tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16351189126928313972024-02-08T01:48:06.301-08:00Pinoy TransgressiveUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-18101760914239705712009-11-09T05:22:00.000-08:002009-11-09T05:30:55.582-08:00Ang Pangahas na Si Pepe Rodriguezby Dustin Edward D. Celestino<br /><br />I. Ang Tiktik<br /><br />Mamamatay na yata ako pero wala akong ibang maisip kung hindi, “Puta, ang supot ng last words ko.” Ang huli ko kasing sinabi, “tanga.” Kung sinuman ang bumaril sa akin, tanga ‘yun. Pero hindi ito ang bagay na dapat pinag-iisipan ko. Hindi na mahalaga iyon. Kapag lumabas na ang katotohanan, kapag alam na ng lahat ang nangyari, malamang patay na’ko. Iba na lang ang pag-iisipan ko. <br /><br />Gusto ko sanang ipaalam sa dalawang “medical professional” kung anumang misteryo ang maaaring bumabalot sa aking pagkabaril. Kaya lang kapag nagsasalita ako, walang boses na lumalabas. Mga tunog lang na maihahambing sa tunog ng pagmumumog matapos mag-toothbrush. Siguro umakyat na ang dugo mula sa aking katawan papunta sa lalamunan. Tanging hiling ko lang, sana tumigil na ‘tong dalawang “medical professional” sa kasisigaw. <br /><br />Buddy, ang pulso! Humihina ang pulso!<br /> <br />Tangina, tingnan mo ‘yun! ‘Yung ganiyang fluid galing sa atay yan!<br />Ang mga taong nabaril, dapat relaxed para ‘wag tumakbo ang pulso at maubos ang dugo. Pero paano ka naman mag-rerelax kung may dalawang bobong pinag-uusapan ang “fluid” ng atay mo?<br /><br />Totoo pala ‘yung sinasabi ng mga taong may “near-death experience.” Ang mga alaala, sasayaw at mag cha-chacha sa isip at memorya. Pero hindi ang mga alaala nung kabataan. Kalokohan ‘yun. Ang isip naka-focus, nakakapit, nananalig sa kung anumang makabuluhang imahen na maaaring maging simbolo ng buhay. Kakapit ang ulirat sa mga nananatiling hibla ng naghihingalong hininga. Nakakapit ako sa aking atay, ang atay kong maaaring pinadilaw na’t pinatigas ng daan-daang bote ng alak. Daan-daang lagok ng alak na marahil ang huli’y ‘yung nilagok ko kanina – mga latak mula sa beer na binili kagabi. Nakakapit ako sa isang pangalan, Pepe Rodriguez. Kung anumang misteryo ang maaaring bumabalot sa aking pagkakabaril, may kinalaman itong lahat kay Pepe Rodriguez.<br /><br />Kagabi, pakiramdam ko’y gumapang ang buwan papalapit sa mundo. Mainit ang hangin noon. Malambot at mabango ang katawan ni Cara. Sa lugar na iyon, kulob sa loob ng bahay, nakatago sa kubli ng gabi habang nakasilip ang buwan sa bintana na parang mata ni Bathala, naramdaman ko ang katahimikan. Pakiramdam ko, malinis ako. At alam ko nang mga sandaling iyon na matagal akong magiging maligaya hangga’t hindi ko naaalala ang dati kong trabaho.<br /><br />Magdamag kaming nagpagulong-gulong sa kama at naligo sa halik at haplos ng isa’t isa. Parang isang mahabang eksena mula sa isang pelikula kung saan ang mga gumanap na artista ay nagkakantutan sa totoong buhay. Pagdating ng umaga, kumain kami ng almusal. Pandesal. Butter. Kasi ‘yun lang ang meron. Habang kumakain kami, nagsusulat si Cara sa isang notebook na pink. Medyo kinabahan ako kasi pakiramdam ko sinusulat niya ang pros and cons ng table manners ko. Titingin siya sa akin tapos magsusulat sa notebook. Tinanong ko siya tungkol dito. Ang sabi ni Cara, “Wala ito. Kasama sa trabaho ko. Nagsusulat ako ng kwento.” <br /><br />Pagkatapos mag almusal, bumalik kami sa kama at itinuloy ang romansa. Mga alas dose, bumangon siya at sinabing kailangan na niyang maligo. Ininom ko ang mga natitirang latak mula sa mga bote ng beer na ininom namin kagabi. ‘Yun na siguro ang mga huling patak ng alak na dadapo sa dila, panlasa, lalamunan, at alaala ko. “Kailangan ko nang umalis. Late na ako. Baka may mga nag-aantay nang client.” Hindi pa rin ako sigurado kung ano ang trabaho ni Cara. Hindi kami nag-uusap tungkol sa trabaho. Naisip ko, mas magandang ganun. Ayokong pag-usapan ang mga trabaho.<br /><br />Nagbihis si Cara. Sleeveless at maikling palda. Umikot-ikot at nagmodel-model. “Okey ba?” tanong niya. “Oo. Maganda. Dito ka na lang. Tumawag ka na lang sa boss mo, sabihin mo may sakit ka,” sabi ko. Sinabi niya na hindi raw puwede kasi bago pa lang siya sa trabaho. Sinabi niya rin na puwede akong manatili sa apartment niya basta hindi ko pakikialamanan ang mga gamit niya. “Bakit ko naman pakikialamanan ang mga gamit mo?” tanong ko. Biro lang daw. Tumawa na lang ako kahit alam kong hindi siya nagbibiro nung sinabi niya iyon. Wala naman akong gagawin kaya humilata na lang ako. Dalawang linggo na akong walang trabaho. Hindi naman ako natanggal o nag-resign. Basta tumigil na lang ako. <br /><br />Buddy, tinamaan din ‘yung spleen! Pero, bakit may black?<br /><br />Marrow yan. Tinamaan din yata ‘yung spine.<br /><br />Oo, alam ko madami akong tama. Kailangan ba talagang ipaalala sa taong namamatay na namamatay siya? Hindi yata tama iyon. Pero, sabi nga ng dalawang “medical professional,” sa spleen at sa spine nga tumagos ang pangalawang bala. Mga importanteng bahagi ng katawan ito. ‘yung spleen ko ang nagsasala at nag-iipon ng dugo ko. Ang spine naman, sa tagalog ay gulugod o espina, ang highway ng nervous system. Sa loob noon ay may marrow, sa tagalog, ubod. Ito ‘yung black na sinasabi nila. Bakit ko alam ‘to eh hindi naman ako doktor? Kasi matagal din akong umali-aligid sa ospital. Madami akong natutunan mula sa mga “medical professional” tulad ng dalawang nagsisisigaw ngayon. Ang nakakatawa rito, noong sinilip nila ‘yung tama ng bala malapit sa gulugod ko, akala ko makikita nila kulay luntian. ‘Yun daw kasi ang kulay ng ubod ng mga gahaman sa pera – mukhang halaman ang ubod.<br /><br />Nahihilo ako. Pakiramdam ko’y isang lasing na hinulog sa karagatan ng gin. Pilit na lumalangoy. Kumakapit sa buhay. Nananalig sa mga simbolo at imahen ng mga nananatiling hibla ng naghihingalong hininga. Luntian man ang ubod at dilaw man ang atay, kakapit ako rito, sa aking natitirang pagkatao. At kung yumaon man ngayong gabi, mayroon pa ring nangyaring maganda: mananatili akong malinis sa alaala ni Cara, at hindi niya malalaman ang aking mga kasalanan. Hindi na darating ang araw na kailangan ko ipagtapat sa kaniya na dati akong espiya, o kung tawagi’y tiktik. Hindi parang James Bond. Hindi naman ako nagtrabaho para sa gobyerno. Dati akong pribadong imbestigador. Hindi rin parang si Mike Enriquez. Wala naman akong hinuhuling abusado. Ang ginagawa ko lang, inaalam kung sino’ng nanonorotot at nagtataksil sa nagbabayad sa akin. Mga babae’t lalaki na nagbabayad nang malaki para malaman kung may ibang kinakantot ang mga asawa nila. Madalas meron. Minsan naman, ang kailangan ko lang gawin ay sabihin sa kanila ang hindi nila kayang sabihin sa mga sarili. Kagaya nung isang babaeng asawa ng congressman. Sinabi niya bumili ‘yung asawa niya ng bestidang hindi kasya sa mataba niyang katawan. “Ano sa tingin mo ibig sabihin noon? Pakiramdam ko may ginagawang hindi maganda ang asawa mo,” sabi ko. Natanggap niya kaagad. Siyempre, alam niya na para sa ibang babae ‘yun kasi ang anak nila lalaki. At kung bakla man ‘yun, hindi naman siguro siya ibibili ng isang machong pulitikong ama ng bestida. Bukod doon, pulitiko ang asawa niya at alam naman ng lahat na ang mga pulitiko, tarantado.<br /><br />Madaming tao ang nagtataksil sa mga kasintahan nila. Kundi man sila ang nagtataksil, nagdududa sila na ang kasintahan ang nagtataksil. Kung meron mang nagtataksil o wala, ang sigurado, may kikitain ako. Hanggang may mga taksil sa mundo, hindi ako mauubusan ng pera. Para akong doktor o mortisyano. Kasi, ang pagtataksil ay tiyak. Hindi nawawala sa uso. Parang sipon o ubo. Parang kamatayan. Lalago at magiging matagumpay ang negosyo ko. Pinaghandaan ko na nga ito eh. Noong nakaraang buwan napag-isipan ko na kailangan ko ng junior private investigator. Taga-ayos ng papeles, taga-record ng mga kaso. Nagpalagay ako ng advertisement sa diyaryo. Makalipas ang isang linggo, bumili ako ng diyaryo para makita kung ano ang itsura ng advertisement ko. Ang balita sa front page, murder at suicide.<br /><br />Ang mga biktima ay sina Moses at Jenny Hontiveros. ‘yung lalaki, si Moses, kliyente ko. May asawa siyang maganda. Bata. Mga beinte anyos lang siguro si Jenny. Si Moses ang nagbabayad ng tuition ni Jenny, mga uniporme, board review classes, at kung anu-ano pang gastos sa kursong nursing. Si Moses pumunta sa opisina ko at sinabing, “Parang medyo distant siya eh. Kapag sinusubukan ko siyang kausapin umiinit ang ulo niya at sinasabing pagod siya sa duty sa ospital at sa mga review classes. Sinasabi niya na kung marunong akong makiramdam, hindi ko siya kukulitin at hahayaang magpahinga. Sinasabi niya lang palagi, ‘Ano? Gusto mong mag-usap, Moses? Ayokong mag-usap. Ang gusto ko, magpahinga.’ Concerned lang naman ako para sa asawa ko.” Walang kinalaman sa pag-uusap ang “concern” ni Moses. Sa palagay ko, ang talagang “concern” niya, ayaw magpakantot ng asawa niya. Ito siguro ang totoong palaging sinasabi ni Jenny: “Ano? Gusto mong mag-sex, Moses? Ayokong mag-sex. Ang gusto ko, magpahinga.” Hindi ka naman magbabayad ng P12,000 para malaman kung bakit ayaw “makipag-usap” ng asawa mo, diba?<br /><br />Nag-imbestiga ako. Makalipas lang ang ilang araw may naipakita na kong ebidensiya ng kataksilan ng asawa ni Moses. Pinakita ko kay Moses ang video ng asawa niya na isinusubo ang ari ng isang doctor. Nakaluhod siya sa harap nito, hawak ang mahabang buhok para huwag makasagabal sa ginagawang pagsubo. Labas pasok ang ari ng doktor sa bibig ng asawa ni Moses. Hindi ko na sinubukang magpahiwatig ng pakikiramay kay Moses. Ano naman ang puwede mong sabihin sa isang lalaking nakita ang asawa niyang isinusubo ang ari ng ibang lalaki? Wala. Nang makita ni Moses ang ginagawa ng asawa niya sa video, bumigay ang mga tuhod niya’t napaupo siya sa sahig. Umiyak siya. Tahimik nung una, tapos naging hagulgol. Matapos ang ilang minuto, tumayo si Moses, nagpasalamat sa akin, nagpaalam, lumabas ng aking opisina, bumili ng baril, umuwi, binaril ang asawa, at binaril ang sarili. Nakita ko siya sa unang pahina ng diyaryo. ‘yung advertisement ko nasa pang-apat na pahina. Okey naman ‘yung ad. Walang mali sa spelling. Bukas, baka ako naman ang nasa diyaryo.<br /><br />Sa puso yata, Buddy! Sa puso!<br /><br />Hindi ko alam kung paano ayusin ‘to. Humingi tayo ng saklolo!<br /><br />Ayon sa dalawang “medical professional,” ang pangatlong bala ay tumama sa puso ko. Pero, daplis lang siguro, kasi kung sapul na sapul talaga, malamang kanina pa ako patay. Buhay pa naman ako eh, broken hearted nga lang. Gets mo? Kung yumaon man ngayong gabi, mayroon pa ring nangyaring maganda. Hindi na darating ang araw na makikita ko ang kasintahan kong sumusubo ng ari ng ibang lalaki. At hindi pagkakakitaan ninuman ang aking hinagpis. Hindi kagaya ng sinapit ni Moses. Ano kaya ang puwedeng mangyari kung sinabi ko kay Moses na walang ginagawang masama ang asawa niya? Ano kaya kung ang footage na ipinakita ko ay hindi ang pagsubo niya ng ari ng doktor kundi ang pag-aalaga niya sa mga bata’t matatandang may sakit? Siguro mas maganda ang naging kapalaran ng dalawa. Baka nakapagtapos si Jenny. Tapos nakapag-abroad sila. Tapos nagkapamilya. Tapos naging maligaya. Pero wala na lahat ‘yun. Dahil sa isang video.<br /><br />Moses, patas na tayo. Maganda rin sana ang kapalaran namin ni Cara. Low-profile lang. Simple. Magtatalik kami sa gabi. Sa umaga, papasok kami sa trabaho. Magkikita kami sa bahay pagkatapos. Manonood kami ng mga pirated DVD habang naghahapunan. Tatawa kasi nakakatawa ang palabas. Magsusulat-sulat si Cara sa pink na notebook na lagi niyang dala. Tapos guguluhin ko ang pagsusulat niya. Maghaharutan kami. Magkikilitian. Maglalandian. Tapos magtatalik ulit kami. At hindi sisikat ang araw nang hindi kami magkasama. <br /><br />Hindi na mangyayari lahat iyon kasi nga nabaril na ako, at ang pagkakabaril ko ay may kinalaman kay Pepe Rodriguez. Kaninang umaga, bago ako mabaril, naiwanan ni Cara ang notebook niyang pink. Naaalala ko pa. Naligo siya. Uminom ako ng latak ng alak. Nagbihis siya, nagmodel-model, humalik sa akin, at sinabing huwag ko pakialamanan ang mga gamit niya.<br /><br />Naiwan ni Cara ang notebook niya sa kama. Na-intriga ako sa kung anumang mga kuwento ang nakasulat doon kaya’t binasa ko ang ilang pahina habang naglalakad patungo sa pila ng tricycle kung saan puwede kong ibigay kay Cara ang naiwang notebook. Ang ikinagulat ko, hindi mga kuwento ang nakasulat sa notebook. Mga obserbasyon ang nakasulat. Mga record ng imbestigasyon. Meron siyang tini-tiktikan. At sino namn ang tini-tiktikan ni Cara?<br /><br />Nakasulat sa isang entry: Jan 13 – Umalis na si Pepe sa bar. Isang karaoke bar sa Fairview – Tikyo’s. Namumula ang mukha niya. Mukhang lasing na lasing siya. May kasama siyang magandang babae.<br /><br />Sa ibang pahina, nakita ko ‘to: Jan 14 – Mag-isang nag-celebrate si Pepe ng birthday. Wala siyang kasama kundi ang aso niyang ang pangalan ay “Prince.” Loner siguro siya. Napansin ko na may scar siya sa kilay. Dahil dito mukha siyang goons. Pero kung hindi dahil dito baka mukha siyang babae kasi ang payat-payat niya. Nakakapagtaka kung paano siyang nakagagawa ng violent crimes, eh mukha naman siyang mabait.<br /><br />Heto pa: Jan 16 – Nag-ahit si Pepe. Baka ginagawa niya ito para mag-disguise sa mga pulis. Siguro may ginawa na naman siyang masama.<br /><br />Ito ang pinaka nakapagtataka – una kaming nagkita ni Cara sa Tikyo’s noong January 13 at lasing nga ako noon. At totoo na ang aso ko lamang ang kasama ko noong birthday ko. At nag-ahit din ako dahil sinabi ni Cara na nakititinik ang bigote ko kapag hinahalikan ko ang ari niya. Kagabi lang ‘yun. Pepe rito, Pepe roon. Hindi naman Pepe ang pangalan ko. Ang pangalan ko Brian Moya. Pero mahigit dalawampung pahina na ang nakasulat sa notebook niya at lahat iyon tungkol saakin. Bakit niya ginagawa ito?<br /><br />Puwede kong itanong sa kaniya ito pagbalik niya mula sa trabaho. Pero baka pag-awayan namin. Itatanong ko, “Bakit ka nagsusulat tungkol sa akin?” Sasabihin niya, “Bakit ka nakkialam sa gamit ko?” Tapos naisip ko baka maghiwalay kami dahil dito. Eh puwede ko namang malaman ang mga sagot ng hindi tinatanong sa kaniya. Imbestegador naman ako, diba? Sinundan ko siya. Nakarating kami sa dati kong opisina. Ang opisinang iniwan ko. Ang opisina kung saan humagulgol si Moses bago barilin ang asawa at ang sarili. Bakit nagpupunta rito si Cara? Kung anuman ang dahilan, hindi na importanteng pag-usapan. Sandali na lang ang nalalabing panahon ko sa mundo. Kung anumang misteryo ang bumabalot sa pagpunta ni Cara sa dati kong opisina, madidiskubre din. Kapag lumabas na ang katotohanan, pag alam na ng lahat ang nangyari, malamang patay na ko. Iba na lang ang pag-iisipan ko.<br /><br />Ang gusto ko, si Cara ang huling imahe sa isip ko bago ito’y tuluyan nang makalimot at maglaho. Si Cara. Malambot at makinis ang kanyang katawan. Mabango ang balat. Amoy mansanas o pandan. Nananalig ako sa mga simbolo at imahe ng mga nananatiling hibla ng naghihingalong hininga. Nakakapit ako sa amoy ng balat ni Cara, sa tunog ng kainyang ungol, sa magandang mukha, sa magandang katawan, sa malalaking suso, sa leeg at hita, sa kaniyang laway, sa kaniyang dila. Nakakapit ako sa imahe ng langit dito sa lupa.<br /><br />II. Ang Kabit<br /><br />Ang bastos talaga ng bibig ni Mr. Garcia! Grabe! Sinabi ba naman niya, “Si Pepe Rodriguez ang kutsarita ng tamod na dapat nilunok na lang ng nanay niya.” Kahit gaano kasama ang isang tao, hindi niya dapat masabihan ng ganun. Kadiri! Hello?<br />Sinabi ni Mr. Garcia na si Pepe Rodriguez daw masamang tao. Sinabi ni Mr. Garcia madami na daw ginawang katarantaduhan si Pepe at ang unang assignment ko raw ay hanapin siya? Hello? Okey ka lang?<br /><br />Bukod doon, madami pa akong problema. ‘Yung mga disconnection notice, ‘yung camera-phone na nakasangla at malapit na ma-remata, at kung ano ang kakainin ko.Hindi ko talaga dapat binili ‘yung high heels na red last week tsaka ‘yung magandang skirt, kahit mukha akong mapayat pag suot ko ‘yun. Pero, on the other hand, kung hindi ko isinuot ang masikip na dress na nabili ko, baka hindi ako ang junior investigadora na kinuha ni Mr. Garcia. Kasi hindi naman talaga ako qualified. Wala akong alam sa investigating. Malakas ang radar ko sa current tsismis, at expert ang social skills ko sa pag-harvest ng neighborhood intriga. Pero sa paghanap ng mga nagtatagong goons, hindi talaga ako fabulous. Ano ba itong pinasok ko? Well, I didn’t have a choice naman. Kasi ang dami nang bills tapos ‘yung ex-boyfriend kong, take note, politician, hindi na ako sinusustntuhan kasi nga nahuli na kami ng wife niya. <br /><br />Paano ba ko naging imbestigadora? One morning, I was telling my neighbor Elsa na ang hirap talaga makahanap ng work kasi puro college-college ang gusto ng employers. Buti na lang may nakitang advertisement si Elsa sa newspaper:<br /><br />Wanted: Junior Private Investigator<br />Male or Female. 21-35 years old.<br />Hard Working. Organized. Well-informed. Computer Literate.<br />No experience required. High School<br />Graduates welcome to apply.<br /><br />Sabi ko, “Perfect!” I’m female, 24 years old, at walang experience with detective work. Pumunta kaagad ako sa address na nakalagay suot ang pinaka-attractive na damit. ‘Yung talagang nakaka-flatter sa curves ko. Halos tumulo ang laway ni Mr. Garcia nung nakita niya ako. Tanggap agad ang lola mo! Pero, seryoso, kalokohan ‘tong trabahong ‘to kasi mali talagang mag-spy on other people. Dati nanonood ako ng Cheaters, ‘yung show sa cable, sa ETC yata. Basta, ito ‘yung show na may mga guys or girls na papasundan sa isang private investigator ‘yung mga loved-ones nila to catch them cheating. Grabe! Todo to the max ang scandalous public away matapos mabisto ang mga manloloko! Sira talaga ang relationship. Hindi ko ma-imagine myself doing that to other people. Minsan naman hindi nila talaga love ‘yung mga ka-affair nila. Kahit nakikipag-sex sila sa iba, I’m sure, deep inside, mahal pa rin nila ‘yung partners nila. For example, ‘yung dati kong boyfriend na politician. Hindi naman kagandahan ang asawa niya, mataba na masungit pa. Pero hindi niya maiwan even for me. Pero ibang kuwento na yan eh. Ang totoong problema ay ang trabaho kong parang walang pinatutunguhan.<br /><br />Tuesday nung nakuha ko ‘yung imbstegadora position, at Friday nung nakasakay ako sa MRT papunta sa office at wala pa rin akong alam tungkol kay Pepe Rodriguez. Sasabihin na naman ni Mr. Garcia, “O Cara, may nahanap ka na bang lead? Ano na nalalaman mo so far?” Tapos, as usual, smile lang ang sagot ko. Pero seryoso, hindi totoo si Pepe Rodriguez. Nag-google na ako ng name niya and hinanap ko na siya sa Friendster, Multiply, at Facebook tapos wala pa rin. Anong klaseng tao ang walang Friendster? Hello? May tao bang walang Friendster profile? Bukod dito, tinawagan ko rin ang dating friends ko from the bar kung saan ako nag-work bago ako binigyan ng apartment ng ex-boyfriend kong, take note, politician. Sinabi ko sa friends ko na humingi sila ng favor sa mga regulars nilang pulis at sabihin sa mga pulis na i-check kung meron bang baranggay or criminal record si Pepe Rodriguez. Sinabi nila wala naman daw. Walang criminal record. Anong klaseng criminal ang walang criminal record? ‘Yun ang pinag-iisipan ko sa MRT. ‘Yung mga contradicting inconsistencies. Dapat may magsabi sa Mr. Garcia na yan na hindi lahat ng magandang babae, walang isip.<br /><br />Nagkaroon ako ng realization: Possible kaya na imbento lang ni Mr. Garcia si Pepe Rodriguez at, ang totoo, palamuti lang ako sa office niya? Alam ko naman na natanggap lang ako kasi maganda ako. Alam ko naman na hindi ako sineseryoso ng mga tao. May nagsabi nga sa aking customer sa club before, “Alam mo ang malas mo?” Tapos nung tinanong ko kung bakit. Ang sabi niya, “Masyado kang maganda. Maraming lalaking mambobola, manloloko, magbabayad, at magsisinungaling para matikman ka.” Hello? Gawin daw akong ulam! Gusto ko sabihin sa buong mundo: Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Hindi dahil maganda ako, wala akong isip. Hello? Behind my beauty is my brains. ‘Yung mga nakakakita ng Friendster profile ko, kilala talaga ako. Alam nila na kasama sa hobbies and interests ko ang “reading novels.” Hello? Ilan ang kilala mong nagbabasa ng novels? People can’t see beyond my looks. Ever since na lang ang binabayaran sa akin ng employers ‘yung looks ko. Okey lang sana kung regular ‘yung suweldo. Pero hindi eh. Commission system. Ang sabi ni Mr. Garcia sa akin, “Bibigyan kita ng transpo allowance na P100 a day, at P1000 bawat item ng evidence or lead na makakatulong sa imbestigasyon natin.”<br /><br />Nung hapon din na ‘yun, sa MRT, tinanong ko ang sarili ko, “Paano akong magkakaroon ng commission kung wala akong mahahanap na evidence or lead kasi wala naman talagang Pepe Rodriguez?” And then, nagkaroon ulit ako ng realization: Baka ito nga ang plano ni Mr. Garcia. Plano niya sigurong papuntahin ako sa opisina niya, titigan, pagpantasyahan, at hawak-hawakan tapos bayaran ng P100? Hello? Mas mura pa sa isang ladies drink ‘yun!<br /><br />Pero, I have my pride. Hindi na ako babalik sa pagiging Guest Relations Officer. I have other talents besides my beautiful body parts. Lahat ng ito naisip ko sa MRT. At kahit na masikip at kadiri, kasi may mga lalaking lumalapit at humihinga ng malalim, inaamoy ako, at ikinikiskis ang mga harap nila sa likod ko, nakapag-isip pa rin ako ng mga realizations. That only goes to show that I can work under pressure. At hindi ako papayag na paglaruan at pagtripan ng bastos na Mr. Garcia na yan. Hello? Asa pa siya. Hindi ako makikipag-sex sa kaniya, kung ‘yun ang motive niya sa pag-hire sa akin. Not for anything less than P10,000! And if ever nangyari ‘yun, na nag-offer siya ng P10,000 at pumayag nga ako, hihiga lang ako sa kama na parang nalantang halaman para hindi siya mag-enjoy! <br /><br />Ganun nga ang sitwasyon: Wala akong money, tapos masikip sa MRT, tapos mainit, tapos nahihilo na ko, tapos nahihirapan ako mag-balance kasi nakatayo ako and I’m in high heels, tapos my mga dumidikit at umaamoy pa sa akin, tapos ‘yung boss ko pa manloloko yata. Sobrang stressed na ko. And then, may lalaking tumayo at sinabing, “Miss, ikaw na dito sa puwesto ko.” Pero hindi niya ako tinitigan, at hindi rin niya sinubukang makipagkilala. Hindi niya rin ako inamoy o hinawakan pag daan ko. Tumayo lang siya sa harap ko. Nakayuko lang siya, tapos ‘yung buhok niya nakatakip sa mga mata niya. Ang makikita lang, ‘yung bigote niya. Matagal na siguro siyang hindi nag-ahit. Tapos nung hinawi niya ‘yung buhok niya, nakita ko may scar siya sa kilay. Mukha siyang matapang. Kung totoo si Pepe Rodriguez, naisip ko, ganito siguro ang itsura niya.