JumpinJupiterSmokes

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Twelve midnight.

Thirty minutes ago Tovs sent me a frantic text message, asking for a love quote. I tore my focus away from the Hermione/Severus romance fanfic I've been devouring to ask myself in exasperation of why, WHY one of my closest friends would actually think I still gave a damn about silly, little love quotes. ("Don't you mean, why you'd still give a damn about love?" my conscience needled in the wheezy tone I've come to despise)

But reality check. Tovs knew me well enough to realize I've been a self-declared, and critically-acclaimed, cynic for a long time. I also knew that he's working round-the-clock on freelance video projects. Hmmm. He must need the quote for one of those goddamned videos. Or surprise, surprise maybe he's finally fallen in love with someone and is working up the guts to spill his feelings. The thought of the ever-so-proper and and genteel Tovs prostrate on one knee, flower in hand, and spouting love quotes made me chortle and choke on my cigarette. Hmpphft. Maybe not.

I must be going mental, I thought, taking a swig of my latest vodka concoction. Very well, I countered, I'm sure he has his urgent reasons for asking me. And if these quotes are going to help him finish his goddamned videos so that he can take his bloody rest, then I may as well help him out. I minimized the Hermione/Severus fanfic (damn!) and opened a new window. Hmmmm. Google, google, type in q-u-o-t-a-t-i-o-n-s.....there. I was about to type a keyword (love) on the search field when my fingers froze, my thoughts hurtling.

How hypocritical of me. Of course I knew the perfect love quote. Why, I've memorized it, all these years, whispering it in my most lucid, hopeful dreams as if it was a mantra. You see, my cynicism of this topic was not borne out of indifference but the all too cliched heartbreak. And the only reason I have never wretched (and mark my words, I HAVE wanted to) over this commonplace component is because I believe that despicable as the concept may be, it makes humans out of us all. You may have all the Manolo Blahniks and iPods of the world but we are all the same in the eyes of dear, old, knock-my-socks-sarcastic, manipulative Fate.

I've fallen in love twice in this lifetime. The second time was painful. Exceedingly painful. With a short summary spanning the period of many, many years:

I loved him, thought he loved me, got uncertain, tried to move on, became his close friend, found out his secrets, settled to being friends, tried to move on, then spent the night with him, got no emotional response, tried to move on, finally learned he also had feelings, got scared, re-examined myself, finally started to open my mouth to declare my undying love, in which case he opened his first and declared his involvement with someone else, I tried to move on and

Gave up. Just gave up on everything.

I exhale some smoke from my lungs. I didn't know I've held my breath while thinking about these things. What the hell.

I'm done with you, I address him in my mind. I AM done with you.

"Still, why not this quote, for old times' sake?" I sneered at his memory.

Extending my arm back, I grabbed my mobile phone and relived the quote that has haunted me for a thousand years.

"It is sometimes a mistake to climb;
it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt.
But is it that bad to fail, that hard to fall?
Sometimes the fall kills you.
And sometimes when you fall, you fly."
-Neil Gaiman

I pressed Tovs' number and sent the bloody quote.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, leaned back and puffed away, blowing circles. He was always so profound, even as he recited the quote to me when we were so very, very, young, amidst the falling leaves and the circling, swirling cirrus clouds. I thought then that I was too insecure to fly, but I knew how to burn. That golden day, he could have damned me to hell and I would've burned in his presence, turning to ashes at his feet, the wind blowing me away miserably. But that would still be flying. I still could have flown.

If only you had given me any extreme emotion. I could settle for disdain if not love.

But not indifference. There is no life in that chasm. You couldn't even say there's a void significant enough to be called a void.

My phone's beeping snapped me back to my smirking reality. Tovs' reply:

"Wish I can relate. But I've never been there. Only skydivers know why birds sing."

I gave a harsh a laugh. Just exactly where is "there?"

My mind flashes back to a trip we took to the Spanish Inquisition ruins last Christmas. I was lazily sprawled on a bamboo table in a cottage near the seashore, glass of vodka in hand (of course) and chatting idly with Hervie, one of the gays in our circle.

