Drunken Love, Que Son [jenna bush book club TXT] 📗

had written those words, but you must understand that I was under extreme pressure of the circumstances, not only physically but also spiritually, during that time. I was hopeless. I was convinced that once I left the homeland it would be forever, a one-way trip. But how wrong I was! You also said that despite the hurt, you still loved me, but you had no courage to look for me after you arrived in America, because your pride would not allow you to. Furthermore, you said the incidents that had happened to you while on the sea made you feel unworthy, and that--was another reason you decided against looking for me. Eve, I had my share of faults, I accept responsibility for what I said and did, and I am sorry to have hurt you. That said, I cannot help but thinking that you too are responsible for us not being together. I am sure you never had the intention to look for me after you landed in this country. While in the camp, you had a relationship with another man and you carried it with you over here. And once you were here you decided to live with your new boyfriend, then married him. It never crossed your mind to at least make an effort to inform me that you had arrived, let alone to look for me. Eve, you must share the blame for the death of our relationship. You could have looked for me after you came here. But you did not. And you chose to be with the one that, according to you, you never loved. What irony! What the fuck! Do you know I never stopped thinking about you all these years? Do you know I never forget you, that I always love you, and always long for the day we reunite? But you kept me in the dark all these years. Why was your pride too strong, so strong that even your love for me, as you professed, could not overcome? You meant to say that if I had not hurt you back then you would have looked for me? Well, convince me! As for the other reason--that you did not look for me because you felt unworthy due to the terrible things that had happened to you during the sea voyage--I can only say that it should not have been the reason that prevented you from looking for me. Why? Because what had happened to you, terrible as it was, was not your fault! It was a disaster that befell you as it did hundreds of others. If I had known about what had happened to you, I would have loved you more, yes, much more, to make up for your pain. You said you felt unworthy of me, but what about love? I don’t care if you were or were not worthy, because I love you unconditionally. No, I don’t think that was a legit reason that stopped you from looking for me. It was something else. Was it because you were heavily involved in your new relationship, so involved that it made you forget me? No, Eve, it was your fault that we did not consummate our love. Do you know how disappointed I am? I might even say that you have betrayed me. But all is too late now. Our love did not have a happy ending. I know my accusation does not do you or me any good now but the disappointment will stay on my mind and in my heart for the rest of my life--as will my love for you. All I have now is memories of you, of our love, that I carry with me everyday, and that is it. But I feel comforted knowing that I still love you, and will do until I die--and beyond. This life is wasted.

 

You wrote that every time you sat down at the computer to write to me, you cried. I don’t want to see you cry. I have made you cry for so many years I don’t want to see you cry anymore because of me. What did I do? Did I hurt you? Or is it the love, the unrequited love, and the longing unfulfilled that is hurting you and making you cry? You know, I am dying myself. I love you so much I think I could go crazy thinking that we may not have a chance to see each other again. What are you doing to me? What am I doing to you? When I think about the life and how it hurts lovers, how it separate lovers, how it exiles lovers, how it makes lovers cry, I hate the life! Eve, I want you to go to bed tonight and don’t think about me and please sleep and I will see you in your dream and in your dream we will be together, we will kiss and hug and we will make love and we will never separate again. Sleep, and I will be with you in your dream.”

 

Shakespeare then steps out of Adam’s head and imagines the situation the lovesick man was in:

 

Since the feeling came back, Adam felt as if he was rejuvenated. He was in love again, and the feeling was extraordinarily wonderful even if painful. Painful because Eve, his love, his obsession, was still an abstraction, a fantasy. She was three thousand miles away. And all he had were the words in the emails. He had never thought he would feel this way again, he felt as if he was meeting Eve for the first time, and the feeling was as powerful as it had been back then, when they were both seventeen and madly in love with each other. He was on a powerful mind-trip. He had started to listen again to the music of Phuong Thanh whose lyrics reminded him terribly of her and their unrequited love. And the more he was attracted to the fantasy of Eve, the more the music killed him. Every word that Phuong Thanh sang hit him in the heart and bled it. He listened to the songs on the subway, on the streets, at home, in the van--everywhere--and hallucinated about Eve.