<br /><br />Pagdating ng Quezon Ave. station ng MRT, bumaba na ako kasi papunta nga ako sa old friends ko sa bar kung saan dati akong nagta-trabaho. Gumewang-gewang din siya palabas. Mukhang nakainom. Pagbaba sa MRT, naglakad ako papunta sa pila ng jeep. Pumila rin siya. Habang nasa jeep, pumikit siya at nagpahinga. Nagulat ako nang pumara siya kung saan ako bababa. Pareho yata kami ng pupuntahan. Pumasok din siya sa Tikyo’s at umupo sa isang madilim na sulok. Doon, tinanong ko ulit ang mga dati kong amiga, si Katja tsaka si Anna, kung meron bang balita tungkol kay Pepe Rodriguez. Wala pa rin daw. Umupo na lang ako kasama nila at nakipag-kwentuhan habang umiinom. ‘Yung lalaking nakita ko sa MRT, umiinom din. Pero, tuwing lalapit ang floor manager para mag-alok ng babae, tinatanggihan niya. Buong gabi, umiinom lang siya mag-isa. Nasa sulok lang siya, nakatalikod sa stage kung saan nagsasayaw ang mga entertainers. Na-intriga talaga sa lalaking ‘yun, kaya nang medyo nahihilo na ako, napalapit ako sa kanya. Parang déjà vu. Ganito kasi ang trabaho ko dati. Medyo sanay pa ako. Sabi ko, “Hi.” Mahinhin. Friendly. Ganon talaga sa umpisa, lalo na kung mahiyain ang customer. Pero bago pa ako makapagpakilala, nagsalita siya kaagad – <br /><br />“Miss, alam ko kung saan ‘to pupunta. Sa tulong ng mahiwagang alak, lokohin natin ang mga sarili natin na may maaaring mamagitan sa atin. Pero, maniwala ka sa sasabihin ko. Magkarelasyon man tayo, at sabihin man natin sa isa’t-isa na habang buhay tayo magmamahalan, darating ang araw na pagtataksilan kita at pagtataksilan mo rin ako. At kundi man tayo magtaksil sa isa’t-isa, sigurado pagbibintangan kita ng pagtataksil, at pagbibintangan mo rin ako ng pagtataksil. Lalala ito ng lalala, hanggang sa umabot sa puntong kung sino-sinong mga tarantado na ang inuutusan natin para pagmanmanan ang isa’t-isa, tapos may madidiskubre tayo tungkol sa isa’t-isa na sana’y hindi na lang natin nadiskubre tungkol sa isa’t isa, tapos iisipin natin na sana hindi na lang nangyari ang gabi ng pagkikita, na naging pagkakataon para uminom at malasing ng magkasama, na naging dahilan para gawin, makakahiligan, makakaadikan, at makakasanayan, ang pagkakantutan, hanggang mapunta na nga ang nakahiligan, nakaadikan, at nakasanayan sa isang relasyong isang araw ay pagmumulan ng poot, galit, at mga masasamang ala-ala na dadalhin at pagsisisihan magpakailanman.”<br />Noong sinabi niya ‘yun, nagkaroon ulit ako ng realization: Ito na yata ang pinaka-honest na lalaki sa buong mundo. Alam ko, nang sandaling iyon, kaya kong mahalin ang lalaking iyon. Ganito kasi talaga nahahanap ang true love. Minsan talaga, pag suwerte, biglang lilitaw ang lalaki para sayo sa mga oras at lugar na hindi mo inaasahan. May matinding emosyon na bumalot sa akin at naramdaman ko na kailangan ko sabihin sa kaniya ang tungkol sa destiny. Pero hindi ko pa nasasabi sa kaniya ang kailangan masabi, nakatulog na siya sa kalasingan.<br /><br />Nang malapit na magsara ang bar, kinuha ko ang wallet niya at binayaran ang bill niya, pati na rin ang bill ko. Kasi diba pag first date ang lalaki naman talaga ang nagbabayad? Nakita ko ang SSS I.D. niya. Nakalagay rito: Brian Moya / 33-9622530-0 / January 14, 1978<br /><br />Tama ako. Destined talaga kami para sa isa’t-isa. Capricorn siya. Taurus naman ako. Pag tiningnan sa online compatibility meter ang compatibility rating namin, 10/10! Perfect score. Birthday niya pala ngayon. Kawawa naman siya. Walang nakakakilala sa kaniya, kaya’t dinala ko na lang siya sa apartment ko. Ngayong gabi, ang prinsesa ang magliligtas sa prinsipe. Hindi naman ako malandi o pakawalang babae. Naawa lang talaga ako sa kaniya kasi birthday niya, tapos mag-isa lang siya, tapos lasing pa siya. Nagpatulong ako sa driver ng taxi dalhin siya sa sofa. Buti na lang mabait si manong. Binigyan ko na lang siya ng tip.<br /><br />Naglabas ako ng maliit na palanggana ng maligamgam na tubig at isang bimpo. Nilagyan ko ng konting rubbing alcohol ang tubig. Ibinabad ko ang bimpo, piniga, at ipinahid sa mukha ni Brian. Hinubad ko ang suot niyang polo, sapatos, medyas, at pantalon… Pero walang malisya ‘yun. May friend ako dati sa club na nag-aaral ng nursing. Ang sabi niya, puwede raw mamatay kapag nagsuka ang isang tao habang natutulog. Kasi ‘yung suka pupunta sa baga at puwedeng ikalunod. Sinabi niya rin sa akin na para bumaba ang pagkalasing, puwede kong punasan ng basang bimpo ang mga maiinit na parte ng katawan – ang mukha, leeg, kili-kili, at ‘yung… ahem… malapit sa groin area. Kaya ‘yun nga ang ginawa ko. Nakaluhod ako sa tabi ng sofa pinupunasan ang maiinit na bahagi ng katawan ni Brian.<br /><br />Nagustuhan niya yata nung pinunasan ko ng basang bimpo ang groin area niya. Palalim nang palalim ang paghinga niya. Medyo kinilig ako nang konti. At nung dahan-dahan niyang minulat ang mga mata niya at tumingin sa akin habang pinupunasan ko ng basang bimpo ang tumitigas niyang… ahem… pagkalalaki, sumuko na ako sa pagnanasa.<br />Hindi ako puta, ha? Marami rin akong nainom nung gabing ‘yun, tapos may lalaking humihinga ng malalim at nakatitig sa akin habang ang kamay ko ay nasa tumitigas niyang pagkalalaki. Hello? Siyempre, kahit papaano, maaapektuhan ako. Pero, in fairness, hindi ako ang nagsimula. Umupo siya. Kinuha niya ang bimpo mula sa kamay ko, inilubog muli sa maligamgam na tubig, hinawakan ako sa buhok, at ipinahid ang bimpo sa mukha, leeg, at sa boobs ko. Medyo kadiri nang konti kasi galing na sa groin area niya ‘yung bimpo, pero may alcohol naman ‘yung tubig kaya siguro patay na ‘yung germs bago niya ipahid ‘yung bimpo sa mukha ko.<br /><br />Grabe talaga. Tumayo siya at inilapit ang mukha ko sa matigas niyang… ahem… pagkalalaki. Naramdaman ko ang gigil niya sa paghatak niya sa buhok ko. Ibinuka ko ang bibig at ipinasok niya ang kanyang ari. Hawak pa rin ang aking buhok, paulit-ulit niyang inilabas at ipinasok ito hanggang sa siya’y labasan. At nang labasan, hinigpitan niya lalo ang pagkakasabunot sa buhok ko, tumingin siya sa mga mata ko, at sinabing, “Lunukin mo.”<br /><br />Siyempre, naisip ko, Hello? Bakit ko gagawin ‘yun? Hindi ko maipaliwanag kung bakit niya ipinagawa sa akin ‘yun. Pero hindi ko rin maipaliwanag kung bakit nung sinabi niya ‘yun, dumaan sa isip ko saglit ang sinabi ni Mr. Garcia – “Si Pepe Rodriguez ang kutsarita ng tamod na dapat nilunok na lang ng nanay niya” – at sobrang natawa ako. Kung puwede lang humalakhak habang may ari sa bibig, siguro nagawa ko ito. <br />Ang dumi ng pakiramdam ko pagkatapos. Pakiramdam ko’y nagamit ako. Nadungisan. Nabastos. Nababoy. Pero may bahagi sa pagkatao kong nag-enjoy. Masama. Malaswa. Alam kong mali, at hindi ko dapat ikatuwa, pero ang sarap.<br /><br />Siya nga si Pepe Rodriguez. Ang dakilang bastardong pusakal. Ang pinakahayop sa mga hayop. Ang pinakababoy sa mga baboy. Bayolente. Bastos. Salbahe. Inconsiderate. Hindi pa niya alam ang pangalan ko, ipinalulunok na niya ang semilya niya sa akin. Ito nga ang pangahas na si Pepe Rodriguez – magulo ang buhok, makapal ang bigote, at may tahi sa kilay.<br /><br />Pagkagising ko wala na siya. Nag-iwan lang ng sulat at contact number sa lamesa, “Salamat – Brian (09062788435).” Hindi pa rin mawala sa isip ko si Brian. Nagpunta ako sa computer shop para i-google ang pangalan niya. Meron pala siyang Friendster account. Tuwang-tuwa ako sa sense of humor niya kasi ang nakalagay sa hobbies and interests niya, “Drinking. Uminom. Mag-jakol.” Astig talaga siya. Wala siyang pakialam sa magiging opinyon ng mga makakabasa sa profile niya. Kaonti lang din ang mga litrato. Merong ilang litrato ng aso. Ayon sa research ko, ang pangalan ng aso, “Prince.”<br /><br />Pagdating sa office, sinabi ko kay Mr. Garcia na nahanap ko na si Pepe Rodriguez – “May tahi siya sa kilay, medyo magulo ang buhok, payat, may bigote. Nakita ko siya sa Tikyo’s KTV and bar. Nalasing siya doon at umuwi na may kasamang babaeng maganda na sa palagay ko karelasyon niya.”<br /><br />Siyempre, ako ang sinasabi kong magandang babae. Pero, hindi ko sinabi kay Mr. Garcia ‘yun. Mukhang gulat na gulat si Mr. Garcia. After ilang minutes, sinabi niya, “Good work. Pero next time dapat may physical evidence o kaya mga litrato ni Pepe.” Binigay niya ang commission ko. Nakabawi din ako sa manloloko.<br /><br />Kinabukasan, kumuha ako ng pekeng evidence. Nanghiram ako ng panty mula sa sampayan ng neighbor kong si Elsa. Kinolekta ko rin ang mga panty na naiwan ni Katja at Anna dati sa apartment ko nung mga panahong nakikitulog pa sila roon. Kumuha rin ako ng sarili kong panty. Sinabi ko kay Mr. Garcia na parte ito ng collection ni Pepe Rodriguez ng mga panty na ninakaw niya mula sa mga babaeng inabuso niya. Kinuha ito ni Mr. Garcia at inilublob sa isang solution, tapos ay pinailawan ng violet na ilaw. Sobrang scientific ng ginawa niya, akala ko mabubuking ako. Pero sabi niya, “Good work!” tapos binigyan niya ulit ako ng commission. Sobrang effective ng naisip kong paraan kumita. Ang kailangan ko na lang, picture. Tinubos ko mula sa sanlaan ang phone ko na may camera at finally, natawagan ko na rin si Brian at naimbita lumabas.<br />Matapos ang tatlong araw, nagkita ulit kami ni Brian. Niyakap ko kaagad siya. Mukha naman siyang masayang nakita ako. Kumuha ako ng madaming litrato. Ang sabi ko sa kaniya, pang-Friendster. After 30 minutes, sinabi ni Brian na sa apartment ko na lang daw kami mag-date. Bumili na lang daw kami ng alak para mas matipid.<br /><br />Nung gabing ‘yun, nag-sex ulit kami. Pumatong sa akin si Brian at mabilis akong… ahem… pinaligaya. Marahas. Pakiramdam ko’y ginagahasa ako ng isang lalaking sabog sa shabu. Mahapdi. Nasaktan din ako nang sipsipin niya ang balat sa leeg ko. Para akong sinakmal ng hayop. Sigurado, pasa ito kinabukasan. Pero nakaramdam ako ng matinding takot at pagnanasa. Lalo na ng itali ako ni Brian sa kama gamit ang sinturon niya at kainin ang aking… ahem… pagkababae. At naramdaman ko na mahal niya rin ako, kasi nang napansin niyang naluluha na ako sa hapdi ng pagkakatinik ko sa bigote niya, tumayo pa talaga siya at nag-ahit bago ituloy ang… ahem… pag-kain.<br /><br />Kinabukasan, habang nag-aalmusal. Nagsulat akong muli ng mga notes sa pink na notebook tungkol sa maaari kong i-report kay Mr. Garcia. Madami ng laman ‘yun. ‘Yung mga na-research ko sa internet tungkol kay Brian, nandoon din lahat. Pagdating sa office, ipinakita ko kay Mr. Garcia ang picture ni Brian mula sa camera-phone ko at sinabing iyon si Pepe Rodriguez. Ginatungan ko pa ng mga kuwento kung paano niya abusuhin ang mga babaeng dinadala niya sa apartment niya. Sinabi ko, “Pinipilit niyang ipalunok ang… semen niya. Kapag hindi sumunod ang babae itinatali niya ito at pinarurusahan.” Hindi ko alam kung bakit, pero nanginig ang boses ko habang sinasabi ito kay Mr. Garcia. <br /><br />Namutla ang mga labi ni Mr. Garcia. Tumahimik siya ng matagal. Tapos, bigla siyang nagtanong, “Paano mo naman nalaman lahat ng ito?” Patay. Ano ngayon ang sasabihin ko? Nataranta talaga ako. Matagal akong natulala. Napalingon ako sa hiya. Aamin na sana ako sa panlilinlang na ginawa ko nang biglang itanong ni Mr. Garcia, “Sinaktan ka rin ba niya?” Nakita niya siguro ang pasang iniwan ng halik ni Brian sa leeg ko. Siyempre, todo acting ang lola mo. Umiyak ako kunyari. Nakapagtataka nga eh, kasi, hindi naman mababaw ang luha ko, pero napaiyak talaga ako. Iyak ako ng iyak. Alam kong hindi naman ako inabuso ni Brian, pero ayaw tumigil ng mga luha ko. Napaiyak din si Mr. Garcia. Sinabi niya, “Kung alam ko lang na ganito ang mangyayari… Ipapupulis natin yang Pepe na yan. Ibigay mo sa akin ang mga litrato. Ipapahanap ko sa mga pulis iyang hayop na yan!”<br /><br />Medyo sumobra yata ang acting. Natauhan ako. “Huwag po. Ako na po ang bahala,” sabi ko. Nagpumilit pa rin siya. “Kailangan maparusahan ang gumawa ng karahasan sa iyo, Cara.” Nataranta na talaga ako. Hindi ko na alam ang gagawin ko kaya’t tumakbo na lang ako.<br /><br />Hindi ko alam kung paano aayusin ang gulong nagawa ko kaya’t nagpunta muna ako sa Ever Gotesco at naglakad-lakad sa mall habang iniisip ang solusyon. Paano ko aaminin kay Brian o kay Mr. Garcia ang kuwentong ito?<br /><br />Napagdesis’yunan kong sabihin kay Brian ang nangyari. Pero pagdating ko sa apartment, ang daming tao. Hinarang kaagad ako ng mga pulis. Wag daw akong lumapit sa crime scene. Nabaril daw si Brian. Ang daming dugo sa kalsada. Nanginginig pa ako nang tumawag ako kay Mr. Garcia. Sabi ko, “Jacob! Nabaril si Brian! ‘Yung boyfriend ko, si Brian Moya, binaril! Hindi ko alam ang gagawin ko. Tulungan mo ako. Hindi ko alam ang gagawin ko. Ang sabi ni Mr. Garcia, “Siguro si Pepe Rodriguez ang gumawa niyan! Ang pangahas na si Pepe Rodriguez!”<br /><br />III. Ang Mga Detalye ng Krimen<br /><br />Ikalawa ng Enero nang tignan ni Jacob Garcia ang puwesto kung saan siya balak magtayo ng opisina. Sabi ng may-ari, ang dati raw nangungupahan sa puwesto ay isang Mr. Moya, pribadong imbestegador na bigla na lamang tumigil sa pagpunta sa opisina. Kailangan pang linisin ang opisina. Maraming kalat ng kung anu-anong papeles. Si Jacob ay isang tagasuri ng tubig. Naatasan siyang suriin ang kalinisan ng tubig na ibinebenta sa mga water station sa lunsod ng Quezon. Pinadadalhan siya ng mga sample ng tubig sa opisina, at trabaho niyang suriin kung ligtas itong inumin.<br /><br />Ika-apat ng Enero nang malinis ang opisina. Wala pa masyadong ginagawa sa trabaho kaya’t umupo muna siya sa harap ng computer at nag-download ng porno. Nagambala ang ginagawa niya nang may kumatok sa pinto ng opisina. Tiningnan niya ang kalendaryo at nalamang wala namang dapat dumating sa opisina nang araw na iyon. Binuksan niya ang pinto at may nakitang babae. “Good afternoon, Sir. I’m an applicant for the junior private investegator position advertised in the paper,” sabi ng babae.<br /><br />Nagtaka si Jacob kasi hindi naman siya nag-advertise tungkol sa job opening na sinasabi ng babae. Baka advertisement ‘yun ni Mr. Moya, sinabi niya sa sarili. Pero dahil sa sobrang inip, naisipan niyang wala namang mawawala kung mag-interview siya ng magandang babae. Hindi naman talaga kagandahan ang dalaga - bilog ang mukha, payat, at makapal ang kilay. Pinapasok niya ang babae at inimbitahang umupo sa silya sa harap ng lamesa niya. “So, what makes you qualified for the job?” tanong ni Jacob. “I have experience in investigation because of my background in investigative journalism. I believe that I’m a good candidate for the position,” sabi ng babae. Naaliw si Jacob sa ginagawa niya. Ang sumunod niyang tanong, “How far would you go to get this job?” Habang sa isip, sinasabi, Handa ka bang tumihaya at bumukaka para sa trabaho? <br /><br />Naramdaman ng babae ang hindi magandang tono sa boses ni Jacob. Tumayo ito at umalis. Ilang babae rin ang dumating at umalis matapos paglaruan ni Jacob Garcia sa mga interview niya. Nakagiliwan ni Jacob ang bagong pampalipas-oras. Naghanda pa nga si Jacob ng mga tanong para sa mga aplikante. Pero hindi siya handa para kay Cara.<br />Enero diyes nang dumating si Cara sa opisina ni Jacob. Hawak ni Jacob ang ari niya ng oras na iyon habang tumitingin sa internet ng mga malalaswang litrato. Hindi kumatok si Cara. Buti na lamang at nakatago sa ilalim ng lamesa ang ginagawa ni Jacob. Binuksan ni Cara ang pintuan at kumembot-kembot papunta sa lamesa ni Jacob. Pagpasok ni Cara, nag-amoy papaya soap ang buong opisina. Bago pa man maitanong ni Jacob kung ano ang kailangan ni Cara, napakalapit na ng dalaga. Sa lapit ni Cara, nang sabihin niyang, “Sir, gusto kong maging junior imbestegadora,” ramdam ni Jacob ang hininga ni Cara sa labi niya. Napanganga si Jacob at napahinga ng malalim na parang gahaman sa hangin matikman lang ang mainit na hininga ni Cara. Ang sikip ng suot ng dalaga. Nang sumulyap si Jacob sa ilalim ng blusa ni Cara, sa namumutok na dibdib ni Cara, napansin niyang nakasilip sa gilid ng bra ni Cara ang gilid ng utong ng dalaga. Tumama ito na parang lintik sa kamalayan ni Jacob at tuluyan na siyang nilabasan. Napadasal si Jacob ng pasasalamat, Salamat at ako’y nabiyayaan ng isang imaheng puwede kong pag-batian habang pinapatay ang inip sa buong maghapong pagtatrabaho.<br /><br />“Sige, magsimula ka na bukas.” Hindi niya ito sinadyang sabihin. Nadala lamang si Jacob ng matinding emosyon. Anong magagawa niya? Sasabihin ang totoo? “Isang pagkakamali ito, miss. Pero handa akong suwelduhan ka, makita lang kita araw-araw. Kasi walang halaga ng pera ang makakatapat sa binubuhay mong pangarap – ang pangako ng kaligayahang nakasaad sa guhit na inukit ng pagkaka-ipit ng laman ng dalawa mong malaking suso – parang tulang inukit ng santo sa bato.” Ito ang katotohanang hindi dapat malaman ni Cara kung nais ituloy ni Jacob ang kaniyang pantasya.<br />Nang makita niya pa lang si Cara, alam na niyang ito ang tipo ng babae na dapat, minsan man lamang sa buhay niya, ay matikman. Kahit na manloko, manlinlang, at mang-uto. “Wow! Salamat po, sir! Ang bait niyo po pala. Ito nga po pala ‘yung bio-data ko. Cara nga po pala ang pangalan ko,” sabi ni Cara.<br /><br />Para may maipagawa kay Cara, napag-desis’yunan ni Jacob na mag-imbento ng isang taong ipahahanap niya. Ito si Pepe Rodriguez. “Si Pepe Rodriguez, dati pa pinaghahahanap ng mga awtoridad. Abusado ‘tong tarantadong ito. Sobrang sama niya sa babae. Manyakis. Madami na siyang naging biktima. Siya ang kutsarita ng tamod na dapat nilunok na lang ng nanay niya.” Napagkasunduan ni Jacob at Cara na transpo allowance muna ang ibibigay kay Cara. Pagnakahanap na siya ng mga detalyeng makakatulong sa pagkakadakip ni Pepe, magkakaroon siya ng kumisyon. Alam ni Jacob na walang pag-asang makahanap ng Pepe Rodriguez si Cara. Mga ilang araw din siyang magpapabalik-balik sa opisina para sa maliit na halaga.<br /><br />Ika-14 ng Enero nang sabihin ni Cara na nahanap na niya si Pepe. Inilarawan ni Cara si Pepe at inilahad din kung saan niya ito natagpuan. Nagulat si Jacob. Nang una’y hindi siya naniwala. Pero nang ipakita ni Cara ang notebook kung saan nakalahad ang maraming detalye ukol sa katauhan ni Pepe, nagduda siya sa sarili. Hindi kayang isipin ng magandang dalaga lahat ng ito. Wala siyang nagawa kundi ang ibigay ang ipinangakong kumisyon sa dalaga at bigyan ito ng mas mahirap na pagsubok. Sinabi ni Jacob kay Cara, “Sa susunod, kumuha ka ng physical evidence, o kaya kumuha ka ng litrato.”<br /><br />Sumunod na araw lang may dalang iba’t-ibang sukat ng panty si Cara. Kinailangang magpanggap ni Jacob na isa siyang totoong imbestegador. Naglagay siya ng rubber gloves. Kumuha siya ng sample ng tubig at nagkunwaring kemikal ito. Nilagyan ng tubig na kunwaring kemikal ang isang panty at itinapat sa ultra-violet lamp na gamit sa panunuri ng tubig. Napangiti si Cara sa ginagawa ni Jacob. “Ang galing mo naman, may high-tech tools ka pa,” sabi ni Cara. Nakaramdam si Jacob ng kaligayahan. Pakiramdam niya’y napalapit siya ng isang hakbang patungo sa inaasam-asam na pagtingin ng dalaga. Nag-isip pa siya ng ibang paraan para magpasikat kay Cara. Dahan-dahan niyang nakalilimutan na hindi siya imbestegador. Matapos ang panunuri ng mga panty, sinabi niya kay Cara (hindi pa rin siya tuluyang nakukumbinse na totoo nga si Pepe Rodriguez), “Kailangan ko ng litrato ni Pepe. Kumuha ka ng litrato ni Pepe. Good work!”<br /><br />Ika-15 ng Enero nang nagdala ng baril sa opisina si Jacob para ipakita kay Cara. “Wow! Ang laki naman ng baril mo,” sabi ni Cara. Pakiramdam ni Jacob, ang iniisip ni Cara habang pinupuri nito ang kalakihan ng baril niya, Naku! Ang laki pala ng ari mo. Dahan-dahan lang ha? Pero, pakiramdam niya lang iyon.<br />Ika-16 ng Enero nang ipakita ni Cara ang mga litrato ni Pepe Rodriguez. Paano kaya nakalapit ng ganito kalapit si Cara kay Pepe? Tanong ni Jacob sa sarili. “Ano ang alam mong ginagawa ni Pepe sa mga babae?” tanong ni Jacob. Sumagot naman si Cara, “Pinipilit niyang ipalunok ang… semen niya. Kapag hindi sumunod ang babae itinatali niya ito at pinarurusahan.” Nanginig ang boses ni Cara na para bang may gumulat sa kaniya. Mas lalong nag-alala si Jacob. Pakiramdam niya na dahil sa mga inutos niya kay Cara, naging biktima ang dalaga ng karahasan ni Pepe Rodriguez. “Paano mo naman nalaman lahat ng ito?” tanong ni Jacob. Natulala lang si Cara na parang may karahasang pilit na binabaon sa limot. Lumingon ang dalaga palayo upang itinago ang paparating na mga luha mula sa mata. At sa paglingon niya, sumilip ang ebidensiya ng hirap at sakit na pinag-daanan. Ang iniwang marka ng halik ng demonyo. Simpula ng sariwang sugat. “Sinaktan ka rin ba niya?” tanong ni Jacob. Nagsimulang umiyak si Cara. Napaiyak din si Jacob. “Kung alam ko lang na ganito ang mangyayari… Ipapupulis natin yang Pepe na yan. Ibigay mo sa akin ang mga litrato. Ipapahanap ko sa mga pulis iyang hayop na yan!” sabi ni Jacob. “Huwag po. Ako na po ang bahala,” sabi ni Cara. <br /><br />“Kailangan maparusahan ang gumawa ng karahasan sa iyo, Cara,” sabi ni Jacob. Biglang tumakbo palabas si Cara. Trauma. Takot na takot siya sa nang-abuso sa kaniya. Kawawa naman. Sabi ni Jacob sa sarili. Nanatili siya sa opisina na puno ng pagsisisi. Matpos ang ilang minuto, may kumatok sa pintuan. Pagbukas niya ng pinto, halos maihi siya sa kaba. Putang ina, nangyayari ba ‘to? Tanong ni Jacob sa sarili. Si Pepe Rodriguez, ang tao sa litratong ipinakita sa kaniya ni Cara nasa opisina niya. “Dito ba nagtatrabaho si Cara?” tanong ni Pepe. Putang ina! Nalaman niya yatang nagsumbong si Cara at gusto niyang patayin! ang iniisip ni Jacob habang sinasabi ang, “Sino po sila?” “Ako si Brian,” sabi ni Pepe. Sinungaling. Kilala kita. Ikaw si Pepe! Putangina mo! ang iniisip ni Jacob habang sinasabi ang, “Walang Cara na nagtatrabaho rito.”<br /><br />“Hindi ka nagsasabi ng totoo. Bakit ka nagsisinungaling? Bakit ako tinitiktikan ni Cara?” tanong ni Pepe. Nanigas si Jacob. Wala siyang magawa. Takot na takot siya. Hindi siya makasagot. Nakatatak sa isip niya ang baril na nasa drawer ng lamesa. “Malalaman ko rin kung bakit,” tuloy ni Pepe, “At mananagot ka sa akin. Kung ayaw mong sabihin, ako na lang ang magtatanong kay Cara.” Tumalikod si Pepe at umalis. Dali-daling kumaripas si Jacob sa paghahanap ng bio-data ni Cara. Alam na niya ang mangyayari. Pupuntahan ni Pepe si Cara sa bahay at papatayin. At lahat ng ito ay dahil sa kaniya.<br /><br />Isang oras nang nasa harap ni Jacob ang baril na puwede niyang gamitin para ipag-tanggol si Cara, ang bio-data kung saan nakalahad ang address ni Cara, at ang telepono na maaari niyang gamitin para tumawag ng pulis. Hindi siya makapag-desisyon sa gagawin. Kapag tumawag siya ng pulis, mareresolba ang sitwasyon at pasasalamatan siya ni Cara, pero mas pasasalamatan ni Cara ang mga pulis na nagligtas sa kaniya at maaaring mapa-ibig siya ng isa sa mga rito. Ito ang nag-udyok kay Jacob na pumunta mag-isa sa bahay ni Cara.