langkau fiction

My colleagues brought me out for lunch yesterday. They knew my car was still in the workshop and that my movement was basically crippled. I really didn’t mind skipping lunch but they insisted I should go with them. Lest I’d starve, they said. I looked at my computer. I managed to rope two sentences to make a paragraph. That’s like the whole morning’s attempt at writing a short essay. Wow, kan?

I succumbed to my colleagues’ offer. There were four of us: Wealth, Vain, Snob and me. We got into Snob’s big saloon car. I think he gets paid a lot outside of work, I don’t know. One thing I don’t really like about lunching out with my colleagues is the topic of conversation.

Yesterday was no different.

Mr. Vain decided to come up with one of the most philosophical topics of our era: football and girlfriends. My brain immediately went into the Sleep mode. Vain’s hypothesis is this, a girlfriend should understand their boyfriend’s obsession with football and not get annoyed if football suddenly interrupted their, er, sexy time. If the girlfriend likes football, ESPECIALLY if it’s the Barclay’s Premier League, then she’s the right person! A short silence hovered over our nasi campur, as if a prayer was in progress. I was looking at them in puzzlement. Goddamn, they were actually thinking about the bloody thing!

Snob looked up, obviously after much screwing of his brain, and said “Well, sometimes, my wife watches the EPL matches with me. So, no problem there. She never complains about me about waking up at 2am to watch football.”

“Well, you’re a lucky guy. My girlfriend is beginning to get irritated with me watching football,” said Vain, who’s an MU fan.

Surprise, surprise, I thought to myself.

Wealth, who roots for Chelsea, added “At first, my girl didn’t like it lah. After a couple of months into our relationship, she’s like immune to me wearing the Chelsea jersey every weekend. I take her out for early dinner if there’s a Saturday match. Sometimes she comes with me to watch me play futsal.”

Snob, agreeing with Wealth, said “Yes, sometimes I take my wife for my futsal game with me!”

I thought, damn, do their girlfriends actually enjoy watching their boys play futsal? I’d probably bore myself to death just to watch people play futsal.

Snob, another MU fan, turned and asked Vain “How long have you two been together?”

“Almost two years,” Vain replied.

“Aiyo, almost two years and only now she’s beginning to get irritated with you over football kah? That doesn’t bode well in the long run, y’know,” said Wealth.

Now, if my bionic eyes served me right, from his facial expressions, I swore I saw Vain was taking our colleagues’ advises seriously. I mean, what in Doraemon’s name, right? I mean, the guy seriously thought about his relationship status with his girlfriend. Over bloody football! hah! I didn’t know whether to laugh or pee in my pants.

Then, Snob turned his attention to me and said “So, what about you? Does your girlfriend get irritated with you watching the premier league?”

“Er…I don’t have a girlfriend,” I told Snob. The rest of the guys laughed. Including Vain, who flashed a wide grin. Bastard.

Wealth, then rephrased Snob’s question as if my intelligence was clogged with brain poo, “IF you had a girlfriend, would she get irritated with you being obsessed with football?”

“How would I know, right? I mean, I don’t know how to deal with a ‘hypothetical’ girlfriend,” I replied.

“Besides, I am not obsessed with football, let alone that English Premier League thing,” I told them.

Vain, who for a minute ago considered his relationship with football over his girlfriend, menyampuk and said “I thought you love football? You play football bah.”

I didn’t know where this conversation was going. I told them I played football probably on a weekly basis but I never enjoyed watching football on TV. Really. They looked at each other in genuine puzzlement.

“How is that you play and enjoy football but don’t watch football?” Snob asked.

“That just doesn’t make sense,” Wealth added.

“Well, I only watch when AC Milan plays. And even that pun jarang. Why? Because our great television channels don’t show the Italian Serie A,” I told them.

Vain said “My god, the Serie A is soooo boring. Who would want to show it on TV? And how can you stand the way they play?”

Wealth then had to add “No wonder you tidak ada girlfriend, watching Serie A. Bosan nak mampus lah…Milan is even playing like shit now.

Okay, so I had no other way to rebutt their comments apart from saying “Chowhai lah you all…” They laughed and just shook their heads in disbelief.

Hey, we’re not in our teen years or 20s anymore. Being obsessed with football – AND interlocking it with a relationship – at this age is ridiculous. I think. I may sometimes rant about AC Milan, how good or how shitty they are, but y’know, to actually poke holes into our brain in the hope that the intelligence juice flow out during a lunch conversation is just beyond me. And yeah, what’s this thing about taking girlfriends for a futsal game if they obviously look so boring sitting on the bench on the sidelines sidenets? I don’t get that.

Okay, I can see rocks are thrown at me now.