NAGKITA NA NAMAN kami ni Ann.
Lagi na lang ganun, parang minumulto namin ang isa’t isa sa
tuwing magkakabanggaan kami sa kung saan-saang kanto, kung saan-saang
kalye. Parang laging may banggaan sa highway.
Hirap pa nito laging cinematic pag nagkikita kami. Tipo bang humihinto
sa pagkilos ang buong paligid, kahit pa pagkadami-daming tao, biglang
mabibiyak ang crowd na para bang hinahawi ni Moses ang Red Sea.
Tapos andun siya. Si Ann na may malamlam na matang parang tumatagos
sa kaluluwa kung tingnan ka, nakatayong mag-isa sa karamihan ng tao,
habang nililipad ng hangin ang buhok niya.
Si Ann and her urban radical chic outfits, beliefs, persona.
Di naman ako sentimental pero hindi ko maiwasan maalala dun sa kanta
ng Buklod na "Kanlungan" yung kuwento namin.
Seven years ago pa yun nung sinabi niya sa akin that she will haunt
me. She did and she has. I saw her literally walk into that door,
entering my life with such small, silent steps that neither I nor
she would know she is to whip up a storm that would crush her and
me years later, a storm I am never to recover from.
Ann has that face, the kind that is judged beautiful by whatever
standard or culture. Her small frame makes her look fragile, almost
helpless. Yet she has a heart of steel. Many times I’ve wondered
how such vulnerability and strength can exist at the same time in
one person.
1996. May boyfriend siya nung magkakilala kami. Guwapo, macho, smart,
buena familia, may breeding. Good catch, ika nga.
Pero hindi kasi si Ann yung tipong basta sasangayon sa kung ano
yung dinidikta ng lipunan na dapat. Kaya siguro kahit parang napaka-perfect
nila para sa isa’t isa nung boyfriend niya, hindi siya masaya.
Grand entrance siya siyempre nang una ko siyang makita. She was
the last person to arrive in a convention I attended and caught everybody’s
attention because she entered the wrong door. I knew at that moment
that I saw her that I would fall in love with her.
I was not able to gather enough guts to really court her all the
way. Isa pa, super guwardiyado siya ng boyfriend. Hinahatid, sinusundo.
Plus I have this emotional baggage. I have this thing with girls.
I can’t live with them but I also can’t live without them.
Ann wasn’t the type you fool around with. The stakes are too
high for one to be just playing her.
The best I could do was magpa-cute. Nung time na yun sa pager pa.
I would send her these messages that I knew made her crazy. Ang
totoo, I just wanted her to be intrigued by my personality. She’s
too different and too special. Feeling ko mapapansin niya lang ako
if I am as different and as special.
Nothing really came out of my pagpapa-cute sa kanya. She went on
going steady with her perfect boyfriend.
Ako, I went on with my life. But I did not really move on.
Unconsciously, I was seeking her out. Na-realize ko lang din yun
years later.
Why I am in the profession I am in now is due in no small part to
the fact that I’ve met Ann. She just made the job look so cool.
It’s like she would wake up mid-afternoon after a late night
of partying, go straight to work and do what she has to do.
It’s cool in that grunge-y, unkempt, pensive, I-am-too-busy-and-the-world-is-too-irrelevant-for-me-to-even-take-a-bath
manner. I could never have imagined Ann living another way.
She has these dreams for herself and for the world. And it’s
like there’s so much passion in her that’s driving her to
go after those dreams.
After that, I had girlfriends who actually looked or had mannerisms
like Ann. They talk like her, or dress up like her or smoke like her.
The problem is they are not her.
By 1997, I had a major relationship that I thought would lead to
marriage. I thought I needed to make a last ditch effort to tell Ann
how much I love her but still didn’t have the guts.
I was on an out-of-town business, was too drunk to even make a logical
conversation.
I called her house and her mother answered the phone.
I told her mother to please tell Ann how much I love her.
Naturally, that one time when I poured my heart out was not really
taken seriously. I learned later on that my message was relayed. The
mother and the daughter laughed it off as some drunk man’s grumblings.
I did not have the courage to contact Ann and tell her I am dead serious.
Ann was at my doorstep months later. Turns out the perfect boyfriend
wasn’t so perfect after all. His flaws were unraveling.
But Ann did not show up at my house looking for a man to replace
the boyfriend. In all her coolness and exotic beauty, she goes to
my house at 4 a.m. with pandesal. She was actually bribing me to stay
awake and listen to her heartaches.
I don’t know why I did not seize the moment.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that by that time I am
developing this skepticism about her.
I resent the fact that she had to stick it out with the not-so-perfect
boyfriend and she seemed to have ignored me.
I am beginning to perceive her as a "player," someone
who have led me on, or maybe someone whom I will never really get
because she was too good for me.
Ann crashed at my house that morning to catch sleep and in my stupid
attempt to pacify her ego that was crushed to pieces by her womanizing
boyfriend, I tried to pair her with one of my friends.
Of course the matchmaking didn’t work out. Ann is not one to
go with that kind of pathetic even desperate move to get a rebound
date.
