Yesterday, I thought I met the most beautiful boy in the world.

You ask if that’s really

possible, with an arched, tired eyebrow, Are you sure you’re not on one of your trips

again.

No, it is possible. I even talked to him. And that, sadly, made him less beautiful.

You arch the other eyebrow, and go back to reading the newspaper.

It was one of those unexpected things. I mean, you never think about when you’re

going to meet the most beautiful boy in the world, do you! I was in No Black Tie, that

little jazz place down one of those no name, nobody streets that luckily not the whole

city knows about yet. Only very clever sorts of people go there – the sort that also go

to writerly gatherings and can talk intellectually about what’s on at the Central Market

Annexe over the weekends. I’m scared to go to those sorts of places. As a writer for

magazines of sorts, people expect you to talk grandly about these sorts of things, but

I don’t really. I just go to music things (gigs, I think they call them) because I think the

music sounds good, or go to art exhibitions because I like the pretty colours. The

magic curdles like milk when you try to be intelligent about it, it goes sour and you

can’t swallow it anymore. So when people ask, looking down their noses, “What is it

that you do?” I tell them I write stories and I can get away with that because people

don’t expect you to be so clever with writing stories, they don’t need you to give them

your Opinions about things. They leave you to it to be creative and fringey, and it

makes it easier for them to excuse your patchwork skirts and sling bags.
So I was in No Black Tie, which I first loved only for its name. I had thought, then,

how wonderful – a place that let you be scruffy! I had a boyfriend once, who tried to

convince me many times that I would reach an age where I would have to stop going

after scruff and patchwork skirts and start coveting suits instead. He told me that “At

a certain age, all women start to appreciate a man in a good suit.” I guess I never did

get to that age while I was with him, because when he’d already grown up and suited

up, I was still adverse to proper tailoring and matching shoes.

No Black Tie though, like every venue in KL had soon become a hub for grown-ups –

bankers and lawyers and couples that have properly organised mortgages and most

of all, all the intellectual elite of the city who gathered to Discuss. They know how to

talk about Things That Matter and have Informed Opinions about these Things. I

know, because I’ve been stuck in conversations with them just because I happened

to sit at the next table. I don’t really talk to them, even if many of them know me by

now, through friends of friends of friends, or just because I’m there so much. I just go

because I like the music – the way it sounds and the way it makes my legs tap – and

I sit in a corner with a notebook, which I scribble in furiously to look like I’m too busy

for Discussions. I like the waiters because they smile and the candles because they

smell like perfume bottles.

Adi the waiter winked at me as I walked in and shuffled me into my corner.

I think you’ll like the show tonight, he said.

Really? Why?
It’s, how do you say? Happy?

How do you know I like happy music?

You always look happy, what! I think the other people won’t like it though. Not

exciting enough, maybe.

I shrugged and he turned off to attend to a couple at the next table, who looked

bored. I skimmed the room, trying to avoid people I knew more than anything else –

you never knew when you’d chance upon someone in this tiny world of KL.

And then I saw him! The Most Beautiful Boy in The World, sitting cramped up against

a busy group toward the front of the room, many, many people mashed together

around a small table. I saw only the side of his face then, but it was enough for all

the lights in the room to dim down, so that he shone, twinkle twinkle, in No Black

Tie’s smoky candle haze. He was in an animated conversation, his hands flying, his

waist-length dreadlocks getting tangled in themselves as he moved his head left, to

right, to left to talk to everyone around the table. There was just the side of his

cheekbone that faced me, sharp and smooth like a coin; and the side of one eye that

looking smiling and most of all, happy.

I wondered then what Adi had meant with all the looking happy stuff and how he

thought I looked happy when I was never really talking to anyone, just sort of sat in a

corner on my own? Maybe he’d just seen too many boring couples like the one next
to me, and by comparison, goofy single people looked happy. Adi brought me a

lemonade, winked again and gestured to the tiny stage where the act was bobbing

about setting up their stuff. One of them was putting on a white jumper which looked

like a giant sheep and he had stringey hair falling about all over his face which he

never bothered to sweep off. How important it is to feel and look cosy when you’re

on stage. I liked him already. To his right, a short, squarish man had sat squatly on a

box and was digging through a big bag of little tambourines. He was wearing an

oversized green football jersey – how un-musician-like! – and had a careful pint of

beer tucked between the tambourines around him on the floor. He looked extremely

bored – I wondered if the man in the sheep jumper was bothered that his fellow band

member was looking so disinterested. He wasn’t. He threw a joke and the little squat

man shook his tambourines and laughed. He wasn’t that bored then, he just looked

it. I liked how motley the pair was. Oddity was charming.

As they jangled things about on stage and people shuffled around the tables to get

into seats, I looked at the flyer on the table to see who they were and what they were

doing. I never bothered to check what was on before my No Black Tie outings – I

liked the surprise. Sometimes, you just end up seeing someone that was on before

though and you know what all their little jokes and stories are going to be; then you

think you may as well have stayed home and listened to the radio. Today was a

surprise – a bossa nova trio which I’d never heard of before featuring their lead,

Charlie. The Jumper, I supposed. Little reviews were splashed around the flyer –

The Star had said this, and Time Out had said that, and No Black Tie were thrilled to

have them there for the first time. I’d never heard of them but I liked that Adi had said
they were happy and their crowded, cacophony of stuff on stage looked like it was

already, even before they’d begun.

