Of Dadoscope, Doppelgangers & Sophia Loren.

It’s been a rather relaxed day, with the exception of a couple of incidents where the accumulation of assholes made me blow up in the face of one of the sweetest people I’ve come to meet. Quite a recurring incident, it’s how karma likes to be funny, or maybe how evolution tends to those who have not been morphed yet by survival’s better judgment. I have no idea what  I came here to write, but I’ve had quite an interesting conversation with my father and judging from my goldfish memory, I’d hate to let that go to waste in the folds of my troubled mind.

It wasn’t anything that special really, we were just sitting there, him after a very long day at work and mine just barely starting, I had an all-nighter ahead and I wasn’t that pepped up about jumpstarting it. As usual, I turned off the lights, made us a couple of glasses of white tea and we sat there enjoying an old 60’s movie called ‘The Countess Of Hong Kong’, starring Marlon Brando and that chick with the unbelievably awesome boobs called Sophia Loren. My dad, as usual, made the most observant and abstract comments, which usually but not always had a hidden meaning he was hinting at. It’s one of his method of getting advice into my subconscious past my defenses. He commented on how Sophia Loren has been made to wear flats so she wouldn’t be taller than Marlon Brando, how the acting was theatrical because at the time, movies were a foreign concept to them. He commented on how all the girls have been casted and scripted to sound ordinary and paling in comparison with Sophia, even though she wasn’t that slick herself; just a pretty face and mysterious demeanor really. He mooted my outraged observations about how much of a male-dominated society it used to be by asking me what Marlon just said, which I didn’t remember, hence proving his point that after all, it was Sophia’s lines to which our attention was directed. He told me that boob jobs didn’t exist back then, and laughed at how I retorted defensively that they don’t make em like that anymore.

Somehow our conversation drifted to our dreams. Not the ones you have in your sleep, the ones you wish for when you’re wide awake with your head given the pink slip. I already knew his by heart, but I like to hear him say it. I get my goldfish memory from him so he never fails to cover all the details. Sipping on his white tea and staring off into the reluctant shadows, with only the TV giving his facial expressions just enough lighting and the movie chatting up the background into a comfortable haze to give room for his speech to be personal yet laid back, he’d talk about how he’d always wanted to retire in a little cabin by an expanse lake, somewhere in the outskirts of a tranquil little town. He’d press that the food needn’t be that great and the cabin would probably be more on the shack side than an actual reputable condo. He’d say that was all he wanted out of life, with the luxury of a quality fishing line, a comfortable reclining chair and access to a beautiful library and good classical music. Somewhere quiet, away from all the confusion of modern needs and commitments of the city life. He’d say that the only adventurous version of that dream of his would have to be roaming the world on one of them yachts that have been furnished into a little floating house.

He’s always been a hopeless romantic, one that has been undercover as a working class blue collar for so long that he’d effortlessly fool anyone into thinking that person has been obliterated long ago. I daresay he’d give the thought police a run for their money had his first name been Winston. He’d talk about his father when I ask him why he wouldn’t go fishing as often as he’d like, much like he used to till I turned 8, and that’s when the story always comes, the one about my grandpa. He was a rebellious soul, confrontational and took life by the balls. The bad boy who took idiotic risks and made it big despite his own father’s expectations of him yet never failed to enjoy the little niceties of life, the redhead on the basketball league and the flirtatious playboy who knocked all the ladies off their feet yet managed to maintain a sense of integrity and chivalry that seemed to have been travelling down the same line since the medieval times and almost gone extinct. He’d say how much of him he sees in me that it scares him, reminding me of how my grandma always follows every little thing I habitually do by an ‘Oh my, just like your grandpa, bless your soul’, and I giggle at the irony, since I’ve never actually met the guy. I’d inevitably start thinking about how a lot of what feels like our choices has been predetermined by genes.

The story that inevitably follows being how he stopped being confrontational and didn’t take the risk of telling his boss he was a total ass after he got married. He’d quip his line, how he stood there in the middle of the bank and told his boss off saying ‘If I wasn’t married, I’d make you into the fool you are, lucky enough for your new set of front teeth, I have kids who’ll pay for this.’ In case you were wondering, he was shortly promoted afterwards. Then my father would never fail to add in the little footnote that I should never try that because people are no longer grounded in a sense of morality and I would most probably not only get laid off, but no other place would hire with that mole on my CV just so the asshole could save face. And yes, dad never forget to add in a ‘Don’t try this at home’ when he’s talking to me; he knows I’m nuts enough to try it against every reasonable argument common sense or self preservation may offer.

He’d always ask me what my dream is, the form of life I’d like to lead, and I’d always say the same thing, an independent life void of attachments and being tied down to a spouse, family or any form of preset agenda or zip code, leading a career that I love doing which doesn’t have to bring in that much money but enough to get me by on my own without tagging me as a kid who can’t pay her own electricity bill and getting evicted for failing to meet the deadline of payment after so many notices. He’d again comment of how much of his father he sees in me, using adjectives like bohemian and existentialist to describe it in retrospect. I’d always ask him what he thinks of it and he’d follow with the usual line of how the striking resemblance I have with his own father is gainsaid by the amazing contradiction I have with my own father, giving a little smile, the one that makes me feel he can see through me more clearly than he can see through the white tea he’s holding; I call it dadoscope. He’d comment on how I always liked it in stock as opposed to his choice of enjoying the tiny luxuries life offers in retail. I always say I get better discounts and he’d retort that his losses are not as paramount to the invested capital.

Then, like every other night, we’d agree to disagree as we drudge on to the things we have to do, cussing at the clock for stealing our time and academia for occupying our heads, only to do it all over again.