confession of a male concubine

i dont know how long we have been lying down that time. all i could remember was the gentle rhythm of your snore and how i patiently followed the shadows in your wall.

i dont know if i have ever told you how i love looking at your window. amazed on how competing sky-rises have missed blocking such a rare urban sight from the inner view of your room: a moon set.

always finding a certain feeling of loneliness when the shadows have finally disappeared. its time for me to go back home.

i recalled the conversations we had last night after i asked you if feelings bother someone alike when it comes to sex.

you answered. it will be stupid for someone to equate sex with love. you have sex just to answer an urge. you fall in love to build something way more lasting, something more secured (i silently laughed at the last word).

i became silent. the answer could definitely put any hoping soul to their respective places and from their i already knew my part.

i pulled my pants up. hoping it will hold without my missing belt on. but it could only last for the next 12 steps before i have to pull it up again.

a close friend once told me how annoying i could be when i start talking and thinking about life's technicalities. its funny that i have thought of this while asking myself why shoes are designed to fit a specific side of the feet while socks don't.

if one should not equate sex to love, then why are there people who question love just because of sex?


its interesting how people paradoxically put confusing weight on the topic of sex and love. some will say its situational and practical while some say its selfish.

but if someone had sex with another other than his/her partner would that mean s/he doesn't love his partner anymore?

is relationship and fidelity exclusively anchored by sex, by love, by both or by something we always deny to matter?

our social contracts have told us that this is how it should be while the rest of our consciousness would clamor it should have been another way around.

before i could finally close the door, i took one last glimpse at you. your body at your side, pushing your legs to your center, hugging and looking for that warmth. honestly, i always liked this part; for this is the only time you are vulnerable. the only time i can be the one who leaves you behind.

i just hope that later, by the time the one who truly owns that bed space returns, s/he will feel my warmth on those sheets as it hugs across your body. just at the very least, s/he knows that i exist.

when lovers look love like sex

 "its just simply like that. my priorities have changed. i am working my ass out and the only thing i am asking for is to feel it again."

source

sometimes i just want to be reminded how we became siblings. you see, my sister just recently moved to the states. she left a family who is dead worried and a boyfriend for five years.


one day, mom called me to discuss about the guy. she told me that he has been calling her almost every hour just to say how much he loves my sister. so its no big surprise, when he said that he wants to marry her. the surprise came when my sister refused and finally called for a cool off.

this drove not only her boyfriend but everyone of us crazy!

you see. my sister and i could probably the closest in the family since we were just a year apart. however, in terms of personality, we are completely opposite. she is religious, i am spiritual. she is bookish, (i want to say) i am street smart. she is sheltered, while i am adventurous. there is not a single thing we share.

"kuya, i am tired. i just do not feel it anymore. when he says he loves me, even if it i know he really mean it, it just dont simply go across. believe me, i tried everything but regardless of what i do, i just cant simply bring back that feeling anymore. everything is not the same. i know you will tell me again, how immature i am. how i am still stuck up with those highschool kilig! how i should have not read those romance novels and watched those teeny bopper films. but i am who i am.and i dont think that will change."

***

two weeks after, a close friend from college organized a reunion. she wanted to hang out with the gang just like the good times. looking at us over a table of ribs and shacks, i can say a lot have really changed.  but when i was about to say its for the better, she dropped the real reason of the get together.

"i am filing an annulment."

our jaw dropped.

source

when all of us were green envious of how her life turned out; peak of her career, wife to a surfer artist who owns a business, have the most travelling stunts here and abroad, here she is planning to break up with the man we have always dreamed for her.

"there is no third party neither he did something wrong. in fact, he is wonderful. more than what you guys and i have asked for. but somehow, i just feel like i am not being true to myself and worst to us. he has been a wonderful man but for some reason i cannot appreciate it. its seem like i am being unfair."

she mentioned about getting alienated with all the things she wants to do and the promises around her. she feels like she is like a not cage pet bird. she can fly but too scared to go out. it is as if she is all tangled and tied with an invisible string of considerations.

***

when many people equate sex to love, we laugh at them. but here are the most of us, not realizing how funny we look at love like sex.

always craving for that insatiable journey filled with paradox, excitement and passion; without realizing how short-lived it is. hence, we continuously repeat the scene, praying that whatever those feelings were will remain. however, they don't.

funny how everyone long for a lasting relationship but refused to accept the fact that these feelings are usually temporary. of course, there will always be a million ways to prolong it, but at the end, it is just a matter of accepting-- settling.

i may never be able to make this understand by my sister neither to have enough guts to tell this to my friend, but i guess, love and relationship are not always for the selfish. its not always about how good it feels like. how it makes our stomach turns, tickles our spine and makes us smile, its a matter of accepting the time when this feeling will eventually fade to open doors for another feeling--- a more "mutual one".

a feeling where impressions and superficialities no longer matter. where the most lavished and sweetest gestures transgress to gentle holding hands or kissing him/her first thing in the morning even without brushing nor gargling. its not simply about what makes you happy but how both of you make each other feel contentment.

love is not like sex. it does not extinguish after orgasm then you can repeat again after each wake up.

just like what gaiman said, omnia mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, but nothing is truly lost). denying change drawn from fear of leading into nothing, simply means refusing to be someone better.

source

at the end, love and life is not about lingering the past, but appreciating the present and keep going for tomorrow--- together.

tonight we might write the saddest story

probably one of the saddest part of life is waking up an inch away from someone you thought to be the person you will spent your life with.

looking at that space. it reminded you about the entire journey of you finally finding yourself here. the almost endless search, solitary introspects and countless meltdowns.

interesting how much that inch of space can draw things out from your head. about monotony, being stagnant, and basically just being --- this.

being this when you have so much to give and do. when the picture of life ahead is strangely different from the idea you have framed before.

is this something you can work on or bear for the rest of your life?

it makes it more complex when loving seem to be more difficult. not because an emotion is absent but because competing to provide more than what is the other resonates becomes rather tiring and unachievable.

source

it makes you wonder the last time your stomach churn because of uncertainty or how your body hair raise because of excitement. you realized you have unconsciously become numb.

you are caught in between crossroads: when your youth is clamoring for your potentials while your perspective cries for stability.

funny how it is all happening inside but you can not seem to find the answer within. but its even funnier, knowing that this was everything you wanted --- the fruit of waiting and those forgotten memories; but now you cannot seem to find the right facilities to hold on it.

you rose up from the bed and stood next to the remains of a not distant memory. trying to focus on the smallest details from the lines, curves and minute movements: basically tracing back the reasons.

more than happiness and passion, it is never easy to claim contentment. but it is interesting how most, position time in a paradigm of pure emotions and rationalization.

somehow, it torn us; and our ideas of a perfect companionship. asking how can someone drop something everyone has been dying to be in? something invested with so much and have managed to have stayed for the longest time--- until now?

tonight, you might write the same sad story over again or perhaps a new one. but regardless, of where your pen leads you, promise me, you will neither be scared of making a decision nor come up with something just out of your volition.