<br /><br />Ipinarada niya ang kotse sa harap ng apartmeent at kumatok siya sa pinto. Laking gulat niya nang ang nagbukas ng pinto ay ang pangahas na si Pepe Rodriguez! Nataranta si Jacob. Hinugot ang baril at pinaputukan sa tiyan ang inaakalang si Pepe Rodriguez nga. Bumagsak ang lalaki. Binaril niya ulit ito. Sa tiyan ulit. Tumagos sa likod. Tumama sa gulugod. Lumpo ang lalaki. Buhay pa rin. Naghihingalo. Hirap na hirap. Kinuha niya ang wallet ng inaakalang si Pepe Rodriguez para palabasin sa mga awtoridad na pagnanakaw ang motibo. Habang papalayo siya sinabi ni Pepe, “Tapusin mo ang sinimulan mo. Pahihirapan mo lang ako pag hindi mo ito tinapos.” Itinutok niya ang baril sa ulo ng lalaki. Hindi niya kaya. Itinutok niya na lamang sa dibdib para barilin ang puso. Pumikit siya at ipinuok ang baril. Dumaplis lang sa puso. Buhay pa rin si Pepe. May mga babaeng nakarinig at nagsisigaw. Tumakbo si Jacob. Bago siya makaalis sumigaw si Pepe, “Tanga!”<br /><br />Nagmaneho si Jacob palayo. Hanggang maubos ang kalsada o gasolina. Kung anuman ang mauna. Kailangan niyang lumayo. Tumunog ang telepono. Si Cara. Nabaril daw ang boyfriend niya na si Brian Moya. Tiningnan ni Jacob ang wallet na nakuha. Sa loob nito may SSS I.D. Ang nakasulat: Brian Moya / 33-9622530-0 / January 14, 1978. Kung ang katotohanan ay isang bulalakaw, kung saan man tatama iyon, doon maihahambing ang nararamdaman ni Jacob. Kapag ang tadhana pala ang nagbiro, hindi nakakatawa. Itinuloy na lang ni Jacob ang biro ng tadhana at sinabi kay Cara, “Siguro si Pepe Rodriguez ang gumawa niyan! Ang pangahas na si Pepe Rodriguez!”Margueritehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11685714902170001873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-24882264702821077892009-11-08T02:58:00.000-08:002009-11-09T02:03:45.677-08:00The Five Peso Coin<span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >By J. Luna <o:p></o:p></span><w:worddocument><w:view></w:view><w:punctuationkerning><w:validateagainstschemas><w:compatibility><w:breakwrappedtables><w:snaptogridincell><w:wraptextwithpunct><w:useasianbreakrules><w:browserlevel></w:browserlevel> </w:useasianbreakrules></w:wraptextwithpunct><!--[if !mso]><object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id="ieooui"></object> <style> st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1593833729 1073750107 16 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; line-height: normal;" align="right"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ …And Jesus called a child unto him…”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; line-height: normal;" align="right"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >Matthew 18:2<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You have a five-peso coin in your hand. This is enough, you thought, to buy candies or cheese snacks. This is already a valuable piece of treasure to a child.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You know her mom. At times you run errands for her. Sometimes you pick her up from school when mom is busy. You are efficient with your task. Mommy is grateful.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You replace the five-peso coin in your pocket. Your pocket is full of coins. You grope through it and took out a peso coin and two twenty-five cent pieces. You walk towards the sari-sari store and bought a cigarette. The girl goes to the box where she keeps the cigarettes. She bends down and you get a spectacular view of her breasts. You get a hard-on. She hands you the cigarette and you ask for a lighter. She hands you a box of matches instead. You get a whiff of her delicately perfumed wrists. You think she is a nice lay. You light your cigarette, then you return the match box to her. Don’t forget to say thank you. Smile. She smiles back. You walked away, puffing at your cigarette. You have a terrific hard-on. You pause. You remember the five-peso coin.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You carry her school bag. You have to keep up with her pace, so as not to lose her from your sight. Mom will get pretty damn sore if you lose her. She is mommy’s little angel. You take the fifteen-minute walk to her house. The school is too near to waste “special” fare for the tricycle. She tells you she needs to pee. She can’t hold it any longer. You guided her to the corner of the street where she can be concealed by the trashcan. She squats. You got a view of her panties hanging on to her ankles. You heard the tinny winny trickle on the pavement. You tried to block your mind from dirty thoughts, but you felt a strange sensation- damn, you shouldn’t get a hard-on from a peeing kid, you thought, but you feel your donger bulging in your pants. You feel someone shrugging at your arms. You wake up from your reverie. You walk her home. Mommy is waiting at the door. She smiles, and says thank you, as you hand her the kid and the bag. You say, you’re welcome. She hands you a shiny ten-peso bit. You thank her then you hurry off. You feel the need to jerk-off.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >***********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You entered your dank smelling, and cramped room. You looked for tabloids. You opened them one by one, looking for pictures of naked women, half-naked women, women in thong underwear, women in bikinis----You cannot find any. You threw the papers on the floor. Disgruntled, and disgusted, the papers suck!, You thought. You opened your fly to expose your prick. You tried to think of lewd images. But all that enter your mind is the faint trickle of pee on the pavement. And the panties on her ankles with cartoon designs. The Power Puff Girls.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >***********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You suddenly feel your legs stretch and strain as your abdomen heaves to your release. Man-juice explodes and scatters on your pubes, and all over your belly. You give in to the ecstasy---go whore!! Suck it!!! I’m spreading jizz all over your face. Bitch!! The frenzy passes. Back to reality—back to your dank, smelly room. You grab a dirty shirt, and wipe away the juice. You throw the shirt on the floor. The masculine scent of Chlorox bleach mixing with the sour stench of midday sweat and jock itch. -----tiptaptiptap said the peepee on the concrete.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >***********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You take a long drag on your cigarette as you cross the corner. The sound of coins jangling in your pockets, and an erection you can’t conceal as it struggles against the tightness of your jeans. You walk on… Then you hear the sound of children chanting:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >..Nanay, Tatay gusto kong tinapay……<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >***********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >She looks like her sister, the hot kolehiyala, the thought races to your brain. Before she went to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Manila</st1:place></st1:city> to study, she was the object of every Dong and Totoy’s fantasy. Remember, you used to show-off your basketball playing skills every time she passes by. She’s a hot little snob. Who cares? You spent your drinking sessions talking about the cunt’s nice ass, her long black hair, her chinita eyes, and her red lips. Boy’s talks. Dammit, the kid looks like her sister. You take another puff. You watch her from a distance..<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >……..ate, kuya gusto kong kape……….<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >************************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ It’s really nice of you to do me this favor,” Mommy says.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You smile looking at the ten-peso coin she handed to you.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ The times are dangerous. It is unsafe to let my daughter walk home alone. And, I don’t trust these tricycle drivers. Remember what happened to Kris?”, she pauses.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You answer, “ Yeah, Kris. Old Bebang’s niece. They say it’s a tricycle driver who did it to her. Poor Kris.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ Such a nice kid,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ Lots of maniacs around. They won’t even leave the kids alone.” She continues.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“Yeah”, you reply. Then you smile.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ Gotta go,”,you say, then you wave byebye. She waves and smiles as she closes the door. You hurry off. She must have looked pretty in her teens. Then you try to imagine how her bush looks like. You shrug off the thought, then you walked away.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >***********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >……lahat ng gusto ko ay susun-<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You walk your way to the bunch of seven-year old runts, who are playing their stupid game. You take a final drag at your cigarette, then you throw it away. You take the five-peso coin out of your pocket. Then you approach her.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >***********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >You hear the trickle of peepee on the pavement. You see her nice cute butt, slightly concealed by the raised school uniform as she squats, nice cute panties hanging on to her ankles.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >***********************<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >She looks at you with a queer, questioning look.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ Your mom asked me to give you this,” you show her the coin. Her eyes shimmer.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ If you will come with me,”, she tries to grab the coin, but you put it back into your pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ Unfair!!”, she says.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" >“ Lets go, ” you said, then you lead the way.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">~ 30 </span><br /><span style=";font-family:Verdana;font-size:10;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p></w:snaptogridincell></w:breakwrappedtables></w:compatibility></w:validateagainstschemas></w:punctuationkerning></w:worddocument>KARL De MESAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11696138773989605054noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-22148989805355572702009-10-06T00:08:00.000-07:002009-10-06T00:19:07.454-07:00Importsby Carljoe Javier<br /><br />Kaps the kapre walked through the main entrance of SM North and into a rush of filtered, air-conditioned air. No matter how many times I go in and out of here I’ll never get used to this kind of breeze, he thought to himself as he put his arms up to allow the guard to frisk him.<br /><br />The guard looked up at the gigantic Kaps and smirked. He ran his hands across Kaps’s back, moved lower. The kapre huffed at him, dismayed by the formality. Then Kaps jumped up in surprise as the guard cupped his butt.<br /><br />Nobody had ever touched him like that before. The nerve of that human, if he knew what I could do to him, Kaps grumbled to himself. No, there’s not much I can do to him. It’s their world now, paved over mine. He tried to calm himself, live with it, live with the things that happened and let things happen as they did, as they always did and always would since humans had taken the world for their own. Resignation still couldn’t erase the idea orbiting his head: that guard just grabbed and squeezed a chunk of my big mythological ass.<br /><br />As was his nature, he pulled out his pack of tobacco for a smoke. Then he remembered the No Smoking signs all around and put the pack back into his pocket.<br /><br />A couple of uncouth youths had started following him when he was getting ready to light up and he noticed them trailing. He looked back at them and had to admit that in the centuries he had been interacting with humans, these kids had to rank among the most absurdly dressed. Screaming bright shirts draped over dark skin, pants so big that they would have fit him, shorts so long they might as well have been pants, bandana, upside-down sun visor, backwards cap. No wonder he could walk through the mall without being noticed much; some humans looked more outlandish than mythological creatures. What did humans call this ill ilk of theirs? Jologs. Sounds awful, like the Lord Melu putting a curse on you.<br /><br />He caught their talk, some of which was about him. It wasn’t hard since they were rowdy and loud and acted as if they were the only people around. He wished he could set his old friend Tikboy the tikbalang on them so that they would get lost somewhere. These were the kind of people that made co-habitation with the human race so hard, people who made it more appealing to leave this land and go to the brighter regions.<br /><br />“Let’s just follow him a while. See where he goes.”<br /><br />“Okay. ‘tol, check out my new phone. It’s got a camera. Let’s take a picture of that guy.”<br /><br />“Tama. Go take it. Hey, where did you get your phone? Okay a chong.”<br /><br />“This?” Chong said as he was setting the phone’s camera to take a picture of Kaps from behind. “GSM, ‘to ‘tol. Galing sa magnanakaw,” he said with a smile.<br /><br />“Ayos. You have to take me where you got that. My 3310 isn’t cool anymore. Where have I seen this guy before? I know I saw him on TV or something, I just can’t remember.”<br /><br />“A big black guy like that; has to be a basketball player.”<br /><br />“Right, chong, I think he’s the new import for San Miguel.”<br /><br />“Yeah. Hey did you see that beer commercial with Patricia Javier’s boobs?”<br /><br />He couldn’t stand much more of their talk so he swerved away, turning from the mall’s main aisle into the department store. He walked through the men’s clothing section, then passed by the men’s accessories. Gold lighters glinted at him, like a blink from a pretty girl on the other side of the bar. But he knew they weren’t blinking at him, they were probably blinking at the guy behind him.<br /><br />He walked past, watched as a man in a long-sleeved shirt and tie came over to hold the lighters. I can look at them, Kaps thought, but I can never take anything home. Wanting to feel better, he headed to the middle of the department store, to the record bar. Music soothes the savage mythological creature.<br /><br />When he got there Kaps shook from the clatter crashing from the speakers. The sales ladies were having a good time, swaying to the euro-pop beat and squawking to each other. They were playing one of those Christmas carol remix tapes. He wondered why Christmas was starting earlier each year.<br />He and his kind had been scheduled for celebration only during late October. Not one of his relatives had been featured on Magandang Gabi Bayan and the people were already preparing for some other holiday. He thought of the self-help books he had seen the other day he was roaming around, wondered if it could help him feel better if he read about nurturing his self-esteem in this modern age, or finding a sense of himself.<br />Sense, senses, seeing the sun rise through the tobacco smoke atop his tree. These were the things that could make him feel better. But his tree was gone and there was enough smoke up in the air to block out the sun. It was like he’d lost his senses since he couldn’t use them the same way anymore. He could rarely feel the earth.<br /><br />His thoughts were attacked by a crash, some mad animal ravaging a splash cymbal, then the sounds multiplied. He reeled from what sounded like all the animals in a forest had decided to go on a noise barrage.<br /><br />After a few seconds it ceased and he could think again. The megamix had segued. He didn’t know what had a more ear-splitting pitch, the sales ladies’ shrill screeches or the doomp doomp doomp of the Mambo No. 5 beat playing with chipmunk-like vocals. It sang: “A little bit of Prancer all night long/ A little bit of Blitzen by my side/ A little bit of Donner’s all I need.” He thought it was sick when his cousin Jun had tried dating a tikbalang, but this was too much.<br /><br />A headache set in, the urge to smoke and clear things up. He headed for the rear entrance facing the car park, and there started smoking his tobacco. Cars drove by, clucking and crowing like a flock of chickens disturbed. He took in deep breaths, losing himself in the rhythm of inhale, hold, exhale. There were no cars or mall or euro-pop Christmas bestiality. Only the important things remained: him and his homegrown tobacco.<br /><br />He didn’t actually grow the tobacco anymore. His tree and the land that he haunted around it had been plowed away and the mall built over. When that happened his magic had been taken from him. He was lucky that his brother who moved to one of the brighter realms had sent him an enchanted tobacco pouch that conjured up his smokes.<br /><br />After a few puffs he went back into the mall. He let himself be frisked again, and this time went by without incident. He placed his pouch in his back pocket and started walking around again.<br /><br />Feeling hungry, he headed to the food court. He checked out all the stalls. Then he walked around and checked them again. Everything seemed so appealing and he still couldn’t pick what he wanted.<br /><br />He thought meat. He missed having something bloody. Then he remembered again what his brother had written in his letter about staying away from raw meat because they found all kinds of nasty things in them. He thought of all those nasty things crawling around in the meat, like maggots that you couldn’t see.<br /><br />It was because of that letter that he tried to quit eating meat. He’d gone on a vegetarian diet, but after a few days missed the feeling of chewing on flesh too much. He just felt it was different, it fulfilled something in him to be chewing on some dead animal, even though he hadn’t had the pleasure of hunting it down and killing it himself.<br /><br />Besides, he’d convinced himself, they’d been eating that raw meat for centuries, and the worst they got was a case of kapre LBM. It didn’t matter to him whatever was crawling around in there. He needed meat.<br /><br />He could taste the crackle of the oil and feel the meat slapping against the grill a couple of stalls away. He hustled over, fast as his long legs could take him, and salivated over the red meat turning brown.<br /><br />At first the woman working the stall looked at him as if asking, “Have you got money to pay for this?” because Kaps could barely keep his mouth closed as he looked at the long ribs crackling, bright bones turning brown as the fires licked them.<br /><br />He stood there in front of her, and because he’d made no big movements or did nothing to draw attention to himself, she seemed to have forgotten that he was even there. It was almost as if he could disappear if he stood long enough in front of certain people.<br /><br />He grabbed a rib off the grill, juggled it until it cooled, then tore the flesh away, his teeth scraping against the bones until they had turned white again.<br /><br />He sat back and had a smoke. He felt happy to have the smoke, but as he puffed and watched the smoke sway and squiggle in the air in front of him he remembered the pale moonlight that the smoke used to dance in, the breeze that blew away the ashes at the end of his fat cigar, the quiet clatter of the forest that he had power over.<br /><br />His eyes were glazed over, staring at the past, until he crashed back into the present when one of the jologs tailing him earlier came by and grabbed his pouch. In the half-second that his mind made the time jump and his eyes had to get used to the pale not of moonlight but of antiseptic fluorescent, the thief had made enough distance to be out of reach of Kaps’s long arms.<br /><br />The thief made a break for the escalators but Kaps caught up with him, his long legs taking strides that no man could outrun. He grabbed the boy and threw him against the escalator. The sharp, serrated edges of the escalator steps scraped the kid’s face.<br /><br />Kaps grabbed his pouch and got onto the escalator. As it ascended he climbed up to the step where the boy had slumped over. When the boy saw him he tried to scramble up the stairs but Kaps struck him with a backhand against the side of the head and the boy slammed against the escalator’s rail.<br />Kaps grabbed him by the collar and threw him out onto the floor. Kaps got off the escalator and looked up.<br />The boy, lying on the ground, covered his head waiting for another blow. He looked up when it didn’t come, wondering how his luck had turned so quick.<br /><br />Kaps couldn’t stop staring at the Christmas tree. It towered over him, a monument of mockery directed at him. He felt himself shrinking, losing his essence as it was taken by the Christmas tree.<br /><br />His tree: plowed over and replaced. This monstrosity, artificial and alien, had taken its place. He forgot about the thief, forgot about his pouch, forgot himself, as he stared it.<br /><br />With Kaps distracted the thief crawled away and made a run for the nearest exit, alerting security guards about a large, dark, hairy man that looked like a foreigner that had assaulted him.<br /><br />The rage that had filled Kaps when that guard had grabbed him, when he remembered his tree, when that punk had tried to steal his pouch, all came to a head as he stared at the Christmas tree. He wasn’t even aware that he was slobbering like a dog, hunched over in some primitive stance ready to pounce. He roared, then charged at the symbol of his world’s end.<br /><br />He lunged at it, but couldn’t shake the deeply set foundation. He thrashed at the branches, but the plastic just swung back and forth and smacked against his face. Then he felt the thwack of a security guard’s stick on the back of his head.<br />He held his neck and crumpled on the floor. He rolled, trying to evade the next blow. He looked up to see the guard that had harassed him when he came in.<br /><br />“So, you think you foreigners can get away with things like this, huh?”