Death Becomes Him
His name is Paolo. Some of you know him. He’s my ex-boyfriend, my first boyfriend in fact, and probably my first act of rebellion as a teenager (No boyfriends till eighteen. Good luck with that).
It wasn’t even much of a relationship to begin with. Those were just four months of my life. Four months! Five if you include the one month that we kind-of-sort-of got back together during freshman college, but that’s that. I’ve been part of a five-year relationship, but those four months seem as significant.
You see, six years ago, I got a text that crushed me to my very core. It was six in the morning, September 1, my friend Glenda’s message read: "Paolo died this morning. His wake is at his house". At this point, Paolo and I had been out of touch, having been out of highschool for almost eight years. And in my head it was more of a "Oh dear, poor him" kind of reaction than anything else. Then I went downstairs and my mom asked me why I’m up so early on a Saturday morning. And when I spoke the words, that’s when I broke down in tears "Namatay na si Paolo".
And these were copious, flowing tears, like my husband or someone I’d like to be my husband (e.g. Topher Grace) has died, and that’s when I felt for the first time in my life that I lost someone important.
So nowadays, I still think about him. When I’m in an FX and a guy beside me smells exactly like him (Eternity for Men. Is that cheap?). When I hear the cheesy song he dedicated to me back in highschool (yeah, yeah, laugh it off). When I read old letters from our mutual friends.
And reunions. Just like the one we just had last Saturday. Leah, Riza, Annalyze and I were to meet at Allan’s house and I got there first. Allan showed me some old pictures from our highschool days. And it was such a shock to see one from a memorable field trip, where Paolo and I sat together on the bus amd just held hands all the way to Clark Air Base (I don’t know what’s so field-trip-worthy of Clark Air Base anyway). And I started missing him again.
Which is frankly really unfair. Now I can’t remember any bad thing that Paolo did— I’m sure there’s a lot! If there wasn’t any, I wouldn’t have split up with him in the first place, yes?
Paolo — his personality alone, that is — is romantic. He was great with words. He is probably the first guy in my life who for some insane reason WANTED TO BE WITH ME. I think this is evidenced by not one, not two, but THREE tries of asking me out (I turned him down the first two times haha). And he just showered me with so much affection. Just…. showers and showers of it.
Now his death has immortalized his romanticism. And since he died so young, I will never see him fat and balding and sagging. His death also immortalized his youth.
Sneaky, little bastard. (And I say that with love).
Whenever I do miss him, I just tell myself "It’s the loneliness talking". My mind is so out of whack that I even thought of the soap-opera-angle — Paolo’s really alive but hiding somewhere in the United States under a top secret witness protection program and when I’ve become a successful novelist, I will tour the US and then he’ll see me signing book covers then we’ll be reunited to live happily ever after!
Sure.
Because I’d rather think of that extreme possibility than accept the fact that I’m never going to meet a guy as great as him.
