a girl friend from work and i, we have become jules et jim. we are infatuated with the same guy. she will never know it, of course. so will he.
for over a week now, my girl friend had been pestering me to be her wing queen. the date: sunday night party at her drafty apartment. the objective: to pork this gorgeous man.
in truffaut's seminal film, two heterosexual european men, one french, another austrian, share a not so tenuous friendship between them and their equally viscous love for the same girl, catherine, played with most exquisite camp by the immortal jeanne moreau.
our catherine is this six footer, generation 1 ½ pinoy hunk. born in manila and raised in the bronx, our pinoy catherine is currently finishing his art studies at new school u. i'm not sure now whether he is into art history or he is actually enrolled in the visual arts dept. but do we care?
my girl friend doesn't need me to get him. she's a fine sister, she can get it anytime.
but then again, like every other ghetto girl nowadays, what with all this shit about boys on the dl, she is afflicted with this neurosis. she is none too sure whether the boy is straight, straight girl ass lover.
and since the boy is, as she tells me, my peoples, then i was in the picture. i am her pinoy gaydar. not that i'm complaining though. the boy, unlike most of my peoples here in east coast, is straight out tight. tight, i can hardly breathe.
in her party, oh my girl friend concocted many ruses just to get closer to the boy. she forced us to play these lame parlor games replete with toys r us props. but nothing seemed to work. the boy was still with his posse.
finally, she delivered an ultimatum to me - why me? - to drag the boy to within her grabbing radius. armed with all my worldly fwisdom, i brought this unopened tequila anejo bottle to the boy's group huddled near the kitchen radiator. quickly following me, my girl friend brought along a bowl of thick slivers of lime.
half an hour later, my trick seemed to work. the boy was warming up to us.
but instead of dismissing all the other unnecessary characters in the play at this crucial act, my girl friend who was into gorgeous men and new age yada yada started instead a round of proust questionnaire. a proust questionnaire in a central bronx party. how phat is that?
strangely, the now inebriated boy was into it. our college pinoy hunk was apparently into verbal tussle. this was where i first thought of poisoning my girl friend and taking home, instead, my gorgeous people back to my sufficiently heated apartment.
what is your greatest fear? loss of psychological independence, his answer. greatest extravagance? classic chuck taylors. when and where were you happiest? quite a pause, then, in the company of my thoughts. if you were to die and come back as another person, who do you think it would be? no pause here. jean-michel basquiat without his demons.
we, my girl friend and i, stared at each other and just sighed. beauty, indeed, is everywhere a welcome guest.
after his stellar turn at the round table questionnaire, our pinoy hunk excused himself. being the hostess, my girl friend had no choice but to continue the game. she, most lacklusterly, began quizzing the boy in corn rows to the right of our honored guest.
but after an eternity, our special guest did not return to the table yet. my girl friend kicked my shin from under and i had to scout for him. he was not in my friend's bedroom - she wished - or in her pink bathroom. so i took my coat and went out of the apartment.
as i made it to the second flight down, i saw our pinoy hunk peeing by the end of the hallway. panting, i tiptoed back to the apartment.
the party didn't end up well. two cops came up apparently at the behest of some of my friend's wet blanket neighbors.
our juiced up hunk had to be driven home by one of his homies despite the not so subtle protestations of my girl friend. and in no mood for commiseration, my friend threw me out as quickly of her apartment.
the french decadent poet charles baudelaire once lamented that we are enveloped and drenched in the marvelous, but we do not see.
navigating down the steep staircase of my girlfriend's building, i could still figure out the wan yellow hint of the pee of our pinoy hunk down the end of the hallway. from where i stood, it looked liked a mound of zest shaved from a juicy and piquant lime.