Profanity and Up skirts

Profanity and Up skirts


“Ya got a light, dude?” she looked up surprisingly into a dark blank expression of a concrete wall dimly lit only by an orange flicker of joyful dancing flame. Amazingly, her call was politely comprehended by strangers benignly close. Perhaps sometimes in life, we gain dependence from beings we least expect. In certain time, from things we least expect. A machine, maybe. A profane machine.

Growing up for her was not easy, easy was never the word to grasp, not in her life, at least. Her father, a down trodden political figure who was always more interested in protecting his own standing arse and her mother, who was so absorbed in her meditation classes that one day she ran away with the class facilitator. The news didn’t made headlines though, considering how unpopular a political activist her father was.

Her teenage years were plagued with constant absenteeism from class and rowdy intrusions at home. She had always wanted to attend classes but somehow or rather she would never make it. Most of the time, it was just her father trying to revive his almost non-existent right wing career by keeping his daughter at home to show his visitors the happy family he owns. It was a big upset to consistently have distasteful pretentious people walking in and out of the house; much less preventing her from a proper school life.

After her mother took flight, her dad became extremely reclusive. He would stay in his room all day long listening to those awful meditation guide tapes over and over again as if to gain whatever mere existence left of his wife. The phone stopped ringing and all those obnoxious people disappeared from their garden. Just like how the happy family has torn apart.

Expectedly, she soon disappeared from school too, much to the relief of the management. It was a bit hard to clear the air especially to the education department that a political figure’s daughter had been skipping school often with no real digestible reason.

Her father didn’t even lift an eye when she left home with a man who claimed to have loved her to pieces. He just didn’t care nor acknowledge her presence after his career plopped down the wrong lane. In his eyes, she was only a mistake because he never did plan to have kids; it’s just too distracting from all the political issues he had to handle. She was an extra mouth to feed, what more with the leaving of her mother, she became a painful reminder of her mother’s infidelity. It didn’t matter that she left with the man, he just couldn’t care less.

She straightened up a little and adjusted the gaudy pale pink flair skirt that she had seductively taken right under the nose of the boutique’s wary owner without paying. None to naïve to realize her exceptionally hormone-inducing attractive figure is a prowess tool that could be manipulated for her own benefit, she occasionally fishes favors from the all too willing men who hastily laps up to her desires. Middle-aged men, who have lost the panting for their wives, happily turn at the sight of a meek willing young sexy thing that seems like a glimpse of hope fore them to revive their diminishing appetite. In the case of the boutique owner, it was the often accentuated “ooh-ahhs” over his dressing sense, the cheeky winks, the stolen glances on his arse, and the ultimatum, the occasional supposedly accidental up skirts. The skirt, was in fact, not the only thing she took away for free.

The cigarette ate itself away and vapor into mists of smoke and fine dusting ashes. The low-lit almost empty room held a machine which promised to tell the world of you. And everything else that betake your fortune.

Ignoring the only other two strangers in the room, she took four slow big steps towards the machine. Huge and intimidating, it was decorated according to an Oriental-themed, although anyone could easily have dismissed it as a cheapo gimmick to cheat passer-bys of their dispensable one dollar. The marketing department was pretty efficient though, a dollar of an average of 78 hits a day would make the company about seven hundred eighty bucks every ten days. The tagline was easy; slot in a dollar and let us tell your fortune for you.

She stared mindlessly at the machine for a while thinking about the countless times she had passed it witnessing some superstitious individuals obligingly scrutinizing every word printed on the fortune sheet to some young schoolboys chuckling away at sheets that say, ‘you will find true love today’.

The machine itself had withheld a timeframe longer than she had worked in the room, or was it a hall, she wondered. Perhaps a shop, she silently debated, but the brutal truth always came splashing her in the face like cold water on a winter night, it was a brothel.

The awfully garish bright neon signboard, the red dim Phillip bulbs which boasts a lifespan of 10000 hours, the pleasant geisha looking door girl sitting at the makeshift reception of a plastic chair and table, the dodgy looking couch for customers to await impatiently their turn alongside the fortune machine makes the world that she had unwillingly succumbed into after being revealed the appalling truth of the man who claimed to have loved her.

He was just a struggling idealist who thought he could bank on some money from marrying a political figure’s daughter. He thought so wrong.

