Salt, simmer, and stir

The first time I tried to make Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce I burnt it. My mom pointed out my mistake after: having the heat dial turned as far as it would go counter-clockwise, which I thought was the lowest setting. To get a proper simmer, she said, I had to turn it back to where it’s almost off, igniting just enough of a flame to keep the heat going.

 

Leave it to me to mess up a notoriously easy idiot-proof recipe. 

 

I always meant to try again, but in the end, it took me four years before I got around to it. And I didn’t even plan on it until I was at the supermarket standing next to the cans of whole peeled tomatoes, thinking to myself: Why not? I picked up a 400g one instead of the 28oz the recipe called for, deciding to halve it for now. I went to the dairy aisle and got a stick of butter and cottage cheese, wanting subtlety and creaminess to finish it off. 

 

I didn’t decide to cook it until 1 a.m. on a Saturday, having woken up from a nap that made me miss dinner. I emptied the can of tomatoes into the pot, added half the stick of butter, cut an onion diagonally (not by design, I’m just bad at it) and also stuck half of it in. Added two or three good pinches of salt—I can never salt anything again without thinking of this tweet—and stirred occasionally. Turned the dial all the way to the left again, a full 180 degrees, worried that the bubbling was still too strong before remembering I was supposed to turn it back until the flame was barely there. 

 

The sauce thickened and its flavor filled the air. Its bubbling felt like a mere afterthought, which is how I knew I had it simmering correctly now. I was finally doing it right.

 

Before I knew it 45 minutes had gone by, and in the last stretch I boiled some water and added the packet of Nissin pasta from the Japan aisle that I’d bought just for this, which looked like a thinner type of ziti. It was funny to me, the idea of combining a 45-minute sauce with 3-minute noodles.

The halved recipe made just enough to richly coat the entire pack of pasta, which lasted me two servings: one to tide over my hunger from that missed dinner, and another for the next day when I had no idea what to eat for lunch. I put it in a bowl and topped it with some of the cottage cheese, admiring how chunky and streaky and full-bodied the sauce turned out. And then I got to sit down and eat. 

 

Tomato sauces are usually a hit or miss with me—I’m not a fan of adding olive oil and sometimes it just tastes off to me for reasons I can’t explain. But this sauce was perfect, light and fresh and just the right amount of sweet, with even a little bit of umami. It was exactly the way I’d always wished a tomato pasta would be, and even on the first bite I knew I should’ve made a full batch, so I could share it and, yes, have more servings when I wanted. 

 

I first heard of the Marcella Hazan sauce on Alida Nugent’s now-defunct blog Your Best Worst Friend, and it was during a time when my depression was new and unrelenting and my relationship with food was beginning to get complicated. I avoided dinner with my family and everything seemed like a chore, even just fixing myself a bowl of leftovers. (And don’t even get me started on washing the dishes.) 

 

But Alida Nugent’s post, which I’ve put up here because I still re-read it all the time, made the recipe sound simple, and warm, and filling. Comfort in a bowl, no spoon needed. I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. And now, after having made it myself (Me! Not such a kitchen disaster!), I can definitely say it has healing properties, too. 

 

With my mom gone for over a year now, getting food in my stomach hasn’t gotten any easier. I miss her cooking, and I miss savoring a good meal with her. I wish I could’ve shared what I’d cooked with her. But I’m always thinking about that little mistake I made with the heat dial, and how she knew how to fix it when I couldn’t even explain it right. Now, every time I make this sauce, I think of her when I turn the heat down. And it’s just like she’s looking out for me like she always did.

Something’s gotta give now

I waited until after the One Direction concert to tell my parents I wasn’t graduating. 

By the time they announced the group’s Manila tour dates in May 2014, I was already over it. My “official” One Direction phase lasted only a month: It was January 2012, I was seventeen, and I had moved on from teen heartthrobs (the Jonas Brothers) in favor of edgier dreamboats (Andrew VanWyngarden). I was in a hurry to grow up. 

When my friends from bandom—that subculture of the internet dedicated to the glory days of 2000s pop-punk and alternative bands from labels like Fearless and Fueled by Ramen, my main focus being The Academy Is…, Cobra Starship, and The Maine—began revealing themselves as One Direction converts, I didn’t get it. I was immune to their accents and their glossy, clean-cut, just-shy-of-matching pinup-du-jour looks. But rabbit holes were rabbit holes, and one night, in an attempt to understand the Directioner Mystique, I found myself looking up their tour diaries and the quintessential fanmade “funny moments” (which were indeed funny) on YouTube. And then came the excellent songs from an admittedly solid debut album, and I couldn’t deny it. I was hooked.

For the next four weeks or so, at least. It was enough to get me to spend another P360 (not a small value for someone on a UP student’s allowance) on the latest issue of BOP magazine, something I hadn’t done since I was thirteen, just so I could get the fold-out mega poster and put it up on the wall by my bedside. It was enough for me to tune in to the premiere of the “One Thing” music video and look back on it as some defining point of a year in which I turned eighteen and so many significant, unforgettable things happened. I took a screenshot of a close-up featuring Zayn and Louis and set it as my laptop wallpaper. But by February, I’d become preoccupied with a series of Ayala Mall shows headlined by The Summer Set and A Rocket to the Moon, and it just so happened that my crush on John Gomez at the time was enough to stomp out any remaining embers of what I felt for One Direction. 

