A
long and piercing moan pervaded Juliet’s room. She liberated a sigh of
satisfaction and remained seated near her windowpane. She was thinking about
Romeo the entire time. He was not even aware of her existence but in her mind,
they have been sharing nights and nights of endless pleasure. The emotions
weren’t defined. Maybe it was love, or lust or obsession; she did not care.
Her
mother knocked on the door and her rumination was interrupted. It was already
time for dinner so she cleaned up after the traces of her intemperate fantasy. Phantoms
of sexual or maybe emotional thirst started coming after her the moment she
heard him speak. It was one of those moments in fairy tales when the prince
speaks, the princess suddenly goes into trance, romantic music plays to break
the silence and everything starts happening in slow motion. Since then, she
would steal little moments to stare at him, admire the tiny blemishes on his
cheeks, relish his clementine-ish, male scent, and savor his elusive, trembling
voice.
He
was not a man of many words. He would give the shortest replies to specific and
limited conversations but these short-lived instances fuel her nightly
routines. Sometimes, she would imagine him slowly and softly pressing the
warmth of his slightly rugged skin against her; sometimes, she would just be
contended with a minor tingling in her womanhood through a concoction of short
voice recordings.
She was in her senior year in
college and was on the stage of completing her thesis. So that particular
Wednesday, she had a scheduled meeting with her thesis adviser. She arrived at
the cubicle and accidentally ran into him. It seemed as if he was on his way
out in a hurry; like some sort of an argument just took place between him and her
thesis adviser but since she was on a rush, she shrugged the whole thing off.
Romeo got into an unintentional
fight with Mr. Mercado that morning when an unfamiliar girl came rushing in. He
was not utterly certain if he knew the girl from somewhere but he was strangely
seeing her more than a few times. However, it seemed irrelevant because his
thoughts were pinned onto Jaime or Mr. Mercado. He was just dropping off a poem
he wrote especially for him and Jaime awkwardly rejected it for, according to
him, some moral reasons.
He dismissed the thought and reached
for Jaime’s picture on his desk while simultaneously reaching for his thighs.
It was as if Jaime’s face expunged the tension between them that morning and
suddenly brushed a lingering eroticism in his veins. He was in love with his
teacher and nobody else knew. Every night, he would be visited by his sexual
thirst for his teacher and he would always feel powerless and submissive. This
has been going on for somewhat a long time now. He cannot resist the thought
even though he cannot come out of the closet. His parents, who have very high
expectations of him being a lawyer, will absolutely disinherit him.
Once again, lust defeated him. He
slept with an overwhelming feeling of contentment. He was concealing his
identity crisis with the hope that it’s just a phase he needs to conquer. At one point, he started questioning his
sanity or the entire playing-with-himself thing.
At
one point, she started questioning her sanity or the entire
playing-with-herself thing. Her parents are already having suspicions about her
unusual behaviour. She woke up with a post-it on her desk from her mom saying
she’d meet a physician after lunch to talk about the “problem”. She wanted to
go but she could not; going might mean she was accepting the fact that she was
ill.
Her
parents ambushed her at school that same afternoon; practically dragged her to
the doctor and signed a waiver to do a test without the patient’s consent. She
was assured that it’ll remain confidential, though. The doctor said it would take
a week for the test results to come out.
He
refused to take the test. He immediately dismissed the thought that he was ill
and went with the flow of his nightly activities. Seeing Jaime in the mornings
remained as painful as him denying his true sexuality. Talking to the teacher
would not do him any good. All he would get is a long politically correct
double talk about the moral and ethical implications of teacher-student
relationships.
Even
if he wanted to escape the ghosts of Jaime in the middle of the night, he could
not help it. It was like this pathological need to be sexually involved with a
man. He did his research. It was a different or a special case, rather. He
found no need to visit a doctor for proper medication. As far as he was
concerned, he was not ill.
Her
lab results came to mail after exactly a week. She found it first, so there’s
really no need to let her parents know. The results came with medicines that,
according to her doctor, would help minimize her sexual urges and would appease
her sudden convulsions. She stopped reading upon seeing the words minimize and
appease. So the doctors really concluded she was ill. She decided not to take
the medications. As far as she was concerned, she was not ill.
It
went viral, the visions went viral. It used to be one vision at a time, and
then they started coming after her in series of demented and warped Romeo
imageries. Most of the time, she would have seizures, hallucinations and
paroxysms. She had an extreme panic attack yesterday at Mr. Mercado’s class;
she felt a cold rush of blood through her veins and just an irrepressible
erotic stimulation. Romeo was in the same class; maybe that was the reason for
the attack. However, Romeo was not really able to make it to class that day but
his smell permeated every single cell in her body. The sight of his chair, of
his locker, everything made her quiver. The attack made her take one of the
medicines the doctor sent her.
Romeo
opted to skip class today; even if it was Jaime’s. He hardly slept that night;
visions of Jaime came defiling his thought process bit by bit. Most of the
time, he would have seizures, hallucinations and paroxysms. He managed to steal
some of his mom’s tranquilizers to make it through the day. Then he called
their family doctor for a confidential lab testing. All he should do is to wait
for the results and take the tranquilizers he stole from his mom.
The
results came with medicines that, according to his doctor, would help minimize
his sexual urges and would appease his sudden convulsions. Taking the medicines
for a while helped with the manic attacks but the nights remained the same. He
would still get random, erotic visits from Jaime in the middle of the night.
He
came to Jaime’s cubicle the next morning to supposedly profess his feelings
towards him. Coming out clean about it might lessen the manic attacks. As
expected, he and Jaime went through an extreme argument about it. Only this
time, Juliet was at the door, unintentionally listening to the conversation.
She could not breathe. She felt pathetic and stupid and subjugated. The very
thought that she was having this sexual or maybe romantic feelings for this
guy, who apparently, turned out to be attracted to the same sex, made her want
to punch a wall down.
She
felt betrayed. Tracing back to those nights when she thought she was in love
with this man and even used him as a masturbatory prop numerous times makes her
more furious than nauseous. She was mad. The mental illness destabilized her
academics, her social life, everything and now, the only man that she loved
will, unfortunately, never be able to reciprocate her feelings.
Learning
about Romeo’s sexuality made her take the medications religiously. She needed to
find a way to make her mind and heart forget. She tried getting back to her
usual routines before the incident; going to school, hanging out with friends,
clubbing on Friday nights.
Mr.
Mercado, out of desperation, found no other alternative but to threaten him of
expulsion if he would not stop his depraved actions. In spite of this, he still
refused to give it up and so Mr. Mercado made a compromise. He would not tell
his parents about his behaviour and he would never bother him again. Romeo knew
the consequences of facing the wrath of his parents so he conceded. It was
mortifying more than painful. Not fighting for his feelings and giving in to
threat made him feel weak and gutless.
Romeo
decided to take the medicines and undergo further lab tests. As of the moment,
this was the only thing that would prove him to be a brave man. The medicines
might take his mind off the circumstance. He would still see the weird girl
from his class around campus; less creepy than before. He would catch her
staring at him sometimes but she would look the other way.
It
has been three months since Juliet started with the medication. She would still
see Romeo around campus; she would stare at him once in a while but would
eventually look the other way when he would catch her. She is feeling all
better now. The medications make her a bit restless, though and they, little by
little, exterminate the old, pathetic Juliet she had been.
Sometimes,
Romeo would still come in the middle of the night, thieving the new Juliet of
little romantic moments but the new Juliet would resolutely refuse.
-end-
