The Mornings After

2003-07-04T04:27:00.000-07:00

I Said, Where To Now Cloud?

Erik,

I wrote this haiku this morning. I was feeling sad because you're not there to share the breakfast food with me.

BREAKFAST BOWL OF RICE
STEAMING COFFEE, CREAKING CHAIR
SUNSET IN MY EYES.

Gosh. Forgive me for sometimes being too juvenile. I promise to catch up.

I was thinking if we could pose for our photo. Tell me when you'll be available.

I Love you and am longing to see you more with every passing hour.
Take care.

Pao.
RSVP

-----

This is supposed to have been sent last Monday.

My Darling Baby,

The REM phase of my sleep cycle is undoubtedly catching up for the past days and nights that it has been ignored by my stubborn crazy habits. Why, I'm able to dream once again, and it's a sign of kissing stress goodbye. The best thing is that you're always there in my dreams. The not-so-good thing about it is that not all the dreams were beautiful. Others scare the hell out of me. Just like last night. After I sent you my e-mails, I immediately went home and slept. I thought it was late. Then I dreamed that I was still in the net cafe, surfing. Suddenly you came and I was alarmed with the look on your face. You seemed as if you were in a trance; like the way one looks when one's been drugged. You had teasing eyes but a haggard body. I asked you to wait till I finish what I was doing and you mumbled a hardly intelligible sound. Before I knew it, you were gone. Then, I logged out and searched for you inside the cafe. The room was set in hot colors; reddish and smoky, as if it was a bar. The atmosphere reminded me of Satan's palace in hell from my early cathechism classes. At last I found you lying on a couch, buried under throw pillows. And guess who you were with in that dream? Three guys, and it was evident you had just gotten laid. The three guys who were still carressing your chest immediately went away, sniggering when I approached you.

I woke up trembling and thought it was already 2AM. It was 11:30PM. I bought a bottle of beer and downed it while Norah Jones wailed my anxiety away. I was thinking of you.

With boundless love,
Pao

-------

My Baby,

Things can really be dull without you. I went to school this afternoon and checked the final list of graduating students. I didn't see any of my classmates so I decided to just go back home. I'm on my way. I just dropped by this cafe to let you know that I'm missing you right now.

I want you to know that I'll always be by your side no matter how difficult our lives can be. Everything seems much easier just knowing that you'll be at my side, too. We'll never grow old, honey. Your beautiful image will never fade in my mind, no matter how time makes a canvas of your face, painting wrinkles on your skin. And the feelings I have for you will never wither away in my heart.

You can be one hell of a bitch at times, but I promise to bear with your bitchiness. After all, winning a trophy like you, which means having a diva for a spouse, entails pain and endurance. Just promise not to hurt me too much with threats of leaving. I'm not your job. You can't just commit AWOLs, and leave me wondering if you'll ever come back or just abandon me here, dying of grief!

I want to stay with you forever. Please stay with me, too.

I love you.

Yours for the kill...errr, for ever pala,
Pao.

PS

Stop flirting with your officemate. Ipapakulam ko yan sa friend kong graduate ng S.I.S.S.Y.!!!!!!!!

2003-07-04T04:25:00.000-07:00

Where To Now Cloud?

Today is about the loneliest day of my life. I don't know but, once again, melancholia is looming fast with its despicable head.

My eyes are obstructed from my view of my Paolo.

Yet for the nth time, I want to go back to the days when our love was young and wild. Yet for another insane moment, I want to shout for help but, my heart wants to be left alone.

So for the first time, I am posting Paolo's billet douxes for me during those days when we were unjaded, carefree and unguarded.

Honey,

Please give me a chance to let you feel how much I love you. This is not impulsive the way you think it is, trust me. I'm willing to risk everything just for you. Just trust me. I may not be able to promise you an extravagant way of diva life but we can work things out. You'll never stagnate with me.

I used to think that being close to my home and family is what I needed. But when I'm with you, I feel like I'm home.Amidst the filth of this city, I found home in your company. Your so pure within even if you used to brag about being a world wide whore. When I'm with you, I feel like I'm in the best of all possible worlds.

I'm so tired of fleeting blessings from God. All I need is the gift that you are. I cannot bear to see summers and rainy seasons without you. Please stay. I promise to be better and more deserving of you.

I'm not what you think I am. I'm not promiscuous by nature. I'm just afraid of going through what I've gone through before. But this time I'm ready for another fall. Hope you'll be there to break that fall. I'm rushing with gravitational acceleration for you.

There I'm getting too mushy for your taste. Just want to let you know how great I feel for loving you. Sorry, I can be this corny when I'm in love. I know I'm way up the threshold of mediocrity.

Please e-mail me back. I'll await your lines with bated breath.

