Faces, then a cleansing
on Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu
I used to watch my mother perform the Wudhu. The tap hissed as she opened it, a sound soon replaced by a stream of water breaking against the tiled floor, the splash dampening her feet and the seams of her shorts. She washed her hands, rubbing between her fingers and up to her elbows, beads of water sliding down her arm. She would cup her hands then, under running water, and a small oasis puddled between her palms. Eyes squeezing shut she lifted her hands to her face, and her open palm rubbed the water downward from her forehead, swiping across her nose and cheeks. The ritual is yet at its end, but I was transfixed as she cleansed her face, though I was never entirely certain why. Now as I try to imagine her before me, the image fast forwards to when she dresses for prayer, covering her body, leaving only her face uncovered. Straight towards the Qiblah it became a facade of worship, a representation of soul and devotion that has been thoroughly cleansed and prepared – now deemed satisfactory for the heavens. Perhaps this was the reason behind my fascination. Or maybe it was less a fascination than childlike curiosity, and I am only now grasping its significance as I flip through other memories of this ritual: my friends, in the years that followed, would take their baptism and confirmation, and once more I would watch as water run down their temple, wondering if they did indeed feel purified; primed for a new life, ambling to a fresh clearing ahead of them.
I, on the other hand, had never experienced face cleansing as a religious rite. My relationship with the ritual is secular, involving soap specialised for acne-prone skin, and later on enhanced with exfoliators and serums – a full regimen of skincare routine built to achieve a facade deemed fit for civilisation. I remain convinced, however, that the ritual is somewhat sacred, or still retains its sacred roots no matter how far divorced it is from religion. Over the sink, as the water pool in my hands, I become aware of what awaits me. When water meets skin I wake into the self, and begin anew.
It is this feeling of awakening that one gains from reading Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s Happy Stories, Mostly. In twelve short turns of varying genres, he explores queerness – and queer life in Indonesia – through crises and isolation, loneliness and death, seen often through heteronormative eyes; narrators who are not themselves queer but tread perpendicular to his queer characters, sharing familial or platonic bond. A most painful irony, I find, but an effective tool to display the mighty force of norm: just as man is the measure of all things, the heterosexual image and ideals reign as the arbiter of happiness, and those who don’t conform to them are kept at the margins of happiness – almost, not quite, always just about. In a chat with translator Tiffany Tsao at the end of the book, Pasaribu speaks of the “hampir” (the almost) where queers are always thrown to, “and there the idea of happiness turns into the vampir,” (a vampire). Rightly so. To queer people in a nation like ours, happiness might feel a kind of chimera, with norms and conventions that will drain the life out of anyone who disobey them.
Narrators and characters of these stories find themselves in this position, one way or another, as Pasaribu shuffles and repeats their names. Laura, Lin, Anton – they live many lives between his lines. Each story, I imagine, is a good scrub of their faces, and when they lift their heads up from the basin perhaps it is someone else they see in the mirror, a version of themselves who have seen a different life. Them, but not quite, just about. They too, throughout the stories, experience dreams and memories of another world, built by choices they did not make, or magnified effects of the ones they did. “Glimpses of alternate histories,” Tsao said of it, “and lives they might have had.” Perhaps this is Pasaribu’s way of offering his characters a kind of fluidity from which they are continually barred; possibilities that they cannot otherwise imagine, a chance to wash off the grime off their faces and restart – groundhog day-style.
To be able to live a parallel existence seems to me almost like a superpower, a godlike capacity in a godless world. Though Pasaribu’s footprint include numerous Christian references (elements I highly appreciate thanks to 12 long years of Catholic school), Tsao pointed out that God is acutely absent in these stories. But is it possible that they are there hiding in plain sight, passing names to each other, taking turns to master their own destinies or inhabit a better fate? Then again, this could be exactly what a god would have you believe: they are everywhere and nowhere; they are in all of us, never to lead us astray. I do not know what is true. But I feel it is prudent one take stock and ask – after the face is rinsed, cleansed and soaked in front of the mirror – who it is blinking back at us: ourselves, another version, God? Because if we are indeed made according to God’s image it is perhaps also prudent to question our power in defining the trajectory of others’ lives, if we actively feed a system of ideals and conventions, and how much we, in our almighty power, are willing to take them apart. There might be no divine answer, as Pasaribu’s stories suggest, but who knows. Perhaps one day we might find ourselves in the outer ring of a new future. Almost, not quite, just about.
