Drunk conversations

"You should meet him. I swear you'll like him," she said while on the verge of crying, mourning a recent love affair lost in the inevitable pit fall of long distance relationship.

"I do not do blind dates," I repeated, for the seventh time. It was a slow ill-starred night, no tense, no rebellion, probably because it was not even seven in the evening. Our company had settled with early drinks recently, always eager to find empty comforts in our beds and the uneasiness of the coming work and school weeks.

"They always end up to be some horrible one night affair for the less adventurous. 95% of the time, I will tell myself that the other person, completely devoid of information about me, relying on sweet talks from you or whoever has set us together for a lame dinner too expensive for a student, is too good for me. I will always think he's too good for me because he probably is. And as for the other guys, I will feel pity because I will never be into them as they are, I presume from their attempt to converse film by immediately mouthing Citizen Kane, into me. Either way, I always end up feeling bad and depressed because it makes me realize I can't get the love I want," I continued.

She's on another bottle of alcohol. The slow tedium of the night was being filled with the sentimental songs playing in the bar. Not the best drug for the malaise of the heart.

"Maybe you should look for the love that you need, not the one you want," she said before taking a long, deep take on her cigarette. "We are not getting any younger, optimistic."

"That't bullshit. You know more than to settle for a yearning so shallow," I rebuked.

She just shrugged her shoulders. Maybe all the heartbreaks, so tender yet inevitable, was consuming her body, her existence. Or maybe it was just the alcohol.

"I'm not becoming some incurable romantic, but you should hear me out. The problem, I think, is that we settle for the love that is convenient, something that does not wake you up longing in the middle of the night, but rather, I don't know, just when you are taking a piss or folding your sheets, you're just 'Oh, this love is enough, I'll take' but you know deep inside it is not the demand that would preoccupy your days and nights with burning friction. If you capsulize love into just receiving, the needing, you are not doing yourself or the other person a favor," said the alcohol, which made me go in a law student rant marathon.

The place was getting crowded, under the pretence of false cheerfulness from the yellow lights and random cut-outs and memorabilia on the cluttered white wall. Our phones ringing from detached pieces of our lives, unaware of our agonies. The night sky outside stingily black from the lack of stars and the dirty pollution.

"We are supposed look for love that would make our hearts leap just by the thought of the other person on the other side of the room, probably just shaving his week-long stubble, which is not even at all, not a tad romantic, not because you need some stranger to leave unwanted hair on your bathroom tile but because that is the intimacy that you have always wanted. You gush over the fact that you are not just close, but ductile. Something, someone that makes you ravenous, so hungry you cannot even remember what it feels like to be void, all those years of being on the edge gone," I made my final case. This is not my spotlight.

"You want or you do not want at all," she muttered under her breathe while she drowsily grabbed her bag and motioned for me to do the same. If only I weren't so tired and full of feathers from the vodka, I would have insisted we drink our bodies to Pompeii. The night time is worst now.

Unnecessaries

The neighbourhood's glee, or whatever remains from all the years' exhaustion, is taming down in somber. It is getting late. I am on my second bottle of wine and will probably be up for more. The heads of the house, though groggy from the day's work and the alcohol that flowed as early as six this evening, are watching a sermon on the television, rather lackadaisical.

I do not get the festivities in my veins, cold and blue and battered from all the years of expecting and never having, rather getting the undesirable, the throw-ups. There must be a few things drunkenness can remedy, but like the merriment of the holiday season, all the past gulps had made its present effect spiritless. Even the presents seem lackluster, transfiguring into a query of budget and sucking up to some higher up.

So while the rest of the world is opening their presents, I cannot help but contemplate on things given I so long wanted to disregard, take back from its trashed gift wrappers and ribbon and seal again, never to be pondered at.

One. I need no pressure more than what I bear now. I have walked this life in constant fear of shamelessly disappointing, crumbling down to the anchors on my feet, boulders on my shoulder and thorns in my head. Yes, it is the last year of law school; the prospect of wearing sablay, then a glint from afar, seems restlessly nearer. "Your younger cousins look up to you," you always say but you never wondered, or if you did you never cared, how I always have to look for some platform to stand on.

Two. Spare me the pity. I do not need those uneven, enigmatic looks from you. I fell into this pit of unrequited, disgusting appetite for you. And the hell, I was left all bruised in the rut. So stop.

Three. Cut the crap on your personal issues. I know I have always been the go-to guy in our group when personal drama strikes. But I can only bear much, especially if you were the last person to be seen as the blessed fuckin virgin innocent mary in your life. Stop the everyday text message, facebook chats and constant bickering. I told you before I wanted to slap you, but you took that as something metaphorical, an attempt on my part to create an illusion of hardness so you could be tough. No, I really want to take a hit on your face, so reality can take one after.

Four. No, I am not half-done for being single. Rub the presence of your significant other, bath in the glory of waking up every morning with an early morning text message from him, create the illusion of being complete when with him, but please, do not attempt to generalize the world as wanting, abominably desperate for another human to consummate his existence. I am cozy and gratified in this aloneness and you should respect that.

Five. I do not need this negativity. But I live in this gift I have fed my own for the past few years now. The trouble was, I had been this man all along, I simply hadn't though about it. But an escape plan would be nice in the future.

I take it back. The wine has taken its toll. I am now alone in my room. The silence is depressing me. I'll just probably shut my eyes so the world will drop dead.

PS. I really don't know what I want for Christmas. A complete early version of Proust's In Search of Lost Time has been in my mind lately. Also, I may be drunk so pardon this piece of shit entry.

Hunger

It’s not even about sex. I don’t care about the sex. The forced thrusts, the musk of inert heavy male flesh; at some point it gets weary. What’s important is to wake up with someone. To spoon with that person. That’s what matters, the spoon. You wake up not with the cold draft of the deadly early morning air but the steaming twitch of drying cold. A warm belly, the one who loves you breathing against your shoulder, perversely and obstinately endearing.That’s it, the spoon.