<br /><br />A boot crashed into his ribs and he lost his breath. He felt himself fading, the loss of self and the physical weakness wearing him away. It took so much to maintain his form, and now all that energy was seeping away, the kicks and blows taking him apart. He watched as the last of his magic was destroyed.<br /><br />The guard punched Kaps in the face, leaving him bloody and beaten. Then he walked away. He didn’t even notice that he had trampled and crushed the pouch, and that the pouch was now gone.Margueritehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11685714902170001873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-46954027199320615622009-10-05T23:59:00.000-07:002009-10-06T00:52:58.509-07:00Cleanserby Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon<br /><br />Jhoy’s note looked salty. Translucent, grey-purple paper ruled with dark purple ink, like a sliver of my grandmother’s veined calf. Torn from a worn, cheap notepad. It didn’t look dirty to me, exactly. It looked salty, just as the dull yellow brine in the jars of Jhoy’s stall looked salty, the brine that kept all those shriveled smidgens of strangeness in suspension. All those wrinkled brown things that may or may not have been seahorse heads, lizard tails, worms. The jars were sealed tight with rubber bands, but the essence of their contents must have seeped into the paper somehow. The note looked salty, like I didn’t have to smell or taste it to know that it was.<br /><br />I sat cross-legged on my bed and read the note. The instructions had been scribbled down beforehand to make for a quick transaction. I remembered how each page of Jhoy’s notepad was filled with the same set of words. <br /><br />mamayang gabi di maghahapunan<br />9 p.m. 2 cytotec (inom) 2 pahilab (inom)<br />tulog<br />11 p.m. 2 cytotec (pasok sa pwerta) 2 pahilab (inom)<br />tulog<br />bukas maga paggising<br />5 a.m. 2 cytotec (inom) 2 pahilab (inom)<br />bawal maasim malamig<br /><br />The pills were wrapped in a salty-looking yellow flyer for some housing development. They cost 2,000 pesos all in all, half of my week’s allowance. Six huge Cytotec tablets in printed silver packets and six tiny blank tablets in an unmarked plastic pouch. Jhoy said the tiny ones were for cleaning out the uterus. So that I wouldn’t have to let some other woman do it manually, she said. I didn’t even know that my uterus would need cleaning after. I would have to believe her. The Cytotec, at least, I knew were meant for stomach ulcers and just so happened to kill fetuses on the side. I got that from the Ask Yahoo! Health and Wellness section. They have a resident doctor who answers all your questions.<br /><br />I looked at the wall clock. 8:57. The last thing I ate was a stick of fishballs for lunch, before the FX ride home from Quiapo. Perfectly pedestrian. I smoothed out the towel underneath me, fluffed my pillows, poured some bottled water into a glass, set my cellphone alarm to 11 and looked at the wall clock. 8:58. I snapped open two Cytotec packets and shook out two cleansers. The Cytotec were smooth, Mentos-like. The cleansers reminded me of that chalk they used for cockroaches. I swallowed them one by one with some water. The Cytotec didn’t taste like anything, but the cleansers left a metallic-salty aftertaste, like they had been in the palm of an FX driver all day, absorbing the zest of change. Not like I had ever licked the palm of an FX driver, but that’s probably what those people taste like, if ever. I lay down, sniffing my fingers. Chalky, salty.<br /><br />There was a knock on the door. I kept flat on my back.<br /><br />“It’s open.”<br /><br />My grandmother entered.<br /><br />“Good evening, lola.”<br /><br />“Good evening, Consuelo.”<br /><br />She shuffled over, her diaper crackling beneath the quilted gold dressing gown, and sat at the foot of my bed. Crackle, crackle. <br /><br />“How was your day, Consuelo?”<br /><br />“It was okay. And yours?”<br /><br />“I sent Gerry out for DVDs this morning,” she replied in her deep, regal tone. “We have Reservoir Dogs and Battle Royale 2.”<br /><br />“We already have Reservoir Dogs, lola.”<br /><br />“We do? It’s alright, hija. An extra copy.”<br /><br />We had extra copies of a lot of films. American Psycho. Saving Private Ryan. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Cannibal Holocaust. Ichi the Killer. American History X. Taxi Driver. Silence of the Lambs. We based our purchases on movie-vault.com’s growing list of The Most Violent Films of All Time, which my grandmother had asked me to search for. She and I coped through bloodshed. The films reminded us to always be on our guard. We needed to see people dying dreadful deaths, scenes that would lodge right into our brains from a classic, upside-down gunshot in the mouth. That was how my parents died two years ago. A killing spree at the Shangri-La Plaza parking lot, where innocent shoppers were shot and hacked at by Chinoy teens high on coke and Scarface. It’s not like the guards at the ticket booth check the passengers’ jackets.<br /><br />Gerry was our sixth driver since their death, so he wouldn’t have known which titles we had. My grandmother kept changing the help as a safety precaution. They must not grow on us, she said. Her father was a governor slain for collaborating with the Japs. She had relinquished prayer after that, focusing instead on increasing her inheritance by being a Sampaguita soap spokesmodel. She wanted to be rich enough to forget, but that never stopped her from being on her toes all the time. One of the toughest, most prudent women I knew. And the most poised.<br /><br />“Your day was okay?” She shifted a bit closer to me, keeping her back perfectly straight, clutching onto the comforter for balance. “How was it okay?”<br /><br />“I went out.”<br /><br />“I know. I didn’t see you at lunch. Did Clarissa pick you up? Did you two have dance class today? Did you tell me you were going somewhere?”<br /><br />“I forgot to. I’m sorry.”<br /><br />“At least you’re with Clarissa. Senator Punzalan still insists on a bodyguard for her?”<br /><br />“Yes, lola.” The bodyguard’s name was Polo. Short for Policarpio. Clarissa finds the name embarrassing, but I think it has its charm. “But I went out alone.”<br /><br />“You did?” My grandmother’s voice rose. “What were you thinking? Where did you go?<br />Did you go to the mall on your own? Why didn’t you text Gerry? Why didn’t you tell me?”<br /><br />“I went to Quiapo,” I replied calmly. “To buy abortion pills.”<br /><br />An astounding blankness swept over my grandmother’s face. The look Travis Bickle wore when he pointed his fingers to his skull like a pistol and went, bssshhh. <br /><br />“For whom?” she managed to ask, her lips barely moving. “For Clarissa?”<br /><br />“For myself, lola.”<br /><br />“For yourself?”<br /><br />“Yes, lola. I’m pregnant,” I answered, grinning. “Isn’t it great?” <br /><br />My grandmother continued to stare at me.<br /><br />“I’ve been having sex with Clarissa’s bodyguard,” I explained. “His name is Polo. He’s 36, very muscular and has a moustache. It tickles when he sucks on my nipples. I think he’s a good fuck, although he is my first so I wouldn’t really know. The first time we did it was at Iñigo Fajardo’s party, because Iñigo paid the drivers and bodyguards one-five each to drink with us. That was the first time I got drunk, lola. I really liked being drunk. It’s the greatest feeling, when you’re drunk. We did it in the garage. On the floor. We made it a regular thing. Sometimes in the Explorer after dance class, while Clarissa’s still in the shower. Sometimes at the Victoria Court on Canley, when you think I’m out for coffee. His cock gets really hard, lola, and it’s just no fun with a condom. I don’t love him, though, and I don’t want this baby.”<br /><br />I paused for some air. My grandmother’s face remained blank. Her body was perfectly still. I threw her the biggest, warmest smile and resumed.<br /><br />“I’ll only tell him if the pills don’t work. Been good at handling it on my own, so far. Did a lot of research. If you Google “find abortion pills in Philippines,” the most popular results are on Quiapo and Cytotec. Mostly message threads. Girls helping each other. Where in Quiapo, how to buy the pills, stuff like that. There’s some negative stuff in them too, like on girls almost dying from Cytotec, but that’s because they took too much or took it too late. I’m only two months pregnant, and you know I’m good with instructions, so you don’t have to worry. And I learned that they use Cytotec for abortions all the time in the States. It’s legal in a lot of countries. It was worth a shot, you know? Right?”<br /><br />I waited for my grandmother to respond. A teeny nod, a few quick blinks, any itty-bitty twitch of recognition, anything. She was static. I kept going.<br /><br />“So I took an FX to Quiapo. There’s a lot of them outside our village, right? Got down at the church. The stalls were there by the steps, selling weird things in jars and weird dried plants just like the message threads said. Didn’t have to ask for the pills. A woman from one of the stalls got up and pretended to walk past me, and she just said ‘gamot’ while looking at the church. Like in a spy movie. I nodded and we walked back to her stall, which looked exactly like all the other stalls, so I bet the other women were jealous. The woman’s name is Jhoy. With an H. She has bad skin but she’s very nice. She gave me the pills, a note with instructions and her cellphone number in case I had questions. After that, I walked around for a bit. The church is smaller than I thought and doesn’t look very special. There are palm readers by the square in front of the church, and people selling flowers and rosaries. There’s a tiangge in every side street. Hordes of people. They sell underwear on the sidewalk, lola. And DVDs. I browsed through them but they were mostly new movies and porn. I could have gotten some porn, but I wanted something we could share. Got tired after a while, so I took an FX home.”<br /><br />My grandmother blinked, yet it was most likely because no one could keep their eyes open that long. A salty tang quickly filled the air. She placed her hands on her lap and shifted a bit on the bed. Squish, squish.<br /><br />“Did I do a good job, lola?”<br /><br />“A good job,” my grandmother said very slowly. She blinked again, clearing up the flat glaze in her eyes. “What do you mean?”<br /><br />“The sex, the pregnancy, Quiapo, this abortion. You could call it field work, lola. The real deal. Have I made you proud?”<br /><br />“Oh. Yes.” Her head moved up and down, like a nod. “That was a good story. You made up good details. ”<br /><br />“I didn’t make them up.” <br /><br />“We should do this regularly. It will be good for us. Have one ready by tomorrow night.”<br /><br />“I wasn’t telling you a story.” I patted the towel underneath me and pointed to the pills on the bedside table. “Look, lola, I’m getting rid of a baby.”<br /><br />My grandmother’s eyes fell on the pills. She smiled. I took out Jhoy’s note and held it out to her.<br /><br />“Read this. Jhoy gave me instructions. The next step’s at eleven.”<br /><br />“Props,” she mumbled without looking at the note. “How nice. Good night, Consuelo.”<br /><br />She stood up, back straight and chin up as always, and headed towards the door. The tang thinned out as she left the room.<br /><br />Sighing, I looked at the wall clock. 9:12. I folded my hands over my belly, closed my eyes and told myself to be patient with her.<br /> <br /><div style="text-align: center;">+++<br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">INT. SHANGRI-LA PLAZA PARKING LOT – NIGHT</span><br /><br />CONSUELO, 17, lies flat on her back in an empty parking slot. She opens her eyes.<br /><br />Blood-drenched corpses are strewn across the lot, some disemboweled, some with eyes gouged out, some with heads blown apart, all holding on to plastic shopping bags.<br /><br />Consuelo gasps in pain. She sits up, clutching her belly. A large, dark figure waddles up to her from the winding exit ramp. It is a GIANT SALT SHAKER mascot with plastic eyes, smiling plastic lips, gloved hands and giant red boots. It stops right in front of her. She looks up, squinting at its silhouette framed in stark fluorescent light.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />You told her.<br /><br />CONSUELO<br />She doesn’t believe me yet. I’ll give her time.<br /><br />GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />You shouldn’t have told her.<br /><br />CONSUELO<br />Why not?<br /><br />GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />If she does believe you, she’ll stop you from doing it.<br /></div><br />Consuelo stands up slowly and walks around the lot, examining each corpse. The giant salt shaker follows her, nudging the corpses with his boot. Consuelo stops at two bodies piled on top of each other. The one on top is of a woman in a brown silk dress and heels, the one underneath of a man in a dark blue polo, black slacks and black leather shoes. Their heads have been blown off. Consuelo squats beside them.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />(continuing)<br />She’s the enemy.<br /><br />CONSUELO<br />(going through the corpses’ shopping bags)<br />She’s on my side.<br /><br />GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />She won’t let you get rid of it.<br /><br />CONSUELO<br />(flinging bloodied department store tissue paper out of the bags)<br />Of course she will! What are you talking about?<br /><br />GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />She doesn’t think the way you do.<br /><br />CONSUELO<br />Yes, she does.<br /><br />GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />Nope. No.<br /></div><br />Consuelo pulls a newborn baby out of one bag. The baby, covered in blood and thick, white mucus, writhes in her hands. Its wails echo across the lot. Consuelo flings it over her shoulder, and it crashes against the windshield of an Explorer. The lot is quiet again. Consuelo continues rifling through the bags.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />What are you looking for?<br /></div><br />Consuelo pulls another baby out of a bag and flings it away. She continues fishing babies out and throwing them away, a pile of dead babies growing on the Explorer’s hood, the air punctuated by screams and silence. She stops and winces.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">CONSUELO<br />(rubbing her belly)<br />Wait, wait. I think it’s here.<br /></div><br />Consuelo takes all her clothes off and sits splay-legged on the floor. She rubs her belly harder and harder, her expression growing more and more pained. A shiny silver knob slowly pokes out of her cunt. It is the top of an ordinary salt shaker. The shaker’s entire shaft begins sliding in and out of her, very slowly at first, and then gradually quickening in pace until salt grains start sprinkling out onto the concrete. Consuelo’s grimace fades. She moans in pleasure.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">GIANT SALT SHAKER<br />You’re weird.<br /><br />+++<br /></div><br /> I woke up to a rooster’s crowing. My cellphone alarm, rising in volume at every crow. I fumbled for the phone, shut it up and opened my eyes. My grandmother was standing over me, squinting at the print on one Cytotec packet through her gold-rimmed reading glasses. I still kept flat on my back. My belly felt heavy and pulsed with a slight, constant pain.<br /> <br />“See, lola?” I said with a smile. “I told you. Everything is real.”<br /> <br />“I couldn’t sleep. I hoped you’d be awake. Do you want to watch Schindler’s List? I made popcorn.”<br /> <br />“You don’t want to watch the next step?”<br /> <br />“Of what?”<br /> <br />“Of the abortion,” I replied patiently.<br /> <br />“Oh, yes. That. Alright, I can play the grandmother.” She chuckled. “I can get shocked and start praying for God to forgive you.”<br /> <br />“Lola, this isn’t a scene,” I told her firmly. “Everything I told you really happened.”<br /> <br />“Before we start the play,” she said. “I have to ask. Where did you get this printed?” She held up the Cytotec packet to the light. “It’s very well-made.”<br /> <br />“Lola, I didn’t.” My voice was much louder now, and I uttered each syllable as slowly and clearly as I could. “They’re real.”<br /> <br />My grandmother snapped the packet open and slipped the pill onto the palm of her hand. She looked at the pill with the purest wonder, like a hen would at the smallest, smoothest, whitest egg in her nest. She rolled it around in her fingertips.<br /> <br />“Oh, it’s a mint,” she declared.<br /> <br />“No. It’s for killing babies, lola.” A sense of urgency and annoyance was building up in me, mingling with the ache in my belly. “I bought them in Quiapo, like I said. From a woman named Jhoy. With an H.”<br /> <br />“I love mints.”<br /> <br />She held the pill up to her full, crinkled lips. I sat up a bit.<br /> <br />“Lola, no.”<br /> <br />She popped the pill.<br /> <br />There was nothing like it, when my body switched to automatic. <br /> <br />I shot out of bed and tackled my grandmother onto the carpet. Pinning her shoulders down with my knees, I jammed my left hand into her mouth while my right grabbed her cheek and yanked it to the side for more room. My fingers jabbed at every warm, wet inch of the cavity, poking the insides of her cheeks, prodding her loosening dentures, stabbing the slick, rutted underside of her tongue. No pill.<br /> <br />When I thrust my hand out, she started making this hollow, jagged sound, like a bad impression of TV static. The pill had lodged in her throat. I thrust my hand in again, slipping my finger down as far as it could go, crooking it again and again once I felt a tiny, hard curve. It wouldn’t budge, and my grandmother’s writhing was making it hard for me to latch onto it. I pulled my hand out and gripped my chin in thought. Fresh saliva coated my jaw and dribbled down my arm in gobs. My grandmother continued to writhe beneath me.<br /> <br />My glass of water waited on the bedside table. I grabbed it, smashed it against the table’s hard wood and chose the largest, sharpest shard. Like all crucial weapons in movies, the shard glinted with great promise. My knees dug into my grandmother’s shoulder blades with extra force. She was probably screaming, but it came out a long, strained wheeze. I sliced down the length of her papery throat. Blood burst out, streams of ruby seeping into the gold satin of her dressing gown like a hurried sunset. The pill, now a shiny red cherry, was at the base of the wound, snuggled against layers of gummy, deep scarlet murk. I fished it out of the folds of frayed flesh and looked at the wall clock. 11:07. The smarting in my belly told me to hurry. I glanced at Jhoy’s note resting on the comforter.<br /> <br />11 p.m. 2 cytotec (pasok sa pwerta) 2 pahilab (inom)<br /> <br />I slipped my panties off and splayed my legs wide open. The blood coating the pill would make for good lubricant. I pushed the pill into my cunt as far back as it could go, until I was sure it was nestled into the warmest part of my cavity for optimum utility. Suddenly, the image of Polo’s cock ramming me came to mind. I repeated the process with another Cytotec pill and shook out two cleansers. Their chalky, white exterior turned pink and gluey from my dripping, red fingers.<br /><br />I dry-swallowed them and licked my lips. Extra-extra-salty.<br /> <br />I stared at my grandmother’s corpse. Her dressing gown was flung open, blood from her gashed neck slowly coursing down the small, pruny flabs of her breasts, down her stomach sprinkled with raisin-like moles, leaching into her bunched-up plastic diaper. The diaper blushed.<br /> The whole room reeked of blood. The whole room was salty. An air of menace and misery, of everything my grandmother and I tried our best to value. It was frightening. Fragrant. I loved how the saltiness shot fiercely up my nose at every breath, how it stung my eyes with such ruthlessness. I placed a hand proudly over my sore belly and smiled at my grandmother’s corpse. <br /> <br />My grandmother had always been on my side. This was all a test. She wanted to see if I would do the right thing, if I knew what to do in matters of life or death. <br /> <br />“Did I do a good job, lola?” I asked, slipping back into bed. “Have I made you proud?” I set the cellphone alarm to 5, pulled the comforter over me and closed my eyes.<br /> <br />Silence means yes.Margueritehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11685714902170001873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-6170800147873455762009-10-05T23:56:00.000-07:002010-05-30T17:39:04.388-07:00Penitenceby El Diablo Rojo<br /><br />Before Rolando Hernandez could even work up a good, dignified protest, they had scrambled into his cramped apartment in San Jose and seized him, gagging him with a dirty pink bandanna. Now they carried him, whimpering and confused, out of his room. Rolando tried to twist his head around to break his mouth free and give the biggest scream of his life but (oh, fuck) their hands were surprisingly firm and strong, despite their nails colored a ridiculous deep red, some electric blue. The intruders stuffed the bandana back into his mouth with brutal force and bound his arms behind him with rope.<br /><br />As they carried him out of his room, all four of them in their silly-looking micro mini shorts and heavily made up faces, he saw the various posters thumb tacked onto the thin walls. Various posters of women scantily dressed, some downright naked, with come-hither messages on the lower middle portion like Be My Dreamboy and Let Me Make It Up To You Tonight, lined the wall nearest to his door, and on the floor, in haphazard piles, lay the cheap, dirty magazines (both straight and gay) he had been collecting since he had first discovered the self-induced pleasures of masturbatory fantasies.<br /><br />Rolando hung like a limp noodle between his abductors. And for the first time in his life, Rolando was suddenly sick with fear. He had had a couple of beers earlier that evening, sure, but he knew he wasn’t drunk so he shouldn’t have any problems tackling this bunch of sickos. Yet when he tried to struggle, kicking his legs, he found his efforts to be in vain. He couldn’t even move his arms. This is so wrong, so dead wrong. This is my room, my space. And they grabbed me. Coño vos nana! This can’t be! I’m a man! What’s fucking wrong with Zamboanga that something like this could happen!