A Simpler Time

Graduation dinner came and went last night. It was held at
, supposedly "the city's hottest and most exciting world class dining experience". With several awards and accolades to its name, it also counts several celebrities in its guest list including Susan Sarandon, Baz Luhrmann and Ian Thorpe.

But that is besides the point.

I would have enjoyed myself in any case, wherever the venue was.

It was the company that mattered to me... In any case, the rodizio de churrasco or Wood Fired Churrasco menu was nothing to rave about and just too pricey to be worth it at all.

Everyone was 'fashionably' late again as usual, I thought in the beginning. And, I was getting bored again, as with the usual straight gathering. The expected queries of my 'partner', the constant barrage of 'so, what have you been up to?' which leads to my predictable reply of 'nothing much. what abt yourself?' as late night scenes of ARQ flashes through my mind.

I am sooooo tired of it all, my awkwardness, my shifty eyes and evasive tone as I surveyed around the room and realise that almost everyone came in couples. Is this the reason why I have been spending all my time with other PLUs? I hate making up stories to conceal my alternative lifestyle, knowing that I am doing it because I am ashamed of the real me. I hate that I feel so alone in a private function room of 22 guests. I hate that nobody knows how much I have changed from the times when everything was simpler.

Everyone thinks or at least believe that I am still the same old me.

So, there I sat grudgingly, beside the same people again, Marc and Alf, the former who is the only person to know abt my sexuality. She is looking stunning with her slicked back hair, in an Audrey-Hephburn inspired dress and gloves. And I was in my usual grey suit again, but still stunning as usual LOL.

C, a girl from HK then presented us with something that she made, projected to the screen in the middle of the room. It was a 20 minutes video montage of all the bits and pieces of memories that we have shared the past 4 years. There were the birthday parties, the graduation photo where we flung our hats into the air, the BBQ's, the drunken sleepovers after exams, the 'drunken' sleepovers during exams, the ski trip, the Port Stephens retreat, the paintball skirmish, the crazy beach bravado trip during winter. It was all there, all 4 years of friendship and bond, immortalised. True, C included cheesy soundtracks like "Graduation Song" (vitamin c) and "That's what friends are for" etc, but my eyes were moist by the end of it actually.

Seeing it all again in real life was abit hard. It again reminds me of a time in the past, when everything was simpler. When sexual orientation was not an issue, when I did not have to supress the real me, when people knew me as I was. But today, constant worries innundate me .. rising unemployment in this economy crisis, choices of freedom from parents, uncertainties of sex and boyfriends, new frontiers to explore and worsening obsession with my body image. How I yearn to be innocent as I used to be, when I knew less but was happier.

But it was not to be. I was clearly depressed by the video but there was no one to confide in. Not them, not then, not there. It was for me to keep it in and not for their ears. So I put on my best smile and casually brushed away the slight tear at the corner of my eyes, with a forced yawn, and it was Mr. Charming once again.