Yours,

Chopin

----

Erik,

Three seconds after you stepped into the car when you left this afternoon, my missing-you-fierce reflex was activated. I just watched the moving figures on the TV set while my mind let itself be absorbed by thoughts of how to be productive while you're away, as you suggested in your own directive diva manner. After letting my eyes strain from being fixed on the TV screen while being detached from its optical nerve link to the brain, I became drowsy and took a beauty rest. Perhaps the illusory cognition that I'm living with you in a world of our own failed to automatically disengage itself from my ordinary consciousness, the moment you left. It adhered to my actuations and late this afternoon, the illusion materialized and battled with present existential demands. I transformed into an invisible divine entity living amongst mortal beings in the boarding house, without their knowlege that I co-exist with them. Since they couldn't see me, they thought that I wasn't there in my room slumbering like a god. So they left without warning and locked the house, not knowing that a sleeping deity was left inside. It was 6pm when I got up from bed. I couldn't go out to buy a cig because I was locked up. I took a shower and waited for the mortals to come. It wasn't until 7pm that I finally became free to smell the filthy air outside, to my disappointment. To live a beautiful life really entails pain and some power of the imagination.

Anyways, I thought I could now finish the haikus that we started last night. So I spent the early part of the evening thinking of what to make out of "cold, silent pillars". After what I thought were futile moments of eternity, I came up with an idea plus a haiku about light and shadow. Sadly, they went like these:

COLD, SILENT PILLARS
WATCH ME STEAL A LONELY KISS
WHILE YOU SCAN THE STARS.

Do you like the first haiku? Or do you still think it lame?
Here's another one:

HALF-LIT IN THE DARK,
CHIAROSCUROS IN YOUR FACE
MAKE MY SORROW STARK.

Tell me what you think about the haikus.

And don't forget the promise you gave me that you'll stay no matter how manic-depressive I could often be.

Loving you with endless passion, and missing you more every second,

Paolo

----

Honey,

I didn't get your message. I checked the phone the moment I got up from bed (12 noon). Ate Mabelle also didn't tell me if there were any messages. I was thinking of making a call but I hesitated because I know how much you needed to have a real good rest after our three day craziness, so I didn't bother. But I miss you so much that your image always seems to pop up in my mind most of the time. After lunch (first meal), I slept again because when I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw myself growing eye-maletas. Then I dreamed. The boundary between my consciousness and sleep was very vague that I thought my dream was real upon awakening.

All I remember about the dream was: Jing and Ate Mabel were chatting outside the room while I was lying in my bed, reading a book. One of the girls told me you've just come. I went to the door and let you in. We went to the room. We were sort of cuddling, while in my mind (dream state) I was puzzled about the events and was asking myself if you were actually there, because I knew you had to go to work. When I woke up (1:30), I was groping for you but all I had was Ate Mabelle's stuffed pillow. I felt fear rushing in my chest. What if our love is just a dream? What if one morning comes and I'll awake to find you're not really here after all? I hope this beautiful dream has no ending.

I took a shower and accompanied Ate Mabel on her shopping. I bought a book at NB. I skimmed through the book when we got home and fell asleep again. We bought food and had dinner. I wish you were with me. With every spoonful of rice that I took, I remembered you.

Take care and focus on your work. I love you.

Pao

2003-06-30T04:32:00.000-07:00

Him and Me Against the World

I knew Erik wouldn't leave me as suddenly as their housemaid told me. You see, we are the opposite poles of a magnet. He may wander as far as Dumaguete but my magnetic charge will keep pulling him back to me. I knew that the wombat was just hibernating somewhere.

So many things, good and bad, happened after that depressing night when I received that deceiving info that Erik had gone away to Dumaguete. All these things boil down to one sad fact that I came face to face with: having a different love like ours is not an easy thing. Sometimes, I feel so in the mood for drama that I get to think the whole world seeme to be against us. The very significant people in our lives who are supposedly our main source of strenght and support turn out to be the worst of our opponents. There, not only am I depressed, I'm also having persecutory delusions! But what can I do? These people are constantly condemning us, turning their back away from us, and doing other un-Christian acts, instead of giving us love and trying to understand the differences that exist among us. We have promenaded in front of them a hundred times and we didn't turn into pillars of salt but still they wouldn't give...... It's hard to make a difference, but it's even harder to be different.

2003-06-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

Waiting for Godot and the Crying Game

While I thought all along optimism was a virtue I just realized that it is not always the case.

It is pathetic.

It is dangerous.

It is sick.

Life is too unpredictable to even think that something is sure to come your way.

Picture this: a gay blurted about being suddenly enrapt by a fire of inspiration after a chatting session with a blogger who was only playing a prank on him by pretending he was the other.

[will be back]

2003-05-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

We The Loving

Over the weekend, the company where I work for as a web author went up north for the much needed team building. It's not that everyone was walking around with an axe to grind on everyone but that turnovers have been going badly ballistic.

As is my wont, I naturally vent out my little whims when I found out that I was going to be required to cook up some preparations (read: schticks). Well why, it just feels good to know your worth of course.

So on with my little whims. Among others I made sure that these ones fell on fully-functioning ears like comfortably thick mattress, dry and clean comforters, well-lit space, proper ventilation and above all, accomodation exclusive for two. You see I was going to tag the paramour along.

To my surprise, the news was welcomed with breathless anticipation particularly with the big boss.

"No sweat, Erik. The hell I care a hoot about how you demonstrate your Kamasutra skills even in front of me. Sure. Go ahead. Make my..."

"...day gay..." I quickly cut in.

We all broke loose with our laughing bones spilling out of our guts.

