Dad, I want to become a stripper.

See, the thing was, I have a deeper relationship with my dad, where I can ask him a question and he would actually take the time to ponder over my questions and answer them, even though they were downright ridiculous. Take my statement where I told him, somewhere during my late teens (and this was when all hopes of me ever becoming a vampire had gone out the window and I had discovered the joy that was Suntanning Within An Inch Of My Life), that I aspired to be a stripper when I grow up. Obviously, I was having a laugh. Obviously, I was only trying to get a reaction out of him and wonder if somewhere deep inside that calm, collected man there was a monster of a father who would belt me for saying such things. It had seemed unfair that my mother was the psychopath that she was, with the love of bashing the kids with anything within reach, from a manky dishcloth to 4-inch pumps. But what my father had said was, 'Are you certain of this? Think about it, Girl. It's not an easy market to get into. If you had not messed about with your college education, you would have actually made something out of yourself. But no, you cannot do that. However lucrative the rewards are.' I come from an Asian country, an Asian household where we usually get called by our gender. Girl for myself, Boy for my brother and Little Girl for the house cat. See, if I had asked my mother if I could become a stripper she would have said, 'WHY are you doing this to me, Insert Full Name As Per Birth Cert? What am I going to tell my brothers? What will the relatives say? Where have I gone wrong with you?'. Because everything is a personal attack to her. I had not aspired to become a stripper because I loved stripping and swashing about my flabby bits to her. I had wanted to do so just to make her a laughing stock. Still, I do say such things just to wind her up and have a giggle about it with my dad afterwards. I have told my dad, giggling, 'You poor sod, being married to that. What the fuck was going through your mind? Bet you regret making that choice based on how her legs went up to her armpits and she was so fair she glowed in the dark, didn't you? Because look at her now. On the brink of menopause, frizzy, angry and ever so vulgar.'. To that my dad always rolled his eyes and said something along the lines of She is your mother and you are going to turn into that sooner if not later and I will live by my mistakes. I love my father. I can talk about aliens and wonder with him if we actually came from another planet. Usually, when my mom walked into the room, he'd say 'But no. We are all god's creatures. We came from the earth like the prophets said.' and I'd nod, dutifully, because Mom Is In The Room and her fragile mind cannot handle that God did not paint the skies. Or something.

I'm being mean, aren't I? I love my mother to bits. She's just a bit loopy at the best of times and angry the rest of it. My mother gives the best cuddles, the best kisses, cooks the best dishes and she removes the toughest of stains. My dad just lets me hang on to an idea and run away with it until the moment comes when I would collide with my mother and I'd stop.  

I am 25 and I STILL do not know what I want to be when I grow up, when growing up eventually takes place.    I had wanted to become a journalist at one point but that was dashed when my Mom asked me, 'What the hell are you going to write about then? The rubbish that was in your diary?'. Yes, Mother, because if you work with The Straits Times, you can actually begin an article with Dear Diary, I hate my mother so, can I push her off the stairs? when the more important news would be say, the Wall Street crashing. But no, my diary contents would interest the residents of Singapore more. She read my diary and I never lived it down, you know. Of all pages that she could be fixated on, it was that one that began with me wanting to push her off the stairs. Of course, if I was her, I'd be horrified as well and I'd make sure I had locked my teenage self in the room for all of eternity for my own self-preservation. But if I had remembered correctly, that happened because I had come home from a date with a massive love bite and she had gone on and on and fucking on for hours about what sort of a prostitute I had turned into. I was starting to wonder then if I should charge the boys that had fiddled with my tits. So I had said to her that I was not a prostitute because I had not charged them a single cent and then she called me A Slag and it was around then I had thought that she must be very miserable with her life and I should just push her off so that she can go off screaming Into The Light. I was lucky if I could land a date a month and she was screaming about how she had raised a slut and I was feeling a bit miffed. Just one fucking date where I had let a blooming boy suck the bejesus out of my neck. Was she not worried that I might die of internal bleeding or something? 

Oh, Mother. 

I should re-name my blog to Oh, Mother. 

But then... Oh hi, Vagina! seems apt. For now.