My Heart Faint

I wrote this exactly ten years ago. About friends who don't look at each other as friends do.

***

“Hoy, Cassy!” Boggs called out from behind, obviously annoyed that his sleep was interrupted by the inertia of her sudden brake.

Cassy only chuckled and upped the car’s speed from ninety to well over a hundred. Boggs sat up, alarmed, while I only stared at her in amusement. She had never acted this reckless before. No, she had never acted reckless at all. We didn’t even know she could drive a car, let alone treat one like she was on a racetrack. Thankfully, we were driving on an empty highway that early Sunday morning after spending most of Saturday night drunk on vodka. Our little dorm Christmas party got a little out of hand, you see.

“You probably should slow down, Cass,” I told her nonchalantly, or at least I tried to sound as matter-of-factly as I could. She was the type who didn’t like to be told off, and I was the type who always kept his cool. This was Boggs’s car, and truth be known, I was getting worried that we might run into a rogue motorcycle and spend Christmas with broken bones in a hospital. I didn’t trust Cebu’s traffic, not even when the road seemed deserted. Vehicles and pedestrians alike are known to pop out of nowhere, and with Cassy’s less-than-sober condition, it was best to assume the voice of reason.

She stuck out her tongue. “Boo. Don’t be such a grandpa.”

 

***

 

Something jerked at the back of my mind, a memory that had pushed itself to the surface, beckoning me to remember it. It was the night when we were left alone in the dorm common room after everyone had left for summer vacation. She missed her ship earlier that morning, and I was waiting for my parents to arrive from the province the morning of the following day. She had knocked on my room on the second floor (the boys were housed on the second floor while the girls were on the third) and suggested—in that half-playful, half-self-conscious way of hers—that we watch a movie in her room. I immediately said no, painfully aware how a “movie” might turn out to be something else between two young adults left alone in a room. I remember vividly the shadow that overcame her face, and she didn’t bother to hide her disappointment (both at my instant refusal and the malice, which she rightfully detected, that I had attached to her invitation) when she said, “Boo. You’re such a grandpa.” She stomped her way back up to the third floor, her liveliness now completely snuffed out, leaving me to think about her suggestion more rationally.

Cassy wasn’t the type of girl to ask a boy into her room with indecent intentions. I should’ve immediately realized that. We had been friends for four years, and that should have assured me that her invitation was made in earnest and that she really only wanted to see a movie with some company. I started to feel the pang of regret in the pit of my stomach as I realized the subtle prejudice that I had formed against her innocent proposal, how baseless and unkind it was. So I followed her upstairs, my newfound courage awkwardly blending in with my constant dread whenever she is close to me.

 Cass had heard me behind her and promptly turned around, a grateful and teasing smile on her lips. Outside fireworks popped and crackled, but neither of us seemed to have noticed. All this silent space and the stillness of the night was ours, and for some reason or other, we decided we were going to partake in it.

 

***

 

“I’m okay, but Boggs is terrified.” I pointed at Boggs at the backseat, who was holding on to the car seat’s cushions for dear life. He really wasn’t supposed to be at the dorm party as he wasn’t a tenant, but he spent so much time with us at our common room after classes that all our dormmates treated him as one of our own and insisted that he come. He came with his dad’s car, along with five bottles of Smirnoff. Halfway through the last bottle—with the rest of our dormmates passed out on the stairs, the sofas, the bathroom, basically anywhere that offered a horizontal surface—we knew it was time to take him home. He lived in Talisay, and in the wake of the drunken wreckage, only Cassy and I survived, although barely. Between the two of us, however, she seemed strangely more alert, more present, and didn't appear like she had more than a glass worth.

Cass laughed her crisp, childlike laugh, a sound that I had come to associate with Saturday afternoons, when you open yourself up to adventures, when you let life surprise you. From Monday to Friday, Cass was the proverbial nerd, her lap always cradling a book of some sort, a colored pencil tapping her lips in rhythmic intervals. She liked to read like that in the common room, and she was always a lovely sight on occasions I passed by. I always wondered what she was reading that made her so entranced, that rendered that otherworldly gaze in her eyes as if she didn’t belong in this world, as if she was off somewhere in another space and time on a grand quest that only she could participate. Sometimes she would notice I was watching, and she’d raise her head, smile, and ask me (more out of courtesy than an actual desire to know) what I was up to. I would come up with some excuse, and she’d return to her book with such alacrity that it made me think that she was returning to reality, and I was the one who was fiction.

