I am horrible.

If you walk into my room now, you will see clothes strewn over an unmade bed, handbags and newspapers piled up on my other bed (please don’t make me explain why I have two beds), more clothes spilling out of the closet onto the floor, and shoeboxes scattered all over the place. Who would believe I got voted Most Organized back in high school?

*Sigh*

It was my equivalent to Spring Cleaning Day. Except it’s not spring. And I doubt it’ll all be done in a day.

If you’re a packrat like I am, let me give you some advice:

• Throw out all those useless things you’ve collected over the years. You know you’ll never use them, even if you keep telling yourself there will be an occasion when it’ll come in handy. It won’t.

• Take snapshots of your shoes and stick them on the side of the shoebox. This way, your precious heels can be housed neatly and you won’t have a hard time finding the right shoes when you need them.

• If you have more clothes than you can handle, pick out the ones you know you’ll never wear again and give them away to charity. Or if you insist on keeping them all, find a plastic drawer to store your more “casual” clothes so they don’t pile up on the floor!

• Stuff your handbags with crumpled balls of paper to retain its shape. Keep your handbags in a plastic bag or in a breathable bag to protect it from dust. Again, snapshots come in handy when trying to locate the right bag.

• Put some silica gel (those little packets of transparent beads that comes with crunchy snacks with the words “DO NOT EAT” in bold) in your shoe closet and handbag storage area to dehumidify your closet and prevent fungus from thriving in there! Eek!

Try to maintain this system and keep your room from becoming more cluttered.

Now, I must excuse myself and go clean up the mess in my room!

Ms. Poophet sat on gum today. Curse the damn chewer who was careless enough to leave a piece of gum stuck somewhere. Ms. Poophet hopes the chewer will burn in hell. I’m sure this has happened to you before…or not. Either way, fret not, as Ms. Poophet is here to save the day!

Dab the gum-infested area with some baby oil (peanut butter and butter is also said to have worked, but which would you rather have your clothes smelling like, baby oil or peanut butter? Exactly.). Rub the area free of gum with an old toothbrush until all the gum comes off. If doing this on leather, the oil will take the sheen of the leather out with the gum, leaving a dull area, but Ms. Poophet thinks that’s better than a white sticky mess.

Last night started at REWIND, on the second floor of the Camp Davis complex in Sukhumvit 24, with my coworkers, which consisted of two lesbians and my gay graphic designer. They invited a bunch of their friends and altogether there was about a dozen people, including fugly guy from the law firm downstairs that my coworkers tried to set me up with last year.

(Side note: I have a particular fondness for Camp Davis if only because MAO used to be there, the first real bar that I partied in. That was where I learned how to knock back glasses of whiskey and sing Thai songs. I *heart* MAO. Maybe I should start a campaign to bring it back…)

This was not the first time I’ve been to REWIND. The first was with these same coworkers and a few others, and the second was on Military Coup Drinking Party (aka “that night we do not speak of.”) For some reason I always have fun there. It’s not a big place, the band isn’t particularly amazing, the food and clientèle so so, but perhaps the old spirit of MAO still lingers there and I have fun out of nostalgia.

Anyway, we ordered food but it took an hour to arrive, and during that hour we were already quite tipsy from having nothing else to put in our stomachs but Black Label and super salty peanuts. Then entered Bear… and from the first moment I laid eyes on him I thought he was cute. He’s a friend of a friend of my coworkers, and he went to school with the owner of REWIND. Those who know me will know that I’ve been complaining that I haven’t met a guy that I considered “cute” in a long long time. He’s a lawyer at a certain local budget airline that uses a beauty contest to recruit stewardesses. Cute and smart. ” This was my lucky day!” I thought.

