My Thelma

I don't know when or how exactly we first met, or, even more importantly, what pivotal moment knitted us together. When I try to think back to those times we hung out in college, what I manage to recollect are scraps of memory in which we were already buddies -- the two of us riding a jeepney to SM North, the two of us driving around the campus in his owner, the two of us waiting for our class to start.

There were a couple of crucial events, I suppose, like that month-long Citizen's Military Training in Fort Bonifacio, which we had to attend at the same time. And later on, those anxiety-ridden days when we were just starting out in UP and had to be observed and evaluated by members of the senior faculty. But I suspect that it's all the other things that we shared implicitly that really brought us together and made us bond. It's the unspoken understanding that we were both square pegs/drama queens/lost souls (even now, in our early thrities), but together we were, well, not so bad after all.

And now, more than ten years since we graduated, our friendship is still going strong, despite his being in Singapore and my being here in dear old 'Pinas. Our cache of memories, both sad and happy, continues to fill up. The time I took him to some dingy basement pool hall in Quiapo less to pocket balls than to observe the skin trade. The afternoon I set him up for some nice little nookie in the kubo with a volleyball buddy of mine. The days spent strolling around in Burnham Park in Baguio and eating pigar-pigar in Pangasinan. The wine and the cheese and the rambling conversations about poetry and boys.

Thelma, there's still so much we have to learn and experience, so many more crimes we have to commit. The road stretches miles before us. I just hope you won't forget where Louise, the baddest chick of all, lives.

Happy birthday. And believe me when I say you are missed.

A Home in the Rain

There's a typhoon today, and so no volleyball, just hour after hour of lying in bed, with the sheets tangled round my feet, and channel-surfing. It's not so bad, actually. I like curling up in bed with a nice book, reading in the weak aquatic light coming from the window. It brings to mind those slow, lazy college days at the boarding house, when I would just press my nose against a newly acquired copy of a Milan Kundera book while listening to Tracy Chapman and the rain. Or walking under the acacia trees along the UP oval, trying with the help of a puny umbrella to reach AS with my clothes dry. It reminds me of a boy I adored, when I was still just a boy, and how one time we made love in my kubo while a storm turned the world upside down outside. Later, when the rain subsided and he'd fallen asleep, I sat by the door just watching the broken twigs and bougainvilla blooms strewn in the yard. That was a strange time, a time of uncertainties and hurts, but also of poetry and song and foolish hope.

Now, so many years later, I'm here in the orange room of my apartment, listening to "Fix You" by Coldplay, which is a perfect bad weather song, if ever there was one. And suspended in the hammock of memory, I feel neither happy nor sad, but at home, which is not a bad place to be.

The Beyonce Box

It's just a plain ice box, something to keep fish in. We bought it at a fish shop in Davao when we decided to bring home some tuna.

I don't know what got to me -- maybe it was because we watched Beyonce's concert on DVD the night before -- but after the box had been sealed and I was given a pen to scribble my name on it, I wrote down "Beyonce." Then I turned to B and told him I'd carry all the bags if he would pick the "Beyonce box" up at the airport.

We had a good laugh waiting for the box to turn up at the airport in Manila. When it did, B plucked it off the baggage carousel immediately, not wanting anyone to see who Beyonce was.

That glittering and glamorous ice box has travelled with us many times since, and of course, each time it's with us, bearing fish, meat, soda or ice, we can't help but hum "To the Left, to the left..."

Kathisophobia

What exactly do they feel
who fear the commonest thing?
In Fear Factor I learn that man
could have a phobia of sitting down,
and I can’t help but snicker
at the thought of someone panicked
at the sight of a chair. Perhaps
he is someone otherwise normal,
a bank executive or lawyer,
who knots his tie the same way
as the next person, relishes chicken
like everyone else. But in malls
he stays clear of the furniture section,
which makes his heart almost jump
with its monstrous sofas and divans.
At weddings he is the one odd guest
who claps for the bride and groom
out by the church door, unable to stand
the wooden pews gathered inside
like a pack of wolves. And when
you visit his house, isn’t it weird
how he will not offer you to have a seat?
How the two of you will stand
in the middle of an empty space,
exchanging stories on your feet?
Oh, the possibilities are endless
when you imagine a life shaped
around one fear! The blind dates
he stands up because he cannot sit,
the movies he watches erect as a stick.
Even the simple act of relieving himself
oh for him cannot possibly be simple.

But then what is it like to finally meet her,
the one woman who loves through
the cramps, who thumbs her nose
at the varicose veins begun to spread
like webs on her legs? She might be
plain as a mop, but for him she is
unimaginably beautiful, standing
before him like a dutiful salesgirl,
offering her love like a box of shoes.
I feel almost envious when I picture them:
two poles, rooted on the ground forever.
When other couples who have slumped through
a hundred candle-lit dinners have divorced
and then remarried, the two of them
go on and on unbending through bad weather.
It doesn’t matter that ivy grows and covers them
from the feet up. Alone in his fear,
they remain the last couple standing

B's Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, B!