Paolo was not the least unenthusiastic about the whole trip even if on second look our pockets were stinky or musty from disuse (okay, penniless). He bore the heavier baggage replete with all beaching accoutrements. When I countered it with my proclivity for minimalism like only the mauve batik, esprit gym mat, O. Henry Award for Fiction he settled with just the basics: shirt, shorts and sandals.

I was surprised myself when we got to the place. It was notable with its exquisite appointments like the ethnocentric curios and thingamajigs. I led Paolo by the hand to our accomodation, a dainty bamboo hut which was lacquered in mahogany luster. Although it looked like a children's playhouse, the elements inside defined it as a lovecottage built for two. Paolo pulled me tightly close to him and we settled with a long frenchkiss for a breakfast while the whole ragtag of creative cybercraftsmen roughhoused outside.

We vanned to a new resort which we were later told was the family's new project. I thought it would do well with the tourism campaign for WOW Philippines! Later when asked for my ideas on how I was going to enhance the already soothing landscape, I said it would do no good if they uprooted, relocated or, rearranged the rugged rocks and the lovely ancient trees hemming in the green lake which was alive with green algae and water hyacinths. One feels coming to full being inside an artist's canvass with the sun, sea, sand and spirits.

Some of our parlor games were held there. My team leaped in record-breaking bounds for the sackrace, ran in full throttle for the blackberry relay, and as a team leader, I butterflied, freestyled and sipped algae-contaminated water for the swimming heat. As we were obviously the most able-bodied and highly-spirited of the teams, our efforts were not in vain. We won the most major prizes. I bagged the highest. Paolo was beaming with pride when he whispered something about giving his wallet a break from stark desuetude.

Paolo and I celebrated in silence the life that we have shared with each other as lovers, friends, and nemeses amidst the sensuous waves; we felt eternally herculean as we marvelled hard and long at the mighty ocean that we had cupped together in our hands.. Skin on skin, we rejoiced with the rapturous waves tugging at our bodies; we are ready for anything, our story will go on in the face of all the world's fiercest storms. There is life with true love.

Dusk fell on angular shades inside our hut. We stared at our protracted shadows on the wall. I wonder what life would be like without the surreal beauty of a love story like ours.

From a small opening in the window of the van, as I watched the piece of sky being ravaged into pieces by the lightnings, and with Paolo's hands in my hands, I managed to chew off one haiku. Paolo wrote it down for me.

"Let me keep this, baby." I looked into the world's most fascinatingly sad eyes of the world's most hearbreakingly beautiful paramour. Then I fell in love with him more than I loved him seconds before that. Then we kissed into the whole trip back home.

2003-05-04T08:09:00.000-07:00

Days Here

Dawns here are dead
without your life-giving kisses:
I am a gaping well
plagued by a relentless dry spell.

Noons here are cold
without your warm hands:
I am a body of ice
thawing away in
fevered isolation.

Dusks here are drab
without the poesy of your silhouettes:
I am a blank page
abandoned by an absentee poet.

Nights here are empty
without your starry eyes:
I am a pitchblack sky
waning away into a blackhole.

--Erik

2003-05-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

My dear Paolo

I am plagued here by a certain kind of pain that gnaws at my sanity with every single thought of you. My prayers are all for you and your safety, your health, and most of all, your happiness with which I helplessly anchor my own happiness too. If the Great Hearer of Prayers is listening to my pained pleadings now, I earnestly beg Him to give us an enduring spirit so that we may one day live to see the beauty in living a dream meant for two honest beings: mortals who vowed to outlast eternity.

You are my salvation and you know that in the way my eyes beam with pride each time you speak floridly of how pure I am despite my claim as a practicer of the art of harlotry.

You, too, are my angel and you know it in the way my hands touch you with fervent adulation at your stunning pulchritude, I am too selfish to share an iota of you with just about any other undeserving mortal.

And yes, you are my heaven, Pao. You know it in the way I willingly squander my limited drive and energy to explore the vastness of your domain.

Funny, I just stepped into my room from my nth lookout at the gate. Call it madness but even if I know that you are not coming, I still stubbornly hang on to the last thread of hope that one day, you, my salvation, my angel, my heaven, will be moved too by a sudden maddening desire to drop me a visit even through a fleeting apparition.

Have you grown tired of me, Pao?

Have you given up on us already, my baby?

Don't you want to see me now, my angel?

As I Sit Here Waiting For You

I.
Clouds drift bv
heaving with desire
to touch for real
those soothing feel
of your soft
warm hands.

II.
Breeze swooshes past
wailing out old sad tunes
like songs of Norah Jones
or, yes, like those dreams all
you weave at daybreak
or nightfall.

III.
Leaves fall by
murmuring secrets
familiar
like the poems
of Senor Pablo*
you devour and
relish with such
gusto.

IV.
Strangers pass by
looking all oddly the same
with those haunting
downcast eyes
whose darting gazes
pierce through
in stark mockery
of all the banal celebrations
of earthbound souls.

V.
My salvation,
my angel,
my heaven,
come, please,
see me
now.

VI.
Baby, just be here
my love
before I die
slowly away
of desolation.

VII.
But know
that until then
I shall be
calling out your
name every
single second
of those moments
of non-being
in hell.