It started innocently enough. He asked where I studied and where I liked to party and we all played drinking games together. The cover bands played all the essential Thai rock, from old school Micro to Body Slam to Cells, the new sensation from Laos that got everybody jumping and singing along. I told everybody that I had to go meet my high school friends at JET in Thong Lor Soi 10 and Bear offered to come along. Why? Who knows. It must have been the dress I was wearing. But I wasn’t complaining. So we got to JET, picking up one of my girlfriends along the way, and squeezed through the throng of frenzied “Friday-Night-End-of-the-Month-Clubbers” to our table in front of the bar. Everybody was already there and what an ego booster it is to arrive at a party fashionably late and be greeted and hugged by inebriated friends! I allowed myself a moment of shallowness and felt like a mini celebrity. I tried introducing Bear to everybody and we downed a few more drinks. Not much conversation could be made because of all of the noise, but there was nothing body language couldn’t solve.

The high that was achieved at REWIND dissipated exponentially as the number of people entering JET increased. It got to the point where Bear and I couldn’t even stand together at our table, but were pushed up against the bar. He then mentioned that he missed going to NARCISSUS. Lo and behold! He used to be a raver.

“I’ve never been there,” I shouted over the music.
“Really? Wanna check it out?” He shouted back.
“Okay!”

So we said goodbye to everybody and squeezed back out of JET and hailed a cab to NARCISSUS in Sukhumvit 23, with a little detour through Sukhumvit 11, because Bear forgot where it was.

In the cab, Bear leaned over and whispered, his breath heavy with alcohol, “You’re such a cute and cool girl. I’ve never met anybody like you before.”
“I think you’re really cute too.”
“Really really. I think I’m in love!”
“That’s because you’re drunk!”
Bear laughs.
“If you love me, you better take care good of me tonight!”
“I promise!”
We shook hands.

What fun NARCISSUS was! It was like being at a jungle party on Koh Phangnan: the ear orgasm of electronica, the strobe lights and glow sticks, the girls raving on the tables and the people reaching their arms up towards the God-like DJ in his holy booth. We had a couple more drinks and danced together and he never left my side. I had a blast… until I turned around and saw Bear sitting on the couch, head rolled back and eyes closed. He fell asleep! Poor guy… I should have known that he was overly drunk since the moment we left JET. Immediately I became sober. But I didn’t feel worried; I just sat there with him until he woke up, which took about 5 minutes.

“I think you should go home. Where do you live?” I said.
“Around Sathorn,” he answered.
“Oh, I can take you home. I have to get my car at my office at Sathorn anyway.”

And so we left NARCISSUS, with Bear sleeping on my lap all the way in the cab. We got to my office and tried to walk as nonchalantly as possible passed the guards down to the car park, but they have seen all my late night antics before and just smiled as they turned on the lights. Once I drove out onto Sathorn, I asked Bear to give me directions.

“I don’t want to go home. I want to stay with you!” he said.
“Bear, I can’t bring you back to my house tonight. You’re too drunk, but maybe next time? Now tell me where you live.”
“Just keep driving and go over the bridge.”
“But if we go over the bridge it won’t be Sathorn anymore. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”
“I want to send you home. I don’t want you to drive all the way back by yourself.”
“Then how will I make sure that you get home safely? You’re drunker than me!”
“I’ll get a cab back once we get to your house.”
“I don’t want to take you back to my house.”
“But I want to stay with you!” he begged, “You’re so cute and I really like you!”
“I like you too but I really think that you should go home. I’m tired and I want to go home too.”

At this point I had already pulled over to the side of the road.

“So, how come you don’t have a boyfriend?” Bear asked, changing the subject.
“Because I don’t trust guys.” I answered. I might as well keep him talking until he’s more sober. Maybe I could also reason with him. Or trick him into telling me where he lived.
“Why not?”
“Because my last boyfriend cheated on me.”
“How can anyone cheat on such a cute girl like you??”
“I don’t know, but he was the jealous possessive type.”
“That’s because you have so many guy friends! At JET! They were all hugging you!”
“Hey,” I started, a bit miffed, “I have been friends with those guys since I was a kid okay. And they all already have girlfriends! They are like my brothers. It’s like you’re dating a girl who has a bunch of older brothers. So how come you don’t have a girlfriend? I bet you really do.”
“No, no I don’t!”
“Then you probably have a lot of girls on the side.”
“No, I don’t have any either!”
“How come?! Wait.. are you gay?”
“NO!”
“Then what? Bi?!”
“NO!” Bear reiterated; he was getting worked up. “I am not gay or bi okay! Here, you can talk to my friend and he will tell you that I am not gay!”
“Hey, that’s okay man. I believe you if you say you’re not!”
He then picked up his phone and dialed somebody’s number. “Hey Gaan! Talk to this girl and tell her that I am not gay.”