She touched the machine and traced some ink scribbled sketchily on it. Frankly, it was just human nature to reach out and leave and imprint on objects that they closely encounter; like how some idiots scribble on bathroom walls while taking a dump. Most customers resolved to vandalize the big fortune machine while waiting for their girls. As expected it is at a brothel, scribbles of such, laden with profane sense can only be duly understood and comprehended.

Over time, the machine has seen perhaps a one too many four letter words and a tad too much of female anatomy descriptions. But still, it persisted and continued churning out fortune sheets for every dollar fed by curious by-passers.

She took a deep breath and dug into her bosom where she kept most of her cash, a solution of convenience as handbags could sometimes prove a hassle when all a customer demands is a quickie in the toilet cubicle. She took out a dollar coin that felt comfortingly warm from its snug nesting and pushed it down the coin slot.

The machine lit up and produced some jarringly upbeat jingles while the screen blinked furiously of the words, ‘In process’. Several seconds later, a fortune sheet dropped into the outer panel and the machined shuts off abruptly as if the one dollar worth of entertainment had just reached its time limit.

She shoved her two fingers into the panel and dug up the sheet. Unsuspectingly, she unrolled the paper to reveal,

“Happiness is not something that you need to seek for, it is something within you that is waiting to be realized.”

Her eyes remained transfixed at the sheet for a considerably long period before she heard her name being called out rudely; awakening her fascination of the phrase. She cringed and paused for a moment ignoring the door girl whose wailing seemed more and more impatiently punctuated. Happiness, she thought, have I ever feel that way before? Unwillingly, she did a memory jog to her years at home, school and everything else that had warped her in her not so glorious life. Sadly, she couldn’t think of any happy occasions; she crumpled and tossed the sheet into her faux leather bra. What bullshit, she silently cursed before she turned and finally answered the call.

The door girl pointed to the second maroon door on the left down the connecting hallway. This was just plain non-verbal signals that she had learned to be extremely familiar with. A customer was waiting to be served for in the room. She paced slowly while her mind did some mental portrait drafting of how the customer might look like. Would he be tall? Short? Bald? Caucasian or Japanese? She never really did like serving foreigners; it was too hard to comprehend if the groans meant positive or negative connotations.

She stopped right at the door, took in a deep breath and discreetly practiced a pleasing smile. Holding the fake display of delight, she pushed open the door to see the back of a man.

The man, early fifties perhaps, with thinning grey hair sat slumping on the plastic chair. He looked shabby and his clothes were so worn out as a testimonial of multiple washing machine tumbles. He turned and faced her slowly and they held the gaze. She took into his droopy brown eyes accentuated by wrinkle lines and his slight crooked nose. His slight crooked nose; the one that resembled her so much; the same one that she had last seen many years ago.

She could barely hold her voice as she felt the lump build in her throat.

“Dad?” she croaked aloud.

The man, startled for a moment, stood up and took a closer inspective look at her. His mind finally caught up his visual dawn with the realization of the whole situation. He gave a long huge sigh. A long, exhausted and longing sigh. He reached his arms out and held her in his embrace. It was a hug. A genuine hug which she hadn’t felt in years.

Moments afterward, she felt a sense of wetness where his head lie on her shoulder. There he was, a big man of all glory, hugging and sobbing into the comfort of his daughter, in a brothel. Amazingly, a sense of pride washed over her as she raised her hand and pat his shoulder to silently comfort him. For once in her life, she felt that her existence was worth of something to her parents.

Fifteen minutes later, he gently broke off the hug and stared at her gratefully. He mumbled a soft thank you and left hurriedly as if no one should know of what had happened.

She sat down on the plastic chair and conveniently lit a cigarette trying to comprehend the situation. Her father had expressed gratitude finally in all twenty-two years of her life, for something that she had done all along; being there for him. It wasn’t something that she had thought would come easy, but the thank you had taken perhaps too many missed flights. For once, she felt that her father had finally recognized the person that she was, the daughter that she was. Ubiquitously, she could never make out the tons of problems that her father could be facing, but at least, he had took her shoulder for comfort.

She pushed into her padded bra and retrieved the crumpled sheet, straightening it so that she could reaffirm those few simple words. It was true, happiness had deemed her today, she didn’t look for it; she just realized that it was there all along, that’s all.

She smiled a genuine grin this time, a light blazing from her heart. In this crude world, she had found solace, in a profane machine amidst all the up skirts.