Longing for you,
Erik

2003-05-01T05:59:00.000-07:00

Don't Go Far Off

Here is a poem that Pablo Neruda wrote for me a long time ago. I had been keeping it since then. He was shipwrecked and I found his body with a bloated tummy lying in supine position in the sandy shores of Daet, while I was collecting shells and starfish for my bathroom decoration. I administered cardiopulmonaryresuscitation to revive his system and it worked. We became friends, went fishing together, and found ourselves drinking in smoke-filled cafes and bars, with poetry as our pulutan. Time came when I told him he had to go back to Chile because I couldn't keep him any longer, with my finances running low. Besides I was getting bored with his endless rumination over an unrequited love. So he left but before he did, he gave me this poem, which he wrote on a piece of tinapa wrapper. Tinapa used to be his craving back then.

Pabbs, as I fondly called him, told me in one of his most profound moments of reflection that I would someday feel what it is like to be left alone by love, without warning. And that when such a time comes, I would understand what he meant by the lines. Eventually, Pabbs added with a haunting clairvoyance, I would send this poem to someone I love via the zephyr of longing and agony. Perhaps, it's time. I'm beginning to feel what Neruda has always felt. An immense sky of sorrow is hanging over me, and I'm waiting for my dearest Erik to drive it away before it devours me completely. So I'm sending this to Erik, wherever he is right now. I'm sending these personalized verses sealed with my never-ending love for him. I hope that the zephyr reaches him in time so he may feel my embrace and my kisses, as he trudges along some pebbled beach in Dumaguete.

Don't go far off, not even for a day, because --
because -- I don't know how to say it: a day is long
and I will be waiting for you, as in an empty station
when the trains are parked off somewhere else, asleep.

Don't leave me, even for an hour, because
then the little drops of anguish will all run together,
the smoke that roams looking for a home will drift
into me, choking my lost heart.

Oh, may your silhouette never dissolve on the beach;
may your eyelids never flutter into the empty distance.
Don't leave me for a second, my dearest,

because in that moment you'll have gone so far
I'll wander mazily over all the earth, asking,
Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

I'm waiting for you, baby. And I will wait for your homecoming even if it takes another lifetime. Till then, I remain

yours,
Paolo

2003-05-01T05:15:00.000-07:00

Has Anybody Seen My Baby?

This afternoon while I was doing my laundry I received a text message from Erik. He said he was at the ticketing office, and asked me to call him at his house. So lotto is suddenly one of his latest hobbies. I thought it was an ordinary call-me-up message but as always, I immediately went down to the nearest booth to call him. I wasn't braced for any bad news, I swear. The maid who answered the phone told me he went to Dumaguete and I thought he couldn't have gone as far as that. He was just with me last night. We just had breakfast together this morning. This maid is getting into my nerves! I pacified myself with a dose of Mozart, like I always did when I get into fights with Erik. Two hours later I called him up again. I let a girl friend ask for Erik but the maid told her the same whereabouts. This isn't a joke anymore.

I could feel my lacrimal ducts coating my eyes with a film of thin water. But I didn't cry. Not till I got home. I cried the million rivers that Miggs cried, perhaps even more. And right now I'm the sole possessor of the world's greatest sorrow. Mozart doesn't work for me anymore. Why did he leave without warning? I thought he was just playing lotto. Negros is too far but if it means having to save my first salary to buy a ticket and follow him in his Negros vacation, I would. Will anybody please let me know Erik's provincial address? A just compensation of endless gratitude awaits the person who can lead me to Erik's Dumaguete abode.

An open letter to Erik:

Baby, why do you have to leave without telling me where you're going? I'm missing you and its driving my sanity away. I've exhausted my remaining powers to relax and take things with Buddhist calm. Please come home. I promise you won't have to taste nicotine in my mouth again, ever! Just please come back.

Baby, you're breaking my heart...

2003-04-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

Hangry

As of cyberpresstime, the word still has not caught the attention of lexicographers. It's obvious. I just coined it. I mean, no, Paolo and I coined it and we are not about to submit it yet for a patent or something. Uhm, wait, are words patentable?

It popped out during one of our moments of non-being. Like our endless pillow fights either after we have sex or, before one of us pleads for a serious frenchkiss, you know, while one gets dead serious with the act the other gets a serious attack of buffoonitis. The works.

But on that day we were particularly high on something, I felt bliss in my bosom. Yes, I felt it when he called me up at work just to ask me if I was really coming at ten. I said "Sorry baby I can't make it because Saddam was sending in some feelers through the site that I was working on that he was going to make Kamuning an entrypoint for his escape from Bush's men."

Paolo went ballistic. I was imagining an ear-splitting phone banging from him. And in an instant I was calculating my move to slap Saddam with a summon for causing a momentary handicap. That if my timpanic membrane goes kaput or, if auditory area of my brain gets the shock of the blast, Saddam had better reroute his way. And I mean it.

There is no playing tricks with somebody in love. Or a guy named Paolo. So okay, I gave up and appeased him with a "Yes, baby, I am coming home at ten or ten-thirty, thereabouts. Wipe that scowl and growl off now, will you?"

