Sadness and Desire, Chapter Four

She made breakfast: fried eggs and bacon. The eggs were well-done, the bacon burnt black. It didn’t matter to me one way or another, I just munched on them and downed it all with dark breakfast-beer she picked up at a craftbeer joint last night. We sat in the living room, eating our breakfast, with Breakfast at Tiffany’s on the TV. I forgot that I have that DVD. How she found it, I had no idea.
I was almost done eating when she started crying.
“You all right?” I asked her.
“Yeah,” she panted, wiping her tears on the sleeve of her shirt. “That scene just gets me every time.”
She was talking about that scene when Audrey Hepburn was looking for her cat while the rain was heavily pouring.
“Why, though?” I had to ask. I myself have my own interpretation of the scene, but I wanted to hear hers first.
“Nothing,” she was shaking her head. “It’s just one of those holy moments in cinema.”
And I was like, “Okay.”
When we were finished eating, she told me she wanted to fuck so we went to her bedroom and I was closing the door when she pulled me to the bed and tore off my clothes like a hungry bear. I didn’t even have to do anything. She pushed me to the bed and I laid down as she swirled and gyrated on my top like a gyroscope. When it was over, my body was twitching with satisfaction while she laid beside me, catching her breath.
“What was all that about?”
“I needed to clear my head.”
“And?”
“My head is so clear I can’t even remember your name.”
“Maybe I don’t have a name.”
“Maybe I want to do it again.”
“That scene of the cat in the rain turned you on, eh?”
“No,” she said. “Just shut up.”

Lunchtime, she wanted to go out so we took a taxi to Cubao and I made her drag me to the place where she wanted to eat.
It was a Thai restaurant.
A waitress greeted us at the entrance, and we sat at a corner table, near a window, where the lines of traffic from the street were visible like strands of Christmas lights. I was scanning the menu that the waitress handed to us when she started talking.
“I miss being a child.”
My eyebrows narrowed. “Why?”
“A child will just go to Mcdonald’s. Or Jollibee.”
“You dragged me here. We haven’t ordered yet. D’you wanna go to Mcdo or Jollibee?”
“No, it’s fine,” she sighed. Then she repeated her statement. “I miss being a child.”
“Why?” I asked again.
“Well, back then, things were a lot simple, you know what I mean?”
“I don’t,” I told her. “Probably because as a child you have to deal with parents.”
The waitress came back and took our orders. We ordered Tom Yan Goong, Moo Yang Ta-Krai, Yam Pia Duk Fuu and an assortment of desserts. The waitress asked us to be patient because it will take a while to cook, to which we humbly agreed like obedient children in an era of fascism.
“I hate my parents.”
“Well, nobody said you have to like them.”
“I know.”
“Why, though?”
A waiter came and poured us some water while we wait.
“Let’s just say they’re the reason why I think most relationships are crap.”
“So this is crap?”
She laughed. “We’re not like them, fortunately.”
“How are we different?”
“We were born in a different generation.”
I thought about that for a while.
“You’re in good terms with your parents?” she asked.
“I won’t say it like that.”
“How would you say it then?”
I chose my words carefully. “Let’s just say they were long gone before I had a chance to hate them.”
Her eyebrows narrowed.
“My Dad passed away. My Mom re-married and is at the States.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“Did you love him, then, your Dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
I raised my hands to the table. “I don’t know,” I repeated.
“How about your Mom, then?”
“I will say the same answer.”
“Okay,” she said, smiling. “How would you know if you love a person?”
“How would you?” I asked her.
“If that person’s with me, you know. That’s the first thing. The person I love should be with me.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and’?”
“And?” I repeated.
“Well,” she stuttered. “If that person is with me, why shouldn’t I love him with all the cliché stuff that comes with loving a person?”
Our order finally arrived. We ate in silence, shuffling our spoons in between bowls of soup and rice, pork, and fried bananas, sipping milktea and water, until all that remained on our table were a mess of empty plates and glasses.
I stared at this still-life painting in front of me: the plates stained with remnants of food that seconds ago were boiling in a pan, or well, alive; the glasses with the remains of cubed ice silently melting, their once solid forms coming into terms with thermodynamics and transforming into a new form. Or maybe it wasn’t like that at all. The still-life in front of me were ruins of a long-lost civilization, forgotten by history, remembered only in brief silences, in brief moments of reflection. Where were we in this ruin? Do we even dwell in it? If so, why?
She burped. “Craving satisfied!”
“But satisfaction is just an illusion,” I remarked.
“Fuck you,” she said. “I love great food. Great food always feels nice. Like good things will happen.”
We split the bill and left the restaurant. We bought cigarettes from a sidewalk vendor and watched the cars and pedestrians coming and going.
“I wanna go somewhere,” she began.
“We all wanna go somewhere,” I replied.
“This city is a ruin,” she said. “You stay here, you end up nowhere.”
We crushed our cigarettes with the soles of our shoes.
“Let’s take a walk,” she said.
I agreed.
Hand in hand, we strolled together in this labyrinth of a city, without any destination in mind. I was the one who kept worrying about a lot of things. Maybe her smiles were all I need. Our bodies were secondary.
It was at that time that I remembered Kristelle. And that garden in my dreams.