Goodbye, La Dee Da

Goodbye to this blog! I've transferred to a less corny address. I'm not saying it's not corny, only less so.

Wet Wool Blankets

It's a heartbreak-even situation,
Nothing lost and nothing gained.
So I'm 10 years old again,
Standing in the backyard,
Waving at a train.
- Ani Difranco

Happy Birthday, Morrissey

Dear hero, imprisoned,
With all the new crimes
That you are perfecting.
Oh, I can't help quoting you,
'Cause everything
That you said rings true.
- Morrissey

I was going to put up a picture of you as a much younger man, when you were on the crest of it all and you had handfuls of flowers spilling from your pockets. I don't mean to say that you're no longer on the crest of it all, although everyone else says that you've already had your time, that it's already been decades since. Anyway, I'm not going to be sentimental here. I loved your songs and I love them still, all of them plaintive or ebullient or both, your voice coaxing open the fist in our hearts year after year. I know nearly nothing about you, no matter how much has been written of your life or how much of yourself is incarnate in your lyrics. And of course you won't read this, and you wouldn't know horseshit about me either. But today you turn 49, and I have sung with and along to you more times than I care to remember, and all I know is that I once thought the loneliness would be unbearable, and then I heard you sing. You don't know me, I live in a city you might never have heard of, you don't know me, but here is celebration, here is gratitude, here it is, here it is.

Typical Me, Typical Me, Typical Me

I traveled to a mystical time zone,
And I missed my bed, and I soon came home.
- The Smiths

So here I go again, scrabbling around the flat at the most ungodly hour there is, at that bracket of time pinned between the opaque night and the first irreverent fingers of sunlight through the curtain. My place has always attracted too much clutter despite every noble effort, but right now, the mess is worse than ever: clothes everywhere, a couple of used Ziploc bags littered over the floor, my hiking pack leaning against the fridge, looking like some poor eviscerated creature that a bunch of poachers punted aside with a mean, steel-toed kick.

Make no mistake, I want to rally beside modern science in its bid for truth in the theory of evolution, but at this precise moment, the only thing I can imagine is Darwin's ghost hovering over my shoulder, clucking his incorporeal tongue, and thinking that the story of my life is the only thing that can torch his theory to the ground. All those years in the Galapagos looking at the beaks of those cute finches! Utterly wasted! Fucking shit!

Because – let's be honest here, kid – I don't evolve, and I never learn. This is the hundredth time I'm packing up for a trip at the last possible squealing minute, and my head is buzzing with lists that cancel out each other hopelessly. And I know I should be well-rested before I hike up any mountain, but forget it, I don't have time for sleep. Sleep, who needs sleep, goddammit. All I gotta do is soak my organs in coffee for the next twenty-four hours, and all I have to do is keep my head from crashing down to the keyboard while I'm at work tomorrow.

Anyway, I can feel myself coming undone at the seams. I am not kidding. In the last two months, I've been jumping from one place to the next, from one job to the other, from Manila to Capones Island, then back to Manila, then up to Banaue with Jose and Claire, the three of us slithering up and down the terraces, then further on to Sagada, then down to the congested avenues of Baguio City, then back to Manila, and before I could even say the word, "home", I found myself miraculously transported to my cubicle in Ortigas, still redolent of pine trees and bus-stop buko juice.

With Jose by a view of the terraces, which we have effectively blocked.



Me, Jose, and Claire, in the middle of the hike up the terraces.

In 16 hours, I'll be on my way up north again, this time for the Big Brother Big Sister hike up Kibungan, Benguet. It promises to be an incredible weekend, filled with good cheer and shiny faces and toothy grins, and my group for this climb includes beloved familiar faces, all of whom will probably try to restrain me with industrial sized ropes the moment I get drunk enough to run around the area, screaming until my throat goes to shreds.

Learn more about the program by clicking here!

It's going to be heaps of fun, oh yes! But good god, even if I were powered by Energizer batteries instead of this sputtering heart, I wouldn't last into infinity. Give me a boring weekend. Give me vacant hours and breakfast at 4 in the afternoon. Everyone knows that the Energizer bunny is a con artist! Let me be a fat-cheeked squirrel with my store of precious nuts. Hey, give me those nuts. Jose?

A Hot Day And A Sticky Black Tarmac

I'm bleeding pretty colors,
Yeah, all over myself.
- Juliana Hatfield

The heat is a bully. The heat is the bully you once dreaded at school, the very same one who waited for you after class each day, his fist a packed sphere, a planet you were doomed to cross orbits with. Unlike the squinty-eyed bully of your childhood, however, the summer's heat won't wait after you've gathered your notes and stuffed them into your bag. It doesn't care to wait until the school's authorities clear out before it finally knocks you to the ground. The heat believes itself to be an authority, anyway, and will bring you to your knees even if the government vows to protect you. And everyone knows this government is shit and all its promises to be no better than chaff, so screw that.

But like I said, there's no stopping this summer. We're a country bisected into rain and sun, and now that March is ready to sigh out its last days, the heat has begun marching in steady legions into the city, stunning everyone into near-inactivity. The humidity is worse, too; the air feels sodden and irritatingly present, resistant to the smallest movement. Imagine curtains of molasses, try your best to picture it!

After all, an energetic imagination is what we all need now to get through this goddamn heat. If you can imagine what a curtain of molasses may look and feel like, you might also succeed in convincing yourself that the heat is just a trifle you can slap away into retreat. Forget cancer and those nasty ultraviolet rays. Your skin has the tenacity of leather. Your skin is patched over with small mirrors that reflect the sun's glare.

The sun, in fact, can do nothing but yell out its empty solar threats. The sun is actually ridiculous! The sun is a lemon drop you can pop easily into your mouth. When you grin, your smile radiates light from the lemon drop resting on your tongue. Even when the lemon drop has dissolved, the light resides in your skull. You are luminous at all hours.

If you can think that, you'd have won half the battle.

With A Fuse That's So Thoroughly Shot

Burn down the disco, hang the blessed DJ.
Because the music that they constantly play,
It says nothing to me about my life.
- The Smiths

Part One:
When they set the tone for the evening, it was clear that subtlety had no place in the proceedings. The bass line thudded into our building unannounced, leaching through every door jamb in our floor and drumming away at the glass panes in our windows. The music hammered its beat up to my temples, where I felt my temper gather into swollen, livid clots stoppering my vessels.

AH AIN'T NO HOLLABACK GIRRRL AH AIN'T NO HOLLABACK GIIIIIRRRRL!!!!

Where in god's name is that shit coming from?? I flung open our windows and poked my head out into the cool evening, squinting at nearby houses and buildings, but the view only looked back at me innocently before their own shadows reclaimed them. Gwen Stefani was still belting away somewhere, and I decided that it was probably from the construction outfit next door; occasionally, music blasted out from some radio in the site, but it often petered out in less than fifteen minutes.

No harm in letting the workers have their portion of fun, I thought, as I stepped out to the stairwell with a book and a glass of soda. Even then, I thought it was curious for the construction crew to choose Gwen Stefani, or even the hip-hop track that came right after Hollaback Girl. In previous nights when the crew turned up the volume, it was almost always because Air Supply or Michael Learns to Rock came on, and I would later hear a couple of discordant male voices straining to hit the right notes.


Part Two:
But this time around, track after track of fecal hip-hop music shot out into the night, and our building – our floor, particularly – seemed to be right in their path. Well, fucking shit, I said to myself, taking a long draught from my glass. How in god's name were we supposed to get any rest with all this revolting music catapulting at us? The window panes hadn't stopped quaking, and I began to suspect that the construction site had nothing to do with it all. The worst part about it was that the music disclosed no signs of letting up; it kept on thrumming at every available surface until I was fit to be tied myself.

I drew up to the nearest window, and in no time, had picked out the locus from which the racket was booming out. At the top floor of FBR Building, a stone's throw away from ours, I could trace out the revolution of disco lights and their exaggerated sweep, could make out a line of heads bobbing to Nelly and his yammering henchmen.

