I would never have known if not for a chance glimpse into a Taiwanese fashion magazine. Fashion and women magazines are ranked among the guilty pleasures of my life, because such magazines are far too frivolous and are built upon the premise of enticing the reader to consume far too much to be good for themselves. I should know when to stop reading them. I spend beyond my means, which is a sure sign of a addict to material consumption.

Speaking of frivolity and other trivial things, I wish I was still young enough to carry off those rather passe Japanese ultra long baggy white school socks that were all the rage when I was sixteen. I saw a pair the other day that was about thirty centimetres longer than my legs and meant to bunch up over a pair of patent loafers, or mary-janes. I gushed over them and bemoaned the fact that I was far too old to wear them at all. Jingle just giggled at me and my antics in the shop.

What a giddy-puss.

***

I have developed an aversion to tall, reed-slim Chinese girls with long straight (rebonded) black hair. It is partially due to the envy these girls inspire in me. If they are the Xi Shi and Mei Fei of the four legendary Chinese beauties, I will be the fat Yang Gui Fei.

But the dominant reason these days is because the Beau likes girls who are above 1.6m and weigh about 5 kg lighter than I am.

He calls me shallow and superficial when I point this out.

I guess I am. But sometimes you can't help wondering why when he points out the girls he finds attractive, the uniting factor is that they are tall and slim. Maybe I look slim to him. I don't know.

I have seen his ex-girlfriends. I will probably collapse and die if I am ever able to look as thin as they are.

Oh, and he jiggles my biceps and triceps all the time, and jests that it makes him hungry just to look at all that meat. The only consolation I have is that although they are meaty, they don't jiggle much. They are solid, albeit, underused muscles, not fat.

I feel like I am seven again and being teased by my uncle for being chubby. I can feel my cheeks redden from his pinches all over again.

***

I think I am addicted to the rush injected by unrequited love. Something about emotional pain entices me to live. If not, I seem to fade in inches. Now, I feel detached, remote, a dying fish on a hook, flopping around only because every other dying fish around me is fighting to live, and losing the battle.