After a night out, I always feel some type of way in the car on the way home. Especially when something important happened. It’s rare when something important happens during a night out, but when it does, the car ride home feels like another universe.

Beside our university, there was a McDonald’s. It was always full. Always. People had to stand around waiting for seats, and when one opened up, it was, for that brief moment, like the Hunger Games. We have all accepted that, on the way to get a seat, all rules of decent society are suspended. We are animals of the basest kind. And whoever gets their ass on the seat first wins.

But we were a bit luckier because it was 9PM. I don’t remember why I was there so late. Maybe there was a bazaar or festival or something. We decided to meet. For weeks then I had already been thinking about him.

He said, “Do you have to be anywhere? Am I wasting your time?”

We were seated outside. There was a traffic jam on the avenue, as usual. Occaisonally, the LRT passed above the cars, loudly traveling on the rails.

I remember thinking no one has ever asked me that before. No one has ever asked about whether they were wasting my time, and no one has ever used those words in that order. Something about it struck me.

I said, “No. No, of course not.” I wanted to say: I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world but here with you right now. Right here.

I don’t remember what we were eating. But we ordered food, and we were looking at each other. I’ve loved him for years at this point. We were classmates during the first year of college but then he went to the United States. He came back a year later. And by then I still felt for him what I felt before he left.

He wasn’t especially handsome. But he was good looking. It was the way he acted, the things he said, the things he knew. And his eyes. He had large eyes that betrayed an innocence that every second became indistinguishable from stupidity. And desire. Hot, burning desire.

We spoke about poetry and life in America. And I brought up a girl he used to love. She was one of my best friends. And he adored her. He always sat beside her, followed her around like a puppy. She was late to come to school one day, so he spent the day with me. And when we came across her on the way to class, he shouted her name to get her attention and made for her. He didn’t even look at me as he said goodbye. I felt that was very apt.

I asked him, now, about her, and although he was amiable, the question seemed to have upset him. Later, I’d read his blog, and he seemed to reference it. “A friend asked me about something that happened years ago,” he wrote. “He spoke like he knew. Did you know? Were you there?”

I don’t think he understood the extent to which I was familiar with what happened between him and that girl. She told me everything. She told me everything because she knew that I really liked him. And she didn’t like him much. That bothered me.

I remember being at my aunt’s party. She held it at her nursery school. They had to close the gates and the blinds so that nobody saw that she had invited her family and friends over for a party. Behind a bookcase, there was a bedroom and a kitchenette, where the teachers she hired could live. She let me use the computer in there.

I spoke to that girl, and she was telling me about how they had gone to a bar the previous night. They both got drunk. She needed to puke, and the boy went with her to the bathroom, so that he could help her as she puked. He held her hair and made sure that she didn’t get any on her. And because of her drunkenness she then began to kiss him. Deeply. With tongues swirling around each other’s mouths.

She was telling me about how she regretted it. How she wished that she liked him, given how much he liked her, but she simply didn’t. And I know that I was asking for it, since instead of asking her to keep these things to herself, I actively asked her to update me about their relationship. But I got very angry. I said: You know how much I like him. The way you’re talking so casually about how much you don’t like him is very inconsiderate. Which it was. But at the same time I had as much a hand in that pain as her. Maybe more.

But now it was two years later. He was sitting in front of me, and we were spending time together. She had long forgotten about him; she had a boyfriend now. I felt like, unlike then, I had him to myself. Which wasn’t true of course. Absolutely untrue.

In any case, we spoke so much about poetry and literature and video games that my father began telling me to go home. I was lucky enough to have someone drive me home, an employee of his he paid extra to drive me. He wrote his email on the back of the receipt so that I could email him. On the car, Sweet Soul Revue by Pizzicato Five was playing. And until today I associate that song strongly with that evening.

The more I spent time with him, the more I wanted him, but the more it was apparent that he loved women. He loved beautiful, intelligent women with European and American sensibilities. He was never going to love me or even like me or even be romantic towards me. I never asked, but it was obvious to me at some point. So, I never asked and I never tried anything. I never even broached the subject.

But he did tell me about having sex. His preferences, the things he liked. How he would go about it. The things that happened before, during, after. And that was supposed to be enough for me. He would never do those things with me, but I knew how it would happen if it did happen. Which it never would.

I remember that drive home. All I could think about was how happy I was. How much I missed him. How handsome I still found him. I remember that Japanese song playing. I remember the horrible Manila traffic. The harsh lights of the freeway. And I remember thinking I loved him. How stupid I must be because I loved him.