Dirtbag on [excerpts] mode.

It was part of my routine to knock on their door every Tuesday at around 7:30 in the morning. I was classmates with Mark, the bassist of our band, and it seems like this day would be my first time not to hear any response or any rumbling from upstairs or any thud that would might tell me straight on the face that someone’s home.

Our Finance class would start at around 8, and if I’d wait for another ten minutes knocking on their door I would be running late. I decided to at least notify him that I was knocking on their door, and that there was no answer. I even shouted his name several times and it did nothing than to disturb their neighbors. I somehow hated their flat for having a second floor but it’s okay. I guess he was at somebody else’s flat yesterday night and he probably was too drunk to go home.

It was around 4 pm when I came back to their flat and knocked their door. There he was with his puffy eyes and his morning hair, standing on the door wearing his usual boxers. I was with Drew, another bandmate, and it was part of our routine to go to the flat and have our band practice.

“I’m really sorry I haven’t texted back a while ago.” He was talking to me.
“Nah, I don’t mind.”
Drew and I went inside.
“Sit.”
I sort of scanned everything in his flat and it was unusually dirty and messy. His plates were left soaked with water on the washbasin. Even his guitar wasn’t kept on his guitar bag.
“Uhh, you can practice all you want but I’ll go sleep and take a rest for a while.” One of his hands are holding the banister. He was about to go upstairs.
Both of us nodded.

Drew did the guitars and I did the drums of some Motion City Soundtrack song. Ayeka’s doing some group project on her Sociology class so she can’t do the vocals right now. Biff’s our rhythm guitarist and he’s currently taking extra efforts with his Engineering classes. At that day, I was half-listening to the beats and all. I was more of wondering what’s going on with Mark.

-

“I wasn’t used to Mark sleeping that much,” Drew suddenly said while we were having some snacks at Mini Stop. I was halfway finished with my hotdog sandwich when I shared his sentiments about Mark.
“Me either. I have this feeling there’s something going on. Something bad.”
“Bad how?” He was playing with his straw.
“I dunno. I haven’t seen him on our Finance class. And we have this report on Psych and he was marked absent. If he was getting some sleep yesterday, he was probably sleeping the whole day.”
“Maybe he had this thing going on.”
“He might fail his classes.”
“No way, Mark’s a geek.”
“Who knows? After all, nobody knows what’s happening.”
“I’d give Jane a buzz.”
“You might be barking on the wrong tree.”
“I’ll just ask Jane some stuff about Mark - she might know something.”

-

Three days after our Mini Stop conversation, Mark was sick. Totally sick and injured. Ayeka sent me the details: he was confined at the University hospital after drinking insect repellant and slashing his left wrist. This threw me in a state of intense shock - it even left me paralyzed on the sofa for a while. Mark wasn’t the suicidal type of a guy. Though he really takes things seriously and by that he wasn’t much of a joker, he still has this positive outlook on towards everything. He rarely feel depression and anger, in fact we haven’t seen him depressed or throwing tantrums on everybody. He’s this type of guy who would still feel cool and nonchalant even if everything in this world’s falling apart.

-

I saw Drew and Biff on the lobby of the hospital and their faces were immensely worried. This was my first time to visit a friend on a hospital, and I shuddered at that fact. I’m not really used to people on their sanitated garbs and surgical scrubs and everything.

“This isn’t right,” Drew said with lips curled.
“Give Jane a call,” I suddenly blurted out. Jane was Mark’s girlfriend for four years.
“She won’t answer. I gave her ten calls and she won’t. Something’s going on. She wasn’t going on our Genetics class ever since Mark - like what you’ve said - was skipping his classes,” Drew was sort-of panicking. Biff was wearing his customary silence during the conversation. I sat and went silent for minutes.
“Ayeka’s coming.” Biff finally found his way to say words. All of us glanced outside.
“Updates?”
“We’re about to cancel our gig next week.” Drew said.
“Yeah, we can’t go on like this without a bassist.” Biff added.
“No, I mean, about Mark’s condition.”
“We haven’t talked to the doctors yet.”
“Why not!?” Ayeka demanded of some explanation. She’s always like that.
“We’re terribly scared of what happened. And maybe we’re in this state of shock right now. And the doctors won’t let us in right now. I have no idea what’s going on anyway.” Biff confessed. I was downright surprised Biff was having a good job talking. He’s really mute most of the time.

-

The next three hours, the doctor showed up. He was wearing a blank face, the way the TV shows would imitate it as it would attribute to a totally suspense-filled scene. But in real life, that blank face splits you apart with suspense. It’s a lethal suspense, a totally silent suspense that tends people to bombard themselves with questions - hundreds of thousands of questions - until they would feel like getting a gun and put it on their forehead and let their brain gush all the blood it wants.

“I’m sorry.”

-

All it took was a simple “I’m sorry” and everyone wept silently. It’s funny how two words have all it takes to dismember our composure. It’s funny how those two words sucked out our lives for the moment. I wept, wept, wept. I was taken aback by how empty-handed we are when the doctor said it. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the same lines but it’s different when a doctor says it. It has this ethereal gravity that pulls your spirits so down.

-

A week after his burial, the rest of us played everything we composed and virtually everything we know at his apartment. Good thing I still have the keys to his apartment. Anyway, we played there in this solemn and dignified way, even if we’re playing rock and alternative. It’s probably the longest gig I’ve ever had, or maybe it felt and seemed so long.

-

I unlocked his bedroom and there I saw a letter. His letter. I wouldn’t put everything here, but the letter said that it was written when Drew and I were playing that Motion City Soundtrack song “Autographs and Apologies“. He suddenly felt the urge to write this down as his way of apologizing to everybody, and as his last autograph as well. His motive of doing the suicide was because Jane, her four-year girlfriend, aborted their five-month child. (Yes, he got his girlfriend pregnant and though they didn’t do it on purpose, he somehow understood what happened and accepted that fact.) He said that by that time Jane told him about the baby, he felt so ecstatic, so happy upon the news that he promised to myself he’ll do everything to graduate and nurture the child and caress it in his own arms, but after the abortion incident he suddenly felt low and depressed to the point that he wanted to end his life.

And then he wrote down the chorus of that Motion City Soundtrack song. I even sang it in front of Ayeka and Biff and Drew while reading the letter.

So much for the autographs,
so much for apologies,
so much for the promises we never intended to keep.
How does it all end up?
How does the story ends?

We packed the drums and the guitars and left them at the apartment. I duplicated the keys for the four of us and the apartment became our studio. Biff’s practicing on the bass, but Mark will always be our number one bassist.

-

This is a fiction but based on a real-life story: the apartment, Biff, Ayeka, Drew and Mark are real identities (though not their real names). However, the abortion thing never happened. The pregnancy did. The suicide didn’t.

It’s hard for me to separate the completely fictional from the fiction that happened on real life, but it won’t make much difference.

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