When Stories Are All We've Got

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Previously: (Please read these first to better understand the story below, and play the video at the end.)
So Goodbye, These Days Are Gone

"of all the edifices man has built,

no one can deny, no one who has lived at least,
that love is the frailest structure of all...
built to tumble, meant to fall."

"I still remember what I told him last year on his birthday, that whether he's 24 or 40 or 60, I hope we will always have each other."

Long, Long Ago and Oh, So Far Away

"That is the curse of secrets, I think. It gives new meaning to old memories. I wasn't even sure if he really did love me."

A Year Ago

"For the first ... and last time in my life, I felt that kind of love. And the memory of it is beautiful ... enough to last. Enough to give me comfort on nights like these... when love seems so far away."






Manuel was twenty-four then, I was twenty-seven and we were in love. When I write about him now,  it is tempting to dismiss it as one of those ordinary affairs people have. But I know that what I felt was as deep and as rich as love can ever get, with all its shades and complexities.

He had poise and a quiet dignity. His eyes, I remember, were black like his hair, and he was lean and tall, gentle and fragile-looking. And so in the summer of 2007, I took him out on our first real date. I had just gotten back from trekking the mountains in northern Vietnam and I was eager to see him.

We ate at a restaurant which served fusion dishes and neo-Filipino food. I was very nervous. I wanted to say something special and profound. I wanted to be sophisticated and elegant and wise. I wanted to impress him.

It turned out I did. We had a second date, and then a third. And so on. The next few weeks was a whirlwind of romance and desire, of hearts racing and pulses quickening. It was the birth of love.



The thing about a story is that we dream it as we tell it, and in this way memory and fantasy and words combine to create stories in our heads. You make people talk, they become alive. They sometimes say things like "I'm sorry" which is what Manuel said to me long after he was gone.

Even now I can still see Manuel walking away after we said our final goodbye. The sun had set and the streets were oddly quiet. He asked me to meet him on his last day in Manila months after our break-up, he was leaving tomorrow for America. I had a strange feeling I will never see him again. I never did.




Even after some time had passed, I would dream of Manuel, dream of our happier days, dream of time gone by. In them, we were still in love. None of the terrible things had happened yet, they were set in a future that was still to come. Blissfully unaware of the tragedy that was approaching, soothed and enveloped in the flames of our love, we were happy. Until one day, he stopped appearing in my dreams.

There was something different about the dream where I saw him last. It was vivid, more solid. It felt real. We were driving in the countryside on the outskirts of Manila to revisit a restaurant we loved which overlooked the Taal Lake. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining and a cool breeze was blowing.

Manuel turned to me and it seemed like he was about to say something important. I tried to stop him. I didn't want to ruin the moment, it was a time to be carefree. There would be time for seriousness later.

But he looked at me with his eyes so soft and so sad. "I'm sorry Kane," he said.

"It's alright," I nodded. I was about to cry. I had waited so long for him to say those words and finally, here they were. "Alam ko. (I know.) I forgive you."

I squeezed his hand, I didn't want to let go. If only I could hold on to my anger and pain just a little bit longer, I'd be able to keep him here, a prisoner of my dreams. But I knew. It was time to set him free. It was time to set myself free. I stepped on the gas and the car sped up the highway. We were racing, racing. To where, I wasn't exactly sure.

And then it becomes 2012. I'm thirty-two years old, and still remembering Manuel. Though he's no longer really Manuel, but made up with a different name and a different identity, like the man who never was. It doesn't matter. I loved him and then he left me.

And yet right here, under the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see him as if through a mist, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no goodbyes, no death, no heartaches. I can see others too, my other lovers Marvin and Kenneth and Ed and Kristine, the only girl I ever loved. They're all there, smiling and waving at me.

And sometimes, I see myself driving on a highway with Manuel under a dark moonless sky. I'm young, I'm happy. I'll never die. I'm driving across the surface of my own history, moving fast and when I step on the gas and speed into the present, five years later, I realize it is as if I am giving myself hope, trying to save myself with a story.

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Much “I Do” About Nothing

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Trajan recently broke up with his boyfriend and we were all worried about him. Everyone around the table was asking him how he was. I observed how strangely calm he seemed.

"Okay na ako (I'm okay)," he said in response to all our questions. "Bago lang naman kami so madali mag move on. Ano ba kayo. Marami pa dyan (We were just starting so it's easy to move on. Come on, there's a lot more guys out there)."

Wow, I thought to myself. How can there be people like that?

Arlan leaned towards me and whispered "Alam mo, minsan hindi ko maintindihan bakit ganoon ang ibang tao. Parang ang dali-dali lang ng break-up sa kanila. Diba hindi dapat?"

