Proboscis

Firstly, I’m an environment sort of person. This is one of the aspects of my calling myself “natural”. I like walking. Only if you have walked everyday, from PhilCoa to the NIGS Building, and the longer, Math-Building-and-Science-Complex-Park route at that, would you know how this is related to being natural. You see, this is one heck of a beautiful university, aesthetics-wise. From the helicopter of Alas Singko y Media’s Traffic Team, you’ll see UP Diliman as several radiating ovals of pure green and maroon, alternating greenery and buildings. You finally realize how we got our school colors. This is, I repeat, one heck of a beautiful university. I swear to God if anybody would offer me a scholarship anywhere else in the world I would still choose UP Diliman over any university, any day. I swear to Goodness. Even over Harvard. And if you’re as confused as I am, like if you’re also a poet in your blood and in your poetic head and poetic heart, but majoring in mathematics for some obscure reason that you have forgotten somewhere in between differential equations and the bewildering, ironically poetic lives of Archimedes and Newton, then you would treasure walking, and know what good it does to your shriveled up, poetic little soul. You would treasure this economically challenged yet still immensely endowed and blessed university, in all its beauty, considerably fresh air, considerably wide patches of trees, and considerably roughing-out atmosphere. Walking to a half-poet, half-mathematician is nirvana. You can’t write a poem while walking, and doing equations without sitting down is invitation to madness.

Not that I’m not yet mad, mind you. One other aspect of my being “natural” is talking to myself out loud, and I mean THIS LOUD, complete with facial expressions and gesticulations and, naturally, profanity. I know of course that there’s nobody there. But I forget to tell you that aside from being a math major, a poet, and a sadistic walker, I am also a very loquacious person. Talkative, whatever word you want to use for it. So even if, or maybe because, I am all alone, I still talk. And it is meaningful conversation, let me tell you. Sometimes I make more sense working out ideas by myself than with other people.

This weirdness often gets me into trouble. Like the day before my all-awaited field trip to Taal Valocano in Geology 11, that morning before I embark on another walkathon, I dined at McDonald’s PhilCoa. My luck, they had run out of fresh hash browns and I had to wait by my table. So I carried on this all-too familiar monologue about service, about uncanny fast food crew members who would run out of breakfast during breakfast time, and as usual I had this classic debate-class argument, “Are McDonald’s hash browns worth getting to school late for?” And, honest to Goodness, there appeared two middle-aged women, in respectable three-piece suits and genuine pearl necklaces, standing by my table eyeing me suspiciously. There was no way they were bananas. But they stood there for a whole five minutes, gaping at me, anxious about my monologue. I think they were debating whether they should be polite and ask me whom I was talking to, or start invoking spirits to exorcise whatever it was that they thought was possessing this pitiful girl whose file case contained both Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry and the textbook for Advanced Calculus. Their nervous audience to my eloquent speech about the freshness of the hash browns and the crew’s tendency to burn one side yet scarcely singe the other side was abruptly ended by my large orange juice spilling all over my pants. If I were not a College of Science student I would be lead to believe their wide eyes caused the cup to knock over, but I don’t think so. But two seconds later after I felt the ice in my pants, voila, they were gone and out of the restaurant.

After I ate the hash browns, I decided to walk to the gym, to dry my pants. I had planned on wearing those good clean pants to the field trip the following morning. Anyway, I had used up one and half a page, and we aren’t even in Taal yet, while this was supposed to be a reaction paper to the field trip.

So I fast forward. My blue fraying Jansport stocked to the brim with one week’s allowance’s worth of junk food, Oreos, chocolate bars, hard candies, chicharon, bread and one and a half gallon bottled water, at three o’clock the next morning, I was picked up my Tandang Sora boarding house by a remarkably patient classmate named Patrick Mendoza. I would have used more positive adjectives, but I remember the campaign period for the Student Council Elections was over. I had told him to pick me up early, so we could get the best seats in the bus.

As a poet, and bet essayist in all my high school years to the point of being given the moniker, The Mistress of Words, I knew what taal meant in Filipino. It meant home-grown or native. Si Cyril ay Taal ng Maynila, si Iris ay taal ng Laguna. I told Patrick about this. He couldn’t care less.

And so there we were some few hours later, seated at the very front of the bus, freezing to our bone marrow by the Siberian-class air conditioner cold, and singing stupid road songs and enjoying ourselves. Another classmate named Andrew sat with us. Across the aisle was our professor Ms. Caroline Jaraula, who was probably as nutcracked about this field trip as I was, for she was frantically on the phone, making sure that everybody who should be on the bus was already on the bus. Her cell phone was packed and zip-locked in a dainty little plastic bag. I was enthralled. For the first time I saw a zip-lock bag. And we are sure that if ever her phone goes overboard in our boat ride for some obscure reason, the bag would keep it safe and floating.

We reached our destination late in the morning after making only one stop to eat breakfast at a gasoline station between Susana Heights and Southwoods of the South Luzon Express Way. I was extra-boisterous and louder than usual. Firstly, because there were some Americans with us. I am not your colonial mentality freak. I just happened to be a girlfriend of an American guy, and against rationality I had contemplated approaching one of the blondies to ask if she knew any Stacy Jackson from Sacramento, California. Secondly because I had one life-long dream, and it was finally going to be fulfilled—to wear a bright orange life preserver jacket.

Don’t laugh. It’s truly my life-long dream. It was spawned in my poetic head by my best friend Cyril, whom I think I should tell you about, not because he is my friend, but because he is essential to my story.

Cyril is a real freak of nature. He had millions of pursuits; he volunteered for the Red Cross, studied French, is a stage actor of UP Manila, a member of the UP Singing Ambassadors which is based in Diliman, and dreamed of someday gathering enough ammunition to own Mars. What I find most remarkable about his remarkable traits, and there were many, is that he loved Mother Nature so much. His most memorable birthday gift was when all 34 of us his classmates promised him we would not litter and pollute the environment for one day. My Valentine’s gift to him last year was a certificate from the La Mesa Water Shed people attesting that I had paid one hundred pesos so they would plant a tree in the shed and name it after Cyril.

Anyway, Cyril is a Biology major in UP Manila, and he is my best friend way back in high school. In his Zoology 10 class he had several field trips, and in all his pictures he was depicted as wearing bright orange life preserver jackets. I started to nurse this obsessive craving for those jackets. And finally, our Taal trip was going to grant my wish.

Naturally, when Ma’am Carol told us to choose a buddy for which we would be responsible for and who would be responsible for us, I chose Patrick. Andrew chose a girl named Malayka, and the four of us made a unit. The thirty-minute boat trip was bewildering. It’s like being in the middle of nature. And I love nature. Cyril and I must have swapped text messages two thousand times.

There were two sets of terrain to explore, the first being hard yet fun, the second bordering on hell yet ecstatic. Liken it to a sine curve, if you will. It was a tour de force.

Ironically, the nature-lover that I was, spawn of Cyril, I have weak lungs and a weak heart; the former coming from my Mom’s side of the genes, the latter directly inherited from Dad. I lagged behind in all the trips, may it be climbing or descending. Patrick had no choice but to lag behind with me, but it was no bad thing, as he himself was carrying three liters of water. At the tail end we devised ways to divert our attention from our miserable plight that NIGS probably adopted from reading Amon Goeth’s Concentration Camp: we had races going up backwards, made bets as to what time we would reach that pink little hill way over there, and distinguished dried horse dung from aa lava.

I loved being responsible for Patrick. I would say responsible little things such as “Watch out for the thorns”, as there were several prickly aroma plants all around, and I would be pulled up my him during steep ascents. On the more exciting and tricky descents where we just sort of skied our way with out feet turned sideways and the heels going before the balls, we took turns leaning on each other to get the sand out of our shoes.

Naturally I shrieked and wailed seventy-five point two times every minute. One of the Americans, named Jonathan, who lagged behind on account, I would guess, that he is attracted to the pretty teacher whose name I didn’t know, who had taken the charge of watching the tail end of the line, had smirked at my obvious urban upbringing. The urge to ask him about my beloved Stacy still in my poetic head, I assumed friendliness and told him, “It’s not healthy to not complain.” Jonathan laughed aloud and since then, he humored my loudness. He would groan, “Oh, no, it’s too grassy here, oh, it’s so full of sand, gosh this is hot, my, I’m thirsty.” Freakish Americans.

I’m not so hard to please, ladies and gentlemen. Every bit of the trip was a glimpse of heaven, even though I think “a glimpse of heaven” is too sappy a phrase for even a poet to use. We had reached a spot where it was perpetually raining, where the pretty teacher at the back, I recall, had warned us about opening our umbrellas up there, lest the wind should blow and carry us to kingdom come; only when we were back at the foot of the mountain did I realize that it was completely covered in clouds. I dissipated my chocolate bars and junk food quickly, giving it to the professors and the sticky little son of our Taal native of a tour guide, and our friendly manong who steered the boat. But my Jansport still felt like a meteorite on my shoulders.

And so for the second expedition I learned from my mistake. I left my bag on the boat and just carried a half-emptied bottle of water. Still a mistake. For at the foot of the second mountain, I met two sticky little girls who asked for some food. They were so cute. I told them I would give them some food later when we got down, as my bag was in the boat. Something purely urban in me told me that they might find in my last sentence that I was giving them permission to do away with my bag, so in a rush I told them, “Please don’t touch my bag.” The sticky little girls were offended. They said, “Hindi po kami magnanakaw, Ate.” I was sorry. So sorry. I confessed my guilt to Cyril in two thousand more text messages.

When we did get back down, I gave them everything in my bag. I tried to be their friend by asking them their names. They were Geneva and Rochelle. I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. Geneva was going to be a dressmaker; Rochelle planned on being a broken watch doctor. Some disquiet followed me after such an interlude with those sticky little girls. They were so poor and so broken, they were afraid to dream higher. Why not want to be a rocket scientist or a Miss Universe. My buddy Patrick, responsible for me body and soul and poetic mind, said, “What? And be disappointed?” He had a point. What options did those Genevas and Rochelles have in life?

It broke my heart also to find trash spewed all over the road going up. I know that the tourists such as us were responsible. It’s like we were on the edge of civilization, on the threshold of nature, and yet it was as if the evils of urban living had tentacles that reached every corner of the world. This is a tragic thing. To want to escape and be called back by a plastic candy wrapper or a mineral water bottle half-buried in the ash.

“Hello, Stacy. I’m now at the top of the caldera wall of the Taal Volcano, looking down at the crater, and just want to share this moment with you.” The idea of a phone call to my boyfriend brought tears to my eyes. For it truly was a beautiful moment. A foreigner who was from another tour group had said, looking over the drop, “How do you capture this?” And I had to stop myself from saying, “You don’t.” What do you expect me to say? His wife was right there with him! What more capturing is there?