<br /><br />A voice then spoke in the darkness, serious. “Buenas noches, Lando. We’ve come to take you away from the dreariness of your room so we could have a little fun.” The owner of the voice loosened Rolando’s buttoned down shirt and belt and undid his jeans. “You like that, si?”<br /><br />Another one piped in, rich and full of mockery. “Oh, si. Lando sure likes to have fun. Fun. Fun. Fun. That’s what Rolando’s all about. In fact, I’ve noticed lately that he’s had too much fun.” The person casually laughed and with one quick movement slapped Rolando hard across the face. Someone else shoved a hand into his boxers and pinched his cock and balls. Rolando yelped in pain, gritting his teeth. Everybody laughed as they carried Rolando down the stairs of the building.<br /><br />He was thrown in a rather ungainly fashion into the back of a pink Honda Civic, and his abductors scampered in around him, digging their knees into his groin, their hands splayed across his open chest. He was sweating profusely now, and despite the seriousness of his situation, he found himself becoming hard. He tried turning on his side so his tumescence wouldn’t show. The car lurched away from the curb, and then the voices were talking, and the bandanna that had been stuffed into his mouth came away so he could lick his chaffed lips and look at them with quivering eyes.<br />“W-where are you taking me, mga punyeta!” he gasped. He looked down. Yep. His cock was still rock hard. And it was showing, its dark purplish head peeking out of his red boxers.<br /><br />“Lando, Lando. You naughty, naughty hombre.” The leader of the group said, looking at his groin, head shaking in pure disapproval.<br /><br />“What do you want from me?” cried Rolando.<br /><br />“Don’t pretend not to know what we want, Lando dear.”<br /><br />“Go to hell, you fuck! Let me go!”<br /><br />The car rushed down a bumpy road in the dark. The moon wasn’t in the sky, and only a few stars scattered themselves about in the black sky.<br /><br />“I didn’t do anything wrong. I know all of you! Cocksucking bitches! Whores! You’re going to kill me!” Rolando screamed.<br /><br />“Oh don’t be such a drama queen, Lando!” said one of them, a Zsa Zsa Padilla clone, patting his cheeks rather affectionately. “We wouldn’t even dream of doing that.”<br />“We won’t. I swear by my implants,” said another to the one leaning against one of the windows, the one looking like Cher, with gold tassels, puckered lips, the works.<br />“I swear by my botoxed cheekbones, we won’t,” Cher assured him.<br /><br />Both of them grinned mischievously at Rolando. Their smiling faces reminded him of a cartoon he saw once when he had been a kid, one that involved a rather nubile blonde girl getting lost in a magical land. He remembered that bulbous cat, materializing out of nowhere, leering at the poor girl, its wide orange mouth displaying a monstrous grin. Zsa Zsa and Cher both looked like that now.<br /><br />He wanted to kick in those disgusting, painted faces, but he found himself feeling very very cold. For a thought suddenly came unbidden, one that in that very instant began to grow and take up the rest of the space in his head.<br /><br />“If this is about that ugly fat-ass Nora—"<br /><br />His kidnappers (should you still call them kidnappers even when the victim is more than thirteen years old?) all gasped at the mention of their friend’s name. One of them, this time a bad imitation of Alice Dixon during her Dyesebel days and who was silent since the ride had started, spoke. “Don’t you ever insult that precious, precious name! You don’t even have any respect for the dead!”<br /><br />Rolando shrugged his shoulders. “I have nothing to do with that stupid Nora’s death.”<br />Alice Dixon suddenly swung a fist right smack into Rolando’s face. It landed on his right cheek, stinging him.<br /><br />“W-what the f-fuck! What did I do? What did I do? You assholes, you good-for-nothing putas! Just you wait till I get out of these ropes! Just you wait, you goddamn, ball-licking pussies!” Rolando raved, spittle flying from his open mouth.<br />Zsa Zsa pulled on Rolando’s hair, hard. Rolando screamed and his eyes burned, filling them with tears. And something else, something that looked like rage, now swirled in their pools.<br /><br />“You are guilty, Lando. We saw the note. We know the reason why Nora did what she did. Poor wretch. She loved you, Lando. She loved you,” the leader said from the driver’s seat.<br /><br />“And now, you have to pay for what you did.”<br /><br />Rolando shook his head, shook it for all its worth. “No! No! I didn’t do anything! Please believe me! I didn’t do anything to—“<br /><br />Cher shoved the bandanna back into Rolando’s screaming mouth. “Oh, shut your trap!<br />Really now! Are we there yet? This animal is giving me a headache.”<br /><br />Cher looked out of the window and stared at the scenery. They had already gone past the foothills of Barangay Pasonanca. Now, the car zoomed around a curve and began its slow ascent up Abong-Abong Mountain where fourteen crosses marked the uneven road, all the way up to the cruz mayor which stood sun-bleached and proud, overlooking the city. Tomorrow was Maundy Thursday, and people would flock to this holy site, lighting their candles and wishing that the burdens of climbing up, doing the way of the cross as a form of penitence, would be enough to cleanse them of their grievous sins. Rolando didn’t know it yet, but he was going to be the first one to do it among all of them.<br /><br />“I hope no one’s up there,” said the leader, a frown crossing her hairy face.<br /><br />“It’s way past twelve midnight, Kayla,” Cher said. “I’m sure no one’s about. I hear the place is kind of spooky.”<br /><br />“Yes,” Zsa Zsa confirmed. “No one would dare stay up there at this time of night.”<br />Soon after, they arrived. Kayla parked the car near a waiting shed, a few meters away from the cruz mayor. They hauled Rolando out of the car. By now, both his jeans and his boxers were way down, around his ankles. Kiss and teeth marks were all over his thighs, groin and on the flat of his stomach. On his broad, rippling chest, a crude message had been written with red lipstick: He is the Sacrifice.<br /><br />All four of the abductors then carried him to the cruz mayor. Rolando felt tired, though his eyes were open wide. He didn’t struggle as they undid the rope and retied his arms around the cross. He stood there, swaying, a prisoner for all of them to see.<br /><br />The four let out a whoop of joy and gave each other a high-five. The leader took out a cigarette from her breast pocket and lit it.<br /><br />“So, Lando,” she began in between puffs. “Do you now confess?”<br /><br />“I difnt kno whartf yorf talkling abouft!” Rolando tried to scream.<br /><br />“Sister, wait. Let me just take the bandanna off his mouth.” Cher walked up to where Rolando stood and for the second time pulled the piece of cloth away. Before she left him, Cher stood on her toes and brushed her pink-colored lips on Rolando’s.<br /><br />“Sayang, Lando. Tu muy gwapo era. Handsome, true, but what a heartless brute.”<br /><br />“You bitch!” Rolando spat at her. It hit Cher in the eye, and he laughed, laughed so hard.<br /><br />Cher only stared at him with her cold eyes and went back to the group. Then they all began to say some things.<br /><br />“Confess now, Lando. Because of you, Nora is dead.”<br /><br />“Nora had been good to you, Lando. Gave you your every whim.”<br />Even when she had none to give.”<br /><br />“You know she had that operation. All of us in the group did. She had no money left.”<br /><br />“Still, you insisted. Cellphones. A digital camera. Lifetime membership at the gym.”<br /><br />“She had nothing left.”<br /><br />“So you left her.”<br /><br />“She hung herself! It’s not my fault!” Rolando screamed.<br /><br />“It’s because of you she did it!” Kayla shot back, hurling her cigarette at his naked chest.<br /><br />Rolando laughed. “She deserved it. The bitch was so stupid. So she killed herself. Is it my fault that your kind lusts after me?”<br /><br />“You ingrate! You selfish oaf!” cried Zsa Zsa, biting her lips.<br /><br />“The likes of us should get rid of you!”<br /><br />“No longer will gay men take to straight, stupid guys like you!”<br /><br />“Murderer!”<br /><br />“User!”<br /><br />“Short dick!”<br /><br />“Enough talking!” the leader shouted. “Let’s begin.”<br /><br />And so the four of them began to take off their ballerina shoes. Then, they slowly took off their tops—cherry pink, ocean blue, melon green, earthy brown—and their tight stone-washed jeans. Then their panties. They unloosened their long, black hair from their ponytails, shook them and let the night breeze do the rest. Pretty soon, all four of them stood naked.<br /><br />Rolando stared at them. He stared at them really hard. Stared at their faces, and then at their humungous boobs which he knew couldn’t be real. And he stared at the area where their dicks used to be; only now there were no ding-a-lings there asking<br /><br />“How’s it hanging, Juan?” Just precisely cut, vertical slits that passed for pussies.<br /><br />But that wasn’t the worst part. Oh no. Not by a long shot. For in the four transvestites’ hands were all sorts of dildos, some unbelievably thick. Others came in odd shapes and hues. Kayla was holding an electric pink one. She was twirling it like it was a baton.<br /><br />Horrors. Horrors.<br /><br />Rolando shivered.<br /><br />“Someone’s going to be realllyyyy sore tomorrowwww!” Zsa Zsa said in a sing-song voice.<br /><br />And somehow, standing there with his pants and boxers down, the four of them slowly approaching him with menace and lust in their eyes, Rolando did not for a moment doubt what he had heard to be false.Margueritehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11685714902170001873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-49044711813273611422009-10-05T23:27:00.000-07:002009-10-05T23:55:31.933-07:00Faith in Poisonby Karl R. de Mesa<br /><br />Eat the darkness, feed your mind.<br />~ Zodiac Hidalgo, “Novaliches Journal”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Every angel is terrifying</span><br />The drugs are a fabulation. Every wisp of smoke I inhale and exhale is a story formed from one breath to another. Take this train I’m on, for instance. It could suddenly lift from its rails and be taken to a desolate planet, a razed nothing where food and water is scarce. <br /><br />I wonder, then, who would make love to whom, who would be eaten first and by what method we would decide this sacrificial process. Or perhaps we’d all just be too hungry to think about it. <br /><br />An obese lady seated in front of me is holding a light brown and white puppy. The dog has a gold earring piercing its left lobe. Probably a mongrel, I think, but can’t really tell. <br /><br />The animal solves this by talking first. “Well, are you gonna ask?” the puppy says. Turns out it’s a he.<br /><br />“Ask what?” I say. <br /><br />“You’ve been staring at me since we got on at Boni. It’s Kamuning station now. Either you’re a real wuss or…” he pauses.<br /><br />“Or what?”<br /><br />“Or you don’t believe dogs can talk.”<br /><br />“Hmmm. Likely. But then, junkies like me experience all sorts of weird shit. Maybe Kyrie cut my stash too pure again?“ <br /><br />“Oh, I was wondering why you don’t look too good.”<br /><br />“It’s always this way, dog. If you don’t mind the term.”<br /><br />“Sure, human.” He pronounces it hoo-man.<br /><br />I ponder on this, realizing that neither of us has opened our mouths through the entire conversation. And I add, “So who doesn’t believe it, too?”<br /><br />“See this fat woman?” Woo-man.<br /><br />“Uh huh.”<br /><br />“None of her family believes it either, although their ten year old kid’s catching on pretty fast. Soon enough, I’ll spring it on all of them and make up a story about tetranogenic effects concerning oddly cooked bibingka, TV radiation and lots of Selecta ice cream. By that time, I’ll be writing my own comic strips. Cartooning’s my thing, you see.” <br /><br />“Is that so?”<br /><br />“Yeah.”<br /><br />“Well then,” I say, “Don’t forget to dedicate one to me. My name’s Lucas.”<br /><br />“Too fagotty,” the puppy says, wagging its head from side to side “I’ll call you Luke.”<br /><br />I nod and smile, “Sounds good.”<br /><br />The puppy taps a paw to its head and makes its earring sway, “I won’t forget. May the force be with you, Luke,” Then we’ve arrived at Quezon Avenue station and the obese lady is heading for the doors with the puppy. The dog is waving goodbye to me and mouthing, “Always.”<br /><br />I didn’t get his name. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Elegantly wasted</span><br />I’ve seen a lot of posters of oblong-shaped, silver-skinned aliens, with black, chinky eyes, smoking hemp from cleanly rolled roaches. The posters say, in yellow Arial, “TAKE ME TO YOUR DEALER.” They’re great to look at. I’m all for them. But I believe that the utopian ideal should stay on posters because they’re exactly that: a perfect, untarnished notion.<br /> <br />So, when I come home, it’s a unusual to find Kyrie’s petite body lying on my bed, watching reruns of Ispup! Kyrie, my illustrious hemp pusher.<br /><br />“Hi Luke,” she says, her lips drug dealer red. The room smells of sweet wizard variety. She has on a brown skirt and matching dark top that highlight her mestiza skin to effect. The skirt just barely covers her ass, but the heavy boots she waves like weapons would make you think twice about touching it. Not at all unattractive, since she has the most silken of legs and a nice, fragile-looking package that more than makes up for her characterless face. She’s on her stomach and her feet are in the air tracing curlicues.<br /><br />“How’d you get in, Kie?”<br /><br />“Through the door. Same as anybody.”<br /><br />“Please leave the same way. Jesus, I have to sleep first. Do you know how long I’ve been out on field? Ever been to `Garay, into the real green? Try it for a week with only one pair of jeans and no running water.”<br /><br />She rolls out the merchandise from little teabags but I take off my shirt and walk into the bathroom, not even wanting to look. She says, “But these are the latest, Luke. Right off the market, experimental fabula strains. Cost you a thousand pesos for three packets. Only from me because you’re special.”<br /><br />Right now the hinges to my bathroom door are broken, so closing it isn’t an option unless I want to just rip the thing right off. “I don’t care. I’ll see you tonight. Right now I have to sleep.” I’ve spread the toothpaste and am already brushing but there’s no answer, only Jon Santos’s pitiful whine as he impersonates Armida Siguion-Reyna. I take a peek. “Kie?” <br /><br />She’s gone. From here, I can clearly see the three teabags she left on the bed that’d cost me just a thousand pesos right off the rack because I’m special. I proceed to brush my teeth. <br /><br />Moments later, I’m on the bed and smoking the fabula. I see that she’s also left a ticket for some party titled “The Mobile Consortium – North Ave. to Taft Ave.” At the back of the ticket, Kyrie has scrawled in her loopy script: ‘Be My Hallowe’en? More discounts if you do, bub.’ With her package, the girl can get any boy she wants. A few heartbeats later, the tickets have gone into the trash and I’m rolling another hemp into a tight little stick. I lie back and try to sleep but the drugs are a fabulation. <br /><br />In my rapture I meditate on 1 question: where the heck are Projects 2 and 5 located?<br /> <br />After an hour without answers my head gets tired of the circumlocution. My meditation turns up something else altogether. The ceiling unfolds a story, violently raping my head. <br /><br />You’ll hear the riddle of prayers calling in the lurking lipstick scenes<br />Once, the boy was named Bernardo. Now, he is just one of the numberless, nameless dead that prowl the earth in search of salvation. I don’t know what Bernie’s salvation is, but I do know three things about him: <br /><br />1) He was once a staunch pro-ERAP supporter. But when the shit hit the fan and EDSA 2 came along, he saw the error of his ways and quickly changed sides. Having voted for the man, however, haunts him well into his unlife.<br /><br />2) He once got his gorgeous girlfriend, Sandy, drunk and stoned enough to consent to a six-way orgy with his barkada, wherein she consequently choked to death on a particularly well-hung guy’s semen. They got rid of the body by throwing it into Pasig. This, he firmly believes, is the cause of his damnation.<br /><br />3) He knows for a fact that Sesame Street’s Bert is evil. <br /><br />What Bernie doesn’t know, however, is that his erstwhile girlfriend choking to death is only half of it. Unknown to him his stash can be traced back to numerous contacts and deals, winding its way back ultimately to Kyrie. Kyrie, in her usual smug customer routine has cut the shit a bit too pure and first timers like Sandy have a hard time taking such unmixed stuff. The effect is an ever so slight constriction of the throat that would have made a world of difference to the girl’s disangulated and intensely skewered position. Thus the choking to death. <br /><br />Now, Bernardo walks the byways of E. Rodriguez in search of something he doesn’t know shinola about. One night he encounters a sight that terrifies even his dead heart.<br /> <br />Three nuns in their big black and white trimmed habits are walking towards him on the sidewalk. The three are equidistant from each other, their strides precise, and the lead nun holds a swinging metal incense carrier that trails smoke. Bernie cannot see their faces behind the wimples. And he doesn’t want to see. He is certain that they have faces of wickedness and evil beneath those bellos. Terrified, he squeezes himself into a niche in the wall and lets them pass. However, the last nun stops and turns around to face him, with cheek still pressed against concrete. What passes for sweat in a ghost is streaming down his face. The evil nun approaches. With her face inches away Bernie feels her breath on him and it smells of sweet flowers. Just like his girlfriend did.<br /> <br />“Stop sniveling, you dork. I really hated that. Come to think of it, I still hate it,” the nun says and takes off her wimple with the white trim. <br /><br />“You haven’t changed a bit,” Bernie says, going from one eye open to two. <br /><br />“Hmph. Can’t say the say the same for you,” she points to his decomposing knot of a neck that trails flesh and tendons in the breeze. She looks up at a sign, “Do you remember this?”<br /><br />Bernie looks where she points, “What?”<br /><br />“That’s just like you. Not to remember our first anniversary.” She sits down on the curb and rests her chin on a fist, wimple in hand. “You told me to wear those see-through panties and then you ripped them to shreds when I took off my clothes. There goes a thousand down the toilet.”<br /><br />“The Stone Arch Apartelle,” Bernie says triumphantly, remembering. He sits down beside her and they watch the cars go by like unerring neons. <br />“I suppose I should be glad for little things.”<br /><br />“Sandy…”<br /><br />“If it’s a question the answer is probably be `Yes’ and `You did kill me.’”<br /><br />Bernie starts to sob. <br /><br />“Oh, stop the waterworks. My only regret is not telling any of your exes that you liked me doing you. That I’m probably the only one who was crazy enough to ever put on a dildo and fuck your behind to kingdom come. Maybe that’s it. After all these years of walking around here with those two idiotas in this get-up I still couldn’t figure it out. And I tell you, you get a lot of time to think by the time traffic hits New Manila. But I digress. So, the question here is: did I just really love you or was I as crazy and perverse as you to have done all that?<br /><br />She puts the wimple on her lap, “I have to explain that I go through it in progressive stages. When we start out in Aurora I’m blaming the whole shit on you and your pampered burgis childhood, coupled with a traumatic family life, plus some abuse from your Uncle on the side. Not to mention that time you had your kid sister blow you in exchange for a gallon of ice cream. You told me you couldn’t recall how old she was then. Maybe not older than 11? Then we get to somewhere along Christ the King and I begin making concessions. That maybe everything was racked against you. That maybe it’s not just an inborn thing but a factor of environment as well. That maybe being bombarded with that stuff all day was sure to have an adverse effect. I start going through all the academic Freudian-Jungian-Frankelian things that could’ve comprised that one event that brought us to the point where the six of you filled up all my orifices (plus one in each hand and one on my breasts and mangling them forever – you had yours in my ass didn’t you?). Anyway it starts to spiral down from there and when we finally get to Quiapo—"<br /><br />Bernie pleads, “Please, stop—"<br /><br />“WHEN WE FINALLY GET TO QUIAPO, I tell myself that it was all those years of repressed Catholic school girl distress coming up like fucking bubbles! I tell myself that I could’ve loosened up and not panicked and just relaxed my throat since you guys just had to put that big friend of yours—what’s his name, Mr. So-Well-Hung? Wally, yeah, that’s him—in my mouth. I tell myself that if I had just relaxed, I could have swallowed it all and I’d still be alive."<br /><br />“Oh God,” Bernie says, wiping the tears with the back of his hands. <br /><br />“Nope, old love. The more appropriate term is: That pretty little bitch was stuck-up till the end. That’s what you told them, di ba? Your, whadda ya call it? Justified excuse.”<br /><br />A couple came out of the apartelle, laughing about something, arms around each other in a calm harmonium. Their conversation, as did the patter of their feet, mixed with muzak and wheels. <br /><br />“I’m sorry,” Bernie says. “I really am, Sandy.”<br /><br />“Yeah, well, I’m already dead and you are, too, but that’s not why you’re like this. It isn’t me Bern. That’s what I was supposed to tell you if I saw you. This isn’t the big sin that made your undeath. So there,” and she stood up to leave. <br /><br />“Hey! Wait, aren’t you gonna tell me what it is?” Bernie says. Sandy already had her big wimple on and her face was hidden within again. He talked to a shrouded darkness. <br /><br />“I don’t really know, Bern, even if I did want to tell you.”