By Nico Carmen
I’d gone to Hawaii at a particularly low time in my life; “low” as in, for example, if I, say, texted someone I particularly really wanted to text me back and that someone didn’t, it’d set in my stomach and spirit a coiled tension that I couldn’t recover or mentally straighten myself out from for days, threatening to swallow me, swallow myself up, like some anxious ouroboros. Which is to say that was exactly what had happened, and this coiled stomach-spirit collaboration-knot was what I carried with me on my trip to see my best friend.
Right from the airport, the problem made itself known basically immediately: they were bickering in the car, my best friend and her new boyfriend, over something as easy (one supposes) as lunch. I’d barely gotten a hug and hello in before these clash-sparks flew. Alfred (the new boyfriend) barely gave me a look or a word when Jasmine (my best friend) introduced us. I promise I did try to be cordial. He looked young, nineteen or twenty, and seemed nervous, or maybe I intimidated him, of course thinking back I hope that wasn’t the case. His mustache was more an attempt at a mustache than a mustache. I told myself on the plane I would try to be kind, a sort of “on my best behavior” kind of thing, not because things between me and Jasmine were strained or anything like that, but because Jasmine was the kind of person I needed to be kind to: she had the capacity to crack easily. (She’d been institutionalized once already.) A new boyfriend would then fall exactly into that crack-easily category of Jasmine’s psycho-social calculus I had to be mindful of. I knew Jasmine would find it important, if not totally crucial to her mental well-being through this trip’s duration, that I liked this new boyfriend, but if he was going to make it difficult for me, him, all of us, then my best behavior could only take us so far. I realized all this basically in the car ride out the airport.
We went, finally, so thankfully, to a phở place, Alfred’s suggestion. We ate more than talked. Of course I caught up with Jasmine, or it’d be more accurate to say I tried to, what with
Alfred there and all, and this wasn’t to say I had anything, really, against him at the time, but he was so quiet, if not for whatever reason sullen, as he sipped his phở’s broth that the overall atmosphere had descended into something I could only describe as damp, an almost disgusting contrast with the gorgeous weather right outside our clear window. I asked him simple questions and got monosyllabic answers. “Yes.” “No.” “Um...” It’d be one thing if he was just shy or an introvert, but there was something, and I couldn’t put my finger on it then, almost malicious in his overall vibe, his way of brushing me off seemed almost deliberate, as if an obligation he had negative-type feelings toward, an obstacle upon his next few days. It didn’t help any that I had a few years on him (and Jasmine for that matter, in fact Jasmine and I both were older than Alfred, which made Jasmine’s bickering with Alfred, whose teenage years still clung to him like fading but still very present animal smell—to be honest dealing with him confrontationally was to be dragged down to his emotional level, at times—sort of something like a bad comedy sketch, with actors of no chemistry, so self-evidently a waste of her mid-twenties wisdom one hopes one obtains by that station in life that I was shocked that it didn’t appear to her as such, as self-evident) and whenever I looked at him, him sipping limply at his soup, dribbles of liquid on his mustache, I couldn’t help but think, “This fucker is really driving me around?” To be fair to him, he could probably sense all of this swirling in my head, ouroboros-like. And to be fair to me, as it turned out, neither Alfred nor Jasmine had sufficient funds to cover lunch, so guess who had to take care of everyone’s meals? I was beginning to love Hawaii very much.
I stayed, again, thankfully, at Jasmine’s place. It was good to see her parents again. We (Jasmine and I) sat up in her room, talking late into the night, talking, finally talking. There was so much I wanted to hear about and catch up on. We talked about work and movies and books and boys. I didn’t ask much about Alfred, steering the conversation away when I could, and only covering that topic for Jasmine’s sake, so she wouldn’t catch on to the fact that I was, indeed, steering the conversation at all, away from certain things. I could see it in her eyes, glinting like wet lapis, why she’d bother with someone like him: because someone was bothering to bother with her. She’d always had this air of supreme loneliness about her, that she carried in a second nature kind of way, as one has a shadow, that somehow clouded her so darkly that you could almost physically see it. When she stood next to others she seemed edited to be a smidge more grayscale. A slump of the shoulders, a glance at the lower eyelid or cheek, never into your eyes directly. I couldn’t help but want to be her friend, as one would want to pick up a stray. I picked up my phone and saw that I’d received no messages. Not even those two filled-in circles that would at least let me know she’d seen them, my messages. I set the phone down. We finished the night by lying on the floor and listening to a Japanese singer-songwriter album I’d pressed play on the video of. The summer-night sounds of the katydids gave me a full-body buzz.
(A real dream I had that night: that person’s face, staring deeply, haunted and possessed, asking me this question: “Why are you still here?”)
