Memory # 0019

Hi, Miguel.

I saw you last week while I was coming out of Kodak Express Katipunan. After five years, you still looked the same. You had the same tan skin settling about your frame as though it was only a suit you'd borrowed. You even had the same hay-tinted hair, shot through with sunlight and L'Oreal # 0491. It had, however, receded by about three inches. After all, you should be 30 by now, and isn't that what happens to men as they get older? It also seemed to me that you had shrunk. Did you really shrink, or did I just grown up?

You were walking to the ATM beside the store. While I was pushing the door open, you looked up, and for half a second you held my gaze. I waited for you to recognize me, but you didn't. I felt relieved, but at the same time, I wondered - have I really changed that much? In any case, you never really paid attention to me when I was your student all those years ago, so why should you start now?

For two semesters in college, I sat in the third row, next to a skinny boy whose I face I can no longer remember, listening to you reconcile Being and Body, integrating Hope with the Divine. I haven't seen you since then - till that split second outside Kodak last Saturday (how apt then, to have seen you outside a place where memories are preserved for a lifetime).

You were a good teacher, but you were too arrogant - you even had that strut, which I'm sure was simply your upper body trying to balance itself out on your rather ample behind. Yes, you were good-looking, as much as any half-American, half-Filipino man can be, but you were so damn coño, it was hard to be attracted to you without feeling guilty about it.

But you were nice, in the same way that all people are nice, even ax murderers and child molesters. He seemed like such a nice man, the neighbors like to say, liked to keep to himself mostly, was always nice and polite. I never would have thought he could chop up all those people and eat them! Really, it's all so shocking. Of course, Miguel, you're no killer cannibal. But your neighbors probably all love you anyway. I'll bet even your landlady gives you her special sinigang every Thursday. It's truly amazing what great gluts can do - tell me, really, are those implants, or are they for real?

Now I hear you're in law school and you're engaged to be married to my friend's youngest sister. It's funny how memories can be so permanent, yet lives can change so much, so fast. Are you less mayabang now, or have you become even more so? Do you still have that ass, so plush it could easily be mistaken for a sofa seat? Would you make a good husband? And do you still declare your penchant for smelling (clean) underwear in class?

It's not my place to ask these things, as we were never close to begin with. But I do wish you all the best. Even though I am certain I will never receive an invitation to your wedding, I shall pray that your bottom won't look too big in your tuxedo pants.