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There are some movies you know of, and you resist to watch it, simply because watching it will bring back some memories or reopen nearly healed wound. Last night, I decided to watch Eternal Summers after hearing it will be shown in Singapore. The first time I watched its first raw trailer was in 29 October when Sham told me about it. That was about two weeks before the breakup.

I went on to write about some feelings after the trailer. Part of it was the realisation on my part that we were on our way on to different directions. Two perpendicular lines that have crossed each other path but obviously will not meet at the same point again. The words were not explicit but I knew he understood it. That blog is prelude to everything that happened. Things that should have happened much earlier too but like my close friend always said, all people like to swim in De Nile. Or denial. That helps us to cope with things around us or so that we do not have to deal with it. We probably know each other ten years too earlier.

The other part is actually hurt me alot more. I was mourning the dying phase of the innocent boy inside me. All these days, despite some of the most difficult part in my life journey, the child remained very pure and believed all the good things in this world. The belief in love and freedom. The courage to love what he want even when not reciprocated. That boy left me briefly a few years ago when I let myself do things I never quite understand today. In last October, the trailer woke me up again to make me realised that the boy is leaving again, only for a different reason.

In the cinema filled with gay men last night, I can sense their disappointment at the end of the movie. Most people wanted a different ending, a clearer one. It was an open one. But if you understand one of the last words said, you know the love is more one sided. People denied it, preferred a clearer yes or no. The man is not gay, straight or bi but someone saw the line blurred.

The gays have resisted the social norm imposed by the straights, some of them spent their entire lifetime doing so. Yet when the gay communities got a little more defined, they started imposing their own model of homosexuality or bisexuality on themselves. Anything else than fall outside the model is unacceptable. Like Brokeback Mountain, gay must define it as a gay film and box up the emotions of the characters so that we can celebrate the love or feel the sorrow. Or at its worst, a benchmark that censorship are relaxing their control. When you look beyond that, it is really not hard to understand the Eternal Summers or Brokeback, are just about love.

The boy left me again in October because I have started to fall into the process of stereotyping things around me. Love was no longer about that special feeling for someone. It has changed into a ceremony of having someone there I called my partner, a working term so that I can figure out how I can talk to someone who come to me for help or a pretext to sex. We murdered the meaning of love.

Perhaps like what Shane in Eternal Summers said, when we grow up, everything started to change. And sometimes, we screw everything up. In the attempt to find a partner, we screw everything up. The ceremony of searching online profiles, intiating a few conversation, size the person up against our imagnative checklist. Things that we will not do as a child.