I think I was relatively calm until I found the source of the music, most likely a sem-ender party thrown by a bunch of pompous rats flush with Daddy's easy money. Something kicked in me, kicked strong enough to punt my heart out from its warren and pitch a grenade in to replace it.

Before I even thought of it, I scooped up my book and my glass of soda and flew down the four flights of stairs with steam blowing out from my ears in hot white opaque funnels. I need hooves and horns, boys! I need a crimson sheet and a nervous matador! Give me a dusty stadium and a matador to kill fucking fucking fucking shit who do those brats think they are fucking shit it's nearly midnight and now I can't even sleep and my sister can't sleep and Gwen Stefani's voice is still careening about in my head give me that fucking squiggly-nerved matador I want his blooooood —


Part Three:
"Whoa, where are you going?"

I paused mid-step, huffing. It was Joel – he had been working his way up the stairwell, and I'd nearly bowled into him in my rush. "There," I pointed to FBR, clearing my throat. "Their music's blaring right into our fucking floor. I swear to god it's fucking noisy."

He turned his head and cocked his ear. Sure enough, a fresh round of beats was starting, and Joel winced. "Ugh, it's that hip-hop shit," he said, disgust plain on his face. "Wait, are you going to tell them off?"

"You bet I am," I said, hurrying off once again, instantly regretting the fact that I'd brought my book and glass with me, both of which were becoming a little cumbersome. It also hit me that my anger had begun to spike at the level of hysterics, hardly anything new.

Striding into the first floor of FBR Building, I halted briefly in front of a mirror and realized that I hadn't even run a comb through my hair, which was now in a hopeless wild tangle. Plus, I was wearing only boxers and a large shirt – I scarcely cut a commanding figure. But then I turned to the elevators and saw a sign taped near the doors: PRESS D TO BREAK YO SELF. I hopped into the first elevator that came, pressed D, and broke mah self. These morons ought to be shot.


Part Four:
A faint ding announced that I was finally in D. D for Deck. D for Dolts Weighted With Bling. D for Dickheads Who Impose Their Bad Music Upon The Neighborhood. As I stepped out, the music roared at me, louder than I had first imagined it to be. At least 80 kids stood around on the dance floor, all of them looking powdered and coiffed and giggly – even the guys, who were all probably fairies anyway. Their brains, alas, were jellied over on the floor in a quivering mess. A few heads turned towards me, confused. Oh my god ha, who's that girl in the pambahay shirt? What's she doing here making tambay? Oh my god is she actually joining this par-tay? Maybe she's somebody's yaya!

I tossed my head and surveyed the scene. Okay, plan of attack. Wait, there is no plan, all you wanted was blood. Wait, I don't want to end up in jail, but yes I want blood. Focus! I can't, it's too loud!! Focus! Okay! There's the bartender. Okay! There's the bartender, go for the jugular.

I cut through the crowd and made a beeline for the bar, a makeshift wooden structure that seemed ready to spring free of its own shape. A smooth-faced boy, too young to seriously be a bartender, bent into an Igloo to retrieve beers, and I took a hold of his shoulder as he straightened up.

"Hey, man." I said, pinning him with a look so malevolent I was hoping he would crumple up and pee in his own pants. "Who's managing this party?"

He stared at me in undisguised surprise, his jaw slackening. "What? Wh-what?"

"I said, WHO'S MANAGING THIS PARTY???"

"Um, ah, the girl, that girl, in white, um, ah, the girl in front of her, not the girl in white—"

"WHAT?" I said, crossing my arms. "What girl in white? Who the fuck is managing this party?"

"Ah, the girl, in white, see her? Um, there's a girl in front of her, that girl, she's the one in charge—"

He bolted with the rest of his sentence trailing behind him, and I shrugged and made my way to the Barbie Doll he pointed out. She had her arms looped around a guy, and she bounced to the music so much I expected her limbs to snap clean off her torso. "Excuse me," I said when I was close enough, feeling a little pacified now. Must exterminate Queen Ant. "Are you handling this party here?"

She turned to face me and gave a cloying smile. "Oh, yeeeaah," she trilled. "Yeah, hi, what's the—" The Barbie Doll looked me over, studied my boxers and my book and my glass of Coke, suddenly baffled. She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind one ear and said, "Um, did you just arrive?"

"Yeah, I did. Are you in charge of the party?"

She brightened up, and led me away from her group. "Yah! Hey, have you paid yet? Do you want to stay? You need to pay a hundr—"

"I'M NOT HERE FOR THE PARTY!" I said, exploding again. "I need to talk to you for a sec." I motioned at her to follow me, and when we found a spot that wasn't as noisy, I faced her, putting my hands on my hips. "I'm not sure if you realize this, kid, but you're holding this party right in the middle of a residential area, where people are trying to sleep—"

"What?" She looked completely bewildered. A flush of irritation crept into her expression. Oh my god, who's this girl in the pambahay outfit ba? Why is she making sigaw to me?


Part Five:
The beats continued to pound away, and a few kids brushed past to pay for the entrance fee. I sighed. "Orright, let me explain. Your music is blasting the living hell out of our building. We live on the fourth floor of that structure," I said, pointing to my own building standing mute. "I'm sorry to be so goddamn blunt, but it's difficult to get any rest when you—" I peered at her and felt like giving up. The Barbie Doll swayed a little on her heels, still looking a little stunned, and seemed to wait for me to say some more. "Oh, goddammit. Look, where are you from anyway?"

In a split second, her face rearranged itself, and she gave me a smug half-smile. "I'm from Ateneo," she said.

Well, fucking shit, that explains it, I thought to myself. I'd always hated that university and the way the students cheapened any damn language, all those prrang's and those now na's and those make tusok tusok the motherfucking fishballs. Shit, it was also my school, but I was never one for school spirit, anyway.

I shook my head at her. "Look, kid. I'm from Ateneo, too. What I'm trying to say is that your music is too loud."

The Barbie Doll turned to look at the DJ, who was sweating over the vinyl. Her shoulders were slumped now, and she turned to me with a beaten look in her eyes. "Do you want us to tone it down?"

'YES!" I exclaimed, throwing my hands up. "Yes, please!"

"Okay!" She nodded her head, looked at me for a moment, and began to walk to where the DJ and his turntable were stationed.

"Thanks, much appreciated," I called out, sliding into an elevator when it creaked open. On my way out of the building, I was surprised to see Joel standing over a bunch of inert guards seated by the entrance.

"There you are!" He gestured at the guards impatiently. "I was trying to tell them what a noise that party was making. You were right! It all goes right into our floor!"

"Oh, yeah," I nodded, feeling a touch depleted. All that excitement took a bit of puff out of me. "Don't worry, though, I told them off."

"Hah, good for them. What if they bring the volume back up?"

"Punyeta, if they try it, I'm charging right up again to that dumb little soiree of theirs." When we got up to the fourth floor, though, the improvement was encouragingly palpable; the window panes were still, and the music was fainter now and less affronting. I was, however, taken aback at how I was actually imperious and rude at both the young bartender and the Barbie Doll. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn't have stood for such behavior from myself.

But there's just no excuse for braying out music in the middle of the night, at exactly those hours when folks are trying to get some shut-eye. It's flat-out inconsiderate and ill-mannered. So goddammit, I say fight fire with fire. And if you happen to have a flamethrower, why, all the better. It'll only make for a rather fine barbecue.

All The White Horses Have Gone Ahead

You will return one day
Because of all the things that you see
When your eyes close.
- Morrissey

You know how it is when you have a volume of poetry, how you can easily pick your favorite pieces in a heartbeat, or how your memory can dredge up the same verses that once sounded off the sleeping gong in your chest? And how, always, in that same volume sit the other poems, the other poems that do not speak to you, no matter how much you squint at the words and study the spaces between them? You suspect that the poet is saying something urgent and spectacular, but the work itself is a stranger who refuses to meet your gaze.

