I Was Told On A Sunday

No long faces, no long looks, no deep conversations. I was told in a park covered with trees. I was told on a Sunday.

So Much To Say

So much, so much has happened during the past month -- throwing myself off into the rocky cliff that is the corporate world (yet again), least of all.


We met about three weeks ago and between then and now, words that have been as much another language to my mind -- to my skin -- started to make sense.

Everywhere with him was a dream. We spent Christmas and New Year's together. We had breakfast at the Salcedo Saturday Market with three old women sharing our table. We went to Baclaran. We went to Mall of Asia at 7am. He sang to me. He has a very beautiful singing voice. Here in my room, I finished reading Tehanu while he was asleep in my arms.

He is leaving this week.

Obscenities in the Dark

The lies never stop.

Creation and Destruction

I am incapable of creating anything new now. There's really no sense fighting for it any more than I have, so I'm giving up writing. It's plenty amazing how I managed to delude myself for such a long time when clearly I have no talent. I sure did fool a lot of people though -- something that can be plainly attributed to luck, obviously.

So what am I now after foolishly, pretentiously identifying myself as a writer -- as an artist?

What I have always been, I suppose -- an ageing nerd jerking off to beautiful boys in the Internet. An unemployed 28-year old living with his parents, playing online games to kill time, gaining pound after pound in front of the computer. A broken, embittered gay man with nothing but his fantasy books for company, and pillows and blankets that haven't been washed in a long time for comfort. A person without identity, without the will to fight the disease eating at his mind, heart, and spirit, someone void of passion, and someone who has no business walking amongst the living.

How many out there are like me, I have to wonder. The state the world is in, suicide SHOULD be a legal, sensible option.

Obscenities in the Light

It's easier to do in the dark what's not right in the light. (Closer, Mike Mangione)

His soul split in two, and he found himself watching his own body from the back of the room.

He -- the Other -- was masturbating. The kind with no restraint or... or intellect. It was obscene and visceral, nothing but blood and guts and instinct. He Who Watched moved closer, making no sound, disturbing nothing. Here, the Other seemed even more animal. There was no god here. No god stronger than what is, no force more powerful than flesh writhing in the dark.

The back of the chair was bent as far as it would go, but the Other never stopped pushing. 'Break, oh gods, BREAK!' his body screamed, but never will it relent. Warhorses powered the Other's legs, muscles stretched taut and sweating, and his feet tried to dig into soft earth but instead were met with floors of mold and old wood. These forces, and the many tangible shadows prodding, pulling at the Other's flesh, opposing him from all sides exhilarated his senses to even greater heights, to even deeper dimensions, and he pounded on his blood-gorged cock even harder.

His arm -- the Other's left arm -- the one part that remained human reached towards the monitor. He Who Watched felt it at once, and saw it for what it was. There on the monitor was not a beautiful, smooth boy, standing by the pool with nothing on but a pair of skimpy black trunks and a smile. Not just. It was beauty itself -- beauty and all its lines and curves and order. The hungering, ravenous thing that was the Other wanted nothing else but to possess that beauty, that order, to take it into itself, to dominate it and at the same time be enslaved by it. 'Mine,' wordless it whispered into the gloom, into the cold, pitiless light. Envy was seething, vibrating the still air. 'You are mine. I want you. Please. Please. I love you.'

It was agonizing for He Who Watched. This Other, he realized, who is thrall to his senses, completely free of shame, free of gods -- completely, utterly free -- could be the purest, most genuine thing in all creation. There were no lies here. No words. Just blood and flesh and inertia and movement. He Who Watched stood vigil for a few seconds more. And at one precise moment, three things happened at the same time: the twin souls merged back; he came; he wept.

The universe, pure and free mere seconds ago, once again coalesced in its centuries-old cage of words. He, breathing and blinking back into a world of logic and language, was once again bound -- his name and its string of histories settling onto his forehead, into his chest. The glasses he was wearing felt heavy nested on the bridge of his nose. The fatty flesh on his back stung where the grooves of the plastic chair dug deep. His legs and feet ached. Shame blanketed his heart -- thick and wet and throbbing. He was a nerd jerking off to a beautiful boy over the Internet. 'I love you,' he said, more than a few times. The world be damned if he won't do it all over again.

The Dance Ends

No more dancing. No more words. I want to die.

I see nothing left to live for in this world. Which isn't to say there's none -- it's just that I seem to be unable to find one for myself strong enough to keep me together, and I am exhausted. This world has me trapped; I have nowhere to go. My prison is a vast expanse of words and concrete, of people and stones -- without sound, without shape, without walls, but a prison none the less. It is terrifying to say the least, but I am done fighting. I am done moving.

