7/52 Summer Love

They would be empty most of the year and come to life during the Summer and Christmas Holidays. Summer houses are usually very large homes with at least six rooms and it is not unusual to have quite a few with a dozen or more large rooms to accommodate a clan of shrieking cousins and their guests.

I had a few favorites down by the road from where I lived and a few up on the different hills doting the city. I would either ride by on my horse or drive by as soon as school broke off for the summer and see if any of the houses would have come alive by then.

The Country Club usually signals the coming of summer as guests begin to arrive and fill the rooms, restaurants, and recreation areas. The bowling alley, pool and pingpong corners are the usual teen hangouts where one would pick up who’s in town and who’s throwing the next party, soiree or bonfire. In those days, there were no decent teen bars, clubs and dance halls and it was not unusual to have a few gatherings going on in the same night giving the opportunity to enter those ghostly summer houses by party hopping. By the time I left town to explore other cities I have practically enjoyed the hospitality of all the prominent homes in my hometown.

The city would come alive only during this two major holidays of the year. Parks would get filled with the latest models of cars and motorbikes, buses and jeepneys would spill out every imaginable kind of local and international blend of the human specie. The city would be transformed into a lowland enclave with visitors outnumbering the locals.

Aside from the regular holiday visitors that kept summer homes or membership at the club, there would be new faces that would stand out from the familiar crowd and be an object of curiosity. For these new comers, the cliche “when did you arrive?” seldom applied but the rather warm and coy “is this your first time here?” would surely start a conversation and strike an acquaintance as the chances of having a mutual friend in the vicinity is inevitable. It would be followed by the usual where do you stay..where do you study…do you know…what are you doing tonight string of questions. This starts off a sequence of daily visits, city tours and weekly parties that would introduce everyone to everyone. By the middle of summer (which is quite late actually), everyone would be more than familiar enough with each other and pairs rather than groups would begin to dominate the social scene as the infamous Baguio fever would strike.

While lowlanders would fill the upland city, there would be windows where we in turn would escape and get away from the maddening crowd. The family would head off to the beach where much like the summer mountain city, the beachfront was dotted with private homes that would fill up with very much the same composition of relatives and friends. A similar routine of bonfires and soirees brought people together and unlike the city bug that would take weeks to sink in, the beach bug bit almost instantly. It must be the beachwear and almost bare nakedness that made pairing more conducive.

I had a few of my own summer loves, from neighbors to family friends, acquaintances at the country club and the unavoidable kissing cousins to beach flings. By college they would have come from cross enrollees that took summer classes as an excuse to be away from home or maybe really up to get out of the lowland summer heat and have a breath of cool mountain air all the while getting bit by the love bug. Unable to shake of the virus, a few would extend their stay by enrolling for the following year and the next.

Towards the end of summer, separation anxiety starts to sink in and an air of melancholy fills the air as “When are you leaving” becomes the byword. There are no goodbyes and hasta la vistas. “When are you coming back” is nothing but a dumb question surely to be met with “next summer if we don’t go abroad”. A sudden lifeless neighborhood and community of empty houses and quiet recreation halls simply signals the end of a flurry of events that will fill the mind for a few weeks until the local routine takes its place. I find myself bowling and swimming in the pool alone with echoes of the recent summer chaos still bouncing between my ears. A few attempts to write love letters in hand crafted stationery ends up in the trash knowing that she (they) will be back next summer.

Every summer seems to make me a different person. The diverse experiences brings about a new worldview that binds me to new relationships but apparently isolates me from ones that I’ve outgrown. As I evolve and make friends with new minds, I outgrow the familiar and become a stranger to it. There are times when I savor the sweetness of the innocent past and yet surrendering to its memory, knowing that sweeter memories are still in the making.

I may not have lost my virginity in any of those summers but I definitely lost my innocence with each passing season.