Be Your Own Bae

"Daryl Qilin Yam masterfully traces quiet heartbreaks, unseen intimacies and urgent longings—the moments of inner epiphany that change everything. Be Your Own Bae is an expansive collection of stories charged with the pulse of the millennial generation. It is as brave and electrifying as a hand held open in the dark to the possibility of touch. It will arrest your heart."

—AMANDA CHONG, poet and playwright

"Be Your Own Bae is an intimate portrayal of connections formed between friends, lovers and strangers, and the stories we tell in order to find meaning. Reminiscent of Rachel Cusk’s Outline Trilogy but distinct in its observations of millennial life in Singapore, reading BYOB is like eavesdropping on the conversations of strangers and coming away with a richer understanding of ourselves."

—BALLI KAUR JASWAL, author of Now You See Us

Daryl’s stories are a paradox. Breathtakingly experimental in form, but refusing melodrama and flourish, they’re like finely crafted bulbs of clear glass, capturing a queer-inclusive transnational Asian everyday with all their tensions and heartbreaks.

—NG YI-SHENG, author of Lion City

Yam’s liquid prose carries us, dreamlike, through these stories. We flow through them and somehow, they flow through us as well. The physical places his characters inhabit are as vivid as the rich inner worlds that they navigate. Their conversations sparkle with words spoken, words unspoken and words unspeakable.

—TANIA DE ROZARIO, author of Dinner on Monster Island

Copyright © Daryl Qilin Yam

Cover artwork by Alvin Ong.

Used with permission of Alvin Ong and Galerie Rodolphe Janssen.

Published in Singapore by Epigram Books

www.epigram.sg

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.

National Library Board, Singapore

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

First edition, September 2024.

ALSO BY DARYL QILIN YAM

Kappa Quartet (2016)

Lovelier, Lonelier (2021)

Shantih Shantih Shantih (2021)

To whomever I’m with! at the moment

STORIES

Ba-doom

The Wolves, or Have You Ever Read Tao Lin?

Some Place/ Some Time

Thing Language

Jiro

A Dream in Pyongchon

Painful

just the green bit

A Film by Hong Sang-soo

Speculative Fiction

J—, or a Story After a Story by Haruki Murakami

Mangwon-ro

Ba-doom

EVERYONE’S GOING AROUND the bar, telling stories of their first love.

Tori goes first. She’s the receptionist at our ryokan, and the reason most of us are gathered here tonight, at the other end of Shinmachi: me, and Isa, and a bunch of others from all kinds of places. She rounded up all the guests at the end of her shift and kicked us out the front door, insisting that we follow. Fifteen minutes up the street and here we are, at a bar on the ground floor of a shophouse, perfectly empty, as though the whole place had just been waiting for us.

Tori’s story is great. It’s about a volcano. When she speaks in English she does it in a breathy sort of voice, and with her eyes and nose and jawline I can’t help but think of Winona Ryder, in Little Women—Jo with her hair cut off. It’s an uncanny resemblance, and I’m sure she’s been told that many times by her friends. The point is, it’s not often I think of Winona Ryder or volcanoes, but I guess those two things are also beside the point; we’re really just talking about Tori here, Tori and these other folks from the ryokan, and even then I have only just got to know them an hour or so ago. It doesn’t matter.

⁂

Masako and I never talked much, says Tori, "so I never really knew why I had come to love her so deeply.

We had a routine, as a class. Every Monday we’d spend thirty minutes sweeping the dust on our school quadrangle; the dust was mostly ash that had fallen from Sakurajima, she says. It was custom to wear napkins over our noses and mouths as we swept with our brooms. While we did so Masako and I would stand side by side, sweeping the morning dust off the quadrangle together, and our brooms would move in the same direction, always. That convinced me we were connected somehow.

The bartender is handing me a plate of cashews when I ask: Connected? How so?

Tori shrugs. I don’t know, she says. It’s a funny thing to admit, not knowing, because I remember the feeling of being in love with her. It was so total, so absolute. I was sure I had my reasons, but now I can’t seem to grasp them. She takes another pause here, her eyes now bearing a distant look. "Eventually that connection became a sort of channel, I think. For my devotion. Halfway through the school year she asked if I could stop copying her movements all the time. And so I did. After we graduated from elementary school we went to different middle schools. I thought we would never see each other again.

On one hand it was a perfectly fine thing for me to accept; on the other, you could say it was a very specific, very exquisite kind of torture to endure. Tori then directs her eyes towards the ceiling of the bar, and I lift my gaze as well, up towards the wooden panels above us. On most days I couldn’t decide what it was I was going through, exactly, says Tori. "But no matter.

