Missing...

It has been 2 weeks since I have seen my so-called partner, the reason my status in Friendster term is “married”, has called me or sent me a message. For the past 4 years, I have been seeing this basketball player from Zamboanga and we are in this arrangement that I am his better half and vice versa. The reason that he is a constant fixture in my dating life is because maybe I have no other choice, or maybe I love the idea of being in love with someone. The circumstances surrounding our first meeting was somehow hazy, even downright pitiful. He said that he needed to go home to Zamboanga for the holidays and needed help. That was last 2003, and I was hooked on him since then. He made sure that he spends 2 weekends every month in my place, staying overnight. I love the idea of roleplaying, of me acting out a part as a dutiful partner, preparing him breakfast, lunch and dinner. He is a Moslem, thus, I have to pull out my culinary wizardry to whip out dishes without pork. So far, pasta is a main fare, and I have served every imaginable types of pasta, penne, spaghetti, fettucine, spaghettini, macaroni, among others, either with red or white sauce. I must admit that we are like a typical couple at home, Saturday nights are spent watching DVDs, sometimes finishing 5 in a day, drowned by bottles of beer. Then bedtime arrives and I have no choice but to perform the wifely duty of matrimony, minus the nightgown of course. We usually get up before 10 in the morning, although he wakes up earlier than me because of his body clock, he is used to waking up early due to daily basketball practice. We usually laze up in bed and talk about anything, I admit that one thing that I like about my man is that the gray matter between his ears is something to reckon with. He was from a Jesuit-school in Zamboanga during his secondary school, and he could speak excellent English. His dad was the chief of police in Western Mindanao, so I presumed that the guy is financially well-off. I always kid him that maybe his father is a typical police chief, the one that drives around town in a flashy car, which he regularly disputes. He says he does want to talk about his family. Whenever he is asleep, I feel guilty perusing thru his wallet and mobile phone. Inside his wallet is his photo taken when he was young, maybe around five. I wish that one day, my photo got to be in his wallet, which is next to impossible. He learned to delete messages in his inbox as well as outbox to avoid discussions. There was once a time that we fought over those messages, and I admit that I felt guilty invading his privacy. Once, he answered the phone and had to go to the washroom to speak with the caller, I felt raged overcoming me, so I got the dog and walked her around the neighborhood. I didn’t go back after an hour and spent the next hour not speaking to him and we brought the discussion to bed. Even if the lights were off, we were discussing about the mysterious caller and he kept saying that the caller is no longer in the Philippines. He said the magic word, the four-letter word, that ended the discussion in a better note and a glorious sex. The relationship dragged on for months, even years, with me accepting the rigors of him balancing his life between studying and basketball. I always ask him where I sit among his list of priorities and if I am included in his future plans. It is a recurring question before going to bed and before he leaves the house. He always answer back that I just have to relax, I am part of his life, that is enough to shut me up. I am guilty of nagging, I admit, but any self-respecting girl, or gay for that matter, needed to know. I have learned that to totally love someone, a person should lose all inhibitions and experience a freefall to experience selflessness. I know it is stupid to put a person’s welfare before one’s own, but I guess love involves giving one’s best, no half-baked emotions, only 100% sacrifice. This might sound masochistic, but whoever said that love without pain must not have experienced love at all. We must love and be ready to suffer the consequence, whether that relationship fails or succeeds, the end product is that we took the chance of being part of a relationship.

This ongoing saga has been the longest I had in my life, I tried quitting a couple of times and yet, I always welcome him back with open arms. Maybe it’s the idea of being in love that makes me stay, or I do feel better that we have been together for some time now, and throwing the towel is synonymous with losing him. Whatever it is, I guess there is enough reason to keep it going.

After 2 weeks, most likely, he will pop up back in my life, I guess he lost his phone and he could not contact me, I told you, I am a half-full kind of a guy, never the half-empty type. Optimism is a kind of bird that perches on a tree and never leaves, no pun intended, but I love birds, whatever love means….