remembering the tinman, part 5

march 2002, letter to g

dear g

thanks for the advice.

know what? a few days after, i'm totally over M(!). of course, i still remember that fateful night especially when I can still smell him in my bed and my pillow. but given a certain degree of rational perspective, i know that there is no use torturing myself on the why's and the what for's.

having said that, i feel i also owe it to myself to try to explain why i was overreacting. not to justify, for indeed, what's the use? but more to try to get off clean. you know, straighten it out in my mind. maybe because i want you (as my bff) to understand a little what i'm going through. or maybe i want to rehearse what i will say to E once i decide to tell him all about it (which i will in time). either which way let me try to explain.


i think i've already discussed in full what i am going through professionally. what i haven’t explained yet is how this has affected me and the way i interact with people here.

the truth is i can’t explain what is happening to me. except perhaps as any other person who finds himself in the role of a stranger in a foreign land. even my new friends are hours or days away from where i am. at this point, i need to wait for the weekend before i can speak to a friend.

do you know what it’s like to have no one to talk to?

it’s like nothing that is happening to you is real. sometimes i find myself just wanting to scream just because nobody is listening.

and this has such an effect on me as a person. most of the volunteers here think i’m an "introvert". isn’t it funny? introvert! me?! i realised it’s because i have gotten used to not speaking to anyone that even when i am amidst people, i still keep quiet. sometimes i feel suffocated if people speak all at once. all the while, i was thinking, i was once the life of the party, whatever happened to me? weird, right?


you know what? i have been taken to further isolating myself by frequently going to the abandoned train station 30 minutes walk away from where i live. it was built way back when the plantation was a center of commercial and social activity. now the trains don’t even pass by anymore and the station is all vandalised and crumbling. it looks like all the lost hopes and dreams of the community here are captured by the station that has not welcomed a guest for years and the track that forgot the heat of metal running against metal. there i find peace.

in this state of mind, M found me. i guess when M came i was just so hungry for any kind of human contact. and when he showed me tenderness, its like a showing an addict who’s dying for a fix some narc that is for free. no wonder i sounded shrill and out of control.

but i'll be o.k. now that i have been told i will be re-assigned to the city, away from the oppressive silence of the plantation, i can finally see the light. even now i can feel changes in me. it’s good because i already worry about myself sometimes.

i’ll park my pen here.

kiel

ps. M called. we agreed to spend some time together in cape town last week of this month. i told him i’d rather discuss things with him when we see each other. don't worry, i'll play it cool. i understood your message loud and clear.

beyond watching the watchmen

last night i embraced my inner straight boy by being a comics dork – lining up for the first night to watch the watchmen (i even considered dressing up as one of the characters), only to be sneakily sabotaged by dr. manhattan’s floppy flaccid blue prick.


ok it’s not comics. it’s even listed as TIME’s best 100 novels of all time. but one look at the yellow & black cover plus the coloured illustrations with conversation balloons inside and my friend id gives me ‘the look’ (the one given to hopeless men) and says, “aren’t you supposed to be old enough to read something without pictures?”

still, watchmen was what got me to graphic novels. now i have a small but quite respectable loot including from hell, superman for all seasons, death of superman, 300, wanted, sin city volumes 1-7 and stardust (although, the last one is an illustrated story – there is a difference.) you may raise your eyebrow to a level higher than bebe gandanghari’s because they now all fall within the ‘tv/movie tie up’ category. but then again i can hardly stop the hollywood agents from transforming art to cheesy money makers, can i?

i digress.

so there i was, braving the long lines in front of the gay’teway cineplex till. shifting my weight from one foot to the other because i was so excited i needed to pee all the time. not because there was so much cruising in the cinema lobby, silly - because the trailers were really good. to get to this point, i left my boss’ mouth hanging open when I said no to his request for me to re-send that one last email (you know, the one he didn’t read and now it’s my fault) and convinced jp it was a cool movie, he had to go. it was going good.

we got the tickets with time to spare for a quick beer at café adriatico downstairs before the show. when we came up for the show, there was time enough to go to the loo for a pee. when we went to our seats i carefully inspected the terrain for toddlers or jologs who might insist on imposing their noise while I was watching my movie. clear. i was on a roll.

all was right in my world (the opening credits was a killer) until dr. manhattan appeared with his swinging blue cock. suddenly, the (straight) couple next to me started sniggering whenever the offending appendage made an appearance (which is – by rough estimate - about a quarter of the movie).

suddenly the movie seemed all too ridiculous.

don’t get me wrong, a built, ripped, buck-naked and shaved billy crudup (or whoever was his body double) in blue is not exactly appalling. and I’ve always found soft cocks endearing in their vulnerability. but how can i take his existential pronouncements seriously when there are people around me who can’t get over his incandescent flopsy?

the movie ended with me feeling cheated.

i had the urge to rummage through my graphic novel collection, looking for clues why i found this one so precious. and there, (edited from the movie) I found my dr. manhattan again when he said…


‘The world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away.’

go watch the movie and try not to be distracted by the naked moviestar playing radioactive-nuclear-disaster-survivor-turned-superhero. better yet, read the graphic novel.