INOCENCE OF AN EX-BESTFRIEND
These recent violent protests sparked by a
video on youtube somehow reminded me of an ex-best friend. How so?
I’ll tell you.
In my younger days, back when I used to
roam the streets of Manila in search of night spots with a sign that reads
‘wanted: folksinger’, I had this ‘silent type’ guy as a constant tag along and
eventually became a band mate, and yes, my best friend.
Now, this ex-best friend of mine, will
somewhat strike you, as a very shy guy, and very down-to-earth literally with
his head almost always bowed down and looking sideways. He, most of the time,
is smiling, or grinning as one may put it, when being spoken to. He seldom speaks. Just sits in a corner,
quietly.
It
didn’t bother me a bit then. In fact, I think it was his ‘quiet-never-talk much’
way that molded our friendship. I love to talk about a lot of things other than
music. And he was always there, yes, to listen. (Ho-hum. ) Besides, I myself
get high on silence and love being left alone by my lonesome. As it is for me,
so it was for him. Or so I thought then.
We played together as a duet and went to
hunt for places to play. Between us two,
everything went smoothly. After a few uneventful
months, I invited a bass player and a drummer to somehow tighten our sound and to reinforce our music.
It
was a mistake.
My then soon-to-be-ex-best friend being a
man of few words didn’t say a thing but resented my move. His not so pleasant
character started giving hints. In practice
sessions, when told to refine a chord or syncopate a rhythm, he would suddenly
stop playing and walk out on us whispering curses to himself. There was this
one instance when me, the bass player, and the drummer were having a good laugh
when out of nowhere came my ex-best friend saying, ”You’re talking about me?”
and made a motion of hitting us with a microphone stand. But he smiled widely
afterwards, so the three of us thought it was just a joke.
And then, one day it happened. During our
first gig as a four-piece band, he again played a wrong chord. Instead of saying
‘sorry’, he laughed wildly, and walked off the stage. When the club-manager
stopped him to ask why, he gave the most unreasonable of reasons, hit the
manager with a ‘Pacquiao’ left-hook, and threatened to burn the whole place
down. Not satisfied with what he just did,
he started throwing bottles, glasses, ash trays, napkin holders around and
hurled several mono-bloc chairs towards the stage obviously aimed
on us, his band mates. I was stunned. I
never thought he was capable of being so
violent. Right then and there, we disbanded.
Up until today, I can’t fully grasp what
happened that day. I remember my ex-best friend telling me how his childhood
was: Prayers right after waking up in the morning, before and after every meal,
and before going to bed. Bible study and reciting the Holy Rosary every night, Black
Nazarene on Fridays, Mother of Perpetual Help on Wednesdays, hear mass on
Sundays rain-or-shine-no-matter- what. He was short of saying his parents were
grooming him to be a priest one day. I can still recall how my ex-best friend’s
voice sounded so sincere, while telling me how God-fearing he was; and how he
wished everybody would treat everyone as brothers and sisters, as fellow human
beings, as children of God; and how he look forward to the day he would be in
heaven.
How could he be so violent? I remember
asking myself after that incident. What was it that got into him that day? What
drove him to just snap and explode so violently and insanely mad at everybody?
Does he have deeply-rooted insecurities? How was he really brought up?
And
just how could one say he is this and that, and then do another that and this?
My ex-best friend knows. But does he?
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