Rowena, my co-worker, went to bed early and slept like a log. I took in I was the last person stirring, apart from the hosts, Rowena's maiden aunts, so I prepared to go. They noticed that I was staring at them, so they gave me a couple of sofa cushions and insisted that I crash in the spare room, if I could find any floor space.
I'd got to consider the distance of San Miguel, a town on the outskirts of Iloilo City. Taking a taxi from there to my house had a slim chance - besides, it was far too dangerous.
I got up and weaved my way through the debris from the house party. The hosts showed me the way and bid me goodnight. As I climbed the stairs, the light dimmed until I was feeling my way along the walls.
I stepped over bodies asleep on the landing. I nearly toppled over twice, my balance compromised by holding the bulky sofa cushions. I felt my way to the spare room door, and groped around in vain for a light switch.
Giving up, I swept my foot along the floor, trying to find an empty space in the pitch blackness. But there were people sleeping here too, and no space for sofa cushions.
My thigh brushed against something - a bed. I abandoned the sofa cushions at the foot of someone in a sleeping bag, whose drunken lack of consciousness was deep enough that he or she failed to notice.
I felt along the width of the bed. When my hands hit nothing, I became bolder and felt further up. To my surprise, the bed seemed empty.
I climbed aboard, running my tongue over my unclear teeth and regretting that I would not brush them tonight. As soon as I became horizontal, my head gently throbbed as if I had been awake so long my hangover was already kicking in.
I lay full length on one side of the bed and stripped down to my boxers in the dark. I ditched my clothes next to me on the bed and felt around for a pillow.
‘Yes!’
‘Oh! I'm sorry,’ I whispered to the boy that had shrieked when I put my hand on some bare part of his skin. He had been curled up in one small corner of the bed. ‘I didn't know you were there!’
‘I wasn't,’ he laughed nervously.
I carefully reached out into the dark to find my clothes. ‘I'll find a space on the floor.’
‘Don't be so weird,’ he sighed groggily, stretching out so that an arm and a leg pinned me back to the bed. ‘This is a big bed. We can share it.’
***
He rolled away from me. It crossed my mind that he had perhaps just pushed my clothes off the bed onto some unsuspecting drunkard sleeping on the floor.
‘I do move around a lot though,’ he said. ‘Pardon me if I disturb you.’ He jumbled up somewhere in the dark.
‘I'll be fine, I'm a deep sleeper.’
‘Pity. I'm a restive.’
There was a moment of silence. I felt certain that we were the last two people awake for miles. He squirmed, brushing my thigh.
‘What's your name?’
He told me and I forgot it instantly. I remember it as JP, but that's a guess. I know my memory of the night is faulty because I can almost recall how he looked, but I never saw him.
He didn't ask me my name. He asked me what I did for a living.
‘I work for the government,’ I answered.
‘What do you really want to do?’
‘Well, I want to be a writer. One day. But that's not going to make me a living, at least not yet. So I have to do a job.’
***
‘You know what you want to do. That's amazing.’
‘Yes. Although sometimes I feel like I'm deluding myself. If I want to write I should be writing.’
‘I know how you feel,’ he confided, shifting again. I could hear from his voice that he was facing me directly now. ‘I'm living a dead-end life.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I have no idea what I want to do. So I'm doing a menial job because it's easy. I'm just killing time until…’ He paused.
‘Until what?’
‘Exactly. Until what. It's disappointing.’
I felt a wave of drunkenness wash over me. My eyes saw dancing patterns in the black. ‘How old are you?’ I asked.
‘Eighteen.’
‘So you're of legal age already. You're only able to make your own decisions about your life. People, like wine, improve with age.’ He sighed.
‘Do whatever you want.’
‘I don't know what I want. There are too many options; it's bewildering. Meanwhile, I'm coasting along the path of least resistance. I don't want anything badly enough to pour my heart and soul into it - I admire people that do.’
‘Ah, the curse of freedom,’ I countered with mild indifference.
‘Precisely. We have too much freedom. It's a sickness. A hundred years ago, we would have been allocated a job for life, and a partner for life. And our decisions would be dictated by a firm moral code in the form of religion. And ambition was defined merely as rising above those modest expectations.’