On Saturdays, she kept to her room in the mornings, only coming out in the afternoon to watch movies or play Uno cards with the rest of us in the common room. On occasions when our parents graced us with our allowances, some five of us, including Boggs, would go to the mall, eat at a restaurant, or just walk around. Then we’d sit at the granite steps and tease one another while capping off the day with ice cream. How she laughed like a bird who just learned how to fly.

 “I’m sorry, Boggs.” She slowed down to a forty, but not before I caught her looking at me.

I felt a strange sensation in my chest, like a cage had come unhinged in my heart and the monster living there had awoken, clawing its way out of my atria, threatening to reveal me for the wimp that I was, screaming at me until the sheer force of its cries almost drained me of color. I refused to look at Cass. By now, a lump had formed on my throat, as if unsaid words had found their way there and were slithering toward my tongue, only to stay on my lips like a snake. I immediately swallowed in discomfort, giving way to fidgeting that was so uncharacteristic of the “cool, disinterested” image I was trying to paint of myself.

There was only one other time when I experienced this kind of discomposure. It was the first time I repressed it, pushed down the monster back to the cage where it belonged, afraid that if she as much had a glimpse of it, she would run away from me, our friendship spoiled forever. It was that same night when we watched a movie alone in her room.

***

We were huddled together side by side, leaning against the wall where her bunk bed was propped against. We had set up the laptop on a chair in front of us. After spending quite some time deciding which movie to watch, we settled on Armageddon. As ridiculous as it sounds, we both had never watched it. I can’t remember the movie now. All I know was that she was very close to me, and she was crying, whimpering like a lost child on the blanket that she had draped over our legs. I turned my head to her, and the lights from the screen illuminated her tears and her pressed lips. I willed myself hard to keep my eyes on the screen, both mentally scolding my hands for wanting to reach out and touch her and frustrated at my lack of courage for doing so. In my mind’s eye, I could feel myself getting old, and I wondered if a boy my age should have better fears, more aspirations, even just to say that I tried, even if it didn’t turn out the way I envisioned it. Instead, at that moment, when the night afforded me so many opportunities, I just remained still, nerveless, my heart faint—a scene from one of those mediocre chick flicks.

After she had cried, she turned to look at me. There was a pressing question in her eyes, or perhaps it was an ache, a plea for me to once and for all address the silence that had settled uncomfortably between us. The tension had become almost palpable and had assumed a life of its own, a forbidding monster with its claws gripping my shoulders, crushing my heart, until I felt it sucking my lungs empty. Perhaps this is what it feels like to hold on to something for too long—everything is amplified, grotesque. Tell her. Tell her!

 

***

 

“You know what?” she said suddenly. Her remark jolted me back to the present. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel uncommonly tight.

“Yeah, what?”

“You look really beautiful in this light.”

             Her eyes were on the road as she said it. Without warning, and before I could contemplate if what I heard was real and what she meant, she accelerated again; and the sudden change in momentum caused Boggs to propel forward violently, hitting his head on the back of Cassy’s seat. She stepped on the brake in alarm and wheeled her head toward him. “Oh my god, Boggs, are you okay!” she almost about screamed.

We heard his moan gradually fade into silence. She maneuvered the car on the side of the road, and I made my way to the backseat to help him lie down again on the car seat. He was knocked out. I felt his head, and a sizeable bump began to materialize under my kneading. “He’s got a head bump, but he’s alive.”

I heard a sigh escape from Cassy’s lips as she started the car moving again, gently and more carefully this time. “I’m sorry for that,” she mumbled, her voice unsteady. Her hair was bathed with streaks of orange by the first hints of sunrise. At that moment, with Boggs’s unconscious figure in my arms, I wanted to tell Cass how beautiful she was.

