Ever woke up one morning and realised you had absolutely nothing to do?

Well, in my case yesterday, not till lunch anyway. I had promised to lunch with Manuel after his exam, but that was hours away. The morn was cool and the skies were grey and the Universe was telling me to go right back to my ever so inviting bed.

I said NO.

What with five entire days wasted and lost forever last week, five days I will never get back, I wasn’t about to let another moment of my life go by like that. If nothing else good came out of last week, at least now I feel an urgent, ever-present desire to LIVE, stronger and truer than anything I’ve felt before. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll lose myself again but that only pushes me harder to go forward. Even if the road does not promise to be easier, anything is better than being stuck in the goddamned hole I’ve been in all this while.

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So, I got up, had breakfast (a sure sign I’m reverting to some kind of normal; there used to be days past when I’ll be lucky to get up in time for lunch, and then only just) and proceeded to give my room a little spring cleaning, throwing out the junk, the nasty, useless bits that I won’t allow in my life anymore. Neat.

At Manuel’s, I cooked lunch for four; we had the Mikes along for a culinary misadventure. I can’t seem to do right in Manuel’s kitchen. Firstly, it took way longer than it should have, which is always a Bad sign that something went wrong. Then, halfway through the cooking, I told the guys I wasn’t making noodles in egg and onion soup anymore. They asked me what I was gonna cook then.

“Oh, it has the same ingredients that went in. I’ll just hafta wait and see what turns out in the end before I know what to call it.”

That, my good readers, is a Worse sign that something went wrong. What, I hear you asking in your delightfully querulous tones, is the Worst sign?

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Well, in the end, when I just couldn’t cook the damn thing no more, I served it up with most of the soup missing (it decided it had enough of all the nonsense and walked out the door, taking most of the onions with it) and noodles the consistency of noodles that had been cooked for a day or two too long, plus grated cheese all over what must had been, in a previous life, a decent Chinese dish that would have nothing to do with fermented dairy products.

And, to top it off, I called it Kenny’s Miracle.

(Trust me, it WAS a miracle we got to eat at all. At the very least, I got to stop cooking, which, in my book, is very much a miracle of sorts.)

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Anyway, we finally got down to eating, if only because we were more famished than reluctant, and there I was surfing a site that was linked from Neil Gaiman’s Journal with pictures of clocks and pretty much nothing else.

So, when Blue asked me “What does the clock say?”, I naturally went into an extremely informative if somewhat mind-numbing tirade on how the site was an original idea stolen during a reading of Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe’s A Walking Tour of the Shambles. An ardent fan heard a fictional URL Neil used in the book and went right out and immediately registered the delicious http://www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com. That happened to be the site I was currently perusing.

And, erm, the clocks don’t say much but they do tell the time, apparently.

Blue, who had this spaced-out look on his face all the while I was yammering away like a hyena, slowly repeated his question. “What does the clock say?”

It was then that I had this shadow of a notion that he actually, merely, wanted to know the time.

Which left me no choice but to ignore him. (Of course, two minutes later, I turned around and finally told him the time, as if it was only the most normal, random thing an idiot could do.)

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I felt superb, needless to say.

After this remarkable lunch, of which I was the only one to finish (if only out of self-obligation and professional pride), Mike went upstairs to clear out his room before leaving and Blue went to the university to have a pleasant argument with German bureaucracy.

Before he left though, Blue just had to mention that I finally looked like an Asian thug. All I was wearing was my good ol’ Tori Amos (SLG 2001) beanie, a loose tee and grubby, baggy pants that, in better days, believed itself to be a dark shade of the colour blue. Eh, it was comfortable.

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The rest of the afternoon was spent with Manuel in his room, in a dreamy spate of emails and fresh coffee. The Mikes reappeared soon enough, with Erich in tow, and together we went up to Mike’s room to scavenge what was left.

While we were ravaging his cupboards, Mike took out this tube of hair gel and got everyone to grease down their hair. Persuasion for me took the form of him squeezing the stuff onto my head while I was still foolishly refusing. Ah well. We looked dirty and horribly pleased with ourselves. What do you expect, with five guys playing around, lubricating themselves with gel?

Nothing left to do then but to head off to the Augustiner bierkeller for dinner with some fine folks. The waitress we had was one cool lady; a no-nonsense, rambunctious little thing, she was nice enough to remove a reservation to give us a table. In short order, Hadi, Maran, Baby, Maria and a friend of hers (a real biker chick, WOO-HOO!) joined us.

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Mike hit on this brilliant idea of passing around the Augustiner coaster (one of the nicest, actually) for everyone to sign. Now, faithful followers of this jaunty journal, yours truly was extremely honoured to be asked, not to sign, but to draw instead, and I got a whole side of the coaster to myself. Alright! Yeah, yeah, settle down. That was the good part.

The flipside was what I had to draw. Subjects so horribly disgusting, depraved and sick that I can’t even begin to describe them. Which, I suppose, was why I was asked to draw them instead. No, seriously though, he really demanded a lot from me. The last drawing alone was a minor miracle: it advertised a variety of body parts that would have taken an Indian yogi to exhibit together in the same frame. Or a very flexible Asian schoolgirl with pony-tails. Uh-hum.

This, plus the half-ton of grease in my hair, made me feel so dirty. Tolis took a long look at my drawings (as did everyone else, trust me, don’t let those dirty bastards tell you any different), then turned to me and said, “You are so GOOD.”

“No,” I replied, “I am so BAD.” Pained, guilty snickers all around. Oh boy. Well, my amoral audience, should you wish to view this, the coaster version of Playboy magazine, have no fear, Mssr. Stone will be sending us a copy when he’s done scanning it and I’ll post it up here, and that’s a promise. [Ed. The infamous coaster was scanned and emailed to us all, see it below in its nefarious glory, uhm.]

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The bierkeller people finally threw us out into the night, and Biker Girl was nice enough to offer Mike a ride. Maria handed him her helmet, closed it up real tight and we all laughed. He looked so mean, oh yeah! I quipped that this was gonna be the only time he’d ever be shut up so we better enjoy it while it lasted.

Of course, Mike being Mike, he had to try to manhandle Biker Girl and getting himself in front. He was forced to go back to being pillion when we surrounded the bike and wouldn’t let him go till he exchanged positions. (Hey, this was how much we trusted the guy…)

The fact he couldn’t start the bike contributed somewhat. When Biker Girl finally did it, he observed, “Huh, guess ya gotta have STRENGTH to start the thing.” Damn right.

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As he flew away into the streets (people, beware!) we figured out who was gonna send him off the next day. The task fell to Maria, Tolis and Blue. The rest of us had stuff to do, unfortunately, so we said our goodbyes last night.

I had to do it between the Giselastrasse and Münchener Freiheit stops, which wasn’t much time, but just in case, you didn’t get it the first time, Mikey, here it is again:

Remember how you said you like one line from the story I wrote Sarah? How the hotel had rooms that were always occupied, always empty. Well, I never know what occupies your mind (and I think I’m better off for not knowing) but I know that room in your chest, that heart of hearts, is never empty.

Here’s to you, bud.

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Copyright © 2002 Kenny Mah Ying Fye.