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Epilogue
“Odi et amo!” I yelled out in my drunken voice, to the stars
that stared at me from above. “Quare id faciam, facasse
requirint? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior!”
I paused, so I might take another gulp of alcohol down my
system. “I hate and I love!” I said to Rick, as I fell drunkenly
on my butt, crashing down on the grass-covered ground. “How is
this possible, perhaps you ask?... I don’t know, but I feel the
fever devour me and I’m tortured!”
“Give me that!” Rick yelled, as he stole the beer can away from
me. “You’ve had enough, Tommy boy!” He drank from the can after
he said that, finishing the rest of my beer. “No more beer for
you, Tom!”
“It doesn’t matter!” I yelled at him as I lied on the green
grass, my eyes staring mindlessly toward the skies. “Oh, weep,
Cupids and Venuses, and however there are of charming lovers
under the star-vigilant skies...”
It was May 21, 1999 now. I had just completed and finished my
Latin AP exam that morning, which may explain why my mind was
still filled with verses of miserable Catullus and exiled Ovid.
I had finished The Woman Warrior after Elly left, reading
it once again as a drug to keep her memories away from my mind.
The book wasn’t that good, losing my interest after the
narrator’s crazy aunt was locked in the crazy people’s house. I
don’t know, maybe it wasn’t the book’s fault, maybe it was my
own fault, distracted by my sadness and grief.
It was a good thing that the Latin AP was near, for then it gave
me another reason to read the poetries besides the reason of
replacing it from The Woman Warrior as my new
mind-numbing drug. I don’t know, but the events with Elly made
me feel closer to the poets, who were also away from their true
love. Catullus from his Lesbia, Ovid from his Corinna. It made
me understand their poems better, made me able to remember their
pain in words.
I was once again at Rick’s house, ever since that long ago
midnight, drinking myself to my own abyss. “You’re right, Rick.”
I yelled at him, still lying down on the semi-soft grass. “No
more beer for me! For they ease none of your worries and pains.
Nothing more but the liquids of a drunken bread.”
“Aw, shut up, Tom. You’re drunk!”
“Pfft, bullshit, Rick.” A mindless smile spread over my face.
“I’m still not drunker than the drunken bread.” I then looked at
him, who was still drinking the golden liquids of the drunken
bread. “Why doesn’t love ever come out right, Rick? Can you tell
me why?”
Rick stared at me thoughtfully for a while, before he answered.
“Because love is like a fairy tales, we always want it to end in
a happy ending, but it often comes out as a sad one. Love is
uncertain, my friend, a game that has no certain end.”
My mouth was hanging open after he said that, maybe because I
was as drunk as Bacchus himself. I was impressed by such deep
words, a phrase of eternal beauty. “Oh, city which were able to
hold such great a poet, however small you are, I call thee
great.” I smiled. “Beautiful, Rick... I never knew you could
write such beautiful verses...”
“I didn’t.” He interrupted, smiling as he gulped down more
alcohol. “You did, Tom, in your Fairy Tales...”
I looked in shock at him, the revelation surprising my drunken
self. “I... I did?”
“Hmm-mm.” He nodded. “Epilogue of the Fairy Tales novel,
narrated by Sho Fujira himself...”
I was still surprised. How ironic, a phrase that I had written a
few months ago, has now been used to answer a question that I
had just uttered. “Me and Stephanie got back together, Tom.” He
looked at me, happiness dancing in his drunken eyes. “Did you
know that?”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t... What happened?”
“I had broken off with her, because some college friends of mine
told me that it was uncool to have a high-school girlfriend, you
know.” He gulped down more alcohol. “That was why I decided to
break off with her through a phone call, ‘cause she may see
right through me if I told her in person, you know?”
I just nodded, my thoughts still fogging my useless mind. “I
then realized that they weren’t real friends, you know?” Rick
continued, his eyes looking up at the star-filled skies. “Real
friends wouldn’t ask you to change your behavior, you know? So I
thought about it, and realized how stupid it was.” He threw the
empty beer can away, and lied on the grass also, feeling the
blades caress his messy hair. “I called Stephanie yesterday
night, and apologized for my stupidness, and asked her to be
mine once again, ‘cause her beautiful face still haunted my
mind, you know?
“She came to my work today.” Rick continued, in that same dreamy
tone. “And with a kiss we sealed forever our joining fates...”
“I’m glad.” I said, an eye looking at him. “She was slowly
falling apart to oblivion without you, ya know?”
He nodded, looking at me with a confident smile. “Thanks, Tom.
Thanks for being such a great friend, both to Stephanie and to
me...”
“Gee-wee.” I chuckled, looking up toward the endless dark sky
once again. “I feel honored. Don’t I get a medal or something
for this?”
“Nope. But you do get the reward of a knuckle sandwich for it.”
He punched me playfully on my arms. I laughed and punched him
back, exchanging punches for a while before our bodies gave up
in exhaustion and pain. It didn’t matter, our laughter filled
the silent night.
We stared at the skies silently after that, each wondering about
our own thoughts. “I’m giving up writing, Rick.” I announced
after a while, the alcohol-induced drowsiness gone by then. “I’m
not going to write anymore.”
He looked at me, concern in his eyes. “Why?”