Hervie is a downright kind soul but is known for his impeccable and impenetrable emotional demeanor. Of course, a romantic place such as the ruins invites a conversation dealing with romance-centered topics, the lack thereof, or the past. I was feeling quite melancholic and didn't need much prodding from him. I slugged my drink back and gave him the quickie summary, ending with "...of course I'm glad to be rid of the whole thing. During the worst nights I just wanted to die."

Hervie, in typical Hervie fashion, was silent for about fifteen minutes. Then he surprised me with a comment. "I wonder what that feels like," he asked, more to himself. "Someday, I wish I'd have the luxury of knowing what it would feel like to actually feel the want of dying for the love of someone."

And I ponder his words tonight.
No one would ever want their friends to be hurt,

(..it is always a mistake never even to make the....)

but I can hardly tell them not to fall in love. After all, I did.

(...is it that bad to fail....)

I cannot protect them from pain. Because

(...and when you fall....)

it is the risk we take to last long enough to see beyond the clouds.

(..and when you fall...)

And snatch the chance to live the life of someone truly alive.

(...you fly.)

But Tovs, calculate. Calculate. Calculate.
How much falling before the dizzying, euphoric heights turn into dark abyss?

----------------------------


I light up another cig. Pour another glass. No rest for the weary, damn right. Only endless puffs and tinkling ice cubes bathed by moonlight. Thank the heavens for the wonders of the vices. Perchance my heart will not rest tonight, but maybe some of my thoughts will. But maybe....

I raise my glass to the moon in silent salute. (Here's to looking at you, kid.)

...maybe I can take a break from playing bloody Ice Queen. Just for tonight, I can indulge in inhaling and exhaling the same air he breathes. Tonight , I can --wait, is this Pablo Neruda richocheting around my head?!?

Saddest lines indeed. Sad can't even begin to describe it.

My phone bleeps. Low battery. I turn it off. I don't think Tovs will be sending me anymore messages tonight. His last message was pretty heavy, especially for the lighthearted banterings and jovial moods of our set. Perhaps he is also pondering things because of the bloody quote and his reply to it. Maybe not. I hope for the latter. There is no rest for the weary, Tovs.



But I did fall. I really did.
But I never got to fly.


And what birds?



There were no birds, Tovs.
So how can they sing?

I've always wondered how my friends viewed me. Oh sure, I haven't exactly breezed through the self-conflicting identity crisis of the pre-adolescence stage and I as sure as hell will not deny that I have had moments of only vaguely remembering who I am.

But I've long since started to forgive myself and have had ample beginnings to atone for the rash mistakes of my youth. Thus, with renewed self-awareness, albeit minus the self-pity of self-centered pre-maturity, I now try to examine the intricacies of my friendships. For after all, there's got to be some truth to that whole hullabaloo of "tell me who your friends are...blah, blah," right? Right.

Many people have always said that I have the tendency to stay with my own little clique of friends, and that I was virtually raised into this world by my gay friends. And I must say, they're damn right on both counts. Growing up (older, taller, plumper) has made me realize that I have little patience for the whiny, weepy, girly, and sometimes, traitorous complexities of girly friendships. Not that I never made any girlfriends, it's just that they are very few and far between. Add to that the fact that I appreciate (and sometimes relish) the bluntness and harsh beratings of reality constantly showered over me by my three closest gay friends.

Tovs, Ferns and Lei. Yup, the three men who are as part of me as every strand of my wild, often unkempt, hair, oftentimes a subject of their notice but never of their harsh perusal. And by that fact alone I know that they hold me in high emotional regard. After all, gays are supposed to be the connoisseurs of perfect beauty, right? Right.

Many moons ago, I stopped harboring my not-so-secret hatred of my hair's stubbornness to conform to society and flat-out accepted my fate. Ferns, Tovs and I were gorging on a particularly large heap of NY Classic (with extra cheese) at Yellow Cab. After catching up on the latest gossip, Golden Globe conundrums and hated ex-classmates, I caught Ferns eyeing my spectacularly disheveled mane. I raised an eyebrow. "Are you going to grow it long?" Ferds, the epitome of classically-chic hair conformity asked me with the blankest tone ever made legal. I hesitated and replied to the feminist, individualist tune of finally accepting who I was. "And besides," Tovs volunteered, "You're an artist!" And with that bohemian perspective, we accepted the fate of my hair with finality.