<br /><br />“But what’s your big sin? Why are you here too?” Bernie dazed now, seeing the cars in a swirl. <br /><br />Sandy pecked him on the cheek and he shivered from those freezer cold lips. “It’s a secret,” she said. “Hafta go. The girls will be looking for me soon.” She ran, a nun in black with white trim, and faded like a `50’s movie reel. <br /><br />Bernie looked up at the lighted sign of the Stone Arch Apartelle. It blinked every 5 seconds. <br /><br />“Jesus fucking Christ,” he said, and walked on, pondering his sins. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The loose palace of exile </span><br />My sin, on the other hand, is excess. It’s two days later and I’ve finished the fabula. All 3 teabags of it. Talk about addiction. I think I can stave off my down for a day but beyond that? Thing is, I have to have a proxy. I decide that alcohol will be just fine; so I call up a friend and ask him if he’d like us to meet and go drinking, catch up, whatever. From my place in Novaliches, it’s a pretty long drive to any decent bar. <br /><br />“Um, yeah. S’okay.” Rico says with his scratchy voice, “but I got to take a bath first. Why don’t you take a trike over here so you don’t have to wait?” This is Rico’s way of saying I’m not too patient with long bathers, which Rico is. Takes baths that stretch up to two hours long depending on his mood. But he’s always at the deep end, so I say yes and go since it’s just a few blocks away.<br /><br />Once there, I’m greeted by the maid who’s about to go home for the weekend. Rico, his frizzy, curly hair standing up in deformed spikes, tells me to wait, make myself comfortable, drink whatever I want. Then he goes off for his shower. <br /><br />I must say that Rico’s house is a veritable mansion (three floors with enough space for a gallery) and has rooms furnished like a five star hotel. Him and me go way back to primary school. We used to watch a lot of dirty movies in his bedroom and, in high school, smoke a lot of pot and cigarettes. One thing Rico has as well is a gorgeous mother, the real MILF kind. <br /><br />She’s still young, having had Rico and his sister when she was just barely out of her teens. I remember she had incredible light brown skin, a handsome face that virtually radiated freshness, and the biggest tits off a Filipina I’d ever seen that wasn’t in the movies. Rico’s papa is a big-shot stockbroker and keeps them well-funded, himself most often on business trips abroad. <br /><br />One time, we had to use the Playstation (God knows what his parents play, simplified Dance Dance Revolution maybe?) in his parents’ room and I had to sit on this chair where his mother’s bra and shorts had been left hanging. I somehow found a Lifestyle Section of that day’s newspaper to cover my upper body. Then I let Rico engross himself in beating the hell out of the other racers in Jet Moto. This precaution up, I started sniffing the inside of the cups and, I tell you, I had enough fuel for erotic fantasies to last me a decade. Still jack off to it from time to time, the memory losing only the details but none of its essence. The scent left on those size D-cups were part honey and part sea spray, mixed with something musky that must’ve been sweat. <br /><br />I kept smelling the thing for the next half hour, pretending to be engrossed with an article about some new hemp that was undetectable to any test. That was until Rico finished the damn game and we had to go down and eat. <br /><br />That was the day I cursed Shakey’s delivery for being so fast. <br /><br />Anyway, I never got the chance to do that again on account that I never really got back into their house, mostly because they had a big family dispute. Turned out, Rico’s papa was cheating on the mother. I suppose I should have said sorry to poor Rico. Me fantasizing about my buddy’s mom doesn’t help friendship any, but he doesn’t know it and lack of that knowledge keeps him (and me) from harm. <br /><br />Well I’m here now. Rico’s still in the shower and mom can’t be anywhere over 40 years old (or thereabouts – she was in her late twenties when I pulled that stunt). I’m determined to find out if my luck will hold since, apparently, there’s nobody in the house except old Mang Tebio who’s out in the garden cutting weeds. My fantasy mom, I’ve been told, is off in Hong Kong shopping her ass off. <br /><br />I go over to where I remember the main bedroom is and find it open. I step in and turn on the light. The room’s smaller somehow and more feminine, more geared to a single person ever since Rico’s papa left. These days I hear she’s attending more and more Baby Arenas parties than is good for anybody’s health. There’s a chair and I spot some clothes.<br /> <br />I rummage and jackpot! It’s a black bra with a bonus: lacy, translucent undies, almost see-through, those maybe-I’ll–get-lucky kind you find in any woman’s wardrobe. Booty. I pick up the bra first and sniff. Still the same old Rico’s mom scent: equal parts sweet honey, salty sea and a faint trace of musk. I realize I’ve gone to sit on the bed with the panties on my lap and that I’m clutching the bra to my nose. My head is swimming like a cyanide-bonked fish. After I don’t know how long I drop the bra, pick up the undies and inhale deeply. <br /><br />I am on my knees in an instant, my strength buckling under the strong feminine odor. Riding the sensation I find that Rico’s mom has lost none of her touch on me even in her absence. What I previously mistook for sweat is stronger here, the musk aggressive, heady, delivering a kick to my groin, filling my jeans to bursting. Painful and splendid. There’s a bit of spotty, whitish discharge in the middle, no more than a few centimeters long but quite visible on the material. <br /><br />I lick. It tastes salty, slightly viscous and languid as it goes down my throat.<br /> <br />I hear the shower being turned off and Rico’s voice growing louder, singing something Iggy Poppish. When I hear him open the door to his bedroom I take a last sniff and put the bra back where it hangs on the chair. I fold the panties neatly and stuff it in my back pocket. I turn off the lights when I go out and gently close the door. I make my way to Rico’s room as my hard-on dwindles. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Lahveh, etcetera </span><br />Look: the bar is called Big Sky Mind and it’s been refurbished by a goth owner. Darker, but still basically the same art and bohemian mill. The walls are white on black and the 1007 names of God are painted on them in two-inch high block letters. <br />I order the Bolognese and let Rico, his frizzy hair teased into little punky spikes with a lot of gel and hairspray, ramble on about the place’s history. Apparently, he comes here at least once a week. <br /><br />Rico says, “One critic described Big Sky as `A quaint, artsy café.’ In my opinion, artist-run space fits it better. Granted that as Katya, the bar manager, says, some people understandably find it `scary.’ The bare Spartan distinction can certainly trigger some fight-flight hotspots in the easily spooked—this fucking aforementioned critic also described the place as if `set-up in a hurry by subversives, ready to fold up at any sign of trouble’—the shallowly ignorant (`uh, ba't anlalaki ng mga bintana?’) or those who think that blinders are a hip fashion accessory.”<br /><br />I spoon enough Bolognese into my mouth to keep me from talking. Rico works as a PR man for a bank and can talk his mouth through the night if you let him. In my semi-stoned state, I neither have the patience nor the inclination to interrupt. My part of this exchange is “uh huh” and “exactly.”<br /><br />“Here, on the first floor, is the bar and restaurant. You see it’s a smattering of tables and a brown couch. At one time or another, you can find personalities like Karl Roy or Sammy Asuncion seated here, guzzling a beer or in conversation. Even the desk lamps have character,” Rico flicks the switch on our table lamp that is made from driftwood and kitchen utensils. “And speaking of the damn devil, there he is! My man, Sammy!”<br /><br />A stocky, solid man with long curly hair, a batik shirt and a skewed look in his eye comes up to our table, claps Rico on the back and says, “How ya doin’, spy?” <br />His torn blue jeans look like they’ve seen better days.<br /><br />“I’m alright. Bit under the weather but doing fine. This here is my friend Luke Ramirez, just came off his tour of duty. Mag-puputo, I mean.”<br /><br />Sammy snakes out a hand and I reach for it, “Glad to meet you.”<br /><br />“Same here,” Sammy says. <br /><br />Then Rico excuses himself as he and Sammy go out to Sammy’s car to get some CD that Rico loaned him ages ago. I’m glad for the moment, Rico being the blabber that he is. Minutes of peace with my dear pasta. Renee, the proprietor, passes by my table, nose ring and a huddle of other body piercings, and we nod in recognition. <br />Then Kyrie arrives with the puppy. <br /><br />I’m pretty sure it’s the same puppy. There’s the small gold earring on the left ear, the same meaty plumpness, the cute button nose and the hangdog (sic) look. Only difference is he’s not talking. Kyrie brings him in and all the girls in the vicinity light up with a bliss I’ve only seen during playful sex. The pup keeps barking for them and this is just too cute as far as the girls are concerned. Somebody gladly takes the dog off Kyrie’s hands. This leaves me at her mercy. <br />“Hey, photo man.”<br /><br />“Hello, Kie,” I say, leaving the pasta for a while and putting down my fork lest I feel motivated to stick it somewhere. “Where’d you get the dog?”<br /><br />“Oh, him? I’m puppy sitting until his owners get back from Palawan. Poor baby, there’d be no one to feed him.”<br /><br />The girls have now formed a phalanx around the pup, their voices sing-songy and giddy. “Looks like that won’t be a problem,” I reply.<br /> <br />“Did you see the ticket?”<br /><br />Sub-title: cut right to the chase why don’t you? “Yep. And here’s the cash for those packets.” I pull out my wallet and hand over two five hundred-peso bills. “Thanks. That was good stuff.”<br /><br />“Was?” she asks, even as she puts the bills away “I know you, Luke, but don’t tell me you snorted all of it in just two days.” I drink some iced tea. “Fucker. Oh well, that puts me back a bit, but just to assure me of your undying gratitude, I’ve brought you some more.” She pulls out two teabags of the fabula and I grab for them. Kyrie is faster and pulls them away. “I said, just to assure me of your undying gratitude and your noble presence at that consortium, I’m giving you these,” she shakes the packets, “Gratis. Without charge. Zilch. Not on your list. Plus a guarantee of three more free, if you promise to be at that party.”<br /><br />“I promise,” the word doesn’t even register in my head.<br /> <br />“And give me a brain splitting blowjob after,” she says.<br /><br />“Sure,” I say without hesitation. <br /><br />She giggles, but I don’t hear, “Good. Cause if you don’t, no more fabula, dearie. No more stories. No more psychedelic dream eddies. Now give pretty Kyrie a smack.”<br />I peck her on the right cheek and grab the packets. <br /><br />“Cheers,” she says and is skirt swirled off to join the puppy oglers.<br />I smell the stuff and it’s better than the wadded up panties in my pocket. <br />That’s what I love about this place, there’s always something going down (an open drug deal notwithstanding) and nobody could care a bit. It’s 9 PM and I know where my brains are going to be. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">I am the passenger</span><br />To be driven. To live under glass and be in the hands of a capable motorist is a pleasure I indulge in as much as I can and is one of the foremost reasons I have avoided driving schools like the plague. <br /><br />This is about an hour later with the cocks well in their nest, inside Rico’s car.<br />We have smoked one whole teabag and are seeing snatches of dreams and hopes and nightmares in the tenements we drive through. I don’t even know where we are. Rico doesn’t care. What we have are snatches. The challenge is to assemble our own narrative from memory, the high and the fragment rays that are episodes embedded inside pedestrians, vehicles, train boxes, lights burning within half-parted curtains, the eyes within objects and the beating heart of machines. <br /><br />A great rapture, this configuration. <br /><br />“I got one,” Rico, triumphant, announces. “You ready?”<br /><br />Headlights too harsh, stories in my head like putty melting before I can sculpt. A truck blinks at me. I tell him, “Go.” <br /><br />Rico begins. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">THE LOVERS</span><br />Here are two lovers who meet up in Tagaytay in an IT seminar on LINUX. They are Sirri and Denver. <br /><br />Denver works for a local arm of Microsoft and is a kick-ass programmer. All nerd and half-life twit. The kind you could kick on the street but has razors for nerve endings, the bushiest dendrites you’d ever see if an autopsy was ever done. <br /><br />Meanwhile, Sirri is an info-tech journalist for a national daily. She’s sharp, witty, adept at hard ball, the trek and legwork and gossip meistering. She’s done it all in the name of news. Her love for computers and technology is unparalleled. <br />The miracle is that everybody gets drunk. The two of them more so. The tension has been up between them since the start and Denver covers it up with witty banter and a lot of college jokes. Sirri plays it cool and savvy. She wants to do the cute technique but is afraid to come on too strong. So she points her warmth at somebody else, then looks at Denver, as if this could present a solution in angles, like a Bata Reyes 9-ball game. <br /><br />Anyway, they end up sleeping together – another miracle. Just sleeping because the seminar house has walls so thin that a one-year-old could punch holes right through. In the morning, they smile at each other and seem flustered, red cheeked and excited, wondering if they should make love. The walls are colored green and each think how the strange, beautiful creature they find beside them is totally unexpected, surreal, but nonetheless warm and inviting and filled with radiance.<br />They put it off to sleep some more and the morning call for the first session comes. <br />Too late. <br /><br />Not even half finished with their desires, they go back to their jobs and write each other craving, desirous e-mails. Love letters they keep buried within seven folders of made-up directories filled with spam files. All have been converted into hidden format. <br /><br />One of Denver’s letters: <br /><br />denveru@microsoft.com.ph to sirristar@philjourn.net<br /><br />To Sirri, <br /><br />For many years, I have suspected that I do not have a life. I type long and boring and sometimes eloquent code, go home and prepare for the next day. But this is not it. Recently, I figured out what it is and why. It’s corny and tasteless, but it’s true that there are forces that do things to you that you wouldn’t expect. That makes you act in ways that you won’t ever dare when in a normal frame. But mediocrity is hard to live with when you come into the light’s severe contrast. <br /><br />The fact of the matter is, I would like to ask you out. I hope this isn’t too forward. Coffee or a movie or perhaps both, if a whole meal would not be asking too much, then that too. I’ll pay for everything. <br /><br />I try to remember your voice and am frustrated and angry with myself to find that I can’t. : (<br /><br />Please reply, <br />DENVER’<br /><br />Sirri replies, a bit charmed, a bit annoyed at the guy’s ineptness. <br /><br />sirristar@philjourn.net to denveru@microsoft.com.ph <br /><br />Dear Denver, <br /><br />Of course, I’d like to have coffee some time. Plus a movie. Plus a whole meal. But you have to set aside this tone of formality, like what you had in your first letter. Our exchange can’t be this way, in this tone; it’s unusual and I’d feel a bit disappointed if you consider me anything else other than a very close friend (I do crave your friendship). <br /><br />I don’t know and can’t venture to determine why you’d feel that you didn’t have a life until you met me, but I’d like you to tell me about it sometime. =)<br /><br />Let me get your mobile number. I’m afraid I won’t be free until next week. Will Monday be fine? Do you think we should go see the new Scream movie or that movie with the bugs and the exciting trailer? LOL!<br /><br />Whatever it is you yearn for, know that you are not alone in such desires. <br /><br />SIRRI’<br /><br />So this shit goes on for sometime. <br /><br />They go out and date and there’s an air of secrecy that permeates it. As if both are wary of some greater authority that will suddenly penalize them. Neither knows why but it adds a sense of adventure, an aching to their days apart and a wisp of the gamish that has so far gone only to kiss and make-out, done mostly in Sirri’s apartment that she shares with a roommate. <br />Months go by and Denver, for his loyalty and above par performance at Microsoft, is given a car. Nothing fancy, just a second-hand old box-type Corolla, deep blue with rubber bumpers that don’t push in like the new tin ones do. Anyway, they’re in a restaurant and Denver decides to make the big announcement. <br /><br />“They gave me a car,” Denver says.<br /><br />“Really? Oh wow,” Sirri says and looks at him sheepishly. She’s wearing an off-white dress that hangs on her frame awkwardly, but nevertheless makes her look sweet and vulnerable. Denver looks at the suggestion of cleavage on Sirri’s tan skin. She adds, “Um, can you bring it tomorrow?”<br /><br />“Of course, I just couldn’t today because of the coding scheme.”<br /><br />“Great. Listen, I have to go but I’ll see you tomorrow night. Pick me up at the office since you have a car. I’ll wait outside.”<br /><br />“Sure. Hey, wait, what are we watching tomorrow?” Denver asks as Sirri rises, knapsack in hand. <br /><br />“Oh, I’m not really particular. There’s nothing that good on anyway, although Elizabeth Hurley plays the devil in one.”<br /><br />“Oh,” Denver ponders on this a moment, “Anything else you want?”<br /><br />“Trojans,” Sirri whispers. <br /><br />“Ha?”<br /><br />“Condoms, Dev,”’ she always called him Dev.<br /><br />“Trojan. No prob. See you,” Denver bobs his head, already excited. <br /><br />Sirri leaves and the guy feels like jumping up and down, pumping his arms, doing cartwheels and pissing on the wine glasses. Denver goes to the drugstore and buys two whole boxes of the specified rubber.<br /><br />The big day comes and Denver decides they’re better off parking somewhere in Diliman since campus premises are a haven for lovers. They’re inside a copse of trees and they begin okay enough, the foreplay making them all the more awkward and they have some trouble pulling down the rubber. Then it’s done and Denver is in and he’s pumping like mad, groaning like an ox, pretending he’s a jackhammer. <br /><br />He explodes like fireworks. His bliss is unnamable. His bliss is part of a conglomerate of first time blisses that accumulates in the small, forgotten corners waiting to be found again. That rush and calm is also a beatitude that Denver has never before felt. He feels her silken underneath him, all around him, sheathed. He is suddenly exhausted. Both of them collapse in the backseat, the fragrance of post-coitum and sweat and delight stifling the air in their pantomime. Their bliss is unnamable. <br /><br />Sirri is exuberant. She cradles Denver and they are two spoons. <br /><br />Then there are flashlight beams outside the window. <br /><br />The police have arrived. <br /><br />For the first time Denver feels what it is like to be a hypnotized deer. What he remembers after that first is the confusion within the harsh glare of concentric illumination like the age determiner on large trees when you cut them down and see how long and how old they’ve been there. Second is anger at somebody else seeing Sirri’s nubile, half naked body as she clutches his big shirt to ward off the cops’ prying eyes. <br /><br />They’re dragged off to the local precinct for acts of lasciviousness, are finger printed then asked questions and given a half hearted lecture on how the moral fabric of Pinoy youths today is steadily being unraveled. As punishment, Denver would have to go plant ipil ipils with a DENR program. That’s it. <br />But Sirri, a girl with wits like a halo, sees this balding sergeant in front of her and imaginatively, coolly, pulls out her wallet and bangs down two crisp P1000 bills on the desk. In her smoothest Tia Carerre imitation she tells the sergeant that there’s no need for Denver to plant anything or go anywhere. <br />For a moment the cop looks at the bills, the cash between their triad, the three heroes on the bills staring up at the three of them. Denver starts to think Sirri has made a stupid mistake but then the cop smiles. He nods and pulls the 2000 and it disappears into his pocket like a phantasmagoric rabbit. The cop says “absolutely no need” and Sirri almost laughs. Sleight of hand by one so bulky looks so unreal. She holds it in and what comes out is a wry smile. <br /><br />“Of course,” the sergeant adds. “No need at all,” and calls an attendant to bring in their record. Once the attendant leaves, he tears up their records and typed up report, in fingerprints and acts of lasciviousness. Tears it up several times until it’s nothing more than confetti. Then he escorts them to the front and tells the duty cop that he’s got this one. Wave goodbye now to the cute couple, he tells the other cop. <br /><br />Denver guns the car. One eye on his girl, he’s going from first to fifth gear in a matter of seconds and they’re racing up Antipolo. Whooping with the stereo up loud. <br />Sirri’s black hair trails the wind when she sticks her head outside enjoying the scratch of night cold on her skin and Denver feels the blood that tells him he is finally, irrevocably alive. Up in the heights of the lookout the stars are velvet, the city below astir as if sprawl and sky were twins. They’re making love again. They are laughing and giggling in the back seat. <br /><br />“Why’d you want to do it again so soon?” Denver asks as they lie sated. <br /><br />“Because I didn’t come yet, dummy,” Sirri says. <br /><br />And the day after she’d go to the office and print out all of Denver’s love letters in plain sight of the whole news desk staff.