Just Like Your Mama

Surely in their tempestuous teenage / tween years, it is every little girl's deepest nightmare to grow up to be exactly like her mother. Although most women would vociferously decry such a unfilial comment, I know that more than a few would consciously balk if told that they resemble their mothers. It takes time, age and experience to appreciate a mother's wise, womanly ways.

So what happens to gay boys? Que Sera, Sera but do we resemble our fathers or our mothers more? Quite hard to tell on my side.

Well you see, my maternal side is full of seriously anal-retentive, tight-assed neatniks. Brooms, dust cloths and vacuum cleaners are never far from hand and immaculate perfection is the essential goal of these squeaky clean scrubwomen :) Quarterly family reunions are spent spring cleaning over serious discussion over what natural ingredients goes into the best furniture polish and which store sells the cheapest dishwasher. Dust, cobwebs and cockroaches run silently screaming at the sight of these cleaning witches. Even the slightest speck of dust would seriously unhinge their sense of self - and since I've seen one of my Siamese cousins throw just such a hissy fit after finding a dust ball in her bedroom, I can confirm that it's hereditary.

Always prayed that the clean gene would skip a generation but I noticed my brother showing the tiniest signs of anal retentiveness years back ( when he alphabetically organized his books, arranged them in perfectly orderly stacks and colour-coded them according to year and subject ) and lost hope knowing it was practically inescapable. Still I imagined that I'd be able to suppress the gene since I'm the more scruffy tolerant sort. After all, I do get back on weekends to find my own home relatively awash with dust and cobwebs and it doesn't drive me to wail absurdly while flapping my hands helplessly from the balcony like Rochester's mad wife.

Well, okay I did it but it was only that first time.


The houseboy taking a break
Can't recall what happened afterward but I resurfaced a few hours later with my bones aching and literally covered in a grimy mixture of sweat, dirt and furniture polish. Unfortunately I didn't have a sexy half-naked houseboy on top of me.

Even when I became a doctor ( obviously the clean gene rearing its previously submissive head! ), I consciously forced myself not to turn into one of those superior obsessive-compulsive creatures with a Mr Monk fetish - a fate most of the nurses have unfortunately fallen prey to. Although I worked hard to remain aseptic when need be, I tried my best not to fuss over the little things like that impossibly minute cobweb dangling on the ceiling fans that would have the matrons and the sister getting their het up. Thankfully I have to say that I successfully ignored the blood spatter, the baby vomit and other secretory bodily fluids I better not name. Life would have been quite impossible otherwise.

Then I came upon Charming Calvin's Cosy Crib. Been a month since he moved in - yet the boxes are unpacked, the television cabinet woefully bereft and the walls scandalously bare naked. All that I could probably live with - despite the eye twitch I'm developing :) Then I came back early to his place today and decided to take a short nap before my hard-working man came back from work. Seriously domestic bliss, I know. Dropped my head on his pillow and looked up to see .... Charming Calvin's Creepy Cobweb Collection.

Bet the neighbours are still talking about the unearthly preternatural shrieks coming from that apartment upstairs.