He handed me the phone and I explained the whole situation to his friend, who is gay himself (oh the irony). He was very nice and asked me if I was alright. I told him I was; that Bear had been very nice to me up until this point and that I was tired and all I wanted was to just go home but Bear wouldn’t let me. Gaan expressed his concern and offered to come pick Bear up. I said okay. Now, all I wanted was to I just wanted to get rid of him. So I told Bear that his friend was going to come meet him.

“What?!” he cried. “Why did you do that! You can’t let him take me home. He’s gay! What if he molests me?”
“Hey, you were the one that called him and he’s your friend!!!”
“But I want to stay with you!”
“But I already told you that you can’t tonight. I’m sorry okay. I would really like to too, but just not tonight. Please understand. Maybe next time??”

More protesting ensued and we had a little argument. I mean, here’s a 31 year old lawyer getting told off by a 24 year old office girl about limits and self control. WTF? Thankfully Gaan arrived just in time, apologized on behalf of drunken Bear, and hauled him away.

For the record, Bear did not once try to grab or kiss me. We held hands, and touched each other’s faces and arms but there was nothing indecent about the way he treated me at all. He was very sweet up until he turned into a tantrum-throwing 5 year old.

There was a moment where I just looked him in the eyes and thought to myself, “I’m never going to see this guy again. There is no way anything resembling normalcy can be salvaged from this. Damage done.”

I feel like it was such a waste of a really fun night and a really cute guy. Everything was great up until the ending. Why did it have to end like this? Why did he have to be so damn good looking yet so drunkenly stupid? WHY, GOD, WHY??? (Why didn’t I take advantage of him when I had the chance…?!)

Ms. Poophet is in her mid-twenties and yet, she was already experiencing mid-life crisis. Or maybe it was PMS. Whatever. All she knew was that she was having a bad ending to an okay day and it was quickly turning her mood sour.

First, she had to make the 1 km trip from her office to the sky train on foot because of an unforeseen circumstance. That wasn’t so bad since she needed the occasional exercise. But then halfway through the trip on the sky train, most of the lights flickered off and so did the air-conditioner. Imagine that…it was a 30 scorching degrees out, and here was Ms. Poophet, crammed on a packed train with regurgitated body heat. Nasty, nasty! A few stops later, a voice came over the intercom system, informing passengers that they had to get off at Siam station due to a hitch in the electrical system. Thank goodness Ms. Poophet had engagements at Siam and was planning on getting off there anyway, or else she would’ve thought the world was out to get her.

Fanning herself with her hands, she was slowly carried out of the train by the tide of people that jiggled and juggled past, disgusted that they were swiping their sweaty bodies against her.

After what seemed like ages, Ms. Poophet finally found herself at the exit to the sky train station and as she regained her posture and began strutting towards her destination in her painful-but-adorable-pumps, she began to loosen up. Afterall, she had a massage session coming up and she didn’t want her body to be tense. A flick of her wrist told her that she was thirty minutes early for her appointment; nevertheless, it had never been a problem — in fact, they required that clients be there fifteen minutes before their session so that there would be time to change into more appropriate attire. As Ms. Poophet headed for the door, another woman who was also approaching the door cast a sideways glance at Ms. Poophet and quickened her steps so that she reached the opening first. Ms. Poophet tried not to let this bother her — the other lady was more mature, not just in terms of age but in her physique as well. (And she didn’t mean this in a good way.)

