Happy Birthday

My birthday used to be a secret. I didn't tell people when it was because I wanted them to guess, and I knew they would. In my youth, I was arrogant enough to think it would matter. Or maybe deep down I already knew it didn't, but my cynicism was still in its infancy, and the thought was a mere whisper behind one of the many closed doors inside my head.

Today, it's mostly still a whisper, but it rages into a chorus from time to time. The closed door has multiplied, hinges rattling from the harsh mumbles that reiterate my inconsequence.

Today, I rebel by telling everyone when I was born. "October 13," I tell everyone who will listen. "I'm a libra," I add, as if the more other people know about me, the more I exist. The more I demand to be here. I'm like a toddler stomping on one foot, insisting people remember that thirty something years ago, I changed two people's lives and I was their joy, I was wanted, I was waited for.

Today, I hold on to that. Granted, it's not too much to hold on to. I could feel my fingers clamped on the back door, pushing, pulling, wondering how many seconds the world will stop when I slip out. I am no longer in my youth, but I guess I still have the arrogance in me to think that I would matter.

The Disadvantages of Having A Male Best Friend

1. Everyone thinks you're dating. Even the people you're actually dating.
2. "You look so good together!" comments. We look good. Period.
3. When meeting potential dates, he has to just straight up pretend he's gay coz if he doesn't, they'll ask, anyway. "Oh he's straight? But you're not gettin' jiggy? You sure he's straight?" Yes, Brian. Also, you're not getting a second date.
4. You know his mom and hence have become the unwilling conveyor of mommy reminders. "Tita says you should buy clothes that aren't black. Also sleep early."
5. Random people, like let's say a Turkish kebab vendor, suddenly think they have a say in your spousal choices. "Oh, where's your wife from? You're not married? Well, you should be." Unless you're paying for the destination wedding, no thanks.
6. When you say, "We're just friends," people complete the sentence with: "...but with benefits?" Oh I wish. I wish we had benefits. And by benefits, I mean health insurance and pension.
7. When you go out and want to meet people, one has to purposely wander away to increase both of your likelihood to succeed. It sucks because you wanna spend time with your best friend AND also maybe meet the love of your life.
8. When you casually mention that you've had sleepovers at his house, everyone gives you *that* look. Like you're both 15 and have no control over hormones.
9. Even after making a list like this, you will convince absolutely no one that you're not together.

Awake

I want to be your coffee cup. To have that bottom lip running across my angles. I know how careful you can be. You take things in painfully slow, always at the precipice of hesitation. It makes my breath hitch. My senses focus on that single second the hot liquid caresses the slick skin against your teeth. My imagination mesmerizes me.

You hold that cup with such considerate gentleness that makes me curious about how you hold other things not made of porcelain. Are you as guarded? Or do those fingers explore like a conqueror, mapping out entrances and exits, twists and territories Your knuckles look rough, and my thoughts head straight to impossibilities. I want to tell you about them. But not right now, when your eyes are closed, tasting. Not right now, when I can bore right through you with unabashed hunger and still keep it a secret.

Drive

It is overwhelming, how much I want you to touch me. How much I’d like to feel your fingertips on the blade of my clothed shoulders, lightly scratching, beckoning my hairs to stand on end, soldiers at full attention. I try not to think of those same fingers roaming up and around and all the ways, but my mind is already there and every other place it could put you and your warmth. There is a tightness when I breathe, like you’ve reached inside my ribs and told my heart to stop. To slow down. To not fill my lungs with the smoky tang of your leather jacket. When I close my eyes, I am back in the semi-darkness of your car, with that song from somewhere, the dark roads opening up before us, the lights loudly blinking. But there is only you beside me and those hands on the wheel that I follow, enraptured. I wish they gripped something else. And as much as I could, I don’t look at your face. I don’t look because there is no end after that. So I subtly stare at your knee, my veins pounding on my throat, wanting to brush imaginary lint at the top of your thigh.

You make me feel like I have already touched you. It embarrasses me. I wonder if you could see right through my eyes and into the fire. There is thrumming in my skin and it hums at the undulating closeness between us. And although I have to count the days til I am back with you in the dim secrecy of those two seats, I anticipate, with parted lips, all that is possible.

Vacuum

There was a small vacuum inside my heart. Every time you told me you were tired, it turned on and sucked a little bit of joy. I felt a pinch, and I grimaced in anger and sadness. When you told me you didn't have time for me then, maybe later, it took some more. The memory of you looking at me in bed was thrown into the vast nothing of nowhere. When you forgot to tell me that you loved me, it took even more. The smell of the first bouquet you gave me. The feel of your arms that night in your car, while I whispered for you to never leave me. The taste of your lips the first time we kissed. And the pinch became a squeeze, and the squeeze morphed into a grip. I imagine my heart shriveling, getting smaller and smaller after every day I didn't see you smile at me, after every perfunctory greeting on the 17th of each month, the staccato of routine managing to get through the buzz of the fuzzy line.

After all that I am sure, right now, that my heart is a raisin. The vacuum is bigger, too. It has started to take my lungs that I can't seem to speak, more so when you ask how I am. I would have loved to say that there are times that I have to stop working just so I could stare at my phone's screen, wishing and hoping and begging for a hello. But I end up saying okay because it was all the air left in me. I feel it in my stomach, too. It grumbles even after I eat. It does not stop, and I have to type louder and louder lest my colleagues hear it. They may think it is me, complaining.

I am scared of the day, dear, that the vacuum takes everything inside me and I am left an ugly shell. I am scared of the growing black pit that creeps steadily to my throat, to my limbs. My fingers are cold. I wish they could touch you again. But you are far, and perhaps that is for the best. What I am frightened of the most is on the day I see you and reach out, the vacuum will take you, too, and I will never know where you have gone.

November Playlist: George Ezra Edition

I don’t know how he does it, but his songs are like capsules that hold my powdery memories. Every time I listen, it’s as though I’m swallowing a pill and letting my cells soak in the hazy film.

1. Budapest (“But for you I’d leave it all”)
2. Drawing Board (“Lately I’m a heartache, I’m a desperate plan in hand, I’m a blueprint in the sand”)
3. Blame It On Me (“What you waiting for?”)
4. Don’t Matter Now (“Well it won’t last and it won’t stand, It don’t matter now”)
5. Shotgun (“The sun it changed, in the atmosphere, architecture unfamiliar, I can get used to do this”)
6. All My Love (“All my love is yours, all my time is ours, all my reckless dreams and my restless hours”)

 Listen to these in order. Go on.

Baket List

Updating this list is bittersweet because I am sure I will die alone and unloved.

1. Visit all UP campuses
           UP Diliman
           UP Baguio
           UP Los Banos
           UP Cebu
2. Watch an Up Dharma Down gig live
3. Go somewhere far, alone
4. Come up to a stranger I'm attracted to and tell him/her that I find him/her attractive
5. Design (and pay for) my dream bedroom
6. Read Pride and Prejudice in one day
7. Go on a candlelit dinner date
8. Buy my parents new wedding rings
9. Save 100k
10. Find a man who will love all of me
11. Go to a gay bar.

Apparently, the straight guys that do exist and like me, don't really love me, and they leave me anyway because my all will never be enough for anyone. I don't know why I'm even trying.