Wednesday

“If love turns into obsession, is it still love?” You asked.

It is ten minutes past nine in the evening, and the bar is unusually subdued compared to those other evenings since I’ve frequented this place these past two months or so. Except for a few couples - maybe acquaintances, scattered about in three tables, whose voices were drowned by the loud sound emanating from the television set showing this somewhat new foreign rock group disarmingly reviving Hendrix’s heydays - there were just the two of us over four empty bottles of beer. Tonight could have been a Saturday with the familiar faces and familiar pats at the back and the all too familiar greetings from college buddies. Tonight could have used a few show tunes or guitar riffs to fend off the heavy atmosphere that should excuse me from evading your question. It’s that question that my mind would rather refuse, or if I should answer it now, then positively or with an open-ended maybe for your benefit.

You signaled for another set of beer, without asking me if we are still staying for another more, before moving on to somewhere together, or in our individual places. I remember this local writer who, in one of her semi-popular writings, fondly recalls a Saturday night spent among supposed friends, and how should two bottles of beer create a benign aura in an otherwise solitary face. Your question shouldn’t have come as a surprise the way that it did because what was between us was anything but benign.

“If love turns into obsession, is it still love?” You seem to ask again, although you haven’t, only that your eyes bore into mine the same way that they bared me since the first night I knew you, after I extended my hand to reach yours as a gesture of clean friendship.

“Why do you ask?” I responded, as if asking back should suffice.

“Has it ever happened it you before? In your thirty years?”

“Huh?”

It’s a Wednesday alright, should this explain the unknown sobriety? The waiter approached our table bearing with him four bottles of beer with a bucket of ice cubes that seem to immediately turn to water despite the coldness of the summer evening.

It’s a Wednesday evening alright, the twenty-sixth of May, an evening bathed in a rush of cold air that screamed at my face when I cruised the highway on the way here to meet you after the two weeks that I went out of town for some school related stuff. Just about seven, there was only a soft drizzle left from a whole day of rain, which I just spent lazily at home. I was silently praising the rain that wouldn’t shy away from a brief and slight ray of light that once in a while reaches my forehead and my cheeks through my bedroom window.

The summer is almost gone, the evening’s telling me so, and in so many ways I felt strongly about the opening of the classes this coming June. Maybe not so much about the passion for the chosen profession, although there is solace in accepting the comforts of stability while I am in this line of work. Maybe the unquestioning comfort that sleep could provide after a whole day at school with students and another few hours spent for my master’s education. It’s the routine really that I’ve come to embrace unconditionally, and week nights are as typical as the other evenings the whole year through. So much unlike this Wednesday.

It’s Wednesday alright, I keep on reminding myself, and the supposedly cold evening rush that greeted me in the drive has nothing to do with the heaviness that we are inhaling now. After all it’s that kind of Wednesday that happens during my summer each year, and when the school opens, then my evenings might just be as unrecognizable as the rest of the week.

“Ron,” he speaks softly, in that manner that would only allow me to stare at the half-filled beer mug.

“I thought you wouldn’t come.”

“But I did, didn’t I?” Was the most that I could say after spending about an hour pretending to figure out the ultra modern songs that I’ve been hearing, while thoughtlessly mumbling in careless details the routine events that shaped my life these last two weeks. Not that it would matter at all, or if it should matter to you, although I know for sure that you’d listen to anything that I would say because I always see it in your eyes. Of course, I’ve promised us that we would make an effort to know each other more, and you’re doing that exactly now, nodding at the things that I’m saying, completely understanding without fault the dynamics and supposed complexities of my professional life. While you, your eyes digging mine, fully in control of your chain of thoughts, and never leaving me and my details.

“I arrived ahead of you, didn’t I?” And haven’t we talked a lot about me this past hour, over those wasted bottles of beer? Didn’t I interest you enough with the long hours I defied sleep just to finish all these papers, these demands of my job that were way too early for my age anyway but nevertheless important to feed my youth?

“Ron, you shouldn’t have come, you know. When I asked, it is not much of an asking but an invitation, you know that I’ll be around anyhow even if it is not now.” You asked, almost knowing the many reservations I have at the back of my mind. You reached across the table, to my hand, and your touch was too firm and fixed on its grasp. Your hair is loose on your forehead, with a deep sense of foreboding. Your face unshaved, seems roughed after all these weeks, and I could see circles under your eyes. Your jaw was loosened by the many thoughts in your eyes. Your mouth silent as I know that this moment is way beyond words. And your eyes, weighs the heaviness that we both knew while you continue holding my hand, with such intense force of masculinity that I haven’t experienced before, and I, powerless to move back from your grasp.

If I were strong enough, would I rather remove my hand from this union and feign interest to the beer mug to pacify my throat that has dried after I searched your face for the longest time? Should I rather reach out and search your face, not with my eyes this time, but with my hand that still carries with it the force of your touch?

If love turns into obsession, is it still love?

We never knew about the half-empty bottle that was left before you reached your hand to weigh me down. We never knew about the other couples, if they danced away the night, or if they resorted to the safety of their own rooms now that the drizzle has affirmed its longer presence until the morning after. We never knew how often we came back to same bar, the same room, or to be amongst the same subdued crowd. Such was the force of your submission. And such was the force of my fear.


03 June 2004