Listening to: First Class by Jack Harlow
The rain yesterday. Absolutely torrential. ‘Deluge’ is a better word. And plural too. Was it 6 times it rained yesterday? 7? 7 Deluges. Plus, ultra windy. New season, new storm name. This time it’s Agaton. Check Twitter with the hashtag #AgatonPH.
We’ve had no internet for two days. And eventually, a power outage on the early evening hours. Up until Taraweeh. We couldn’t go to the mosque and so all the people in the house congregated with our driver as the Imam. I had to use a chair due to my gout attack. Swollen knees, swollen left foot.
Shawn Mendes Dreamin’ 🥰❤️~
At the beach. Think: The Bahamas (Alex & Solange Dimitrios’s Residence, Casino Royale) meets The Talented Mr. Ripley Beach Scenes meets Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach. Sparse Coconut trees growing diagonally due to the everlasting beach wind. The sea is an entrancing turquoise, fulfilling to the eyes. Only passing clouds deign to provide you shade.
Shawn Mendes and I are floating in the water. He’s wearing his gold necklace with the emerald pendant and black Capri pants. Upper body, bare, Chest, sculpted. Body, a combination of svelte and buff that only he can achieve. His hair is perfectly wavy as always.
Shawn’s hands are stretched and swirling to keep us afloat. And I’m locked behind him, floating like I’m in bed lying on my tummy. My left arm is coiled from his left shoulder, across his collarbones with my hand both hooked and caressing his right armpit.
He isn’t tickled. He’s deep in discussion, almost an argument, but only as far as his Canadian kindness would permit, with a young man my friend and I once met when we spent the night drinking at Fred’s Revolucion, Cubao X.
The young man is brown, like myself, both in ethnicity and from staying under the sun too long. He’s wearing a loose Cowboy, denim jacket, loose denim shorts. He’s seated at the back of a yacht, on the expendable platform stern with his feet submerged in the water. He says nothing to Shawn Mendes. Merely looking at him, merely half-listening. Just a brown, beautiful boy whose shoulder-length hair is dancing with the wind, feet in the water, not responding to anything Shawn has to say.
Who wears denim to a beach? At the back of a yacht on a heavenly Mediterranean sea? All the people in this dream would flawlessly fit in The Talented Mr. Ripley beach scene except for him with his silly denim outfit. Shawn must be the gorgeous Dickie, the other young man, Marge. I, Mr. Ripley.
But I, sensing the discussion stretching too long, gripped Shawn’s armpit to signal “enough.” My chin gloriously in deep his collarbone. When he turned his head and we touched cheeks.
~
By the bungalows, Shawn says he’s going to get us drinks. I tell him I’d walk with him, as I have explored the wide beach more extensively than he. We reach a beautiful West Indies, Caribbean-designed house that’s bleached with sunlight and dense with bougainvillea. We reach the bar. It’s just us and drinks magically appear. Shawn is deciding whether we should keep in touch via Instagram or Twitter. Either is fine, I say. I only use my accounts to scroll and check other people.
We must have met at the beach. I must have approached him and we must have clicked. For me to have ended up with an arm wrapped around him, floating at sea, even in fantasy.
End of dream.