But something came up. The mocking ten thirty hourhand just waved at me and still I was in the office. Talking mindlessly with the boss as the face of my beautiful Paolo with a batting eyelash flashed before me right on the sweaty palm of the boss.

At eleven I was growing cacti on my butt. I began to feel the pricks already. Or, it could be Paolo with his powerful ESP making sure I felt his presence. That very minute, I was trying to open to activate my firestarting gift on the bigwig in front of me. In fifteen minutes or so, I was beginning to see a reddish patch on the left cheek of the guy. Funny. Firestarting skill is relevant. And dangerous. But who wouldn't kill for a Paolo?

When I saw a twitch of pain from my fluffy-faced boss, I knew the torment was over. He excused himself and said we are going to resume the meet the following day, I was hailing a commuter jitney at eleven thirty.

On the road, images of my beau morphing into a tyrannusaurus rex flashed before me. I was keenly keeping my eyes on the sideview mirrors of the vehicle to make sure we were not zapped into the film-set of Jurassic Park. I empathized with Sam Neal's frustration when he saw that a mother T-Rex was clawing ferociously at their vehicle. I was panicking. When I thought I saw the sign "Objects Are Larger In Real Life" printed on the mirror, I wanted to scream "Watch Out!" at the driver. The lady beside me at the frontseat of the jeep was quizzical with her estimations of me. Who cares now? I mean, would you prioritize a bag-lady's estimation of you when you have a T-Rex scaring you.

When I finally took off, I did not see a cheery Paolo waiting for me at the shed. No. Not a shadow. I walked briskly and after a block, I heard him calling out my name.

"Erik?"

"Paolo?" I scanned through his hands to make sure there were no predatory claws mutating somewhere.

"You don't know what I had just gone through for being stood up. I looked around for you. I dropped in at LN and C bars to check if you were not there cavorting in your old harlotic style." His eyes were filming with tears. He hugged me.

"Can I explain? But first, have you had dinner yet?" I should have docked at the thought of T-Rex but, the heck, if T-Rexes were as beautiful as this one in my arms, I am willing to be a submissive prey.

"No. You know I couldn't enjoy a meal without you."

"Baby, when you are hungry and angry at the same time, you will see monsters everywhere. Come. Let's go and take our dinner." Then I hugged him close and suddenly Jurassic Park transformed into a paradise in the midst of confused beings with primeval instincts in their endless simulations of the games people play, each essaying the role of a predator in one scene, or, a prey in another.

2003-04-25T03:22:00.000-07:00

Why Do I Love Thee?

"You are the perfect compliment to my imperfection." --- Erik

2003-04-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

The Untold Powder Room Story

"...the other party people around us moved away little by little, allowing us enough space for the dream..."

As if quoting my own lines in italics is not megalomaniac enough, I figure I had been too consumed by a severe grandiose paranoia to even think about believing those lines and well, crying them out loud. So now, in this moment of sanity and objectivity, I declare it isn't true that the party people gave us a space intentionally. I was too absorbed by romanticism that I thought the whole world around me was also in love.

In the middle of our Philosophy-inspired dancing, the sight of a group of men, naked to their thighs, caught our attention. Then I figured the reason why the crowd gradually moved away from us was not to allow us some space for a romantic adventure. I realized they could be too human for that act of kindness. They were simply engrossed at the sight of those guys in their spectacular orgy performance. ( Shame! Shame! Humans by nature can live in such stark selfishness; there's no room for altruism or benevolence!)

We saved our faces and kept on dancing. But something about the haze that surrounded the orgy guys reminded me of a ritual in which a sacrifice was offered to a heathen god. Yes, now I remember. The whole performance resembled the "Rite of Spring", except for the music not being Stravinsky's, and the movements not as acrobatic as Nijinsky's choreography. I would have ignited a pandaemonium to show the performers how their show should be received, the way Spring's first performance was received. But Malate was not Paris, and I was afraid the crowd might not understand why there had to be a pandemonium. So Erik and i just turned our eyes away from the Rite of Beasts show. And we kept on dancing as if we were bitten by a deadly tarantula.

Erik the philosopher met Paolo the psychoanalyst. He commented that those orgy men were like beasts. Only animals have the guts to make out in the open, so these men must be of the same hide. I said with my Freudian tongue that these orgy guys must be excessively id-driven, for them to engage in orgies at public venues. Their libidinal reservoirs must be bursting with energy that could outshadow the power of the ego and the superego. Erik wondered if I would also engage in group sex if I were in the same situation. I answered an assertive NO! (Charing! - Erik) even if something prurient was already brewing at the back of my mind. Realizing that the world becomes a boring place when philosophy meets psychology, we resorted to dancing. And we danced, like there's no stopping it.

Erik must have felt lactic acid build-up in his limbs, and uric in his bladder due to the non-stop megamix dancing and to the booze. He paused for a breath and I followed in a domino effect manner. He asked if I felt like urinating and if I'd like to join him in the C.R.. I mumbled an unintelligible word that meant halfway between a yes-yes-yes and a you-really-think-we-can-do-it-there? There was something naughty about the way Erik mentioned C.R. Braced for an adventure, I followed him downstairs. So off we went and headed towards the cubicle, past the queue of guys waiting outside the powder room for their turn. Oblivious of the knowing eyes that were staring at us, we entered the cubicle - yes dearies, of all places - and unleashed the beasts that were lurking beneath our decent skin. We devoured each other ravenously as if famine threatened our survival in that jungle. Then a rush of adrenaline...

