His Passport Out

He's late because he's kept in a meeting, because of the jam, because of the rain. I spend the time writing in my notebook. Writing practice in any spare space.

I haven't see him since mid-December. A lot has happened since. He's had his long-distance girlfriend to stay. They have plans. She's looking for a job for him in out there.

She's his passport to out. Out of here where no-one understands him. He's tried it before - long-distance friendships leading to a serious relationship abroad. Where people will understand him. Where he can make his art. (He's talented in so many directions - though of course it's the writer I cheer on the most - hope he finds his true centre and focus.) None of these relationships have worked out for him. And each time he's come back to Malaysia with his heart broken.

People here just aren't on the same wavelength. They don't read. They don't get what he's about. I'm not Asian, he says. Not inside, where it counts.

He talks up a storm, doesn't stop. It's not a conversation. It's a monologue. He talks books, films, his philosophies of life, acting. He psychoanalyses the characters of sitcoms (how did they get into the conversation?) quite as thoroughly as any professor of film studies. He dramatises imaginary conversations with appropriate accents. I can scarcely follow where his head goes, he moves so fast between thought and thought. There're moments when I don't quite make the connections. But then he's already moved on to the next topic. Hypomania? Perhaps. "You're special," I said once "Because you're touched with fire, like so many great artists, writers." I never told him what the euphemism meant. He never asked. I've never had the courage to take the discussion further.

It's in the moments when he stops talking and there are sudden silences that he looks so incredibly sad, so suddenly stricken. And I know that he is scared. Perhaps of the fact he's losing his job in a few days time and still has to pay the rent. Perhaps of the relationship he's committing himself to, the big leap he's about to make ... and on which he's staking so much.