It happened 12 years ago. In 2001. March 2001. Before high school graduation.

We didn’t have any more classes and we went to school simply for graduation practice. We didn’t need to stay in school for a long time for that. We stayed only until lunch time. Afterwards, we could go home, go to the movies, wherever. On that particular day, we decided to go to H’s house. To play video games.

H’s house was still newly renovated then. So he took us on a tour. We went to the kitchen, the garage, the bedrooms, the unfinished attic. It sounds pretty boring, and I guess it was. Until we reached the attic, that is. It was, as I previously mentioned, unfinished. The floor was incomplete. H told us to step on the beams. So we wouldn’t fall. He told us, but I didn’t listen. I put one foot on one of the beams, and one put on what I thought was a floor.

It turned out to be a ceiling panel. I found out the hard way. I found out, because the next time I felt solid ground under my feet, I was on the second floor of the house, and there was a gaping hole above me, where the ceiling panel used to be.

I fell through the ceiling. Of my friend’s house. As in, I destroyed a part of their newly renovated house. And all because I didn’t listen to H when he told us to stand on the beams.

Needless to say, after my friends confirmed that I wasn’t injured or anything, they laughed endlessly. All the way until we were on our way back to our own homes. In fact, they’re still laughing about the incident now.

It happened 12 years ago, but when we talk about it now, it’s still funny. But you must be wondering why I’m bringing it up now. Here’s the thing: That day, there were only five of us who were in H’s house. Me, H who owned the house, J1 and J2, my best friend and her boyfriend at the time, and JDG.

They were the only witnesses to that embarrassing moment. Only four people, and now there’s one less.

JDG passed away yesterday. It was a heart attack, they said. To tell the truth, I’m not that interested in the details. How and why are irrelevant at the moment. What matters to me is that he’s gone. He just turned 29 last March and now he’ll never reach 30.

I still don’t know how to process the information. He was such a good friend. We haven’t seen each other in a long time, but we exchanged some long Facebook messages a while back. And he did greet me on my birthday last year, and he said that he was sorry he couldn’t come. I said it was too bad and that we should just see each other next time. I guess, that can’t happen now.

I don’t know how to write about this. Which brings me to my next point: my next most embarrassing moment. It was just a few hours after the first one. Yes, it was more embarrassing than falling through the ceiling of my friend’s house.

We were in the jeepney, on our way home, and joking about the double-meaning of the verb “fall”. I literally fell that afternoon, but JDG was saying that I also figuratively fell, as in, fell in love, for H. Well, we were in high school at the time and talking about being “in love” was the thing to do.

“You fell. In more ways than one,” JDG said.

And stupidly, or guiltily (because I did like H at the time), I countered with, “That’s right. I fell. And no one catched me.”

I actually said catched. And in front of JDG, too. The most grammatically aware person I knew. And because I’m very pompous about my knowledge of English grammar, it was way more embarrassing than having destroyed someone’s ceiling, when I made that grammar mistake.

“Caught!” JDG said, and J1 and J2 could not have laughed at us any harder.

Here’s the thing: all my memories of JDG and me seem to be of the two of us arguing. Because I dared to challenge his debating, fighting, arguing, and English skills. How arrogant I was, to think I could be better at him at something, anything. Especially the stuff that he was really good at. Now I think he was probably just indulging me, or perhaps he found my ineptitude entertaining. Whatever the reason, he went off to become a successful lawyer, and I’m, well, not a lawyer.

And the disjointed thoughts (and most probably there are also grammar errors) in this blog entry don’t make me feel any more confident. Thinking about it now, I never could’ve beaten him in any debate. But I’m happy that he at least thought me worthy an opponent. Even if it was just for laughs.

I still wish I could write as well as he did. I wish I knew as many words as he did. I also remember him being one of the few people whom I could talk to about books and music and movies. Or, okay, you can basically talk to anyone about those topics, but he was one of the few people who would get the references I would make, and make references I would get.

Perhaps I’m biased and I haven’t met a lot of people, but he really was one of the most brilliant people ever. Intelligent and insightful, he could intellectualize your very human problems without being unsympathetic. He could see things objectively but still be a very concerned friend. And he had a great sense of humor, too.

It might be in bad taste to quote from The Walking Dead, but this was the exact line I remembered as soon as I heard the news. Brilliant as he was.

“[He] was a loss to the world. Hell, [he] ran this place. I just worked here.”
- Edwin Jenner, The Walking Dead (S1E6,TS-19)

He was such a brilliant writer. Some of my friends posted pictures of his letters or screenshots of their last text exchanges with him. I looked for ours and found that it was over two years ago. We were talking about how busy we both were and how we haven’t seen each other in ages. I said that it’d been difficult to see him since he moved, and he said that it’d been difficult to see us since he started his job. So we were talking about all that lost time and he said, the last thing he said was, “Well, we’ll always have H’s ceiling.”

I’d hoped for a more recent memory than that, but at least we do have that. And that we always will have.

Now, I’ve never actually gone out with this dude (I’ll call him 6, cause, he’s dating story 6 that I’m posting about), and based on the past couple weeks of interaction, it’s not going to happen. 6 lives on the West Coast and will be visiting Chicago for Bear Pride, so the opportunity to get to know him in person is quickly approaching and I’m afraid I’m going to have to let it pass.

Some of you of course are thinking, “oh Royce, as usual, over thinking reactions and keeping your standards impossibly high means no one will ever do anything right by you.” I assure you, they can, have, and will again one day…one day.

