I
I spent most of my college days commuting from the university I attended and my hometown (which is 50 km away from each other).
I rode a jeep and a bus for about an hour and a half. My baon never fell bellow P150 per day.
I have experienced a lot while riding buses. I became quite familiar with some bus drivers and conductors and even some bus inspectors. Well, I was never the type to chat and talk but I occasionally give a smile of greeting to those who have been quite nice and polite to me.
Basta there are a lot of experiences that I have come to treasure, weird people I have come to meet and odd experiences and encounters that made its way on my journal.
But, there never was a man who made its way into my memory banks (ugh, very unliterary, I am so affected with all the sociolinguistic jargon we need to take in daily).
I guess when you are in school and you have to study, you really have no time to think about anything else. However, this past week, ever since grad school began; I have been obsessing on this thing.
Everytime I climbed up a bus, I always utter a silent prayer that I would be given a chance to sit with a strikingly fascinating man. I mean, when riding busses, I have never sat with a man since I was in college.
No. I always attracted old men and women who loved to talk about their sons and daughters and their grandkids the whole trip. Sometimes, I get to sit with business women who always have loads of paninda from super (the supermarket, a sort of divisoria like place, but dirtier and less literalized).
Once, a drunk sat by me and asked me for my name and even bragged that he owned several drugstores and businesses in Roxas and could well afford sending me to school (yeah, he was drunk). I had to move away since he was really making me nervous at that time.
I even managed to get to sit with a crazed guy who had blood all over his shirt and head and had an odd bump somewhere on his forehead. He seemed a bit off and kept muttering. I was so nervous the whole time. I guess that’s what I got for protecting my other half of the seat for that man.
Yeah. I was guilty of turning away potential seat mates that day because I was hoping that a fascinating man would come along and take that seat and I could fantasize the whole time I was sitting with him.
Pathetic huh? That happened just last Friday.
And then, yesterday, he came and sat beside me. The first fascinating man to sit with me on a bus ride home.
No. I was not expecting it. In fact, I have given up the pathetic practice of reserving the seat for a guy, any guy, as long as he takes my fancy.I mean, I am not yet an old maid and should not feel that desperate since I will be turning what, 24 next July. Haha.
I guess the fact that I have never had a boyfriend makes me that vulnerable. Really pathetic. Look at all those girls leaning against their boyfriends. Waaah. How does that feel, I wonder.
Anyway, I have just left the library with my head still reeling from all that reading I had. I can barely read signpost a few feet from me… and I was still reading Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short stories when he suddenly sat beside me.
Surprise.
Who would have thought it?
He was tall, not really handsome, no. He does not even have any compelling charisma (if he had, I did not feel it). He was big but not remarkably so.
I guess what made him notable to my weird senses was the fact that he was the first real man I sat with on a bus ride home.
If I see him, I probably won’t remember him but I really went overboard with the fantasies (not sexual I assure, just sweet and innocent, General Patronage type, I swear).
I guess I felt safe and comfortable beside the man. I learned that he was off to Dumarao. He was carrying some sort of plate number for a car and he was wearing walking shorts and a Tshirt that I do not even remember the color (really haha).
I guess God knew His job. I often asked Him why He never allowed any cute man to sit beside me (since my sister often brags about how she keeps sitting with really cute guys, unlike me). Now, I know why.
Because when I fall, I fall too deep. I get too involved even for just an hour. I kept thinking about that man from Dumarao until now. Even if I could no longer remember how he looks.
II
When I was in Grade Four, I had a weird dream about a boy. In that dream, my classmates and I went to some place in the northern part of Iloilo where we met students from one elementary school there. My classmates sort of left me on my own and one of the boys told me not to worry since he will take care of me.
The boy introduced himself to me at that time. I don’t exactly remember the face or the appearance but I still have the name. He introduced himself as Cyril Nuevo.
I haven’t met anyone by that name.
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