<br /><br />Rico coughs. <br /><br />I wait for him to say THE END. Instead there are few minutes when he huffs and then he pulls us over into a small road to stop the car. He’s rubbing the bridge of his nose and I’m thinking he’s going to rub it right off. <br /><br />“That’s good shit, man,” Rico says.<br /><br />“That’s it? That’s your story?” I say, slumped in my chair and feeling the crash biting, its teeth sinking, jaws working away at the muscles of my psyche. It intends to maim. <br /><br />I only have one packet left and do not intend to waste it. Partly because I can’t dance and thus have no intention of pleading Kyrie for more in that consortium and partly because I am not progressing at all out of this addiction. <br /><br />“Oh, yeah? I’d like to see you try. Come on, tell me a fable.” Rico’s head is on his arms on the wheel. I can’t see his face. <br /><br />I say, “Next time, I will. Next time,” feeling the crash coming on much harder than I thought. The pressure, like metal clamps, tightens around my temples. A corkscrew being twisted in my guts. <br /><br />Rico is shaking his head to something huge descending. The names of the kingdom are found beneath glass, and the names of God are inscribed on café walls. “I knew you were a fake. You shit faced junkie,” he whispers.<br /><br />I reply telepathically: Sure, but who’s got mommy’s panties in his pocket?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Still shaking in this tear room</span><br />At home, days later. That consortium set for tonight looks pretty attractive. <br />My secretary called this afternoon and reminded me about that fashion shoot tomorrow. I asked if she could hold the executives off until next week since I’m feeling under the weather. Yeah, sure, I’ll see what I can do, boss. <br /><br />This is withdrawal from fabula. An emptiness I can’t fathom and didn’t believe possible. <br /><br />Have you ever been inside a small practice studio? When the band has everything turned up to incredible gain and the feedback is immense and wailing? When that Jimmy Page melody is hanging in the air ripe to pick and the song paints a wall of Pink Floydian proportions then comes to an abrupt end? The sudden deafening quiet, the no-soundness that makes its way from your ears to tap tap tap at your spine and make you do something, anything to make noise, but it just echoes off the padded walls like a scream with no mouth. <br /><br />I can even feel my corpuscles trembling. They’re asking why I’m putting them through this torture. Before I know it I’m licking up the teabags for dregs and last strands of the weed, hurrying to find those other packets I haven’t thrown out and hoping there’s some left. I’m a thorough guy as far as drugs are concerned so I only find three small straws. Not even enough to burn, but I try anyway and of course there’s no fix. So the dross shittiness of it climbs up my system and I throw the pipe across the room and something made of glass shatters. <br /><br />I pace around the bed, pounding the mattress with my clenched fists. This is what I have learned: I am super-deformed and my blood is unshakable addiction, broken and ugly. Living like this is beautiful, terrifying and desolate. Every second ticking away on my clock pushes me minutely closer, tottering at the precipice. I find it harder and harder to resist. This is a taste of the void and I do not like it at all. <br /><br />Not at all. <br /><br />It’s still in there, I think. I can see the ticket’s edge. It waves its folded, yellow colored corner and tells me, in a little boy’s voice, to pick it up and go for the fun. It’ll be fun. Twisting from the edge of the abyss, I get up and frantically empty the trash to get at it since my hands are shaking so bad. <br />I shower, put on a silk shirt and some black jeans, don some jewelry to not seem out of place. Run to the mirror in the bathroom. Look and see that you don’t need no make up, boyo, you’ve got all the dark circles beneath the eyes you need. Reminds me of soccer punches. I catch a taxi and go to North Avenue Station. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The ravaged, lonely ones</span><br />I’m always late and tonight is no exception. At the station finally and the fire in my belly leaps up to singe my throat as I climb the stairs. <br /><br />I’m sure there was once a long line of well-dressed ravers and party people but that’s all gone now, replaced by a trail of scattered confetti and velvet hung on pillars that decorate the place as if it’s a big womb. The big hulking guard stops me and asks for my ticket. When I give it, he grabs my left hand and injects something into my wrist with a quick, painless syringe. Then he shines a bar code scanner on it. I can see that I’ve been implanted with one of those cashless imprints. Through the neon yellow lines and miniscule numbers the code on my wrist reads: MONDEX TICKETRON. <br /><br />“Enjoy the party, sir,” the guard says, who’s got a big MONDEX SECURITIES—Enjoy the Cashless Convenience!—sign on his steno cap. He tips it and pushes me inside the dancing crowd as the doors slide shut. The MRT moves, the party is off, the ravers are whoop whoop whooping.<br /><br />I find her on the second stop as I get off for a moment and flow in with the waiting, costumed ghouls into the next boxcar. I drag off an Igorot she’s making out with and tell him to go fuck Lolita over there. <br /><br />“Ho ho! You made it!,” Kyrie says as she hands me a pipe that looks like a big lizard. When I light it, smoke exhales from its mouth. <br /><br />A souped up remix of “She’s in Parties” is my leveling off tune and I notice that a Jolina Magdangal look-alike is sitting beside me telling me how fucked up I look and wiping my sweat with a hanky. <br /><br />“What did you do to your hair?” I say.<br /><br />“It’s the techni-kulay look,” Kyrie says. A yellow MONDEX brand is on her forehead instead of her wrist “I was going for the masa approach tonight. Do you like it?”<br /><br />“It’s horrific.”<br /><br />She gives me the finger then pulls me up to dance. The fabula in my system does me good and I find that I can still keep up with the beat that’s been changed to a Bowie number. The drums are too aggressive and the bass shoots into my chest, forcing my heart to thump with it. <br /><br />Kyrie tells me, with one hand cupped to my ear, that the train stops at every station once around until Taft and then we close off the whole thing, not making any more stops and just ride around hanggang sawa. I tell her the driver’s got to be tired after at least an hour of it. She says that’s why he’s got to be relaxed every so often then swivels my head to the driver’s booth. <br /><br />A dreadlocked mestiza with sunglasses is in there with the driver, her hands gripping his shoulders, grinding away on top of him. The driver’s uniform is unbuttoned, his own hands clutching her thighs and seeking a deeper penetration, willing to disintegrate the pubic bones that keep them apart. The mestiza’s sunglasses bob in time with their thrusts and land farther from her nose each time but don’t fall. <br /><br />That’s not all. Undone from my withdrawal haze, I see the consortium has gone wild. There, the Igorot is giving it from behind to a petite, pig tailed Lolita in her Catholic school girl outfit, his bahag discarded and now being used as a hanky dance by the others, she hanging on with her stick thin arms to a metal rail as they buck and heave. On the far seat, I can see an ape-man having his banana stroked and licked by the flamingo red lips of a Gaiman Death wannabe, her ankh pendulum swinging and flashing as she bobs her head in time to the drums. <br />This one’s for the history books, Luke, my son, Kyrie tells me in her best Darth Vader.<br /><br />Then it’s Ziggy plays guitar and all the rockers begin to pogo. After that its house numbers, one after another, but I still can’t see where the hell the DJs or the sound systems are. As we dance, Kyrie’s Christmas décor hair swings in a psychedelia of colors like an unbound ferris wheel gone horizontal, the run of her Doc Martens stomp as sweat pours down her legs are a delirium and her slit black skirt do their own numbers like the clickety clack in my brain. <br /><br />I know the party let-in phase has long gone and we’ve since done two rounds of the whole MRT system but in the middle of “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” she decides she just has to have that blowjob I owe her. <br />Knowing Kyrie, however, I know she’d like some privacy so I tell her that I won’t renege and promise to give it tomorrow. She refuses, “No. I want it tonight.”<br /><br />“But Kie, this thing isn’t going to stop. You said it yourself.” <br /><br />“Oh, it will.” And she approaches the driver’s booth, opens it to the sound of Ms. Mestiza Dreadlocks, her stomach on the control console, pushing herself onto the driver’s engorged brown dick, her ass cheeks being pawed as she groans like a city in subsidence. <br /><br />“Hoy!” Kyrie screams to be heard above the music. When the guy doesn’t respond, she taps his shoulder. <br /><br />The driver opens his eyes. “I’m busy.” <br /><br />“Stop this thing at Q Av.” <br /><br />“No way,” the guy chuckles.<br /><br />“Yes way,” she hands him a fat roach.<br /><br />Ms. Dreadlocks stops pumping for a moment and takes the roach with dainty hands. “This is just what I need,” she says in a husky tone. She lights it, still grinding softly. “Let them out to fuck, Tonio, you only have to open the door less than 5 seconds anyway.”<br /><br />Tonio looks at Kyrie, then me. He says, “Whatever. Just be ready” And he slams the door. <br /><br />Once the opportunity arises Ms. Dreadlocks waves us to the opening doors. Kyrie and I exit quickly as the driver closes them before they fully open. Which is less than 5 seconds. It takes most of the train by surprise, but a few manage to follow us. I spot one man who had surely been dawdling, his head caught between the doors, whimpering as the train rushes off oblivious to his predicament. <br /><br />“Wait, I have to piss,” I say to Kyrie before she can drag me down the stairs. <br />I shake off her hand and rush to the bathroom just in time to catch my bladder before it bursts. I put a hand on the wall and lean onto the urinal. Just as my piss slows to a trickle a man with green hair and a punkish get-up staggers to the urinal next to mine. He fumbles for his zipper. <br /><br />Before he can open his pants, however, he coughs, and the cough quickly turns into a deep, growling phlegm fit. He directs his mouth over to the urinal just in time to point the green and yellow vomit that comes out of his lips. <br /><br />At first it’s just a dribble, timid and slow, then it promptly turns into a forceful surge that reminds me of the way water from a fireman’s hose is so powerfully expelled when the hydrant is first turned on. By this time he’s bent nearly double over the urinal and the small sink that is only built to catch piss is overflowing with the wretched, half-digested remains of his dinner, lunch and breakfast. <br /><br />Complete with clues. <br /><br />Instinctively, I step back as his fluids spill to the floor. They narrowly miss my shoes. I curse involuntarily and the punk, the deluge abating for a few seconds, glances up at me. He holds my gaze before the convulsions take him again. <br />It is not strange to feel kinship with a state of recognition. It is not peculiar to have sympathy for history -- such as the one that confronts you with an unerring flashback of yourself in the same predicament. The only similarity is that, in both instances I am helpless. Not strange at all that is, before gravity reasserts itself. I feel a familiar swelling in my throat that I force down quickly. I zip up my pants, douse water on my face and lurch my way out of there as expediently as I can while the punk continues to belch and belch. <br /><br />People. Simply no respect for the scene. <br /><br />I have never been so glad to be holding Kyrie’s hand as we cautiously descend the station stairs. With each step I am thankful that today, for the love of everything holy, I am not the punk. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">I’m killing time on Valentine’s waiting for the day to end</span><br />The rest of the damned might find pleasure in getting free drugs and having a chance to service their sexy dealer in the process, too. Not me. I’m a control freak, always have been. <br /><br />I like a bit of sadism in my sex. Just a tinge of violence, enough to be exciting but doesn’t actually hurt. Models and dancers are often my fare. Their delicate bodies are deceptive. Most are strong enough to take a slap or even the occasional four-post tie-up with silken scarves that my bed is also conveniently equipped with. It’s different with Kyrie. I owe her and so I give it the best I have between hurricane tongue twisters and all, the fabula in my system goads me on as much as the musk inside her. She’s straddling my neck from above so I have no chance to avoid her juices when she comes. I bet this is just the kind of thing that turns her on. <br /><br />Of course, Kyrie is as insatiable as the next person with high metabolism. So what she does is she climbs off my neck and goes down on me. As much as I hate it, I’m responding and she soon has me harder than a square prig in a suit. She’s grinding away on top of me, hands on my knees, body cat arched and eyes showing whites. This is how it feels to be a plywood board with a dildo. She slumps when she’s done. I can’t even move since the numbness is setting on my legs, probably from the combined roller coaster of my withdrawal to leveling and thence to rigorous intercourse. <br />I sleep. <br /><br />When I wake up Kyrie is not there. I find her on the rooftop smoking. In this apartment, I’ve got the penthouse plus the rooftop and the junk of my works in progress and some sculptures are up here. I slowly insinuate my hands to hold her and turn her face up for me to kiss and I make it sweet, like the faint duress on a Bailey’s mix. It is our first real kiss and she blows out cigarette smoke when our lips part after the long seconds, sticky and slightly hurting from the pressure. <br /><br />She gives me a Marlboro light. I walk back near the door where there’s a long wooden bench and sit. Kyrie stands up barefoot and steps onto the dais that I’ve decorated with alibata runes, her small skirt flaps in the 7AM breeze. Then she’s raising her right hand and turning up her palm as if presenting the city to me. <br /><br />“All this will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me,” she turns around to me. “How about you, Lucas? Will you take down your God for me?”<br /><br />“Nope,” I shrug. <br /><br />“Awww, don’t want to light up the city with your bliss?<br /><br />I pout and shake my head. <br /><br />“Why do you love the fabula so much, Luke?”<br /><br />I suckle on the cigarette. “Dunno.”<br /><br />“Do you think this is one of your episodes, Luke?” Her lips are needle-thin and she steps down.<br /><br />“The world is full of episodes. They come free.”<br /><br />I can’t believe we’re having an argument about art. <br /><br />She approaches and squats and puts her face a few inches from mine. “Episodes? Let me ask you something, Luke. Do you make make-believe documentaries or real life? <br /><br />I shrugged, “I make them as I see fit, Kie. That’s why I win awards.”<br /><br />She stands up and smoothens her skirt, pulls up another bench in front of mine. <br /><br />“Hmmm, right. Well, may I tell you a story? This’ll be brief, I promise” she takes a drag off her cigarette. <br /><br />“Shoot,” I said. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">THE THREE OF SWORDS</span><br />Here are two lovers. Let’s call them Boy and Girl. The Girl belongs to a family of entrepreneurs and business mavericks; the Boy has a lineage straight out of radio jocks and news anchors. <br /><br />However, where they meet is nowhere in the city but in Cordillera, where the old gods and the rebels dwell. They love and fight and train like guerillas and if the cause had a god, it would smile down on them for their devotion. Inevitably, they are married amid a cross of M-16s. Their love is sealed with an exchange of a handful of bullets. They consummate their vows down in the city where they join the legal wing of the cause. <br /><br />Retired and ready to make a good life with their heads down, the Girl gets a scholarship on urban planning in Europe, while Boy comes back to take care of an ailing father. The suit of an anchor and reading the day’s misfortunes on a teleprompter fit him like a glove, the ease of mass communication is wired to his genes. They write long letters through the evening, turning each blank new page into their best friends and sending them off to the arms of their beloved. It warms them through the endless nights. <br /><br />However, Boy’s mother has other plans and does not want that hateful Girl to make a wretch of her son. So she fakes a letter from Girl saying that she has met somebody up in Utrecht, and that she does not know how to say it, but she does not love him anymore and that she must forgive him but she is not coming back. In anguish, Boy slashes his arms and bleeds to death in his room. He is buried without preamble. The father, searching for his son, dies of lung cancer, his son’s demise kept a secret even on his deathbed.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Girl comes home having completed her course and looking forward to be reunited. Instead of kisses and cozy nights, she is shown his grave and left to herself with his remains. <br /><br />This is unacceptable, Girl thinks through her tears and so she makes her way down to Subterrania via an old mountain portal and sings her way through the layers of tropic gehenna with its inhabitants unable to touch her. Her voice is armor and weapon, its fierceness unfathomable. There, in the core of the Underworld city, she kneels in front of the King’s throne and she pleads her lover’s fate, asking the King and Queen to release his soul from the tormented fate of suicidals. <br /><br />Surely this is within their power?<br /><br />Moved by the Girl’s willingness for sacrifice, the Queen appeals Girl’s plea to her lord and he agrees. “The price, however, will be your voice and his wounds,” the King declares. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">It’s the heart’s filthy lesson…</span><br />Kyrie stops to hurl the wooden bench through the air and clear into the next building. I hear it crash into something made of glass. She towers above me. <br /><br />“You’re scaring me, Kie.”<br /><br />She puts her mouth on mine and when she talks they brush like feathers “Am I? I have not sung for a long time. Will I sing again?”<br /><br />She steps back and shouts, then comes rushing forward holding out her forearms, showing me the long scarred gashes that line her arm and wrists about three inches long each, with a single long one running vertically through the middle, bisecting them all. “The price is your voice and his wounds.”<br /><br />I stagger up but the bench catches on my pant leg and I stumble. “You made this up.”<br />She shakes her head, an apparition of denial. “Neither am I human, Luke. On my hundredth birthday, when I die, my blood plus my curse will disintegrate what fragile system remains inside me and scatter the dust of my flesh, the casualty into the sun like a thousand motes to be forgotten. Who shall remember me? Who shall sing to me or about me within this sacrificed brief life?”<br /><br />“You’re a sick fuck, Kie.”<br /><br />“No. That’s you, Luke. Do you know why you love the fabula so much?” <br />I sigh, grab a particularly hideous brass sculpture of mine and stand up. “I suppose it’s going to be some obvious answer,” I tell her, trying to be calm. <br /><br />“Because you have no stories of your own.”<br /><br />This was a lie. “Fuck you, Kie.”<br /><br />“You already did, idiot.”<br /><br />“You’re wrong.”<br /><br />“Really? Prove it.”<br /><br />I stand up and brush off the dirt from my clothes. “I’m a pictures man, baby. Give me ten minutes. Stay here.”<br /><br />She nods and holds out her arms, “Take twenty.”<br /><br />I go down and set up everything, then climb back up and throw open the door. I kiss her on the lips. She responds then flings me aside and runs down, faster than I can catch her. I find her standing amidst all of it. There is an expression on her face that I think I get when I’m watching strippers. <br /><br />What she’s looking at is still unframed, propped on six medium easels in a semi-circular arrangement. Kyrie stands in the middle. She’s not sure which one to look at first. My babies they are, my original stories, obras paid with a blood sacrifice.<br /><br />I start to ramble off my description, the one I’ve been waiting to tell someone for the past decade but can’t or won’t or should have. I tell Kyrie who never takes her eyes off of them. “The pieces are collectively titled Closer to the Angels. They are composed of six canvases that show the transformation of a woman into a winged being,” she still hasn’t looked at me so I continue. “The credit liners on the lower right side indicate that it is mixed elements of painting, photography and computer ministration.” <br /><br />Kyrie now approaches the first and moves to each canvass as I tell her a story. “As you can see, the lady resembles a fashion model, elfin-faced, high cheekbones, although she is no contrived model. In each of the six pieces, she is in the process of transformation against a backdrop of festival. <br /><br />“The first one is colored in predominant white and shows the young lady in a state of dance. The second, in earth tones, shows the start of the process,” I point. “There her face shows a hint of something unusual happening. In the third and the fourth, both in shades of black and gray (Kie, there are, as you may notice, odd objects attached to the pieces themselves), she goes from pained to agonized. Her small hands turn into claws and there’s something coming out of her back. A glimpse, no more. Then her whole body in seizure, almost in a fetal position as the thing on her back is finally revealed: wings. These wings are more reptilian than avian and white protrusions hold the top ends and hooks decorate the flared parts like bat’s wings. <br /><br />“On the next canvass, the lady’s getting up, her wings are half spread. From this angle, we can see that there’s blood on her dress that’s been nearly torn from the growth. This fifth piece is done in red. In the sixth and final piece, we find her wings fully spread, a span that spills out of the canvass borders. Her palms are turned upward and her face holds an expression of half-satisfaction, half-glee. Her feet are together and her head’s thrown back. The sixth is colored in gold and silver.”