...and we came. Not the glorifying orgasmic bliss that you're probably thinking about, but one which Erik calls a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am experience, to my disappointment. To think that it was my first time (Charing again! - Erik) ever to unload my spermatozoa with somebody in a C.R. cubicle.

After the powder room encounter, after finally taming the shrew in Erik, we now are contemplating moving in together into a room that would nurture our dreams; living happily together, growing old together, dying together, and finally transcending our current state of earth-bound existence.

aa

2003-04-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

Six Reasons Why I Hate You Plus One

My Dear Paolo,

You ask how much I love you? Must I explain? Here:

6. You never fail to remind me how monstrous I am.

5. That despite my monstrosity, you still offer me this sickening devotion of yours I get nauseous each time I hear you talk on end about the pureness of my essence. Whatever that meant, in all its utilitarian sense, it's really sickening, dude.

4. You are so stuck on me, it scares me to death thinking of the possibility of dragging a whale's carcass around when I want to move on with my life to another level, something higher than where we are right now.

3. You dream big beautiful dreams for us both, it makes me shudder to think I am too simple for all these big dreams.

2. You love me with an intensity appropriate only for gods, it sends shiver to my bones because I know I am not even close to being a fully integrated human being much less a god. My god, I am only trying to be human with some godlike qualities!

1. You are too stupid to admit that you are a cheat because you haven't gone through all the 100 Miles To Go Before You Sleep With The Cloudwalker.

Plus...

Above all these, what really matters is that I love you more than you love me, my baby.

Yours until eternity and a day,
Erik

2003-04-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

Why Do I Love Thee?

"Only you could put the fire back to the embers of my metaphorical consciousness: I could very well be the messiah to the lost, ailing, degenerating civilizations of this maddening world." -- Erik

2003-04-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

Why Do I Love Thee?

"You roused me from the cold clasp of my dormant slumber only to let me dream beautiful dreams; big dreams; this time even more transcending because I know I am with you." -- Paolo

2003-04-14T05:49:00.001-07:00

The Night Before the Mornings After: Conclusion

"You know Pao, with your overstated pathos, you could beat Frances Ruffelle's Eponine.", a friend jested.

Alright...alright. I know I was too metaphorical with my last blog. Call me a walking bundle of mush but could I help it if Erik made me feel like a child of the Romantic Period? I must confess I was rapidly falling in love with him in a 9.8 meter per square second acceleration. Well, let me be and let me bask in the hot limelight of love.

As perhaps some of my friends out there in the dark of cyberspace are wondering what happened to the slut-turned-prima-donna that fateful Saturday night meeting, I might as well spill the remaining juice of our story. And call this blog a wrap.

Your ears may be bleeding right now, but everything revolved around our dancing which was basically dirty in all its raunchy moves. There's nothing else to do at Piggy's but smooch and dance, smooch and smoke, smooch and drink, unless you want to be caught dead in your deadman walking state helplessly salivating at the sight of hunks glazed with their glossy slime... err sweat. So as not to make our dancing turn into monotonous aerobics disguised as a hot Latin number, Erik injected mini Philosophy lectures into the scene, which I think was tainted with the teachings of his cult-of-idleness master. All throughout that night, he performed a dozen transformations from the giddy cloudwalker that he had always been, to the mutant Magneto, to the hot D.I., and other formidable forms. This time he metamorphosed into a bearded sage regurgitating profound words of wisdom, while the soundtrack, the song "Happy", was playing in the background.

Entranced by that now and forever anthem of the Piggy's crowd, he blurted out in a tongue-in-cheek tone something about happiness that went like, "Happiness is not like a commodity that we can hoard. It does not pile up, but comes only one by one...so we have to seize it the moment it comes our way." I can't figure out if it's the booze or the soundtrack that made him regurgitate such loaded lines. Because later on our second meeting, he denied ever having said those.

Anyway, I swallowed that heavy dose of Erik's idea with much gusto even if I've always believed that happiness, like any other emotion, is just a matter of neurotransmitters in the brain attaching to their receptors and causing an electrochemical change in our system, making us feel what we feel...(gasp!). I could have been a candidate for buddhification if you saw how my face beamed like a glow-in-the-dark face with such a genuine and newfound enlightenment. And I thought happiness was Erik; so I held him tighter and closer to my heart. Because I knew that within a few rotations of my fake Tag Heuer's hour-hand, he would be gone...just like happiness...just like neurotransmitters in their reuptake phase.