Here are some pics taken during B's birthday. I'm still in the process of resizing all the image files, so they'll be easier to upload. I'll publish the others soon. Promise.

(At Club Manila East)


(We took refuge from the summer heat under this tree.)


(Beer, anyone? Or how about something sweet instead hehe?)


(Just beyond are the waves.)


(Why are you laughing so hard, Arc? Is it because of Kenneth?)


(B, Eric, Larry and some guy -- I don't know who :))


(And -- taraaaan! -- one of the many hot dudes at Club Manila East.)

My Magic Cloak

More than joint aches and a receding hairline, what brings home the fact of old age to me is the death and/or the declining health of a few beloved people. A few months ago, the father of my friend and former piano teacher, Alma, passed away. He was followed, after a long bout with cancer, by the mom of one of my dearest friends, Tess. And just yesterday, the mom of an officemate, one of the few people I trust in our department, passed away as well.

I've never met my officemate's mom, but I am lucky to have known papa (Alma's dad) and nanay (Tess' mom) when they were still alive. Papa was a thin, short fellow who carried himself like a soldier. He always stood ramrod straight and spoke in a low, almost stern voice that I would have found intimidating had he not been the incredibly warm and friendly fellow that he was to me. During the time that I was still taking piano lessons from Alma, he and mama would always go out of their way to make me feel not just at home but a real part of the family. They would even serve me snacks -- usually, puto and softdrinks -- even though I was paying Alma less than 200 pesos a month for the lessons.

Tess' mom I had little interaction with, mainly because she was a shy woman who liked to hide in the kitchen. But I remember rare moments when she would burst into laughter while lying on the sofa and watching Eat Bulaga in their cramped living room. At those moments, she looked like a female Buddha, so full of life and guileless joy that nothing, not even a hand-to-mouth existence, seemed capable of dampening her spirit.

I can only imagine the amount of grief that Alma, Tess and my officemate felt over the loss of their parents. To my mind, that loss is like an erasure in an extremely valuable painting, a white scar where Mona Lisa's smile used to be. No matter that everything else in the painting remains the same, the entire painting itself has become so unsettlingly different, that we too, mere museumgoers that we are, find ourselves altered by it.

In my case, the alteration took the form of a realization: I won't be forever twenty-two, which is where I still am now psychologically. Time will come, hopefully not soon, when my mom will not swoop in every time the laundry piles up in the hamper and my dad will not be sitting on his favorite chair on the porch, waiting for me and my sister to entertain him with a little conversation. Time will come when, instead of sweating it out on the court and flirting with other boys, I will be walking arthritically to the grocery or drugstore and brandishing my senior citizen's card at the sales clerk.

I don't mean to make aging sound like such a dreary prospect -- I'd like to think that there are loads of joy waiting for every person at any stage in his life, sort of like a hotdog and Coke stand at every train stop -- but it is true that for many PLUs, especially those who choose to not "go straight" and get married, old age seems like a dark and lonely road. One of the most heartbreaking true stories I've ever heard was about a friend, a gay man in his sixties, who lived alone and decided to go to the drugstore one night because he was feeling a little ill. He'd barely gotten out of the house when he had a mild stroke, lost consciousness and fell on the pavement. Since no one was around at that late hour, he just lay there for what must have been a long time, under the moonlight, surrounded only by his dogs. (The good news is he survived and is more or less back to his normal -- and naughty --self.)

I'm not exhorting anyone to "turn straight" and get married; the same fate does befall lots of married people as well, after all. I am merely trying to illustrate what the death of a parent can make someone feel. On Edsa, there's a billboard that says "Every time a baby is born, a new dad is born too." I think the same applies to the death of parents. Every time a mother or father dies, an orphan is born, who is different from the person he was before if only because he doesn't have that magical protective cloak, which having a parent gives. A cloak that keeps us from going out naked and vulnerable into the world. (Naturally, I don't speak for those who never even saw their parents or whose dad or mom proved to be unspeakably cruel. Perhaps those people had to make do without a cloak all their lives.)

That said, I'd like to believe that, when and if the time comes (knock on wood) my own parents leave this world, I will discover reserves of strength that I didn't even know I possessed. Hopefully, I will be able to use all the things that my parents have taught me to survive and be happy, not simply to get by but to honor their memory. That's what a friend and ex-lover did when his mom died; a happy-go-lucky guy who spent nine years in college, he has since become the family "patriarch" (he has a lover, plus two married siblings with children) and makes surprisingly grown-up decisions about everything from finances to child care. And his success owes a lot to the fact that he does things the way he thinks his mother would have done them.