In Stephen Dunn's Loosestrife, there was one such poem that I bypassed a lot. Reading it felt like knocking on a door that preferred to remain bolted, and I went through the last lines as unmoved as when I started off. This evening, I re-read Imagining Myself My Father for the first time in almost a year, expecting nothing but the same impenetrability, and was instead knocked violently off my feet. If I'd been wearing socks at the time, the poem would also have yanked them off, hard.

I actually can't understand how I might have missed it. If there was anyone who should've appreciated the poem in an instant, that would've been me, Daddy's girl, a sucker for the old man and his bald head and his easter egg figure. In Dunn's Imagining Myself My Father, the dad is a salesman in the exact same fashion as mine was, a man whose work inevitably flung him to distant cities. In such an occupation, solitude is as much a given as the car rumbling beneath your feet or the highways spooling out to what feels like a dreaded eternity.

(I remember how, when I was in High School, Dad had approached me on the eve of one of his business trips. He wanted to know how to operate a Walkman, and if he could borrow mine so he could listen to his Sinatra tapes on the road.)

With Dad after my Graduation last March.

In any case, here's the poem. Some things are just too good to keep to yourself. And I think I'll call up Dad in the morning and ask him how he is.


Imagining Myself My Father
Stephen Dunn

I drove slowly, the windows open,
letting the emptiness within meet
the brotherly emptiness without.
Deer grazed by the Parkway's edge,
solemnly enjoying their ridiculous,
gentle lives. There were early signs
of serious fog.

Salesman with a product
I had to pump myself up to sell,
merchant of my own hope,
friend to every tollbooth man,
I named the trees I passed.
I knew the dwarf pines,
and why in such soil
they could grow only so tall.

A groundhog wobbled from the woods.
It, too, seemed ridiculous,
and I conjured for it a wild heart,
at least a wild heart.
My dashboard was agleam with numbers
and time.

It was the kind of morning
the dark never left.
The truly wild were curled up, asleep,
or in some high nest looking down.
There was no way they'd let us love them
just right.

I said "fine" to those who asked.
I told them about my sons, athletes both.
All day I moved among men
who claimed they needed nothing,
nothing, at least, that I had.
Maybe another time, they said,
or, Sorry, things are slow.

On the drive back
I drove fast, and met the regulars
at the Inn for a drink.
It seemed to me a man needed a heart
for the road, and a heart for home,
and one more for his friends.

And so many different, agile tongues.

In Corridors Of Time

When you leaned over and touched me on the arm
it was as if my arm needed to be touched
in that way, at exactly that time.
- Edward Hirsch

Everything was deceptively simple. You took a bottle of beer and waved me over. I believe it was The Simpsons that got us going. I remember touching your shirt. I thought I was being very clever. I didn't recognize the evening as a precursor to anything. The hours were there anyway, factual and artless. I was thinking of tom-toms chanting through the jungle, an arrow whistling its passage through the trees. I was thinking of how dizzy I was. In my mind, your face and the streetlamps and the chuckling moon were all one and the same.

Even if I'd consulted a colony of fortune-tellers, none of them would have guessed.

I did not think the evening as a precursor to anything. The hours were there anyway, factual and artless.

I thought you had the loveliest hands I'd ever seen. I panicked when you smiled. I wanted to know what was happening, but the hours were greedy with their secret. They just wouldn't let on.

I would like to say something about gratitude or redemption. I want to be fluid with expression, I want the words to calve precisely from the hulking, speechless concept.

I don't think I'm very successful at it. Also:

I don't know of a story more beautiful than ours.

Hi, Jose.

I Got Confused, I Killed a Horse

Now I know how Joan of Arc felt
As the flames rose to her Roman nose
And her Walkman started to melt.
- The Smiths

One:
Because I've handled a fair share of emceeing stints in the past, I was under the general – but patently false – impression that any hosting gig lobbed my way would be easy enough. Sure I'm entertaining, articulate, and versatile! Sure my voice is round and pleasant, with slightly smoky undertones! Mostly because I smoke, of course! The point is that while I lack confidence for so many other endeavors, I have never seriously doubted my capacity for playing the host, bursting at the seams with sparkling rejoinders and a grievous amount of abdominal fat.

I clung to this belief stubbornly – that is, until the luckless day that my friend Ike sent me a message over Yahoo Messenger.

Ike: Dude, you still do emceeing stuff?
Peachy: Sure. What's up?
Ike: JL needs an emcee for her wedding reception. Game?
Peachy: Game!

Maybe I should have trusted that first gnawing of apprehension when I realized that I'd just agreed to do a wedding. Oh, but I was so confident, I was riding on a gale that vaulted over mountaintops and disrupted ordinary weather patterns in poor countries like ours, I was just so sure of what I could do, knew to my bones that I could do it. A few moments after Ike had spoken to me, JL sent me a message, and I found myself nodding eagerly at every turn. February 9? No problem! At one in the afternoon? Grrrreat!

Two:
I think my enthusiasm had eclipsed my own uneasy history with weddings. It isn't that I have anything against two adults tying the knot in front of a swooning collective; I'm all for love and every given form of its strange profusion. I have nothing against five-year old flower girls keening down the aisle in a rampage of tears, rose petals, and white taffeta. At the very least, these things serve as entertainment, part and parcel of the comic hour.

Which actually directs us to the crux of the problem: I find weddings hilarious. During Chino's wedding some years ago, Mia and I snorted lungfuls of laughter back into our chests and quaked red-faced in our dresses throughout the entire ceremony. This was not a nice sight. I was right in front as one of the readers, just ten paces away from where the priest was seated, and Mia (being Chino's sister) was one of the bridesmaids, ranged right beside the bride's prim friends. Some time afterwards, we learned that our aunts had clucked among themselves disapprovingly, complaining about why Mia and I "had to laugh so much".

(By the way, these are the same aunts who enjoy Reader's Digest jokes, and are therefore not to be relied on.)

On the day of JL's wedding, however, all the self-assurance I'd managed to reclaim went flying out the window once again. I was supposed to wear a dress that showed just the proper amount of skin and limb, but the moment I zipped it up, it hit me that it just wouldn't do. The front part drooped so much, any chump leaning in from a certain height would see my boobs, or the sorry lack of it. Either I'd lost weight or lost boobs, the latter being a larger impossibility: I have never had decent knockers to begin with, and have no recollection whatsoever of getting a mastectomy.

Three:
I eventually found myself sneaking into the church in another dress, one that was approximately the size of a hand towel, a strappy blue thing that held to all my curves and invented them where there were none. Almost three-fourths of my entire back was bare, and the hem of the dress fluttered a little above the middle of my thighs. I looked like the witless slut who had tragically believed she was invited to a client's wedding.

Ike snickered when he saw me slipping through the entrance. "Hahaha," he said. "Haw haw haw."

I tugged at my dress. "Shut up," I snarled.

During the photo shoot, we all leapt up to where JL and her groom were standing by the altar, and we took our places beside the newlyweds. An industrial-sized electric fan howled away in our direction, and I held my skirt down gingerly and kept a smile frozen on my face.

"Peeeach!"

I turned. It was Jessette, the Maid of Honor, a former officemate I hadn't seen in nearly a year. "Hey!" I said, grinning. "Look at you! You look terrific!"

"Thanks! And you look so, uh – sexy!"

I grimaced. "Ugh, I was supposed to wear something else, but then—"

She guffawed. "You look scandalous."

There was absolutely no way I was going to win this.

Four:
"Hello, hello," The sound system crackled to life, and my voice – alien, too deep, sounding as though it were completely dissociated from me – spilled out from the amplifiers. We were now in the wedding reception venue, a room with a ceiling so low I could imagine my own breath ricocheting from the concrete above my head then jetting out to knock a few champagne glasses to the floor. I felt like a six-footer, felt as though something in my pituitary gland had gone horribly wrong and I'd gotten an ill-timed growth spurt. Shit shit shit shit shit. Nervousness rang out through my limbs in tiny spasms. I stepped away from the microphone and shot a beseeching look at my co-host, who was too busy digging his own hands deeper into his pockets.