We went out right away the next day. Hawaii’s sun’s heat... there was a difference there I wasn’t used to but welcomed, an inviting tropical warmth instead of an indifferent landlocked burn, a concrete hatred. We met up with Alfred again, he was waiting in his car, outside the house. I noted this, that he didn’t knock on the door and wait inside, commingling with me and Jasmine and Jasmine’s parents and Jasmine’s parent’s little maltese. He’d rather sit in his car in the heat, which was admittedly oppressive once Jasmine and I got inside. Again the bickering: Jasmine wanted to take me shopping, Alfred thought we were to embark on a hike and was already mentally prepared and physically dressed, stocked, and equipped for such a thing. I had no preference, though I did assume we were going to go shopping, because that was exactly what Jasmine had told me over breakfast, and diplomatically brought up that I had plenty of time to do both, no matter what we did today, there was ample opportunity to do the other. Alfred grunted and made a sharp turn into the city. My seatbelt dug into my clavicle. Jasmine won out today, though it felt like no victory. We went thrifting and I got a pair of selvedge denim, which I wore the rest of my trip. I’d wanted to swing into a bookstore but something about Alfred told me that, not only did he not have the patience for that kind of thing (he hardly seemed like the bookish type), he hardly had any patience in general. Everywhere we went that day he stood out in his hiking outfit, tapping his sneakered foot and waiting in the corner of whatever store we were in. I was as aware of him as one is aware of a small chore, easy to accomplish but always being put off, so it niggles at the brain, relentlessly, forever. I watched Jasmine pick out a bag or a dress, Alfred hazy and serious in the background, and I felt ridiculous, like a surgeon seeing someone out in public ignore an obvious injury, a half-arm bleeding, missing at the joint. The day, in the final analysis, was fun, though I couldn’t shake the sense of having dragged a sudden, barely known, foisted upon cousin all day. I'm sure Alfred felt the same about me. When we did go hiking, it was nice, though sweaty, and my interests of thrifting and café hopping had no outlet at that altitude.
It didn’t take long for Hawaii to descend into something like a hell-madness, its fires navigable only with the utmost mental acuity and social caution. Needless to say, we all got burned.
Later in the trip, either a day or two before my flight out, we were invited—or more accurately taken by Alfred with very little explanation, and later arguing between Jasmine and Alfred right as we approached the house—to Alfred’s daughter’s birthday party. No one had told me that Alfred was a father. The baby was turning two. Jasmine turned away when I looked at her, as if it was her kid to be embarrassed by. In that moment, as Alfred fumbled for his keys and got his mom’s house’s front door open, the music behind that door like an omen, I never felt so far from Jasmine, or anyone, as though I was on the flight back already, alone.
Immediately the eyes. Knowing Jasmine and her type, it had been no surprise or shock or disdainfulness on my part to know that Alfred and his family were Filipino. Jasmine and I were both not. Though Alfred’s family treated us with kindness, if not restrained tolerance, there was that initial extra second’s pause of unrecognizable Otherness, the feeling of an invader suddenly in a room, which admittedly, we were. I sensed something more than just the requisite awkwardness and unease of the position we were in, the physical fact that Alfred’s nuclear family, of which he was the father figure, was indeed not whole: a racial animus that either informed the awkwardness or was fueled by it, everything entangled in some clumsy, mad dance of uneven social relations. Jasmine pointed out Alfred’s daughter’s mother (who was closer to him in age than even Jasmine and I were to each other) and we participated in this dance by avoiding her at all costs, moving to another room when she stepped in, leaving the line for lechon if she arrived for more, turning down the mic for karaoke so our presence wouldn’t be so audibly and flagrantly and obscenely put on display. Alfred split his time between the mother and Jasmine, and while I can admit now that I did not like him, I did not pity him then, either. A young Filipino boy asked if I knew Korean, I told him I did not. I am not Korean. Jasmine is not Korean. I was all too aware of my (our) status as the Other, here, as Alfred and his daughter’s mother’s combined families were probably at least unconsciously aware of their Otherness in relation to me (us). Standing there, water cup in hand, rice and lumpia in my stomach, next to Jasmine, wanting to talk to her but also not really wanting to speak at all, Alfred’s lola’s eyes on us with a sort of combo of curiosity and wariness, like a cat who would prefer to relax than have to be active at a moment’s notice, only able to relax if we were not in those eyes’ gaze (or in the house at all); I seemed then, more than ever, less a friend of Jasmine’s than an accomplice to some crime I didn’t commit, a guilt by association only. I watched as Alfred talked to his ex, their daughter in his arms. He looked older somehow, or mature if I wanted to be charitable. I watched Jasmine watch Alfred. I wondered how weird it was that Alfred only seemed to come alive when he bickered with Jasmine, how amicable he seemed with his ex now. I could see it now: Jasmine and Alfred doomed to break up, get back together, break up, over and over, again and again. Androids enslaved to their lonely programming. I checked my phone. And how was I any different? I tried to not to want to think about it.
The party ended without any incident, though one could argue that us being there was incident enough. The late drive back was quiet and painful in its quietness. Alfred dropped us off and left with little conversation. Jasmine’s house loomed ahead like a thing that loomed. The lights were out; Jasmine’s parents asleep inside. We stood there a beat too long; so long that it could be acknowledged, as some unlikable social clowns in a group setting might do toward an awkward silence. Jasmine looked at me and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I shrugged. We walked away from the house.
