Visiting Michael (1)

The adjective ‘best’ signifies that it’s the ‘most favourable’, of the ‘highest quality’, ‘most excellent’, or have the ‘highest standing’, thus ‘best friend’ would mean, in the simplest term, the ‘closest or most favoured friend’.

In other words, one can have only one best friend.

But it's fairly difficult to identify who was one's best friend in one's younger days, because more likely than not, one would have a best friend at school and then another one in the neighbourhood or in a circle of friends outside school but not from one’s kampong (village).

It’s not unusual that in our younger days, depending on where we were (at school or back in the kampong), we would be moving from one circle of friends to another, each sometimes totally alien from the other.

Sometimes, when one was lucky (and life simpler), it could well be the same guy in the various circles of friends.

In those days, I didn't extend my school social circle into my private life for the reason they were vastly different, comprising friends from different segments of society and activities.

In school I was in a class which had scions of very well to do Penang families, the crème de la crème of the Chinese community on the Island. A number of us (about a fourth of the school’s top class) were from the other end of society, where most of us dwelled in shacks dispersed among the shanty towns of Ayer Itam, the low cost housing in Rifle Range flats and the slums of the Weld Quay district, etc.

Our better-off classmates resided in mansions located in the rich well-manicured green urban areas like Jesselton Garden, Scotland Road, Ayer Rajah Road, or along Peel Avenue, etc, where beautiful leafy angsanas, flame of the forests or majestic palms lined the quiet roads since British colonial days, with some of these exclusive avenues ending in secluded cul de sac.

Then, some of my schoolmates were from middle class residential areas in between these two extremes of economically positioned schoolchildren.

Michael was my best friend in school - we sat together only in the last two years of our schooling which meant that we became good pals at a crucial stage of our mischievous teens. Bad news ;-)

He came from a reasonable well to do middle class family. The only boy in his family, he was pampered left and right by his parents and sisters. He was a very handsome devil, and extremely popular with girls.

On top of looks and ample supply of pocket money, he had an additional and most wondrous possession - a scooter! And his very own too!

It was just ... well, in those days we didn't call it cool ... bloody marvellous. Needless to say, as a teenage boy I was green with envy, though Michael being the generous bloke he was, allowed me to ride on it as the driver even when I didn’t yet have a licence – no money to get one, and perhaps I was still underage … and somehow we always managed to stay one step ahead of the cops, though there were a couple of close calls.

Each weekend we would, generally without fail, attend the Saturday matinee, not so much for the movie but more because it was then the 'in' thing for teenagers – mind you, we hadn’t gotten around to using words like ‘in’ thing yet.

The Saturday matinee and (for the adults) Saturday midnight show had cult followings. Teenagers attended the former perhaps to meet up with teenage girls or some pals, and even make new friends (hopefully girls). Besides, the fees for the matinee specially catered for teenagers.

Michael and I were no different from other teenagers, though for me personally I had a small but significant problem. I had to scrape together by each Saturday enough money to buy the matinee ticket and a few extra coins for drinks, and even a small bowl of Penang laksa or koay teow t’ng.

Michael was a very generous friend and had often offered to foot my part of the bill, but I was too embarrassed and shy to accept his kind considerate gesture, so I earned a few odd sen here and there during the week, especially on Sunday.

I ran errands for our local grocery shop, assisted another friend with his hawker business, and was odd job boy for one of the village’s several gambling dens, buying takeaway food (ta pau hawker food), cigarettes and whatever I was ordered to purchase.

All were of course part time jobs. The tips varied, and when an uncle or auntie was winning, he/she would slip me a nice ringgit. Woohoo!

On Saturdays my best mate and I would meet up at the selected cinema, purchased our tickets and then adjoined to a kopitiam for a drink of kopi-O-peng, char koay teow, koay teow t’ng or laksa, before we joined the movie crowd. We would be looking for friends or hoping to make new ones.

There were a few (very rare) occasions when we met up with a hostile mob, either going for the same group of sweeties or one that Michael (who was a bit of a mischievous bloke) had previously offended. But we managed to survive such encounters.

After the matinee, Michael with me riding pillion would zoom off to his favourite music shop where without fail he would purchase his favourite tapes (later CDs) for that week.

He would ask for my opinion as to which would add better to his considerable collection, as if I was an expert. I am not sure whether it was Michael’s way of being inclusive or he really needed my advice. Well, as his best friend, I gave him my best shot.

I would be a liar if I don’t admit I envied his financial standing, especially when he opened his wallet to extract the necessary ringgit to pay for the tapes/CDs. But strangely I wasn’t driven to say silly things like “One day I’ll have that sort of money as well.” I suppose I was pretty relaxed or just plain unambitious – I think the term applicable then would be ‘pretty laid back’ ;-).