‘I see what you mean,’ I admitted. ‘When there's only one path, there's one way to succeed and one way to fail. And now we have a million ways to fail. But we also have so many more ways to succeed.’
‘Success is impossible when everyone has such freedom, because there's always someone out there doing it better than you. When conformity was the rule, success was easy.’
***
I jumped as he reached over and tickled me. I laughed, trying to stay quiet, and reflexively slapped his arms away. It was a thrill, flirting with this stranger in the dark.
He dived for my midriff again with tickling fingers and I took his wrists and pushed them back towards him. I brushed against his torso and snapped my hands away.
‘What are you wearing?’ I asked.
‘Just underpants,’ he replied.
‘Sorry I touched you.’
‘Don't worry, it was my fault.’
‘Are you going to sleep like that?’
‘Oh, no. I'm an insomniac. I probably won't sleep at all.’
He was much closer now, I could feel it. I could smell his skin. I self-consciously moved my arm so that it was touching him, but only barely. Probably his leg. I tried to make it seem casual, as if it was the result of inadvertent restlessness in the dark, but I left it there, feeling his warmth.
‘I just want to be different, you know, inimitable,’ he murmured, more gently than before.
‘Everyone's just unique.’
‘That's the problem.’
I felt tired, and I let his words wash over me. A couple of times I thought I had responded, but then realised I hadn't, and I had to make a real effort to lift the conscious part of my brain into speech.
But then I felt his hand touching me, searching. I became wide awake again. I shrank away as his hand wandered dangerously close to my groin. I would be embarrassed if he touched me there, especially at that moment.
The silence became as complete as the darkness as his wandering hand persisted, and found me. My breathing deepened as he massaged me beneath my boxer shorts. I closed my eyes and visualised his there.
Without stopping, he took my hand and placed it on his. With all my other senses stifled, I quivered with the pleasure of his touch, his texture.
Then I heard his gentle breathing become irregular, and I remembered that we were not alone in this room. Yet we were each more alone than ever.
He retreated for a tantalising moment and I heard the tell-tale sound of his briefs being slipped off. There was movement on the bed, and suddenly I was aware that he was invisibly straddling me.
***
He pulled down my boxer shorts and put his inside me. Warm and yielding, I enveloped him. Neither of us moved at first, just savouring the sensation.
Softly, he rocked. I put my hands on his sides, feeling taut stomach muscles, and he came. I gasped as the rhythmic gripping pulled me over the edge and orgasm rippled through him, and into mine.
Then it was as if he disappeared, as if he disengaged and left without me noticing. The bed felt empty. I must have fallen asleep.
I awoke feeling tired, as if I had not slept but been out cold. Any hangover I deserved had passed. Thick draperies had been pulled aside and the sun shone through the windows.
There were still some party guests sleeping haphazardly on the floor, but I was alone on the bed. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, hesitant to face the world, remembering JP. Then I got up.
There was more floor space now; some guests had gone. I found a bathroom and splashed water on my face. I borrowed a toothbrush and cleaned my mouth out.
I dared to venture back into the bedroom to look for my clothes. As I cast my eyes about the room I looked for faces that might be his.
Once dressed, I followed the smell of cooking breakfast downstairs and found the hosts with a smattering of guests. My recall of names and faces is unreliable at best, but when alcohol is thrown into the mix I don't even bother trying.
I made small talk and ate fried boneless milkfish and rice flavoured with fragrant screw pine and took my coffee white with Cofeemate. My eyes absorbed every face in the room and I tried to guess. None of them gave me any signal. No naughty secrets were coaxed into mischievous smiles on account of my eye contact.
But he wouldn't have known who I was. He never saw me, and I never told him my name. I wasn't even sure of his. I didn't know how to breach it in conversation - it would be embarrassing if I asked after JP and it turned out he was there.
The guests must have thought I was suffering from some kind of unreasonable worry, my eyes flicking back and forth between them, weighing each of them each up in turn as if I suspected them of pouncing.
I thought I'd look for his name at Facebook.
***
The breakfast they made was sheer ambrosia. As it settled in my stomach, I let go. It was purer as a secret as the details of it remained cloaked in mystery. Then I bid all Rowena's maiden aunts a fond goodbye.
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