 

And he drank more, much more than usual. Not hard liquor, but red wine. In the evenings, he would go outside, bought a bottle of wine and sat in his van and drank it and listened to Phuong Thanh. And as the alcohol took effect, thoughts about Eve became alive in his mind and he felt that the love became even more intense during those moments when love, wine, and Phuong Thanh came together in a potent mix of pain and bliss. The earth could fall off its orbit and Adam wouldn’t be aware.

 

By the end of January, 2005, Jane left for her vacation. Adam was home by himself. And the first night Jane was away, Adam picked up the phone and called Eve. It was a Saturday night. They had been exchanging emails for five months; and tonight, Adam decided to take the affair one step further: he was going to hear her voice.

 

Shakespeare feels that he has reached a critical point in the story and he thinks he had better let Adam speak for himself. So again he imagines what was going on inside the mind of Adam, his inner monologue:

 

"I’ve decided to call you. You’ve given me your cell number. We have been writing for so long, and now we must talk, a big step forward, and I wanted to have the courage. So I bought a bottle of wine and sat down and poured a glass of wine and then picked up the phone and dialed your number. I had told myself that I must never talk with you while drunk, that was why I called you when I was not drunk yet, only when I was having my first glass of wine and my mind was still clear, not after I was drunk like a pig. You answered the phone with a strange accent, but I am not surprised, because I had anticipated that. I remember the last time I talked to you was in 1992, and I was shocked to hear your voice: you had a strange southern accent, something perhaps you acquired while living among the southern people all those years in Ca Mau. I had to admit that when I was talking to you that time I had had 12 beers. On that occasion I remembered you asked me about my current girlfriend and you suggested that I dump her. But I did not dump her. In fact, she is now my "wife," even though it is such a painful relationship. That time I also said I still loved you and wanted to be with you but you said you now had two small children and both parents to take care of and you would not pass on that responsibility to me. But anyway, this time you immediately recognized my voice and said that the way I talked and my accent had not changed at all despite living in America all these years.

 

Then as we continued to talk, clumsy at first because we had not had a conversation for 12 years and we were caught off guard. But as we talked, I continued to pour wine into my glass and I drank fast; and only after fifteen minutes with you on the phone, I finished the whole damn 750ml bottle of red Yellow Tail. I started to get drunk and my voice became increasingly boozy and my mouth started to get loose. And as the drunkenness upped its intensity, I began to get carried away by the conversation. I told you about my undying love for you, about how for the last 27 years there was not a day that I did not think of you, that I still loved you like I loved you when we first met, that my love for you would never die. Because I was so damn drunk, I only heard what my mouth and my heart were screaming and I did not listen much to you, but I was not too concerned about that because I knew you still loved me but you just did not say it straight out because you were afraid. I really spilled my guts out to you. And I told you that I wanted to go to San Jose to see you--and you only. And you said yes, but you have to tell husband because you said you and he are very open and straightforward with each other. You said that your husband is an understanding man, and would have no problem letting you to see an "old friend," even if that old friend is really a lover resurrected from the dead and this lover is bent on making love with you if he sees you again--to make up for what we have missed for the last twenty seven years. Perhaps your husband is a sucker?

 

For me, this is no longer a sickness. It has turned into madness. I am standing on the edge of insanity. All because of you. Of this crazy love for you. Of the terrible longing for you. I said to you last night that when I go look for you in your town I want to see you alone, only you. I don’t want to see your family or anyone else, I only want to see you. I said I will rent a motel room and contact you and you will come to me. And you said yes, you are willing. Now, I said all that while I was delirious with love and the thirst to see you. But this morning on waking up from the delirium, I realized that I was wrong, that I had lost my reason when I said those things to you. Rationality tells me I must not see you. It is dangerous. I