The Blue Insomnia BREATHE IN; breathe out. He tells himself, savor the sweetness, the bliss. Pantera’s 5 Minutes Alone blares from the stereos, sheer sonic torture there. But no matter, he stands unmoving, facing the black hole that is tonight the wall mirror; blankness reflected in his eyes. He wants to laugh at the song. 5 Minutes Alone. How lonely. He takes a deep puff, holding the smoke until he can only breathe it out. He wonders if like him, all people can see how smoke slow dances with such grace, before vanishing completely in the dark as it is breathed out. Little wonders like that—like the mournful burning of the tip of the stick—are sweet. It is two in the morning; he sits on his bed, refused by sleep. Outside, there are only darkness and silence, occasionally disturbed by tricycles plying overnight in the village. How hot can the day be?, he wonders, and then scratches at his neck. The ceiling fan seems drained too as it spins shakily, unable to ease the heat. He takes off his shirt. The moon peering in through the windows and the faint light from the street lamppost fronting his apartment reveal tattoos mapped all over his skin—there are dim patches on both arms, a scorpion is in his chest, a snake circles his navel. All these though are betrayed by the quality of his breathing. Slouched, it is as if he is praying, almost crying. Even the one wrapping his back, a tiger, which took sixteen hours to complete, does not growl now. No fear, he mutters, his eyes fix on the six-word lie banding his right arm, below the skull tattoo. Hell, he was afraid all his life. All the twenty-one years of it he has wasted being afraid to do bad things, like cutting his hair with school scissors when he was five, afraid mostly of how his mother would teach him the lesson he was asking for. He can only smile at the thought of how his mother, all bones now, would feel with his hair shaved off now. He can clearly remember the face of his mother inside the coffin. Her pale lips half-smiling at him sternly, Cheshire-like. His mother expired and ended with an epileptic seizure when he was only fourteen. He recalls watching her writhe and squirm, like a worm in a platter of rock salt, on the cold marble floor of their house. It was one June afternoon when it happened. He has just entered the main door, gone straight home from school, still with his knapsack on. He saw all of it but he just stood there, unsure whether he should close the distance between them, by moving to help her. He was even unable to embrace her, or run away. The next moments blur, an ambulance came, men in white uniforms, with such agility and grace like angels in flight, carried his mother on a green stretcher, took her to forever. A smile broke across his face, something inside him was silently ha- ha-happy as he saw her lying stiff on her brass brown coffin at the funeral parlor the very next night. He last saw his father, who is an engineer delegated in a Malaysian firm, during her wake. His father has a new family back there and except for the occasional Birthday and Christmas cards, he never hears from him. His old man though is generous enough, a little too much even, to send him regular allowance enough to support a small family. He lived with an uncle’s family, shared a room with his cousin Antonio, until he later rented his own apartment when he set out for college. He curls up in bed, coughing and at the same time cursing rather convulsively, teary-eyed as he watches the glow of his first stick this time slowly die in an ashtray by the bedside table, fading out in one final smoke dance. Like the others, he has to hold on to something—a promise perhaps—to go on, to keep up with the days. He remembers Antonio offering him the gift that he halfheartedly took but readily liked. It was some time during his twenty-first birthday, also that same time when Emily got for herself a boyfriend. Emily was all that mattered to him. She was different from all the rest. With her, he could do poetry, do corny things. Next to her ballerina-like comeliness, he stood like the pathetic cliché of the wannabe rock star who never made it on any stage. A Lou Reed line sticks to his mind, “She’s all I ever had but never could keep.” Antonio promised him he would forget her as soon as he whiffed his way to silver bliss. Chuckling, Tony described it as “chakra-awakening” as he slid it in his polo pocket, sealing their deal with a grin and a pat on his back. It was but a bunch of dried leaves, carefully foiled, smuggled from the Mountains. Later, the costs are good thousands regularly slashed from his allowance. So Tony not only broke stocks. He never liked though the other stuffs he made him try. It sinks to him now; it seems that after all, his Biology classes somehow prove it right—Nature has all the cures for sicknesses, even that for sadness. He assures himself that those dear moments are his happiest, yet he cannot fully believe his own claim. He is afraid to. He is always afraid, and alone. Such that he fears in the end, he will be nobody’s care, nobody’s memory. He continues to puff the stuff anyway wishing only that he’d be a tad braver. He had gotten himself his first tattoo when he was barely eighteen, precisely because he