The next time I saw her—that was in 1999—she was applying
for a job in the company where I work and she was four months on the
way.
My girlfriend the last time I saw Ann turned out to be psychotic
and we separated. Now I am a free man again but with no Ann.
Ann actually married the boyfriend. In fairness nag-reform naman
daw, and that’s when they got married.
I bailed out on all my pending paperwork the entire afternoon and
took Ann to the nearest restaurant.
Pregnancy made her glow and all the while that I was sitting there
I was thinking that baby she had in her could have been mine. Wala
na akong nagawa kundi magbuntunghininga. Bago kami naghiwalay sinabi
ko sa kanya na may kamukha siyang artista, yung favorite kong boldstar
sabi ko. Ann laughed. Hindi na kami nagkita months after that.
On year 2000, I had a drink with friends and learned something about
Ann that would tear my heart apart.
One of the guys there said he bedded with Ann weeks after she went
to get a civil wedding that preceded by months the grand church wedding
Ann’s and the boyfriend’s parents wanted. It was a short-lived
affair. Ann never wanted to see or talk with the jerk after the church
wedding.
The guy was pretty heavy on the details and I could not, for the
life of me, fathom why Ann would sleep with such a jerk. And to think
that at one point in time, I was preserving myself for her. Back in
1996 na bumubuwelo ako para manligaw talaga kay Ann, I swore I would
lose my virginity to her. She was that special.
I was so torn and wrecked that I slept with the first girl that
came my way.
That one-night-stand stretched into several weeks, and later months.
The woman, older than me, made me her boyfriend.
Until I got this call one afternoon at the office and the person
at the other line said she is Ann.
Pinostpone ko siyempre ang buong araw ko at tinabla ko ang buong
mundo nang sabihin ni Ann na puwede siguro kaming magkape-kape at
mag-chikahan.
Di maiwasan na sinabi ko sa kanya that I learned she had an affair
with a jerk.
I felt that it was our moment of truth and the only time in all
these years that we have been bumping into each other that we were
really honest.
Sinabi ko sa kanya how I think she’s been playing me the whole
time. Sinabi ko sa kanya how I hated her.
To my shock and disbelief, she said she hated me too.
She told me a whole gamut of other things which I did not know before.
And I learned of my follies, and all the wrong moves and timings and
signs that would have led us to be happy together but I missed.
In the end, that’s what we were all about: a series of mishaps,
of chance encounters, and what-might-have-beens.
I saw right there before me the real nature of the complex woman
that I have loved all these years. The lady who has made so much impact
in my life that not a day passes that I do not wonder whatever happened
to her.
Hindi ko alam kung anong klaseng pagbibiro ng tadhana iyon.
Ann went looking for me before she got married. On a last ditch
effort pinahanap niya pa ako sa bestfriend niya. Pinakontak niya ako
pero wala na ang dating phone number ko.
On the eve of her marriage, pupuntahan niya sana ako sa bahay ko.
Pero she had a car accident at wala siyang driver’s license.
Hinabol siya ng pulis, then she made a sudden stop sa wine store sa
kanto namin, sa wineshop where I have made hundreds of purchases,
just to evade the police. Bale nalampasan siya ng mobile.
Bakit ngayon ko lang nalaman yun?
Di na natuloy ang plano ni Ann na puntahan ako sa bahay. Nagpasundo
na siya sa boyfriend who, under these kinds of circumstances, would
take care of things.
I looked at Ann hard and there was no turning back. It was just
me and her and the rain.
It was my one opportunity to hold her. I threw all cares to the
wind and I didn’t give a damn.
Ann was all passion. After a while I felt things were getting out
of hand and I didn’t know how to handle it.
My girlfriend, the older woman, found out about Ann and ruined everything.
She harassed her and made all kinds of threat to Ann. My greatest
regret in all these, wala akong nagawa simply because in the eyes
of the entire world, what I have with Ann is wrong.
I lost Ann for the nth time, and have wondered for at least three
years what happened to her.
My girlfriend finally let me free after I showed her I could be
as evil as she is. Then I began to look for Ann.
I was beginning to accept that this is where it all ends when I
saw her again.
She looked well, but still with the boyfriend-turned-husband by
her side.
The other day, Ann and I finally bumped into each other again. She
didn’t want to even see me. I begged her to give me her cellphone
number but she walked out on me.
The entire afternoon I was waiting for my office phone to ring because
I felt deep inside that she would change her mind and call. I wasn’t
wrong.
Kanina nag-usap na kami in person. I apologized. For hurting her,
for giving other people the chance to hurt her. She had this look
now as if she is ready to take on anything, that nothing would shock
her anymore. But I gazed into her eyes and felt my heart pound like
crazy. There it still is, the vulnerability, my fragile Ann.
Before she left, ninakawan ko pa siya ng kiss sa noo. I barely made
it kasi umiwas siya.
I guess I wasn’t able to apologize for the bigger things.
Sorry, Ann. Dapat tayo eh. Sorry talaga. Pero wag ka mag-alala.
Nothing and nobody can take away what we had. Atin yun. Promise.
---------------
Si Jokanaan ay 31 years old.