It got me thinking into how much their opinion meant to me. Had it been another girl with disheveled hair, I knew they wouldn't be as gentle. I realized that I had been expecting their snippy comments at times, when none were really coming. Maybe, with the age of friendships comes the temperance of what makes each of us stand out, making every single characteristic still exist but often diluted with regard and compassion. And something else. Love.

Any person who grew up with her chosen friends can attest that they will reach a point of being proud enough to say that they've been through the worst of times and have roughed it out, with battle scars intact and interlocking with each others' wrists. It's a common miracle. No biggie. Still, I often peruse the magic of how the strength of our bond has made us see each other in lights that would only exist through the others' eyes. Sum it up to that they actually see me in a better light than I see myself. And thank the heavens for that. Because if they ever saw me as I see myself, I know they'd be aghast to see the mini-insecurities of a past hastily shoved away and hypocritically labeled "over." Every time I round a dark corner, I see how they see me, with hope and a focus on the best qualities I've long thought non-existent, that, in a way, it gives me hope. As if I am near salvation. Or even worth saving. And I knew, deep in my heart, that I look at them the same way, even as their eyes glaze over from not seeing their own beauty for themselves.

Even as Ferds gently reprimands me that Diet Coke is the same as the regular one. Even as Lei snorts that the chunks of cheese in the Spaghetti I cooked for dinner are as big as I am. And even as Tovs looks on with a non-committal air as I chew on one pizza slice to another. They may never openly berate me that my behind is getting too frumpy to be legal, but they often prove that I still have the potential to be saved from my inner tantrums. And how can you really help it, if you're in a circle of true friendship? In retrospect, the three of them know how my tongue accelerates when it comes to Lei's problems with a certain shrew, that only Ferns' offer of food screech me to a halt. Hmmm...but this shrew would be for another installment.

For now, I'll try to wrap up this semi-ecstatic, semi-drunken rant. If you search for a point, I will not volunteer it to you. Look for it. If you have any real friends you'd know my point. And this is my blog and I'm nasty when I've had three rounds of vodka, so tee-hee.

For now, I offer this piece as a tribute to my three closest gay friends. With their angelic demeanors, nasty cackles and evil plottings. I may never know what you see in me to love me, but I appreciate the fact that you look at me and see what I can become, or honor me for what I once was.

Just recently, Ferns threw caution to the winds and decided to pursue his dream -to become a fashion designer. He pooled his money and enrolled in the tutelage of a Paris-educated master. One windy Saturday, while he sipped his quintessential iced and I smoked my Marlboros, he poured out story after story of how he is finally finding his niche in this world. His eyes sparkled with happiness and unshed tears and I swear that there was so much hope in the air I was surprised that Seattle's Best wasn't turned into a dressmaking shop with a wave of his pattern-making hands.

Suddenly he looked at me, ultimately caught up in the throes of artistic inspiration. "Let me make a skirt for you," he gushed. "An A-line skirt!" Stunned, I huffed and I puffed and blew the idea away. No way am I going to disclose my waistline, much less, have my hips measured! And my legs! Well, actually my legs are fine but still.

We were quiet as we walked to the bus stop. I kept wondering why he'd offer to make the skirt for me. God knows there are enough fake fag hags to go around for one of them to fit in as his pseudo-model. Why me?

But then I realized, maybe I'm the one making a superb effort of screwing up my self-confidence. What a way to go. Your friends try to boost your morale and you try to make a massacre out of it. And thus, the ultimate gift of friendship: accepting yourself as your friends have accepted you.

Before Ferns and I parted to go home, I told him to give me a month. A month to lose some of my belly and actually see my hips contoured by his mythical skirt, I told him in jest. But actually, a month to get to know myself, the self I've professed to hate and have hated for so many years because of its many imperfections. A month to get out of my self-inflicted shell, and maybe the rest of my life to appreciate the gift of acceptance and unconditional love.

