My Lips are Sealed

Jump to Comments

I was looking at my header photo just now and I remembered things.

It was in Dave’s old classroom, on the second floor, in that three story unit he rented along Timog Avenue in Quezon City. It was icky. That thing had been sitting in there since who knows when. When we came into the room the silicon mouthpiece was resting on the floor. (my mother convinced me that florr germs do exist and that they are the grossest things) After a short lecture, he asked me to stand up and check the tank set-up in front of me. He made me stick that dirty silicon in my mouth. It was weird and I felt the dust particles cling to my lips as I wrapped them around the strange contraption. When my lips were sealed around it, I sucked. For the first time I breathed air from a SCUBA tank.

It was in the four foot deep end of the Celebrity Sports Plaza swimming pool. It was summer, and there were dozens of kids and even more adults in the pool. We were in the water, all geared up sans the wetsuit. Dave asked us to put the regulator in our mouth. I remember being icked by the thought of pool water entering my mouth because I knew people peed in the pool all the time. I put the silicon in my mouth just the same. I tasted the heavily chlorinated water. I felt like spitting everything out. But Dave told us to breathe slowly. And I did. He asked us to kneel down and feel how it was like to actually breathe from the tank underwater. I did. I was horrified to find hair and translucent particles of yellow-green-whitish things suspended in the water. The magic of breathing underwater escaped me as my completely icked self struggled to stay put. But I was breathing underwater like a fish.

***

Nobody talks underwater. It’s not entirely impossible but the thing you need to be able to do that is expensive and not really practical. We do have slates for the very important stuff, but sign language is good. Besides, the one thing you always hear is your breathing. And when you’re as comfortable as I am, you can tell you’re buddy’s near by the sound of his or her breathing. I like the fact that nobody really talks underwater. Sometimes we scream or yell some incoherent thing into the regulator when we see something magnificent. Like a whale-shark or marble ray or shark..well, pretty much anything excites us.

***

When the Mister asked me to marry him, he did it underwater. He wrote it on a slate, and I wrote my reply on the same slate. We kissed with lips tightly sealed lest the saltwater gets in. I was as quiet inside, as the waters outside.

***

People tell me all kinds of things. Everyone thinks I can keep their secret. I don’t disagree. But sometimes some of the things they tell me are too much to bear. Sometimes I wonder what makes them feel that way. But I never say anything. I think the only secrets I have trouble keeping these days are mine. Otherwise, my lips are sealed.

2 Comments

Filed under ...