Seventeen

Whenever Ang Tigbuhat, now is in his late 50s, has any doubts at all about his life, he brings himself back to an earlier age. At 17  you always think this will all last till forever. The world is not dying. It is not even getting old.

But what does he know? He is only 17  and his days are empty and must be filled with everything that could possibly fill a day, television, movies, beach, hanging out, even a phone call that must be stretched as far as it will go.

But as the electric sound on the handset is not enough, he must turn on the radio. The Beatles would be playing something familiar within the general topic of love. “I want to hold your hand”, the radio goes. And though he is only holding a telephone, that is enough. In his young mind the beautiful person at the other end of the line is holding the telephone also. There is only this inconsequential, symbolic, piece of plastic between them. You can miss a lot of things at seventeen.

But it is okay. A bit more time is required before he will see the distinction between things as they seem and things as they truly are. And what is to be gained by thinking that it is only a phone call? What he holds in his hand is only a contraption, so much electronics; the voice he hears, only sound reproduction, illusion? And how can he tell that even the Beatles will go away, disappear from the airwaves for awhile before they are rediscovered? And all by the time, they will have grown old or passed away?

You cannot foretell the future at 17, nor do you even want to. There is only the day in front of you and it is only slowly forming in units of small accidents. You did not think of calling today? And yet you did. And how did you know the fatal consequence of this call would be a date to see a movie? And of course you are broke.

But Mommy is there. She will give you a small lecture about thinking for your future and being serious with school eventually to have a job, to raise kids and become successful; but the money will come. You know exactly how to convince her. You know that she loves you even if she must work so hard to get by.

In time, he will gather the memory of all this, how hard she worked, how little she got for it, and how she passed away smiling at what he had become. “I do not worry about you anymore.” Those were her parting words. It would be all he needed from her and he took them as a declaration of their mutual redemption. She might as well have said: You do not owe me anything for what I did. But those were not her words. And this day of parting would not be till much later. For now, there is only the movie and perhaps enough money for a burger and soft drinks.

The object of his desire is beautiful. They sit together at a burger joint talking about music, politics and the books they were reading. The conversion has small inflections of gossip, who was with who and what happened to whom, where. And then they laugh. And the laughter would carry all the way to the movie, which was where he finally took the risk to reach out, sliding his right hand smoothly to its target.

The hand did not protest. It was skin, warm and cold in spots, with just the slightest cold wetness over the soft pillows of its surface. It was rough and smooth in spots. It was smaller than his. And fragile when it held him back. It was all he ever imagined a hand to be. But he was only 17  and there would be many other hands from then on. But even so, this hand would become his reference. It would be the measure against which he would judge the quality of anything he ever held from then, other hands, pencil, hand-tools, guitar, brushes, hammer and carving knives, his saxophone, this keyboard, on and on; until he would be in his mid-fifties wondering: Has he done anything much and worth thinking about since he was 17?

And what indeed is the full measure of a single life? At seventeen he had only a few dreams. This would be his good fortune. At seventeen he was only discovering the world. In his late fifties he is discovering it still. The world is endless that way. But if he were asked: What more do you dream of? He would think this: To hold and be held this way, always, if not from time to time.