paolo

It should not have happened. But it did. Or maybe it didn't. In the conventional sense, nothing really happened. A few months ago, if someone had asked me if I'd gotten involved with someone who was already in a relationship, i would have answered no. Funny, the things we block out of our past.

I was 15 years old, a college freshman, a provincial girl in the big bad city. He had money, a car, and was three years older. He was from the city, and he could sing.

We would talk between classes, and sometimes during. One time a teacher didn't show up and we ducked out. He treated me to maruya at Mang Gerry's. I had never had a boyfriend, but he had a girlfriend and I figured he knew what he was doing.

He sat crosslegged on the floor outside the DAC, eyes closed, earphones in his ears, head leaned against the wall, smiling slightly to himself. Opening his eyes, he saw me, and motioned me over. "This is my girlfriend's singing" he said, offering an earphone to share. She was a music major, and her voice was heavenly.

We began to hold hands, if that's what you'd call it. I don't know how it happened. Perhaps his hand came to rest on mine one day, or our fingers brushed against each other, or something. We began to...play, our hands teasing, stroking, caressing during class. We could not look at each other. Running through ,my mind "Is this foreplay?" We could not talk about it. "Your touch is so...intimate," he said, and that was it. We were so young; we didn't know what the hell we were doing.

We were in the chorale together, and some nights he would walk me home down Padre Faura, the streets still slick with rain. "~Pagmasdan ang ulan, unti-unting pumapatak~". We were singing it long before the Eheads or Regine V brought it back.

I met his girlfriend once. She was beautiful and gracious and expensive, and everything I was not. He was introducing her to our classmates when I arrived, fashionably late as usual. "Oh, and this is Farah," he said meaningfully. I got the feeling she knew more about me than I did about her. "Does she know??" I wondered.

It ended on a star-filled night on a grassy bank in the lee of a waterfall. It was a class hiking trip and late at night. Everyone was tired but too wakeful for sleep. We all sat in a circle, trading stories and jokes. He sat beside me on a log, with me half-leaning against him. He put his arm around me and I straightened up stiffly, allowing his arm to drop. "Yakap,"he pleaded. "May girlfriend ka e," sabi ko.

We stayed in the chorale and ran for the student council together, but drifted apart. He grew close to another classmate. I don't know if he and his girlfriend stayed together. But somewhere in my college belongings is a recording he'd made, his favorite songs from our "Big Three" -- musicals we both liked: Miss Saigon, Les Mis, Phantom of the Opera.

Paolo, that was very sweet of you. Thanks for everything.