Charlie the Jumper sitting was centre stage, sitting on a high stool now with his

guitar propped up, looking through the small crowd. I scanned it too again, following

the line of his gaze, and saw then, the mop of dreadlocks turn off from the crowded

little table and tumble onto the stage. There he was again – all beauty! Someone

passed him a cup of tea in a transparent cup and saucer, which he drank from,

quickly, before setting it down next to an odd mash of things. He sat down on the

other side of Charlie and looked expectant, all ready to play. There he was. Just.

Beautiful. He was everything dishevelled – an un-ironed, flimsy shirt, hundred-year-

old jeans and hair, everywhere. He looked like a picture I saw once, randomly, of an

old and incredibly crumpled painting from Tibet, up for auction at Christies or

something equally posh. It was grubby and torn in places but right in the middle,

brilliant and loud, was the most astounding image of a blue deity, four faces all with

different expressions – peaceful, alive, fierce and energetic – and twelve arms that

swung out to embrace a female consort. He looked both dreaming and calm, and

wildly ecstatic at the same time, flying while standing still.

This boy looked like that, changing and gesturing all the time, all over the place. And

yet, underneath all the movement, the hair and the dancing hands was this face just

like the peaceful one of that blue deity – at once, still and alive and glimmering blue.

Now, he was placid and looking towards the stage, where Charlie was talking, saying

his hellos to the audience, telling them all about bossa nova and giving them a crash

course on Brazilianisms. He also introduced the other two thirds of the trio – the
squat man on his right called Tony, and the Beauty, called Ivan. I was surprised that

he had a normal name. I fancied he might have one of those really ethereal names,

like something you would call fairy folk – Legolas or Aragorn, or something worthy of

Tolkien.

Tony, slumped down further in his chair next to Charlie, still looked a bit bored,

thumbing a little drum thing and looking about the room. They’d been a motley

enough crew, just the two of them and with the beautiful boy sitting there also, it was

all too unexpected, incongruous, absurd, mismatched and splendid. Adi was right –

the jumble was its own kind of happy. They started playing medleys of classic

Antonio Carlos Jobim songs – the ones that create many reasons for feeling good

about yourself and the world, even if they actually, in an odd sort of way, sounded

quite sad. Charlie led most of everything, really, with his stories and songs and

delicate mannerisms of a true aesthete. Tony picked things out of his big bag and

banged away on them – it looked like very sophisticated sort of fun but he

maintained a kind of constant boredom on his face, so it was easy to imagine that

the lovely sounds he was making just happened on their own.

All this was just a distraction though from the chaotic beauty of Ivan sitting off to the

side making all kinds of wonderful percussion sounds with odd looking instruments

that look like he’d made them himself (no, probably not. He wouldn’t be that silly!).

He overwhelmed me for two hours with his perfectly symmetrical face, with these

sleepy long eyes that looked about ready to blink slowly, slowly, once, twice, until he

fell into slumber and lots of dreaming. I imagined that even his dreams would be

beautiful – there would be music, floating smells and all sorts of colours. But of
course he wasn’t really sleepy! All the stories he’d been telling his friends earlier –

what a lucky group! – were now coming out as lots of new, contrapuntal tales that

stuttered and clapped and sang with Charlie and the guitar.

I had to stop looking at him. I thought that if I looked too much, his face might split

into a thousand pieces, or my ration of beauty for this lifetime would suddenly run out

and he would turn hideous. I turned to look at Charlie for a while, still singing quiet

songs that nobody could understand. I thought that that was probably the best sort of

music – the type you couldn’t really understand – because then, you could just listen

to it and feel good without all the endless Discussioning that becomes so tiring.

Adi sidled past with another lemonade that I’d even forgotten I’d ordered.

He said, See, nice, right?

Yah. I love it.

And that boy lah, damn cantik, all the girls are crazy about him.

Huh.

All the girls. Of course, lah, you’d be crazy not to be crazy.

The next two hours went by quickly, in an odd reversal of time. The slower and softer

the songs were that Charlie rang out on his guitar, the faster time ran around the
stage, until it was almost two hours, and the trio decided to take a break. Charlie said

something funny and the room hummed in a stifled giggle before he placed his guitar

down on the stool, and the other two clattered their drums and tambourines and

things down in a noisy flourish before tripping off stage.

And now here he was, back on the same floor, in the same light as all the rest of us.

I thought I couldn’t stand it, he looked deafeningly splendid and I was very afraid that

he really would crack if I looked at him any longer. I slid out to the bar where I

ordered another lemonade, leaned against the counter and made inane conversation

with the barman, Pete. I asked him about his girlfriend, his new car, his favourite act

this month, his plans for the weekend. I asked him all sorts of things to be as normal

as I possibly could

Pete started telling me about how he was going out to a huge rave this weekend,

and would I like to go along? It was in Melaka and promised to be massive.