<br /><br />Kyrie sits down within their circle and puts her fist in her mouth. “Oh, Luke,” she says reaching an arm to the sixth but not touch it.<br /><br />“Well,” I say deprecatingly, “At least you like them.” <br /><br />Kyrie, I think, is crying. <br /><br />“You see once, not so long ago, in a street parade, there was a fledgling news photographer covering what-not festivals and shitty celebrations. He chanced upon a young woman running to the back of some parked jeepneys. He followed, intrigued and curious, and what he saw there was the magnificent transformation of the girl into a winged, fanged being with leathery wings, inch long claws and cat slit eyes. All the while, he was clicking madly away, changing films like crazy.” <br /><br />Kyrie stands up and unbuttons the top of my shirt then searches my neck. She finds the puncture marks easily, the two thin scars on the left side of my neck <br />I continue as she touches them. “Of course, she noticed him and whisked him off to the sky and murmured truths to him in the rush of air and pyrotechnics. The festival’s roving medical team found him in later in the morning, on the top of a broken tent clutching a roll of film. Half his blood was gone. He still has the puncture scars to this day. And she has been with him ever since.” <br /><br />I’m done. <br /><br />Kyrie is leading me to bed and laying me down. Her weight on top of me feels comfortable. A heaviness. A fabulation. Just like the force to imagine worlds. <br />She pulls out a brownie the size of a comics panel, waves it at my mouth. “Eat me.”<br /><br />“Time for sweets?”<br /><br />“Just eat, Luke. Please.”<br /><br />I shrug and eat the thing in three chews, tasting slightly of mint and something damp. Kyrie lays her head on my chest. I drift off. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">…With her hundred miles to hell</span><br />The first thing I notice is the feel of grass instead of sheets. <br /><br />“Kyrie?” I sit up. <br /><br />There’s no Kyrie and no bed, no paintings and no apartment. There is just this long stretch of grass and cemetery tombs dotted with Chinese sepulchers and slabs on the ground with names of the departed. It’s late afternoon, the sun like a red eye splashing the horizon with a palette of warm colors. Standing up, I see that the grass in my hand is brown and brittle and that the rest of the scenery seems just as long disused or abandoned. <br /><br />What the hell happened? <br /><br />“You mean who the fuck are you?” the voice is unbelievably seductive even as she comes down from the blood red sky. She is as young and terrifying as I remember her, my nameless lady of the claws. I’m barely able to catch those clawed hands as she swoops down and propels herself with powerful flaps of reptilian wings. <br />My fingers are bleeding at once from where her knife sharp claws touch me but I hold on even though her strength presses like a juggernaut. <br /><br />“How are you, Luke? Missed me?” she kisses me full on the lips and bites down. I knee her. She lets go and laughs as my lips bleed from the twin punctures of her canines. “Did you enjoy showbiz while I was away? I bet you did. All those girls, hmmm? Too bad you didn’t display those paintings of me at once. Why, my dear, are you ashamed of me?”<br /><br />Wrestling with what seems a ton, I manage to roll us over until I’m straddling her from above. I’m still unable to get the advantage with her hands but I’m not letting go anytime soon. What the hell is happening? If this is a drug dream then you better wake up, Luke! This way lies death. <br /><br />Luke, if he’s dreaming, isn’t waking up. The winged woman talks on, refusing to yield to my willing her away. “I hear you telling all those interviewers and those TV people that you’re always looking for answers, Luke. So much pseudo-intellectual bullshit. If you were ready to face the terra incognita of the soul I’d have come sooner. But it took a spiked brownie to get you here. Have you lost track of your meter, child? Gone insane while looking for something you know is futile? Still shaking? Do you want the answers?”<br /><br />“Fuck you,” I spit out with some blood.<br /><br />That was a waste of breath. She easily rolls me over and is again on top, pinning my hands to the sides of my head, putting her face near mine until I can smell the reek of her breath. Oddly, she smells vaguely like Rico’s mom’s undies and beyond that, the rotting awful smell of dead lizards, corpses in vast, empty abandoned lots. <br />She continues. “The answers, Luke: <br /><br />a) Bernardo’s greatest sin is the corruption of an innocent. He is damned because he traumatized his then nine-year-old sister for life. It is a direct result of his perverse request on that fateful ice cream day. She never viewed sex as a normal act again and thus, he irrevocably tainted her forever. <br /><br />b) Rico’s mom is a slut and that made it much easier for Rico’s father to find another woman. And much easier to get caught and tarnish his image, but it was the father who finally filed for a divorce.<br /><br />c) The puppy’s name is Pol. <br /><br />d) MONDEX follows the left hand path of darkness and shall rule the earth one day with its cashless society.<br /><br />e) Sirri and Denver will marry and live a happy life.<br /><br />f) Kyrie is a changeling. <br /><br />g) You are a fake. <br /><br />“No!” I shout and put all my concentration into rolling us over. I succeed but her claws are about to take my hands off. <br /><br />“You have always been a fake, Luke. You possess no imagination. You have no fire in you, no duende. Your heart is cold and barren to rival the glooms. You are nothing but a thief.”<br /><br />“That’s your verdict? I still made you into a masterpiece. I still did all the work. You just bit me and told me to go fuck myself.”<br /><br />“No, Lucas. I gave you the life you never had.”<br /><br />I slowly pin down her arms with deep, even breaths, “So what now,” each word is hell coming out. <br /><br />“You’re coming with me.”<br /><br />We stare at one another in the way humans and animals stare. I do not know which one I am in this equation, perhaps the latter. I remember Kyrie telling me she has never been human. <br /><br />Hooman. <br /><br />I slam my forehead into her nose and satisfyingly see it bleed. “That’s not going to happen.” I slam against her again and knock a few of her front teeth loose. She’s screaming now. I do this until I have spent all my anger, until I feel her nasal bone crack or go into her skull. She is a butterfly pinned beneath me. <br />A strange calmness spreads through her and she slowly melts into the earth, beautiful again like I remembered her. Like cooked cheese settles on a dish she osmoses into the brittle grass and the soil and diminishes into ether, into a film fade that I have been gladly running from all these years. The years smolder and burn and you allow them to take you with them. <br /><br />No more. <br /><br />I collapse on the grass. <br /> <br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Caveat emptor </span><br />A wet tongue and a bark unearth me from slumber. <br /><br />“Yarp! Yarp!”<br /><br />He barks once more and wags his tail as he climbs up my chest. “I thought you’d never wake up.”<br /><br />Yarp? “Pol,” I smile. <br /><br />“Yeah! That’s my name. How’d you know? I just got it last week when they came back from Palawan! But they’re all in Pampanga now, the shitheads.” The puppy settles down and whimpers a bit. <br /><br />“Thanks for waking me up,” I say, grabbing him and turning him on his back so I can rub his stomach. Excited, he stretches and bares more belly as he yelps with joy. <br /><br />“You almost scared me there, fag. Was drinking out of the bowl—nice salty taste you have in your bathroom, by the way—and heard you screaming, you were twisting the sheets like a wild man too. And your hands were…”<br /><br />I hold them up and there are the wounds.<br /><br />“Your hands were bleeding.”<br /><br />“S`okay, Pol. Everything is alright now. Where’s you babysitter?”<br /><br />“‘Kyrie? She just went out for some groceries. Great ass and legs on that one man, um um, mucho delisyoso. Hey, I know you and that girl have made it on this bed. I can smell your cum and hers, “he sniffs. “From a mile away. What I want to know is did you videotape it?”<br /><br />“What?”<br /><br />“Nevermind. Hey, got any beer?” Pol asks and climbs down to paw and bark at the ref door.<br /><br />“Of course.” I rinse the blood off my hands, wrap them in bandages then get Pol a Super Dry that I put into a bowl. Slurping hungrily, he tells me he prefers to sit on the table. So I pull up a chair and put the bowl in front of him. As my butt touches the upholstery, I begin to feel woozy. The pain hits me.<br /><br />“Are you okay?” Pol asks, his mouth dripping Super Dry, but before I can say Yes I’ve blacked out. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />I wake up sometime in the morning with the sunlight filtering in and see Chin Chin, my secretary, changing the bandages on my hands and Kyrie in the background smoking. There’s something wrong with her nose, there seems to be a white strip there, like a cast. What happened to your nose, dear? I also try to say that she shouldn’t do that, (chain smoke, I mean) but I swim out of consciousness again. <br /><br />The second time, I wake up in darkness and see only that Pol, in his puppy tubbiness, is reading the newspaper on my dinner table with a nightlight. He smirks at a news item in the Metro. I try to tell Pol to turn on the lights because reading like that can damage your eyes, but what comes up is a cough. Then I’m out in a blink. <br /><br />The third time, my winged girl is sitting at the foot of my bed wearing a frown. Her taloned feet hold her steady on the horizontal post. She puts a finger to her lips telling me to be quiet as she rocks Pol, holding him in one arm, the puppy suckling at her breast, while with another she hold up a card to me. I can barely make out that it’s got the illustration of a man on a bed being pierced by swords from above. I can’t count how many. <br /><br />* * *<br /><br />When my fever breaks I find Kyrie staring out at the dawn sky. I find that I’ve been out for a week which not only means that the fashion shoot has flown the coop but that a host of clients have unsheathed their bolos and are eagerly betting on whom will get to behead me first. Chin Chin tells me I can take care of it if I just work hard for a month. I say of course, and then bang down the phone. <br /><br />First, I have to make love to Kyrie. <br /><br />As we lay down she’s laughing and caressing the puncture scars on my neck, she tells me: “Beware.”<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Polgas the dog was created by Pol Medina, Jr. for Pugad Baboy Comics©. </span>Margueritehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11685714902170001873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-43006491500722386392009-10-05T23:18:00.000-07:002009-10-05T23:23:36.892-07:00SophistichaosWhen the catastrophe finally hits, all we’ll be left with are stories like bent signposts from the time when the roads with these signs actually led somewhere. They symbolized possibility. You could go there. You could choose not to. <br /><br />The catastrophe I have in mind is plain but no less vicious in its destruction. Something to put a tremendous dent in the armor our civilization tells us is well nigh unpenetrable, or well on its way to becoming so. Something as scathing and full of entropic force as the rats that kicked the Byzantine Empire in its imperial gonads in B.C. 541.<br /> <br />Rats, yes. The ancient Romans had government, conquering armies galore administering the Pax Romana as they went, territories up the wazoo, philosophy, science, religion, the commode and a system of sewers, but all it took were a horde of rats to throw it all into disarray. <br /><br />Named after Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I, the Justinian Plague was a foreshadowing of the Black Death of the 14th century. Back then, Constantinople was importing massive amounts of grain from Egypt and other territories via shipping to feed its burgeoning cities. Historians theorize that the rats were spawning in these ships, nurtured by the huge granaries. With the ships came the rats. In the rats was the bubonic plague. In the bubonic plague was a painful, slow death that ran the populace right to the ground. <br /><br />Encyclopedias will tell you that the plague “ravaged Italy and diminished manpower seriously,” but that’s hardly an accurate picture for 10,000 people dying daily or the plague pits overflowing with corpses. There was no cure for it. They had to wait `til the disease ran its course.<br /><br />My own plague season literally came in 2003. One day I just couldn’t get up. No fever, no noticeable symptoms. I just felt like my bones were heavier than a sack of rice. I blamed it on the drinking binge a few nights previous and tried to sleep it off. No luck. To top it all off I couldn’t hold anything in for long. I kept shitting it out. Foul-smelling stuff, too. <br /><br />After being misdiagnosed for five days my aunt decided to get my platelets checked. Bingo. I had dengue. The next few weeks was spent in bed with an IV stuck through my right hand. My aunt was a doctor so I was lucky I didn’t have to be confined but living with that IV and performing a complicated stunt whenever I had to piss (as well as trying to discern whether I had the strength to do it right away or take several deep breaths to muster enough of it) was as close as I ever felt to dying. <br />You try to get up but the disease laughingly says, “No, you will stay down.” And you just know that if it kept you down long enough you’d kick the bucket. The will to fight ebbs subtly and the effort to keep it alive is wearisome. <br /><br />I hate needles but I got expert at fiddling with the IV whenever the blood would rush too far into the drip. When I came out the other side after a month in quarantine I was 15 pounds lighter and I had the strength of a kitten. The genius of the hole is: no matter how high you climb you can easily fall back down.<br />I imagine my catastrophe these days as rudimentary – airplanes crashing into buildings, twenty foot high waves and the cessation of global operating systems come to mind – but no less effective. <br /><br />Tracking the trajectory of the falling and getting back up is the territory of transgressive fiction. For years authors like William H. Burroughs and Hunter H. Thompson with a healthy dose of substances and, I suspect, a binge on Dostoevsky’s novels, were clearing the way to a genre that was defiant, radical and humorously optimistic. More recently people like Douglas Coupland, Irvine Welsh, and Chuck Palahniuk crystallized the mind space where the previously mentioned had gone before. <br /><br />The world is a cruel, flawed place and it is this mortal, imperfect nature that informs transgressive fiction. Implicit in that is a current of optimism and beauty. Anybody who’s read Palanhiuk’s Fight Club (or seen the movie) knows that it’s more than just terrorist cells and getting the shit kicked out of you every week. Still, it takes a whole different kind of reader to appreciate the beauty found in a haymaker to the face. <br /><br />When the novice to the fight club smiles in the aftermath of a match and hugs his opponent, it’s because he’s finally found the kind of liberation he’s always hankered for. There’s sitting under the bodhi tree for hours and then there’s that. Which one do you think resonates more with people in the 21st century? <br />Beyond the mere anarchy is a revelation with the fury of a divine message. In Wilwayco’s novel Mondomanila, the protagonist finds catharsis in the murder of a hated Amboy. Lily, the heroine in my story “Lily, Faith and Disease,” crafts the perfect control method and her own deliverance by surrendering her will to her incestuous father. <br /><br />Transgressive fiction is entertainment like a rude awakening. It is the fervent hope of the editors and writers in this anthology to unfetter you from the static of the mundane, the routine, the every day, the grind. That burden of mental jewelry that makes us resemble zombies in a Romero movie, something that our comfort-oriented technology, politics and social conditioning so easily shapes us into. <br /><br />If it takes gratuitous violence, depiction of taboo, extreme methods of storytelling we are willing to use them. Amid the blood and gore (Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon’s “Cleanser”), drugs and debauchery (my own “Faith in Poison”), farce and mockery (Jonathan Jimena Siason’s “Penitence”) we hope you find the path to your own emancipation. Snap the fuck out of it. <br /><br />Think of this book as a roadmap to possibilities you never realized. We’re telling you this not because we like you, but because we don’t want you to be like them. If, for nothing else, you can prepare for the catastrophe, before all the road signs get bent from the inevitable onslaught. Before possibility becomes just a campfire story. <br /><br />KARL R. De MESA<br />JULY 2007 <br />Novaliches, QCMargueritehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11685714902170001873noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1635118912692831397.post-71389551462716070212009-10-05T19:43:00.000-07:002009-10-05T23:16:07.169-07:00A New DemiseTransgressive fiction is dying. But it isn’t because the desire of today’s writers to put forth as much sex and violence and whatever other form of depravity they can scrape off of our rank, tired cities in the name of catharsis has dwindled. No. It is the opposite. We’re choking on this shit. Those smelly little gems of pure adulterated Wrong that we had had to unearth from a few particular writers—Chuck Palahniuk’s blood and guts and shame floating to swimming pool surfaces, say, or Irvine Welsh’s nasty, creamy brown toilet stalls, or Hubert Selby Jr.’s gangrenous, holey heroin’d arms—have become so profuse in today’s literature that they have somewhat lost their luster. Throw some ultra-mega-extra-hardcore pumping into your fiction (or a beheading, curbing, double-penetration, whatever), and realize that to see this scene register, to see it elicit shock and revulsion and maybe some of the more vomitrocious reactions from its readers, now takes a bit more wishful thinking. Life’s a bitch.<br /><br />It can be argued that most, if not all, fiction is transgressive. It is. In varying degrees, fiction misbehaves. Reading a good story or novel can leave you shaken or furious or mournful. Yes, it can extract more positive sentiments, but whatever these moods may be—hope regained, beauty discovered, the idea that everything is hilarious or filled with adventure—they can’t help but be tinged with a certain somberness, an understanding that whatever bliss we get out of life is found in a world that can’t help but bear grit and sin and complacence. Good fiction is a stimulating slap on the face, a steel head-brace with pincers prying your eyelids open, keeping your gaze bared to the truth. The Marquis de Sade is transgressive, natch. But then so is Charles Dickens, Dave Eggers, Salman Rushdie, Virginia Woolf, Michael Chabon, Kurt Vonnegut, JM Barrie.<br /><br />All fiction, then, is transgressive in that regard. But when a piece is considered transgressive in the course of history is the factor that I think makes this genre—or marketing term or, yes, obscurists’ handy, pretense-laden tag—a more feasible one. The most obvious time that a fiction piece reaches its ‘transgressive peak’ is when it is first put out there and dares to say something that is true but hardly articulated at that time. But it can also don a more transgressive shade years, decades or whole centuries after its first publication. It all depends on how the social standards of any given time relate to the work’s content. Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange is even more apt now, and deliciously so, what with media mind control burgeoning with our technology (aloha, Facebook). In contrast, Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, read in our present time and its flagging sympathy for smart, aimless slacker types, just sounds fucking whiny.<br /><br />So yes, transgressive fiction is dying. With such fitting morbid-ness, it is dying a good and bloody death all the time. But every time it does, a new version of itself—all naked and shivering and pissed—also writhes out of whatever fetid grave society digs next for itself.<br /><br />This anthology (which, with your future short fic contributions, will become the regularized, online story orgy we’ve been drooling for) yearns to be testament to the fact that transgressive fiction is dynamic, that it will continue to live on despite the countless deaths our society and its ever-morphing standards will hurl at it. There will always be something out there that will cause us grave offense, that will goad our gonads to go nuts, that will get us all ticked and scared and sick and, most importantly, that will exhort us to think hard about who or what we’ve become, and how we can all get the hell away from and beyond that crap. How to transgress. To sin for our own sakes.<br /><br />I am writing this introduction on the 18th floor of a corporate complex in lieu of my ‘occupational tasks.’ Maybe you are reading this from your own business district hidey hole, or from your studio-type room-for-rent, or from your most esteemed university. It doesn’t matter. What does, however, is how you want to fare after reading these stories. What do you do now? There has been a gun to your head all along. And if there is anything these stories would have beaten into you by now, it is that you do not like this sting of steel on temple. It is that you want to live. <br /><br /><br />~ Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon, July 2008Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0