And it's not mere death that I'm craving, too. I want to be forgotten. I want every trace of my existence erased from the histories of this world. No one will remember my face, nor say my name ever again. That is the kind of death I am wishing for -- not the shallow death of earth and ash, of pain and remembering. Because being forgotten is the only true, pure way to die.

Deeper

I want to feel this hatred --
it's what I need to drag me through this.

As Long As That's True, Skin

"I hate this life." I don't think truer, more satisfying words ever passed through these fingers, these lips in the 28 years of raucous, roiling hell I have behind me. It's almost absurd when I think about it; now I have no idea why I have been denying it, but I truly hate this life. I hate it.

This afternoon, walking home, I was saying it over and over. There was a kind of exhilaration that was hard to deny as my words gathered speed, gained volume. "I hate this life, I hate this life," I was saying under my breath. Eventually, it drowned out the music I was listening to. I was walking to its beat. I hate this life, and that's the truth. In a mad, twisted way, saying it gives me strength.

I may not have hated this life as much as I do now, but I think I have only been building up to something more absolute, something more true. Something clearer:

My life has been mired in blame. Where I am now is the sum of thoughtless, reckless decisions. I'd always felt death lingered near for me, so every moment, every crossroad mattered less and less. I make a decision without much regard for anything, a decision I think might lead to a less painful dying -- and then I find I'm still alive, trying to deal with the consequences. Another thoughtless decision, I think to myself. Another reckless choice. Words justify my suffering, give shape to the hell I've conjured for myself.

Blame throbs sickly in my chest promptly enough -- a malevolent virus, at the same time a relieving tonic. Guilt follows. Then regret. Then, finally, shame. Always, an endless string of self-hatred -- blame, guilt, regret, shame. Blame, guilt, regret, shame. Another thoughtless decision, another reckless choice. Blame, guilt, regret, shame.

It took years. An entire decade. More than a decade. Blame, guilt, regret, shame. Thoughtless decisions, reckless choices. Blame, guilt, regret, shame. Tori Amos said, "The only way out is to go so far in." This life has been a succession of drowning, a circus of disappointments. Pretense, posturing, lie after lie after lie. And the clouds part. And the bells toll. Truer, more satisfying words have never been uttered: I HATE THIS LIFE.

SO GO AHEAD, UNIVERSE. Shame me. Show me your idiocy, your stark, radiant beauty. Show me how good you could be. How happenstance and meaningless encounters are given meaning, given flesh, given words like love and friendship and family and identity and bittersweet happiness because the Gods know we're desperate for purpose, for hope that there's something else, something MORE to strive for. That there's something behind the curtains of years, the vast expanse of space. Go ahead. Shame me. Show me what I can't have, all because I have found what in my heart is the absolute truth: that I hate this life and everything in it. Nothing can be clearer now.

I did not ask to be born. Neither did anyone, I suppose, so I will be forgiven if I say I hate this life. I resent everything about it. I hate the smell, I hate the noise, I hate the people and the complications of relationships -- from the most trivial to the most binding. I hate the things we don't have words for. And the words that we have -- every nuance of language, every sharp descent, every steep incline, every particle of power words command -- all of it inadequate, all of it I hate to the very core of my being. I hate that ultimately, there is nothing for us but darkness.

Every day I hate this life even more. Things rot inside and outside of my body. Through these eyes there is nothing beautiful, nothing good. My soul quakes at the agony, at the blinding radiance of this hatred. I hate how difficult, how utterly complicated, how physically painful it is to leave when leaving all I want to do. When dead is all I want to be.

Here's To Me

Because it's true even if a few nasty demons do get to slip between the cracks sometimes. I get shafted by my lousy clients on Thursday? Sure, why the frak not. It's not like it's anything new. So my birthday gift to myself? You may think you're not good enough, but you're sure as hell better than a sorry lot of people. HAPPY FRAKKING BIRTHDAY TO ME.

A Whole Lot of Shouldn't Haves

I shouldn't have to feel guilty for being myself, I know I shouldn't. I shouldn't have to apologize. I shouldn't have to be angry or envious or resentful. I shouldn't have to feel this weak, this taken advantage of, this pushed aside. I shouldn't have to go to the washroom every hour on the hour, to the one at the far end of the floor where people rarely go to, just to sob very, very quietly; just to squeeze out the knots in my chest; just to rub at my eyes to force the tears out. I shouldn't have to do that. And if I should, I should like to do it with as much noise my lungs will allow.

I'm still not sure if I should be writing, but I do because it's the only thing by far with strength enough to give me an identity -- ghost-like and immaterial and fragile it may be. I feel I should be somewhere else, though. I shouldn't have to feel this constricted, this edited. I shouldn't have to censor myself, or say 'I am' when as a matter of fact 'I am not'.

I shouldn't have to be huddled in the dark, when I could throw open the windows and feel the rain on my face, on my hair, taste the rain on my tongue, and laugh at the sky, and laugh at the sky.