This

Why do I insist on this? Why do I believe that I do not deserve better? Because there is nothing more. Because there is nothing else. Because this, even if this is a lie, is mine. Because this is my lie, my pretense, and no matter how intangible, it is more than what a million, two million, countries and countries worth of people alive now can hope for.

This. This is mine. This purple butterfly bruise is mine. This humming, thrumming pain is mine. This madness, this turning away from light, from sound, from flesh and language and color is mine. I insist on this. I deserve this. There is nothing else.

Tonight

Tonight he came back. Tonight he said sorry, and some truths were disclosed. Tonight I told him I love him.

'Thank you,' he said.

Lines Crossed

'Umalis ka na.' So leave. Those were the last words I said to him yesterday. It looked like he wanted to. It looked like he was done using me.


The weekend was spent at Puerto Galera. He said he's never been to the beach before but despite this, most of his time was spent arguing with his aunt -- according to him, at least -- over text about the fact that he never asked for permission to go. I tried not to mind but as bull-headed as he can be, how can an argument stretch for a day and a half? It did stretch, however, from when we were still at the beach the day prior, to the following day when we were about to leave, even until the bus ride back to Manila.

He wanted to stop for pizza before heading home, so we walked over to Amici after getting off from the bus at Pasay Road. He was lagging as, yes, his god-fucking nose was still on his god-fucking phone. But there was nary a word from me until we got to the restaurant. If I was going to be angry with him, it's not going to be weak and half-assed; I wanted my anger to build up to something... more. We were waiting for our food to be served and as if on cue, he affected a startled look, and he said without taking his eyes off his mobile phone that his aunt was on her way to the boarding house and he had to leave immediately. Lies. A voice, dark and rasping, clawed at my mind. So leave.


'Sorry for disappointing you,' his message came not 10 minutes after he stepped out of the restaurant. I finished both of our drinks. 'I knew this would happen. If this is the last time, it will be very memorable. Take care.'

He was never very smart but I knew every word was a trap, if unwittingly set -- crude yet delicate. I never responded but then again I could never come up with anything less biting and less melodramatic than 'So you're done using me.' It's hard not to feel used getting back from a trip one paid for entirely, and then being left high and dry, yes?

So are you done using me? I highly doubt it. But we'll see.

Patterns

He came back. He left so many times that I lost count, but each time he came back. Sometimes he would storm off in a flurry of words unsaid, other times it would be me closing the door. Each time, however, it was him who would make his way back.

To be truly honest, we could never be more different. Our overlaps cover very little -- and even these were very tenuous -- there really is not much reason for us to be together. Which is why it wasn't much of a surprise when four days ago he told me, 'I'm not the one you're looking for. Good bye.' Well that was one of the smartest things he'd said, I thought quite honestly and with no small amount of spite. 'You're probably right,' I responded. 'Well then. Good day.'

This afternoon, he called. 'Sorry,' he said. We agreed to meet up for dinner. I echoed his words back to him the second we were face to face. 'You said you were not the one I was looking for.' His expression was unreadable. We started walking. Silence thickened our steps -- like floodwater up to our knees. Pasong Tamo was grey and cold and static.

The next words from me were probably a mistake I realize now. 'Am I the one you're looking for?' It was a flimsy, fraying thread flung into the dark, hoping he'd catch it, hoping he'd hold on to it more tightly this time. Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes... Heartbeat. 'Yes.'

It may not have been a lie but it was certainly weak, and the question was not at all fair. Regardless, the thread held, and I could feel torn cloth sewn back together. The flood stretched out in front of us, and familiar patterns were forming in the darkening sky. There was nothing else to do but walk onward.

Breaking

This string is stretched too tight, too far. I need to feel something break, hear the muted snapping of threads and the ripping of new cloth. I need something cut. I need something dead.


He came back shortly after he left, and for a time, all was as before. 'Happiness makes one so sure,' I remember reading somewhere. And foolish, though that was left unwritten.

Little by little, I heard it -- the familiar sounds of leaving. There are many things I have yet to find out about him, he said. There is great pain he does not want me taking on, he said. Words masked with kindness and selflessness became as immaterial to me as air and shadow, and all I could hear was 'No,' and all I could feel were his hands pushing me away.

I convinced myself I did not need to fully understand him -- that I simply needed to be there. And it was an act, a pretense I did not have the strength to sustain. I had the reckless impatience of youth, and my longing got the better of me. Three weeks after the last time we met, I presented my offer once again: 'Let me help you,' I said. 'You tell me there are many things I do not know about you yet. You tell me you carry this nameless, shapeless pain. Let us give name to it. Let me face it with you,' and again, 'Let me help you.' He had the same answer obscured in so many words, 'No.'


This morning I had a vision. I was in a place where someone had fallen to die though there was no body. It was a place of incomplete death. It is raining now, and the pillows are cold under my skin, the edge of my blanket is wet with ugly, ugly weeping. There is death in my chest but it is incomplete, and I am still burdened with life. Something needs to break. Something needs to die. Completely.

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.