I end my narrative with the hurtful journey back to the spot whence we came, and boarding the bus in our filthy sanded shoes and dusty, wind-lashed faces after a wet, tide-whipped boat ride, and myself being dropped at the foot of the Alabang Viaduct in the express way. I skip the part where we made one last stop to buy buko pies and other pasalubong, for this part was all too fast and harsh for someone just barely recovering from an old wound opened by such a beautiful place as Taal. In just a few hours I would be back in the house with the treadmill and the four-piece radio component and the electric water heater, doing integral problems and writing this reaction paper in a thirty thousand-peso word processor.

So why had I placed Calvin and Hobbes cartoons here? Firstly, the obvious. Bill Watterson loved nature like myself. You always see Calvin and Hobbes exploring different places, enjoying every season. If they had ever been to the Philippines, they would enjoy Taal and probably say the same things I had said here. But secondly, the poetic. Calvin is young, but he does not fear questioning the ways of man, even though he is a member of this species. And why pick a tiger for a best friend? Simple. In his foreword in the Calvin and Hobbes Lazy Sunday Book Bill Watterson wrote, “One thing, though, is certain: little boys, like tigers, will roam all the territory they can get.”

As for me, I am glad to have a best friend such as Cyril, who taught me, though sometimes excessively, to passionately be devoted to discovering what I can about nature. I am glad to take Geology 11 as an elective. I am glad I got to wear a bright orange life preserver jacket in two thirty-minute boat rides. I am glad I got to meet Geneva and Rochelle. And those American field trippers.

And I am sad because it is such a rare experience, and yet things still spoil my joy—those dreamless sticky little children, those pieces of litter like pimples scattered in the otherwise smooth face of God’s creation, these man-made troubles that continue to bother nature.

But whatever, things such as Taal expeditions will continue to suck our sensibilities dry until we start caring, like blood through a life-exhausting proboscis of the true human nature that makes us humans truly belong to nature.

Pag-ibig, Sana

Mahal kong Mat,

Hindi ko alam kung natatandaan mo pa ako. Kunsabagay, isang beses lang tayo naging magkaklase. Unang semestre mo at huli ko naman. Freshie ka non, graduating ako. Sa totoo lang, hindi ko rin sigurado kung natatandaan pa nga talaga kita.

Pero isinusulat ko ang sulat na ‘to nang Tagalog bilang pagpupugay sa subject kung saan kita nakilala, at kung saan panandalian tayong nagkasama.

Sabi ng mga kaibigan ko nung huling beses akong “umibig,” hindi raw ako in love. In love lang ako sa idea ng pagiging in love. Yon lang nga siguro yon.

Madali naman kasing maging ganon e. Lalo na ngayon, kumbaga klima ang pag-ibig sa faculty room ko. Oo, tinuloy ko ang pag-aapply bilang guro sa Math Department tulad ng kuwento ko sa iyo. At nitong nakaraan lang na buwan, nagdiwang ng anibersaryo si Romar (faculty roommate) at ang girlfriend niya. Nagdiwang ng isang buwan nilang pagsasama si Rozano (isa pang roommate) at ang girlfriend niya. Si Betty (isa pang roommate) ay abala sa paghahanda para sa kasal niya sa darating na sembreak, at si Rose naman (roommate din) ay kasasagot lang sa manliligaw niya. Sa totoo lang talagang klima ang pag-ibig ngayon. Napapaligiran ako ng mga taong nakalutang sa kalawakan araw-araw sa bagong pag-ibig na kanilang natagpuan, sa bagong reapirmasiyon ng pag-ibig na matagal na nilang inaalagaan, at sa bagong panimula ng pag-ibig na matagal na nilang pinapangarap. Ako naman, kakagaling ko lang sa isang pangit na hiwalayang tumuldok sa isa ring pangit na samahan. Sa bawat umagang pumapasok ako sa MB107 at nandun lahat ng mga katrabaho ko, pakiramdam ko may tutugtog na “Alin, alin, alin ang naiba/ Isipin kung alin ang naiba/ Isiping mabuti, isipin kung alin…”

Nung isang Biyernes, binayaran na ako sa wakas nung batang tinututoran ko sa Math 11 at Math 14. Walong daang piso para sa isang linggong pagtuturo. Kumpara sa iba, mababa ang rates ko, pero para sa akin naman community service ang pagtulong sa mga nangangailangan, lalo na sa math. Kaya malaki na ang walong daan. Pagdating ng Lunes, medyo maaga akong nakarating ng PhilCoA mula Muntinlupa, himalang walang trapik. Hindi ako masyadong nag-isip. Basta bigla ko na lang nakita ang sarili kong hindi sumasakay ng UP Jeep kundi UP Village na traysikel, sabay sabi sa drayber na, “Ihanap niyo po ako ng bukas na flower shop.” Dinala niya ako sa tindahang may pamagat na La Rosa; at doon, inubos ko ang dala kong pera sa mga pulang rosas, dilaw na carnation, pula, puti at violet na daisy, at ilan pang maliliit na bulaklak at magagandang dahon, na inayos nung tagabantay ng tindahan sa isang napakagandang bouquet.

Siyempre nagkaroon ng commotion sa faculty nung pumasok ako na dala iyon. Wala talaga akong intensiyong lokohin sila pero papano ko naman ipapaliwanag na ibinili ko ang sarili ko ng mga bulaklak dahil wala lang? Kaya sunud-sunod ang tanong nila. Kanino galing? May bago kang manliligaw? Taga-Math ba siya? Kailan mo siya dadalhin dito para makilala naman namin? Nginingitian ko lang sila, at nag-enjoy naman ako sa atensiyong binili sa akin ng dala kong mga bulaklak.

Siguro’y bigla lang tumama ang inspirasyon sa tamang oras, dahil nung saktong umaga palang iyon ay (1) sisimulan nang ligawan ni Chris (isang lalaki sa kabilang faculty room kung saan matagal na akong nangungulit at nagpapapansin nang walang ibang dahilan kundi dahil wala lang talaga akong magawa) si Zolah, isa pang instructor kung saan matagal na rin siyang nangungulit at nagpapapansin; at ayoko namang kaawaan ako ng mga kaibigan ko o mga kaibigan niya dahil hindi umubra ang pangangarir ko sa kaniya, at (2) dadalaw sa akin ang ex-boyfriend kong si Noey para magpagawa ng assignment niyang essay na inaakala niyang gagawin ko para sa kaniya dahil inaakala niyang patay na patay pa rin ako sa kaniya kahit iniwan na niya ako. Parehong nakita ni Chris at Noey ang mga bulaklak na nakadisplay sa lamesa ko. At wala na silang sinabi pa.

Pero sa totoo lang hindi iyon ang totoong tagumpay ng mga bulaklak ko. Sa loob ng isang linggo nakapalamuti sila sa noo’y magulo at boring kong puwang sa departamento. Sa tuwing papasok ako ng kuwarto inaagaw agad ng mga kulay nila ang atensyon ko at hindi ko mapigilang mapangiti sa ganda nila. Kapag lumalapit ako sa lamesa ko sinasalubong ako ng halimuyak ng mga rosas at nararamdaman kong isa akong babae (na hindi madalas nangyayari). Sa bawat katrabahong babati sa kanila nakakaramdam ako ng kasiyahan, isang pagmamalaki para sa kanila. Sa loob ng isang linggo (nitong Biyernes kinalas ko ang bouquet para ipreserve ang mga rosas at carnation at itapon ang iba dahil lanta na), nadulutan nila ako ng kaligayahan. Nagkaroon ako ng mas magandang dahilan para pumasok sa sarili kong faculty room at tumambay sa sarili kong lamesa.

Minsan inutusan ako ng nanay ko na magfile ng application ng bunso kong kapatid sa College of Fine Arts at doon nakita ko ang banner ng pagbati para sa nagwagi sa isang patimpalak sa disenyo. Ang iyong pangalan. Mat Francisco. At naalala kita. Lagpas isang taon na nung huli kitang makita.

Binuo kong muli sa isipan ko ang mga alaala mo. Magkatabi tayo sa airconditioned na classroom natin sa Malikhaing Pagsulat 10, ISSI 305 yata yon. Kapansin-pansin ang kaguwapuhan mo. At simpatiko ka. Kasi nung minsang nagbabasa tayo nang sabay-sabay at wala akong kopya nung akda, inilapit mo sa akin ang upuan mo at sinabi mong “O, wala ka palang kopya, eto o,” at nagshare tayo sa kopya mo. Kapag maaga tayong dumadating sa klase at wala pa si Sir Rommel, nauupo tayo sa coffee shop sa labas at nagkukuwentuhan. At pinakikinggan (at napatunayan kong tinatandaan) mo talaga ang mga kinukuwento ko, kahit hindi ko naman alam kung paano ka magiging interesado sa Acturial Science, Operations Research, at iba’t iba pang kurso sa Math, o maging sa mga plano ko sa buhay pagkagraduate ko. Minsan ipinakikita mo sa akin ang mga gawa mong obra (isa kang Visual Communication Major kung tama ang pagkaalala ko). Paborito ko ang iskultura ng dragon na ipinahiram mo sa akin at ipinaliwanag pa kung papano mo ginawa. Magaling ang mga kamay mo. At tandang tanda ko rin nung kami naman ang nagkasabay ni Sir Rommel sa pagpasok nung bandang huling bahagi ng semestre, kung saan kinikiritik natin ang mga final papers ng isa’t isa sa klase nang hindi natin alam kung kanino. Sabi niya gustong gusto niya yung maikling kuwentong “Adobo at Pinya” at naghulaan kami kung kaninong gawa nga ito. Kinuwento ko sa iyo nung magkatabi tayo uli at sinakyan mo lang ako, kahit na sa bandang huli, ikaw pala ang sumulat non. Tandang tanda ko rin ang huling araw natin sa MPs10. Iyong paper ko ang huling-huling kinritik ng klase, kaya alam na ng lahat na akin iyon. Ayaw mong sabihin nang malakas ang mga komento mo sa akda ko, kaya sinabi mo na lang sa akin, tutal magkatabi naman tayo.

Ilang beses pa tayo nagkausap, nagkita, nagkasalubong pagkatapos non; minsan pinangakuan mo akong iguguhit ng isang larawan, pero wala namang nangyari sa pangakong iyon, na hindi ko na inasahan, dahil baka busy ka. Ilang araw rin tayo nagtext, nagpalitan ng email, at dalawang beses nagkasakay tayo sa jeep, isang beses sa Toki at isang beses sa PhilCoA. Tapos, wala na.