wanted a mark—he understood most the necessity of an identity, of a definition. You couldn’t afford to be just anybody when there was no one to assume it for you. A street artist designed it for him—a black sun in the left forearm, by the deltoid. He got fond of the pain each needle prick brought, of the feeling of life you earned each time you heal, of the permanence ink fixes on the skin. He is thinking, in the past, tattoos were supposed to be metaphors of the seasons of tragedies one endured. Yet all of his are somewhat…dry, and vacuous. And now he feels dirty, he even considers taking a shower. He lights a second stick. The first puff is thick on the throat. His eyes strain to roam the room as he looks for something to wipe the sweat dripping down from his face with—the bedspread’s of no use. Making it into the band is the best thing that happened to him so far, so he thinks. He plays bassist in a band called “Ragnarok.” Their night gigs eventually distracted him from his studies, also disrupted his sleep. Jeff, their vocalist who dared them all to get bald, calls their music “kamikaze jazz.” He received a text message from Jeff earlier saying that the group will meet later in the afternoon today to tune up for their chance to snag regular gigs at a Katipunan bar for the next night. At least he has something to do later. But this night’s a dead one. With the back of his right hand, he wipes off the sweat trickling down his forehead, just above the eyebrows. He only needs to sleep, like all others, he supposes, to kill time, to practice how it is to die. And maybe to dream. But he seems to have lost that talent a long time ago. He takes a deep puff, holding the smoke until he can only breathe it out. The smoke that comes from him belches, unlike the one given off by the tip of the stick. It is not that sweet when thoughts slow dance with smoke. It belched the same way it did like when he found them there together, standing in a waiting shade by the college building. It was raining a little then. Their arms were entwined like coupled stems of a bonsai. The guy was shorter than she is. He walked to them straightly. She politely introduced the nut. He’s Bob, she told him, the one I’m telling you about, she said with the smile that always made him smile before. Not now. Not now. He was doing a boring cigarette then. He took a deep puff, held the smoke, and then breathed it out. On Bob’s fat face. Bob coughed; his eyes were red as he caught up his breathing. What’s wrong?, he heard her say. He turned his back on them. Where will you go?, she said. Such scorn in her voice, like that of his mother’s. Her hand, which he remembered to be capable only of softness, clasped his left arm tightly. Too tight even, and too long, that it hurt him. Her grip paled the black glowing of his sun by that arm. It was the only time someone held on him that long. Long enough that he needed to breathe. It will never work. He pushed her. He dashed off. Each stride, each step away from her weighed with the pain of the harrowing distance between them, of the permanence of its break. He found himself on his knees, after such long way, panting by the door of his apartment. The noon sun suddenly peaked at that time; the tropical shower giving him a headache. His hands trembled as he scrambled to find the right key. The shadow of the crucifix he had put above the door when he first moved there appeared dangerously sharp. And then finally he was allowed entry. He dragged himself to bed, curled on it. How he wished then for sleep to come and take him away to some dreamland. But nothing can sing his lullaby. Even Metallica was out of tune then. He closes his eyes, tightly. He shakes his heaving head, trying to shake off the thoughts. Wishing that they burned off, disappear like smoke He shuts his eyes and forces sleep, although he know he has lost it somewhere, sometime ago. Now he sees the lost, understands it when he realized its need. Clear panic loom up: the ceiling is slowly descending towards him, pressing downward, down. The walls, one with the Black Sabbath guy pointing an accusing finger—close in. He feels the crush in his bones. Is it just the smoke, just from the smoke? Mad whirling, mad dancing? Something tightens in his chest. His every limbs feels soft, watery. He lies unmoving, waiting for the thud of verdict somewhere. It will crush me, it will. He closes his eyes, tightly. He shakes his heaving head, trying to shake off the thoughts. Wishing that they burned off, disappear like smoke The radio died on him. He didn’t bother to check what’s wrong with the thing. Breathe in the sweetness, the bliss, the bliss. The sun will rise anytime soon. Especially for him who claims the familiarity of darkness and silence. Light, and the clarity its promise casts, can be blaring and blinding. A rooster cackles in a distance. He summons strength to arrange the curtains. Spread them like that so that they cover the windows completely. The day would unfold anyhow, how hot can it be? Nothing else moves but sweet smoke. It continues its slow dancing around the room even in this breezelessness. He can only breathe out; breathe out deeply now as his shadow waits to lay down and rest.
Copyright © 2003 Raymond Calbay |