much as I craved an end to my morning slinks into the office, I had no choice, bu
t to endure until a new job came along. I wanted to quit because Ben had left me, and because Joshua was spreading his vile to anyone who would listen, which was most everyone for who can resist an un-censored, R-rated, inter-peer affair gone awry.

  After six months of appreciating life as it will be in hell, I left the company for a new position with a new employer, resolving never to repeat the Joshua lesson. I remain aloof at work for this very reason, although I do participate in the occasional social club gathering. I still drink as if I have spent each day in the desert, but my drunken self-pity is its own barrier.

  However, I have not been alone all of these six years post-Ben. Not so long ago, there was Rudy.

  Amber had pressured me into trying yoga, her newest obsession, which followed the Tae Bo phase, but preceded the rock climbing phase. I did not want to go to yoga, but I was stressed and morbid and Amber assured me that the answer was yoga, not merlot, which was extremely odd coming from her.

  We rolled out our mats in the dimly-lit room and waited for the instructor, who I assumed would be an Indian guru-type with a turban, and white flowing cheesecloth pants and dress. I was not expecting Antony, a gay Chinese boy who whispered, for the uninitiated, that yoga was about liberation from the material world and union of the self with some supreme being. He lost me at the outset for I did not understand the purpose, and matters worsened as the session began.

  Yoga is slow and controlled and consequently stressful. As I laid there on the floor, I was overcome by an irrepressible urge to move my legs rapidly, and while I focused attention on stilling my legs, my feet ticked back and forth like a fast-paced metronome. I tried not to breathe in the halitosis-filled oxygen as devotees, and Amber, exhaled from deep within their lungs. I held my breath, wondering what lurked in the molecules that taunted my nostrils and where, who had they come from. I raced from the room leaving the mat behind, and took the gym stairs two at a time. A treadmill was free. I cranked up the speed to settle in for a heart racing, sweat pooling, world-record breaking sprint to nowhere.