Pagkagaling ko noon sa FA (fast forward), nakangiti akong bumalik sa Math. Inisip ko kung may magtatanong uli kung kanino galing ang mga bulaklak, sasabihin ko sa kaniya, “Hindi mo kilala eh, pero Mat ang pangalan.”

Marami namang Mat sa mundo, di ba?

Pero wala nang nagtanong, at OK lang naman sa akin. Di ba sabi ni Juliet, kahit ano ang itawag mo sa rosas, mabango pa rin? Wala nang halaga ngayon sa akin kung kanino galing ang mga bulaklak ko, maganda pa rin sila, lalo ngayong iniisip kita.

Pag-uwi ko kagabi sa Muntinlupa may bulag na binatang sumakay sa bus sa Ortigas para maglako ng sampaguita. Sa buong buhay ko, noon lang ako nakakita ng naglalako ng sampaguita sa bus. At bulag pa. Nagmamakaawang bumili ang mga pasahero para raw may makain siya. Napuno ng halimuyak ng sampaguita ang aircon bus. Pero wala na akong pera. Inubos ng rosas, carnation at daisy. Naluha ako nung bumaba siya (walang bumili); gusto ko sana siyang pasalamatan sa pag-akyat niya dahil panandalian kaming nakasinghap sa bango ng kaniyang inilalako, isang tipo ng kaligayahang hindi naiiba sa kaligayahang naidulot sa akin ng mga binili kong bulaklak para sa sarili ko sa loob ng isang linggo.

Siguro dala lang ng atmospera ng romansa na nakapaligid sa akin, kaya sinubukan kita ulit hanapin. Tinext. Miniscol. In-email.

At heto, nakita ko ang profile mo sa Friendster.

At nalaman kong bukod sa may girlfriend ka, may limampu’t apat na babaeng may “I love you” sa testimonial nila sa iyo. Nalaman kong araw-araw mo nang naririnig na guwapo ka. At nagmamaneho ka ng four by four. At may isang babaeng hindi mo girlfriend na mahal na mahal mo at mahal na mahal ka rin. At “baby” kayo kung magtawagan.

At pagkatapos kong malaman ang mga bagay na ito, bigla akong tinamaan ng isang matinding kalungkutan.

Isang kalungkutang hindi ko maipaliwanag. Hindi ko maibsan. Hindi ko malunasan. At hindi ko alam kung saan nanggaling, o kailan mawawala. Hindi mo ako kailangan para makita ang ningning sa loob ng iyong pagkatao. Hindi mo ako kailangan para iisip ng magagandang salita ang paglalarawan kung gaano ka kagaling na alagad ng sining, kung paano ko nadamang isa akong tunay na babae (na hindi madalas nangyayari) kapag kausap kita, hindi mo ako kailangan para gustuhing makilala ka at maging malalim pa ang ugnayan natin. Dahil marami nang iba pang nakakakita at nakakadama ng mga iyon. Marami nang nakakakilala at nagpapahalaga sa iyo.

Kapag tinetext ko ang mga kaibigan ko na nalulungkot ako, lalo na iyong mga faculty roommates ko, napipikon ako sa mga reply nila. Sabihan ka ba naman ng, “Huwag kang mag-alala, magkakaroon ka rin,” ibig sabihin, magkakaboyfriend din ako. Sa totoo lang, hindi naman iyon ang punto di ba? Hindi ako nabubuhay sa mundo na ito para maghanap ng lalaki para basta magkaboyfriend. Para lang may matext ng “gudnyt” gabi-gabi at makasabay sa tanghalian araw-araw at may maghatid sa akin pauwi. Para lang makatanggap ng mga bulaklak. Sa totoo lang, ang buhay ay para magmahal, at ang hindi pagkakaroon ng boyfriend ay hindi ang tunay na dahilan ng kalungkutan ng mga taong walang boyfriend. Hindi ko pa alam kung papano papangalanan, pero alam kong hindi iyon.

Hindi ko na sila tinext.

Alam mo Mat, ang mundong ito ay puno ng mga taong hinding hindi ko maaabot, pero hindi iyon ang ikinalulungkot ko.

Sana noon ka dumating, noong may sapat pa akong kawalang malay para maging kontentong pinapangarap ka lang. Pero ngayon, ang dami nang bagay sa pagiging isang babae na nakikita ko sa sarili kong tinatanggap ko pero hindi ko maipaliwanag. O mapangatwiranan. Masyadong komplikado, likha ng lipunan at ginagatungan ng henerasyong aking kinabibilangan. Wala na yatang babaeng handang gugulin ang sarili sa pagiging tapat sa isang pag-ibig na hanggang pangarap lang. Gusto ko, pero wala nang gumagawa e. Hindi kita makukuha, kaya kailangang umikot sa ibang direksiyon ang buhay ko, kailangan kong matutunan iyong “marami pang iba dyan, huwag kang mag-alala, magkakaroon ka rin” attitude. Dikta iyan ng lipunan. At sa kalungkutan ko, papaniwalaan ko na lang.

Kaya heto, tutuldukan ko na.

Hindi kita lubos na kilala, kaya hindi ko masasabing mahal na nga kita. Para sa akin, simbolo ka ng lahat ng lalaking puwede kong ibigin pero hindi puwedeng maangkin. Hindi na kita hahabilinan ng mga tipong, “kapag nalulungkot ka,” o “kapag may nanakit sa iyo,” o “kapag iniwan ka niya,” atbp. dahil alam naman nating pumpon lang ito ng mga salitang walang kabuluhan.

Pero tulad ng bulag na tindero ng sampaguita, gusto kitang pasalamatan sa panandalian mong pamamahagi sa akin ng kagandahan ng konseptong itong tinatawag na pag-ibig. Sa pag-akyat sa bus ng buhay ko, sa pakikihati sa kapirasong bahagi ng aking paglalakbay sa buhay.

Itutulog ko na lang siguro ito.

Iris Orpi

PS. Salamat nga pala sa mga bulaklak.

A Few Last Words, Before I Turn the Page

And you cry a little, die just a little Pretending you’re feeling just a little more pain I gave now I’m wanting something in return So cry just a little for me

—“Cry ” by Faith Hill—

I now have the formula for creating life. Not really biogenesis, but a formula to life that can used by philosophers and poets and the general populace. A life prototype consists of learning, loving, pain, happiness, evil, faith, color, purpose and when you’re lucky, sometimes a little bit of drama to make everything glamorous and glittery.

Needless to say, save for purpose, I can get struck by lightning now and it wouldn’t make that much difference to me if I had, or if I live to be ninety-nine. Save for that one ingredient, my life would be complete.

But let’s talk about drama. This thing I’m typing is the conclusion to the Math Club Trilogy, where, whether you like it or not, I am the main character, the hero.

…Please be informed that as of today I am terminating my membership at the University of the Philippines Mathematics Club…

…Please realize that this decision is resolute and is the product of careful considerations. I entertain no thoughts of being persuaded to change my mind but should that be the case, I assure that any effort shall prove futile so may I suggest the organization to channel its energy on more worthwhile endeavors…

…Rest assured that I harbor no animosity or hurt feelings toward any member of the club and am quitting for my own personal reasons which I beg your respect for choosing to not disclose…

The letter was an act of vanity. I did not state my reasons because I did not want to listen to any more explanations. Such was my love for them and my fear of them because they have the capacity to melt my heart and change my mind. And such was my pride that I wanted them to realize that they could not have known everything about me like they thought they did, that I wanted them all to be surprised and puzzled and guessing, when all the time when we had been together they took for granted that I would tell them everything and did not need any prodding. And I implicitly told them to not bother go after me; such was my fear that my leaving would not make any difference, that they would not even care to try to stop me even as just for formality, so I jumped the gun so I could spare them from awkwardness, and myself of more pain.

I hang out now full time with SUMS+UP and am the active member there the way I used to be for UMPC. I do not consciously miss the old family and try to bring its ways into my new place. Comparison is logically invalid; the two organizations are in no way similar. So I shrink smaller into myself and with the space I left I accommodate new intellectual and political ambitions. It seems now I am making enrichment give way to greatness.

Before I handed in the letter, but it was already written, Vina came up to me at the SUMS+UP lounge and apologized for what she had said and done. I acknowledged the apology and apologized again for what I had done. She offered that if there was anything I wanted to talk about, I could always come to her, Cham and Jakie. I said thanks.

The night of the same day I went online and found Anj and Jown. I didn’t really confess the whole plan but I said goodbye to them in my subtle way, told them I would miss them, and told Jown to do what had to be done with our secret, which until now is a secret. They were confused, asked what it all meant, but I said nothing.

I almost didn’t quit. But for me my membership has been a struggle, a continuous fight, and before those instances I have already declared the fight over.

Last Wednesday, a week or so after I left UPMC officially, I stepped into the familiar building, which I always call my building, home of my hardships, haven of my mind and my dreams, cradle of my new group, sanctuary of my vanities, ivory tower of my fears and nuances, the building which I shall be leaving in just a few months’ time. I heard their laughter, their voices, I felt the tread of them whom I have loved. I smiled to myself that perhaps for the last time our paths have crossed again, and I shall see those beloved faces.

My old family and my new crew ate lunch at the same canteen, at the same time, that day. This is what Jessica Zafra had called against the laws of probability, but then again, when you’ve lived in it for four years, you realize UP isn’t such a big place. And also probably, Miss Zafra doesn’t understand that drama is an ingredient of life’s recipe.

I looked at them from our table, and they all took turns looking back. There wasn’t really an impulse or an urge to stand up and join them, but I had thought about it, and could only smile. Kharmie and Ervin both got up and came to me, each giving me a hug. Cham and Vina also came and patted my shoulder.

They were still who I remember them to be, and maybe if I’m lucky they’ll always be that way. Of course they’ll change, but maybe they’ll keep the qualities that I learned to love about them. And they’re still together. They were healing from the big injury. They were rebounding, bouncing back, getting back into the league. Maybe what they lacked in intellect, as what SUMS+UP calls it, they make up for with an abundance of love and tenderness, which I had turned away from.

I had wondered why they weren’t sad to see me, I had wondered why they didn’t try to keep me in the club even if only as a formal gesture. It had been days since I quit. But I had said those things in my letter, had I not? I did to protect them against me, and myself against them. I did so that I would have a one-up over them, but as I sat there listening to debates among my new crew about social issues laden with jargon and ideologies, I realized that my strategy backfired on me. Math Club keeps its distance because I had asked it to. And I realized that I sorely miss them.

They finished their lunch first; the sort of things they talked about did not require a dining table to be discussed over. They could still talk while they walked, or rode the Toki jeep. And as they filed out of the Math Building Canteen, they stopped by the open door and called to me. And all waved at me. And all said goodbye to me.

