a red and white mambo jambo;

bleeding love

on our first disco night out together, i was bleeding red and we were intoxicated with none of that hooch, but only with the love hormone; oxytocin.

we boogied to 80’s songs, most of which i don’t know but you mambo-gestured your way through each one of them; with a doleful look when you didn’t like a song, and quite the opposite when it was a favourite song — your face lit up with a multitude of cute-uncle-cheeky expressions.

It’s hard to imagine you have social anxiety, looking at you jive and groove so naturally. I brushed that thought aside a couple of times, because I wanted to be fully with you in the present and relish our disco moment together.

After copying your mambo moves for a couple of songs, i was better equipped with dancing vocabulary and i started creating my own mambo language; that was enjoyable. For songs that we both knew, we both talked in our own mambo language, together. You would pull me close in between verses to kiss me, I leaned in without hesitation; something I would not have been comfortable with in public with previous guys. We must’ve kissed about a thousand times that night; I was half-thinking if people thought we should get a room, and I brushed that thought aside as well.

It was quite the marvel that the first Singapore song came on just as we came back from the washrooms from across the road as we did not want to trod into the vomit-filled cubicles in Zouk. It was “Stand Up for Singapore”, the first song of the night I actually knew the lyrics to. I loved singing “Home”; it was so fitting that it was National Day and I felt this was “home, truly, where I know I must be” with you. It was such a warm, fuzzy feeling. I was thrilled that “Boom, boom, boom” by Venga Boys came on; it was to be the initiation of many more oldies into my Spotify playlist, thanks to your influence.

The last song we shared before we made to leave Zouk, was “You Belong with Me” by Swiftie, and I had no qualms dance-telling you that you belonged with me. Again, I would not have imagined myself capable of doing something “brave” like this before; it felt so natural and right.

We went to get homemade barley drinks (old people we are, I know) from nearby Zouk and there you told me you kissed me so much on the dance floor because you were afraid I would be bored with the 80s songs I did not know (which were admittedly quite many). I looked incredulously at you; torn between deciding if it was good that you were so concerned about me being bored or bad that you kissed me not just because you wanted to. You then quickly said that the way the lights shone on my face created shadows and I was really pretty and so you wanted to really kiss me. I say exasperatedly, wringing my hands, how poetic can you be?

You’re gradually changing me.. I know in a good way. Deep down though, I am very afraid — afraid something so good will not come to be.

What has become of Zann with the young, positive energy? Does she still have it, just with a side of cynicism? How does she keep knowing she is who she is, while she grows together with you?

I don’t think you know this. Should you know this?