To barf or not to barf? (in public)
Hello friends,
What’s up?! Are you ASTOUNDED that September has arrived? August slipped away like a bottle of wine, indeed. Or maybe it flushed itself down the toilet like the roach I murdered last night. Either way, time has never felt so irrelevant. I’ve been ruminating on this ‘year'.’ I’m hesitant to call it a year because it has mostly felt like one very long day, a hungover Sunday that is rotten and heavy and swaddled in nausea. Things that I’ve missed: wearing cologne with purpose, the pleasant agony of a first date, emoting in public through the use of my mouth.
Yesterday I watched a woman puke into an Açai bowl. In Singapore, the government has enforced non-optional mask wearing. Citizens are permitted to remove their masks only to consume food. In a country well known for its…shall we say…stern public directives, I was surprised to witness the gall of this stranger. She utilised this rare privilege and reversed its purpose. It felt kind of subversive—almost cool—but mostly gross since I was trying to munch on my own slab of frozen berries.
I was sat next to the puking lady in my usual spot facing the street. I plonk myself there often to examine the characters that fall in and out of various restaurants and bars. Recently, I’ve visited most days—desperate for a glimpse of the public mundanity I had not known how to miss. Pre-lockdown, I would emerge from the solitude of writing and revising to get an açai bowl and a healthy fix of human bustle to unscramble my brain. Post-lockdown, I’ve been feeling shortchanged by this routine. It’s not as fulfilling to watch young lovers brawl and make up when all you can see are furrowed brows and flailing arms. The curfew has impeded the drama too. Nothing juicy goes down before eleven.
At first, I thought my sickly friend was coughing. This enraged me. How dare this stranger expel her germs into our shared airspace which was already polluted with invisible virus particles. I felt compelled to speak on behalf of law-abiding citizens everywhere and implore her to put on a mask or cover her mouth. But the sounds from were wild and rumbling and too bizarre to stifle. Instead, like an anthropologist going native, I turned to the side and pretended I hadn’t noticed. Before she went fully for the upchuck, I watched the stranger tap her foot and retch nonchalantly with her eyes cast off into the distance as though she were smoking a cigarette and pining after a long lost friend.
The vomit came unceremoniously. The stranger doubled over her empty bowl and refilled it with the contents of her stomach. I noticed from the empty tableware that she had also gobbled a smoothie and two slices of avocado toast. I was transfixed, for a moment. Enthralled by this undaunted public display of gluttony, illness, anxiety, or whatever the catalyst that propelled such vulnerable and indecent behaviour. Vomiting is so intimate. It’s the ultimate lack of agency— an internal battle that is suddenly lost and swiftly announced. As the stranger gagged into her bowl I noticed that the rest of her body remained under control. Her arms were crossed, her foot tapped away. When I throw up, my body becomes a thrashing and uncontrollable demon that is separate to myself. I found myself admiring her decorum, the impeccable grace of being able to cross your legs and tap your foot as hot bile burns your throat.
Before I sat sit with the stranger, I took a yoga class with an instructor that I’ve known for three years. I don’t remember much from our early interactions. I was in a fugue state—so detached from my body that I had grown dependent on a cocktail of prescription drugs to tell me when to wake, sleep, and eat. In a rare moment of inspiration, I booked a beginners vinyasa. It felt like nothing at first. But it was something to do, an appointment to keep when life was an unsteady tower of jenga blocks. I saw this instructor everyday for a year. I never noticed my body changing, becoming stronger and more capable, but she did. I think you're ready for a real flow now she said after I finished my sixth month of beginner instruction.
I revered my yoga teacher. Unknowingly, this stranger gave me my body back. In a weird way, I kept her at arms length beneath a veil for all those years—afraid that knowing this deity too intimately would tamper with the peace I had found, or somehow, corrupt my delusion that she knew something I didn’t about life. I have come back to her now, after a year in New York, to take the flow classes with ease and chit-chat on my way out. As I made my way to the açai cafe, the instructor stopped me and waited until the other students had left.
I’ll be taking a corporate job, so I don't think I can teach anymore. She explained that she wasn’t getting enough hours, her responsibilities had doubled since they reduced staff capacity, and she wanted more stability now. I understood. I just wanted to tell my close students. She said, and I thought—this is not a stranger. This person has given so much and I have never taken the time to say thank you. And so I did, briefly, I explained that her teaching mattered—her practice had thrown me a raft at the choppiest moment in time. We switched back to small-talk, but I noticed a few tears flood her face and collect at the lip of her mask.
When the stench of stomach acid finally reached my table and my sweet bowl of frozen berries, I collected my things slowly and drifted off into the evening—glancing back at the woman puking in public, thinking that perhaps we were more alike than I had thought. Two gluttons filling up then emptying out in front of everyone. There are stranger things.
Xoxo,
Z