Home Alone

Two topics dominated our lives over dinner on Friday night.

One of which is quite depressing.

"Try, try, try! I want to see!" Stanley insisted as he shoved his iPhone in front of Carl's face.

"I don't want to look old!" Carl said with a pout, and looked at me for help.

The latest fad that's got quite a number of my friends talking (and worrying) recently is none other than Face App, which can, among other functions, make a person look old. Realistically old.

Why people want to do that is beyond me.

All you need to do is to take a selfie, choose that setting and voila, you'll get a peek into the future and see how you look when you're 600 years old.

And Stanley had been very fixated with that app, even taking the liberty of imposing his unhealthy obsession on us, by posting a very disturbing photo of his aged self in our group chat.

"You look like a dried mummy," I typed, commenting on Stanley's digitised skin, which looked leathery and wrinkled.

"?!" Carl typed.

"Look at how you've allowed your iPhone to take charge of your life," I wrote.

Frankly, it's very depressing to see how your friends could potentially age.

And according to that app, Carl would have droopy cheeks and eye lids (which prompted our dense friend to worry over his oversized biceps and chest muscles).

I on the other hand, will have mottled skin as dry and crinkly as a preserved seahorse and a droopy right eyelid.

The topic of Face App surfaced again last evening during our steamboat dinner at Tanyoto, where Stanley merrily went around the table, insisting that all of us had our headshot taken again, just so that we could see different variations of our aged selves in years to come.

The cheeky Stanley even managed to cajole a very giggly Malaysian waitress who gamely did so.

After she saw how old she could potentially look, she gasped and stopped coming to our table to top up soup or take additional orders for the rest of the evening.

"Poor girl, she looks like a zombie now. Look what you've done Stan," I chided.

"Snow White needs to know that she can't remain fair and fresh faced, and virginal forever," replied Stanley, ageing evil queen.

The other topic that dominated our dinner topic that night - which could also be potentially depressing, depending on how you look at it - was living alone.

"All my adult life, I'd been fantasising about living alone," Stanley declared.

"All your adult life, you'd been fantasising, full stop," I said.

"I think you don't want to live alone. You just want to live away from your mum," Carl pointed out, which won praise from the table for being so on point that evening.

"My kaypoh mother wants to know everything about my life," Stanley complained. "She loves sneaking into my room when I'm not home and on the pretext of helping me pack my room, takes the opportunity to probe into my stuff," he complained.

"I can see whose genes you inherited," I replied with a raised eyebrow.

"Eew, stop it, Adam. Now you're putting disturbing images of my mum probing. That's even worse than all the Face App photos!"

A decade ago, Stanley suggested that Carl and I invested in an apartment so that the three of us could all live happily ever after.

The logic behind his thinking is that boyfriends can never be trusted, and we need to help one another change diapers when we're old.

Neither Carl nor I bought the idea or any apartment, for that matter.

It would be crazy to live together because we would end up killing Stanley (I suspect I would have to do the plotting and dense Carl, with his python-sized biceps, the strangling work).

Or we could end up having our apartment raided and impounded because our concerned neighbours would report us to the police, thinking that our unit was an actual brothel, with so many different men visiting Stanley.

But now, Stanley is ready to buy an apartment, with or without us.

"I've been hunting around," he said, scooping up more chicken morsels.

"What's new? You're always hunting around."

"What's new is," Stanley said as he blew at his spoonful of chicken, "I've started the process of house hunting. I'm starting to view some next week. Care to join me, boys?"

Carl and I perked up and cheered.

"Wow!" Carl exclaimed.

"Does your mum know?" I asked.

"She'll be the last person I'm telling!"

"Unless you get probed by your mum first," I said cheerfully.

Though we're all born in the same year, Stanley has always managed to be avant garde: He's the first among us to have a boyfriend (not surprisingly), first to pick up smoking ("how do you think I honed my blow job skills?"), first (and only person) to get fined by NEA (when he threw a cigarette butt near Mustafa only to be approached immediately by plain clothes officers who were ambushed nearby), first to own a car, and now, first home owner.

"Eh, relax and calm your man tits Adam," Stanley said putting both hands up in mock surrender.

"I'm only starting to view - I'm not buying anything yet."

Then again, with Stanley, it's only a matter of time.

The moment Stanley sets his mind about doing something, he gets it: Men, work, food, car, apartments.

"But Stan, why must you move out ah?" Carl asked at the dining table, a rare occasion that he managed to, a) string a proper sentence together and b), an even rarer occasion that he could keep up with our discussion.

"Well," Stanley tilted his head, an indication that our fey friend is switching to serious mode.

"I haven't really thought about it. But don't you guys want to move out and live alone too?"

Later that night, I gave that question some serious thought.

Stanley isn't the first person I know who has always been wanting to move out.

In fact, three years ago, when my batch of 1979-born peers turned 35, I experienced a tide of housing party fatigue.

At least eight of my friends bought public flats the moment they came of age (singles in Singapore can only own such properties when they turn 35).

Though majority of those friends who bought flats are gay (including a handful of lesbians), some of them are heterosexuals - mainly very independent women who are convinced they'll never own a wedding ring and sleep in a matrimonial bed.

As I sat in my room (while my mum continued watching her noisy Canto serials in the living room), I thought about why people would feel a need to move out.

The need for space? Privacy?

Then again, for people like Stanley whose room is an entire attic, space has never been an issue for him.

Stanley once held an ORD party for at least 20 NS boys at his four-storey home where we had barbeque, and later, a noisy rave party in his attic bedroom.

Everyone was drunk and happy that night.

Stanley were to later tell me that since then, he believed that his true calling in life is to make men feel very happy in his home. But that's a story for another day. 

Do people move out because they can afford to?

Surely, there are people who can afford multiple properties but choose to stay with their family?

Besides, wouldn't it be a big betrayal to your parents if you are single and yet choose to move out?

Then again, in some cases, people move out for very practical reasons - including wanting to be closer to their parents.

One friend who did so last year told me that his mother and he agree that the move was for the better.

My friend, M, is an air steward and his new flat is just two minutes' cab ride to or from the airport.

And because he's physically away from his family, M makes it a point to drop by his family home to spend time with them. Something he had taken for granted when living with them.

Collectively, M spends more time talking to his mum during that weekly visit than on any normal day when he lived with his mum.

And they spend less time arguing about mundane stuff because they no longer have a reason to get on each other's nerves.

But how many of us who move out actually do so under such altruistic reasons?

Or, are we victims of western propaganda - that years of watching US movies and sitcoms have inevitably introduced the idea of moving out when we're adults?

As I tried to find an answer that night, nothing came up.

Except one mini revelation.

That some of us should be thankful that we're able to move out - by choice.

Because for every one person who finds joy in doing so, there must be others who don't see it as such.

Those who're forced to move out because of bad family ties, or being left alone after everyone migrates, or having inherited flats from parents who've died.

In those cases, surely there was no joy to begin with.

Then again, who's to say that there will be joy even if we chose to move out and live alone under happy circumstances?

"You're right," Stanley typed in the chat group after I shared my thoughts with the boys. "There's no guaranteed happy ending, unless you're a paying customer."

"But that's life isn't it? We make our choices," Stanley wrote.

"I'll stand by them regardless of your psychoanalysis," he said.

"And even if I grow old alone - and boys, trust me, I have seen my future thanks to Face App, I will not regret moving out and living alone.

"For me, I will definitely make my bed - and lie in it. Every single night, in my very own home."