But I digress into the nitty gritty of this particular exchange. Allow me to flow some information your way. 6 and I have been chatting on and off for months, pretty standard, I don’t hold random dating website/app chatter in super high regard, so it’s always off and on with me. But, 6 and I did make the jump to phone number exchange, a bit more personal since a direct line could be had and there was no excuse of “I haven’t logged on for a few days.” Here is where our story gets going.

I’m pretty good when it comes to texting, I like to think I’m a good communicator (overall I mean, sometimes feelings are hard, but that’s different, when it comes to witty text banter, I’m about it). I have been working pretty harsh hours lately, and 6 knows that. He knows what’s on the line, what my schedule is like lately and how stressful and exhausted it makes me, and that only pertinent information in my life will be responded to when I’m under such duress. I laid that out on the table from the get go. I’ve also informed him that it’s not personal when I don’t respond to texts, sometimes, I just don’t because there is nothing to respond to.

This is a screen capture of a portion of our text conversation which has led me to just stop and be done, because I just can’t anymore.

“Oh well…take it EZ”

Seriously 6? Seriously? Mind you, this is NOT the first time in the past three weeks that we’ve been texting that he’s gone the “oh well guess you’re not into me” freaking Eyore syndrome, which is why I’m done. Insecurity, not sexy. Also, just cause you send me a text message of a smiley, or the word “Sexy” doesn’t endear me nor require me to follow up in anyway, that’s not a conversation, nor a conversation starter.

Interactions like this happen all the time to me and they are just awful. I understand not being a super confident guy, hell, I’m insecure with the best (or worst) of them. That doesn’t mean that I automatically go all self depreicating and “woe is me” if someone doesn’t respond to me, in what I feel is a timely fashion. Their timeline, is not my timeline. I do not feel entitled to a person’s time or energy if the only thing tying us together is a few weeks of banter over text messaging, so I’m not sure why they do. And it exhausts me.

So sorry 6, moving onto 7, whomever that may be.

My new friend – let’s call him Big Grey Man – first made an appearance when I was queuing for a post-swim, pre-work coffee. Me: flustered and late as usual; Him: big and grey – and overly eager to chat.

‘We meet again…’ he said, as I approached the coffee queue. I actually turned around to look behind me, so convinced I was that he couldn’t be talking to me. He was.

It transpired that we had also been queuing for a coffee together the week before (quelle surprise!), and exchanged the very smallest of pleasantries – an encounter so inconsequential that I had completely forgotten it had ever happened. Obviously he hadn’t.

And so began one of those awkward conversations, where I try hard not to engage with him on any level (short monotone sentences usually do the trick), and he tries his hardest to keep up the patter. I feel a little mean because Big Grey Man is perfectly pleasant. But I have a rule about the gym: I don’t believe in communicating with anyone whilst there. I just want to get in, do 30 lengths in the pool, and exit – all with minimum human interaction.

This was tested about two years ago when I was reluctantly befriended by Lipo Liza – a woman who regularly had several pints of fat removed from her stomach and thighs, and seemed hellbent on sharing the details of this gruesome procedure with me – at 6.30 in the morning. It wasn’t just her thighs that got airtime though: I knew all about her job (she hated it), mother (hated her), ex-boyfriend (hated him) and many other details which I would not want to inflict upon you. Luckily, her newly-thinned thighs led her to new-found love and she moved somewhere down South, finally leaving me in peace.

Another strange specimen at the gym is Mad Army Woman. You know those people who like to Make A Scene at the gym by huffing and puffing loudly, pacing up and down and doing exaggerated stretches? She’s one of them. While the rest of the morning swimmers are quietly getting on with their lengths, she’s busy doing her own peculiar routine, which as far as I can see involves angrily striding up and down the pool in a full wet suit (she’s about the size of a small bungalow), pausing to eat half a banana, taking two controlled swigs of Lucozade and then – bizarrely – circling the jacuzzi in figures of eight, thrashing through the water in an exaggerated army march. It’s quite frightening.

Back to my new friend though…

Big Grey Man: We obviously have the same routine!

Me (feigning interest in the coffee menu): Hmm…

Big Grey Man: I didn’t see you last week though?

Me: My car broke down.

Big Grey Man: Really? What was wrong with it?

Me (yawn): The alternator. (Yawn. Yawn.)

You get the idea.

I finally managed to escape but as was crossing the car park, there he was – honking his horn and waving manically.

I hoped that my interaction with him would be limited to the pre-work coffee queue. But when I went down to the pool this week, lo and behold, he was there – sat in the jacuzzi, beaming like a mentalist and waving at me (again!). Crazily, he was chatting to Mad Army Woman (who appeared to be on stage seven of her drill: Stop circling jacuzzi for three minutes and eat second half of banana). They both seemed to be staring at me. Big Grey Man waved again.

What next? Inviting me to join them in the jacuzzi? Chatting to me in the steam room? (attempting to strike up a conversation in the steam room is strictly taboo in my eyes).

At least Lipo Liza had entertaining stories in her quest to fight the flab. Big Grey Man offers nothing but big greyness and Mad Army Woman nothing but drill-sergeant lunacy. I didn’t want to be part of their weird jacuzzi club.

I dunked my head under the water and swam away – with a little theatrical splash of my own.

maybe next time I will have this kind of love and commitment from any guy :)