Obvious, to point out how hot it was on a tropical island, but the heat reminded me how warm the upcoming winter would likely be, and this made me sad. The moon was white and swollen-fat. Death—I’d thought to myself, unrelated to anything happening at that moment and figured I’d write it down someplace, sometime, later—is the foreclosure of all worry. I wondered if there wasn’t some merit to speeding up the process of eventual non-worry for oneself after all. (You shouldn't say these kinds of things, and yet...) Jasmine walked ahead of me, leading the way. Not that there was any place in mind. (I recalled when we would walk side by side; she was the kind of person that could never walk straight, lean into you as you walked, and I’d have to keep stepping to the side and almost into the street to not have her bump into me. I was nostalgic for that near-feeling of her on my arm.) Our footsteps on the sidewalk rang flat, hollow. We walked until we reached a park. Empty, of course, at this late hour, maybe even “abandoned,” if one wanted to be cynical, which I try not to be, if I can help it. Jasmine sat on one of the creaky swings, her legs swaying. I stood and watched the moon, and the occasional car passing by. I imagined it was Alfred, circling, haunting, wraith-ish. I sensed danger, given the situation. I also sensed that Jasmine wanted to say something, to verbalize an itch that in the alone-ness of the head she could not scratch, to let it hang in the air like the moon and perhaps I could maybe help scratch it for her. I waited.
“Tell me honestly,” she said, “am I fucking up here?”
“I don’t know where ‘here’ is,” I told her.
“‘He’s immature, with a kid of his own, still understandably involved with the mother of his child.’ Thinking along those lines, aren’t you?”
“You’re telling yourself that.”
“He tells me he loves me.”
“And you believe him?”
“Yes. I think so. But then like, what good has thinking done for me?”
I opened my mouth and closed it, saying nothing.
“You don’t much like him, do you?”
“I like Alfred,” I said. This was a lie. “In any case, I came here for you, not to like him.
Which I do. But that’s more a happenstance thing.”
“You think I can do better.”
“Don’t put me in that position.”
“Well, what do you think?” I checked my phone, an instinctual looking-away. No notifications. The screen went black and reflected the moon.
“I would hope you get, do, and have what’s best for you. Me. Us. I mean—Jasmine, I am stuck on a person who by all appearances has fallen off the face of the earth—cannot be found on any celestial body—and so will not text me back. I keep checking my fucking phone. Because of a person. I can’t even enjoy myself here properly. I couldn’t tell you what ‘better’ is if I’ve never had jack shit for myself.” I paused, and wanted to throw my phone away. I didn’t.
Jasmine stared straight ahead, now. I could see it in her eyes, sense it intuitively, after years of knowing her. She wanted me to tell her what she wanted to hear. What was that, though? And would that have been the right answer? The right thing to say? Did I believe even half the shit I just said? I learned then that I was the kind of person to lose all conviction of self at the final, most crucial moment (coupled with being stuck on a person that would never call/text me back, if there was a baseline to be considered pathetic I’d crossed it without ever noticing that I did so). My silence afterward had meaning in that it meant nothing.
There were some other words after that, but nothing worth reporting here. She sat at the swing and I stood there beside her. The night was loud with bugs. I felt like speaking aloud a doubt of mine, about our generation not psychically surviving our thirties, but didn’t. When Jasmine got up, she removed one of her boots, then her sock, and then the other boot and sock, until she was standing barefoot right there on the playground. She tossed her footwear into some bushes on a trail nearby. She proceeded to walk back in the direction of her house, on woodchips then rock then concrete. Not so much puzzlement as it was a sense of loss, resignation, I followed her without saying any more. We went to bed and never spoke of that night again.
Romantic-love may be the more intense event, prioritized by some (or maybe more than we’d like to really say) as perhaps the Event of one’s life, there is, I think, an “X” of sorts worth speaking to about the Friendship-Event, how, if cultivated and nourished properly like a plant, can flourish longer, be more fruitful, than any romantic relationship. So when Jasmine video-called, months later, to tell me, between coughs and tears, that she’d broken up with Alfred because he confessed to still having feelings for his ex but still very much wanting to pursue things with her, Jasmine—like a child who wanted one too many things for Christmas—I could feel my face deaden, as if losing strength and hope at the structural, cellular level, and when she hung up I was truly tempted to never take another call from her again. I think about the person who did not text me back: why did they not text me back? I think now this person felt for me what I suddenly felt for Jasmine then: I had, for Jasmine, to alter slightly for our purposes the title of a sociological paper, a “Dimorphous Expression of Positive Emotion” so intense that it bordered on actual committing-wanting malicious violence upon a small creature: wanting to kick a puppy, so precious and helpless it was. This, in the end, turned out to be a decision made for me, since, because, I never heard from Jasmine again. No text, call, nothing. I have a bad habit of losing people in this way. I suppose calling her would be easy... about as easy as her calling me. I suppose. When I think back on all the things that have never happened to me, I think about my brief time in Hawaii.
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