"Well, uh, I think we could start now," I said to him.

He looked at me in mild surprise, as though he'd forgotten where he was for a few blurry seconds. He and I had been introduced just ten minutes before in a rush of names and polite, pre-fabricated statements: Yeah, hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. I think we should start in a while Sure. He was the groom's brother, a fidgety guy with an anxious laugh, and he asked me if I'd done this kind of thing before.

"Emceeing, you mean? Well, yeah, but never weddings," I said, quick to lay out my disclaimer. If I screw this up, it's because I've never done it before. Absolution is mine! "What about you?"

"Uh, yeah," he said, scratching at his chin. "This is my second time, actually. The first was with our other brother."

"Excellent, at least you know the route. I'm not so sure about how to navigate this thing." I shifted my weight on another foot. Goddammit, these shoes were murdering me. "Are you the youngest?"

He pursed his lips. "No. I'm the eldest."

"Ah," I said benignly. He must hate these weddings, I thought. I felt the pressing need to spout bad jokes to this man beside me, thought that the situation could use a dose of crude humor. I wanted to elbow him in the ribs and flash him a conspiratorial smile. So when are you getting married, huh? Bet your folks ask you that a lot. Always the Best Man but never the...Man? HA HA HA! Koff koff. Oh, forget it. I took the program and shook it out. "I guess we could get this rolling now."

He nodded and stepped to the microphone, and I heard him start out with the first venturing greeting. I scanned the program and – holy shit, the Invocation?? What the--? Who's going to do the Invocation? I took my co-host aside just as he drew away from the microphone. "Hey, man, you wanna do the Invocation?"

An expression of pure dread spread across his face. "Oh, no," he said, almost recoiling. "No, no, I don't want to do the prayer."

I groaned inwardly. I hadn't prayed in years. My spiritual life was a wasteland rife with tumbleweed and slain cowboys and hinged saloon doors that creaked and swung with every wind's sighing. "All right. I'll just do it." I came up to the microphone. Goddamn, how did these things start again? Oh, right. "In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy spirit," I pronounced. Everyone in the room crossed themselves in unison, and I cleared my throat. "Dear Lord. Thank you for this day. Thank you for, uh, for the pleasant weather. Please bless the, uh, newlyweds."

One of the older ladies looked up and fixed me with a grim stare, and I tooled around frantically in my head for a few more lines to sustain the prayer. "Thank you for the. Food which we will. Partake. Of. Please bless us all. We pray for. A bright future for. The newlyweds. Thank you." I ended the prayer, and the guests crossed themselves uncertainly. I shoved the program into my co-host's hands. "Here, you take over for a while," I hissed.

I stalked over to my table, where Ike was also seated. "Shit," I said as I came up beside him. "Goddamn. That was a disaster."

"Dude," Ike said, one eyebrow raised. "That was the worst prayer I'd ever heard in my entire life. The worst."

"Come on, really?"

"Without a doubt. The worst prayer ever."

"Huh. Thanks a lot, man." I cuffed him weakly in the shoulder, then went back to the front, where my co-host was sweating through a string of names, the customary acknowledgments. I gave him a wan smile. "I think we're doing a nifty job so far," I told him after he let go of the microphone.

"Yup," he smiled, unconvinced. "We are. I think we are."

Five:
It just wasn't working. Weddings were too solemn, weddings were populated by too many matrons who frowned at short, backless dresses designed to amuse construction workers and overzealous Ateneo High School boys. I was mangling the whole event; I was sarcastic without meaning to be, and so was my co-host. It was obvious that neither of us was a big fan of weddings, and once we started floating wisecracks to the bewildered audience, we couldn't stop ourselves.

Still, I can't say that it was entirely a disaster. At the very least, I had my officemates in stitches, although god knows I wasn't even trying to be funny anymore. When the Dove Ceremony was about to start, I nodded to the Head Waiter, who promptly bustled around the pigeons in their gilt cage. "Ladies and gentlemen," I began. "We will now witness the Kissing of the Doves. Because that's what doves do. They kiss." I clapped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late. The older people gave me condemning looks while my former officemates exploded into shards of laughter.

When the reception was over, I struck out for the exit with a cigarette in my mouth. Thank god we finally got that out of the way, I thought. I stood by the entrance, taking ridiculously deep drags, when one of the older ladies appeared beside me. She took out her own pack of cigarettes, lit one, and studied me. A smile was playing at the corners of her mouth.

"You have a very beautiful voice," she said.

I coughed, startled. "Thank you!" I exclaimed, straightening up.

"Beautiful," she said. "You shouldn't waste such a lovely voice with all this smoking."

"Mm, yeah." I peered at her cigarette. "Well, you have a good voice, and you smoke, too."

She let out a laugh, turned, and pointed to a man hobbling towards the exit. "That's my husband," she said, without any apparent meaning.

I was running out of things to say. "Does he smoke, too?"

"No, no, only I smoke."

"Doesn't he mind?"

"He doesn't have the right to mind." She tossed her head. "Only the women are supposed to smoke. For all the stress we endure, you see. What do these men know of suffering?" She threw her husband a disgusted look.

I giggled feebly.

"Well," she said, stubbing out her cigarette. "We have to go now. It was nice talking to you. Take care of your voice."

"I will," I said, and almost saluted her. Meanwhile, Jerick, one of the flash animators from my former office, had sauntered over to my side. We traded high-fives.

"Oy, Peach," he grinned. "Ikaw rin emcee sa kasal ko, ha? Kung magpapakasal ako."

I sniffed. "Dude, didn't you see how I destroyed the reception?"

"Ano ka, okay nga eh. Tawa kami nang tawa."

Eky joined us. "Oh my god," she gasped. "Oh my god, Peach. You were so funny! I swear to god! You're nuts!"

"Aw, man." I said. "Thanks, but I don't think it really worked well with the older folks, you know? But thanks."

Jerick slapped me on the back. "Basta pag magpapakasal na ako, ikaw emcee ha."

Well, all right, sure. As long as someone else does the Invocation, I'm pretty certain I'll be fine.

There's A Place In The Sun For Anyone

I've seen this happen in other people's lives,
And now it's happening in mine.
- The Smiths

What I recall most acutely from all the Sunday masses I attended as a child wasn't the heat stunning me into paralysis, or the gaudy frocks I wore, or the bright wallop of envy I felt when I saw the other kids playing tag while the priest intoned all those baffling words and Mom's hand on my lap kept me seated on the pew. Every squirm and fidgety motion was sent into retreat by a censuring glance from Dad, and I sighed and leaned back against the comfortless wood, thinking of my bike and my new fighting fish in its glass jar at home. I thought of how time expanded and lengthened without compassion in the small church, an hour feeling like three, the mystery of the host without its former charm now that I was permitted to take it.

I remember it all with great clarity, but one detail pitches out in starker color. My family almost always occupied the same pew on the same row, unless another family had gotten to it first. We weren't the only ones inclined towards that sort of regularity: nearly every Sunday, a woman and her daughter slid into the pew in front of ours. I hardly paid any attention to the mother, who remains formless and shifting in my memory, but I remember watching the daughter with a kind of obsessive intensity that may have been, in hindsight, completely unwarranted.

In fact, I do remember the daughter still, and what she looked like, and what she wore. I remember studying her while she went through the invariable religious motions in her modest dresses. She must have been just in her late teens, but I remember thinking that she seemed so grown-up, her movements possessed of a calm that I could never invoke from my own spare body.

