Friday, March 04, 2005

Just Read this, I Don't Know What to Call it

It's such a stressful day for me. I'm fantasizing about that scene from the movie, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Rebecca De Mornay's character quietly goes to a public bathroom with a small shovel and, after gently closing the door, starts wildly hitting everything with the shovel.

A peek into the unimaginably wild beast beneath a calm skin.

And I thought everything was going along well.

I saw an old friend last night. Old, as in, we last saw each other in 1997. (She once promised she would invite me--if she ever gets married--to her small beach wedding.)

It was a small party in a small (but fairly new) Makati bar. I didn't think I would bump into her. But she was there. All smiles. We said our hello's and how-are-you's and performed our obligatory hug with matching beso. I didn't notice at first that she was with someone.

Half an hour later, she was across the room, posing for a photograph. And she was with someone. They held each other, just for a second, and it was all it needed for my world to turn upside down.

"Are they together?" my date asked me.

Isn't it freaking obvious?! "I'm not sure," I replied. "I think so. It seems like it. She hasn't said anything to me."

My old friend and her girlfriend.

How come she never told me? When did this start? My life started flashing before my eyes.

She was my secret love. That girl across the room. There was a time when I loved her, when love was able to make me vulnerable.

"It's weird," she said over the phone, a lifetime ago.

I didn't reply. I didn't know what to say. She continued, "You're a good friend, but I don't look at you that way. You're like a sister to me."

It was a hot summer afternoon. I had dropped off flowers and a do-or-die card at her house in Las Piñas. All the way across town. I was in Makati.

What could I say to that?

"Okay," I muttered. "I'm...I didn't..."

She added, "And I'm not into girls. I'm not gay."

End of flashback. The roar of the bar crowd comes back.

I wanted to call her a liar, to blame her for all the tear-soaked journal entries and the cuts on my arm, the pillows filled with muffled screams. For the pain of unrequited love.

I went to the bar--the open bar, thank God. "White Russian, please."

I was thirsty. "Another one please."

I found a bar stool and started a conversation in my head.

"I need a good fuck tonight."

"Oh, yes, you do."

"What's the worst quotable quote about love ever, in the history of freaking womankind?"

"What?"

"It's better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all."

Another White Russian gone.