Lovestruck (Four) Love Lost, Love Gained

"This time, it doesn't happen again"

After a year-long of correspondence, I finally decided to go to New York City, partially was to visit the great city, but it is actually to revisit the man I met in San Fran. The only difference besides my feeling was that I also went with a boyfriend.

This boyfriend and I had always been great friends who supported and understood each other. The reason why we got together was just so. But being in a different city also gave me a different perspective of what I want with a 'boyfriend', so we had a talk and stopped this boyfriending on the third day of our arrival. We didn't go our separate ways but still stayed until our original plan. He left, and I stayed on.

Actually, me and the man from San Fran only but met once while I was there, for I was too lost for words for anything more, I guess he was too. So I left it the way it was and stopped all communication.

The rest of the days I spent with some people at the hostel that has an abandoned hospital beside it with a huge chimney. Drinks, coffees, and conversations were taken up on the rooftop. For me and others who have stayed for more than a week have learned how things work at this establishment and have already conjugated cliques. And with any newbies, they soon find their groups to settle in, and one of them was Marc.

He went with his friend and came from Europe. He had an air of scholary unworldliness and his looks reminded me of comic book characters from Japanese manga: big blue eyes, blond longish hair, and his angular looks.

Right away, he caught my eyes as he stepped onto the terrace. Like how everything begins, we chatted and got to know each other. Him, his friends and a couple of others we conjugated. We bar hopped, diner dropped in, gallery visited. A few memories still stayed with me.

This was a diner near Columbia University, which is also just behind the hostel. The sticky linoleum floor with a waitress full of attitude serving sawdust coffee were great contradictions to Brad Pitt's autographed photo that's hung on the wall. Apparently, he filmed the beginning scene of Meet Joe Black here.

I don't remember much of what the food tasted, I only remembered the place was a dump but I wouldn't trade the company for anything in the world.

For nearly three weeks, even though we visited the city as a group, Marc and I knew we had feelings for each other. But after two years of torment, I've learned my lesson of not losing myself in travel romances. So I played my cards close to my heart and remained friends with him all the way up till the end of our stay. A spark was made, and the ember of this affection has been burning for more than a decade, and yet we still remain worlds apart.

Lovestruck (Three) - Love, help, fears

"Four walls and a roof"

People always say that music or smell captures memories more than visual. More intimate, some say.

In the summer of 1999 I went to San Francisco and I met a man who dressed like those in the magazine. We first met on Yahoo! Personal website 'Bay Area' section. After exchanging some emails and chats for weeks, we met at a Starbucks near the Montgomery Bart Station and chatted till late into the night.

Sleek hairdo, perfectly fitted shirt with dark brown pants, an aspired fashion designer and a talented writer, our first date in real life ended up in locked lips.

The next two weeks and a half we spent mostly in his 6x6 feet room with white walls around, naked, dressed, talking about love, art, music and life. The cold foggy nights of San Fran with the orange street lights marked my memory of him from his bedroom window. Holding hands, we paved the streets from the Mission to the bay area and him snapping pictures of me, but I have none of him.

The weeks ended with years of email correspondence and promises that were never fulfilled. Words said, tears cried, and hearts broken. Whatever trips that were planned weren't traveled, until the next year - in New York.

Lovestruck (Two) - Boy in black jean

A summer of kissy kiss promiscuous - 1996.

It happened when I was 16 in London. In total, I kissed 6 boys, but there was only one that I truly liked. He had blond hair, blue eyes, was medium height, and always wore black jeans. Our first kiss happened in a pub, with me wearing an ankle-length blue dress from Laura Ashley. After that, everything was history, and even more so now since that memory has lost its luster from the layering of years.

However, youth has its charm, persistence is one.

After returning home, other than telling the story of how all six guys were all at one venue one night and how I had to juggle between them was the story of the boy in black jean. Since the internet had just been invented, access was still limited, so I was stuck with snail mail. Regular weekly letters arrived and mailed. I passed the days by writing melancholy poems and keeping a journal:

"Everyone has a soul.

It's like the main thing in life.

I used to have one,

bright and alive.

Everyone has flesh.

It's like the basic thing in life.

I used to have one,

gorgeous and full of strife."

or something like:

"My passport lies on the desk in front of me. I start to think about whether I should do it or not. Will it be worth it? Or should it just take me away, away to Frankfurt/Main, Though he might have forgotten about the time that we shared, I just wanna see him one more time before my soul flees, before my heart empties. Are others like me when they're so love sick?"

Letters turned to postcards, postcards turned to random phone calls. But my thoughts of him stayed strong. Finally, he came to see me.

It was in a rainy summer. He arrived with his black jeans. I, the same, with my youth. His three-day stay was a dream come true in concept, because the revisit in reality after a year seemed less than how my mind played it out to be. The final chapter to this year-old fling.

Lovestruck (One)

"I wish you were like a magazine that I can hold and read before I go to sleep."

From my adolescence to adulthood I've always loved and hated falling in love, particularly when I travel abroad. The spark is so bright and intense, the feeling is so mutual in almost every aspect. The sex is great, even if it's not, it's passionate. But leaving is the killer, like the first glance, first kiss. Most of the time, if not all, we almost never meet again.

Thanks to technology, there's Facebook, there's gmail and skype to keep that memory somewhat alive.

But all there is left in reality are the routines that you don't want to do, the books you don't want to read, and the only things that keep you going are the music that reminds you of the time you met and the photos you took of him. They become crack and draws you into the memories so deeply sometimes you lose track of where you are because reliving that moment becomes so painfully desperate, then you may want to make irrational decisions like flying there, somewhere, anywhere, just to chase that pink fluffy happy ending.

It's never like that.

People move on in reality and one day turns into one week turns into a year, ten years. Never.

What am I supposed to do now?