When we reached Boggs’s house in a sleepy uphill subdivision that had not completely woken up yet, Cass didn’t immediately get out of the car after she parked. She just sat there, her back against me. Outside, the rustling of the leaves from nearby trees sounded like the sea, and she suddenly turned to look at me over her shoulder. I stumbled inside, my heart beating so fast—one clamorous beat after another—that it hurt. I was nervous, clammy. She was a glass in my hands, and like so many other times before this, I was afraid of dropping her.

She turned back and slid out of the car, and the urgency with which she performed this action let me know that she wanted me to do the same. I gently laid Boggs’s sleeping head from my lap to the car seat and followed her out. She was waiting on my side of the vehicle and put her hands on my shoulders before I could even shut the door. I thought of the warm ocean, the incandescence of the streetlights reflected in her eyes, and the nostalgic sound of church bells that were ringing in the distance. I could feel the dampness of the morning on her hair as they swayed loose from where she tucked them behind her ear, and where I instinctively reached out to regather them toward her face, tracing the warmth of her forehead as I returned the rogue strands behind her ear. I was amazed that it stayed soft and real in my hands. All of a sudden she kissed me, and I closed my eyes, thinking she had become the kind of girl who will not stand to miss a moment any longer. I brought my mouth deeper into hers, and I could almost taste her heart beating, now, now, now.

It was what I had always imagined, my breath steady even as I dared to slide my hand on her waist to pull her closer. I didn’t know what came after this. There had to be something—she didn’t feel like an ending.

You come to me, running

with tears in your eyes

and your arms longing

to embrace me

my hands, shaking

drenched in blood,

touch you for

the first time

your warmth, your light

has reached the darkness

of my heart

and I can feel it stretching

its muscles, its blood

flowing, its voice

preparing to sing

how wonderful it is

to love and to greet it

as it settles in your soul

"Obra Mai Fu"

George Frideric Handel

Gentle Lord Jesus,

have mercy on the villains,

the necessary evil,

for though his hands are bloody

his trail littered with dead men

his heart aches for beauty

for the flowers that grow

only in Your garden

and for the warmth of love

only You can allow him

Lacrimosa

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

a Valentines meal

for my dearest M

let’s forget about the fancy tables for now

the candlelight, the flowers, even the stars

let us make our way instead to the place

we have saved for each other on the table

shoulders touching, ready to feast on this

lovely Valentines spread

we have prepared for ourselves

 

for apéritif: our tannic isolation from

the world, COVID-19—

hard to swallow, a strong and tactile

dryness that stays in your mouth

and won’t go away

            burns your throat

            takes your breath

            overpowers your senses

an unsettling prelude

 

 

for our main course, a warm and familiar

togetherness—tender, flavorful, seasoned

with time and laughter and dreams of the future

we take our time to marinate our days with memories

(dancing in the kitchen in yesterday’s clothes

walking the dog as the sun sets or when it rains

pillow talks and overtimes and the smell of mornings)

            before searing off the grease of discontent

            then we will take out our dainty plates and savor this

                        home we have built around each other

 

and finally, after all this, let us make room for dessert:

                        an unassuming love frosted with strawberry dreams

                        and dusted with sweet whispers into the night

                        it should be enough to last us through this pandemic

                        but we can put it in the freezer and take it out

                        every time this Valentine hunger lurches up

                                    again from our bellies

 

 

so, my darling, let us hold hands and pray to God to bless our meal

that He keep it fresh every day and forever, never to spoil or lose its flavor

for tonight in this table where you and I are the only guests

we will partake and be full

For years, I had endured the kind of suffering only reserved for the grandest of fools, those who believe they were fighting for something true. And I fought hard to hold on, even as the water kept rising, and I kept suffocating—because it was true, or I believed it was. Now I know I had been an idiot, a blind one, an earnestly blind idiot.
And so I died. God, how I died. How it hurt. How I drowned every day for weeks on end in my shame, my guilt, in the unbearable agony of knowing I had caused someone unimaginable, undeserved pain. This is my greatest regret, and the scar it has left in my heart I will carry forever to remind me how I was weak and stubborn—but also as a reminder of how I was forgiven. I can no longer hope for the forgiveness of man, but Christ has looked at me with mercy and offered me another chance.
It is unfathomable that I could live again after all that ugliness, yet here I am. I can only return his mercy, the grace that scum like me don’t deserve, by living every day with gratitude. And so I am. My heart is bursting with thanks that he has calmed the storm and invited me to walk with him gain. I had carried my cross to my "death," and I have learned the lesson that this tragedy wishes to teach me.