When I think of it now, I don't understand why I was so fixated. She wasn't very remarkable, was pretty in a muted way, and she never drew any attention to herself. But I zoomed in on her anyway and created vast improbable fictions for her to settle into. I convinced myself that her name was Rose. She had countless friends, was popular in school, was kind and intelligent and universally adored. She liked a boy who liked her back, and he held her hand and helped her with homework and eliminated the need to understand fractions or the chaos that a wayward decimal point could cause. Rose had read every Nancy Drew mystery, and as a matter of fact, owned a complete collection of it, which was ranged neatly over her neat study table in her neat sun-dappled bedroom.

Sometimes she turned around in her seat and caught me looking, a development that always gave me a brutal shock. I would whip my eyes to another point in the church until she turned to face the priest again, or I would fake a yawn or brush some invisible piece of lint off my skirt. In any case, my little invented world for Rose pressed on, although I couldn't get rid of the feeling that even as I spun plot after labored plot for her, a crevasse of infinite proportions persisted in the space between her pew and mine. None of my stories were ever adequate.

I didn't see Rose for a long while until I was in High School. By that time, she had completely receded from my concerns, and I was too busy wrangling with my own adolescent preoccupations, my ineffectual dramas magnified by a storm of hormones and a bloated sense of suffering. But then she reappeared one Sunday, surprisingly smaller than I thought she was, and once the initial flare of recognition had quieted down, I found myself oddly embarrassed by her presence. It appalled me that I'd devoted so much time in my childhood to a trumped-up fabrication, realized what a pathetic exercise it was at escaping from the playground's ruthless politics or at banishing a nine-year old's secret loneliness. I don't know why it was such a big deal to me then, but I was a teenager – everything was a big deal. I paid severe attention to the priest afterwards, and concentrated so feverishly on every part of the Mass that I went home that morning with a headache banging away in my temples.

Anyway. I'm not sure why I brought that up. Earlier this evening, I was smoking in the stairwell with a cooling mug of coffee, reading a book that Jose had given me for Christmas. A little boy – I didn't know there were children in this floor – had come out from one of the units to stand by the windows facing the stairwell, and he remained there for a curiously long time, staring out at Katipunan Avenue in a posture that struck me as too solemn for someone so young. He looked like he was waiting for somebody, expectation and frank yearning articulated in the angle of his neck and in the way he leaned against the grating. He was real and he was a ghost of things past. I wanted to say hello.

Dialogues: A Post-Holiday Special, Part II

(A nod to last year's Post-Holiday Special)


Dialogue 1:
Daughter is home for the holidays once again, but this year, the whole affair has a dark note to it. Daughter's Friend died two days before Christmas, and Daughter goes to the wake to pay her respects. After the prayer vigil, Friend's Mom introduces Daughter to Friend's Aunt.

Friend's Aunt: Are you working, or are you still in school?
Daughter: Well, I'm already working, but I do hope to go back to school when the chance comes.
Friend's Aunt: To study what?
Daughter: Creative Writing, most probably.
Friend's Aunt: (peering closely at Daughter) Hija, what's your last name?
Daughter: Paderna.
Friend's Aunt: (putting hand over mouth) Oh! Are you the daughter of Atty. Paderna?
Daughter: Oh, no. He's my uncle, though.
Friend's Aunt: Is he still alive?
Daughter: (taken aback) Uh, yes, he is.
Friend's Aunt: Ah.

Conversation dies.


Dialogue 2:
Mom and Daughter are in a Chinese restaurant, having just ordered the chow and waiting for Dad to park the car. Daughter has bought a copy of Time Magazine, and is leafing through it while Mom watches her.

Mom: What a pretty daughter I have!
Daughter: (looking up) Hmm?
Mom: Pretty, pretty.
Daughter: Wow, really? Thanks, Mom!
Mom: Well, I'm your mother. I'm supposed to say that you're pretty.
Daughter: Oh.


Dialogue 3:
After getting off the phone, Daughter pads over to the kitchen where Dad is attending to the Kare-Kare. Mom is also in the kitchen, helping out.

Daughter: I just got off the phone with Jose. He wishes you both a Happy New Year.
Mom: Oh, how nice of him!
Dad: Okay, wish him a Happy New Year for me, too.
Daughter: (brightening) Really? You mean it?
Dad: And tell him that I told you that if he's just playing games, he better look for someone else.
Mom: (hotly) You're just saying that because you played around, too!!
Dad: You know, that's exactly the kind of attitude that doesn't help anybody!!

Fight ensues. Daughter slinks away.


Dialogue 4:
To make the Kare-Kare, Dad needs to make the beef tender by letting the pieces simmer for around two to four hours. By the fifth hour, however, the beef hasn't yielded, and Dad stomps around the house, frustrated.

Dad: I don't understand it. That beef has already been simmering for hours.
Daughter: It's all right, Dad. We can wait.
Dad: I'm very disappointed.
Daughter: Oh, don't worry about it. I'm sure the Kare-Kare's going to turn out just fine.
Dad: The man who sold me the meat told me the pieces were from a calf. It should be really tender!
Daughter: Maybe it was an athletic calf.
Dad: Haha.
Daughter: Hahaha.


Dialogue 5:
By the eighth hour, the beef isn't ready yet. Dad is clucking his tongue, and the Kare-Kare's been moved from lunch to dinner.

Dad: I shouldn't have blanched the pieces. That could be it.
Daughter: I have a theory.
Dad: What's that?
Daughter: That calf was a triathlete before they butchered it.
Dad: What's a triathlete?
Daughter: --
Dad: Is that a dinosaur from the Jurassic period?
Daughter: It's an athlete who runs, swims, and bikes, all in one race.
Dad: I didn't know that.
Daughter: For sure.


Dialogue 6:
After what feels like a century, the beef is very nearly done. Dad checks on it periodically, a relieved look spreading on his face.

Dad: Okay, forty-five minutes more, and we can sit down for dinner.
Daughter: Excellent!
Dad: I'm sorry it took so long.
Daughter: Oh, it's all right, Dad.
Dad: Maybe I shouldn't have blanched the meat.
Daughter: Well, at least you know better now.
Dad: Yes. Do you mind waiting a little more?
Daughter: Not at all.
Dad: I promise to make it worth the wait.
Daughter: It always is.

I Booked Myself in at the YWCA

I'm a boy and you're a girl.
La la la la la la la la.
You're a girl and I'm a boy.
La la la la la la la la.
- The Smiths

Okay, let's see how this works. Surveys are great when you're too lazy to be creative for another drawn-out post.

57 Girl Confessions

Note: This is almost making me gag, but I'll stay with it!

1. Is it cute when guys kiss you on your forehead?
It's all right, but a guy can do better than my damn forehead.

2. A big poofy dress or a short party dress?
This is such a dumb question. Why would anyone want a big poofy dress? Since when has dowdiness been attractive?

3. What would you do if you received a long love letter?
Eat it.

4. Group dates or single dates?
I am so tempted to skip this survey, but I'll see how far my patience carries me.

5. Do you hate it when guys act different around their friends?
Aren't we all licensed to act differently with different groups of people? What is this quiz assuming, that we're all uni-dimensional? Morons.

6. Are diamonds a girl’s best friend?
Fuck no. Diamonds are boring. I can't even eat them. At least love letters are chewy.

7. Is your hair up or down today?
Down, the way it usually is.

8. Do you straighten your hair?
Why spend on hair treatments when you can spend the money on books and beer? Glug glug.

9. Favorite mascara?
What other girls are wearing, especially if they're clumping up, because it looks funny and I can laugh at it secretly.

10. Do you get your nails done?
No. I'm a nail biter and manicures are useless.

11. Small or large purses?
A backpack.

12. In your purse, what are your must haves?
Cigarettes, a lighter, money, and admittedly, a powder compact.

13. Jeans or sweats?
Skirts.

14. Do you wear clothes/shoes/jewelry that’s uncomfortable?
WHAT A DUMB QUIZ.

15. Do you text message a lot?
No. Texting is a pain sometimes.

16. What would you do if you got pregnant?
Abort the baby.

17. What’s your favorite color?
Dark red.

18. Heels or flats?
It depends, you moron.

19. Did you ever cry during a romantic movie?
My tear ducts are naturally overreactive.

20. Would you ever leave the house without make-up on?
Rarely, but yeah.

21. Walmart or Target?
I hate shopping. Next question!

22. Do you wear collared shirts?
Shit, my patience is about to expire. I'm still on the 22nd question, and there are 57 all in all!