Which brings me to this furtive, recalcitrant hope: though we can lose our magic cloaks and become vulnerable, we can also learn to find or weave another one. It may not be the exact same thing, but it can help us get through some of our darkest moments.

***

Here's a cloak I want to weave for the future. It's a pretty ambitious one, so I don't know if I'll be able to actually make it.

This cloak is in the form of a house. This house has many rooms. One room has many books, a big window that lets in light and a giant poster of Meryl Streep. It will belong to my friend the Mel Man.

Another room has a small garden. Its bed is a small stage. In this room can stay my friends Darwin and Maeng.

Beside it is another room with a table and playing cards, and a big comfort room with cubicles. Here is where Arc and Winston (yes, they are together) will renew their passion for each other.

Down the hall is a room with lots of pirated DVDs and an extra bed for "guests." This is where Sam will stay.

And there will be more rooms -- for Tess, for Nelson, for Jon (something Tori Amos-inspired, maybe) -- where they can all grow old happily in, always just a few steps away from a loving friend.

And, of course, a room for B and myself, which I'm sure will have nice, flowing curtains and, like Mel's room, lots of books as well. This room will be adjacent to the big living room where we will all gather, to trade stories about past and present "bookings," to play Pinoy Henyo or charades, to sing songs like this (click on it!) those nights we most need to feel warm, loved and safe.

What I'll Remember B for

For me, it's that afternoon three years ago when we went to La Union from San Carlos on a motorbike. Just for the heck of it. I hadn't ridden a motorbike in years, but I knew cute guys on motorbikes made B weak in the knees, so when I saw his brother's motorbike parked outside their house, I thought, There are only two possible endings here. Either I'll look like a complete fool or he'll fall more deeply in love with me.

I took a deep breath and told myself, What the heck.

The truth is, I'm no man's man. I think I'm masculine enough to pass, in certain contexts, for a straight guy, but I'm not above asking B, who's into Project Runway and beauty pageants, to twist the cap off a Coke litro for me. I'm also scared of heights, frogs and speed, which is why I hate ferris wheels, avoid the countryside, and drive like my grandmother. (Of course, a lot of straight guys share those exact same phobias.)

One of the stupidest things I've ever done, in fact, was agree to ride this huge metal contraption called the Whirlwind in Big Bang Alabang back when I was in college. I was then dating a girl named Toni Weinstein, who was pretty and sweet but also quite low on serotonin -- she didn't feel alive unless she was performing some sort of daredevil stunt. So one by one we tried all the rides and stunts, from the giant slide that left me with skinned elbows to the Superman rope, which made me feel like a biologist moving from tree to tree in some rainforest. Everything went well enough until we reached the Whirlwind, which was like a huge ferris wheel, except that the riders didn't sit in some car but got strapped standing up to a piece of metal.

Upon seeing it, all my neurotransmitters went haywire, but I wanted to live up to my macho swagger, so with a confident grin, I bought two tickets for Toni and me, got strapped to a pole, was spun till I lost all notion of south, east, west and north, and died of a heart attack a hundred times in ten minutes. Honestly, why would anyone ride the Whirlwind unless he's preparing for a trip to outer space? Why would anyone in his right mind think that having his internal organs rearranged would be a source of pleasure? After the ride, I told Toni how awesome the whole ride was and then ran to the nearest comfort room to disgorge my dinner.

But that afternoon, as I zoomed down the highway on B's brother's motorbike, B wrapped his arms around my waist and laid his cheek against my neck, giving no heed to the people who might see us, and I felt, suddenly, invincible, as though I could ride that motorbike to the end of the world, as though I could make it fly! So I started going faster and faster, even when it began to rain hard enough that I had to squint to see the road, even when the wind blew the raindrops against my face so hard, they stung.

All that mattered was that moment: the two us tearing down that endless glistening road, the sea to our left, mountains and fields to our right. And B, his arms around my waist, whooping like a child. At that moment, I was the handsomest, tallest, strongest man in the world, and there was absolutely nothing I wouldn't be able to deal with, not even a giant frog with ferris wheel-shaped earrings.

Of course, like everything else in life, the spell of that moment ended. We turned back, drove home, took a long, hot shower. And the next morning -- surprise of surprises -- the strongest man in the world was snivelling. Back, you might say, to the skinny, geeky poet who'd rather read a book than don a leather jacket.

But despite lasting only a few hours, that experience will make me remember and cherish B forever. For as short as that experience was, it gave me a glimpse of what I could do or be, and taught me how deeply I could possibly feel. Besides, the way, ehem, he rode my bike in bed that night was worth the cold I had for days after. :)

Happy birthday, baby. Hope you'll like this birthday gift. (Click on it!)


(Hey friends, in celebration of B's birthday, please share with us your most memorable moment with B in the comments section. Thanks!)