I waved back and this wisp of nostalgia flew to me. They were walking out that door and out of my life for good now. They were waving at me like they would at a good and cherished friend. Why it had to happen this way I couldn’t quite fathom, that I would be granted one last look at all their faces before everything goes away. Did they know how much I loved them? Maybe. Math Club knows a lot of things.

But I’m thankful it happened, drama as it may be. How story-like life is sometimes.

And the story ends here, in the way all stories should end. Now I can turn the page.

b.s.

(If you don’t like treading in bullshit, you better put on your boots right now.)

I read an article by Bo Sanchez once that said, “You tell people how to treat you.” In all probability, he may be right.

This is the very first piece I’m writing that I shall not allow to be read by people I know. It’s because all of them think they know everything about me, and they are wrong.

One of my split persons, ever talented in coming up with profound existentialist questions, once asked me, “Are you scared of being alone?”

I used to be. Now nothing scares me anymore.

No, nothing’s wrong with my computer. I have just been planning on writing this piece for the longest time and I came up with a different beginning sentence every other day.

However, a beginning is still just a beginning. It is not everything. And

in this case, it is nothing compared to what I’m going to write next.

You should not count this as a literary piece of some sort. Personally I find no art in angst. And this writing is going to be so full of it. This is nothing but a typewritten series of rants and raves of somebody who’s got something to say, and can not say it out loud to somebody, lest her anger gets the better of her and she ends up in jail, or the loony bin, or worse.

I just quit Math Club. That’s right. It’s probably the very last chance I’ll ever get at actually belonging with somebody, and I threw the chance away.

The whole club, minus a couple of exceptions, had a whole jing-bang of confrontations last Tuesday about matters I elucidated in an essay called “Lovesick Blues”, which is, if I may say so, a rather good and well-executed essay, and I know all of my readers would agree. Therefore the characters here shall be the same, only tonight I am not in the mood for artistry, or even order. I shall just call them by their real names, regardless whether you know them or not.

I never imagined “Lovesick Blues” could get me into way, way bigger trouble than is being undergone by the real troublemakers, but you know sometimes life’s like that.

Probably the biggest mistake I’ve ever made was to love Math Club as much as I had. That’s my little secret. Following that enormous skirmish with Linnaeus, scars of which I shall carry with me throughout my petty little life, I never tried to be a part of a big group again. I couldn’t risk it. The less people I get involved with, the less people I run the risk of getting hurt by once they get tired of me, and find me irritable and worthless, which they surely always will. It just takes some time. Now I DID NOT ACCEPT THIS; I tried to change; I really did. I avoided crowds, consciously at first and then it became an instinct.

I joined Math Club, then, as a leap of faith. Maybe I have changed enough, I told myself. It has been years. And I know all these people. They already know me. The only thing they’ve got to get used to is extended time spent with me, but they have already spent time with me before, only shorter.

When I became a member, I loved the club with all my heart. They were my family, my confidantes, my second home. I thought of them when I wanted to have fun and thought of them when I needed cheering up. I discovered again this love for life, this passion for childish things, this penchant for doing silly things for no other reasons but because I wanted to do them. I learned to become myself, to be free, like I used to be all those years before. I felt this uncanny love for every single member, I experienced this overwhelming desire to get to know them, to spend time with them individually and as a group, I formed this bond with which I trusted my life and myself.

They did know everything about me, although that may not be that remarkable. I am just generally a very open person. Nothing to hide. I’m not really that exciting, and my life didn’t have that many secrets or anomalies to share. Just the ordinary, wholesome growing up stories you can get a dime a dozen.

But there was a secret, and that was that I didn’t have anyone else but them. Sure, I’m a member of SUMS+UP, and with that group I feel great and noble and ambitious, and they fulfill my intellectual needs and conversations with any number of its members always feel rewarding and meaningful; but they’re not Math Club. We’re a bunch of powerful entities with our arms linked for a common cause, several common causes, to be exact, but we’re no family. We live our lives separately and don’t interfere with one another’s outside-SUMS+UP existence.

I didn’t have anyone else but Math Club but I didn’t tell them that. I was too embarrassed. They might think I was some overzealous freak who couldn’t live without them for a day, which perhaps I was. So I tried to keep it casual. Tambay for some time, say hi to people, but secretly I cared for them, grew tender and warm inside when they hugged me or wrote a note to me in the logbook or the Yahoo! groups, although they seldom did, said a little prayer for them every night before I went to sleep.

So they didn’t have the right, nossir, to tell me I was in no position to speak about anything during last Tuesday’s confrontation. They didn’t have the right to claim my anger was exaggerated when I addressed Jopes and asked him questions about what he did to Melissa. They didn’t have the right to laugh at me when I started crying as I was explaining to Leo that the confrontation was necessary to save the club, which had been falling apart every since Jopes and Cham decided to hook up without informing us. They didn’t have the right to berate the expression “save the club”, which I used, or to label it drama.

I was the most affected person when this thing happened. I was the most devastated watching the rift grow wider between the old members and the new members. Because I didn’t have anybody but the club. JM could have been the one to suggest the confrontation or the forum or whatchamacallit, but everybody knows that at the end of the day, she has someone else to come home to, her boyfriend SeeGo.

Oh yeah let’s talk about that. I’m so sick and tired of taking bullshit from people who could afford to push me around and take me for granted and do things to me that would normally make a person angry, not caring if they get me angry, because they are quite sure that somebody would take their side anyway. I’m sick to overflowing with being forever on the watch about people’s behavior toward me, being scared perpetually that something I said or did had pissed somebody off, losing sleep and peace of mind about why all of a sudden this girl stopped giving me the generic beso-beso she usually gives the girls in the club or why this guy didn’t say hello back when I said hello to him, asking myself all the time is she mad at me? and worrying, oh no what did I do? just because I didn’t want anybody from the club getting mad at me, while those morons could afford to throw away friends as they pleased because they have already established a firm circle of their loyal friends, who would back them up whenever they felt like waging war on somebody.

Now you who are reading this piece shut the hell up, if you please, if you’re about to give me a lecture about why I had acted this way, and that with this behavior I had been inviting them to abuse me, et cetera, et cetera. Spare me your lecture. I have already given it to myself dozens of times. But they were the only ones I’ve got, you understand, the first group I ever belonged to in years. They gave me what I needed; a place to stay, friendly words, reasons to love again, lots of precious moments and things.

I was the one who wrote “Lovesick Blues” not to execute a literary feat, but because at the time when the bomb about Jopes and Cham exploded, and people were running around in circles like newly beheaded chickens, I needed a way to voice out my fears and my questions and my hurt. It could be the end of Math Club, and all of them had their own crowds and boyfriends and girlfriends and other organizations to turn to when we fell apart, but me, I had nothing. I would have nothing. Nobody wanted this to be okay again more than I did.

I think the people who had the nerve to get angry at how big an issue this Jopes-Cham-Mel shit had become are hypocrites. That bastard Jopes even had the guts to ask in this gaggy tone, “Ba’t naman lumaki to nang ganito na kailangan pang madamay si Anj?” and more prattle along that line. Lala asked the same thing. Even said why did everybody have to have a say on everything. That’s bullshit. There’s no convincing me that those asses were not enjoying the fact that their love affair had been the talk of the town for some weeks now. Didn’t they perpetuate this big bang with utter disregard of what the other members would think? Didn’t they have the guts to pull this explosion together because THEY KNEW, yes, ladies and gentlemen didn’t they know, that they were too popular to not have this rare confrontation organized because surely, everybody would care to give them the benefit of the doubt and the chance to defend themselves, because they were too important to the club? Come on, guys, enough with the hypocritical bullshit. They fucking enjoyed the attention and while they could fool everybody else, they could not fool me.

Kharmie, Ervin and I spent half the night together, discussing the issue, the night we first found out all about it. We argued and laughed and cried over the fact that people got hurt and would get hurt. In tears and sad faces we consoled one another and discussed the problem as if our life depended on solving it. Which perhaps was the real case for me, although that was still my little secret at the time. And we mused, how interesting this all is, how we are sitting here when it’s almost ten p.m. talking about those people, when back home we have our own lives waiting for us, our own problems, some or most of them even more worthwhile to fuss over than this one, except that we never burden the club with them like those people are doing now, and why? Because we know better. Because if you didn’t like other people making a big fuss about your personal affairs you wouldn’t just two-time in public expecting people to not care. Because we were scared, finally, that if we pulled our exploits as publicly and as recklessly as Jopes did, the club might not care just as much, we being not as popular as Jopes or Cham or Mel or as important as Sarah, and it would hurt. I for one don’t come to the tambayan with hair in disarray wailing loudly about Stacy having another girl in his house right on our third anniversary, half because I didn’t want the club to worry about my own personal affairs, and half because I wanted them to worry but they may actually not, and that would hurt me bad.

And then there’s Vina and Cham. Vina yelled at me. Called me names. Used angry words. Hurtful words. Wore a rabid face, filled with obvious hatred. Until now it still plays in my mind, everything she said and did. Funny. I’m sure the Linnaeans had done and said similar things to me during our Guidance Office confrontation, but I don’t remember the details anymore. Maybe time has erased it. And maybe time shall also erase the memory of Vina’s animosity when the time is right.

May I point that Vina wouldn’t even have had the guts to do those things if she hadn’t had Cham and Jakie by her side. If she hadn’t been sure Ronnie and Helena would make my life a living hell if I had suddenly stood up to defend myself and make her face the shame that she rightfully deserves to face. If she hadn’t already had the assurance that there would definitely be someone in her camp, should her enmity tactic blow up on her face.

Vina was enraged that I had repeated to other people what she and her crowd had joked about referring to Cham behind Cham’s back. The joke itself was rather derogatory and slanderous, and the people who told the joke didn’t care at the time of the telling who heard it. Now she was angry at me because I had told a couple of friends that I heard her and her friends say it. How convenient, wasn’t it? They were the ones at fault, they were the guilty ones for making that joke up, they were dissing Cham and making her look like a bitch, and they didn’t care who heard them diss her, but now that they have probably talked it over with Cham and their group is solid again, they need somebody to pin all the blame on about the joke, and since I am the available such somebody, I’m now taking all the grilling. They didn’t want to take responsibility. They didn’t want their friend to get mad. So for them to cover up their own anger at themselves, here’s little Iris, whose side nobody would take anyway when we trample her.

