12 years after

my baby was sorting out her files, and found this last night. i thought i'd give you a background of  the story behind this writing.

i always tell people i loved her from years ago, but after high school we sort of drifted apart.
it was all my own doing, as i haven't figured out who i was and what i wanted to do at that time. yes, there was a time i was so scared to love.

back in 2006, my good friend Rubs came to stay with me in Subic. That was the first time I had the courage to tell my friends I had been in love with her since 1994. And that I wanted to meet her again. This is the story.


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“Do you still play the piano?”

 

Funny how in the scattered amnesia-infested clutters in my brain, all I remember are the little, ordinary details. Perhaps that is what the effect is of days and days piling up and fleeting, tiny little steps away from the memories left behind.

 

I realized a week ago when I was sitting outside a café with a friend of long ago, that it takes two people to actually recount a memory. When you’re alone, well that is just nostalgia, plain and simple. Here we were getting drunk on coffee, cigarettes and intricate little conversations, and recalling. There is none greater than recalling ancient incidents with the much different perspectives of two people who haven’t talked about it in twelve years.

 

Twelve years, oh my, what a big word. I was twelve years old when we first met. I was twelve years old when I discovered life, and that I was in it. And all the things that followed that until, four bright and overwhelming years that have molded what we are now, and what will cradle us for the persons that we are going to be.

 

There we were, two people surrounded by the chatter of the present, recalling as best as we can, the golden days that now appear like a labyrinth, a version of euphoria that will never be relived again. It is amazing how it was designed to be that way---that each one person will remember a completely different thing from what I kept hostage in my brain. Ordinary details that I didn’t even acknowledge at that time. And when we put it all together it becomes a whole new twist of the story, a fantastic version of the truth put together by hazy recollections and joint ideas compromised into one. Imagine adding another person and another, and all putting these perspectives into the pot, creating that ecstatic brew of experiences that fit into the great mysterious puzzle of the past. Put in the liquor, the laughs and the watery eyes, and there it is the great big time machine that was a high school reunion.

 

We were at the finest restaurant in Reinnes, dining Italian al fresco in the cold and crisp January night breeze. The writer with a manic cough that was so frequent that it masqueraded as a characteristic. The artist smoking away as if it was the last cigarette box in a desolate island. No question about it, it created the atmosphere for the ritual. When you start speaking in the language of “do you remember?..., that’s when you know you’re in it for the night. Forget about everything around you, the crowd, the place, the food, the breeze, and teleport. I’ve always loved having my friends over, as it’s like having that minute you see accidentally see yourself in a mirror that wasn’t there before. Like glancing up to catch a moment of the image of yourself in a puddle of rain on a busy intersection. That is what a friend does best, to become those puddles that reflect you when you’re caught up in all the things that led to creating the word busy.

 

The writer and the artist, with the frailness of twelve years worth of other experiences not shared with one another going back to that time. The exhaustion of dragging out the skeletons dusty and fragile, made for a lovely evening.

 

“What would you say to her?,” the artist asked with all sincerity. And a hundred thoughts came to my mind. What do you say to your first love without a word shared between you for twelve years? How do you even begin? How do you force your tongue to speak to her on the eve of her wedding, to finally tell her that she was the first one who taught you how to love?

 

I said, “Do you still play the piano?” And the artist was confused but comforted by the thought of those words coming out from my lips, imagining me at that situation, where it was impossible to speak.

 

There is a great volume of things shared and spoken between me and Sofia. But the thought that kept playing in my head was her graceful fingers dancing across the black and white keys, her head bowed down, her eyes closed, her dark curled tresses falling just below her ear, her beautiful face softly lit by stars and moonlight, her beautiful white dress hanging from her ivory shoulders, clinging to her breasts, hugging her waist and gently falling off her hips, covering and revealing her porcelain legs as her naked foot steps gently on the pedestal. I do not remember the music that wooed my ears as I stood there by the piano paralyzed by that moment, the moment that she entered my heart and carved her initials into the depths of my being.  It was the very few moments we were alone, and she was saying goodbye for the holidays, one of many that we would spend far apart. Was it a Christmas song, was it an ode of love, was it a lullaby? I could not remember. It’s true when your other senses die out to give their energy to the other senses that would enable you to experience it best. Everything else gave way, save my eyes and my heart to live in that moment and make it the most hallowed image of her unto this day. It was a beautiful goodbye, and for the first time we realize that with all the joy that love had brought upon us to feel, so will it bring the exquisite little pains of goodbyes.  I sat next to her and she laid her head down on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her and held her hands on the other on top of the piano keys and we fell silent and sighed. She was going home for the holidays and I didn’t know what was going on inside her head but I dreaded the 2 weeks I’d spend without seeing her smile and her quaint little eyes that disappear when she does. 2 weeks and now twelve years. . .

 

“You know you should call her right now,” the artist said as reached for the phone. And I panicked and shook my head no. Because I still believe hat in one surreal way fate will let us see each other again and that I would be able to say it in person. I would not throw all the magic with a single phone call from nowhere, to hear her over the garbled indifference of the cell phone, “Who are you?” when she hears my voice from twelve years ago now belonging to a stranger who was coughing every minute.

 

Maybe I’d get to see her before she gets married, or maybe not. Maybe I’d run into her during the graduation of her firstborn. Maybe, just maybe. But I knew there has got to be one time when it would happen.    

 

“What do you want to say to her that you have to say it in person?,” the artist asked. “I think it was more awkward for you to ask her to dinner all of a sudden after twelve years of not even a word.” Exactly, I said, That is why I have to let fate decide if we were going to meet again. The artist screamed in frustration and laughed. Because we knew we were not going to close it that night. And the artist had another thing to look back on and regret. But the beautiful thing was that it was now shared regret between them.

 

“All I want to do is say I’m sorry.”

 

About how, twelve years ago I was the biggest coward and idiot. I wanted to explain to her why I walked out on what could have been the greatest affairs of my life because I was scared and dumb like a sixteen year old was at that time. To finally admit that she was the biggest regret of my life, and it was the most terrible kind of hurt I could have given anyone in my life. I left her because I was scared and I was stupid. And not until twelve years later when I have become this twenty-eight year old writer, a little bit wiser by time and a lot bolder by experience, to realize that I had to put a closure to it all with a most sincere apology. That was the task at hand and the artist and the writer realized it that night that it would probably be the hardest ordeal to say sorry to your first true love, to the one who got away.  

 

k. Saturday, February 04, 2006, 12:45 P.M. out to lunch.

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i thought I'd share this one with you all, because fate has been so kind. 2 years and 8 months after I wrote this, she is mine.

Fate has been so kind.

I love you so much baby.

Rubs, thank you so much for lending an ear and always believing..