a deeper shade of brown

Is this going where she thinks it is going? Of course it is, there is but one direction for it to go, and it is nowhere. How can she expect someone like that to stop and say that's ok if you don't want sex that's fine and I will love you forever until we eventually get married and pop some half-n-half babes out?

so they break up, her and Raul the spicy Salvadoran. He kisses her gently on her forehead before he takes his leave. Suddenly she is craving pupusas that he used to buy for her. 

And then she is back in Malaysia, and it is too easy to forget Raul ever existed. That he didn't exist merely on a timeline somewhere on Facebook or on her Instagram. That he used to sleep next to her and smile at her gently. 

Instead, she is thrust back into the hectic tempo of the 'doing good' worklife; a lack of work/Netflix balance. She reconnects with Frieda, or Freed as she is affectionately called. 

"Why do you spend your time chasing approval?" she asks, chewing on roti canai, her fingers smeared with yellow dalca. Me sipping blissfully sweet teh tarik basking in the glorious sunset.

You create your own happiness, you know? 

What a concept? 

Frieda has become English almost. English-adjacent rather. 

It is beautiful. She takes tea with everything, has a wonderfully deadpan English sense of humor. Not slapstick far from, that's American. Reverse-reverse colonialism?

Instead of reverting to the land of our ancestors, reverting to the original colonizer is somehow comforting. 

I tell her about my college  roommate, a nutjob I say. Terrible. 

And the thing that bothered me the most was that she told me she wanted to be Zadie Smith and it was awful because I had discovered Zadie Smith first, with the pettiness of one who has been wronged and seeks a restorative rebalancing through small acts of spite. 

I meet Frieda's friend and this friend has a friend who I find extremely attractive. He's lithe, bubbling and funny in a way that is self deprecating without being self-abasing. His name is Sarab. Because I am twenty-four I fall for him in a serious meaningful way without meaning to do this; and we fall into bed together. It's good, he's gentle. I'm terrified of catching feelings until he doesn't leave after the fifth time we make love. 

I start writing again, I learn more about the environment every day. It's good for me. I love being an assistant professor.