Plus, how those sweet little bitches could take their friendship for granted. There is no way Vina could convince me that she had NEVER, EVER badmouthed anybody behind his back her entire life. I would never believe that she is some virtuous angel, especially considering how rabidly she had just treated me, but the only difference between her and me, that puts her now in position to spit on my face just as if I were the scum of the earth, was that everything bad she had said about anybody she had stabbed in the back, every insult, every curse, every rumor, she said to faithful friends who never told on her, whereas I had the misfortune of telling what I heard her and her friends say about Cham to people who obviously weren’t loyal to me and spilled the beans. Another pile of bullshit.

So I quit the club. In a flash of logic I wrote my letter to the head of the Membership Committee JM in formal tone and without any drop of the hurts and resentment I am actually feeling for them. I had the letter handed to her today.

But I didn’t quit because I hated them, or because I was angry. I quit because I know all these things about them, the confrontation had taught me to see through their façade and into their true colors, and because of that, I can’t bring myself to respect them anymore, no matter how I still very, very much love them.

And I quit because when I looked around the tambayan for the last time that Tuesday, and tried to memorize their faces, even with tears in my eyes I could see what they saw when they looked at me. It was the same girl Linnaeus had seen. And it dawned on me quite silently but painfully that, much as I loved them, they could never love me back.

I quit because this has happened to me twice and I still don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I admit that I did something wrong. I know that there are things I had done that had been done in bad judgement. But I still don’t see, honestly, anything I’ve done that’s so wrong as to make me this miserable.

But I still consider my semester-and-a-half stay in Math Club successful. I judge it not by how it ended, but how I had been during our togetherness. I have learned to love again. I have opened myself to the world again. I have loved again. I have loved again.

I spent the rest of Tuesday crying in my bed, alone. There were several times when I thought I had run out of tears, and then I would start all over again. That night I tried to decide which one moment I would remember each member by.

I’ll remember Cham, Vina and Jakie with the moments we spent when we were roommates in our overnight Sem-ender Party in Subic. I talked about Aaliyah, and they all listened. I’ll remember Jown by the secret we had about the Scavenger Hunt. I’ll remember Anj by our chats online, and how she trusted me with her secrets, which I never betrayed. I’ll remember Lala by our moment in the Math Building when I thanked her for making Harris happy again, and how she had smiled. I’ll remember Marian by that one singular time when she was leaving the tambayan for class and I was the one closest to the door, and she kissed me on the cheek for goodbye. It was a real kiss, not a beso-beso. I’ll remember Taylo for the time during Applicants’ Orientation when I told her I thought his girlfriend, Marian was beautiful, and he acknowledged the compliment. I’ll remember Harris by that time he told me that no matter what happened with Stacy and me, he’d always be there to support me. I’ll remember Bert by the time he slept in my boarding house to cook paste for the Jag & Lee Sale we had. I’ll remember Sarah by the time we were the only girls who spent the night in ISSI when the Jag & Lee people delivered the sale items, and we talked each other to sleep. I’ll remember Jopes by the instance he asked me if he could sit next to me, as if he needed permission when he could sit anywhere he wanted, and I had noted what a gentleman he was. I’ll remember Leo by when he read my essay “When It Rains” out loud, and told me I was a good writer. Or by that one time when during our House-to-house Newspaper Brigade days for FOPC we had lunch at Mang Jimmy’s and he paid for my share of the bill because I was broke. I’ll remember Erwin by when he offered his cell phone for me to call Stacy when I couldn’t afford to buy a prepaid SIM. I’ll remember Melissa by the half hour we spent in KFC at the Ayala MRT Station, and walking in Glorietta on our way to the bus terminal, talking about this issue that ultimately tore me apart from her and the rest of the club. I’ll remember JM by our expedition in SM, how she had asked me about Stacy and told me how strong she thought I was by what I said. I’ll remember Mark by the smile he gave me when I was singing Nina’s version of “Foolish Heart” and I had successfully hit the right high note in the second stanza. I’ll remember Ronnie by the jokes he made, the picture messages in his cell phone I asked him if he could send to me, which he did send. I’ll remember Melody by the breakfast we ate together when I brought it to her and the guys who slept on the third night of the Jag & Lee Sale. I’ll remember Dang by our Chowking meal together, when both of us were craving for Beef Wanton Noodle. I’ll remember Loubert by how he was the one to tell me how I should prepare for my formal interview required in Math Club Application. I’ll remember Kail by the night half of which we spent lying side by side on a worn bed one night of the Jag & Lee Sale, as he told me the story of the film “Being John Malkovitch”. I’ll remember Sam by the time during my application days when she asked me to letter the names for the Math Wizard Participation Certificates, and while my efforts were not that immaculate, she still said, “Wow, these are good. You rock.”

Kharmie and Ervin, I’ll remember them for everything. They were with me during my first downfall, and they were with me through my second. They were real friends. I shall live my life loving them. And the only reason why I didn’t consider them to be those people like Cham is to Vina or SeeGo is to JM, the people who would “stick by me any moment I decide to wage war against somebody”, is because I have so much respect and love for them, that I dare not expect them to stay with me when I’m in the wrong. It is in endeavoring to deserve their friendship and goodwill that I become a better person.

These people gave me some of the best experiences of my life.

Funny I’m crying again; I didn’t think there was any left.

Goodbye, Math Club.

Lovesick Blues

Sometimes we hear a love story and it transports us into this warm fuzzy sides of our hearts where we just want to sigh dreamily and reminisce about the times when we ourselves have experienced that L-word and never wanted the inundating feeling to ever end.

And then again once or twice you will hear a love story and it simply makes you sick.

Now I’m no Shakespeare or Mills & Boon, nossir, even though I cried my eyes out to The Bridges of Madison County, I’m not really into trying my luck at making my own audience shed some tears for a hunk with some hunky name like Brad or Matt and some damsel with a yummy name like Amanda, Helaena, etc. Somehow when I try to create my own lovey-dovey world my characters either act too human to be forgiven or too un-human to be credible. It would be better being a taxidermist; Mademoiselle Zafra was right.

A couple of people I know have tried their luck and either ended up in the looney bin—well, not literally, but still—trying to deal with their own identity crises, or very, very successful at the L-word business that they become sex-starved sex experts. Most other people I know are like me, preferring to browse through book sales for some juicy novel to read on rainy nights and trying our luck at our own true-to-life love stories.

And it is among these true-to-life love stories of my friends that this not-so-usual story unfolds, this sort of thing that almost makes you wonder if you’re on candid camera and some roomful of teenyboppers are devouring bowlfuls of popcorn while watching you on TV.

First, the cast. Two girls are in the limelight. To protect their identities, because they’re really on the losing end when you finally get right down to it, I will call them The One and The Girl. The One because when this story finally got out among those who care to feel involved, everybody keeps pointing at her and making theories, and whispering to one another, “She’s The One.” And The Girl because ever since this girl entered into the lives of those who care to feel involved, she’s always been the pick of all the men, and thus she is “The Girl.” Now of course you can’t have a love story with only two females and no males, except if this is one of those infinitely complicated lesbian existentialist dilemma stories, which it isn’t, and in fact one main man is involved. This such man deserves no anonymity, being the sick element to this sick story, but, I’ve already said it, he is the sick element and thus makes me sick to write his name, I shall call him The Heart. Which is convenient for me to remember, because for reason numero uno, he doesn’t have one. And for some reason he was given this nickname by his fellow men, probably because he has a talent for stealing the hearts of the women among those who care to be involved.

Now there are other, minor, characters. The phrase “those who care to be involved” refer to a specific group of people I shall now call by the moniker “Da Club,” which we literally are, and I include myself. This Club of course has a President, and that shall be her name in this story. The President incidentally is the best friend of The One. In Da Club, The Girl has her own best friend, which we shall call The Sweet. Now only one guy was the source of the vital parts of this story I was given the honor of writing, and I esteem this guy highly, mainly because he is almost my own best friend in Da Club. I want to call him The Guy With His Fingers Crossed And Has Hopes, but since that’s too long to type, I’ll just say The Guy for short. The Girl has her own club outside of Da Club, which also includes The Sweet, and this club we shall call The Crowd, which include three more characters besides the ones already mentioned.

Hereby I shall begin the story. Da Club existed longer than the present members have been around, and The One and The Heart and The President are among The Originals, and The Guy, The Girl, The Sweet, and myself, among more others, joined a bit later. Like I said The Heart has a knack of getting the girls, but why I never could quite fathom, but he did. But by this he singled out The One, and why I never asked, because it was quite obvious. The One is pretty and a good friend and all that. So they date. Lots of dates. The sort that Filipino chismozas and chismozos don’t let slip. It was like a known fact everywhere that The Heart and The One are getting it on and please don’t interfere with whatever is going on. Which everyone respected, because like I said they were The Heart and The One.

Later me and my constituents joined Da Club, and whatever rift there could have been between us the The Originals just plain never existed. That’s the magic of Da Club. Once you get in you become Da Club. Your heart belongs to them and they belong to your heart. You become like brothers and sisters and you forget there ever were The Originals before you.

Now The Girl started stealing all the hearts of the men. Or at least they all found her the prettiest of the lot, which I don’t find anything wrong about, because she is the prettiest of the lot. She has been stealing the hearts of men everywhere she went anyway, and Da Club, no matter how brotherly, was not an exception. But of course there’s no convincing me, nossir, that one hundred percent of these men really loved her. That’s already a given. They just had a crush on her maybe, but all of them falling for her for real is next to anomalous. The Girl herself would agree. Because all she ever has that we don’t is her pretty face and some degree of class maybe, but after that we’re all equals. And definitely there isn’t a long line of men fighting over my hand, or The Sweet’s hand, or The President’s hand. It’s all about the face and the touch of class.

We went around in Da Club like oil. Smooth and suave. We even survived several holocausts together, Club projects, and the more common strain of giving up our solitude for the company of one another, which adds up to quite a sum, when you used to be alone and heart-free all your life. A couple of duos among the minor, unnamed, characters even fell in love with each other and started a relationship, all inside the confines of Da Club, and we supported them, and thanked the Good Lord for using our togetherness as instrument for these people to find their One True Love.

On the concluding night of one of Da Club’s projects, and there was an all-stag semi-party which included The Guy and The Heart, and they were drinking and comparing the size of each other’s dicks maybe, bragging about the piece of universe each of them owns, and all the foolish things men do when sloshed with alcohol, The Heart hinted at himself being unsure whom he wants to make his girlfriend, The Girl or The One. The L-word wasn’t mentioned at all. The dilemma was whom he wanted to make his, regardless whatever he felt for either of them, if he did feel anything at all. Given his character, it was more than probable that he took his being The Heart to his head. That is, he languished in the envy of the other men, that he could steal the hearts of the women like a man with a fishing pole looting thongs off a neighbor’s clothesline.

That night was a Friday. Come Tuesday The Heart and The Girl are already a couple.

