Puberty arrived like an uninvited guest, reshaping my body and my world. One day, I was still a boy climbing rambutan trees; the next, my voice cracked, my bones stretched, and hair sprouted in unfamiliar places. With those changes came a painful new awareness: how I looked mattered.
The mirror became my harshest critic. What stared back at me was a teenager with a face covered in angry pimples. Each morning I would lean close to the glass, hoping they had vanished overnight. Instead, more appeared, red and swollen, mocking me. I tried every remedy I could find — Nixoderm, Eskamel, Bedak Sejuk — poking, squeezing, scrubbing as if I could erase my shame. But the more I fought them, the worse they scarred me.
Girls, the measure of every teenage boy’s worth, wanted nothing to do with me. They preferred the handsome ones with clear skin and easy charm. I, with my funny surname and pimpled face, stood no chance. My self-esteem sank to its lowest point.
Ashamed and defeated, I begged my mother to let me leave Penang for a while. She agreed, and took me to stay with an aunt in Bukit Mertajam, a remote kampong in the mainland. It became my self-imposed exile. I was lonely but luckily I had among my cousins who treated me with kindness, I could breathe. For three years, I hid away, nursing my insecurities and waiting for time to heal me.
When I finally returned home, my face bore the scars of battle, but the storm of puberty had passed. By then, the girls I once chased had been swept away by other suitors. My loneliness deepened. But life has a way of opening unexpected doors when others close.
In my despair, I discovered music.
It began simply — a guitar in my hands, my voice rising in song at the lorong or the basketball court behind my grandfather’s house. At first, I sang only to forget myself, to drown the sting of rejection. But slowly, something shifted. The more I played, the more the music carried me. It was as if every strum of the strings lifted the weight from my chest, and every note released the pain bottled inside me.
I wasn’t just making sounds. I was finding myself.
Soon, I realized I had a gift. Singing came naturally, and the guitar felt like an extension of my own body. With practice, my voice grew stronger, smoother. Before long, others began to notice. Friends gathered to listen. Neighbors nodded in appreciation. My confidence, once shattered, began to return — not because my face had cleared, but because I had found something deeper: purpose.
It wasn’t long before I joined like-minded friends to form a band. We called ourselves The Beats. Sponsored by a businessman who believed in us, we began performing at functions, parties, even nightclubs. The timing couldn’t have been better. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Bee Gees ruled the airwaves, and local bands like The Alleycats were rising stars. I found my voice imitating Robin Gibb of The Bee Gees — so well, in fact, that “I Started a Joke” became my signature song.
And then, to my astonishment, the girls began to notice. Not because of my face, but because of my music. They wanted to be seen with the band boy on stage, the one with the guitar slung across his shoulders and long hair falling over his forehead.
By then, I had long grown tired of being called by my kampong nickname - 'Say Choo” — the Small Potato. That name belonged to a boy who had been laughed at and forgotten. On stage, I was someone else. I chose a new name, a name simple and strong: Jack.
Jack won Talentime competitions. Jack played to cheering crowds. Jack wore bell-bottoms and strutted with the rhythm of Deep Purple songs at weddings and house parties. Jack was no longer the boy scarred by pimples or mocked for his surname. Jack was free.
Looking back, I see that music saved me. It gave me the courage to step out of the shadows of shame and into the light of possibility. It taught me that sometimes, when the world refuses to love you for how you look, you must discover who you are — and let that shine so brightly that no one can look away.
Jack Ung (jack.uct1953@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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