“Because I’m no good at it, Rick. I’ve gotta quit while I’m
ahead, you know?”
“You’re not a bad writer...”
“Yes, I am, Rick. I’m unable to write nothing good unless it’s
about my own dreams and fantasies, my own stories are nothing
but shit... I suck at writing, Rick. I’m just no good at it...”
“Yeah, but that’s no reason to quit! If you suck at it, then
you’ve got to keep trying till you finally become good at it!”
“This is not football, Rick. You can’t just practice at it day
by day, and expect it to become better after each practice.” I
sat up, lying down didn’t feel comfortable no more. “Writing
skills is something that you are born with, just like the
painting skills of an artist, or the singing voices of a
performer. It is something that only gifted ones receive from
God, either you have it, or you don’t.”
“That’s bullshit, Tom, and you know it! Whatever happened to the
Tom I knew, the Tom that would never give up, no matter how
badly he was beaten to the ground...”
“That Tom matured, Rick...”
“Writers ain’t supposed to mature!” He yelled at me angrily,
standing up abruptly, grabbing my T-shirt ferociously. “You told
me that yourself! Writers ain’t supposed to mature, because then
they will lose the daydreams and fantasies that fuels their
imagination, and that’s where their stories come from. You told
me that yourself, Tom! Whatever happened to that philosophy of
yours!”
I looked at him calmly, not frightened by his screams, as if
they were from a dream so far away. “It disappeared as I saw the
reality of the world, Rick, along with my dreams and
fantasies...”
“That’s bull! There is something that’s making you want to quit,
a reason!” He looked at me crazily. “It’s school, isn’t it? Are
you getting a bad grade in Creative Writing class? Is that the
reason why you’re quitting?”
“No, Rick, I...”
“Don’t trust the grades that schools give you, Tom, trust
yourself!” He shook me violently, probably induced by the
alcohol in his body. “School is nothing but a shithole that
society created, so that parents can rid of their kids for a
couple of hours. Teachers are nothing but baby-sitters, they
give out grades based on preference. I’ve never learned anything
useful in school, the real education starts in colleges, not in
High School!”
“No, it’s not school, Rick!” I yelled back, agitated by his
cries. “It is my own decision, and nobody elses. I promised that
I would quit once I’ve run out of story ideas, and that is
what's happening right now, Rick. That is my only reason to quit
writing...”
“That’s bullshit also, Tom. How about that new one you were
writing... Time Racers!”
“That’s just something I wrote without thinking for my
unassignment and genre paper, I have no intentions to continue
its story...”
“You wrote without thinking, Tom! That proves that you have the
skills to be a writer, Tom. You need skills in order to write
without thinking!”
“That doesn’t change anything, Rick. I’m no writer, and I’m sick
of pretending being one!”
“But you never pretended to be one, Tom! You’ve always loved
writing!”
“And how would you know, Rick? I’m sure I know about myself
better than you...”
“You can’t quit now, Tom. Writers die if they don’t write,
because their stories are what keeps them alive. That’s why
writers and artists are so special in the world, Tom, because
they’ll die if they don’t write or paint. Don’t you see, Tom? If
you don’t write, then you’ll die... If not physically, then
mentally, decaying inside of you...”
I looked at him, nothing reflected in my eyes. “Maybe that’s
what I want, Rick... To die inside, to desist to exist...”
He threw me down on the ground, disgust displayed on his face.
“You’re not Tom... The Tom I knew would never quit, he would
never give up...”
“That Tom is dead, Rick.” I replied in a low voice. “Gone far
away...”
“Well, then I won’t rest till I find him...”
I looked at him, sighing in exhaustion. “Life is divided into
three parts, Rick. The beginning, our birth till we reach
adulthood; the middle, when we finally conquer the problems of
our adulthood; and the end, the space between the middle and our
death. This is how my beginning ends, Rick. These are the
decisions I decide to end with... Maybe they’ll change in the
next part, the middle, and maybe they won’t...”
“Yeah? What’s your point?”
“Maybe my middle will have a happier ending than this one, maybe
then I will follow my dreams and become a famous writer. But in
order to reach there, we need patience, for it will not reveal
itself till we wait for the middle to end...”
“And how long will that be?”
I shrugged. “Maybe till our forties or fifties.”
“That’s too long!”
“That’s why we must develop the patience, and endure.” I slowly
got up, tired of lying down once again. “You told me that a real
friend would never try to change his buddy. You’re my real
friend, Rick, don’t make me change unless I want to.”
He looked at me with doubt in his eyes at first, before he gave
in. “All right, Tom.” He smiled. “We’ll wait till we see what
your middle holds.”
I nodded, a smile also on my face. That was when I realized that
the horizon skies were no longer black, but orange now with the
arriving rays of a new day. I quickly looked at it, the sun
almost out of its slumber. Rick looked at it also, following my
stare. “What time is it?” I asked. “It’s way too early for the
sun to be out yet.”
“Summer’s here, Tommy boy.” Rick replied, unimpressed by the
early dawn. “Sun comes to work earlier in the Summer days.”
I nodded, watching it in my brown eyes. “Hello, dawn of a new
life...” I said, mostly to myself. “Guide me into a brand-new
day, as a Phoenix reborn from the ashes...”
---Written
by Liang-Tang Lin |
