Je T'aime Peintre

Chapter One - My First Love

"There's no love like the first." - quoted my favorite author, Nicholas Sparks. And mine was exploratory, filled with unanticipated excitement and truly overwhelming... It was not a perfect love relationship like those fairy tales with an everlasting ending, nonetheless I was contented it happened. There were flaws as time passed by, but I chose to remember the pleasant moments and learnt from the bad ones. I still missed it.

Though my true love encounter arrived only when I was twenty years old, Bob and I sustained our romantic relationship for a remarkable seven years with some "time-offs" in between, and we were torn apart half the time when we dated because he was pursuing his under and post graduate studies in the United Kingdom. It was a real struggle for me, with a lot of emotional imbalance and wild thoughts of what might be happening at the other part of the world. Those friend's experiences and gossips, celebrity news, movies and dramas with betrayal content made it worst. Albeit it was a turbulent and rocky ride, it brought back a lot of sweet memories and priceless experiences. At that stage, it was the purpose in life.

I knew Bob from a local polytechnic when we were seventeen years old. We were schoolmates from the same faculty and had many common friends because we were both sociable, but just individually sociable. Both of us were not close, and we hardly hang out, apart from those times we bumped into each other on the walkway of the lecture halls in between lessons. Those were the times where we smiled shyly and proceeded to go where we were supposed to, with an elevated heartbeat.

Bob played golf hence explained his bronzy tanned skin, had a midsize body frame and was about five feet and eight inches tall. I must admit that he had an above average look. About a month after I started school, I walked passed him outside a lecture theatre during his class break. That was the first time our eyes met. He was chatting happily with his group of classmates and I thought, "Wow, he must be a fun-loving guy!". I was captivated by his youthful look, good complexion, sharply pointed nose and deep set eyes. Bob had the distinct features of a South East Asian and many thought he was a Filipino, despite him being born and breed in Singapore.

Few months later, everyone in school was more or less settled down in the new environment and Bob and me got slightly closer due to the common friends that we were mixing with. Sometimes, we would attend the same lectures, be in the same chat groups during class breaks, shared a table over lunch breaks or hang around the same study corner after school. However, there was always an awkward gap between us. Peeping at him from a distance had become my favorite passing time. In one of my chit-chat sessions with the girls, I heard that Bob was courting one of his classmates. I also saw them studying in the library together quite frequently. Just the two of them. With that disappointment, I diverted my focus away from him. Anyhow it was a pure infatuation from my side.

There were a few times when we took the same bus ride home coincidentally but since it was usually crowded, we hardly speak to each other. Moreover, we were always with our own friends so we only nodded. Time flew by and school work started to get much tougher when my final year started. I was under a lot of stresses and had to put all my concentration at the right place until one evening, the phone at home rang when I was in the shower.

"Hello, who are you looking for?" asked my mom, in mandarin. "OK, hold one please." She walked to the outside of the bathroom and passed me the cordless phone while I was wet and naked. I quickly wiped my hand with a towel and answered it.

"Hello Nicole, this is Bob. How are you?". I was dumbfounded.

"Oh Bob, you caught me at the wrong time... I am in the shower, may I call you back?"

The recollection was so vivid. After I hang up the call, I realized that I did not have Bob's telephone number... That was the era without a caller ID, but I had the "Call Back" function which I could dial for the last caller who rang in, so I managed without any problem. Since then, we chatted for long hours on the phone in the wee hours and also went out for movie and dinner dates thereafter. We spent more and more time together in school than before, during lunches and met in the study corner after school. We took the same bus home, shared the same music on the ipod and munched the same packet of chips we both loved. Many months passed by and I was enjoying it, and I knew it was not pure infatuation from my side anymore.

One evening in February, we went to the Hong Bao festival by the bay. It was an annual event whereby tourists and locals came by to experience the local culture and ambience of the Lunar Chinese New Year. Colorful lightings were lined up by the bay filled with vibrant stalls, selling traditional decorations and Chinese-styled snacks and beverages. As expected, the night was very warm and extremely crowded with people from different nationals, races and ages. It was almost non-passable. Bob held my hand to lead me through the crowd, but he did not it let go even when we passed through it. I was delighted when he made our fingers crossed, even though I anticipated it to happen but perhaps not now, and not under such circumstances. It was supposed to happen more romantically, as I envisioned, when we strolled along the beach on a breezy day with glazing stars above us...

It was midnight when Bob sent me home in his car. His father bought him a used car few months ago during this birthday because he wanted Bob to spend more time on his final year than to waste precious time taking the public transport. When we reached the car park, Bob asked if we could chat longer, I nodded and we walked to a park near the car park.

The night was tranquil and the sky was beautifully filled with stars sparkling brightly above us and all of a sudden, he kissed my lips in a rush and ran towards his car. He left me in complete shock! As I watched him ran in speed, I found out that there was a car park warden making his rounds and I know Bob did not leave a parking coupon just now when we left the car. I ran after Bob swiftly and we drove off to another car park few streets away. There, we had our first passionate and wet kiss in the car, not knowing how to wriggle our tongues but that kiss marked the beginning of our relationship that lasted for seven years. It was filled with love, passion, fights, arguments, loneliness and at some point, misery...

The next morning, I woke up smiling and my head was spinning with distinct images of last evening. My heart raced fast when I thought of us holding hands in the crowd, hugging warmly and the lovely kisses we planted in the car. We spoke like lovebirds on the phone the moment we woke up, met for lunch in town and watched a movie too. It was funny how we joked about being messy and slimy on our first kiss. It was not romantic at all. Coincidentally, it was the first relationship for the both of us. Bob did not ask me to be his girlfriend officially but we naturally became an item after the previous night, a "wet" one indeed.

Bob came from a single parent family. His dad had a family of his own, with two children, a girl and a boy but both were younger than Bob. I heard that his parents had a very tough relationship that did not result in a happy ending. They were never married because of family disapproval as Bob's father came from a well-to-do family but not his mom. I never knew such discrimination still happen but apparently it did.

Bob stayed with his mum and a younger brother who disliked going to school, in a government sponsored flat that came with three bedrooms. On the contrary, Bob took studies seriously and it played an important part in his growing up stage. Even though he was not the kind of intelligent student, he strived very hard as he wanted to make his single-parent mother proud.

When we started seeing each other, we were twenty years old. We spent a lot of time in his house because going to the movies and shopping malls started to get purposeless. Plus the high temperature and humidity out in Singapore, it was wiser to stay indoor. After all, it was also expensive for us to dine out and we were still in school. Hence we preferred to cuddle and watch tv programs at home while we savored delicious meals prepared by his mom. She was a very great cook and she would our favorite dishes every time we dined in and there will never be leftovers.

Every month, I would handmade "monthniversary" cards for Bob. Because I loved handicrafts and had patience for that, I would prepare something for my special love each month. Some of the handicrafts included simple cards, crossed stitched pictures and dried flowers in a box. They were time consuming but it surely brought back fond memories that never fade.