The Angel

Probably not a good thing to finish this book while I was in a very busy coffee shop with lines snaking around where I was seated. I felt claustrophobic by the surroundings and the book I just finished reading made such a tangled mess of emotions. Somehow, I wished for a better ending, not just for the characters in this book, but for all of us, whether in the shadows, invisible, or not. If there's one fiction to read this year, it is this: Lie With Me by Philippe Besson. Translated by Molly Ringwald. (Yes, the actress from Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club.)

I have never loved anyone as much as I have loved you. The first time we met, I was at a loss for words. You have a face that I could gaze at forever. When I found my bearing, I couldn't stop talking, couldn't stop in getting you interested with me. I told you my whole life story in a span of one evening, until they kicked us out of the coffee shop, and we stumbled into the street and went our separate ways. You kept me at arm's length when all I wanted was to be wrapped in them. So I told you things I never told anyone, the darkest parts of me, thinking that I could pull you in with my vulnerability. I laid all my cards on the table, but you pulled out an ace on me. I woke up one day and you were in love. Just not with me.

I didn't like him. He was an officemate that I had worked with a couple of times on late-night projects. The years passed and he moved to another country for work. I saw him in the newsfeed of my Facebook. That's how I was updated about him, because he posted regularly. But he was an acquaintance, much like all the former officemates of ours who have either remained in the old company or moved on to different ones. It was a chance encounter on a street where I was standing, a little lost and looking for a coffee shop nearby, when a car stopped by--and he stepped out. It was like I had seen a ghost. I didn't know he was back.

I picked up the scattered toys that my niece left on the floor. There were Lego blocks built on top of each other with no concept of a design. A toy train and a truck that she had crashed against each other just earlier in the day. There was a wind-up toy with its whirring sound that amused her until it stopped; three dolls with two of their heads popped off their bodies. The doorbell buzzed and I didn't have to check who it was. I knew it was you.

He walked inside the hotel bar for a drink and ordered vodka on the rocks. A muted television was hanging on his right and the bartender, after giving him his drink, turned his back and returned to polishing the glasses. It was still early, past seven on a Tuesday night, and he had ordered the vodka precisely because of that. He has enough time to mull over his drink, let the ice dilute the alcohol and cool it. He looked around, slowly turning his gaze on the mostly empty oak tables. He felt conscious of being only one of the four paying customers in the bar, none of them together, all of them in different states of looking busy or bored. Andrew was still shaking off jetlag, a bit of time disorientation, having travelled for half a day and several time zones from Manila to Paris the day before. For the rest of that day, he had sat through a series of introductions and business meetings, fighting off sleep with several cups of coffee. At one point, in a meeting inside a conference...

It took me three months to get back to my feet. I mourned for you, I mourned for us more than I had mourned for the death of my parents or anyone else I have lost. You were the heartbreak that kept breaking my heart.

It was still a day before the 24th, but I was a nervous wreck already. I was done with the Christmas presents, but I wasn't confident enough that your family would like them. After more than a year, I would finally get to meet them, although you would still be introducing me as your friend hoping that somehow they'd get what that meant. You wanted to make me feel better after the summer my mother had died. You wanted to welcome me into your world when I had felt so unwelcome in mine.

We had settled into a domestic life between two houses. On weekdays we stayed at my place, on weekends and holidays we stayed at yours. You cooked, I washed the dishes and we did our grocery and laundry together. There was a rhythm to it, like the regular beating of the heart, that felt familiar and safe. In another life, it would have been tedious and boring. But the gay world was psychedelic that the change of pace was a welcome change. I wasn't at all religious, having given up on God when I became estranged from my family and it was friends, not God, who saved me. But I joined you to church on Sunday mornings and we would have brunch afterwards in Eastwood and spend a lazy afternoon walking around or back to your place for an afternoon coital delight. The unsurprising way our life moved, the patterns it had assumed, were things I appreciated and looked forward to. It was something we could fall back into when the outside world was too noisy for comfort.

It was hard working with our different schedules. You're awake when I'm asleep and you're asleep when I'm awake. But we tried to make it work. Although we've never really talked about it, about us. Or if there was an us. I didn't want to broach the subject, because it's only been a month. And even after 30 days of talking with you and being with you, I still didn't know where you stood or how you felt about things. I couldn't tell if you were one of those who needed to be asked or if you simply let things waddle. It was unclear whether a month was still too short or too long a time for you, but I had to ask you. I couldn't bear to stand on uncertain grounds. And because for the longest time I wanted to say I love you. But I was scared that you would only thank me for it.

I shouldn't have told you I was ticklish. Every time I stretched myself you'd tickle me and I'd end up laughing out loud; mad that you're the opposite of ticklish. I had an awareness of those times, the times that we did what lovestruck lovers do. They had a silliness that made me cringe and love them. We spent the day after in your bed, drugged and intoxicated by the rough events of the night. It felt like there was no life before you. If there was, all I could remember was the gray paleness of it--the night shift work that I hated; the dates that never prospered that made me feel like I was looking too hard, almost forcing to find love. The feeling that at 33 I was still muddling through life, still figuring out things I should have figured out when my age was still in the calendar. The general feeling that I was being left out and eased out of whatever wonder there was in life. But being there, beside you, on that bed felt like it was right; I found a place where I...

I stood there on the corner nursing a beer, the sweat of the bottle felt damp on my hands. It was still early and the crowd was thin, both in numbers and in size. Many of them came in groups, in twos and threes, though in fours and fives were the more common. Some were familiar faces, the regulars of the club, who may or may not have slept with one another at one time. The solo ones, like me, flocked at the bar or near it, surveying the place with mild disinterest, more conscious than not of being observed too. Some faced the bartender and observed through the mirrored glass while others faced the still-empty dance floor, as if in a trance. The remixes and the popular dance music would come later when the crowd pours in, but for the early birds, the club played an endless, wordless Euro pop and trance music. Nobody danced on those songs. They were just a way of cloaking the desperation borne by those who came in early on a Saturday night when everyone else was on their third or fourth...