hi j, are you there?
i'm finally home after attending the my chemical romance concert in manila—bulacan, rather. it's been thirteen years since i first started listening to them in seventh grade; a good age to get into them, i think. i went with carmen. gabby was supposed to come, too, but had a change of plans and had to sell her ticket to her coworker. the crowd was electric and loud, everyone yelling and singing.
for the first two songs, i sat glued to the chair on row 104, seat 666, and thought of you, j.
were you in the crowd? you nudged me into this world and i feel like i barely left. did you? are you in the pit, or in the nosebleeds, or somewhere in between? they start playing welcome to the black parade and i'm screaming the lyrics, my voice already hoarse despite it not even being halfway through the concert. i'm taken back to seventh grade, both of us horsing around school. for the first time in my life, i lied to my parents about how we needed to do a project just so i could stay over at your place. that day, i think we nearly got run over by a jeepney. we laughed about it.
the other evening, i found a picture we'd taken in a photobooth. i can't remember from when. maybe on that day we nearly got run over, or one of those many other times i hung out at your place and we ventured into the mall. my mom kept it. i'd forgotten about it. we stopped being friends in eighth grade, a natural course after we moved up a year and our classmates changed. no hard feelings.
i still think about that stupid tumblr post. no, but seriously imagine it. i'm sure i sent you that, j. it had everything we loved at thirteen: my chemical romance, panic! at the disco, and fall out boy. dan and phil, too, for me, who'd been a phan since the year before.
i thought i'd kill myself at eighteen.
i'm eight years past that, now twenty-six, watching mcr for the first—and hopefully not the last—time. i wonder if you were in that crowd, j. we don't talk anymore and i've not heard of you since we graduated high school, but i can't help but wonder if you were there, watching in awe as the gerard way talked about werewolves and sang our favourite songs. i wonder if you watched as frank iero, who, if my memory serves me right, you'd always liked, said something silly into the mic. and if you weren't—if you'd grown out of this phase, i wonder if you'd heard of their arrival and thought of our friendship, that distant little thing we had built over a school year, with a little bit of nostalgia as i have done.
carmen and i's voices grew hoarse and we relied on fisherman's friends to soothe our throats. we judged the people who didn't stand or dance, or even move just a bit, whose cameras faced them instead of the stage. we judged the people who filmed nearly the whole set, then said we fucked with the three guys in front of us who headbanged and jammed out, the only people in our section who felt alive. we screamed as songs started and ended, then laughed at gerard's little anecdotes. i jokingly asked my friends if they think gerard saw me all the way up in row 104 and fell in love with me (my friends oblige and say yes, even though we know he's married with a kid. i allow myself this joke because i've had a crush on him since i was a teenager). i leave the arena so full of life, suddenly grateful i didn't kill myself at thirteen or eighteen. on the way home, carmen and i peruse the #mcrphilippines tag on twitter and rewatch our crappy concert videos. my hands are shaky and i end up filming the ceiling sometimes, someone's head at others. we crash out, the post concert depression already hitting us before our car had even left the concert grounds.
j, if you were out there, i hope you had as much fun as i did. we don't talk anymore, but i think i owe this part of my life to you.