***

I thought it was a sweet gesture that Erik never left my side throughout the night; a gesture one wouldn't usually witness in places like Piggy's. There, one can change partners a dozen times in a night. But we were stuck on each other until morning came during which we wore out the mucus linings of our stomach each with another bottle of San Mig Light. There and then, I knew Erik and I were meant to be a pair; a giddy cloudwalker and a guy on the gutter gazing at the stars. I told him I would really want to see more of him ( read: I could die!). He handed me a piece of paper on which were scribbled a name and a phone number: Jun 9233816. Pardon? I believe I'm through dealing with subjects for my case studies! Jun? I thought he had a dissociative personality disorder and was currently possessed by one of his alter egos in the name of Jun. But I didn't say anything. I just stared at the lace of hickies strung around his neck and let out a coquettish chuckle. "You, naughty you! What would they tell me at the office of I'd come in an Oprah outfit?", Erik said in between chuckles and with a mildly pissed off and worried tone.

We went out of the lounge and performed farewell rituals. Erik went to his friends who were then hailing a cab.As he stepped inside the cab and waved goodbye, I felt a certain heaviness in my chest, as if my lungs were about to explode. It was a pain of longing for a sooner reunion with Erik.

The sun was already spreading a golden carpet on the streets and I could feel its morning warmth pricking my face. I stood there watching the car speed off into the distance, snatching Erik away from me. God I knew I would miss this Erik... Jun... whoever he is, very much. I turned around and saw my friend who was waiting for me at the cigarette stand.

We headed towards home; in his face a tired and impatient look, while in my heart was a bittersweet feeling. Why are partings tinged with pain?

2003-04-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

Why Do I Love Thee?

"You are so pure within even when you brag about being a world wide whore."--- Paolo

2003-04-08T04:47:00.000-07:00

Why Do I Love Thee?

"Nothing thrills me more than waking up to each new day with you by my side: your face beaming with the certainty of a forever so real it beacons invitingly with each fluttering of your soulful eyes."-- Erik

2003-04-05T05:18:00.000-08:00

Despondenciado

I know the poignancy
Of a virgin vermin
Feasting on a stale semen
At the sad, sad hour
Of compulsive self-castigation;
Like I know the poesy
Of a pure pure heart
Begging for true love
Before a deadcold stone. ---Erik

2003-04-04T03:15:00.000-08:00

Why Do I love Thee?

"I love you because in every warm, sunny morning, you appear like the missing piece of my life's puzzle; a piece I might have lost in the cold, dark nights of my checkered past." - Paolo

2003-04-02T01:38:00.000-08:00

Why Do I Love Thee?

"Nobody has the power to cause such tempest of soul-cleansing emotions, the best of which are those all-consuming hands that pour in at the most dreadful hours of my self-loathings." -- Erik

2003-04-02T00:08:00.000-08:00

The Night Before the Mornings After: Part II

"...will this one last longer than a sigh?"
-Danton Remoto

The dancing never seemed to stop. Erik and I became one glorious entity swaying and turning in an endless stream of passion and dreamy solitude amidst the universe of bodies that resembled flickering stars. But there was something sad about the pulsating blue beams of light that shone through our tiny orbit. They seemed to anticipate the rage of the coming morning before which they fade out and turn themselves off in defeat. Their timid sparkle seemed to remind me of the fleeting nature of meetings and brief connections like ours. Suddenly I was consumed by a loneliness that I couldn't explain. I felt an urgent desire to touch and to feel; an intense longing for a certain comfort that could somehow reassure me that the world where our lives perform a thousand revolutions night and day is not a sad and gloomy one, after all. Erik so willingly gave me the highly needed strokes. Each carressing contact was served generously without any hint of affectation or deception.

"Do you sense exploitation with what I'm doing?", Erik would ask me once in a while in a hesitant tone as he enclosed me in the warmth of his body. He enveloped my body in a loving, gentle sweep of his arms that made me feel a sudden vulnerability at that moment. All at once I felt an insatiable craving to be imprisoned by him and to succumb to his own desires.

"No.", I heard myself whisper in his ears, almost like a lingering sigh of surrender. As I pressed my lips to his mouth, I found myself giving in to his kisses in return. The sweetness of his moist lips lingered in my heaving chest, and sent a quick electric rush all over my body. Strands of his beard and moustache, like grassblades that suavely framed his warm mouth, transformed into soft feathers as they gently brushed my skin and teased the beads of sweat in my face. The sweet carress seemed to leave me flushed with fever. Our tongues needed not utter words that would have described the profound colors of emotions painted in our communion. They spoke a language of their own as they tangled and untangled with the fiery heat of our passion. Then, for the third time, Erik muttered, "Do you feel exploited?"

There was something about the way Erik mentioned the word "exploit" that seemed to haunt me. It ricocheted in my mind and roused aftershocks of a familiar feeling of fear inside me. Then I remembered how my former affairs all turned out to be deadly games of exploitation. I figured my past liaisons were nothing but monotonous re-enactments of a dangerous play in which I exchanged roles with each of my co-actors, every so often. In the past, a lover and I would begin like two characters fumbling in the darkness of the stage, groping for the dearly prized strokes of connection, hoping that these would somehow see us through another day, month, or even year of agonizing existence. Then came the part where we juggled the roles we played. The victim transformed into the persecutor, the exploiter became the exploited one, and the predator became prey; all these executed with the fluid grace of deceit. And our pathetic lives were trapped in a world of endless ephemeral acts; a theater of karmic cycles and seemingly eternal revolutions of pleasure and pain. It was a den where a lover lashed my flesh with his predatory desire, as much as I hungrily feasted on his meat. And so that was how our brittle existence hurtled bit by bit in a rollercoaster ride down to decadence.

