By CARMELA GUANZON LAPEÑA

DISCUSSED: Odd friendships, Labels, translating all this fuzziness into something concrete

When I ask you what are we
the question relates to position:
absolute, not relative;
And location, precise and not
an estimation.
The last thing I want to hear
is a vague catch all with an accompanying
sweep of your arm
a poor excuse for a non-
relationship or an empty phrase
such as “We just are.”
What is that, really?
I am asking for a name,
a label on a jar so I can tell
whether I’m sitting on the shelf
or I should hide under the table.
Give me a word, give me a world
with a bit of certainty.
Identify this shortness of breath,
this racing heart and trembling hands;
this sweet attack that hits
when you are within my proximity.

“I think I adore you quite a bit.” That’s what you said. I know, I have proof. There’s beauty in love in the time of Facebook, and it’s the fact that nothing is lost to the wind.

We return to our safety nets – the internet where everything is filtered and we are invisible hiding behind our screens and lurking in chatboxes, exchanging e-mails from behind hidden fortresses. If it sounds like a battlefield, it’s because this is a war. I have no weapons but words, and so I try to write you closer to where we imagine we could be.

A few weeks after we began this odd friendship, my phone began doing funny things. Messages from the past would suddenly appear as new in my inbox, and recent messages would relocate themelves to the drafts. I realized that your messages were the culprit – so I decided that all 600 of them must go. But I couldn’t bear to part with them – your words I read over and over while waiting in line, or falling asleep. So I did what anyone in my position (hanging, uncertain like a damp towel in the kitchen) would do. I made an excel file and a record of every single thing you’d ever said to me.

In the entirety of our friendship, we have had exactly three face-to-face conversations, the first lasting for all of three sentences “You should sit down” “No, thanks, I’d rather stand.” “No, really, here, there’s space.” You just smiled and shook your head after that.

If I had the presence of mind then, I would have switched my recorder on, and we would have documentation of a hundred per cent of our verbal communication. Fortunately, I had no such thing on my mind those two times we actually conversed, in fact, I had not much else on my mind but the conversation itself – the worrisome fact that the attempt to get inebriated seemed futile on me; and the way you spoke softly, so softly that I had to lean forward to catch what you were saying.

You know the drill of discovery: the initial small talk questions patterned after those autograph books that were all the rage in elementary; the delight at the similarities and the dismissal of differences; the fascination at feeling interested and interesting; the disbelief at the mutual attraction.

“I’ve had the biggest crush on you since forever.”

“Me, too.”

“Really?”

“No, really.”

REALLY. If phones could cringe.
Then the inevitable thoughts toward the future: plans, lists, invitations; but all are up in the air because, well, it’s too soon.

“It’s too soon,” we agreed. And this is the theme of the whole friendship. It feels different and new (does it not always?) but you are 29 and I am 23 and the last time it felt like this was in high school. You know the feeling – the business of living is relegated to the background, everything is done for the sake of doing it, but the only reason for getting up is the prospect of a day with the object of your misplaced affection. The only motivation for sleeping is the possibility of finding them in your dreams. Every song is about you, all of a sudden, and in extreme cases you are driven to write songs of your own, heaven forbid.

Even more inevitable than thoughts, though, is yearning. The constant contact, communication, tricks us (or me, how could I forget that I don’t get to use us? Not now. Maybe not ever.) into feeling the need to translate all the fuzziness into something concrete. What could be more concrete than the overwhelmingly tangible world of IRL?

This is the last thing you would want, I imagine. In the first place, no one knows we’re going out. If ever we’re seen together, the assumption is we aren’t together; rather, we just happen to be hanging out in the same place. After all, we move in the same circles. We move in circles. This is the circumstance that keeps us from actually going out. Correction, this is the circumstance that keeps us from being seen.

Circles: we liked those as children. They were easy to draw, nice to form, very useful in drawing teddy bears. We talk about wanting to return to childhood – remember the magic markers, the activity book magic pictures that appear after a shade of pencil.

Now that we’re all grown up (more or less) circles have lost their appeal. We argue in circles, circling around points instead of making them. Our resume of relationships could be diagrammed in a spiral. The story is the same, only names and places and dates need to be changed. Fill in the blanks, connect the dots.

We talk about parallel universes – places we wish we were in, situations other than reality. We talk about dreams and fantasies – you explain that I’m not a fantasy, I forget the argument but i remember the feeling. I get it. You like me. A bit.

The moment we find ourselves face to face it’s as if the logical thing to do is gravitate closer, closer than the maximum six inches acceptable in public places. I smell you and ask you for a name but you refuse, I move closer and ask again. Eventually there isn’t any possible closer and there is nothing between my skin and yours but the faint tingle that accompanies increased heart rates and accelerated breathing.

You kiss me.

I am melting and falling and flying, I wrap you in my arms and feel you kissing me I feel all the words you sent through space all the conversations we generated in mid-air, glances across the room, shy smiles and tentative waves. I feel your mouth on mine and I taste you tasting me.

And then the need for air, you pull away and look at me. I search for answers in your eyes, still half-closed. I wait and you open your mouth and tell me you’re sorry.

When will it not be too soon? Does the explanation of timing warrant that if I hang around long enough, it will happen? What will happen? Does anyone even know? The tension is such that it builds up for days, like a balloon attached to a power hose – the faucet is open and the water is filling and filling and filling and of course, of course it will burst. Who knows if it will ever be not too soon? Here, online, in these lines, i have you.

Melay La Pena is an accidental journalist, who is this close to finishing her MA in Creative Writing from UP.

She gets distracted by parallel universes, and looks almost okay in photos edited by people who think normal photos don’t do justice to how they see her. She likes run-on sentences and gets cold a bit too easily.