And The One, whom The Heart has dated for a year maybe, just unceremoniously dumped on the wayside with no word, no clue, no parting thingamajigie whatsoever. Just left there to make a fool of herself believing still that The Heart had singled her out among the girls he could easily get. Which didn’t take too long for her to invalidate, because like I said Da Club is a tight bunch, and one or two souls are bound to be concerned enough to inform you that there’s something between your two front teeth.

I won’t venture on how The One actually felt for The Heart when they were dating, whether she loved him or not, because in fact, I don’t know. I am humble enough to acknowledge that I am not one of The Originals, so I didn’t pry into these things. Plus I and The One never really got a chance to be friends one-on-one, and outside of that I really respected her. I still do. All I know is that she felt maltreated and offended, any girl with half a mind would.

This story has a couple of important subplots, the main of them being that The One is The President’s best friend, and The President can be really nasty and noxious when she’s mad. Which I am not really into questioning, because, close-knit as Da Club is, or used to be, we can still act like untamed beasts broken free at times, and we need such an attitude to cage us back in. And nasty and noxious she did not hesitate being when the news got out.

Now what I can talk about is The Girl and her feelings, of which I have been provided plenty of references by The Guy. The Girl loves, truly loves, The Heart.

Which is more than enough reason to make me consume a couple dozen more pages writing this story, except that I’m in no mood to. People are hurt, more people can get hurt, and loving somebody, in this time and era, is not as simple as that.

Firstly, there is more than enough evidence that The Heart doesn’t really love her. He can be among that lot who noticed The Girl but not really fell for her, the numero uno proof being that he had even seen The One to her house late in the evening, to make sure she was safe, a mere four days before he allegedly “gave his heart” to The Girl. Why the hell do that when you aren’t trying to put her on?

The second subplot to the story is that even The Crowd outside Da Club is hostile to the relationship between The Heart and The Girl for their own reasons, of which I shall form no more theories, because this story is complicated enough as it is.

There are four things that prompted me to render this story on paper, even though I admit that writing it diary-style which is the treatment I usually give stuff like this would require weeks or even years to finish so I’m typing it instead.

Firstly, that people have been hurt. Come to think of it. No one, and I no shit mean no one, can blame The One if she counted upon something of The Heart. Don’t contest. No-one-can-blame-her. He dated her for the longest time. He singled her out. So he didn’t say the L-word. But he b.s.ed her to put her on. But since she expected, and it turned out she expected wrong, it was all her fault that she is hurt right now. Count on it The President and other people, are comforting her. But she was goddamned hurt and somebody hurt her and we all know who.

Secondly, that people would be hurt. Thinking that The Girl actually loves The Heart is enough to give me chills. Imagine one day she opening something and revealing, for her precious heart to see, that The Heart never really loved her. That there have been men all around her who would give their balls just to have the chance to make her happy and she singled out the wrong guy. That she had waited this long to heal from her last breakup only to give the second try to a man who doesn’t really deserve her.

Or okay, maybe he’ll love her. Or maybe she’ll never find out. Maybe it’ll be one of those mediocre love affairs where they are together forever and the heat goes lukewarm and you just lie in bed at night trying to figure out when it started to go sour. But right now The Girl just committed herself to a man she loves and Da Club and The Crowd are not happy about it. Can you be happy with that? Can you live with that? No matter how happy you are, or think you are, if everywhere you look, everywhere you turn, people are being the opposite of happy for you, you can’t be happy in full. And one of these days it’s going to explode, somebody’s gonna ask somebody to take sides, make a choice, and what if she makes all the wrong ones? The Girl will get hurt, only because she loved, she plunged into this L-word business believing it was something true and pure between her and her present boyfriend, and when she gets hurt, it’s also all her fault because she was gullible. When she wasn’t gullible, she was just in love, for crying out loud. She’s gonna get hurt and we both know by who.

Thirdly, this whole Club thing includes me. And The President in all her angriness and desire to avenge those who got hurt and will get hurt, and I betcha we all are behind her all the way, is all for throttling the Royal Asshole who created this whole mess, and I swear I’m afraid someone will get physically hurt. Of course he deserves it, but still, I don’t want his blood splattering all over the purple walls and pink benches of the Club tambayan. Cleaning it up is another day off my dwindling social life. But of course, life with Da Club is my social life. But sometimes it all gets too consuming you can’t breathe. This muddle is members relations rust in the making. We’re all at a crossroad whether we’ll let a great thing die or keep fighting for it to our last breaths. We thought we were a family. We thought together we could survive anything. Except that this time it looks like we can’t survive each other. It’s so goddamned like something out of Tabing Ilog I want to puke. One of these days we’ll all wake up with babies on our laps and teenaged fathers trying to decide to which of the two mothers of his two children he wants to come home to for the day, and we’ll be juggling school work and friendship matters every single freaking minute of our lives that we’ll figure out sooner or later that we aren’t living anymore, just trying to justify the careless mistakes we made in the ancient past. One of these days we might even wake up without a Club to come home to anymore. Sweet Jesus God Almighty.

And lastly, my fourth reason for wanting to write this down. The Guy Who Has His Fingers Crossed And Has Hopes, my almost-best-friend, told me this story. And he told it to me as a confession. Because something else vital, or at least he thinks so, also happened during the all-stag night of drunkenness, which he feels guilty about, because he fears it has triggered this whole mess: he just confided, out of goodwill and good trust, that he thought he was falling in love with The One.

And I lay this story before you now, anyone who cares to feel involved. And you be the judge. You try and help me tell this Guy that it isn’t his fault. He only did what everybody else in this God-forsaken rattrap has been doing on their own volition.

If all these crazy plots and subplots make you dizzy, and angry, and befuddled and hurt, yourself, then do what I finally resigned myself to do, my friend.

I just tell myself that if it’s really true that everything has a reason, that every wound heals in time, and makes us stronger and wiser, and prepares us better for that One True Love up ahead, that these sick stories are part of what makes human history shimmer and sparkle brilliantly and full of richness and greatness, and that we’ll eventually learn from our mistakes and see the beauty of the world in the process, then by all means,

World, show me your magic.

Sacred

Divine Providence played hopscotch with me again.

And you know what? This time, I played back.

How many times have I done this, I wonder; many times I would suppose, for it has become a sort of habit, sitting in front of my computer with my broken heart when handwritten words would not suffice. It is, I suppose too, a form of cowardice, shrinking back in the midst of a battle between tears and ink, unwilling to see the finish, the whether I’ll survive it or break down irreparably, unwilling to gamble.

But nobody can accuse me now of never having gambled. I have, I believe, gambled more than most. Many times in my innocence, I gambled with my heart alone. And afterward, I gambled with my body, which is worse, because I am a woman. You can never gamble with your body without gambling with your heart as well; that is the prime difference between a woman and a man.

They give it different names, that game, and I, who have nothing but words, can tell the difference. And I have tried some of them, but above all, I have tried the greatest of them all.

I have slept with a boy as an obligation—I was his girlfriend, in a kind of forbidden setup, I was his teacher and he was my student, and while I wasn’t ready for it, he has done it with all his past girlfriends and I finally succumbed to the pressure. He neither loved me nor I him. He enjoyed sex with me because he enjoyed sex, period. And he never made me come.

I have had sex for its own sake—he was famous and I was a stranger, in another forbidden setup: he was married. I saw little difference between dancing so close to him on a dance floor and being naked with him, and I needed the sex to be free from everything that bound me at the time—from the bad experience with the juvenile ex-boyfriend who couldn’t please me, to my own physical frustrations and the question of am I frigid?, to the insecurity toward a pure, virtuous, virgin friend who recently married a good man, an insecurity that had threatened to swallow me whole. And the man saved me from all that. Until now I don’t know if I loved him; it was, perhaps, some form of enchantment. He said he loved me, so often he said it. But am I not a woman of words myself? Wouldn’t I know? He enjoyed sex with me because he enjoyed the conquest. And he could make me come because he was a skillful lover.

But despite that, I still wondered about that elusive thing they called making love. It was beautiful to me, that phrase, me who have words and nothing else.

I associated the words with a name, the name with a face, and the face with an actual man. A man I loved for six years, the same man who loved me for six years. It was, I suppose, some form of cosmic accident. But I loved him and I wanted to be with him, even though you couldn’t really expect a man to stick around waiting for six years. I blame myself. I still do. I blame myself every single day.

And so I sold myself to a man for money. It was forbidden too because I had parents and I was a Christian. The only good thing about it, perhaps, was we didn’t try to pretend that we loved each other. I needed what he had and he wanted what I had. He didn’t name it as a requirement but I gave it to him anyway because I had blamed myself enough, and I didn’t want any more guilt. He enjoyed sex with me because he considered it an achievement. I didn’t come, but neither of us was concerned with it anyway.

(And yet, Divine Providence saw it fitting to deprive me of the thing I wanted most, the thing I sacrificed my honor for. I had spread my legs and let a cold, uncaring man enter the deepest recesses of my soul for nothing.)

How did I live with myself? It was funny. During the days that followed I held my pride next to my heart and believed in all honesty that it was Divine Providence that picked my life for me, and that did give me some sense of emotional and spiritual freedom, looking at my bad choices as an object apart from my person.

And then Janice Asuncion recommended the book Eleven Minutes, and reading it brought the secret confusion I had so well hidden back to the surface, and then finally broke it, and made sense out of it. I saw Maria, still the stuff of fairy tales, when she was awakened young into sexual curiosity, as was I. I saw her sexual crossroads, when none of the men she cared for turned her on and none of the men who turned her on could she care for, and saw myself. I saw her loving repeatedly, gambling wantonly, the way I had, and losing each bet, letting go of each trinket of innocence, getting bruised and hurt, and almost quite literally I saw her dark path looming ahead of her the way black smoke curls up unprecedented after one has spent some time looking after the fire. I saw her half falling, as if she had no choice, and yet half choosing, as if she had the power still, that thing called prostitution. And it made sense in a way that some things can only make sense to women. The same way that they see men for the frightened creatures they all are, even if they try so hard to appear fearless.

And I saw Maria falling in love, being half lured, half guided, but on the whole knowing where to go all along, the way your feet carry you home no matter how mindlessly you think you are walking, into sacred sex, in the context of love. And this time there was no envy, no insecurity similar to the one I harbored against my pure, virtuous, virgin friend who had married a good man. Because even though my life—or Maria’s—is no fairy tale, ‘once upon a time’ and ‘prostitute’ don’t go well in a single sentence, I have made love too.

