He was crying as the credits rolled in. And he was being both conspicuous and inconspicuous about it.
“You’re crying!” I playfully mocked.
“Shut up,” he replied nasally.
“Why are you crying? It’s a happy ending!”
“Just let me cry, man!” he sniffed.
“Come on, you’ve already seen it.”
“Yes,” he wiped his lower eyelids with the balls of his palms “Five times.”
“Five times? And you cried every single time?”
“Yes, and?” he sniffed again.
I was about to stop the film when he grabbed my arm and exclaimed, “Wait!”
“What?”
“Let the song finish.”
My index finger hovered over his laptop’s touchpad as I watched him sniffed and mumbled the words of the Belle & Sebastian song playing over the credits. I sighed and pulled my hand away.
I stood up to pee. Once standing, I stretched my whole body upwards and was utterly satisfied to hear my bones cracked in place—or out of their sockets.
Bathrooms were places where I could think, I don’t know why. It’s probably because the deed of peeing and/or pooping was too idyllic that my mind would wander on. And during that first of many pees to come that hour, I thought of the film. It was a queer movie about a blind male teen, Leonardo, who fell in love with the new-kid-turned-close-friend, Gabriel—who was also a guy. It was simply delightful and light, but the question that lingered behind my brain, trying so hard to be hidden and repressed was not that delightful and light. As I flushed the toilet and washed my hands over the sink, the question made its way to consciousness, like water flowing from the nose of faucet as the valve was loosened: was I his Gabriel?
The sun had set while I was peeing so when I returned to the room, it was dark with the night. I turned on the light switch, taped on the wall next to the door, but nothing happened. “Don’t bother,” he said from floor. “The bulb went out last night and I forgot to buy a replacement.” I closed the door, instead. The movie was no longer playing and he was browsing through the video files in the “Films” folder. His face was awashed with harsh electronic light. When I sat down on the bed, next to the laptop, he said, “I don’t know what to watch next.” I pat the bed around me, looking for my phone. I found it behind the laptop. “You ever got that feeling when you have these movies that you still haven’t watched, but, I don’t know, you just don’t feel it?” I was already scrolling aimlessly on Twitter without actually reading the tweets. “Just like with music,” I said, without looking at him; in my periphery, he was still glued to the laptop screen. “You know you want to listen to a song, but you keep on pressing ‘Next’ because you’re looking for that particular song that you unconsciously want listen to, but you just don’t know what it is.” “Exactly!” he exclaimed, with a hand gesture that ultimately smacked my thigh, to which he mumbled a soft, automatic “Sorry.”
Belle & Sebastian’s ‘There’s Too Much Love’ streamed, yet again, from the laptop. He felt me looking and he grinned to the laptop screen. I rolled my eyes. “Come on, man. Obsessed?” He scoffed. “Shut up.”
The words seemed to climb on my shoulders and through my ears, and they had resided on my brain. “There’s too much love to go around these days…”
“Did you feel like that?” I asked, looking at him.
“Like what?” he replied without glancing.
I was unsure if I should really ask him that. It’s been five years, anyway. He looked up. I could just see the reflection of the harsh luminescence of the laptop on his face when our eyes met.
“Like what?” he repeated.
I diverted my eyes and when I returned it to him, he was already back on the laptop.
“Like, I don’t know…like, Leonardo…from the movie.”
It was only for a couple of seconds: his face was still lit, with his fingers hovering over the touchpad. When he finally spoke, he said jokingly, “And what? You’re Gabriel?”
“I’m not saying that—”
“—yes,” he cut through my words cleanly. “I did feel like Leonardo.” He shrugged. “Man, I still feel like him. You know, a hopeless romantic who just wanted to be kissed and who—” he glanced up at me and dropped it quickly “—fell in love with my best friend.” He quietly said that last part. The pin could loudly hit the floor after he said that. “But most of the time, I feel like Carina, the slut.” We laughed. “Why did you ask?”
A new song followed the Belle & Sebastian track. Something I didn’t know, but I liked it. It was a slow, heavy song, like a late-morning person waking up at noon.
I shrugged. “Just curious.”
We were busy with our own devices, with only the unknown tracks crooning between us. When the slow, heavy song ended, a more upbeat one played.
“You were my Gabriel, actually,” he spoke over the song that wanted the world to stop. “Well—were,” he added matter-of-factly. “And if Gabriel and Leonardo didn’t become lovers and decided to remain friends, instead.”
I suddenly remembered that day, five years back. His hands were terribly shaking and his eyes were wet with tears. I was clueless as to what he would say, but he was so anxious about it, moving around the place, starting sentences and then putting an ellipsis next to it, sometimes an em dash that leads to “Never mind.” But with proper urging, he said it. “I really like you.” I was lost at words. And I probably looked offended because he was apologizing and sweating and tearing up profusely, all at the same time. And I remembered saying, “I’m sorry, but I have to go. Let’s talk later.” Then, we didn’t speak with each other for a month.
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” he said.
“No, no, I brought it up. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he replied.
I found myself staring at him while he stared at the laptop. A playful track followed the upbeat song, wherein the singer was mumbling the words. “I’m sorry,” I said. He glanced up at me again. “I told you, it’s okay.” He smiled. I faltered when I said, “No, I mean…I’m sorry… I couldn’t, you know, love you back. I mean, the same way you love or loved me.” He was just staring at me and I diverted my eyes to my fiddling fingers on my lap. Then, he laughed. “What?” I said, mocked. And he was still laughing. He couldn’t stop. He guffawed with his hands clapping, and his legs up in the air. He wiped tears from his eyes and mumbled an apology, but then he would start another fit of laughter. In spite of myself, I chuckled along. “Fuck you,” I said, but it only made him roar louder. When he finally stopped, he was gasping for breath, with his back on the cement floor. I playfully kicked his arm and he exclaimed an “Ow!”
“My god, Jericho!” he said from below.
“What?” I replied.
He answered with a chuckle.
He scooted on the floor and I felt his head on my left foot, cushioned by my slipper. I looked down, but I really couldn’t see him. I felt him looking up, though. The mumbling over the speaker stopped. The next track sounded happy, hopeful, sunny. In the darkness, it felt fitting.
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