It took my mind off itself for awhile. And then, Hello!

Ivan the blue and beautiful god was – suddenly! – right next to me. I blinked very

hard to myself and looked very slowly to my right. He was looking at me through his

awake sleepy eyes.

Hello.
He paused to ask Pete for a cup of tea. (Tea! A gorgeous musician drinking tea. Not

beer, or whiskey, or vodka, or other drinks that very cool types usually drink.)

Are you having fun?

Yes, tremendous! Adi (he’s that guy over there) told me it would be happy sort of

music and it is!

So you’re feeling happy about it?

Yes.

I nodded as I said yes, at the same time, the way a six-year-old is emphatic and

confident about a very important thing she has to say. YES.

Oh good. I like your red Smurf t-shirt by the way. It makes it easy for us to see you

from the stage otherwise it’s just lots of black.

(He spotted me). Hah. The lighting is good here. In the day time, I just look like an

angry smurf. Or an embarrassed one. Or a sunburnt one.

I thought I was being clever, which clearly I wasn’t, but he was still standing there

with all his sleepy, awake energy looking very surely at me and listening.
Okay, anyway. Perhaps I should stop making stupid jokes and you can go back to

talk to your friends.

Oh no. Stupid jokes are good. I don’t need to go in there yet. They’re all being very

intelligent discussing our music in there and I don’t really know what they mean. I’m

hiding.

So he sat outside with me, up on one of the ridiculously high bar stools and started

to talk to me. He asked me questions about why I came here, why I sat in a corner

by myself, and why I didn’t want to Discuss with everyone else. I told him why, I even

looked at him while I was talking, all the while a little bit afraid that he might melt

suddenly, fizz away, or that Adi might come up and ask me why I was talking to

myself because I had dreamt him up. But he stayed right on talking, talking and

drinking his tea, telling me all kinds of unexpected, funny things that were

exceedingly clever, though he wasn’t even trying to be. I held myself together, and

felt very proud for being alert, and not altogether blundering and daft. I made him

laugh, which probably thrilled me more than it did him; and impressed him with

stories about inconsequential things.

And then quite quickly, unexpectedly, something strange and awful happened, which

was worse than if he had really melted or cracked or been a dot in an over-active

imagination. In between him pointing out the merits of drinking tea over beer, and

telling me how he had, actually, made some of those kooky percussion things

himself, I suddenly, all of a sudden, quickly, quickly got bored of him. The fizz went

out – pzzt – and there was just this exceptionally beautiful boy, saying all the right
beautiful sorts of things, laughing in a beautiful musical way – and none of it was

exciting anymore. Suddenly, all of a sudden, quickly, quickly, he had become very

ordinary. He was normal. And that was the worst kind of thing that could have

happened. He had, I realised with a sinking thud, become a Discussion, where

talking about him around him to him had made him unenjoyable, just like all the

pretty colours of a painting and twinkle twinkle sounds of a jazz band go flat, pffft,

when you talk about it around it to it too much.

Just as I realised that, I also began to know what he was going to talk about, and

how he would say it, how he would look at me when he said it. It wasn’t thrilling

anymore, like it had been just precisely 54 seconds ago. It was just so. Which is

probably a worse thing than for it to be boring, because at least that is still a kind of

emotion. I listened to him talk about Brazil and whatever else with feigned interest,

now much, much harder than concealing the earlier ardent interest. He was still

beautiful, animated, energetic and dozy at the same time in a kind of enchanting,

droopy charm but it was just so, just that.

I didn’t think I could hold up for much longer. I might have cracked from this

disappointment, which actually didn’t even come from him. It wasn’t even his fault, so

I couldn’t feel angry or irritated. I just felt deflated, a kind of strange ennui. Just as I

thought I might have to concoct another interesting story to get myself out of having

to hang out there in this rather perfect setting with this difficult predicament, Tony’s

tambourines clattered and it was time for him to go back on stage.

I’m going home now, I said.

Oh? But you were having a good time?

Oh. Yes, yes, I am. But I’m a bit tired. Long day. You know.

Oh sure. Oh hey, they’re starting. I have to go. Write your number down and leave it

with Pete? We’ll catch up!

He dug out some torn paper – a receipt for milk, I think – from his hundred year old

jeans and handed it to me with a lopsided, hasty grin. Then he went through the

curtains and tumbled back on stage, still holding his cup of tea.

I didn’t leave my number. Instead, as Charlie started cooing another tune and Ivan

drummed out rhythms, I gathered my bag, downed the last bit of lemonade and

headed towards the big old oak doors that led outside. As I left, I saw the leaflet

about Charlie’s trio again, a whole stack propped up against the bar. I took up the

whole pile and looked at it. There he was and I wondered why I hadn’t noticed before

– a perfect, gorgeous face framed by electric, lazy hair. He was staring out with an

impish half-smile, haloed by a kind of blue light that reminded me of that old, blue

Tibetan painting again. He should have stayed as a painting, I thought quickly as I

moved off, it would have been more sublime. I stuffed the pile of leaflets in my bag,

swung open the doors and stepped out into the kind of midnight heat that makes

everything feel heavy and flat.