the intricacies of love, the complexities of life

a chilly, pre-christmas air touched my bare skin sending quivers deep inside of me, and making the hairs on my body stood up as i stepped out of the "temporary" place i lovingly call "home" even though nothing is farther from the truth. but i won't dwell on that right now.

it caught me by surprise. the cold air outside. after all, christmas is still a month away, and this part of the world doesn't get that cold even in december, when the rest of the planet simply freezes into oblivion. thus, in my "all summer long" mentality, i wore a thin black long sleeve shirt with giant floral designs meant for the sizzling summer nights on the beach or on the mountains, an old reliable pair of black jeans and dark rubber shoes.

never one to shy away from a cold weather, i decided to walk towards the bar where i was seeing a friend. it was a good forty-minute walk amid manille's filthy, smelly, dangerous and mostly dark streets, but i didn't mind. apart from the rubbish with its pungent smell scattered on street corners waiting to be collected by the trash truck, there were also a number of beggars asking for money. i didn't mind them either, though seeing kids as young as three years, famished, malnourished, thin as a stick, simply wounded my soul. i wanted to offer them food, but sadly i wasn't able to bring some.

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inside, the bar was quite full. considering that it was only eight in the evening. then i remembered it was friday, and everyone was out of their offices early enough. most of them were men with greying hairs and bulging bellies in long sleeve shirts two sizes bigger than them and dark pants usually worn at the office, and students from the nearby universities in shorts and shirts, some wearing eyeglasses, their youth already slowly lost to sleepless nights spent studying, smoking, drinking, discovering the world.

there were a few cute guys too. but they were not on my agenda tonight.

at the back of the room near the rest room was the only place available. it was a table for four. normally i would rather go elsewhere than be seated there, but tonight i didn't mind, even the cigarette smokes that were hurting my eyes. the bar is one of the few places in manille that allows its customers to smoke inside, ignoring a government's ban on smoking inside enclosed places.

as soon as i finished ordering fried tufo, buttered chicken and a bottle of ice cold beer, i texted my friend to tell her that i am already at the place. she replied quickly: i am on my way.

a few minutes later, she was seated right across the table from me. in a long sleeve blouson that looked like a sweater with holes strategically located around the shoulders (quite sexy, don't you think?), tight-fitting jeans, her newly-washed shoulder length hair let loose, and eyeglasses. looking fresh amid the polluted air caused by cigarette smokes.

the music was a bit loud, but it did not stop us from talking about, what else, love and life. in that order.

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i lamented about being obsessed with a lover from way, way back who treated me with so much tenderness, who cried when he was about to leave for uranus to work. i told her he was probably my greatest love, but at that time i didn't know it (ah, the arrogance of youth), so i let him go. he was then eager to leave the country, hungry for an adventure, and experiences.

looking back, i said, after so many lovers, there was nobody like him. he wasn't only extremely good looking, he was also very nice, thoughtful (he would call me at night, while on a break at his work, just to make sure that i was at home and not somewhere else, and we would talk for an hour until i fell asleep, even if i was insomniac!), treated me with respect and not like a bank (not that i had money then, and even now. hahaha. as a reporter for a local newspaper, my salary then was just enough to tied me over to the next pay day despite the fact that i was renting a small, cheap room and eating in turo-turos).

she comforted me. saying that maybe it wasn't the case. that there's still someone out there waiting for me and he hasn't found me yet. then she quoted a book that she had read about relationships and true love. i love listening to her. she is very intelligent, precise, concise, straight to the point. she will be a very damn good lawyer, i thought, as she was talking.

like most of my modern women friends, she is very frank about everything. love, life, sex. no holds barred. that is what i like about conversations with friends like her. they are usually free, frank, honest, uncensored, unencumbered by silly morality, or religion, or what people might say about us having sex even before we are married.

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of course it wasn't a one way street. she also told me about the travails of her complicated love life, but sadly, i was sworn to secrecy. i could not share them here. suffice it to say that at such a young age (i was two decades older than her), she already had a full life, something that i only dreamed about when i was in my silly twenties, hitting bars and boys, sleeping with total strangers.


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later on, as empty bottles of beer piled up, as alcohol made its way into my veins, altering my perception of reality as though i was in a christopher nolan film, it hit me.

our experiences about love and life never changes. they always stay the same, whether we are in our twentys and just starting to discover and experiment about everything, or in our fortys when we thought we had seen, tasted, felt, touched it all.

in the end, i realized that regardless of age, or gender, we will always be beginners when it comes to life, love and experiences. no one has seen, felt, touched, tasted it all. as we wake up each morning, or in my case, each night (what can i say, i am a vampire!), we begin anew with innocent eyes like newly born babies just learning to crawl, getting acquainted with the world, or say "mama."

these thoughts gave me so much warmth that i forgot about the pre-christmas chill waiting for us outside once we stepped out of the bar at four in the morning.

babush!

have a great weekend fairies, bitches, witches, princesses, and wannabes.