In middle school I joined the school’s ekiden team. Cross-country, long-distance running. You get it, she says. "Because of that I got to date a boy named Kosuke, who was one year my senior. Quite frankly I only dated him because I was attracted to his calves, and because he asked me out. I saw no harm in seeing him, in agreeing to see him. Anyway, his calves, they were rather big and, how do I say this—I like looking at a person’s legs. I was always fond of hugging him from behind, and matching my steps with his as we tried walking around together. We’d always fail and end up laughing together, which looking back now was probably the nicest and happiest part of our relationship.

I never loved him, though, says Tori. That space in my heart would always be reserved for Masako. But I remember feeling very fond and giddy whenever he talked about his dream, this dream that he had: he wanted to run from Cape Sata to Shimonoseki, entirely on foot.

Tori looks at us. That would be running from the southernmost tip of Kyushu to the northernmost end, she explains, as her gaze drifts away again. "The idea of it was enough to make me glow, for some reason. Once Kosuke said to me: Maybe the two of us could do that together. That was when I too started to dream of running away to different places, to really distant, far-flung places, except I was never as good of a runner as he was, and I would never do that run with him anyway. If I had a choice I would rather do it with Masako, still. I don’t even care if she likes running to begin with.

"The thing is, it took me nearly five years to see her again. It was outside a jazz bar my father frequented; once a month he would take us there, the entire family, to the basement of this sukiyaki restaurant, and my siblings and I would drink orange juice and lemonade sodas while my father and my mother shared a bottle of wine. On one such occasion the bar had a special showcase, of a double bassist from Osaka, in town to promote his latest album. As I saw his instrument sitting between his legs, I had a sudden recollection of Kosuke, of me hugging him from behind, and I had to leave. That was when I caught Masako, standing outside the bar.

We were seventeen at this point. Masako looked just as shocked to see me. Tori? she said, is that you, Tori? And I said: Hello, Masako. She said: It’s definitely you, isn’t it, Tori? And I said again, Hello, Masako, it’s been a while, except this time my chest was in pain, because I realised that that was the most I had ever said to Masako in my entire life, and now Masako was much, much taller and she had put on weight, around her chest and thighs, and I found myself loving her all the same, perhaps even more. She asked me what I was doing here, and I told her about my father, and how he liked to take us to the Blue Room to listen to music. She lived around the corner, and she was on her way to the harbour. I asked her what she was going to do there, and she suddenly asked me why, with this hard tone in her voice, and I said I don’t know, I was just asking. She looked at me, for a very long time, before saying it was nice to see me. She started to walk away, down the street towards the harbour, just like she said, but the moment I took a step down the same street she turned back to me, livid, screaming at me not to follow her. Don’t you dare, she said. Don’t even think about it. She looked so mad, I turned red and ran the other way, back into the bar; I went into a toilet and checked myself, for I thought…I thought I might have wet myself.

Tori pauses at this moment, her face scrunched into a shrewd, almost despairing grimace. She reaches into the bowl of nuts between the two of us, and holds a cashew between her fingers, her ears reddening. They are a distinct bright pink, and I can’t tell if it’s the alcohol, the recollection, or both.

It wasn’t till recently when I saw Masako again, for the third and last time, she says. She asks Bartender-san if he remembers the news about Miss Sakurajima, and he nods. Tori tells us it’s an annual beauty contest in Kagoshima that’s very popular, named after the volcano in the middle of the bay. It’s a very popular volcano, and it is very, very active, she says. "It’s constantly spewing ash and dust into the sky all the time, and it falls all over the city like fine rain. You can even say it is the heart and soul of our city, this ash at the end of the world. Everything we do is defined by it.

You see, the winner of every year’s Miss Sakurajima is chosen to represent our volcano and the touristy things you can do in the area, like hot springs and sand baths and hiking trails, Tori says. She goes on television shows to talk about her life and her role in the city. She goes on the radio and you can hear her voice, promoting a special deal at a motel, or a particular destination around the volcano. The winner more or less turns into a local celebrity, and everyone will talk about her all the time, our beloved Miss Sakurajima of Kagoshima city.

According to Tori, this year’s winner was announced in the first week of May. Her face hardens as she tells us: "Normally the news doesn’t travel very far outside of Kyushu. But one morning at the ryokan, I saw the headline on page two of the Kyoto Shimbun: ‘Miss Sakurajima Spontaneously Combusts’." Below the headline was a photo, apparently, of a woman on stage, her body engulfed in flames. In that same photo, the other people on stage are keeping their distance, their faces visibly terrified.

It didn’t take me long at all to realise that I knew this woman, says Tori; she still has the cashew held between her fingers, turning it around and around. "I didn’t have to read the article, or look at the caption of the photo. There was no need. Instead I found the bin at the back of the ryokan and tossed the Kyoto Shimbun away.

