It’s scary when you realise how easily friends can be won or lost by a mere flick of the tongue. And no, I’m not only referring to cunnilingus.

Kim, an ex-colleague and good friend of mine, had lent me the movie Gran Torino, which I watched and utterly enjoyed. A part of me really aspired to one day be like Walt, the character Clint Eastwood played in the movie. In it he was a bitter old grump, a war veteran who doesn’t get along with anyone, and just says whatever the fuck he wants to say in reckless abandon. The first quarter of the movie kept me wondering what crawled up his ass and died.

Post movie damage
After watching the movie, I realised this about myself. I bottle up a lot of my feelings, and it festers and eats away at my insides. And then it occured to me, almost as if I just had an epiphany, but not quite.  “I should be more like Walt,” a voice spoke in my head.

I think it would be very liberating to exercise Walt’s level of free expression. Imagine the pressure release. The relief. Just that in itself would be enough to stave off cancer, ulcers and other malignancies, and probably tack on a few years to my life. Well… unless of course I am inflicted with the prematurity of getting shot, which was kinda what happened in the movie to Walt.

Being forward about my forwardness
Reflecting inward upon myself, I’ve come to realise that I’m actually more free with my comments than the average person, and would probably score an 8 if I were to rate my forwardness.

Well, ‘forwardness’ was not really the word I was looking for. But fuck it. My brain’s stuck. It’s my blog. And I’ll say what I want to say.

The reason why I felt ‘forwardness’ was the wrong word is because I tend to sugar coat things a lot, which as you can see, is not a very forward thing, an anti-thesis almost. This happens especially when I’m making a negative reveal to the person, to dampen the blow. I guess what I’m trying to say is,  if shit needs to be said, I’ll say it, but in a nice way.

Struck by a bolt of nothing
Will digress for bit… as a weirdity just entered my mind with regards to the topic of ‘anti-thesis’, which from my understanding of the word refers to two opposites, as in hot and cold, black and white. Isn’t it odd that where speaking your mind is concerned, to be sharp and to be blunt are so closely paralleled?

Being Walt
The beauty of being Walt is that he is not burdened by the tedium of having to choose the right words, and just says the first thing that enters his mind. The ability to convey things as they are just seems so emancipatory, and feels like it would require a whole lot less effort than playing political footsie.

When I think of political correctness, the scene that pops into my head is that of a boxer dancing in circles around his opponent, a boxer who so badly wants to land a punch but is wrought with timidity, bound by the stranglehold of self doubt, one who weighs the consequences of his actions a little too much to be committal.

I’m in no way advocating political incorrectness. I just sometimes marvel at the amount of energy we exhaust trying not to say the things we want to say.

Being Me
Being upfront with my remarks has been a personal trait/flaw I’ve carried since my youth. It has won me the friends I carry today, a handful of whom I regard as my very best. Sadly, it is that same forwardness that has made me my biggest enemies, possibly from their failure to recognise that my remarks are made with their interests at heart, not mine. Perhaps the failure was my own for not being eloquent enough in my communication. And perhaps, being human, I really was being a jerk, and it was probably smart of them to banish me from their lives.

I think I wear my heart on my sleeve. Well, I guess just me writing this post for the whole world to see is testament to that. The folly of wearing your heart on your sleeve is that people have access to that inner you, and you leave yourself vulnerable to those you surround yourself with, not all of whom have your welfare in mind.

I’ve had my heart broken many times, and each time I’ve told myself that I should peripherise myself with walls of some sort, or at least be on high alert when I’m in unfamiliar company. But somehow, I feel that you lose your genuiness once you choose to be guarded, and besides, it is normally the ones you have allowed within your walls who will most severely hurt you.

To keep a watchful eye on those closest to me just doesn’t feel quite right. Personally, I think getting hurt is a part of life, and you just need to deal with the body blows when they land. And if someone you trust betrays you, and you find yourself beyond a threshold of hurt you can tolerate, you can always turn to asphyxiation during masturbation, and hope you slip up.

Being nice
Forwardness should not only be confined to criticism. One can be forward with their praise as well. Often, we are quick to criticise, and slow to praise. And over time we become so used to criticising that it becomes awkward to drop a nice word or two to a person you care about… or even a stranger.

Praise, however, sometimes needs to be meted out cautiously, especially to the opposite sex, or it maybe construed as flirting. A girl I knew, who for all my years of knowing her had only wore pants, chose to one day wear a skirt. I thought she had really nice legs and I told her so. Although we’d always been real buddy with each other, things were never quite right since that day. (Maybe I should have vacuumed my drool to the back of my throat before speaking, rather than mid-sentence.)

A weekend ago at the mall, Sophie was with Oliver, up at a pet store that was accessible only by stairs, and I was put in charge of watching the stroller. A stranger,  a girl in her mid-to-late 20s, came over to tell me that she really enjoyed watching my interactions with my son.

I was taken by surprise and didn’t really know how to respond to that comment. I think I replied “Well, thank you.”

She ended our brief encounter with “I just thought you should know,” and she walked away.

This was not the first time I’ve had something like that happen to me, and this is what I’ve learned from these delightful random occurrences. You never, ever forget them. You carry them close to your person, as you would little gems in a velvet pouch.

It always feels nice to deposit little gems into other people’s pouch. And I’ve often told people that it makes my day making theirs. But there are days when you just feel you have no more to give, and those days can even stretch for months. Those are often the days when Sophie would ask me, “What’s wrong?” and I’d just write it off as being stuck in a blah mood.

Back in the now
I sit here hurt as I write this. Stuck in one of my blah days. I’ve often wondered if I should retract my heart from my sleeve, back into the safe confines of my chest where God intended it to be in the first place. (A deep heaviness set on me as I completed the last sentence. It just had ‘giving up’ written all over it.)

“ What would Walt do? What would that tough son of a bitch say?” I’m smiling even before knowing the answer to that question.

Well, he’d probably say to me, “Stop being such a sissy and suck it up you pussy.” And he’d snarl.

Ha, ha. Maybe I’ll just be me a little bit longer.

Although it is really liberating to speak one’s mind, I think many still choose abstinence over reprieve. And they allow an ever growing compilation of regrets to callus within them, unaware that relief lies a flick of the tongue away, and if words fail them, maybe even at their fingertips.

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