It was on the page before Eleven Minutes started. A man I had been with for only six days. Six days. I remember having lain next to him when I was still to him nothing but a mystery wrapped in lace, chiffon, denim and lycra, watching the miracle of a man falling asleep in my arms. And I fell in love. I still don’t understand what Señor Coelho could have meant when he had Maria celebrate, ‘Oh, to be possessed and not to possess!’ as the most beautiful of all love. I knew that in a few days, this man who had listened to me and spent time and money on me as if I were a queen would leave for Okinawa and I could not possess him and I saw no sense in that. I loved him. I had dreams of being happy with him, I loved him in a way that I had never loved anyone before (not even that man I had loved for six years), as a woman and as a child, full of passion and full of gentleness, with my mind and my heart, with my body and my spirit. I loved him with purity, with simplicity because he made me realize that I was still capable of purity and simplicity. I loved him and in that moment I let go of the past and stopped worrying about the future. I loved him and because of it I had found my peace and had stopped wondering about reasons. I loved him, beautiful and cherished, alive and vigilant, intelligent and trusting, complete and new.

He had made love to me that night.

Señor Coelho mentioned things such as the orgasm not transferring from the clitoris to the vagina being a sign of infancy in a woman’s sexual maturity, and a man seldom asking his woman, show me your body, and excitement in humiliation and sado-masochism being opposed to sublime peace in being healed of it, and the many facets of desire, but he forgot to mention something. It is something I’ve always known because no other thing makes sense, and having been with that man who spent time with me in Manila for six days before going back to Okinawa confirmed it: when a woman is in love with the man she is in bed with, her whole body is charged with this thing (I haven’t found a name for it), from the marrow of her bones to the tips of her hair, so that her orgasm does not come from friction along her vaginal walls or stimulation of her clitoris or nipples, but from her mind, a spilling forth of the thing that her senses are already full of to begin with. The woman is more receptive to sexual stimulus when the man who has her in his arms also owns her heart, that the mere thought of his touching her, the knowledge that he is touching her, doing things to her, makes her come, and not the actual things he does to her. It is love that makes orgasms more potent, sex more pleasurable, and the union of two people so beautiful.

Long ago I had asked Ma. Isabel Bernal why I couldn’t come and she had said there was no definite formula for women, a man may satisfy you and another man may not while doing the exact same things. A woman has to feel wanted, appreciated, made to believe she is beautiful, before she can, in her woman’s mind made guilty by the church and the society she lives in, open herself to pleasure. Maii is a woman; she must know, and I took her word for it.

But she forgot to tell me that when a man has made you feel wanted, appreciated and beautiful, the orgasm becomes a re-acquaintance with yourself, a communion with God.

Where is that man? That man who gave me so many things in such a little time? The man I fell in love with despite my mistakes and my jadedness?

In Japan, doing his thing, probably completely unaware of the order he has spun in my world, the way some men are oblivious of the havoc they had wrought in it. I forgot to ask him whether he loved me before he left. But it is not highly improbable that he only wants to be friends, and not altogether impossible that I mean nothing to him. I am a woman, and that is why it still breaks my heart. But maybe this is what Maria meant when she said what she said about being possessed while not possessing. He came as if he were a thief; but when he left, he took nothing from me, on the contrary, he left behind him a scent of roses. Imagine me, from whom some men have taken so much, still being able to recognize the scent of roses.

I quote Maria, still the stuff of fairy tales, one last time before I turn another page:

…if I have already lost him, I will at least have gained one very happy day in my life. Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost a miracle.

In that case, Antonio has given me six miracles.

Now I have more than words.

Jezebel: Destiny’s Daughter

I am waiting for inspiration to hit me.

There was this teacher at the Math Department. Her name is Priscilla Alejandro. At certain angles she looks like Aaliyah. And she and Aaliyah have the same birth date. I asked another professor for her mobile number even though I couldn’t imagine ever having a reason to call her, just so I could save it in my phonebook under the name “Aaliyahndro.” Miss Alejandro would probably never understand why I have this soft spot for her; yeah, probably not ever. She wasn’t one of my best teachers and I wasn’t one of her best students. The Christmas before this one was her last in the Department. She got married to a Greek professor named Kazanidis and she left the country with him afterward. But that Christmas, I got her the exact same perfume that I used, as a Christmas gift. She didn’t know that I used the same perfume. She just thought I got her a bottle of perfume, period. But it was more than that. That is special between women, don’t you think? Usually women don’t want other women to have what they have. Should I have told her? If I had told her, she might have realized how truly special she was.

This is the first Christmas that Venus isn’t spending in her hometown. I mean Venus Sandoval, you know that woman I told you about? She said she wanted to know what it was like to celebrate Christmas in the city. You know what, I’ll bring a bottle of the same perfume when I see her tomorrow. If all goes well I’ll give it to her. And this time I’ll tell her that I use the same scent, make everything different.

This is a strange world, isn’t it, Kevin?

(That’s Venus in the middle.)

That’s supposed to be the introduction in what could be the biggest essay I’ll ever write in my entire life, called Souls in Transit. But it has been twelve days since I started writing it and I still haven’t written it. I need inspiration. I need courage, and resolution. Above all I need to decide what kind of woman I am. For the hundredth time I sat down in front of this screen and by that stroke of the subconscious that I sometimes get, I started thinking about Beyoncé Knowles. I’ve always meant to write about her. I thought, I’ll write about her first and get back to the biggest essay of my entire life later.

The perfume brand in question, if you read my intro, was Flirtation by Joyce Jimenez. That’s the scent I had used, and still use. It costs a reasonable 140php per 50ml bottle. The day after I wrote that intro, I went to Alabang Town Center dressed to kill to get a bottle of perfume for the remarkable woman named Venus Sandoval, but I didn’t get Flirtation. I got Tommy Hilfiger’s Beyoncé Knowles perfume called True Star.

I was one of the first to receive news about the creation of this scent. I read about it in a newspaper by the time when Dangerously in Love just got out. And I still remember the first time I smelled it. I was shortcutting to the bus terminal through Glorietta in an ordinary evening on my way home from school and a man in a crisp designer shirt and an expensive silk tie offered to spray some on me. I gave him my wrist but he sprayed at the back of my ear as well. And I fell in love with it. It smelled like…a Botticelli painting. The Birth of Venus.

And cost a skyrocketing 2,700php per 50ml bottle.

Brokenhearted, I smiled at the man and walked away. But I came back the next day, and the day after, for more sample spritzes.

True Star is the perfume that I don’t deserve, like a love that I can only dream about and long for in secret but will never own, like a fairy tale I fall asleep to but can never live out. When I see her, I shall give this gift to Venus and it is like I’ll be dreaming the magic all over again. But not permanently, never permanently. Only for one more night.

And now nothing is left for me to do but write about Beyoncé Knowles, the inspiration for that scent fit for a goddess, and hope it inspires me back.

She was, as any person who ever lived a single year in this decade or the last can tell you, the frontwoman of the hiphop-pop-R&B girl group Destiny’s Child. DC started out with four members, Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, La Toya, and Le Tavia. Afterward these last two girls got replaced by Farrah Franklin and Michelle Williams, and more afterward Farrah quit and DC became the trio as we know them today. That is, before they officially disbanded this year, and the whole world expects each of the members, but most specially Beyoncé, to continue shining her star in the recording industry.

Beyoncé is the singer with the distinctive, powerful vocals and the killer seductive moves, the demeanor of a diva and the grace of a true star. I have always felt something solid and definite about her person; while you could call other acts “sultry” or other ways of singing “charming,” while you could describe other artists as “feminine” and other women as “sweet,” these adjectives have always been too tame for the phenomenon that is Beyoncé. Her path has always been the strong, the adventurous, the powerful; the devastating, the intense, the dangerous. The woman that she is—inspiration, fantasy, addictive drug—is like the modern version of Jezebel, as if she was born into this world to be beautiful and sexy, to seduce men and exalt women.

She wrote most songs for Destiny’s Child, and was the first African-American woman, and the second woman, to be awarded the Pop Songwriter of the Year Award by ASCAP, and she couldn’t deserve the recognition more. There is something so starkly of-this-time and of-this-world with the songs she writes and arranges, a complete blending of her being in touch with pop culture and urban living, and her being in touch with her own identity and, as if she couldn’t help it, sensuality.

She dresses like a woman of confidence, a woman of daring; with her on the red carpet she redefined dressing to the nines, and with her in her rap or reggae or rhythm and blues videos she redefined dressing down to party. She knows who she is, and always has, her culture and her stature and her divine personal calling, since the beginning. Honestly, one fashion commentary wrote, who do you expect from the woman who coined the term bootylicious ?

She came up with the solo album Dangerously in Love, and indeed there are very few compilations of tracks that so completely and absolutely match their respective artists as this. The dance tunes, the passion-and-romance ballads (seems trite to use the word “romantic”) and the daring sensual tracks (“corporeal” sounds too un-womanly) cascade into one another like one perfected brew served by Jezebel, the illusion, Jezebel the temptress. There sings a woman who has never been ashamed of breaking the limits of her heart, a lover who came face to face with passion dancing in the center of the ring of fire and did not shrink back, but embraced it, thrived in its heat and abandonly unleashed her maroon, velvet soul to ride with it. When I heard the song that gave the album its title, I knew there was no other way for me but to love like that.

I am thinking of Beyoncé Knowles (who calls herself Bee), and the scent she inspired. I am thinking of Venus Sandoval (who calls herself V), the woman I am giving the bottle of perfume to, and what it means for her to have it when I don’t. I am thinking of my heroine Aaliyah, a few drops of whose fragrant liquefied soul perhaps are mingled with Beyoncé’s talent, how proud she must be to have bequeathed the legacy of her musical genre to such able hands such as those when she passed away, and I am thinking of Sandro Botticelli’s painting The Birth of Venus, how he rendered the goddess with a total faith on purity, beauty, and love, and how I remembered seeing it for the first time when I smelled True Star for the first time.

And last time.

It is all connected, yet disconnected. And my soul needs to be nursed, and my hands need inspiration.

(That’s Venus on the right.)

PS. I just reached for a volume of the World Book Encyclopedia to look up the name Jezebel. And I realize I did not write about the strongest connection of them all.

Insomnia Incurable

I’ve never been so un-me as I was on that night when I practically begged my younger bros to take me with them at the subdivision’s plaza that night to watch Not for Hire, a fund-raising concert set up to raise funds (a blinding flash of the obvious) for the proposed skate park. I’ve never considered anything to be worth my time when I should have spent it sleeping on my bed instead. Plus, I get drowsy in noisy places such as the arcade at the mall. So how much more uncomfortable could I get in the middle of a throng of people, no chairs even, just SRO, in a rock-n-roll concert? I found out soon enough, but I’m not telling you, on account that I don’t want to sound disgusting.

