Symptoms

I have been learning how to blade at East Coast. Mostly, I go Sundays with her. She is a patient teacher, and can do stunts like a figure-skater. We skate from one end to the other, then back. It doesn't take much to relieve my stress. All I need in this cloistered city is a simple stretch of sand, the approximation of water, the company of a good friend.

Sometimes I go with him. He too is patient, which is supposedly a Taurus thing they both share, although they have never met. There are other similarities: both comfortable in their own skin, practical, yet with a vague notion of discontent. The difference is that she is always a call away, and I have not seen him in over a month.

I forgot to mention that I was here with her on Christmas Day. As we were heading home there was a thunderstorm so powerful that we mistakenly turned onto a path without any shelter in sight. We took off our blades, and trudged barefoot in the flowing water.

We were thoroughly soaked, laughing out loud. My handphone was destroyed, I lost his number, and later I had to hang dollar bills out to dry. But I was transfixed by how everything was almost perfect. During the next few days I developed a strange rash on my legs that whatever I did, just would not go away.