(You know, I don't understand how some people can be that way. Break-ups just seem so easy for them. It's not supposed to be easy, right?)

"I know honey," I said. "I guess it's because when we do get a boyfriend, it really means something. Look at us, we've been single for so long and we've had very few relationships."



Sometimes I envy my friends who can jump in and out of relationships quickly, seemingly without being scarred, without losing parts of themselves. Every break-up, every single failed relationship that I had felt like a small death. I gave myself completely to each one of my lovers.

My ex once asked me why is it so hard for me to accept that our relationship was over.

"You and I meant the world to each other once. Or at least, you did to me," I told him. "I just can't be okay that easily."

The ability to move on and heal quickly is something we all desire. But as Sting would say, my heart is not shaped that way.



The conversation shifted and V started telling us about a guy he likes when I suddenly interrupted him.

"Honey, you did receive the first royal decree of the year, right?" I asked.

"No. What is it?" he replied, laughing. We were up to our old antics.

"It says 'Walang mag bo boyfriend sa atin this year (We aren't allowed to have boyfriends this year)'," I said.

"Honey!!! Nooooo," V said. "You can't doom us to another year of being single. Why not?"

"It's my last year in Manila and I'm sure you'd rather spend it with your best friend than with some boy you'd likely break up with anyway."

"But honeyyyyyyyyy… I like him."

I turned my head and looked at V.

"You can like him next year."
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Vacation

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I woke up that day with a single thought in my head: I wanted to see the ocean.

It was a three-day weekend and everyone was busy preparing for the Halloween parties in Manila including the annual Cream Ball and the Black Party in Malate.

Fuck, my friend Jason even had a Hellcats cheerleader costume made. He was hoping to snag a quarterback.

 
 
 
But I wanted something different.
 
"Come on Brian, let's go to Ilocos," I said, trying to convince my friend to come with me. "Cobbled streets, lighthouses, windmills, beaches, and bagnet; what more can you ask for?"

"Hmmm... Why do you want to go out of town ba?"

"I want to go to the beach. I want to swim, I want to travel. Besides, if I stay here, it's the same old thing. Parties and boys na naman."

"Hahaha. You make it sound like it's such a bad thing. Pero sige sige, punta tayo. (But okay okay, let's go.)

"Yey!"

 
 
The bus left Manila Thursday evening and by dawn the next day, we were standing on top of the 400-year old San Agustin belfry watching as the sun's rays slowly crept up on the nearby town of Burgos.

The sun rises and sets every day, but not all sunrises are the same. There was a golden light, streaked with blood and purple, as if the end of the world had come without intruding on everyday-life.

In the afternoon, we stopped by the town of Burgos to see the Kapurpurawan rock formation. The rock was carved out from the surrounding sandstone through the centuries by wind and waves erosion. It was huge, imposing and white, very white.

Brian and I headed towards the rock for a closer look. We were walking on dead corals that dotted the landscape when suddenly a wave hit us. I fell into the sea.

I struggled to reach the surface to breathe but the current was too strong. I was tossed under the ocean, scraped my hands, arms, legs, feet and back against the corals. Then I crashed into a rock, hit my head and everything went dark.






When I was alive, I often wondered why there are no happy ghosts, but now that I am one, I understand why.

The universe of knowledge opens up to you in death. Every word, every detail now has weight and meaning: the smile thoughtlessly given, the promises made.

You begin to understand each moment of your life clearly, identify all the things you should have done, and shouldn't have. But what's the use, when it's all too late?

When you're mortal, you only have so much information at hand. You never know what other people really think; their desires, wishes, impulses. You never know what is hidden.

All these are revealed in death. The lover who waited in the rain for two hours, hoping you'll come back, the dad who can never tell his son how proud he is of him, the friend who betrayed you.

The people closest to us suddenly become strangers, and all their motivations are suddenly laid bare.

Always

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Fiction

I was drinking at a bar when I met Michael. We were introduced by a common friend and we started chatting after we both found out we grew up at the same hometown.

"So, how long have you been in Manila?" I asked him.

"A couple of years," he said, taking a swig at his bottle.

"So how is it so far?"

"It's great," he replied, grinning. "There are a lot more good looking men in Manila as compared to the province."

Michael was about 25, then. He was young, beautiful, eager to see the city, with its bright brimming lights and dream filled streets.

"Here, there's more variety," he said, gesturing at a couple of muscular men dancing at the ledge.

"Hahaha. A collector, I see. And whose turn is it tonight?"

"It's your turn," he answered, looking straight into my eyes.

Ahhhh… this boy likes the game, I said to myself.

"What makes you think I'll go with you?" I told him.

"What makes you think you won't?"

I found him unnerving and exciting at the same time. I rarely meet a man who could outmatch me.

"Come," he said and pulled me to the dance floor.



