mader nabubuhay ang mga patay! part 3

Bernie and I will meet later tonight--same place, at the shangrila.

Sya ang patay na nabuhay at nangahas makipagkaibigan.

Out of whim (but now i'm beginning to doubt this), as we were chatting some days ago, i told him that i blogged of us finding each other again on chat after six years of no communication. he read parts one and two of this blog and urged me to go on with writing part three. i told him there will be no part three for this; i said i could never, and would not, knowing that he knows of this blog's existence already, continue rambling on this piece of my life; but deep within me, something is crying out for closure.

and so i write this.

tonight there will be one.

mader, nabubuhay ang mga patay! part 2

"Hello there! Bernie here, care to chat?" :)

He popped up unexpectedly, it was a username i haven’t seen in years. Pie pauses for a while. Dejavu. Same old intro, same online “warmth”, should there be one. It was this “warmth” that got me talking to him til the wee hours of the morning when i was still “discovering” myself in the chatrooms, a good six years ago. He had a style all unto himself; confident, but not arrogant, as most chatters i’ve met back then were. He had the “mature” stuff, going all over his online “aura”, that got me giddy, like a teenage girl who just held hands with her boy for the first time. that was the feeling—a princess meeting prince charming for the first time. Bernie was quick to burst my bubble though. he told me that as much as he was enjoying our little chats, that he was prowling the site, like most guys present there are doing—for easy sex; he was quick to add, as a brotherly advice that i shouldn’t go looking for love in chatrooms for i will surely be disappointed; I saw his point, but still proceeded chatting with him, anyway.

I was 22, i was just coming to terms with a sexuality that i fought and struggled with, for so long. Yes, he “read” me right when he gave me that unsolicited advice; that i was looking for my prince, eyebags growing by the minute, in that chatroom where one’s face is his YM handle ; his identity. if one is good with words, ugly will become beautiful, hideous will be gorgeous. And in that chatroom, almost everyone held doctorate degrees in creative writing. A minute of delightful conversation passed.. and then ten. Thirty was easy if you’re in cloud nine. i told him i was tying to hit two birds with one stone—that if love blossoms in the process, then it’d be the added bonus; i was there looking for easy fun, too. I know, foolish, stupid reasoning; but i was secretly hoping he’ll have a change of heart in the process, that after the eye-popping sex, he’ll realize he’s looking at his prince charming’s eyes all along, too. At 22, I was that desperate. We set up a date and time to meet, at shangrila mall, in EDSA.

“oh yes, i remember you”, i said, as my mind trailed off to that place beside kalentong market. We just got off the taxi he hailed from shangrila mall, and proceeded a bit further, on foot, passing the street filled with illegal vendors, to reach that small room. That small room, with the incandescent light bulbs and that small bed, waiting for us; waiting for me.

"Huh?"

"Yeah."

to be continued...

mader, nabubuhay ang mga patay!

I was online using Yahoo’s chat / messaging service the other day when out of the blue, a familiar username popped up. It said hi and proceeded to engage me in a manner that was very familiar to me; for not too long ago, i have been a regular fixture in chatrooms that if such lines go unnoticed, such an occurrence would surely signal that my then [unparalleled] ability of sniffing out pick-up lines have greatly diminished in my years of hibernation. A tentative smile began to form in my lips, for suddenly i didn’t know how to react.

If this has been just an old contact i flirted with, i would have easily dismissed him and went on with my life; but the moment i said hi to him and told him that i remembered him, memories of a six year old sunlight falling through the wide windows of shangrila plaza mall in the late afternoon came flooding my senses. Rains have lashed out on the streets of the metro during those months of July and August, and that particular day was no different. Work was prematurely suspended because of the heavy rains; and i came to the designated meeting place mere minutes before he came into view wearing a light yellow polo shirt and cargo shorts slightly wet from the splashings outside the mall. We ate spaghetti in one of the restaurants at the mall’s fifth level. We chatted some more, and later on decided to look for some place more private to continue with the chat.

He paid for the taxi and that small room somewhere in Kalentong, that sunny-rainy afternoon of June.

to be continued...