On a night like this

Jeanette Winterson, in her novel Written on the Body, said it best: “Why is the measure of love loss?” This delicious line can further give birth to an almost-endless series of permutations to feed every famished heart. Why is the measure of pleasure pain? Joy, misery? Acceptance, solitude? The possibilities can be overwhelming. Like sadness.I am thinking of three people as I am typing this in this quiet evening. The rain, which has soaked the narrow path that leads to my flat, has slowed considerably that the sound of raindrops falling on the neighbors’ roofs can be barely heard.

The first person is someone I’ve known for more than twelve years now. We met at a time when I’d just gotten out of a stifling relationship while he was wrestling with his emerging sexuality. Looking back, I think we were doomed from the start. That time, I had an almost business-like approach in my relationships–unable to think without a purpose, to act without a plan, to feel without guarantees, while he had absolutely nothing to offer, being a newcomer in same-sex relationships. Our only common denominator appeared to be the fact that we were both lonely during that time. Perhaps, we naively thought, we’d be enough for each other. Even for just a while.

Less than two years later, after a break-up and reconciliation, we finally decided to end the relationship on a rainy July evening. I didn’t cry so much. It seemed that I’d been crying for the most part of our relationship that when the end finally came, my well of tears had dried up. Yet, out of this broken relationship, friendship bloomed. We became closer than we were before, when we were lovers. Continents stand between us now, along with the lives that we have built separately. We rarely communicate, but in the instances that we do, we do it as if our previous conversation happened only the day, or week, before.

Only a few kilometers separate me from the second person I’m thinking of, but the rift I sense inside is much wider than that. He might as well be on another planet. When I met him four years ago, he was entangled in a relationship that he felt was going nowhere, hanging on the words of a transient lover who hadn’t contacted him in months. Meanwhile, I was a new arrival in his country, taking in all that I could of this new environment. I wasn’t particularly looking for love, and he said he wasn’t too. To me his beauty was intoxicating–wan at the start, gaining dimension once you looked at him long enough, his eyes were at once innocent and flirtatious, while his smile and disposition seemed to betray a deeper sadness and pain.

These contradictions fascinated me and I sought to know him well. I basked in our closeness and soon love sneaked up on me like a thief. I thought I knew him. But, as it turns out now, I really don’t. He is like a lump of clay that changes under the hand of the potter. And while this unpredictability is amusing at the start, I was soon plagued by fatigue that rendered me immobile against the mind-games that he leveled upon me. Yukio Mishima wrote, “What makes a man cruel is the consciousness that he is loved.” This sums up my fate in his hands.

A breeze sends the curtains billowing briefly. I look past the window and try to decipher a pattern among the lit windows on the other buildings. I wonder what the third person I’m thinking of is doing right now. Perhaps, his own tool in hand, giving form and beauty to other people’s ideas. Mutual friends brought him into my sphere, a shy and unassuming young man whose manner of speaking seemed equally imploring and nonchalant. Having seen him only a few times, I am mostly intrigued as to how he really is, without the masks, so to speak. My attraction is like a germ that sits in the pit of my belly, incubating. To what extent, I don’t know. I don’t want to find out.

How could I? And why? What do I hope to accomplish if I bring him–and me, into this morbid tournament of emotions? Do I dare pollute him with my own rancor? I think of him, his supposed wife, his secret friendships, and his own demons to tame. I am drawn to him like iron fillings to a magnet. I hope this doesn’t become too hopeless. Silence engulfs my wrangling. The night devours my words. The shadows thicken. The soft wind carries the faint scent of night-blooms.

I stop typing as sleep beckons.