if the clouds know

drove home from town earlier. parked my car. about to get out. and this song played - "如果雲知道" ru guo yun zhi dao by valen hsu (許茹芸). i froze.

this was one of the few songs that i had memorized in my very old self-recorded cassette back in sep 1996. i had listened to the cassette until it failed me and had thrown it away years ago. and here it was, the song again. as it played on, i was again 30. just coming out. for that moment, i felt chong sitting beside me. i was wearing my specially bought bright orange tight tee shirt and my loose jeans again. i was wearing the gap grass fragrance that chong gave me after his canada trip late 1996. i could almost touch, smell, see, hear, experience chong all over again.

this song had come to represent my first crush, my coming out process, my first rejection, all rolled into one. i had lost sense of what's real and what's unreal. all the time spent driving alone along the highway; or parked at hdb car parks; or walking aimlessly at east coast; or sitting at the westin hotel lounge all curled up and crying my heart out. shamelessly. everything came crashing back. those were the difficult period. involuntarily, the tears in my eyes swelled again. for that moment, how i wished chong was there, hugging me tightly.

all too soon, the song ended... and i realized how stupid i must have looked. still sitting in my car. in my condo car park. eyes all wet.

such memories.

if only the cloud knows.