you know the kind of friends that you have at work, whereby the progress of friendship is hampered solely by the fact that the relationship is founded in the roots of the workplace? the type that you find yourself digging deep into the recesses of your heart (and if i could go lower, the intestinal tracts, the bladder or perhaps the bowels), simply for conversational topics. conversational topics not about work and gossip, but about anything else other than that. the type that you find yourself wanting to avoid taking the same train as them before or after work, just so that you won't have to go through that golden moment of awkwardness when you guys have absolutely nothing better to talk about other than this colleague's tight uniform and that other's work integrity?

well, Kegal Laughs is one of those colleagues. i love her to bits, i really do. and in an alternative world where i love boobs and i love her bits rather than loving her to bits, she would be the type of girl that i would be chasing after. she's funny. she's pretty. and she has a great family background. plus, she's a bit of a nympho. in that alternative world, we might actually have an agreement of sorts to make full use of her nympho tendencies.

each time we smoke between shifts, we never fail to relate our clubbing escapades and sexcapades (just that i use non-gendered terms; nope, she doesn't know that i'm gay). she would always be telling me about how her girlfriends who always go home to sleep after clubbing. not in their own bed per say, but that of others. and obviously not alone as well. typically, they would be sleeping with some random Matrep (pronounced Maht Rape, a common local term used to describe typical Malay adolescents who smoke and live typical Malay lives, some of them come with piercings and tattoos even) they picked up at the club. and did i mention about her strong family background?

she has a brother whom i met once and i suspect is gay (he just happens to look very much like a Twink). and they are very tight as siblings. her mother is quite the riot as well, based on the stories that she has shared with me. one of them involves her mother strutting around at home in nothing more than a pair of panties and a bra. out of a curiosity for details i asked Kegal Laughs, 'What's the colour of the panties and bra, eh?' to which she replied after taking a puff of her Viceroy Menthol Lights, 'Beige! it's like wearing contact lens, like wearing nothing at all (there's a local advertisement for contact lens that has such a tagline)!' and then she proceeded to laugh her very Japanese-porn-inspired sounding laughter that i've come to be so familiar with.

of course, all would be well if not for the fact that her mother was coming close to a full monty while her rather religious father was doing his evening prayers (Kegal comes from a family of Muslims) at the side of the living room. 'Panas lah!' her mother explained as she plonked herself down on the sofa. from the corner of her eye, she could also see her father, poised upright and reciting prayers. yes, it was obviously that humid.

in the last year alone, i believe that our friendship has made some progress though. good enough for smoke breaks and Christmas gift exchanges, but alas, still not enough for a train ride home together. for the Christmas that just passed, Kegal bought me a bottle of Beckham's Intense Instinct. and this may sound bizarre but nobody other than the first boyfriend of three years has bought me cologne before. and please, relatives don't count. besides, they didn't buy eau de toilette or cologne or parfum. they are the bigger fans of thrift stores, preferring that pervasive smell of deodorant that reeks of cheapness and words along the lines of 'least-favourite relative'.
for being the second person in my entire life to buy me cologne, i decided to brave a trip into the legendary women's encampment named, Forever 21. not by myself, thankfully ('Can i help you sir?' 'Oh it's okay, i'm just shopping for a weekend dress'), but with Sunanthar. after acting like a heterosexual couple for several minutes, i settled for a gold clutch. it was a battle between gold and silver, but like i told Sunanthar, 'why settle for silver when you can go for gold?' and that was the message for Kegal Laughs when i bought her that clutch.

i had the unfortunate circumstance of taking the train home with her the other day post-morning shift. maybe it was the fact that i was so used to talking to her in uniform. or maybe it was just that i was too tired to make any small talk about her boyfriends and her life. but about ten minutes into the trip home, we both took out our headphones and blasted random tunes on our ipods. it was that bad actually. and i'm the type of person who would rather go home by the longer and lonelier route, thank brave an awkward conversation without the aid of an alcoholic beverage in hand. perhaps that's why Pangkeng and i function so well as friends. of course we also have sex (as in a vested interest, not the act itself committed between the two of us), beer, cigarettes and an overuse of Hokkien expletives to keep the sparks alive. plus, he verges on being a bisexual.

so obviously, 'great friends at work' doesn't exactly translate to 'great friends outside of work'. Kegal Laughs is the type of person who will most-willingly help out at work even though she has tonnes of things to do. when i hand over the nursing reports to her, she will be the first to say 'it's okay, just pass it to me and i'll finish up for you.' of course, being the one person who loves her to bits, i would do the same for her as well. such a great person, that i'm just simply not all that keen to lose her as a friend when we're outside of work. armed with determination to resolve this issue, i therefore decided to organize the second-ever colleagues-based dinner outing. my ward colleagues simply don't have this 'outside of work' culture. they mainly keep to themselves. which is very irritating when i try to organize outings. they seem so keen when i bring it up during work, but they are the queens of throwing in the towel at the eleventh hour.

most of them are prolly afraid of the social awkwardness as they haven't existed outside of work together before in plain clothes. so in order to spice up the ol' dinner-and-movies routine, i suggested shishah. for some reason beyond me, the majority of the Malay people her really like shishah. i gathered Kegal Laughs and two other colleagues that smoke with me during breaks as well and planned an outing to Ambrosia, a local Mediterranean restaurant at Arab Street. at this point, i have to say thanks to Audrey, Jiayuan, Fadhil and his boyfriend Charlie for organizing the previous wonderful outing Ambrosia. Ambrosia has all the charms that can wow the pants of people. it's dark, it's filled with Middle Eastern carpeting and cushions, and serves over-priced but somewhat great food. and most importantly, it's an indoor setting with a free-smoking policy. all that smoke and carpets always make me think about one of my favourite porn films, Arabesque. of course, the men in the film are smoking shishah of a different sort.

it was a small cosy outing with three other female colleagues, all of them Malay, all of the smokers. Kegal Laughs was there of course. we made small talk about our lives and mainly about work. and the weird thing was that no matter how hard i tried to divert the conversation away from work, they would always bring it right back to the start. we could be exchanging fleeting sexual encounters when the whole conversation would revert back to work again ('And speaking of big penises, did you see the doctor with the big bulge in the pants?').

as i sat on the floor of Ambrosia that night, smoking shishah and cigarettes while listening to the girls exchange ward gossip, my mind started to wander. i was getting contemplative. and that's always a bad sign. i noticed as well that the Middle Eastern carpets that decorate the floor were not very well-maintained. i found a very long strand of bleached hair, which i started curling around my fingers. at the same time, i also wondered why i was fighting so hard to make the friendship between Kegal and me go beyond the settings of work. was it that i just wanted more funny sex stories from Kegal Laughs? or was it that twenty years down the road, i would like to have a friend of decent character to be by my side? and believe me, being a homosexual, it's hard to find decent friends with good character. i'm sure you gay people out there know what i mean.

we ended the night walking along Arab Street trying to make small talk and smoking. one smoked Viceroys, the other Marlboro Red, and another a pack of lights. as i puffed on my Consulates, i came to realize that sometimes colleagues will just remain as that, colleagues. no matter how much you may be helping them out at work, social mechanics just can't seem to pull things close together.

and that's a fact of life i guess i'll just have to live with.

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