I'm trying to remember how I met you in my dream and what we were talking about on the floor. Or where we were and who was driving the car where we were holding hands.

I don't know your name. But you look like you could be a Luke, or a James, or maybe even a Steve.

Not all that glitters is gold

I dreamed of you last night.

Sometimes I remember when we used to hang out in nightclubs, when we left everything behind on our beds, along with the last couple of wardrobe changes we threw on the sheets and whatever books we had been studying earlier that night. I'd put on makeup with what little I know about it and try to convince myself that I look pretty in a short black dress, although my bulging limbs and my post-teenage acne scars were probably screaming their objection.

I remember when you danced with me, your breath reeking of beer but your neck smelling like pine trees. The music pulsated loudly in our ears, threatening to pop our eardrums, but I could only hear the primal cry of my heart, Now! Now! Now!

When we were in high school, everybody thought we would be together eventually. I thought so too, but time has a way of being disagreeable and cruel, and though I faced you with my heart in my hands, eager to offer you all its affection, you simply embraced me and told me we were just friends. My tears tasted bitter in my mouth, but what did I know about love? I was fifteen and stupid.

But then we grew up, and you called me out of the blue, saying you just got home and you wanted to "catch up" on old times. We hadn't seen each other for three years. I had lost weight, my acne had exhausted its term on my skin, and for the first time in my life, I didn't have to convince myself I was pretty—because, finally, I was.

When we met again, we weren't the same. Gone was the golden boy who made everybody laugh and who had so much vigor and passion that our friends made you the envy and trophy of our circle. You had lost your luster, and mine was only beginning to shine. You tried looking to reclaim your glory in others, but I was sick of the pulsating music, sick of the sweaty bodies and the smell of fuck and alcohol, sick of the shallow epicurean delights afforded by your lifestyle that has left me empty and hungover and miserable the morning after. I had outgrown you. I had outgrown the world. 

So I went back to my books and read with the kind of vivacity that I remember having when I was eleven, when the library was my wonderland, when the only friends I had were plain princesses, parading animals, and morbidly martyred saints. It was the best version of myself, the one I had lost to cynicsm and pride and envy. But I am slowly becoming kind to myself again, and I have rediscovered the love I had for the church, for whom I had once thought of becoming an eternal servant.

I still think about it. Whenever I see nuns or priests, I still feel a burning urge to run to their arms and cry unrestrainedly, to beg them to take me with them, to save me from this gradually declining world and give me the peace of the Divine. Maybe I should've gone ahead and filled that application to join the Capuchins that  I mysteriously found on one of my books. I wonder where I would be now if I did become a nun (perhaps it's not too late). The thought is somehow funny and always makes me smile, but now I'm almost certain my life isn't destined for the convent. Wherever that might be, I can only be grateful for where I am now and keep living.

Today I prayed to God to let me give up. My heart is so drained and screaming that it wants to expire.

I have no more left to give, no more fight in me.

It makes me sad that the people who remind me that this city, which I have grown to despise with a passion, is still beautiful are strangers. And you, who have promised to help me, who are supposed to be  a friend, only hurt me.

And now you have threatened to become a stranger, an empty thing with no life or laughter.

You have grown old in your heart, someone I don't care to know.

So really, what else is there? There is no poetry, no joy, no sign of Destiny. Just cruel words and mind games and stubborn people who have stopped at their wounds and cocooned themselves around it, watching it fester instead of opening up to be healed.

This is not the life I want to live, not the person I want to be or want to be with.

Today I am giving up.