A most unexpected phone call ...

I just got a call from a friend whom I haven’t seen in ages. I first met him in 1978 during the National Secondary Schools Press Conference in Tabaco, Albay. We’ve correspondent by snail mail for several years. Then I moved to Manila where I went NPA—no permanent address—having moved from one place to another. We’ve gone through stages—pagers and cellphones—but before SMS came along, we eventually lost touch. He found me last year, through an old blog that I no longer have access to, and eventually, on Facebook. He’s been living in Europe for over two decades now.

Through all those years, we’ve grown to know each other’s quirks and whenever we talked, we invariably finished each other’s sentences and gave voice to each other’s innermost thoughts and feelings.

Let me go back 35 years and 6,211 miles.

We are both Martial Law Babies, the product of a generation of high school writers who, while trained in the Development Communications approach, wore no blinders. Our letters went beyond the usual diary-style correspondence. We talked about anything and everything.

I eventually fell in love with him, and while he could not reciprocate, he accepted and appreciated that love. And in his special way, showed me he cared.

He was heterosexual, and that was it. We’ve remained good friends.

Today, he told me that he is divorcing his wife, and that he has a lover, another married man.

I was absolutely stunned! Where the hell did that come from?

He was pouring his heart out … so I zipped my mouth and listened … an utterly difficult feat for me.

What was I to say? What did I have to say when in my mind, I wanted to blurt out: “It should have been me, you jerk!” But I love my friend, and when he asked for my advice, I was torn.

This is insane. I am no psychologist. My friends know that I invariably give bad advice. I was wary. I may have had a bad script at hand, following in the wake of “My Husband’s Lover” which I never really watched.

I was now crying with him. For someone who is quick at repartee, I really did not know what to say. I was too stunned. I was thinking, wherever fate takes us … there must be a reason.   

And then it came to me, a phrase from one of my literature classes (though I could not, for the life of me, remember whoever it was who said it): “If chaos be the price of love, let there be chaos.”

I told him to follow his heart and wished him luck!