The next day, we woke up at around noon. I was about to leave but he insisted we get something to eat at a nearby fastfood.

"Were you always like this? When you were in Davao, were you sleeping around?"

"Oh no," he said seriously. "I had a boyfriend there."

"So what happened to him?"

"He still writes to me. But I never open his letters."

"Why not?" I asked Michael.

"I don't have time for him. But he doesn't understand that. I wish he would stop sending me gifts."

"What doesn't he understand?"

"That things change. He thinks in terms of forever. He doesn't understand why I can't keep the promises I made to him, years ago."

"Promises of eternal love."

"Who hasn't made promises like that? But nobody really keeps them. We all talk a lot, being in love makes you say things you thought you meant. I did mean those things back then. But I was young, we both were and you think you know the future. He still thinks I am his, forever."

"Perhaps he will learn in time."

"I don't think so. You don't know him. As far as he is concerned, I will always be his... always."

Michael said the last word in a way that indicated he knew that word was not his, but his boyfriend's, which he denied everyday by his actions, by not opening his letters and gifts, by placing a distance between each other.

There are people who know exactly what they want; and their will is much stronger than those who don't know what they want, or know only what they don't want. There are forces we can escape, and then there are those that are infinitely patient and determined, and love is one of them.

I thought of Michael's boyfriend, waiting for his lover to come back. I once was that boy, I remember.



I would see Michael once in while, we would go out for a drink or see each other in clubs. He got into several messy relationships and break-ups, including one that led to the loss of his job at a hotel and another that led to drug abuse. He began to lose his youthful looks, and took on the air of a man who has fallen on hard times. He soon disappeared from the scene and later on, I learned he migrated to Singapore for work.

Years later, I saw him in Orchard at a coffee shop with a guy.

"Hey Michael!" I shouted.

"Kane! What a surprise!"

"It's so good to see you," I said. "How have you been?"

"I'm good, good. Here, let me introduce you to someone."

"Kane, this is my boyfriend, Ryan. He's also from Davao," he explained to me, smiling.

"It's nice meeting you," Ryan said, shaking my hand and smiling shyly.

Ryan was nothing special compared to the boys in the clubs we used to frequent. But there was something about him, an air that was at once reserved and determined.

"We got back together," Michael whispered to me. "I guess he was right, after all. That I was always his."

To Draw Death

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British writer Christopher Isherwood, whose The Berlin Stories was turned into the film Cabaret, first met his lifetime partner Don Bachardy when Don was, in his own words "probably, 16."

They marked Valentine’s Day 1953 as the start of their relationship. Don was 18, Chris was 48.

In 1963, they broke up. From his despair, Chris wrote A Single Man which depicted a day in the life of George, a middle-aged, gay Englishman in Southern California whose younger lover died in a car crash.

George, who must hide his homosexuality from society as well as his anguish at the death of his lover.

It was a brave and shocking book in 1964, and Edmund White later called it "one of the first and best novels of the modern Gay Liberation movement."

Chris and Don survived their break-up. Chris continued to write and Don became a celebrity portrait painter whose subjects include Tennessee Williams to Anais Nin. They were together for 33 years.

When Chris became terminally ill with prostate cancer, they both decided to create a visual portrait of his dying. Over a period of six months before Chris' death in 1986, Don charted the final facial gestures of his lover's illness and death with loving cruelty in a series of line drawings.

“Chris was in a lot of pain towards the end," Don said in an interview earlier this year. "But he had sat for me so often over the years, and I knew this was something we could still do together.”

The last of the series was completed when Chris was already dead. Don remained alone with the body, sketching his lover's final farewell.

These drawings make me feel sentimental. They speak of pain and dying, but there is tenderness in each line. Perhaps it is in our deaths where we fully reveal ourselves and in these sketches, we see the portrait of a man the artist loved to his dying day.

Til' death do us part.

Hush, Hush: This Too Shall Pass

Shakespeare once said: "All's well that ends well." But sometimes, it just … ends.

xtian,

It seems you have joined/are joining the ranks of people ending relationships. What can I say that you don't already know? There are times when words are useless, no matter how well-meaning they are.

We try to manage loss and staunch grief, but perhaps these emotions are based on false assumptions. Our lovers will be there indefinitely, and that is what happiness is based on. When in fact, most of them leave, sooner or later.

So what is there to hope about? And I'm not sure what the answer is. Some people have resorted to living in a series of authentic moments, rather than hope for an everlasting love.

But deep down, everyone wants love, the kind that stretches beyond your horizon. The kind than transcends, not only space and time, but even our own mortality, even death.

