By Rex Catubig

 

“ I Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

― T.S. Eliot

YOU’D think that fifty years of friendship would be arduous for ebbing memory to process and recall. But for twelve unending hours one Saturday past, memories went berserk as stories and recollections surged and burst forth as if from a Pandora’s box. It happened when eight eccentric, smart, iconoclastic, firebrand, and unpredictable high school classmates met up for a fall weekend. All was fair game.

The Saturday started inauspicious enough. The sun blazed bright and was rather roasty for an October morn. But it was an ordinary day that got screwed up when the plan for lunch at a Korean restaurant was junked by San Diego-based class subversive Camilo Abalos. He asserted that it was beneficial for the soul to shoot the breeze in the privacy of Estrella and Giles Maravilla’s’ Cerritos abode.

He convinced us that it’s a god-send chance to sample the Carne Asada which is the pride of his Lakeside domicile. True enough, no sooner had he started grilling the Mexican steak cut than it was gone with the wind and held court as the appetizer companion of Corona.

That put King C. Disimulacion and wife Prima in a quandary as she had canceled her order of Sisig for the main dish. Without getting flustered, and acting on a serendipitous whim, she passed by an Oriental market and spotted these humongous live lobsters. With nary a wink, she walked off with a dozen. And back at the Maravillas, she boiled them to glorious redness and they adorned the dining table as the centerpiece of the movable feast.

But this chain of events put a yoke on Estrella aka Bibot’s shoulders as she had been recalled to the kitchen just when she had hung her chef gloves in favor of church work. Taking on a saintly vibe, she consigned it as a corporal act of mercy that would earn her some spiritual indulgence.

With the hassles neatly tucked away, we began to settle down–when a cryptic message flashed on Bibot’s cell. “I will be there in four hours”, texted Doc Nonong Martinez from Sacramento—million dreams away north of LA! We were incredulous but waited by virtue of friendship.

The time frame had lapsed but Doc Nonong was nowhere. Just then the doorbell rang! It was Doc Nonong like a Greek bearing a gift of two bottles of wine. Driving his state-of-the-art Tesla, he bravely journeyed over 500 miles to be with us.

At last, the party was on. Hungry but happy, we feasted on an American dream menu—and we became high school kids again.

 

The lunch dallied over time punctuated by a volley of irreverence not appropriate for respectable seniors. When offered the bowl of rice, King deadpanned: ” No, thank you, we have enough of that at home”. And when the conversation shifted to the planned travel with some months cited as more expensive than the others, Doc Nonong, when asked his preferred date, blurted snobbishly: ” I can go anytime. Money is not an issue”.

The table bonfire smoldered, but the after-lunch banter exploded.  Milo lorded over and turned into a fire-spitting dragon spewing sanctimonious verbal lava. The evening did not cool things down. Instead, the fiery exchange inexorably led to the frivolous route angels fear to tread. To the outsider, it was a blasphemous exercise of overindulgence. But if you are a member of class ’65, you learn to gulp water spiked with salt and be thankful for devil’s advocates.

At the end of the long day, one escaped unscathed from the valley of fire and learned that fire renews, strengthens, and sculpts you to be more forgiving and more understanding of human foibles and frivolities. The bonfire of banalities is the crucible of lasting friendship.

Indeed, fiery tongues do not bear witness to loving hearts.

Cariño brutal labat.

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