A friend I haven't seen for 28 years

Tomorrow, Oct. 29, I’m turning a year older. And that’s how far I’m going to go about age and about getting older.

One time, it was September 2010, Sept. 7 to be exact, a day before Mama Mary’s birthday, I bumped into an old friend I met at the Metropolitan Theater, 28 years ago at 11:36 p.m. at the Baclaran Church. I was happy to see him. I’m always happy to see old friends. We had a brief chat, whispering as we were inside the church. He introduced me to his wife and his two children. “Kung nag-asawa ka siguro malalaki na rin mga anak mo,“ he impishly declared. “Hindi naman ako pwede mabuntis,” I shot back smiling. I looked at his wife who I suspected to be shy and a little embarrassed at the shameless paunch her husband displayed like a badge of honor.

“Ikaw nga diyan ang buntis,” I pointed to his stomach. He laughed so loud he woke up everyone sleeping inside the sacred house of the Lord. “Boy, ilang taon ka na pala,” he asked mischievously. You knew there was a sick joke coming. I smiled like Queen Marikit hoping that he would stop there. Grinning like a hungry hyena, he was waiting for my answer. I continued my Mona Lisa smile and closed my eyes and pretended to resume my prayers. I was in the next pew in front of my friend and his family. Just when I thought my friend had gone back to his meditation, I heard him say, “Menopause ka na ba, Boy?” It sounded so loud I thought it was heard at the Vatican.

I felt the world crumbling. Menopause. I thought he screamed the word and everyone was staring at me, an aging menopausal former bar girl who was in church begging God to forgive his sins. I felt blood coming out of my nose and ears. I felt I was on fire. I opened my eyes and I saw my old friend grinning, displaying his nicotine tainted teeth. His eyes were bulging in wicked glee thinking that I was thrilled by the idea of menopause. I quickly recovered assessing the terrain and concluding that this was an ambush I could not win. I was in an untenable territory. I turned sappy, “Sweet 16 lang ako,” I whispered like an overworked pathetic geisha. “May sweet 16 bang kalbo,” my old friend retorted. And he roared again like a famished lion. I saw some people in deep slumber turn around perhaps thinking that some rowdy drunk had invaded their sacrosanct sanctuary. Kalbo. What have I done to deserve this pillaging from an old friend of my past? I knew he didn’t mean to hurt me. He perhaps was having a good joke with an old friend he hadn’t seen in 28 years.

I was convincing myself that I was over reacting. I was queasy in the presence of this old friend. The problem was I had not started my novena. I begged God for courage and the tenacity to ignore my dear old friend even just for the next 30 minutes. I closed my eyes again and prayed so hard. There was peace and quiet and I was grateful.

And then the now familiar voice of my old friend who I hadn’t seen in 28 years boomed, filling the hallowed walls of the miraculous church as if we were the only two people in there.

“Alam mo Boy, bilib ako sa iyo. Ikaw yong hindi bastusin na bakla. Galing mong bakla.” And then again he hissed chuckling like a zebra in heat. People were now staring at us. An old woman in the next pew was murmuring, “bakla, bakla, bakla.” And then went back to sleep.

For 28 years, I didn’t see this old friend of mine from the Met Theater. In less than 10 minutes, he managed to call me bakla, kalbo and menopausal and had the gall to ask me how old I was. With bloody fondness and rough love, he ambushed my space inside the Baclaran church where every week I humble myself in front of Mama Mary and the Lord Jesus from whom I ask forgiveness for my sins and to whom I offer gratitude for all the blessings. To Him, I surrender everything including this unwitting “moron” of a friend whom I met in my boyhood at the Met Theater.

They say I have become a celebrity. Really? To my old friend, I am just an aging, menopausal bakla. “Lord, bahala ka na sa kanya,” I prayed fervently that midnight I saw my old, old, old, big bellied friend at the Baclaran church.

Happy birthday to all who were born on Oct. 29.