A Letter

All love is unrequited. All of it. ~ J. Michael Stracyznski

Hindi ito ang huling bagay na hindi mo pa alam tungkol sa akin. But this was the closest I ever got to understanding the beauty and terror of what you have been fighting for. Somewhere along the course of these crazy events, I was forced to challenge the number of drops I would bleed to keep this friendship. Friendship. In the final accounting this transcends everything, even the strongest and blackest of desires, or the clearest paths of destiny itself.

I had an answer in my heart all along, and, man, did it rock their world.

This unexpected: I was late for Comm 3 class that day. I ripped off the ear buds from my ears as I slipped into a chair at the back of the room. The raging, moaning synthesizers and haunting guitars of some instrumental track died in my head as my eyes locked on the person in front. You.

This strong: I have not, for a single moment, forgotten what had happened one hundred and thirty-five days ago. Your lips had never left my mouth. I could have named your smell if I knew words invented to describe it. Your eyes were still burning through my soul. I had never kissed a boy I never knew before, and it was wonderful. Ever since Math 17, the colors of college life in the state university, land of jumbled dreams, prurient hormones and awkward beginnings, have changed so completely and so irrevocably they began to hurt. The way bright light assaults the retina. Clear and visceral and unlike anything.

This physical: My chest began to heave. A giant rug was being pulled from underneath me and everything around me as I took in what was happening. I wanted to run away. I was suddenly cold and feverish. I could feel a wide swath of heavy heat between where we were. I was being drawn and my body knew it.

This unlikely: The fact is I am not easily impressed. My life was rich. I was darling of the karmic cosmos—the golden birth right of early self-actualizers. Perfectly imperfect parents and the tender but constant adulation of four brothers. Nurturing relatives and feisty, interesting neighbors. A charmed childhood. The unscathable peace only travelers and kids who eat dinners with a complete family can ever truly know. So you, that you floored me, was in many ways odd.

This compelling: The interview we were supposed to be watching was just picking up. Keebs, small guy with glasses, waves a remote control towards a video camera.

“This is going live at my blog, Google ‘Ding and Ferdinand Lancaster’s Search for the Great Uncanny.’” Keebs smiled at the audience, and then at you. “They asked me to try and get someone influential here, a name you’d recognize, a person you’d know from TV, but then I thought, if the real lesson we’re getting at here is to paint a picture of these incredible times, then old people will not be able to speak on behalf of this generation, will they?” Keebs looked up sheepishly at our professor, “I have deep respect for the wisdom of old, but guys, this is our playground, who else should speak about the wonders of this decade than one of our own? And so with much pride, and perhaps a little uncertainty, I brought here to class someone who’s much like you, but not really, a guy with a mind as big as the sky, the amazing, the ever-eloquent, Danilo Bustamante.”

You smiled, somewhat shyly. “That’s a little too much, Keebs.”

“Then don’t disappoint our audience. First question. People who read our blog know about ‘the girl.’ Who is she and why is there this whole obsession over finding her?”

They have a blog? I thought.

“I don’t know her name. You know the story. Let’s just say I have a fairly good idea how much fun we can get out of any given day, and I have a feeling that with her, we can trump it by a mile.”

“Do you know how many students there are here in Diliman?”

“More or less. But nothing has ever stopped me before.”

This empirical: Our eyes locked, a few seconds at most, but within it the gravity of annihilating an entire universe. A single blink, a war is waged, an epoch ends. Remember this, I am aware of the body count.

This carnal: It was taking my entire physical strength, fighting off the throbbing, raging claws of desire, to restrain myself from shoving my classmates’ chairs out of the way to run to you and grab you by the shoulders and tell you the words that have been stuck in my throat since the day we met. Take me away.

This sick: But I am also your workaday rebel. I was acutely aware of what this moment would set off. I knew we were meant to find each other today. I knew our histories were meant to intertwine. I knew it the moment we first saw each other. Something in my mind said, “Do you know what this means?”

I thought it would get me to get on that path but instead I realized that this level of certainty has never been examined before. I have actively avoided you for months now, thinking if this was the way of things then something should happen to make us cross paths again. I have ducked and scooted around any possibility that I will ever find you and that you will find me and yet here you are anyway.

“You’re right,” I told myself. “I will not be told what to do.”

This much: I stood up and walked out, leaving behind an unlived history. I knew what should have happened. I should have stayed behind, waited for you to finish your witty tirades about the wonders of this century, and we would have remembered each other, and we would have clicked again, like the months-long gap did not happen, and we would have made out in the halls, perhaps immortalized by Keebs’ still-running webcam. We would have conquered the world with our words, our adventures, our collective mastery of living in the now.

Instead I never returned to that class or to that building ever again. I was weird like that.

Months passed. And yet, Dante, here we are.