And it is precisely because of guys like him that I have very few bloke friends.

Flashback. 1998. I was in the second phase of my tenure in the army, the stage when newbies get posted out of boot camp. For the next two months, I underwent training as a grease monkey.

One fine day, while on a cigarette break with a bunch of fellow course-mates, one of them sidled up to me, a glint in his eyes. I knew right away it was nothing good.

“Eh, introduce a few girls to me leh,” he said quite loudly, his tone on equal parts desperate and sheepish.

I threw him a look.

“What makes you think I know a lot of girls? Do I look like a pimp to you?”

He shrugged, and continued, “Well, you sure know a lot of girls one. I look at you and I can tell.”

I did not know him all that well, but from what I could immediately see about him, he carried himself with a kind of bravado that you could tell was a front, a front which, to the unobservant, might have been passable as real confidence. But by only a thin margin, of which has just been further narrowed by that conversation.

Looking back, army days to a lot of blokes were all about cheonging and scoring; frequent nights out at bars and clubs, drinking themselves silly, and hitting on anything in a skirt. Or anything with a pulse. Most nights could be summarized as nothing more than exercises in prodding a fellow bloke’s shoulder, drooling and going “Eh, eh. That one, that one over there? Chio, man.” And nothing more.

Okay. Yeah. Pretty. So what? It was not as though they would have dared to actually make an approach.

Blokes.

Back at the smoking point, I snorted and then leveled a gaze at him.

“You know what? If you have to be introduced to score, you are definitely not going to pull.”

* * * * * *

Why am I talking about this? Because, lately, I heard about the—pathetic, shall we say?—behavior of a particular bloke, and that has only reaffirmed my belief that it is precisely because of guys like him that I have very few bloke friends.

* * * * * *

Q: How do you ask a bloke to kill himself?

A: Ask him to jump off his ego and land on his IQ.