one phone call

Library. Hey. Are you sleeping? She patted me on the shoulder.

No. Not really. I dabbed my eyes and forced a smile.

The guys are waiting by the parking. Movie. Tara.

Thanks. I can't. Pointed to the pile of papers before me. Need to do these. But really, I just wanted to lie in bed and hug my pillows and sleep for a day.. and forget. Everything.

Don't worry. Things will get better. I promise you.

Thanks. Forced smile.

____________________________________

Going home. So you're going to Cagayan? When are you coming back?

That's the third time you've asked me that. Do you have a problem of sorts?

Forced smile. No. Not really. The phone rings. I speak. But all the more I sulk. The problem was just getting bigger. I wanted to go home. Fast. To that bed. Fast. To Wonderland..

_____________________________________

Home. Opened the door. I'm home.

You're early.

Yeah.

Bad day?

You have no idea. That was an understatement: It's a fucked up day.

_____________________________________

In bed. I was about to sleep. To fade away for hours and hours where I won't get hurt, where I won't be rejected.

Should I call? I didn't want to. I wanted to. I didn't want to. Next thing I knew, it was your voice I was hearing. I haven't heard it for eons. We talked.

_____________________________________

Sala. Your eyes are soo red. You overslept!

Slight chuckle. Nope. I didn't have to. Later, I will sleep. Smiling.

something wrong

Morato. I walked Kix to the jeepney station around midnight. We almost knew every brick on the pavement as we've always been there since the first time we sessioned three years ago. We trod along the familiar avenue, and like in the first time, I marvelled at how the place was so cozy and safe. Bright lights. Well-dressed people. Fine restos.

But something caught my eye on the sidestreets. A family sprawled on the sidewalk, sleeping. Shirts sooted, hair in disarray, frames shouting for warmth against the cold of the night.

I suddenly remembered how manic I felt after watching Sex and the City in Gateway. For some reason, I couldn't reconcile basking in the glamour of New York one second, and sighing at the dirt and grime of Cubao the next.

The problem is, once you've seen and felt the problem, there isn't any turning back. The nagging discomfort of knowing that something is wrong is a sword that will forever hang over our heads.

But the bigger problem is--what are we to do?

desecration

My haven has been infiltrated. My sacred place. My special nook. The only place in this city I go to when I need my peace and quiet. My headquarters where I schemed and studied for the best glories, and fuckups, of my postgrad school life. It is being robbed from me by a... by a pesky bitch who has brought her own army.

If there's such a thing as a bitch pest control agency, I would have called them days ago. But life isn't that easy and things will have to be settled civilly. Bummer. It will then just be a matter of tolerating each other's stenches. And he who tolerates best wins.

The war for this minute, but sentiment-charged, territory is on.

And like a boy who's being bullied for his lollipop, I will stand my ground.

cold turkey

The sem is over and I feel displaced and incomplete. I feel like my dirty old usb without its cap. Lacking. Naked. Ugly.

Maybe that's why I'll be going to cbtl later to help a friend with her take home exam. Secretly, I want to ground myself with a routine I've been so accustomed to. Pitiful. I know. Who in the world wants to do acads stuff over the break? But somehow I can't do without my reviewer. At least not just now. I'm still having cold turkey.

That's why I better hit the beach soon or just sweat off this drug called school--for now.

Because in less than two weeks, school will start again. Hopefully by then, I'll be normal enough to stand my next 6-month dose.

p.s. Oh I forgot. I've to write a paper for November. Haha. So much for my two-week rehab.

someone's getting married

I just heard from the grapevine that a couple from our batch (well, at least for our course) in college is getting married next year. As far as we know, they're the first in our year to do so.

Rumor has it that the guy proposed while the couple was on board a helicopter, a few kilometers from the ground. How's that for high expectations.

I feel genuinely happy for them. We've known them as a couple since freshman year (that was roughly six years ago!), and I think it's high time for them to take the relationship to the next step. Personally, I have my qualms about marriage in this country. It is too restricted, formalized and iron-clad. At least in this country, it is only for those who are pretty sure about what they are getting into.

But as for this couple, I have no doubt whatsoever. Plus, I can't wait to see the cute babies-to-be.

that fairytale kiss

I remember the conversation. It was amidst incoherent conversation, discordant laughs and the stench of beer. What is your fairytale kiss? Everyone is asked. Everyone's answer I now forget, save for mine, and the resultant jeers of my drunken reply.

I said I want to kiss the person I love in a library. I guess that shows how nerdy I've been all my life. But hey. I can't deny it. The library is a special place for me. Sacred, even. It's the only place where things can make sense, if one has the temerity to, well, browse through all of the shelves. A certain lightness is evoked by the thought of being surrounded by the greatest written ideas of man. And it is natural, I think, to share that special place with the person you think is special enough to share your life with. Haha. Cheesy. But hey, the question, after all, asked for a fairytale kiss.

But the thing is, I've been rejected once before. In a library. And like the child who suddenly discovers that Santa Claus is just his dad plus a pillow tummy, I sigh. Adulthood is creeping up. There are no tooth fairies. No wizards. No happily ever after in this goddamn boring world.

Maybe my friends were right. Maybe I was naive in choosing my fairytale kiss, and more so, in actually trying it out. I hear their alcohol-induced raucous all over again. But this time, I join in the laughter.

For now I nurse the bruise my inner child has sustained. But hopefully, tomorrow, I'll learn how to check under my pillow for magic coins. Again.

school spirit

It bothered me as I sat in the Araneta Coliseum last Sunday that I bisected the maroon and blue sections of the stadium. No, I didn't mean it physically, because the two schools were, and have always been, supportive of each other. As one Babbler coined it, we were all children of Katipunan.

I meant it figuratively. I always said I had a genuine dual allegiance. An Atenean for more than a decade, and a Scholar ng Bayan the past three years, I used to think that I love the two schools equally.

But as the cheers (and jeers) went on, I couldn't understand a single maroon chant. As for the blue ones, I knew I could utter them in my sleep. I couldn't join the Ateneo cheers (vigorously) as I was clad in a maroon shirt and was sandwiched by two die-hard marooners. It would have felt awkward to do so.

But I felt awkward inside already, so maybe I shouldn't have cared. Looking back, maybe I should have shouted my heart out for Ateneo the way I did for UP. Love, as my mom used to say when we were young, need not be expressed in the same way to everyone. She didn't ever to go one of my PTAs, but she was almost always present at my brother's because I didnt have any problems at school. But she always brought me to art classes and to my weekly doctor's appointment. These she never did for my brother because he was neither interested in art nor sick when we were kids. She loved the two of us, equally but not identically.

I believe it's the same thing for the two schools to which I owe my life. I love them both, equally, but not identically. Love, nonetheless.