Choked

There have been three new deposits to the apartment in the last two days. Three new men, three new boys deposited - one Czech and two Brasilians. And we are ten, now. Twenty legs pacing one dark wooden floor. Ten voices lamenting - in three languages and six dialects - the thick heat, the squalor, the price of rent, the dearth of castings, and above all else, the overcrowding. Ten minds filled with thought - or not - higher than God, lazily resigned, suspicious and afraid, proud and youthful, eagerly searching, adventurous and strange, hungry or starving...But I can't really say, can I? I can only count them, and there are ten. Only one is mine, but I can tell you that it gasps every minute for open, empty space.

In the room, Leonardo polutes my space with noise, Bruno with proximity, and both with their foreign language. Outside the room, Beau, Matej, Josef and David smoke into the space, so I can borrow none of that for my own. Robert had an accident playing soccer and dresses his wounds in the restrooms, leaving dirty bandages littered everywhere. The kitchen suffers from the abuse and neglect of my roommates. It's beyond my skillset to help the kitchen, so I avoid it. Eating is, consequently, quite a burdensome thing. Water leaks in the common restroom, and the tiled floor spends the majority of the week spored over with dark green mold. I can't even shower comfortably. And forget taking a bath, not that I would really relish having one in Singapore, anyway.

I miss hot baths. The curative properties of a piping hot bath, if you're of the sort who is disposed to liking them, are unmatched by anything else in this world. When I was younger, I would take one or two every day. At the ends of so many days, when the silt of defeat covered my skin and my heart and sat heavy on my mind, the clamorous roar of water pummeling into a deep basin of a tub was all I could ever find to ease me. And I would dissolve into it. First my mind, while I listened to the pounding water and removed my clothes. Then my skin, as I lowered myself in past the steam, past the lip of the tub, past the placid surface and all the way into the water, which aggressed over my body like fire at first. And then, rendered from my middle with a long sigh, all my sentience and consciousness would melt as well into the stasis cradling my being. Equilibrium at last...It's a kind of peace that bears you back into the dark ether as if you had never been born at all.

It's dark now. Saturday night, and through my window spill the sounds of Singapore -voices screaming, laughing, crying, faint music, giant leaves rustling in a hot breeze, a breeze which ripples the surface of the swimming pool below my room; I can hear the rippling water, too. A man calls to a taxi on the corner of Leonie Hill and River Valley. He is going into the night. A congested bus sputters a diesel chortle and disembarks. I am lying in my bed with my head propped up against a metal rail and my laptop in my lap. Outside my room, more voices - laughing, scheming up the night. Dishes clank loudly in the kitchen. Someone is preparing to eat. A brief silence. Leonardo clears his throat from across the room, though not to speak. A splash from the pool - I know who is swimming. All is relatively calm. This is a calm. One more chance to leave. Just get up now, run home the way you came and never look back. To familiar faces and arms that have held you...

Footsteps approaching the room with a clopping noise carry Bruno, wet with poolwater, back to his place, and he tells me the water was nice. "Iz cold in here," he says in his nasal, Brasilian accent. He gathers his shampoo and soap and walks into the bathroom to shower, and the space begins to move again. The currents of air softly churn. Leonardo opens his laptop and the currents intensify. Bruno returns, is dressing, is organizing the clutter around his bed, and it's already too late. Out of the dark and back into the night; the only way to cope is to realize - stuck between the past and the future is my body, paralyzed in Singapore. I cannot leave.

"What you want do tonight? Party?" Bruno asks. I cannot respond.

"Party!" Screams Leonardo.

I can't even breathe.