Gustavo, now in his 30s and working a corporate job, looks back on his Manila college days filled with basketball, cheap gin, cigarettes, and unforgettable friendships.
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| Once a backdrop to basketball games, cheap gin, and carefree laughter, the College of Fine Arts now lives on in Gustavo’s memories of youth. |
A hot, unrelenting sun bore down on the cracked pavement of the College of Fine Arts parking lot. Yet a cool breeze, almost out of place in the Manila heat, drifted through the trees, carrying with it the chatter of birds and the restless whisper of leaves. The scene was tranquil—until Gustavo shattered it.
“HELL YEAH!”
The cheer tore through the air like a gunshot. A rotund student in a blue polo and Crocs, Gustavo threw his arms skyward after sinking a basket on a makeshift hoop. His victory dance was as graceless as it was excessive, hips thrusting into the wind, voice echoing with triumph.
“WHO’S YOUR DADDY, BABY? EAT IT! LOVE IT! GET USED TO IT!”
The laughter of onlookers swelled around him, but his teammate Ren cut through with a dry reminder: “That was your first make in six shots, fatass. We’re still down ten-four.”
The exuberance faltered, but only briefly. The game carried on, students running, shouting, tripping across uneven asphalt. Then came Dino—small, wiry, quick as a knife—who caught the ball at the top of the key. One jab step, one crossover, one effortless burst past Gustavo’s lumbering defense. The layup rolled off his fingers and kissed the glass.
“That’s game!” Dino shouted, arms raised as his team rejoiced.
Gustavo, face flushed, declared the loss invalid. “Cheaters! They’re on PEDs! I demand a recount!” he wailed, as if the asphalt court were a grand arena. But the protest was met only with laughter.
As the sun bent low, more students trickled into the lot, some fresh from class, others already resigned to skipping the next. The basketball gave way to something else—something truer to their youth.
“Gustavo! Gin’s here!”
At the call, the players abandoned the court. Danielle, petite and sprightly, and Jai, with his long hair and easy calm, arrived bearing their offering: bottles of Gin Kapitan, water from the college fountain, and Winnsboro Cigarettes—the day’s holy trinity.
Soon, benches filled with familiar faces. Smoke drifted lazily into the violet dusk as the bottle made its rounds. Gustavo, ever the jester, broke the circle, thrusting the gin and water toward each newcomer with mock seriousness. “Oh, you look tired! Drink your vitamins!”
Professors passed with studied indifference, and the custodians—who had seen it all before—merely shook their heads. It was as if the parking lot itself tolerated them, the cracked concrete becoming a stage for their rituals of laughter, intoxication, and defiance.
Night drew its veil. Streetlights flickered on, bathing the group in pale yellow. Bong, the head custodian, appeared with his flashlight, sweeping the beams across their bottles.
“Get outta here. We’re closing up the gates,” he said.
“You guys drank again?”
“No way,” Dino grinned, his breath betraying him.
The group rose, still giggling, still stumbling, collecting what remained of their gin. But the night had another chapter yet.
“Where to?” Dino asked.
“Sarah’s!” the chorus replied, naming the legendary bar along CP Garcia Avenue.
And so they walked, refusing jeepneys, staggering together like a ragtag army. Cars honked past, their headlights illuminating faces slick with sweat and laughter.
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| A blurred road lit by passing cars, symbolizing fading college memories and the bright moments of youth revisited on the way to a college watering hole in Manila |
“Our livers will kill us, man,” Gustavo groaned.
“When we’re old, we’ll all be in an ICU with gin in our dextrose!” Franz joked, and the group howled.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
A jeepney horn.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Stop honking!” Gustavo snapped, turning to face it. But the jeepney dissolved into blackness, the laughter collapsing into silence.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
An alarm.
Gustavo blinked into the light of morning. The parking lot was gone, the cigarettes extinguished, the gin vanished. In their place: a cellphone buzzing on the nightstand, his glasses waiting, a white pill of Febuxostat for the gout gnawing at his joints.
He swallowed the pill, made his bitter coffee, and lit a cigarette in the dim hush of his garage. His phone, always demanding, lit up with messages.
“Just let me know if you get lost,” Franz had written.
“I won’t bring my car. I’ll be with Dino,” Ren added.
“Will Jai or Danielle be there? Haven’t seen them in years,” said Dino.
It was all for Franz’s daughter’s birthday party. A reunion, years in the making. Names from another life now surfaced on the glow of his screen.
Gustavo exhaled smoke, thumbs hovering over the keyboard. He typed one word.
“GIN!?”
The replies came quick—laughing reacts, emojis, echoes of a past that had never fully died. For a fleeting moment, in the quiet hum of an ordinary morning, Gustavo felt the warmth of those wild days return. And though the years had carried them far from that sun-baked parking lot, the memory still lived, stubborn and sweet, like gin burning in the chest.
Growing older changes many things, but memories of youth never truly fade. For Gustavo, those nights of basketball, gin, and laughter remain a reminder of the friendships that shaped him. Share this story with a friend you once shared late nights and cheap drinks with—because sometimes, the past is worth reliving together.
👉 If you enjoyed this story, you might also like Alone at Night: A Short Story on Solitude, Memory, and Quiet Reflection, another glimpse into his journey through work, life, and memory.
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