(A true trivial episode from the ordinary) Just writing this first as i don't want to lose my thoughts.

My wireless broadband is up and running again. Yeh!!

Yesterday's Lipstick
by Susan Abraham


I am at the bus-stop. A Chinese lady approaches me. She is curved like a C. Once willowy, she now looks a dying tree.
"You going to KL ah.." she asks. She smiles. Her dracula teeth are scary.
I say yes. Her beady eyes stare very hard at me.
The skinny lady says again, "if you don't mind ah...please, I sit with you. No place lah...very hot."
I move a little and stare straight ahead.

She passes me a Christian tract. "Would you like this. Take please."
It says, "Do you want to be a survivor or a loser? Jesus Christ can get your act together."
Now wary, I say no, thanks. She keeps smiling. She wears the same shade of max factor lipstick, my mother wore when i was a baby.

I edge away. She starts conversing and mumbling even breaking into a laugh. Spittle slips and drips. Bubble froth like old black moths. Watching her false teeth quiver, I shiver. "Where is this bus. You know, I was taking the number 69 to petaling jaya and the conductor forgot to give me my ticket...and I told him that i will complain to the authorities that...no such behaviour is tolerated...

The dying tree is talking to herself. I stare fascinated.

A bus appears. The skinny talky woman makes a run for it. It is very hard to run when you are shaped like a C and as flat as a desert. If you fall, you crack for good like a creaky plank of wood. Then your dreams are dashed. Instead of having a spouse lie lovingly on you, you may find a New York crowd walking all over you. They may even think you a rotten bridge and then you'll end up in a morgue as cold as a fridge.

I watch her run. When you are shaped like a c, your backbone is forever overtaking your chest. You look like you are running very far but you stay rooted. Your neck sticks out. Your tongue sticks out. Your 100-year old lipstick sticks out. Your chest shaped like a C is bent so far inside, it looks like it has been buried in a wardrobe of bones. Your backbone battles alone.

In revenge, it kidnaps your little button nipples, your belly. There were never any breasts to speak off. God had forgotten. Only a slight Adam's apple is left as a sex object.

I think that for a man to make love to C would be like making love to a bicycle. Only spokes and one half of a round skinny tyre. In other words, no hope. I pity her.

It is the wrong bus. Miss Curly Wood Plank returns. Her backbone reaches her bus-stop before the rest of her.

A fat Indian woman comes to the bus-stop. She looks like a hated Math teacher. So tight-lipped, she is the kind who would have been labelled by schoolgirls, 'Frus." Meaning short for frustrated. The kind if she hated your Snow-White puberty would throw your books out of the class and you with it before screeching, "I WANT TO SEE YOUR PARENTS... "Either she missed a dowry or suffered for a few decades from a broken engagement. You can always tell the type. Blooming virgins suffered the most at their hands.

I wonder what Christ does when all these rusty dusty spinsters get to heaven; each demanding to be his bride. He had better haul up a planet of wedding dresses ready. And then make a quick resurrection for it.

I realise that I am sandwiched by two valuable ancient spinsters and should be making important writer's jottings.

But my photographic mind will remember every sad and lurid detail.

Earlier, I had seen Miss Roly Poly reading intently, in a bookshop. The page said. "How To Show Your secret Love You Care." She looks about 60. A bit late in the day for that, I had thought. She should be reading books on wills or retirement pensions. She is the wait-for-mr-right type.

Miss Curly-Wood-Plank knows Miss Roly-Poly. Miss Roly Poly looks afraid. Miss Curly Wood Plank starts taking out tracts and chatting. There is a chance her false teeth may pop out with too much excitement. Miss Roly Poly refuses all eye contact and with her skinny lips keeps smiling and nodding as if she had been wound up automatically.

Smiile, smile, nod, nod, smile, smile, nod, nod. Her eyes say to Miss Curly Wood-Plank, "Get away from me, you skinny dope of a sod." I stare and stare.

Suddenly, Miss. Roly Poly glares at me. She frowns, annoyed. Apparently, i did not realise i had been staring too hard.

She gives me that,

"Your mother didn't teach you any matters...." look.

Miss. Curly Wood-Plank chats to Miss Roly Poly. Miss Roly-Poly's cellulite stand to attention like a guard, smiling nodding and ocassionally glaring at me.

I want to tell Miss Curly Wood Plank to go to a salon and get herself straightened.

I want to tell Miss Roly-Poly what a waste of curves, flesh and cellulite and to ask her if I could forward secret love letters on her behalf.

Instead, I come to this infinite wisdom.

If you have not been had by the time you reach forty-eight.

And if wanting to be laid becomes an eternal hellish wait.

If you wake up from bed without a mate, with a dim head and always late.

Then you have been transferred by the blight of the night into the land of the living dead!