"Doing the right thing is not always the most pleasurable thing to do. Sometimes it means hurting those that we care for, no, those that we love the most."
We were lying on the grass at the Luneta Park as we scanned the darkening sky for anything that we could have set our eyes on.
Somehow even the most commonplace of activities such as star-gazing
could turn into an awkward conscious act. That to be sure felt as if such an act we deliberately resorted to in order to still whatever it was that raged deep inside.
I turned to him and saw him cup his palms together before he placed them on his chest. Pious like an unturned china on a table after the last guest had walked away.
I turned my eyes back to the spot in the sky where I thought I saw a light
fading in to view. Or was it the spectre of a dying star?
For a few seconds I felt him straining his eyes on me.
I pulled myself up and looked down straight to his face. The reflection of the burgeoning sunset burst beautifully through his dark-brown eyes.
"Am I missing something here, buddy?"
He looked at me hard and long. Then he smiled that smile that meant "Uh-oh buddy, I think we are in trouble, but, hey, we've got each other, right? so don't worry."
"Come on, Mitch, say it..."
But he refused to answer not because he knew that I knew what was going on, but because I knew it would have been doubly hurting for him to say the word.
I got the news from his aunt who I was dating at the time despite parental protestation about our gap. She was ten years my senior. I was out to prove something. That was that. Nothing else. People didn’t have to know. They were not smarter than they thought they were anyway.
"My sister wants Mitch to shift to Nursing. A stupid mistake I think because if she wants to mint her son into a fine productive citizen then she should let him finishthe course that he chose for himself. Besides, the school that he is currently enrolled in is way way more reputable than the one that my she intends to transfer him to."
"What's his decision?"
"Are you kidding me? He wouldn't be a Meeky Mitchy for nothing. You should try talking some sense into your BF before he lost himself to parental tyranny. I mean, yeah, you of all people..."
"BF?! Hahaha." Sometimes making an ambivalent laugh works wonders when you're caught in the middle of an ambiguous proposition.
"What's wrong with you? Have you got no sense of twisted adolescent humor? Yeah, BF. Why, don't you consider each other best friends?"
Somehow we knew that discerning people were truly cognizant of things going in the consummation of a beautiful friendship. Yet somehow we were quick to erase the slightest of doubts and before they could begin mouthing off their suspicion, we parried them off with the gifts of our talents - he played a mean electric guitar or, piano while I wrote songs and poems and sang them rather uncommonly cool by our
generation’s standard.
We hang out with friends with myself acting like the world’s most entertaining trouper but strangely enough we managed to always end up talking to each other in a corner. While our friends chattered away with a hint of jealousy for our seeming exclusiveness for each other.
“Em, did I tell you that you make it easy for anybody to…uhm, like you?”
“Flatter yourself, dude, I’m just biased with you that’s why I consciously have to ease down on my negative traits with you.”
“I wish we would have a double wedding if you know what I mean. Then live maybe in a duplex, you know, your family on one side, mine on the other, our families living side by side, our lives eternally intertwined. Whatever that means. Hahaha.”
“Boy that sure sounds heavy but you bet, I wish for the same, buddy.”
Now everything flashed before me like a movie about to end as we watched the sun slowly sliding down to the other side of the world.
“Come on, buddy… I’m listening.”
“Em, can we just not talk about it?...Let’s just follow our hearts and keep the faith no matter what. But you ought to know that I am doing this for our own good…”
I thought I saw a bead of tear streaming from a corner of his eye.
The setting sun was too much to bear I looked away and cried in silence.
Decades and many dreams later, we still find ourselves blaming the beautiful sunset for that.