Menthol-Guy

After downing two bottles of Red Horse two of my orgmates (in my writing org) wanted to do something thrilling. At first I shrugged at the thought, but all of us are quite tipsy so might as well savor the moment. In fact it was our last two days in the University for the Christmas break starts this Saturday, and it was the dawn of Thursday. We decided to swim at Baker Hall at 2 in the morning, the sky dark, the stars swerving from their orbits, shining like crystals lost from the thread of a necklace. Students are forbidden to swim there, among other rules like no smoking and no drinking inside the perimeters of the campus.

The three of us had to jump so high to dodge the barbed wires–it was quite dangerous, really–but it went fine. The next thing we did: we lied down at the poolside and just watched the sky. All of us saw shooting stars; I made a wish but I’d rather not spoil (for spoiling it to others loses its capability to become true). I smoked my last cigarette. Our feet touched the pool water, flapped it gently, the sound very much delighting, the night abnormally cold for a tropical country. We talked about the taboos we don’t usually talk about–sex, forbidden dreams, the shenanigans of a college student. We freely talked about things and promised not to divulge it to others; it is a conversation worth cherishing, worth keeping, a symbol that the night is indeed special and unforgettable.

I told them if ever there’s a song that fits this cinematic moment, it’s Inní mér syngur vitleysingur by Sigur Ros. Inside me sings a lunatic.

We stayed there for two hours thinking about things, talking about problems–everything. I wish the nights are as cold as this, as memorable and as worth dying as this, even if the days are humid and problematic, I don’t really care. It’s a night worth dying for, your eyes feasting for the majestic blanket of stars, with Sigur Ros singing inside my mind, celebrating the lunacy of things we did that night.

I went home and slept with a smile on my face.

It’s 1:31 AM. I bought packs of Kinder Bueno!!!

I should be celebrating my four fucking years of blogging this 20th, but it’s nothing really special. (See last year’s post here, though it’s really stupid.) I’m doing this post for the sake of reminding myself. Plus for the sake of celebrating something, or anything.

Thanks for my readers. Without these guys, well, I wouldn’t be here I wouldn’t have this drive to blog, to write crappy short stories, to share what’s going on. I don’t really want to call you guys as cheesy as “the receiving end of my breather” or whatever, but you guys! Just thanks. A lot. For even bothering to read.

Changed some of my category names! Morphed them into something informal, since I think “past is fucking past” among other loser categories are just worth the *facepalm*. (They also have a hover caption, or whatever you call it.)

Show a damn! :) Testimonials, comments, booty calls, even poems or short story ideas. Or even the most boring webcam pic (fansite?). A Jonathan Safran Foer e-book is much appreciated.

To wrap things up that night, I dated with outdated magazines for three, four hours. I read about the War in Darfur, and in another magazine the tsunami that killed thousands in Colombo and Banda Aceh. I gulped down tea, read an arresting article, another gulp, then massaged my temples. Another tea, then massage, then the occasional cellphone check. Read again. Go to the comfort room. Check myself in the mirror: do I look good? I should wash my hands. Do I smell good? Relax myself in the couch, then read. My head throbs. I should buy myself a brand new pair of eyeglasses, this time the ones equipped against my computer’s radiation which leaves me teary-eyed for minutes. Then the occasional cellphone check–just the regular errands from Mom. Stare at some couple, smell the coffee brewing at the bar, hear the calming bossa nova songs, see the silenced laughs from outside. Is there a convenient store nearby? Read about the construction of Palm Jumeirah, how ambitious the Arabs are, how vulnerable it is from the Persian Gulf. Read. Now, breathe. I won’t be buying expensive oatmeal cookies. Read about global warming in the Arctic, about saving polar bears, about the deforestation of the Amazon, the extinction of the macaws and the monkeys and the indigenous tribes like the Kamayurás. Cellphone check. Read. How much will a sedan cost me? Refill my teacup with water. Lady barista beams at me. Do I look like I need to be cheered up? Read another article about Beijing’s preparation for the Olympics. Breathe. Cellphone check. Read again, this time about the Tour de France. Just read. I’m reading the same lines. Scan the area and look for familiar faces. No one.

A few weeks ago, Neko the cat, who had been Jimmy’s adopted pet, was lying on the pebbled floor. Her eyes were hesitant to wake up, caught in a limbo between dreamland and reality. Her furry body was helpless, as if the only thing she could do is to breathe.

It was after Jimmy bought his Rottweiler puppy that I have noticed the downward spiral of the cat’s life; a demise, if we could call it as that. Neko has been a very loyal playmate, but that she couldn’t do anything after the purchase of the black dog, which was named Betty. It would be justifiable for Neko to call her Betty the (Black) Bitch, for–after all–she stole from her what used to be an affectionate master.

Jimmy didn’t really feel the cat’s absence much; she is just a pet, he might reason out, a stray cat who ended up one day at his doorstep terribly shaved, her furry landscape uneven from what seemed to look like spots made by boiling water.

He told me, in between smoking cigarettes, that he had seen the cat last Friday, and that it was scavenging for food in the street nearby. Though he admitted that his recollection might be faulty for he was “in the middle of tipsiness and drunkenness”, and that his faculties are dimmed that time, he told me fondly and vividly of the thinner version of Neko at that very night, alone. He couldn’t help but remember the cat he used to feed biscuits he dearly buys in the supermarket, probably with the satisfied purr of the cat in mind. He used to caress her tail, smooth her whiskers, and even got scratched twice in his wrist–but it’s okay with him, he added with haste, for it was Neko’s wild side, and that it was the only thing cats have that makes people realize their lineage with lions and tigers. He talks to her sometimes, and she is a very good companion.

That day we saw Neko the cat lying on the pebbled floor almost paralyzed, out of no apparent reason (but Jinky the gardener hypothesized that Neko must have fallen from a great height, though I am positive that the cat wouldn’t commit something like suicide and that, Neko surmised, cats only die after falling from the seventh floor), we think it was something Neko ate from the garbage.