Because we lived in different areas, immediately after the music shop, we would part company and go our separate ways, at least until Monday when we resumed class. He would see me off at the bus stop before he rode off.

However, there came that one occasion, after he purchased a particular special CD which he loved and was eagerly looking forward to playing same, that he insisted I went along with him to his home to listen to the music together.

I lived in Ayer Itam while Michael lived in the further reaches of Fettes Park.

To describe our relative locations, say with a mud map, try and visualize the letter ‘V’, one that’s open very wide.

Where the V’s two slanting strokes meet at the bottom would be Penang Road/Prangin Road, the heart of Georgetown where most of the major cinemas were in those days. Ayer Itam is at the top or beginning of the letter’s left stroke while, as you would guess by now, Fettes Park is at the other extremity.

Yes, we weren’t exactly neighbours, indeed in more than one sense of the word.

Do you know what was the first thing that popped into my mind, and forced me to think very carefully before I mumbled an ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ to his invitation?

I suppose you would never ever be able to guess correctly ;-) and I don’t blame you.

I was wondering whether I had the fare for the return journey because I didn’t expect Michael to take me home or to drop me back at Prangin Road. Yes, ‘twas just a simple matter of the extra bus fare for one trip from Fettes Park back to Prangin Road.

So, if I accepted Michael’s offer to visit his house, I had to plan on taking the bus from his place to Prangin Road, back to where I was then, in position to catch the bus back to Ayer Itam, because even if Michael were to offer to take me home on his bike or to drop me off at Prangin Road, I definitely wouldn’t have accepted his offer. It wouldn't be fair to him.

OK, I had the fare from Prangin Road to Ayer Itam, but did I have enough from Fettes Park to Prangin Road? I didn’t even know how much the fare would be – though I had taken that bus service a couple of times those were rare and isolated occasions, hence I wasn’t familiar with the fare nor its schedule.

Very furtively I checked what were in my pockets, specifically feeling for and totalling the few coins I possessed to assess whether I could chance such a trip. The game of gues-timating the required minimum amount was made more difficult by my embarrassment in asking Michael about the nature of the fare from his place to town, thus revealing the cause of my hesitation.

Apart from my embarrassment I doubted he would know as he wouldn’t have needed to travel by bus, using either his own motorbike or be chauffeured around by one of his sisters on a car his dad bought for their use. Secondly, he would then have insisted on dropping me back at my place, and I was too proud to impose on my mate.

Or worse, offered me the fare - I would have died of unmitigated shame!

After the furtive prospecting, I reckoned I might just have the bare minimum required, but nonetheless I worked out a contingency plan. The total I had would ensure I would be able to reach Prangin Road, but after that fare, would the remainder be sufficient to take me all the way back to Ayer Itam?

If not, I decided I would go as far as possible towards Ayer Itam as the rest of my money would take me, before disembarking to walk the rest of the way home – that shouldn’t be too bad, and more importantly, a final resort that wouldn’t be known to Michael (I felt my face flushing slightly at that very embarrassing thought).

But a drastic thought then hit me – unlike Nancy Sinatra's, my shoes weren’t made for walking.

I had a pair of (what I termed silently to myself) ‘charity shoes’, given to me by a distant uncle. They were used but good quality shoes, though 2 sizes too big for me (I padded it up with old newspapers to make them fit) but really, for a teenager they were real daggy stuff (chin chnea lau beh one), not ‘cool’ or appropriate for a schoolboy like me.

But even more terrible than fashion, because they weren’t of the correct size, they rubbed abrasively against my heel. Short strolls were okay but long walks would be murderous to my feet.

Additionally, they were studded and made those telltale ‘adult’ clip-clop sounds as I strolled along, much as I tried my best to be like a ninja crossing the nightingale floor in a Japanese daimyou’s castle.

Man, I sure as hell didn’t want to be walking along Ayer Itam Road sounding like a Nazi SS sturmtrooper or a shoed horse.

I could of course fall back on a contingency to the contingency plan, namely remove the shoes if I were to sense blisters forming and walk barefooted as all kampong boys in my days were capable of doing.

But alas, I decided it was all too complicated and lied to Michael I couldn’t join him because I had work waiting for me at home.

Now, Michael wasn’t a bloke who would take ‘no’ as an answer when he was quite convinced I was not being fair dinkum with him. He wasn’t quite sure what raced through my head (how could he when he didn’t have my ‘problems’) but somehow he knew I wasn’t telling him the truth.

So he threatened me in a way that, as adults today we would both undoubtedly laugh at as silly or childish, but in those wonderful teenage years long long ago, which meant the world to us. He said: “kaytee, we are best friends, aren’t we? Or are we? If you don’t come, that means you don’t consider me as your best buddy!”

Oh, such intimidating threats! I succumbed to his wishes. I got on to the pillion seat reluctantly.

To be continued ……..