The silhouette of his robust figure shrouded in smoke against the open window was how I remember him that fateful day; when I finally got the chance to know him inside out. Sitting there, forever lighting a cigarette after cigarette as evidenced by the overflowing ashtray in front of us, mindlessly sipping and refilling his glass with cheap rum. His tears non-stop, though when you look at him, he does not even seem to realize that they've been falling for hours.
I was merely looking at him; listening, nodding from time to time, injecting questions to guide him further into his tale. A story that was ending right then and there even though the conclusion was happening elsewhere without him.
He was so much older than I was, the mentor and trainer of the performing troupe that I joined a few months before. But because of our mutual interests, we bonded much like brothers that have just met after years of being apart. And though, I was not even the closest to him, I was just there at that moment when he needed somebody to listen.
A loud beep stopped him in mid sentence and automatically, like a robot, he reached for his cellphone and read the message. His face, contorted with pain. How much more he could take I truly did not know but I saw him control the emotions that was relatively obvious on his features. With what little resolve he had left, he took a deep breath and looked unseeingly back at me.
I knew that he was seeing other things other than my physical presence.
"He is walking down the aisle now, its almost over!"
That was all he said, then excused himself to go to the restroom where I heard a heartbreaking sob that tore at my core. I was equally devastated although I knew that what he was experiencing was nowhere near what I had gone through until then.
Boy's story, the one that is ending for him today started 9 years before. He was a young teacher, newly reinstated to the local college after a 3 year stint in Japan teaching English proficiency. Though he was not that goodlooking, he possessed a charisma that made everyone think of him as a buddy, a bestfriend. And it was that year when he met Jose!
Jose was a freshman, a working student being a child of working farmers. But what he lacked in finances, he made up in brains and the will to succeed and make somebody out of himself. Like Boy, he was not much to look at but for the young teacher, he possessed a magnetism that somehow sparked his interest.
"He was not handsome, neither is he until now. In fact, when I first saw him, he reminded me of enthic minorities that one studies in books. Those same people that I teach the students of my history class. But then, there is something in him that made me want to get to know him more!" Boy told me earlier when he was but starting his tale.
"Well, it was not hard for us to be closer since he lives at the boarding house right next to this building. You see that shack across the street? That was where he used to live! Of course, after a few months, he moved in with me!" Boy revealed, pointing at the rundown house right across the window where we were sitting.
From what he told me, it was a learning process for both of them. It was the first time for him to have a lover living with him, a young one at that, and for Jose, it was his first time living with somebody as well, a gay man at that!
There were trying times, happy times but even though there were snide stories from neighbors and co-workers, they soon stopped. Jose, evidently was there to stay.
He did not ask for money even if Boy would have given him eveything that he needed, but because of his upbringing, he continued to work for his studies. And after graduation, when one would have guessed that things would be over, still, Jose stayed.
Working for a nearby business, and Boy still working at the local college, they lived as a normal couple; or as normal as things could ever be. Parents from both sides supporting them in their decision to be as one, people around them recognizing that they were who they were. And things stayed good, or better even, now that they both knew what would make the other one happy. It was an enriching partnership.
And it stayed that way for 9 whole years!
Until Jose met Liezl.
A man is still a man. Whether he has lived with a gay man for almost a decade. Sure, he has feelings for Boy, but they were just not enough.
"Had you been a real woman, I would have married you years ago." were his words to his partner.
What could Boy do but remain silent.
The fights were bitter when it happened. Harsh and physical. Words were biting and more scarring than the bodily pains both of them could have inflicted to the other. But after, it ended in a hug, a shared cry and an almost masochistic tumble in bed.
But still that did not erase Liezl.
And now, Jose and his bride are walking down the aisle to spend the rest of their years together. Jose wanted him to attend as one of the "ninongs" but Boy could not find the strength to see them tie themselves in matrimony while the same strings that bind them would be the same strings that will tug at the heart that beats within himself.
So here we are. Sitting together in his darkened kitchen, staring at the window where we can see the old boarding house where he met the person who made him whole; even for but a short time. Drinking inexpensive bottles upon bottles of rum, smoking unending sticks of Marlboro. As if the vices will somehow dull the pain of his impending solitude.
I can hear his pitiful sobs. And much as I want to comfort him, I knew I could not do anything for him now. For him, his life might be ending with the start of his love's married life.
A lone tear streamed across my cheeks and fell to the table, I could not stop myself from feeling a small portion of his pain as questions filled my young mind. What if this is what is waiting for me? A life where I will be given a chance at being happy and then snatched from right under me... Should I not allow anyone else to have a hold of my feelings the way Boy allowed Jose in? Am I cursed to be alone for the rest of my long years to come? Would I ever be happy? As happy as how Boy was before today?
I really do not know the answer... until now, a few years has passed since I sat there alone, sitting in from of the rapidly darkening window, smoking the last cigarette, listening to Boy's heartbreaking sobs while I whispered to my heart .... Be still!!!
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