The latest French word I’ve learned is ‘donc’, a conjugation, which means ‘therefore’. Donc, I use this word whenever I can. Also in my vocabulary is the French word for ‘go’, which is ‘aller’. I’m brushing up on some French as my boyfriend asks me again and again why I say ‘ko’ instead of ‘ako’, and what’s the use of all the -mag, -um, and -nag verbs anyway?
To my chagrin I can’t answer, maybe because sometimes when you’ve spoken something you’ve been used to for so long it becomes impossible to make distinctions. And yes, of course I’m making up an excuse for my poor Filipino grammar!
During Holy Week somewhere along the crowded Burnham Park there was a man peddling a corny silver tool thing, the Filipino version of the Swiss Army Knife if you will. I was looking at the strawberries and Julien insisted we get the army knife as a ‘tool’. The other morning we used it to put a vagabond screw back into his laptop.
Rule number one : Tools are useful!
He has a nice formal coat – big, black, Mao-collared. It looks distinguised and strong, invincibility in a suit. It looks darling, the way it hangs next to my size-one jeans. His stuff occupy approximately one-eighth of our cabinet. My tiny pairs of shoes seem numerous compared to his Vans and black boots.
He smokes more than I do, if not as much, but his lips remain a sweet red, his gums a sweet red, perfect white teeth. He’s getting thinner, so last night we sat infront of his laptop and visited pictures of him when he was sixteen, six, twenty, twenty-two. Various hair lengths, same sailor shirt. The eyes seem to get older but the intensity never wavers. When we’re done watching his pictures, I still think he’s thin.
“We’re the thin couple,” he said because I’m thin too and definitely underweight.
Last Saturday was my birthday. I’m twenty-four now. I got drunk and went to bed in the middle of my own party. I didn’t even notice the guests leave. Woke up late with a hangover on Sunday. On Sunday night I attached myself to his leg and told him I wouldn’t let go. We played a bit of cards and he tried to walk around as much as he could with me on his leg. I got bored and let go, and he promptly attached himself to my leg and we crawled all over the floor, from bedroom to kitchen, to prove his point. And then we tried to find my point of balance, as he raised me on my stomach with his legs until I fell and I guess I have no point of balance. Afterwards we watched Labyrinth, David Bowie singing “Dance, magic, dance…” in his skin-tight leggings, along with singing puppets.
Did I mention I just turned twenty-four…?
We bought a saucepan and he made crepes – sausage crepes, butter-and-sugar crepes, jam-and-butter crepes. I flipped them over in the pan and it was warm and it smelled like crepes and we opened the windows to let the smell out of our apartment, even though it smelled so good.
Lesson Number Two: Crepes smell like heaven.
The nights, they’re cool and comfortable, even in summer. I was never able to sleep with a bit of light on; now, when Julien leaves the door a notch to let some light into our bedroom, I don’t mind one bit.
Sometimes before we go to sleep he’d push his toe against my foot, or I’d scratch the palm of his hand till the motion made me feel sleepy. And while he sleeps I’ll walk around the apartment holding a pink pillow but I’ll always, always go back to him and scratch his palm or hug his arm till the motion makes me sleepy.
At the office I want so much for the work day to end because it feels like I’m starting a new one when I see him.
And maybe there isn’t much to say, and maybe my life sounds boring right now, no wild parties to talk about or no poetry laced with marijuana, but sometimes you have to feel like you’re home. And I do. On the way back to Baguio in a cramped bus at three a.m. in the morning, I curled myself up into a question mark trying to sleep, hoping to get home soon. And all I had to do was lean my head on his shoulder to know that I had home sitting right beside me.
I’m learning possessive pronouns now. Lesson 6.1 in my French grammar review book. Le mien, les miens, le tien, les tiens, le notre, les notres. Mine, yours, ours. Singular and plural.
Lesson number three: It’s nice to be like grammar…
And still I’ll wait till I speak it fluently, and in between it’s nice to fall asleep scratching someone’s hand, and it’s nice to wake up still sleepy, and it’s nice to run Mao-collared jackets between your fingers and it’s nice to eat a pear in the evenings.
I suppose life’s just nice.
Things have happened and sometimes you shouldn’t let things get in the way of love. It’s so harmful when that happens. Sometimes, wrong comes out of wanting so much to be right, or mistakes are just the right intentions carried out askew. I don’t feel like dwelling much anymore on who hurt whom or what destroyed what. It’s just a matter of being in the moment, of getting through it no matter how difficult. You know?
The simplest words make the greatest sense. Donc, allez.
