Loonie's (rom)Antics

“DEAR FRANCIS,” Marvin had written. “Mahal kita. Mahal kita. I love you. Di ko alam kung ano ang sasabihin sa’yo o kung bakit ko ito sinasabi sa’yo, pero ang alam ko I have to tell you this. Something is making me. Mahal kita Francis. Di ako sira-ulo, pero di kita masisisi if you think I am. I loved you the minute I saw you coming up the oval as you ran around. Nalunod ako sa’yong ngiti, when you looked back at me with those big dewy eyes. I loved the way you stood still. Iniisip ko yun araw-araw, a hundred times, lagi ko yun naiisip, exactly how your hands would feel like pressing against my back and how it would be holding you, ang iyong malaman na katawan. I can’t seem to think of anything outside that minute when we were standing together by your front door when Dennis and I visited you. I just love you. I love you plain and simple. I love you.”

That was a letter I got from Marvin. Well, he was a fool. He was a nut case, tetched in the head – bonkers, balmy. Not because he’d gone silly with love – love was unaccountable, he knew that much just from looking around, just from being alive. No, he was a loony because he’d gone and written it and slipped the letter into my gym bag. He knew that I was committed with someone and he sent me a letter full of garbage.

What in sweet Jesus’ name had come over him. He was a mature man, 34 years old, for God’s sake, reasonably steady in his habits, reasonably normal. Well, except for those three previous relationships, that indissoluble number three. And except for the offbeat hours he kept, and his somewhat eccentric job.

Anyway, it was too late. He’d done something dark and dangerous, writing a letter like that. He’d committed a rash act he hoped he’d never have to account for, but knew he would. Jesus. Buying that stationery and then filling it up with his blustering frenzy, letting it have its way, then actually sealing it, for God’s sake, his tongue traveling along its glued edges. He recalls the gummy taste now with a fresh wave of sorrow, and how he had afterward slipped it – irretrievable – into my gym bag. Farewell. So be it. Godspeed. Launched like a message in a bottle. Like a bomb.

Was I overreacting to Marvin’s romANTICs? Oh yeah. I was. Because Dennis, his boyfriend, WAS my bestfriend. Francis