Fiction #202

Since the holidays started with bedridden nights spent watching Fargo, drinking a bottle of red wine by myself, and smoking a drawer of duty-free cigarettes, I had been yearning for a change. Couching was beginning to feel too lazy for anyone who was easily prone to boredom, so, naturally, I called up some old friends to enliven my free time.

These were friends whom I had shared a likeness for downing alcohol to knock out our senses, since we met five years ago. These were friends whom I'd dial on Fridays, Saturdays, and- in festive spirits- Public Holidays, even, since everybody else was now preoccupied with a work week.

And since we only go out after 11, I met Lisa and Jason on a familiar street, a rendezvous for our wild nights of self-abandonment, and hopped the bars like the musketeers we used to be.

The first taste of rum on the tongue, spiked with the fizz of Coca Cola, the stale, bitterness of gin, spiced up by a litter of mint leaves- cocktails can be as much a friend as those whom I share my drinks with: They can be toxic.

Midnight, between the next tall glass of Whiskey and another shot of Tequila, we doctored up quite a night. While I couldn't recall the exact conversation that swerved drunkenly from table-talk politics to personal conundrums, a memorable one went up like this:

Lisa: Tell us what's going on with your new person.

Jason: Him? Oh, he's sweet. I feel great, you know? It's been a long time since I could call someone without worrying about imposing.

Lisa: How long have you been seeing each other?

Jason: As of now- 6 months.

At this point, the music was so grating to the ears, I had to lean forward to catch the words falling out of their mouths.

Lisa: Well, I'm not a downer, but he's going to disappoint you, you know. Relationships.

Jason: I don't think it's fair for you to say that... You don't know him.

Lisa: I know. I'm only speaking from experience.

I interjected, with more common sense to know the difference between wanton cynicism and a string of bar slurs that'd lead to a fight. "I don't think it's fair too," I turned to Lisa with a lame smile. "You can't be too cynical about these things."

"But that's what I'm like, you know?" Lisa replied. "And people always end up disappointing you."

I felt dread roll back from the graves of regret. There and then, facing friends whom I've spent years of squabbles, banters, and- finally- fights with, I felt gas belch from my stomach. It wasn't the Tequila, but a familiar pang of guilt that caused the unease: Why was I here listening to this crap?

The last time I met my friends, we ended up by the gutter with the unpleasantries of exchanged insults, which wasn't uncommon for friends who drank so dangerously, so often together. We never spoke thereafter, until recently. So within a year, one'd think that the wisecracks would grow up wiser, and the Debbie Downers would start looking up for a change.

But nothing changed so much as did the menu of our drinks. Indeed, a year may have expanded our vocabulary of cocktails to order, but the same self-deprecating talks dredged out from one's cup hadn't. I was staring straight into Lisa, at a friend whom I loved so endearingly then, yet could not muster any empathy for today.

That said, while Lisa was sullen, it was clear we had to move onto something more jocular- to ease the tension. So I tried to laugh.

"A toast to 'new beginnings'," Lisa raised a glass. Then, I surrounded myself to the night, marooned under its spell- sex talk, gossip, mind-numbing affairs. Fun stuff, in brief, without the drama.

By two in the morning, we had hopped from one joint to another. I bumped into an old friend and grabbed onto him like a lifebuoy. It felt refreshing to catch up with someone I barely knew.

By three, the bar was closed. Lisa was out of sight. Jason was on his way home. And I was made responsible for the former's whereabouts. In one long swig, I swallowed my drink whole and felt vodka scratch against my throat like nails.

The crowd was spilling onto the sidewalks like alley cats. Old perverts were negotiating the bar corners, looking for a quick hookup with anyone too groggy to care who was toying their man parts- as long as he paid for cab. Weary bartenders were rejecting last minute orders from those too eager to stay, and everyone looked so stupid when the place stopped serving drinks. Everyone should have been on their way home, except me, who had to wait for Lisa to show up.

She reappeared, after an hour missed on all the hijinks she was supposed to have with her friends, only to confess an emotional call she attended to. "I'm such a mess. Do you think I'm a mess?" Lisa asked. I offered a "no"; I told her it was fruitless to look at things with a half-cup-empty-half-cup-full mentality; there was no cup, simply. If anyone wanted to be happy, he'd have to accept every other emotion that freewheeled with it.

Life's like that.

I hadn't seen Inside Out; though, if I did, I was confident of its takeaway to be of the same.

"But I have no control over my emotions," Lisa replied.

And then, a year later, I suddenly understood the sagely advice offered by professionals who worked emotionally laborious jobs. Nurses, doctors, therapists- I finally realised how independent they were of others' hysterics. One didn't have to feel with others to feel for them, I remembered.

"I just want us to go back to how we used to be. I want to fix things," Lisa sighed, without a clue that the present had no room for her past, and everybody's latter days could only be better off without it.

I, too, heaved a sigh of relief: I suddenly remembered I had Fargo to binge on at home.