Painful to be Private Preoccupations [Part IX]

IX.

I am back in my hometown after graduation, the ceremony hassling us early in the morning, an extravagance lacking the joy and excitement like that of high school. To keep ourselves from being bored to tears, I and some of my friends chat, pace around, fool around in the comfort rooms, speculate and talk about how this or that student was able to graduate in spite of frequent and consecutive absences, laugh at our professors who are obviously bored too, the event thereafter being not as solemn as it meant to be.

In my hometown, I have been spending much of my time catching up with my friends, drinking almost every other night, and I am preoccupied with being preoccupied. Some of them begin to ask me what’s wrong, because they have been noticing that I am being too eager for social occasions, drinking too quickly, too sprightly, wanting to go out like there’s no tomorrow. I tell them that I’m ok, that maybe I just miss these random gatherings, or student life in Manila, while knowing all too well that there’s another reason. Worse, it amplifies when I am here, at our house, being home alone, because I have nothing to do—we don’t even have a network for our TV—and I don’t want to cook and eat again because I’ll just get heavier, and I’m not looking for a job yet.

I get my phone and send her a text message asking what is up, gently inquiring if she changed her mind for the picnic two weeks from now. She isn’t, so I kid around instead, telling her:

“Ganon? Sa kabila ng pagbalani ko sa iyong haraya?”

to which she replied:

“Oo, ganon. Balani someone else’s haraya.”

—she tells me that she has something to do. I think of something too, and decide that I’ll be going out and surf the internet and upload photos of my graduation.

□ □ □

While waiting for the photos to be uploaded, I log in to Yahoo Messenger and chat with my friends that are online too. Lyndon asks me how is it here at my hometown and how many months do I plan on being a bum. I tell him that I’ll going to look for a job next week when my resume gets done, that right now I am just enjoying myself, wanting to be preoccupied with something. He says I am indeed preoccupied not with something, but someone.

“Tama ka nga.” I say.

“Eh ano na ang plano mo ngayon?”

“Wala naman. Siguro bago kami pumuntang Zambales ng classmates ko, a day before the picnic, yayayain ko ulit siyang lumabas.”

”Talaga? Kahit alam mo nang futile?”

“Subukan ko lang, malay mo. Pero sa tingin ko, hindi uli papayag yun.”

“Sabagay. Tapos?”

“Anong tapos? Tapos siguro subukan ko ulit.”

“Pare malabo na yan, ikaw sa ating apat nina Paul at Ken ang talagang nakakaalam ng value of proximity.”

“Oo nga eh. Pero… ewan. Dito ko pa naman sa Quezon planong maghanap ng trabaho talaga.”

“Yun na nga eh. Ito na lang, may itatanong ako sa ‘yo.”

“Go. Shoot.”

“Handa ka bang mag-alay hindi lang ng panahon, pero pati na rin ng salapi, para sa tulad nya?”

“Ha? Eh… Ewan.”

“’Yan na nga mismo ang sinasabi ko eh.”

We change the topic and talk about how horrible Chuck Lidell’s striking is instead. Then he says he has some work to do and logs off. After uploading my photos, I log off too. I go out and think of some place I could go, alone. After deciding that I’ll go to a nearby mall and buy the book I have been planning to buy at Book Sale days ago, I start off, walking.

I think of Lyndon’s question; maybe it is a waste of time, maybe I was just chasing the wind. There is no more to do, nothing can be done, and my fault is not that I failed to date her, but that I have already spent too much time and effort for Joyce. Who knows? I begin to think of my career plans, and realize that it’s not advisable to pursue someone miles and miles away because the lack of proximity would eventually wear the both of us down, we who do not have such connection yet.

I walk through a street corner where a group of large men are drinking. Maybe this group would kill me; I’m in a place where everything is not only possible but probable. I will not be surprised. Foaming mouths, flying gin bottles, rocks wouldn’t startle me. Lahar, snipers, axe-wielding Orcish hordes—it’s conceivable. If these drunkards happen to be pissed drunk, and want to hurt someone who looks like a That’s Entertainment icon for catharsis or whatever grounds pissed drunkards hurt people, it will be me. I should take them out, now!

But they are just having fun, not minding me, so I just walk past them. Another block and I am at the mall, I go straight to Book Sale, excited of buying the book. After about half an hour of looking for it in the shelves and boxes, stumbling upon classics and self-help books, I finally ask a saleslady for help.

“Miss, nasan na kaya yung The Pied Piper’s Poison nyo? Yung medyo maliit na kulay light brown.”

She tells me that she’ll just check in their list if it has been sold, and when she comes back, she tells me it was. I thank her and leave, disappointed, sighing my way through the door.

That book, that novel, it was almost mine. I wasn’t able to buy it the first time I saw it there because I had no money back then—and now it’s being read by some other person who probably bought it because of its cover. Again, I’m feeling something, that feeling that I felt a week ago. It’s a sinking feeling you have, in the pit of your stomach, in the back of your ears, in your chest when it is devoid of something you never knew exactly what it is, but just felt that it was growing there before but then again you’re not sure if it’s really gone. When water reaches its boiling point, heating it further would just dry it up, so you just let it cool and wait for the time to heat it up again. But it pisses me off if you can’t do that anymore, because your fuel was exhausted already, because when it’s the other one’s turn to heat it, that other one refuses to do so for whatever reason that person have and you cannot do anything to change it. Every wall erected in your way you cannot penetrate, because climbing over it or smashing it would threaten to crumble everything.

It’s a terrible feeling: I don’t know if it’s possible to lose something—someone—you never had. And the worst part is at the moment that you’re feeling it, you can’t really do anything about it.

Maybe I have to wait, wait for another chance, at another Book Sale, at another time. Maybe the water shouldn’t be heated after all; maybe nobody needs it at this time. Perhaps, when that time comes, I’ll be having fuel again, and another one would heat the water too. I should back off for now, because it’s possible that I would find another way around those walls if I do.

I snap my fingers, click my tongue and hurry back to Book Sale; maybe I’ll buy another book, I might stumble on a better one this time.