In the form of an A-line skirt.

I love you even without your love. Before I close my eyes before I sleep, before I open them before I wake. Without your knowledge that such a love exists, that such a love still exists, even when things have been said and done, even as we wear our battle scars, lines of anguish dried up on our wrists but internally bleeding upon our wretched veins.

I love you as I walk each polluted street, trudging along, dragging my clumsy feet and hastily blending with a crowd too immersed in its own thoughts. I think of you and inhale the terrible stench of the city, smelling only the flowers and sparkling wine that flowed when we walked these streets together. I forge ahead blindly, smiling blandly at the cursing jeepney driver as he curses me for taking my chances with the green light. I traipse along, skipping over dandelions of muddy puddles, humming the tune of our first kiss, back when the backdrops of acrid smoke and pungent canals blended together into the cacaphony that was your smile.

I squeeze your hand and assure myself that I am safe as I board a bus full of thug-looking men. I tell myself that the power of love can reach even the most criminal of hearts, for surely, even the most heartless of thugs will not harm such a harmless-looking, loving couple.

How do I love thee?

Let me count the ways.

5. Through the smile I smile for you.

4 Through the musky hug I mimic.

3. Through your jokes I relive with relish.

2. Through the promise you made a thousand years ago, that I repeat to myself while I am -

1. Alone.

If one of these thug-looking men shall look at me, I shall truly say, Come, look at my purse, get it, get everything, if you can find anything.


For I have nothing more to lose.

What had started out as a search for a better job, turned into one of the darkest, most depressing periods of my existence. It seems that, regardless of what they told you in college, a dream job dangerously comes to close to really just being a dream. And yet before I hiked up my boots and kicked ass (while still employed in one of the more popular industries in this country) with the classified ads of the dailies and several www.jobs-galore-chenes-chenes....., I have had the nagging question of whether I never really gave much enthusiasm to the pursuit of my dreams. In the end, I realized this was true, probably because I opted to just dream about the dream job,and not have to face the reality of landing it, and finding out if I had a niche in the artists' world or not.

Just today an old friend forwarded to me through email a job posting. It was so ideal, SO the job I wanted that I burst into tears because of two things: 1. the fact that I was lucky to know of the opening,which was rare and really quite what I wanted and, 2. the fact that my friend thought of me, when all the while I have felt that this was a solitary,personal struggle, invisible to my friends.

Anyway, to end this semi-tipsy post, below is how I replied to my old friend -which I promptly did as soon as I sent my resume, of course :-)


Hey Tovs,

I find it touching that you thought of me and sent me this post.Indeed, my friends seem to be part of the universe's conspiracy to help me reach my personal legend. Si Ferns tumutulong din. You know what, I would so much like to stay in the comforts of the walled, air-conditioned confines of this popular industry, if only I could quash out my dreams and just think of life's practicality. After all, it's easy for us to get in these stints and stay in. Sometimes I really castigate myself because I know that there are probably a lot of people there who need to land the jobs we land more than us. I feel so guilty for being ungrateful.

However, I find that I've arrived at a crossroad where I really have to face up to myself. And one of these days I know I will have to choose, maybe I'll find out after all if I'll be brave enough to face a thrifty existence in the light of my dreams. Maybe I'll be able to prove to myself that all my words about an artist's existence and the way of the wise and the bohemian life are not all fluff. Sometimes kasi I feel like a fake na, especially when old friends ask me if I'm still a writer and I answer, "In a way, yes..."

Anyway, nag-balloon na tong reply ko. I'm sure you have better things to do than listen to the cowardly whinings of a friend who was never courageous enough to stick to her dreams. Thanks talaga for the forward. Even if I don't get the job, it has been a bright point in my day to know that I'm not alone.

Love yah!

Misty

I haven't giggled in years.

Oh sure, I've laughed out loud, smirked, simpered at everyday's jokes and amusing what-have-yous, but owing to a pact I made with myself right after high school graduation ---I haven't giggled.

But first, a little explanation.