23. Do you like preppy boys?
No. They're corny, and tend to be perverse. They probably engage in coprophilia. They probably want to have sex with your mom.

24. Do you think lip gloss is the best!?
I don't wear lip gloss.

25. Do you own any big sunglasses?
No.

26. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?
Two hours, of which I'm just spaced out for an hour and thirty.

27. Do you like to wear band-aids?
My brain's shriveling up.

28. Do you like skater boys?
Brain's gone.

29. Do you often wish there was something you could change?
Brain has been listed in the World Book encyclopedia as an extinct creature.

30. Gold or silver?
Silver.

31. Do you like to receive flowers?
UGH, NO.

32. Do you like surfer boys?
That's it, I'm done with this quiz. To hell with the rest of the questions.

33. Do you dress up for the holidays?

34. Do you like to wear dresses?

35. On a scale of 1-10 how much do guys confuse you?

36. In the last 48 hours have you hung out with a guy?

37. Would you date a guy shorter than you?

38. Do you like to hold hands?

39. What is the youngest you would date?

40. What is the oldest you would date?

41. What do you notice when you first meet a guy?

42. Is it hot when guys sweat?

43. What is the best feature in a guy?

44. Do you like making eye contact?

45. Are you afraid of the unknown?

46. Would you kill for chocolate?

47. Did you ever spend all day/night getting pretty for a guy?

48. On a scale from 1-10 how fun is shopping?

49. Do you freak out if you miss your favorite show?

50. Do you yell a lot?

51. Do you wear sweatpants/pajamas to school/work?

52. Have you ever dressed unlike yourself to impress a guy?

53. Do you write a lot of mushy love poems?

54. What makeup could you not live w/ out?

55. Do you fall in love easily?

56. Do you have cramps?

57. Do you think you have the bestest friend ever?

I just realized that Johnny Marr is much cuter than Morrissey.

Also, Johnny Marr is a Scorpio.

I am tempted to step into a place of utterly flawed logic, but I will resist the compulsion.





.

It Pays My Way and it Corrodes My Soul

Sweetness, sweetness, I was only joking when I said
I'd like to smash every tooth in your head.
- The Smiths

It's no secret that I refuse to have anything more to do with Philosophy, now that I've shrugged my shoulders free of its weight after all those years in University, those dreaded Oral Examinations where I had to elaborate on the significance of Heidegger's work on morality, or how Descartes' exercise in "unmitigated doubt" ushered in a persistent era in epistemology, yakkety yakkety. I am done with it. Finished. And I did love it once, when I was a shiny-eyed dud, although I don't mean to say that all those who persist in loving Philosophy are shiny-eyed duds. I am only saying that I was a different person then, and that the herculean, labored abstraction that Philosophy represents no longer appeals to me.

Still, stuff like the video below kills me, and maybe I did understand enough of my classes to actually appreciate this clip. It's fucking hilarious! I almost choked here in my seat from laughing too hard! I send my thanks to Crisgee for shooting me the link to this.

Oh, and to tell you the truth, I didn't really hate Philosophy that much, and genuinely favor Kant over Nietzsche, whom I think is an overhyped, syphilitic codger. Still, there is much to be commended in Nietzsche's work, and stop me now before I go on into some ridiculous, overwrought rant.

Ladies and gentlemen, the video. Nyuk nyuk.


.

If A Double-Decker Bus Crashes Into Us

And you never knew how much I really liked you,
'Cause I never even told you – oh, and I meant to.
- The Smiths

Dear one, you were a dervish, a hurricane I can't claim to have known very well, though I knew some things about you, a distant friend. You wanted to be a lawyer, yes? You loved as though tomorrow was an illusion, and the present a dapper tune you always wanted to play, the way you plinked away at that piano in your house when we were in High School. What young things we were. I still remember those afternoons in your front yard when you helped me figure out that blasted snarl of equations – do you know I never would have passed second-year Math if it hadn't been for you? Oh, you always thought you were never enough, you looked at your sister the way I looked at mine, we always thought we were never good enough, never pretty enough, never smart enough, eternally fucking up. Have I ever told you how much I envied you for how obstinately you dismissed fear? Or how I admired you for the way you blazed past criticism, even if it was secretly wounding you? I never told you these things. It doesn't matter now, you're gone, what use is it. I'm flying home tonight, and I will see you in your casket, and of course it wouldn't be you, none of us will believe it. You were alive one minute and all your breath pressed out of you the next. I want to think that tragedy is something we should be smart enough to expect. But none of us thought you would go so soon. Oh, Ivy, you were always more than enough, did you know this?

Ivy Lalaine Omelio
02 November 1983 - 23 December 2007

.

I've Got A Cloak, It's A Bit Of A Joke

Me, I want a hula hoop!
- Alvin and the Chipmunks

I can't sleep. I'm tired, oh so tired, although I can hardly understand why; all I've done is stretch catlike in bed from one honeyed hour to the next, enjoying my blessed, featureless Saturday, plucking books from their towering stacks, revisiting old titles and giggling through my favorite parts. I can never give any of these books up, these mighty babies, all of them cradling universes between their covers. Miracle of miracles! The written word. Such terrible terrible terrible joy.

Goddammit I really can't sleep. It isn't even Saturday anymore, it's 5:48 in the morning, and my weekend is trickling down to Sunday dreaded Sunday. Sundays always herald the looming blue of the workweek, and how can I give up my bed, how can I? I've given it fresh sheets of a pink so uncharacteristic of me I almost love it. How can I give it up?

So now we are in December. Mmm, December. Even if I didn't have a calendar around, I would've known. There's an unquestionable nip to the air now, and the world is chillier than the last eleven months have known it. Twenty-four more days, and I'll be sailing home in a plane aloft, the fleets of clouds parting for the flying machine, and Dad and Mom will be waiting for me at the airport. I'm sure to overpack again, the way I always do, and Mom will have something to say about my weight, and Dad will have something to say about my job, and he and I will be singing Frank Sinatra songs in the car all the way home while Mom hums along.

The great misfortune is that I will be spending Christmas Eve here in Manila because of work. Oh the tragedy! Christmas Eve in Manila is such an abomination. But what the hell, I'm already resigned to it. At least I get to celebrate with Ate Monique while she languishes through the Holidays, doing overtime to satisfy her ill-disguised masochism.

"So it looks like I'm really going to spend Christmas Eve here," I say to her, stretching out in bed some more, feeling for the limits of my ligaments. She is rushing around the flat, brisk and efficient, about to go back to the office to do more overtime. It is a Saturday, and she is evidently crazy.

"Yeah." She yanks out the towel-turban from her head and her hair tumbles out in a wet black tangle. "Me, too."

"I know. Hey, look," I say, brightening up. "You want me to fix something for the both of us? Dinner for Christmas Eve?"

"No."

"Oh, come on!"

"We'll just end up gaining weight."

"You're mad. Look at you, you're a kite. You're skin and bones. If anyone should be losing weight here, that would be me. What do you want me to cook?"

"Nothing," she says, tugging a comb through her hair. Her hair has always been incorrigible, ill-tempered, accorded with a life of its own. She's hated it for as long as I can remember. She's hated it even when she was but a translucent fetus, even as a zygote, when her little developing cells hinted at the genetic code that would give rise to such a wild mass. She thrashed and thrashed with all her zygote energy in our mother's pillowed uterus. What a girl.

Still, despite her affected opacity, my sister is perhaps the only person who has ever made definite, genuine attempts to spoil me. She comes home bearing small gifts for me: a candy bar, a bag of lychees, pastries wrapped in colored cellophane, a llama. She has, indeed, given me a sneezing llama named Jerry. I have fed it with pancakes and beer.

