Return of innocence

I received text: One of Lily Pad’s guests was A, about your age, from Ateneo. One of the guys who made you bakod at parties. “Bakod” was the word used when I was in high school to mean guys who would stand in front of you, blocking others, to ask you to dance. I laughed. I hadn’t seen him for close to 50 years! Get me his number please. I will call him. That’s how it all began.

We met for dinner, three of us. A was the guy I had not seen in almost half a century. B was me and C was his best friend, who was also a buddy of mine. C and I had both worked in advertising. We had kept in touch over the years, but I didn’t know they were best friends and C did not know that A and I hadn’t seen each other forever.

Back when we were in high school, when I was 14 or 15, A always asked me to dance the boogie. By the time I was 17, I left for school abroad and did not see him again. But he remembered me because, he said, I was the “crush ng bayan,” meaning everybody’s crush, a very generous compliment these days, but then that was just something people said.

I went in short black tights, long lopsided T-shirt and my gladiator sandals, which frankly, are the most comfortable shoes I have. I looked funky. When I walked in, the two six-footers were waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Bagets, they teased. I felt safe and protected walking between two tall men; hadn’t done that in years.

We had dinner at Red. It used to be Cheval Blanc, but the horse ran away and left the chairs blushing. “I used to live here whenever I was in town,” A said. “I used to bring my clients here for lunch or dinner when I was still working,” I said. A and C spend part of the year here and part in the US. We all agreed that the US was rather short on sophistication. “New York is like Manila,” I said. “San Francisco, where I was, is Baguio. A, where you are, is Tarlac and C is in Tuguegarao.” We burst out laughing.

We talked of hundreds of things, the merry old days when they were at the Ateneo and I was in Maryknoll, then when we were just beginning to hatch, when we were all innocence and glee. “I used to take the Marikina bus to Ateneo,” A said, “and I would peep at you passing in your small car. You sat like this (he holds his head high, slightly tilted).”

We talked about our peers, who had married, how many mates. A said he did a role in Father Reuter’s Who Ride on White Horses. “I played Mama in I Remember Mama before Liv Ullmann played her on Broadway,” I said, then we laughed boisterously.

We were like three gigantic butterflies flitting in a field of wildflowers. We talked about the Depression in America, the losses they took on their 401s, how first marriage was like a training camp — you failed, you tried again, and so on. We walked into Conway’s to find four more of their peers sitting there. Once in a while, they came to join us. One was my classmate’s brother. The other had turned me into a fashion model way back when. Another just introduced himself happily to the “crush ng bayan.”

The last time I saw the other one, he recommended me to see his brother, a plastic surgeon, but he did not repeat it that night. I think I must have looked good enough not to need a facelift. We were like teenagers in our 60s.

Four bottles of wine. We went home too intoxicated to say proper goodnights. The next day, I had the world’s worst hangover.

But it was a lovely sentimental night and I kept wondering why. Even if A and I had not seen each other in a long time, it was easy to pick up where we had left off and to flow into what we had all become now, the bumps on each of our three roads, so easy to talk about. Was it that we were very close before? No, neither of them had ever been my boyfriend. We were, when we first met, fresh, young, innocent, just into dancing and laughter and plays. And that night it was like the replay of an era that had flown away.

Maybe that is what inspired the mood. Old friends are strong threads of our youth woven into our lives, sometimes invisible but never lost. Rediscovery makes you feel that time has not passed, that you are still young, fresh, that you have not lost your innocence. Sentiments and sympathy mix with wine. You drink to celebrate just seeing each other once more.

Here’s what I know. Three virtues were there. Charity belonged to A and C who decided on the dinner and made it happen. Hope, well, we hope to do this again, but no one knows when. Finally, that magic night built our faith in each other. We are close friends who love each other, who can count on each other for anything, anytime, anywhere. We are there, a phone call or an e-mail away, regardless of the miles that might divide us. We — innocent or not — were, are, and will be friends as long as we live.

That is wonderfully heartening, well worth the hangover.

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