I knew it was Masako, she says. I know it was her in that photograph, holding on to her crown while her body was on fire. And I know, somehow, that maybe Masako was always meant to be Miss Sakurajima. Maybe there was no other way for her to be crowned Miss Sakurajima unless she went up in flames and turned to dust. I just hadn’t known it yet. I hadn’t known this fate would befall upon her when we were children, sweeping the school quadrangle together. I hadn’t known this when I fell in love with her. But I know it now.

Tori pauses once again, and she turns to study all of us, gazing directly back at her.

I’m sorry, she says. I know how it sounds. She even smiles. You don’t have to believe what I say.

She finally pops the cashew into her mouth and takes a sip from her glass, as though she’s swallowing a pill. Honestly I don’t know what the others might think about her story; I don’t really care. Tori, dear Tori, Tori-chan: for reasons unknown to myself I am inclined to believe her one hundred per cent.

⁂

There’re six or seven of us seated at the counter, and we can hear each other perfectly. My partner Isa and I, we hang back and listen, we’re glad to wait our turn or not speak at all. Our new friend Mateo says his first love was a boy named Stefano, and Tori quickly says, I know this one.

Tori and Mateo go way back; they’ve known each other since college, since the year he was an exchange student at her school. He just so happened to be in Kyoto for the week. This is the boy who was shining, right? Tori says to Mateo, and the whole bar sits up. Wait, what? says Isa, and this makes Mateo laugh, even though he looks like he’s in pain too, from the way he has to put one hand on his chest.

God, says Mateo, to no one in particular. Oh, god.

There’s another guy named Johan, from Sweden, seated at the other end of the counter; he might have come into the bar halfway through Tori’s story, I’m not sure. Johan, with a specific kind of passion, tells everyone that his first love was a girl named Julia. He then asks Mateo where he met this boy, Stefano, and Mateo answers, At my colegio.

And how old were you?

Eleven, says Mateo. Why?

Johan smirks; his blond beard shines as it catches the light. I met Julia in preschool, he says, taking obvious delight in the way his accent has caught the consonants in that final word, preschool. Isa sits up in his chair again, so fast it catches me by surprise. How old were you? Isa asks, and Johan says: We were five. Although English doesn’t come as quickly for him as it does for the others, he tells us, slowly but carefully, that there is an era of his life named Uppsala, after the town of his childhood. Like the buildings in this town, his memories of this place remain just as clear and unshakeable, unchanged.

We always had nap times, right before lunch, and I always liked to sleep next to Julia, he says. One day he heard her whisper to him, Johan. Johan. Vakna. When he opened his eyes he saw her hand, slowly reaching for his pants.

I remember looking around at that moment, he says, wondering if the teachers could see. But they weren’t in the room, and the class was still asleep. And my heart just went ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-doom. He’s hitting his chest now, just to show us how it felt. Ba-doom, ba-doom: the sound of the unknown. Afterwards they went to the toilet together and showed each other their genitals: they bared them for the other to see, and the whole time Johan knew he was in love with Julia, it had to be that; it had to be why his heart wasn’t thrashing about anymore, and why everything around him started singing in his ears. But when the moment was over they went back out and had their lunch, and Julia never looked at him again.

Damn, says Isa. I can feel how hard his heart is beating; Isa is holding me from behind, and I can feel it beat against the back of my shoulder, probably out of fear, but also probably out of excitement, from the adrenaline of being around such open-hearted people, people with no fear of judgement, of exposure. He asks Mateo, What about you? and Mateo replies, with a smile on his face: I’m not so sure.

Why aren’t you sure? Isa asks.

Mateo chuckles, shakes his head. Sometimes I always feel like I can never tell this story right. Do you know what I mean?

Isa nods. Sometimes, he says.

Mateo’s eyes begin to search Isa’s face. You, you’re an actor, aren’t you? That’s what you said earlier? You act in plays?

Isa nods again.

Well, I’m sure you can imagine this, then. Mateo sets his glass down on the bar. In the middle of my colegio there’s a sports park, and in this park there is a basketball court. Mateo runs a finger along the side of his glass, and then uses the water he’s collected to trace a rectangle for us. Now in life there are many paths you can choose to take, he says. I didn’t know this as a child, because in school I somehow always felt the need to be as, what do you call it—Inconspicuous? someone suggests—"to be as inconspicuous as possible, yes. So I always stuck to one route whenever it was recess."

All of us lean in when Mateo begins to make a path with his index finger; Johan has to get up from his seat, just to look, while I can still feel Isa’s heart beating, pounding, as he observes what Mateo’s doing, his path a simple line along the edge of the rectangle, left to right.

I liked this route, Mateo says, "along the basketball court. It had the tallest trees in school, and I always felt safe under the shade. I would keep my eyes trained on the floor and not look up. This was the