Once upon a time, in the golden days of antiquity, we ruled over fabled, far-flung fields of faggotry called mIRC.
With a /kick as our shield and a /ban as our sword, we maintained the peace and served homosexual happiness long before Cherry Coke, across vast channels upon channels of "a/s/l?" heathens as far as our servers could reach.
In this storied and mystical realm, my friend Miguel (first appearance here ) and his lover were one of the most celebrated couples : the Tristan and Isolde, the Arthur and Guinevere, the Merlin and Niviane of our time.
(It being the infancy of the internet and with no Twitter, Facebook, or Angry Birds to occupy our indolence, we had to take our amusements where we could get them.)
But like any good classical tale, tragedy would eventually befall this blissful union.
One black day, a shadow fell across the land, and the whole of mIRC itself seemed to have been shaken to its very foundations with this shocking news: my friend Miguel's lover was dead.
Teeth were gnashed and hair was torn, but there was no lamentation of women - perhaps because we were in fucking #gaymanila, where men were men and hymen were verboten.
At any rate, much wailing and weeping and running of the mascara ensued. However, the piteous inquiries into the wake and eventual funeral of our fallen hero were met with somber, polite responses that the family - alias the bereaved "spouse" aka my friend Miguel - wished to maintain their privacy at that difficult time.
Memorials were held, tributes were given, toasts were made.
And life, eventually, went on.
.
.
.
.
.
And apparently, so did my friend Miguel's deceased paramour. At first there were but wind-carried whispers in the woods. Then, rumblings of rumors spoke of the dearly departed having been spotted in some howling hinterland or other. Had the hero become a restless wraith? A reproachful spectre? An accursed day spa customer wrapped in herbal bindings mistaken for a malevolent mummy?
Heresy! Malice! The Black Arts!
These initial, unwarranted blasphemies were naturally met by the good, upstanding citizenry with unhushed indignation, righteous anger, and hand-wringing horror: how ghoulish, how insensitive, how cold-hearted, indeed, to dishonor the memory of the valiant dead in so callous a manner.
And yet...
More and more sightings occurred, as surely as the sun rose in the east and set in its westerly rest. The stories not only persisted; they grew...and grew...and grew. And like an outbreak of plague, fear, panic and confusion soon set in among the populace. Chaos mounted and anarchy rose, threatening to cleave the realm in two, betwixt the pious believers ("The good man is dead; please let him rest in peace!") and the vociferous unbelievers ("I tell you the goddamn fucker's alive!")
In the service of truth and for the sake of the increasingly-agitated denizens of mIRC, we turned to the "widow" aka my friend Miguel. Pray, we beseeched, put an end to these gruesome speculations and speak! Once and for all say that he is no more, that his memory be consecrated and the forked tongues of the barbarous hordes be silenced forever.
Eventually, after impassioned entreaties gave way to the more efficient methods of threats and a few well-aimed smacks around the head, the truth arose like Excalibur from the lake.
Not only was the "dead" scoundrel alive: he and his erstwhile consort ( aka my friend Miguel) had, in a final conjugal act of Shakespearian complicity, actually orchestrated his "death."
Why, you ask? Why this Great Lie? Why this Gandalfian conjuring of cheap tricks?
Why, Lord, why?!?!
The wool was pulled and we were made a ship of fools because the star-crossed lovers felt that having us believe one of them had gone on to the Great Internet Relay Chatroom In The Sky was, to them, a much more preferable alternative to having everyone know the banal truth: that Romeo and Julio had broken up and that their perfect union had been a sham for quite sometime already.
And so, once more, teeth were gnashed, hair was torn, and yet again, there was no lamentation from women. A few lipstick lesbians hither and thither, though, tittered with twee glee upon learning of this terrible tale of twisted lies and tangled deceit: a Rapunzel's skein woven by our very own paragons of virtue and propriety.
'Tis a story worthy of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, had he set pen to paper in the service of farce instead of magical realism.
And what is the point of the retelling of this true and ancient tale, I hear you, dear reader, say?
Why, nay, there is no point to be made.
No point at all.
Save that of fables and foibles, and how one intertwines with the other.
Or to paraphrase Sir Walter Scott:
"Oh what wondrous webs we weave.
When first we learn how to deceive."