***

Lost in Erik's embrace, I had never felt more owned like a precious possession and closer to home. All my life I felt like a lost ricebird trying to find its golden fields in the arms and faces of men. They were either too vast for me to find a corner of comfort and peace. Or too confined and heavily surrounded by electric fences that kept me from flapping my wings. It was only in a moment of imprisonment in Erik's warmth that I felt a glorious flight to freedom; freedom from fear and loneliness. In his arms, I sensed the closeness of a home with the promise of bright mornings. And at that moment I knew I would be wanting for more of Erik. I knew I would be longing for him to possess me more deeply; an aching desire that is steep...like hunger.

2003-03-27T06:23:00.000-08:00

The Night Before The Mornings After: Part 1

It all started on a Saturday night.

I was sitting in a corner of the disco-cum-orgy room, on the the lounge's second floor, trying to unwind after the nerve-racking thesis defense the morning before. With a stick of Marlboro lights in one hand and a bottle of San Mig light in the other, I tried to lighten up and dissolve my mood into the collective mood of the crowd. It didn't work. I only grew drowsier and the room seemed darker than ever. My usual 20-20 vision almost turned glaucomatous as my eyes landed on the eternally gyrating hunks with freshly sculpted torsos and on not-so-hunky men. The whole place seemed like an oversized can of pickled bodies drenched in their own sweat. The oversaturated salinity of their perspiration would make the brine of the Dead Sea pale in comparison. This ecosystem housed the whole sexual spectrum of the modern male Homo sapiens, which came in an array of somatotypes and ethnicities, in levels of bruteness and nakedness, in levels of intellectual capacity or mental retardation, and other taxonomic categories. There were twinks in all their stages of development, effeminate gays, butch gays, drag queens, self-proclaimed bisexuals, queers, mutants, stray heterosaurs and other varieties; all showcasing the merits of Darwin's evolution. The other inanimate forms behind me were spectres of the humans that they used to be; some were dozing off, other were haggling for the night's lay, and many were perhaps contemplating the reason for their oblivious existence.

Just as I was about to prepare my coronation speech as the Wallflower Queen of the Night, somebody interrupted my gradual degeneration with a quick but delicate brush of his hand. I was drawn away from my deadman walking state of existence by this galloping guy. Or was he floating? It was like a wonderful dream in which a hand touched mine, and upon awakening I found out that the hand was still there; real and warm. I didn't get the meaning of that touch at first. My rational code-deciphering mechanism failed me. Was it an accidental clash of random tactile stimuli? Or was it a pick-up gesture? I settled for the latter. And although I normally didn't allow men to pick me up especially in places like Piggy's, I decided I might as well play the role of a slut that night. So I collected myself and with my infrared vision followed the guy's track through the darkness of the room, as he dissolved into the frenzied crowd. His presence seemed to project a powerful magnetic field. Well, he was a magnetic guy himself, so in a few seconds' duration, I found myself landing next to his feet. My body was automatically grinding in perfect synchronization to the beat of some abraded trance music. I searched Mr. Magneto's face. His resembled a pixelated pretty face punctured every now and then by the sad little blue beams of the lounge's fluorescent light. I quickly identified him from his company... partner? Eeek! He's damned taken? I almost melted like a figure in a Dali painting with my disappointment. But being a cock-eyed optimist, I convinced myself that this was not a time for giving up with Buddhist calm. So I made my dancing more raunchy than ever, hoping to attract this guy with my own evolving magnetism. It worked this time, for I believed I heard him ask with raspy yet soothing voice, "Got a partner yet?" I retorted a resounding "NO" (read: I'm yours! Take me!). And without further delay he shoved away what turned out to be his wishful partner to my delight. He took me in his arms in one sweep of his mighty hands and I succumbed to his powerful embrace. I felt like a slut transfoming into a prima donna.

Before I knew it, we were dancing to a common rhythm, to a music that seemed ours alone. I was drowning in the beauty of this man who called himself Erik; a name that I would find later as the nth alias of Cloudwalker. I was once again caught in a trance, but this time I felt like floating amongst fragrant heavenly clouds, which were actually fumigations of dry ice. We were literally in a world of our own when the other party people around us moved away little by little, allowing us enough space for the dream that I thought would last only for that night.

I liked Erik in a very strange way the first time I saw him. He thought I was edible and I felt flattered by such a sexy remark. Later, he would be calling me a dimwit, half-wit, moron, imbecile, and other such derogatory terms that would have made me spill hydrochloric acid on his face. I would have, if not for the sweet, vulnerable sound his voice made as he lovingly relished his every utterance of those words; words that seemed to have been invented for the exclusive purpose of his cynical advocacy mission on Earth.

2003-03-22T04:46:00.000-08:00

Why Do I Love Thee?

"I love you because you can give me the same passionate kiss before I brush my teeth in the morning; your tongue burning with the same passion as when you kissed me before you tucked me to bed." - Erik