Me, Lyn Ching, and husband Jappy Pascual

The J Boys

I didn't believe it when the Jesuits told us that the friends you made in high school would become the friends you would keep the rest of your life.

Fourteen years since we graduated. The class of Ateneo De Manila 4J Batch 1990.

J Boys.

So the Jesuits knew what they were talking about.

The J Boys were together at one table in Edjie's garage. The J Girls were at another table. The J Girls were wives and girlfriends of the J Boys. The children, for continuity, I baptized as J Kids. I was still struggling with the names of each of the J Girls, so I postponed remembering names of the constantly populating number of J Kids.

The fashion and music I knew froze at high school. The way I dressed and what music I listened to had started to become a lasting trend, possibly a lifetime influence. So too were the stories I told and heard from the same friends.

Todd had arrived from Australia. He was already Australian. The event was in honor of his visit, a valid reason for the growing number of married men to drive out on a Sunday. Talk on the table were revivals of the classics.

I felt at ease. My blood pressure was good. I finished lunch just before arriving at the reunion with clear intentions of not eating further.

I declined the offer of beer.

I simply enjoyed the company of old friends.

Mark Sy

Extreme

Coupled with my fantastic abilities to create tremendous good was a counter-ability to do the precise opposite.

Monday morning the 24th started out good.

I accompanied my two cousins JR and Louie, and Jomar, a nephew through a cousin named Perlie I met in Cagayan. I introduced them to Mitsubishi ATCO in Pasay. Only JR was hired on-the-spot, ordered to start the following day with a decent starting salary.

The other two went home dejected. I was suffering from lack of sleep so I ended up at my mom's house. Louie woke me up from a nap and said a cousin of ours, Arsenia, had come back from the dead. This was a reference to Arsenia's self-exile for nearly two months, a result of her own struggles.

And thus began the back-to-life party.

The bad.

Non-stop heavy drinking that began on Monday night and lasted all the way till the next evening, peppered with blackouts here and there. One of mine involved figuring out how on earth did I find my way to bed, when the last memory I had was having a conversation with Mark Sy. I hadn't seen him in almost five years and the first re-impression he got was bound to be something he would remember for the next five again.

Wednesday.

My term, toxemia. Dr. Erick's, alcohol withdrawal.

I missed work, was unable to call in. My blood pressure readings were skyhigh. The back-to-life day three party almost started, but Louie and Arsenia opted out. My body rebelled against the idea too, and my returning sobriety and my seen-but-not-heard inner angel was asking me to go back to reality.

Please, inner angel pleaded.

The party of three was disbanded. I ordered Arsenia to take some money back home to my mother. I asked Louie to accompany me to retrieve the money my sister from California had sent for the kids' school tuition fees.

That should have ended there but I detoured. I stoppered inner angel with a gag to stop her protests.

I took us to the movies where the movies didn't matter, and there started my physical breakdown. Of course, the ever-present self-doctor demanded potassium supplements (whose brand name I fortunately failed to recall at the time we were at the drugstore), multi-vitamins, and silymarin. We both took Centrum and silymarin.

I was trembling all the way at the ride home. Edward was on the phone imploring me to stop the trip to my mom's, but it was too late. The money was with me and they needed it. I arrived at my mom's home and ostensibly became responsible family man again, not the deadly lead from the party of three.

Carried myself home with a lot of self-pity. Ted arrived and we waited for Dr. Erick to be available on the phone. Dr. Erick stopped me from taking the Kalium (the potassium supplement whose brand I finally remembered while crawling back to my own space). He said it could cause cardiac arrest. Instead, he asked me to just detox with lots of water, then approved the Valium to calm my nerves.

I was shamed beyond words.

Ted took care of me. On Thursday I apologized to Mark Sy, then I notified my work partner I was very ill. She said take as much time off as I needed. She had the impression I was under a lot of pressure and was overworked.

On Friday my mother surprised me with a visit, having been misinformed by an overreacting sister (not the one living in California) that I was hit by fever. By then my blood pressure had gone down, liver function had returned to normal. I was doing laundry and was cleaning up my room. Edward was very pleased.

In effect, I was also cleaning up the mess inside my head that had accumulated over the week.

I felt loved.

Rainy Saturday evening

I'm digitizing old family album pictures. I'm also half-asleep while I'm doing it. Took one blue Valium, got some bad dreams, decided to stay awake and work.