Nighttime from Where I Am

His video was against the light, and he looked like an angel.

“Let me just draw the curtains.” He got up from his seat.

I expected to see his Eraserheads posters on the wall, electric and acoustic guitars strewn on the floor. Instead, I squinted, noticing an eye chart, trying my best to make out most of the letters. Failing, I scanned the rest of the room, finding on a shelf above his bed, a bonsai tree in between two sets of books, a few I recognize as his favorites and a few looking encyclopedic.

The room darkened, and I checked to see my own lighting too.

He sat down. His hair had always seemed dry and curly, but now it looked slick, like he just took a bath. When he glanced up from his keyboard, the screen reflected off his eyes.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said.

I laughed, saying, “I get that a lot these days, Julio. But remember when everyone kept saying what a big boy I was growing into, with my broader back and mustache?”

“Yeah, your catfish mustache.”

“I’m not sure if I should shave it completely or hold on to the hope of fully developing my facial hair.” I said, stroking my babyface chin.

In contrast, Julio was a wolf. He sported a full beard and sideburns, and some chest hair was poking above his collar.

“Hey, you do you. I haven’t had the time to groom myself recently. Been studying a lot,” he said.

From the looks of it, he didn’t need to. I don’t know if it was the lighting or because I hadn’t seen him in a decade.

“God, you look beautiful.” I said.

“Where’d that come from?”

I had wanted to hug him. As friends, Julio and I had always been touchy. We would always place our hands on each other's shoulders while we walked with our friends, and I would sometimes rub his full head of hair out of playful jealousy. But right now, that wasn’t possible, and words were the only way I could embrace him.

My first instinct was to say, “I think it’s the lighting.” But that would be a lie. I could say something sentimental, but I settled with something else.

“I don’t know. You just are.”

“Well, in that case, you’re looking mighty fine too. Roberta's lucky to have you.”

I adjusted my glasses, hiding my cheeks. “How’s Cynthia?” I asked.

“She’s already in residency. We only get to see each other during the weekends, which is cool because we have more space to breathe.” He extended his arms outward, past his camera's reach.

“Kind of like having separate worlds?” As I asked him this, my mind conjured a comet approaching the rings of Saturn, and not twin planets as I would have expected.

He nodded. “If I were president, I’d institute that married couples meet only during weekends, living in their own separate apartments, working their own separate jobs.”

“What would happen to the kids?”

“I hadn’t really thought of that. But my parents were at each other’s throats when I was a kid. I suppose they could alternate each week babysitting. Problem solved.”

Though I mildly shook my head, I told him, “You’d make a great president.” He could be wearing a tuxedo right now, issuing executive orders from a podium.

“But I think you wouldn’t like that arrangement. I wasn’t as close to my family as you were, Rico.”

Then he continued, “Speaking of…”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind.” His microphone crackled.

He had a habit of stopping midsentence before saying something he thought was important. It was a source of annoyance for many of our friends, including his then-girlfriend now-wife who once broke up with him because she wrongly anticipated he was going to break up with her. Usually, what he intended to say was trivial, but for some reason was a great source of shame for him to even utter.

I gave him a smile that said c’mon.

“Well, do you still give a portion of your income back to your family?”

He didn’t hit the mark of what he originally intended to say. “Sure, Mr. Financial Advisor. I still live with my family, and my girlfriend is here with me,” I said.

“In Manila?”

The moment I nodded, I was reminded of the heavy afternoon traffic at EDSA, dozens of trucks and cars parading on the way to hell. My family and I were living in a cushy subdivision so I didn’t have to worry about that.

Determined to not get distracted, I asked, “Do you miss it here?”

“Hmm. I miss not having winter, if that counts. The cold here makes me want to sleep all the time. But the cold there is different, sometimes rainy and humid. It’s the tolerable kind of cold that makes you want to eat a lot at Noche Buena, just to keep yourself warm,” he said.

I didn’t recognize the feeling, perhaps because I had nothing to compare my Christmases to. I didn’t eat a lot in general and treated Christmas the same way I treated birthdays. As I grew up, they were just like any other day. The discrepancy between my indifference and the festive spirit around me, I admit, did contribute to some loneliness. It’s not that I don’t get happy. I just get happy when there’s something to be happy about.

Julio waved his hand at me. Strangely comforting.

“You zoned out a bit there, buddy.”

“Sorry. I was drifting off again, wasn’t I?”

“So, what were you daydreaming about this time?”

I took a deep breath. “I’ve been remembering our past Christmases and New Years, when we were much younger.”

“Like, when we would set off fireworks?” he asked.

“Kind of. When we would also sing carols to everyone in our barangay, and just, being, you know, being with each other.” That made me look downward, towards the mini-screen of my own video feed. God, he was right. I haven’t changed at all.

“We could still do that, you know?” he said.

He got up again.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

From under his bed, he pulled an old white guitar and turned its tuning pegs. He switched on the light of his room and stepped forward to the camera. Now, he looked like a wizened angel rockstar.

“Are you kidding me? You still have that thing?” I asked.

He strummed his guitar and sang the first lines of Silent Night, his voice bright and clear.

"All is calm, all is bright," he sang as if he spoke them to himself.

Giggling through the initial awkwardness, I jumped in. The tempo was a bit too upbeat for my taste. Julio nodded as I heightened my voice and subtly dragged it along to slow the tempo down. He began to soften, fading into the background as I took the lead in the second verse.

“Shepherds quake at the sight…” That line always gave me goosebumps. Everything felt energized, every pixel distinct. It was as though singing clearly, hitting the right notes, helped sharpen my eyesight. Meanwhile, Julio differed in melody, adding dissonance and not quite meeting me halfway in the high notes.

His silhoutte came into sharp contrast as we approached the line “Radiant beams from thy holy face…” He approached the screen as he intensified his strums. As we belted out the last lines in almost perfect harmony, it struck me how child Jesus must have felt when he realized he was God at birth forever. How disappointing it was to not choose one's divinity or experience it only sometimes.

We continued to sing in the few hours that remained before midnight, remembering our go-to Christmas carols. Through it all, my worries about Jesus lingered in the few seconds of silence after the last song, when I noticed that my video had blackened as it was nighttime from where I am.

“We should do this again, sometime. Saturday night?” Julio rested his chin on his guitar.

I was always the one to initiate our get-togethers. It’s strange to say relief, but that was truly what I felt when Julio, for the first time, took it upon himself to invite me.

“Heck, yeah,” I said, as I gave him a smile he couldn’t see.