Singapore Sling

Chapter One

They say there are two sides to every story. I agree with “them” who ever they may be - assuming “they” is actually a small and highly secure unit that controls and directs the tides of popular culture. I also assume that “they” were born in bland business suits and use a profuse amount of Depp styling products, all the while planting such all-purpose universally recognized truths and idioms within society for the masses to adopt, and later reference at their convenience (like I am doing right now.)

I argue however that there are more than two sides to every story given the obvious factor that a “story” usually involves a number of characters each with their own set of experiences resulting in burgeoning stories that shoot off of the main branch. “Spin-offs” one might identify them as. A story can also focus around a single event that affects a group of characters related or otherwise. This single event may be one individual’s experience, but in turn stirs the pot of so many people’s daily grind. Explicably becoming a smorgasbord of story as opposed to one serving of a single dish from one restaurateur.

A woman gets cancer for the second time. This time however she does not respond to any of her treatments and thus lies in a hospital bed on New Years Eve hooked to an IV drip, eyes half closed, jaundice skin the color of squash and sunken cheek bones that remind her youngest daughter of the animated crypt keeper from the YTV television series she watched as a child.

This woman is surrounded by the closest members in her family, all paying hyper attention to the sound of her breaths, the acute rise of her tummy up and down -- the slightest pause making each of their hearts skip a beat, sometimes in unison. At this point the members of the woman’s family present, are all dumbfounded by the mystery of life, death and the lottery of disease -- lost in the silence of thought, memory, prayer, all of which are too ideal for the current and seemingly expected inevitable dooms of the woman’s ill-fated reality.

The heart rate monitor beeps.
The woman’s youngest daughter rests her head against the woman’s chest, feeling the bump of the mastectomy scar from 9 years earlier through the thinning fabric of a hospital gown washed a batch too many. She hums Day Dream Believer by the Monkeys as finally, the woman’s body succumbs to the evil unknown invading her cells, traveling her veins – reaping her of her old age, her motherhood, her every last desire on Earth that could have been (should have been), and catapulting her into an entirely separate unknown. This unknown being the second of two sides to this woman’s story. The story that ensues while on the “other side.” Hence there are two standard sides of one person’s being. One while alive on Earth and one that carries on after that person has passed on to whatever and wherever the other side may be. In any case, after the woman passes on, her being perpetually affects and crafts the stories of all those she touched as she goes on to live inside the hearts of each of them all at varying degrees but really to a fucking immeasurable level.


Chapter Two

This is not the woman’s story. This is the result of the woman’s story on her youngest daughter’s being – whom of which just happens to be me.
Cocktail anyone?

xoLO