The receptionist turned to Ms. Poophet after settling Old Fat Lady in a chair and Ms. Poophet told her that she was there for her consultation at seven o’clock. Running her finger down the appointment book, the receptionist told Ms. Poophet that she would have to wait forty minutes for her massage room, since all the rooms were occupied. The enraged Ms. Poophet blurted out, “Then I’m cancelling today,” without thinking, and seeing Receptionist’s panic-stricken face, felt a flood of sympathy towards the girl. She started to give an explanation, but her evil conscience whispered in her ear that she owed this girl nothing, and she went on to say that she will be back on Thursday and to schedule her appointment for six-thirty. Then she stalked out the door without so much as a backwards glance.

Ms. Poophet wasn’t truly a bad person; she was just mean-spirited at times. (Remember she’s going through mid-life crisis — or PMS, whatever!) Her good conscience finally caught up with her and she felt bad for snapping at Receptionist. She consoled herself by saying even if one of the guests left at that moment, Ms. Poophet would still have to wait for over forty minutes anyway, since they still had to clean the room and get it ready for the next client.

Being in no mood to amuse herself any further, Ms. Poophet decided to head for home. The platform of Siam station was hectic as usual and she waited for the next train to come before boarding. She managed to get a little standing space next to two schoolgirls as the train closed its doors. The girls were talking loudly and one of them had a cup of slushy in her hand, and although Ms. Poophet disapproved of eating on the sky train (or on any forms of public transportation), she did not make a comment. She turned her attention elsewhere and being observant as always, she noticed one college boy staring intently at his girlfriend’s face as they stood thisclose to each other and the train started to take off. Trying her best to be discreet, she looked on with interest as his eyes never blinked and stayed gazing at Girlfriend’s face. What on earth could be so interesting about staring into an oily-faced girl, she thought to herself. Oblivious to Ms. Poophet’s thoughts, Boyfriend still stood looking fixedly into Girlfriend’s face. Ms. Poophet could actually feel him getting horny (not physically, of course! He was sending out auras all over the place!) and she had to refrain from chuckling at his adolescent hormones.

The train chose that moment to lurch forward and the two schoolgirls who were gabbing loudly by Ms. Poophet’s side made a grab for Ms. Poophet’s handbag to upright themselves. You should know Ms. Poophet well enough by now to detect her instant irritation. Amazingly, she bit her tongue, seeing as they were children. That didn’t stop her from shrugging her bag free of the child’s clutches. Strike two, she noted mentally.

The voice over the intercom announced the next stop and Ms. Poophet was ever so grateful that she would get off soon. But once again, mishaps always seem to find Ms. Poophet and as a man in a sweaty blue shirt practically stepped over her (okay, it was actually around her, not over her, but you know how Ms. Poophet likes to exaggerate) to stand in front of the door (“What is it with these people always so over-excited about getting off at their stops,” thought Ms. Poophet), the soles of his shoes scratched Ms. Poophet’s ankle. She sent him a look that would melt an iceberg but lucky for him (and unfortunate for her), he had his back to her so only his back was exposed to frostbites. Then, the two schoolgirls decided they had to squish their way to the front of the door so they attempted to push Ms. Poophet aside while their choruses of “Excuse me”’s rang out.

Perhaps it was her tight shoes that was causing her feet to blister or a combination of that and the mounting stress that made Ms. Poophet blow her top. She turned to the first child, gnarling, “Hold on a minute! The door’s not even opened yet and I’M getting off here too!” That shut the girls up, and Sweaty Blue Shirt, not prepared for his fate, turned around to get a faceful of wintery glare from Ms. Poophet.

As the train came to a stop, the second girl whimpered, “So scary,” to which almost prompted Ms. Poophet to turn around and lash out at them again, but the door opened at that moment and she stepped out with a grim stride. She briskly walked up to the lobby in her condo and waited for the elevator. As she did so, what should she see but Schoolgirl One climbing the steps to her condo. Ms. Poophet slipped into the elevator swiftly and hastily pushed the “Close” button. At last, she was back at her haven where no mishaps can get to her — until tomorrow.