Straight out of a strict, all-girls, Catholic high school and into a premier State University, I tried to rid myself of all traces of my former giggly, bouncy high school self. Full of ideas and bursting at the seams with philosophical and political ideas I couldn't wait to try out, I resolved to take life seriously. It was, after all, the time to grow up. Time to foster the ties which would last me a lifetime, and build the roads to my successful career.

Several years later found me in a high school joint, sitting beside an old school friend. A common acquaintance paved the way for this short reunion, and what could have been idle chitchat ending in promises of keeping in touch turned into something more extraordinary for me. Oh, of course we filled each other in on what happened after our own college graduations, current jobs, love interests, failed relationships, etc. But after a while, and there seems to be no escaping this road, we talked about our former classmates We updated each other on who got pregnant and got married when, who said such and such, and which fossil-old professors still managed to live on in our old school after all these years. Then there was the trip down memory lane of who hated whom, yet eventually became friends with, who had the worst acne, and who was caught doing what with whom in the Seniors' comfort room.

And to think there are a lot of other things we could talk about. As with most schoolgirls, this kind of sentimentality could really not be avoided. While my friend was relating a particularly juicy story, she stopped and looked at my fingers, which I had been drumming against the table, impatiently waiting for the punchline. " You haven't changed a bit, you still drum your fingers like that, the way you used, too," she said.

And she was absolutely right. In fact, looking back, I began to wonder why I even needed the dramatic metamorphosis from eager schoolgirl to aspiring college student. It seemed that life was volatile and profound enough, what with all the rite of passages we go through from high school to college to employement or unemployment to job-hopping to finally finding our niche in this world, without changing ourselves all over and over again.

Suffice it to say that I giggled a lot throughout the whole conversation. Especially when we got to the part of the popular songs then, when Spice Girls was the trend. We got a hoot at how we've always dissected the lines, "Be a little bit wiser baby....put it on, put it on...." from 2 Become 1, arguing in hushed, whispered, voices if the Spice Girls had been indicating a condom as "it."

It was already quite late by the time we checked our watches and bemoaned our 9 to 5 jobs the following day. We downed the rest of our Frostys and slipped off the stools. As we walked towards the door, we talked about who else chanced upon who and if they are now meeting regularly. There were talks about a reunion, an alumni homecoming, even putting up a Web Site, or a yahoogroup. Being Ms. Bouncy and Giggly, and quite comfortable with the title again, I volunteered for the job. Then we went our separate ways.

And after coming home, kicking off my shoes, flicking on and sitting in front of my computer, and lighting a Marlboro, I went to www.yahoogroups.com, smiling in a rather silly way.

After fifteen or so minutes, I had formally created the group. With a giggle I leaned back and read the group description and heading.....

"Hi everyone! Welcome back, girls!............."

And after reading it, I almost did, too.

Such was the effect of Paulo Coelho's book to me that for a couple of days, I began questioning the standards of culture and society in my pre-organized, rountine-ordered mind. Imagine being transported into a novel where the main chararacter, Veronika, after having evaluated that her life was all it should be, realizing that it it could only go downhill from then on and after, decides to commit suicide. It then lands her in a mental facility where, after slapping an old man for hurting her feelings and engaging in a sexual activity with a fully-clothed man to see just how far she can go, and conversing with the other "crazy" patients, she gradually understands that she missed out on a lot in life only through her own acceptance.

Crazy? Socially unacceptable?

Yet, social norms aside, this book illuminates how we all have a secret, crazy side in us. The side that wants to retaliate, in any way we want to, every time someone else hurts us. And the side that wants to dance and leap with glee in the middle of the crowd everytime we finally receive something we've always wanted for a long time.

And I have resolved to finally act as I see fit, so long as it doesn't land me in jail, of course. To dance in the sunshine everytime the wind smells of lilacs, to eat my favorite food and shout "Yes! That's it!!!!" and to cry in the movies just because I feel like doing so. And yes, not to share my popcorn if I feel like it's not enough for me.

So, two thumbs up, Paulo. And based on the principles you've established in your book, I'm sure you wouldn't take it rashly if I see you and kiss you square on the mouth for this masterpiece you've created.

Cheers!