Not for Hire is simple, no-excuse, no-reservation, Noise Blending with capital N and B. Pure Noise Blending. The sort of noise pollution that your teacher in Health IV told you could cause ulcer and permanent digestive system impairment. Multitudes of dudes wearing untidy T-shirts and baggy cargo pants (my bros included) and disgusting goatees and condom hats perpetually pushing and jostling me off-balance, and a group of their lookalikes wearing the same squirm-inducing clothes upstage, encouraging their stupid perpetual pushings and jostlings.

There were a total of twenty-two different bands, and they performed two or three songs each. Halfway through the ten-hour affair I got so sick I almost passed out.

I can categorize the performers into three basic groups: 1) those that somewhat impressed me, 2) those that made me laugh, and 3) those that stood on that stage and made a complete waste of their time and mine.

Firstly, the primary class. There were three or four of this class. They were those who played original compositions, did not use foul language at all in their songs, and did not sound bitter in regarding their parents or the Philippine government. Some sang in English, some in Tagalog, but they were good with their instruments, not so loud, and the lyrics were highly audible and distinguishable from the applause and nonsensical screams and hoots. And their lyrics made sense; they would probably pass for poetry to me after I’ve had a couple of Vodka shots.

And then there are the comedians. There were a lot of guys who pulled this well-worn but still effective stunt of covering up their quirks. But one band blew my head off with laughter. They played three songs, called, respectively, “Erap Para sa Mahirap”, “School Corruption” and “No Talent”. And if you’re wondering how I got the good sense to remember these titles, it’s simple. All of their songs had no other lyrics but the titles themselves. They had tunes and all, and well arranged chorus, interlude, eclavu, but they had no other lyrics. And they went around playfully hitting each other on the last song, screaming at one another that they had no talent. That cracked the crowd up, including myself.

And the third group is—what can I say? Complete fools. They should have stayed home. I should have stayed home. Sadly, they dominated the entire scene. More than seventy per cent of the groups who performed fell to this kind.

And another observation—in all of the twenty-two bands, there where no women.

Well this is done, I can get back to my blessed sleep, and pray I will forget all that have taken place in the same streets of this subdivision that I walk everyday.

That’s Entertainment!

(pasintabi po kay Kuya Germs)

Underneath your clothes,
There’s an endless story,
There’s a man…
~A song by Shakira~

I’ve always been a wannabe.

Wannabe poet, wannabe math whiz, wannabe beauty queen (I have to wake myself up from this one). And there are times when the only reason to get up in the mornings are these wannabe dreams, and they actually get me through the day. Sometimes I work on these dreams, sometimes it is just fun having them, and telling myself I would have them, in a someday sort of way.

I live in Muntinlupa, and, during the academic year, in Quezon City, but I am a Manila Girl. Get that straight. Most of my high school friends live in Manila (needless to say I graduated from a high school in Manila) and we still go out most of the time in Manila. I think I have grown up with Malate, have witnessed a lot of its developments (the parking spaces to the left of Tia Maria were not un-park-able in 1997), its tragedies (the Republic of Malate was the coolest before it burned down in 2001), and its highlights (Donita Rose and the rest of the MTV Philippines crew were there the Christmas of 1999).

Politixx has always been our favorite place. Only a hundred pesos to enter, consumable, and they have the widest range of drinks. Plus their disc jockey really rocks, and I have seen the cutest guys I’ve ever seen so far, hanging out in Politixx. All cool, and we get drunk like never, and spend the remaining hours of the night flirting with the men or women (depends on our gender or sometimes regardless of our gender), and pretending that they were flirting back. Where is it? Right across the street from Insomnia and right beside Kemistry. There had been arguments among us who owned the place, and each of us has his own claims that he had seen the him or her one time or other.

However, Politixx has an upstairs room that we’ve never been in, and it costs a whopping three hundred pesos to get in, non-consumable. That’s a lot of money. I may be a Manila Girl, but hey, I’m still in school. And even if I do have the money for it, not all of my friends do, and so it would go on, gimmick night after gimmick night. But then we had to attend a musical event for Humanities class, and finally I had an excuse to ask for bread from my folks.

The upstairs room, Fridays and Saturdays, held total entertainment of a group called Les Gay Follies. They’re a cross-dressing bunch of guys from the Metropolitan Manila (enough to trust the brochure found at the door), and they are soooo talented, you would be amazed. They dance, from interpretative with full surreal octopus or twisted-queen costumes, to aristocratic social of tango and ethnic; they do comedy—they have their own version of Tessie Tomas’ From Rags to Stitches and Ai-ai de las Alas’ renowned stand-ups; they impersonate—they had done rather roller-coaster Miss Saigon scenes with their all-male cast; and they sing like never, replicating Diana Ross and Whitney Houston. I don’t think I have ever been that amused for months. I laughed so hard, but most of the time I was staring at them in awe, jaw at the floor.

This is true entertainment, ladies and gentlemen.

When the show ended I was back downstairs consuming the consumable hundred-peso entrance, with the Last Song Syndrome of “I Wanna Run to You” from The Bodyguard, and loud speakers blasting in my ears. I saw the Les Gay Follies members leave through the front door, and in the guise of buying cigarettes outside (I don’t smoke), I followed them. And it surprised me to find how gay they looked. Not gay as in happy, but gay as in gay—bading. Finally without the lights I see that their long sultry eyelashes were fake, and the boobs did not bounce, and the plaits of the hair were wigs, and the legs, though shaved, were still a semblance of hairy.

And I knew all along that they were men underneath those costumes, those pitch-perfect voices, but I found myself looking closely at them and being shocked still. They did their shows twice a week, every week. They thought of other new tricks to entertain, and we do get entertained by them. They polish their acts to the last detail, and they are always punctual, and ever-ready with their fake eyelashes and Wonderbra, teased or set hair, and smooth supermodel legs.

I wanted to run after their white van and ask them, are you happy? Do you enjoy our attention, do you really feel pride whenever you bow to the last curtain call (even though Politixx didn’t have curtains)? What do you feel whenever you put on those guises to trick the stage lights? Do you think Politixx gives you enough part off the P300 to keep you going? Where are you going? Are you going to celebrate your success tonight or is it just another night? Are you in love, or have you ever been? Do you have a family somewhere who are proud of you?

Finding out, rather early by the mind but late by the heart, that they were not only entertainers but also like us, human beings who have live outside this funhouse made of disco lights and spirits, and realizing that they were true-to-life badings who have suffered only too many disgusted comments and ugly looks from men and women alike, made me wonder if the members of Les Gay Follies think they have found out their true place on earth. They have talent. They entertained the crowd well. They deserved the good money we paid for them.

But underneath their clothes, like the song goes, there’s an endless story…

And like me, like us, they are wannabes. They put on those womanly facets and be like women for three hours a night. And maybe, just maybe, like me, they realize from time to time that you don’t really have to work for those dreams, because it is fun simply having them.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, In Blue

The place was the Araneta Coliseum. The people may not be dressed their best, but what they were wearing was tad too dressy to wax a car or bathe a dog. What I mean to say is, you will seldom see Pinoys going to concerts wearing full gear of crossbone body piercing and dyed spiky hair and dog collars or tube tops and miniskirts, depending on the genre of music.

Getting tickets itself was hard enough, especially if the artists in concert are the Corrs. Reason Number One: If General Admission costs Php 200, imagine how much the lower box would exorcise you of your dough. And Reason Number Two: Imagine frustrated lovers of the previous Valentine’s Day who were all set out to see the Corrs only to be disappointed because Andrea had tonsillitis and the concert dates were cancelled. What you get months later when the concert was rescheduled is tickets running out weeks before the date was due.

So you find Pinoys dressed like we have always dressed, as if everything was the same, but this isn’t just any event, this is the Corrs in Manila Concert. These were eerily beautiful and talented siblings who came halfway across the world in their flawless white skin and baroque sense of fashion.

I was surprised at them, surprised how different they are. And this coming from a girl who was lucky enough to have a sponsor that let her sit in the upper-lower box of the coliseum. Firstly they were gorgeous. I am a girl but I know a gorgeous woman when I see one. And secondly, they were haunting. I wondered why the violin wasn’t so popular here in Manila.

But in a certain glow, they were very Filipino as well. How close they were, how touching their sibling affection was for one another. How successful their coordination was that they actually made beautiful music.

They had no idea how Filipino Filipinos can get.

The multitude was reminiscent of Edsa 2. A passionate official Erap ouster will know it by the feeling of being crushed by two bouncy females who bounced as they sing, “Yeah, we are so young now, we are so, so young now…”

But you wouldn’t expect it to be felt by a clueless Brit, who only saw bird’s eye-view pictures of the shrine with heads as small as dots. But there were four Brits who did and they were Jim, Andrea, Caroline, and Sharon. They were shocked; you’d see it in their faces.

They had no idea Filipinos could be fanatics, but fanatics perhaps is not the word. It is not the general term for people who shed tears at “Give Me a Reason” or memorized the words to “Only When I Sleep”, who clapped when they clapped and grew silent when they are silent.

Words fail me, as did Sharon who was quoted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer the following morning as saying they didn’t get so big a response outside the UK ever before.

The West marries the East.

As if they knew it was going to be a special concert, or because they knew from their homework about our nature, the Corrs had agreed to play one of their songs, “Don’t Say You Love Me” for the very first time ever, live. It was such a small favor, but I consider it a gift from them, sort of like an appreciative token from people who have been idolized by people they didn’t even know. Following were other old songs that we knew them for, songs they had played in their first Manila performance some years ago that didn’t attract as much attention as this second one did. The songs that gave the world the Corrs. And it is uplifting to the heart, to hear them again.

And then there were new songs, songs that seduced us, the songs that made us know the Corrs apart from other artists, that gave them their distinction. Ahh, the politics of the Araneta. Those who could pay more could see more, and those who paid less could get less, but even this was transcended by the music; for may it be touching the ground they trod on, or way up the roof you could hardly tell Sharon and Andrea apart, people danced, people cheered, and people turned on their cell phones, may it be a Nokia 8850 or one of the older cheaper ones, and waved them as they created their very own salute with their pirouetting backlights, and people fell in love, and people’s hearts got broken. Wherever you are, you would be reached.

Of course the revivals had their touch, like “Dreams” and the less popular ones. It gave us glimpses of what is familiar but that we can’t place, like a sense of déjà vu, both nostalgic and essential to the sensibility.

And the West had married the East, and the something old, something new, something borrowed spiel was fulfilled up to the last note, up to the last melody, up to the last ovation, up to the last moment that the Corrs ruled that small haven of the loving.

They had left, and, pardon the term, left us In Blue. The only way we can remember them. Their latest album which after the entire experience seem suddenly insufficient, suddenly desolate and wanting of some touches.

But we will forgive, and not forget.