So when we found out about On the Road Again Tour in Manila that night in May, I was far enough removed from everything One Direction that I didn’t panic about needing to see them—but I was also still attached in a way that was more about nostalgia and knowing what a huge cultural event it was than anything, and I knew I didn’t want to miss being there in some way. 

An actual photo of Manila Bay from that night in 2014. 

The shows were going to be held a whole ten months later in March 2015, on the Mall of Asia concert grounds. Having attended Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream concert there, I knew two things: one, I didn’t have the means or will to spend on anything besides general admission, and two, general admission gives you shit visibility of the stage because you’re basically on a flat parking lot surrounded by massive heads. It was pretty much a no-brainer to make the decision to stay outside and not buy tickets, since it was an open field and we’d basically get the same experience. The important thing was getting to hear these songs live, because they did have their part in becoming a soundtrack to my teenage years. 

The day before tickets were made available, people started camping out at the Mall of Asia Arena for fear of losing out on the sections they wanted. My best friend at the time, Camille, was one of them. I was nineteen and in the middle of the longest summer of my life, a blue-moon kind never to be replicated again that lasted a total of four months because my university had decided to shift the beginning of its academic calendar from June to August. I was at a crossroads and anxiety-ridden about my future and the fact that I was delayed at school. 

An endless night in the city was just what I needed. 

I don’t even remember what I told my parents regarding where I was going and where I would be sleeping. They certainly would’ve never allowed me out if they’d known the truth. Somehow I ended up going on this overnight excursion, living out my YA novel dreams like I’d read about in Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist or Graffiti Moon. Accompanying my friends as they chased after their dreams of seeing One Direction from the front row was just an excuse. 

We inhabited the coffee shop by the boardwalk until it closed, after which we sat facing Manila Bay in the open air while the skies and the city got darker around us and the clocks eked past 3 a.m. Soon our friends had to go and secure their spots in the line to get tickets, and Rian and I were left with the sounds and smells of the sea and this colossal, magnificent, deserted mall to call home for the night. 

We were nowhere and everywhere, exploring where we could and talking trash and the things we loved, every little thing that connected us and made us whole, together. I can remember none of it now, but I know it mattered deeply and it made sense in the moment. And through it all the mall stood empty: apocalyptic, creepy, grand, surreal. Almost a decade later and I can still feel the way my heart jumped when we spotted a silhouette inside an Icebergs, and the relief and hilarity of discovering it was nothing but a cardboard cutout. I can imagine us sitting on a bench outside a vacant, lifeless SMX Convention Center, nothing but specks in the midst of such a looming structure, laughing loudly and freely against the quiet at juvenile prank ideas and feeling like we owned the world.

Memes and existentialism and the latest episode of SNL (Andy Samberg and St. Vincent, now a classic) on a first-generation iPad Mini at a McDonald’s, Jem and the Holograms and “Dancing Anymore” by Is Tropical and “California Daze” and “Sugarstone” by Peace in the early hours at a 7-Eleven as the sun finally rose over the commercial buildings and concrete. 

We sang bits and pieces of The Strokes’ “Razorblade” through the night: 

I don’t wanna know!

I don’t wanna know—

Tell me tell me tell me tell me

No, don’t,

Okay

By the end of it, we had been awake thirty-two hours. I went home with the strangest sense of jet lag, and knew even then that I’d come away from it a different person, as easy as recognizing the changes that came with a new day. For months after I would see how much had shifted in my life and be able to pin it all on this one night.

Months passed. It seemed impossible that May that they would, it seemed so far away, but they did.

The day before the concerts, it was announced that Zayn would be taking time off from the tour to recuperate, which meant that he would not be appearing in Manila with the rest of the group. My month-long stint as a Directioner aside, I’d come to identify myself as a “Zayn girl,” and I was mildly devastated that three years of waiting had led to this. Still, his health was more important, and it was going to be another fun, endless night with friends nonetheless. 

Camille’s VIP ticket was for the second day, so a group of us were going to spend the first day at the barricades, listening outside the venue. We got there with minutes to spare, securing a good spot away from everyone else who had the same idea we did. When “Clouds” started up, there was screaming all around me. I tried to feign being too cool to react at first, but quickly dropped it because it didn’t matter and this was bigger than me. And because I was so happy, I couldn’t believe it was happening. Nobody saw it, but I was grinning from ear to ear.

It started raining during “One Thing.” I flashed back briefly to when I first saw the video and couldn’t help the emotions that rushed through me—it seemed so long ago. We only sang louder and didn’t even attempt to run for cover. Fireworks exploded with color across the skies as the show drew to a close, and I took shitty videos on my low-fi toy camera that would remind me of Ang Nawawala. 

That Monday, I would try to take a short afternoon nap and wake up in the dark. I would miss everyone. The group would be gone, already jetted off to another city two thousand miles away. I would miss them and I would miss the sea. I would think back to hearing “Girl Almighty” live (for free!) and how euphoric and religious it felt, and I wouldn’t mind that this was what I had to remember, because it was so nice the way only the simplest things could be and I was learning to take what I could get and make it mean something. 