But we don't know if we will have that, or when, or with who. And as we grow older, we start to surrender to the idea that maybe some aren't meant for that kind of love. People who have lost two husbands, and a parent, or a child, have a deeper understanding and acceptance of the mysteries of life. But you aren't there yet. I'm not there yet. You can't expect to be. We're too young, not yet close to philosophical. You want him to change, to love you again, and we have to hope that happens. And also … also prepare as much as we can for the possibility that he might not.

We talk to our friends, read books, in our search to understand what happened, and how to change things. But there are things books don't say. There are some terrible times when knowledge isn't power, when being sane or intelligent won't save you. You are standing in the middle of the night in an arctic sea on a flaming ship that's exploded. Maybe I can help. We are going to try. But perhaps all I can do in this moment is make you feel slightly less alone on a burning deck.

Kane

A Tale of Two Heartaches

"Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through."
---The Great Dictator (1940)

 
Saturday
J: Sorry I don't think I can meet you tonight. I went to my ex's house and returned the things he left sa bahay. I burned all the letters and a picture of us. The only picture I saved. I'm sorry. I can't talk about it. Not yet.

K: Naiintidihan kita. Tight hug. If you want to talk, I can listen. If you don't want to, that's alright too. I am sorry you have to go through this pain.

J: I lost half of me and I have come to accept it. It is hard.
Monday.
J: I am crying na naman.

K: Hay. Ako katatapos lang. Do you want me to call? If not, we can text.

J: Huwag muna. I don't know what to say. Tears just started falling. I am losing it Kane, I am losing it.

K: Alam ko man ang sakit na yan. Siguro I embrace mo na lang ang pain, iiyak mo, ilabas mo lahat. Huwag mo ng pigilan. Matagal pa siguro pero darating din ang araw na okay ka na. Darating din.

J: Ayaw ko na. Everyday I cry, everyday. Why? Wala naman akong ginawa. Wala naman akong ginusto sa nangyari. Bakit ako?

K: Siguro makakatulong if you talk to a friend.

J: I know what they will tell me. I have heard it all. But they don't carry my load. They don't know how hard it is to watch something you fought for die in front of you… to beg, to watch, to cry. They don't know that moving on is letting go of a part of you. Someone I ate with, someone I can't sleep without, someone I cried with, someone I am willing to die for. How in the world do I let go of that? Tell me Kane, is that suppose to be easy? Parang binubutas ang dibdib ko.

K: Alam ko, hindi madali. Devastated ka talaga. Parang giyera yan na talagang natalo ka at nasira lahat. Mag uumpisa ka na walang wala, paunti unti.

J: Thank you Kane. You don't know how much comfort I get just knowing somebody understands. Mahirap talaga eh but I am trying. Nanood ako ng Up kanina. Akala ko feel good movie, lalo lang ako na depress.

K: Hahaha ako din! Umiyak ako after the movie sa parking lot.

J: Naaala ko kasi promise naming sa isa't isa, we will be buried in the same grave. Ahhh this is too much. Good night. Thank you for sharing yourself to me. A gift I didn't expect.

Yesterday, my friend JM and I watched the movie Up. The film begins with a romance, sweet and lovely. Two children meet and discover they share the same dream. They grow up, have a courtship, marry, are happy together, and grow old.

It's not a perfect life. Problems get in the way, but at the end of the day, they always had each other. Until one day, death came for one of them.

I wanted that kind of love. I once told M that couples who absolutely love each other are afraid of only one thing; death. They knew nothing in this world can ever break them apart, not distance, or illness or another person.

"To have and to hold from this day forward,
for better for worse,
for richer for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part."

JM hugged me and comforted me inside the car. But what surprised me the most was when JM broke down. He spoke of how his heart was broken four years ago, and how he was never the same after that.

JM: I wanted to give him the world, but now the world is not even enough to pay for my pain. Now, when someone tells me they love me, I think to myself, until when? Pare-pareho lang kayo, isang araw iiwan niyo rin ako. Kaya uunahan ko na kayo.

JM: Now, when you talk to me about love K, I can't relate to it. I don't even know what it is. After R left me, I told myself, never again. I will never give my heart to someone else.

He spoke of their vow, of a day when they went inside a church, gave each other a ring, and promised to grow old together. I saw a future with him, he said.

I hugged him tightly. All this pain, all these years. But who would have guessed? JM with his prancing ways and lovely gaze. But underneath all the smiles and laughter is a heart that has gone cold.

Heartaches affect people differently. Some become stoic, others shrug it off after a few days, some are haunted throughout their lifetime. But a few are able to accept it, quietly, with grace, in time.

Last night, as I fell asleep I thought of those characters in the film, of a kid trying to please his Dad, of two old men battling for meaning in their lives. A loyal dog. And always, that house, that flying house with all those bright, colorful balloons.

"Thank you for the adventure. Now go get yourself a new one."
---Up (2009)