Of course I am making this up. My sister would never do such a thing, we aren't allowed to keep pets in the building. But I wasn't kidding about the other small gifts. My sister is a jewel, a diamond that no mallet can pound to smithereens. Her bone structure is nearly flawless, and her face is full of utter delicacy. The nose draws a graceful line above her perfect mouth. I look absolutely nothing like her.

In her company, I am cloying to a revolting point, I drape my arms around her and ask for piggy back rides even if there is no chance that she will bear my weight. She is nearly half my size.

"Hug," I command, having transferred now to her bed. She hates it when I do this, and I don't blame her. My bed is perfect, and I have no business spreading myself out on her own bed, but I do it anyway. I let my head hang over the side.

"No," she says, gathering her things.

"You know what I'm thinking?"

"What."

"If I were a guy, I would probably have a small dick."

"What?" She chortles. I am killing her.

"Yeah." I hold up my hands to the light. "We're talking statistically here. I have awfully small hands. I'm only 5'3. I would most probably have a small dick. If I had a girlfriend, she would be so disappointed."

"I don't know how you come up with these things."

"Oh, but you'd be worse. You're just 5 feet tall on a good day. You'd be one of those sorry men with sloping shoulders and womanly hips."

"And a small dick?"

"And a small dick," I say, nodding sagely.

"Bye," she says, hoisting her bag over her shoulder.

"Give me a kiss."

"No. Bye."

Ah, all that studied frigidity. How can you not love her?
.

Hello, I Love You, Won't You Tell Me Your Name

You painted me, and I sat quite still.
- The Sundays

There seems to be an incalculable force at work here, some demigod with abstruse eyes and a voice that sounds like it's always on the verge of spilling over into laughter. I don't know what it is, exactly, but that force is causing at least 70 percent of my friends and acquaintances to call me a name that isn't even mine. At least, not technically. If we're going to be rigorous about things, I go by only two names: my real name, which is Charisse-Fuschia Arriba Paderna, and my nickname, which is plain old Peachy.

If there is such a demigod slinking about behind the scenes, though, he's been responsible for all these people kissing me on the cheek and trading high-fives with me in a demonstration of bonhomie, and then finally calling me Pechay. Pechay. Not Peachy, but Pechay. Not the fruit, but the vegetable with broad, emerald leaves. As in that common thing that sprouts from a layer of dung-enriched soil and is harvested so it can be sold at your local market, where a bunch of the stuff can be bought cheap so your Dad or your Mom or your household help can fling it into a greased wok with onions and garlic and ginger and cubes of tofu, and then serve it in all its leafy, steaming glory right under your waiting nose.

Crunch, crunch.

I don't get it, I really don't. For some reason, people seem to switch almost imperceptibly from Peachy to Pechay, without so much as a premonitory gesture. I've noticed, though, that the switch usually occurs at that point in our acquaintance where they feel like we can stop pretending that I'm respectable. Because face it, whatever credibility I've managed to hoard while growing up has been lost, lost, irrevocably so! It's all been fed to the hogs, like left-over pechay!

I'm sorry, the simile was winking so persistently at me, I couldn't resist abusing it.

But let's go back to the subject at hand. If you're thinking that this is a recent phenomenon, you're dead wrong, like dead pechay. Okay, I won't do that again, promise, no more bad similes. Anyway, you're wrong. This sort of thing has plagued me as far back as that summer when I was six years old, rollicking down the neighborhood's narrow streets with the other kids, riding our bikes and playing hide-and-seek or squealing through this dumb game we made up ourselves called Shark Shark.

That's around the first time one of the kids called me Pechay, and he laughed so hard at the discovery of his own unbridled wit, I was quite sure he was going to choke on his own tongue. Which he did not, unfortunately. More unfortunately, however, the other kids caught on to the jeering as though it were a case of mumps, and I was cowed back to the safety of our house by a full clutch of neighborhood kids chanting Pechay, Pechay while a few others haw-hawed in the background.

What poleaxed my six-year old heart the most, what snuffed out all my illusions about justice and parity wasn't just the fact that the boy who started it didn't choke on his own tongue. Oh, no. What destroyed me was the fact that his name was Lep-Lep, Lep-Lep for crying out loud, and wasn't that an infinitely bigger laugh than what Peachy and all its possible permutations could ever be? I mean, holy shit, Lep-Lep? As in, leper? Like, kess my leps? Lepsteck? And why was I on trial here, when the other kids' names stank worse than mine? What about Tata and Bibing and Wapol?? My name wasn't even Pechay, it was Peachy. Haw haw yourselves, goddammit.

The name asserted itself through time, refusing to be eroded away by the procession of years. Since that summer of my childhood, though, a callus seems to have formed where Pechay kept on rubbing itself against. The name no longer hurts or offends, but I feel strangely divorced from it, no matter how many times the name has been appended to my person.

What I find intriguing, though, is the barefaced universality of it among my friends. I have friends from different circles who have never laid eyes on each other, and yet share the identical desire to label me as a green leafy vegetable. I've done a little investigating, too, in an effort to wring out a logical explanation for the switcheroo, to bridge that trench opening up between Peachy and Pechay. How does one get from Point A to Point B?

"So, I got a question. It's just that, you know, I do get around to wondering why most of you guys call me Pechay. Why? Why??"

"Because you're Pechay! You're such a...a Pechay!"

"All right, wait – is this something you actually agree to do among yourselves, like, Oh, let's start calling her Pechay instead of Peachy?"

Some head scratching. "Uh, no, we just somehow get around to calling you that, it just kind of pops out."

"But I don't like Pechay! Why can't you just call me Peachy?"

"But we can't stop just like that!"

"Yeah, but Pechay sounds so tacky! I'm not tacky," I'd say, stamping my foot.

"Of course you aren't tacky. It's just something that we end up calling you, that's all. Wanna have some beer?"

"Orright, let's go!!"

Obviously, not a lot of investigating gets done in the end. I'm beginning to suspect, however, that it all boils down to the fundamental question of my alleged personality, which is also allegedly incongruous with the alleged traits espoused by the name Peachy. I can no longer count the number of times I've been told that I don't seem like a Peachy, that Peachy somehow doesn't fit. Bruce said it himself when he recalls the first time I hung out with them. My name had been mentioned by Camille a number of times in the past, and Bruce was expecting to be introduced to a sweet-faced giggling thing with fluff for brains. Instead, he found himself shaking hands with a wild-haired, beer-guzzling girl who swore like a sailor and – had fluff for brains. At least he got that detail right.

Some anonymous, sweet-faced girl. No amount of plastic surgery
can give me that kind of face.

While I'd like to humor myself and think that I am a Peachy, that I am, indeed, peachy, rosy and fragrant and lovely when ripe, the consensus seems to be that I am not, nosirree. I am, apparently, green when right for the picking, and I grow directly from earth that the wise farmer has scattered shit upon. There's an acrid bite to my leaves when you chew too intently on them, and when I become part of the left-overs, I will naturally be fed to the hogs.

But I give you vitamins and I am packed with fibre. Which encourages bowel movement. Which you so need now, when the only things you seem to digest are burgers and chips and your own inexhaustible regret.

I am supposed to be good for you. I've been told that.
.

Be Happy Be Arbitrary Part IV:

Elaine's coming over on Tuesday.

My sister and I are cleaning up the flat, finally.

I'm coming home for Christmas.

My sister isn't.

Let's talk about disbelief.

Can you let hatred radiate across a city so it reaches its intended target?

No, no, not radiate, more like shoot, much like a laser beam would.

Or the way a balled fist shoots out into the air.

Let's talk about belief.

No, no, let's talk about disbelief. Disbelief is easier.

I slept the entire day Saturday. It was midnight when I woke up.

There's this chapter in Oscar and Lucinda that murders me every time I read it.

I drank six cups of coffee right after waking up and my hands moved nervously for the rest of the morning.

An ant bit me on the arm and I had to kill it.