Next time, I would think, I’m getting a ticket. 

But as we all know by now, there wouldn’t be a next time. Less than a week after he announced his break from the tour, Zayn left the group altogether, for good this time, and the rest of the members would go on “indefinite hiatus” by the end of the year. And this is going to sound dramatic, but it led me to question everything I thought I knew. 

Even as my interest dwindled over the years, it became undeniable that One Direction had earned their place as icons for the 2010s. At the time I was unsure of many things regarding what’s to come for me, but I found comfort in the fact that I could be sure of them. I was convinced they weren’t going anywhere, and then they were just gone.

For the first time, I felt like I was getting old. My generation was beginning to date itself, little by little, and our cultural icons and markers were disappearing and becoming obsolete. This boy band was my little piece of fluffy escapism. It was easy to take them for granted; I could be interested in them without being invested. I’d counted on them to remain the same for a little while longer, but deep down I always knew they were meant to fade from those teenybopper magazine covers eventually—that was just the way things were.  

Still, I was twenty years old, and they were the biggest thing on earth. It was never easy to face the end of something you’d grown used to. If they couldn’t last, then did anything else have a chance?

I’ve come to think of these nights, ten months apart, as parallel to one another—two halves that come together to create my own great rock ‘n’ roll friendship movie. Think Detroit Rock City, Wayne’s World, Almost Famous, and, yes, Nick & Norah. One Direction, as it turned out, ended up being beside the point. Despite the hyperbolic gut reactions I’d written about, after seven years I’ve come to find that any feelings or thoughts I ever had for or about them have basically ceased to exist. 

(Except for the generational grudge I hold against Zayn for doing what he had to do just before the Manila stop of the tour, and the never ending rollercoaster of declaring I’m over him until he goes and does something hot like dressing up as Daredevil for Halloween or consistently taking a stand against Israel, after which I’m in love with him all over again. That’s never going away.) 

Looking back on it now, these two infinite nights ironically became the end of several things, even if some of them took longer to fizzle out than others. In the first essay I ever published, which was about Zayn’s departure, I wondered what else I might lose in time, and it wasn’t easy to go through the gradual process of finding out it would be the very friendships that made these adventures so special in the first place. Some of them I can freely admit to being partly my fault, while others are a bit more difficult to explain. 

I could never have survived that summer in 2014 or that precarious period of my life in 2015 without them, and it’s bittersweet to recall what we’ve been through now that we’re no longer in touch. Just another thing that I believed was permanent, only to have it pop like a bubble in my face. Now the best I can do is to wish them well. 

“Maybe this is growing up, learning to live with what you’ve been dealt,” I wrote then. “I think of my past self, how she would walk and feel and live and be, and how she has no god damn idea. Maybe the present is nothing more than feeling blindly for what’s to come.” 

I’ve always regarded the One Direction concert as some sort of desperate last hurrah, if only in terms of keeping up the pretense that I was doing well in school. But I know now that it was larger than that. It became a turning point, the end of an era, a certain finality to my youth. 

That night, just minutes after the concert finished, the streets were already clearing faster than I was expecting. We walked and saw them riddled with paraphernalia, and the physical proof was a relief. It all seemed so ephemeral all of a sudden, like they would poof away and it’d be like it never even happened. (How does “Night Changes” go again?) We waited out the dark at a gas station Family Mart having a 1 a.m. dinner of cup noodles. We tried to take turns napping, but I gave up and read The Disenchantments on my phone—a novel about young adults coming of age against a backdrop of music, temporary places, endings, and uncertain beginnings. 

At 6 a.m. I looked through the window and for some reason was surprised to see it was fully light out. It couldn’t possibly be morning. It couldn’t possibly be over. It couldn’t possibly belong in the past.

Alyssa and I decided to head out then—Camille still had her day-two VIP experience to look forward to. We got on a bus, our exhaustion giving way to a comfortable silence. My mind was already on other things. Neither of us spoke the entire time. 

I was going home, and I knew I couldn’t be stuck in suspension forever. I had to come clean. The days that would follow my confession about my non-graduation would be scary and miserable. I didn’t know then that I would find my way eventually, even if it took a few more wrong turns and plenty of time. I didn’t realize that my parents were on my side. Now that I’m older and I got to figure these parts out, I can recognize the power, bravery, and freedom of facing the coming changes and taking the next step forward, even if it meant letting go of what was safe and familiar.

The bus passed Coastal Mall, which I’d known from childhood. This place that I hadn’t seen in years and years was now dilapidated and abandoned—lonely, eerie, and in ruins. All around it, new buildings thrived, modern and edgy, and all it could do was fold it on itself and become lost in time, in a moment that’s simply no longer. Seeing it, along with the sleep deprivation, the anxiety, and a longing for all that took place only hours before, left me unable to figure out what I felt. But the sun was bright and the skies were clear and could tomorrow really be so bad if it looked like this? Anything could happen, and so many things were waiting for me. 

The future was wide open.