Disbelief is comfortable.
.

Test My Tether

Hair is gray, and the fires are burning.
So many dreams on the shelf.
He said, "I wanted you to be proud of me."
I always wanted that myself.
- Tori Amos

The days moved as if through sludge in those months I spent in Davao, a second Leave of Absence hefted upon my school record and time rolling out in front of me like some infinite, blank scroll waiting to be written on. The afternoons were laziest of all. The sunlight would come cascading to the backyard until everything seemed to be covered in molten gold, and the dogs, Coco and Nugget, would either be loping around in a half-drunken fashion or napping by the back door until sundown.

Sometimes I'd play with them, the three of us racing around the perimeter of the house. The game often started in the backyard; I would stand around innocently while they sniffed the air, suspecting something, and then I'd break into a sprint, the both of them catching up and yapping wildly, their forms like little whirlwinds tossing around my legs. They were mad about that game, those dogs. We usually ended it at the backyard, at that area with the bermuda grass spread out over it, and I would lie down while Coco and Nugget panted noisily nearby. I lay down even if the grass felt itchy through my shirt, even if there was dog shit some yards away stinking up the air.

Other than that, there wasn't much to do except curl up in bed, on the living room sofa, on the floor, anywhere – curl up with a book or with the television and its relentless stream of entertainment and information. A cartoon here, a sitcom there, and then a documentary featuring leopards. I loved leopards the best. I would watch leopard documentaries for hours; I loved the way they arched their backs right before springing up to a tree branch overhead. I loved their massive, feral bodies, all sinew and spotted pelt, the way they carved out stubborn, solitary lives.

Mom had scores of recipe books stacked in various areas in the house, and I thumbed through each of them until the urge to whip up something would overrun me and I would heave out the giant Kitchen Aid mixer and all the bowls and spatulas, I would take out the tubs of flour and brown sugar from the shelves and leave the sticks of butter softening on a white saucer.

I made Choc-Oat Chip cookies to die for. I made them so that handfuls of chocolate chips were folded generously into the batter, the walnuts chopped coarsely so there were huge chunks of it in every dollop of cookie dough. I made the cookies large and soft and buttery. I made them so that they surrendered to your mouth.

Dad would come home and find a tray of the cookies cooling on a rack, and he would take one and chew on it thoughtfully, nodding his head. "That was the best cookie I have ever tasted," he'd pronounce grandly. I would grin at him whenever he said this, because he said this of every single cookie I made. He and I would go grocery shopping for more ingredients, bags of Toll House chocolate chips and large cans of Diamond walnuts and small sacks of flour. "You have to make more, four more dozens, maybe," he'd say, pushing the shopping cart purposefully.

We would run into his friends in the grocery, and he would brag to them about the cookies while I stood fidgeting in quiet mortification. "She makes very good cookies. We're buying ingredients, in fact. You should order a dozen from her." And they would, they would order a dozen until I had orders piled up high to the ceiling. These people usually started out asking for a single dozen – later, they'd call up the house and ask for four dozens. Sometimes six. It was crazy.

At night, I would go out from my bedroom to get a glass of water and catch Dad sneaking out a cookie from the container, crumbs of an already-eaten cookie flecked on his chin. "I like to munch on them while I'm watching TV," he'd say quickly. The television wasn't even turned on.

I would kiss him on the cheek and go back to bed and read some more before turning in for the night. The crickets sang loudest outside my room, so much music coaxed out from a pair of wings and friction. I haven't yet found a better lullaby.
.

It's Burning On The Road

But don't forget the songs that made you cry
And the songs that saved your life.
Yes, you're older now, and you're a clever swine,
But they were the only ones that ever stood by you.
- The Smiths

Birthday week's spiralling down to its end, and it's been – as I've mentioned to anxious friends – one of the best that I've seen in recent years. Not because the 5th of November was welcomed with a huge party, limitless alcohol, a giant cake with the surprise of a male stripper crouched inside, oh, nothing like that. And although I wouldn't object to such a celebration – that male stripper would've made for a lot of laughs – my 24th birthday was fun enough, with friends treating me out to seafood and beer, not to mention a tiny cake from AMCI friends, plus a poetry reading and more beer capping off the day.

And then, of course, there was half a day and steak with Jose, which is always a foolproof formula for a wonderful time.

Slouching outside Purple Haze while waiting for Mahal's gig, ending the Birthday Week with Obbie and Abbey. Photo courtesy of Obbie.

The only fact that could've caused a dent in the whole thing was the Delayed Pay Check, a development which is never acceptable nor welcome in any given universe or solar system. I'll bet even one-eyed, slime-cloaked extraterrestrials would throw a fit if they didn't get their checks on the appointed date – because, really, no matter how indifferent you claim to be where fiscal shit is concerned, you have to concede that having an empty wallet is definitely no fun.

Still, it's all been great. Light years better than last year's birthday, to be frank. Even Carlo remembers what a wet blanket I was, what with that panic attack giving me a good wallop in the morning and ruining my mood for the rest of the day. I may have been asking for it, though – days before my birthday, I would stay up at night and worry about what I was doing with myself, where I was headed for, if I was at all headed for anything. That sad, needless slurry of anxiety that twenty-something folks like to dunk themselves into.

While I'm not saying that I now avoid those questions altogether, the last year has been all about going over those same concerns without obsessing over them, or finding the tragedy where there was none, or conjuring new monsters because it was a habit you couldn't resist catering to. What I'm saying is that I am now a better person because I've been paying a lot of attention to what Oprah and Dr. Phil have to say, and I bought myself a copy of The Secret and found a real wellspring of hope in it, and I've recently decided to give up beer in favor of knitting reindeer-themed sweaters for all of my friends.

I'M KIDDING.

I actually haven't made a lot of progress. I still have a filthy imagination, I still swear a lot, my moral self is in shreds (if it was there to begin with), and I lie to Dad about going to Mass. But I'm quite proud of how far I've gone in the last 12 months; at the very, very least, I can wriggle my ears now. Unassisted. I am that cool.

-----

Peachy: I got a question for you.
Ate Monique: What.
Peachy: Suppose that you had a pet lobster –
Ate Monique: I would never keep a lobster as a pet!
Peachy: Okay, all right, but what if all the lobsters in the world had been wiped out, and you were asked to take care of this one remaining lobster while the rest of the scientific community looked for a mate for it? So supposing you had this lobster, right –
Ate Monique: Okay.
Peachy: What name will you give it?
Ate Monique: Um, I don't know. Why?
Peachy: I'd probably name it Freddie.
Ate Monique: Freddie? Well, actually, yeah, that would be a good name for a lobster.
Peachy: Isn't it?? Isn't it perfect? Doesn't a lobster look so much like a Freddie? Can you imagine it inside its aquariu--
Ate Monique: Wait a minute, why am I even talking to you about this??
Peachy: I have no idea.
.

A Case Of Do Or Die

When we look back at it all,
As I know we will,
You and me, wide-eyed.
I wonder, will we really remember
How it feels to be this alive?
And I know we have to go,
I realize we only get to stay so long.
We always have to go back
To real lives, where we belong.
- The Cure

For the last four months, I and some 30 other people submitted ourselves to what, in countless ways, seemed to be a demonstration of actual dementia. I can't understand now how we all managed it, how we blazed through the Makati traffic every Wednesday night in our running shoes, sweating it out just when everybody else was trudging back home; how we were able to rouse ourselves awake every Sunday morning to run all along Fort Bonifacio and to grunt through set after set of insufferable ramps. I think of all the kilometers we'd sprinted through, or all the mountains we'd so far scaled, and I can't resist shaking my head at it all. It was crazy. No doubt about that.

But, well – it's all done now, and we wrapped up the Basic Mountaineering Course with our Induction Climb in Mt. Kalatungan, Bukidnon, a five-day, high-altitude hike that brought us to the very summit of the sixth highest peak in the Philippines. It was, by and large, the best climb I have ever been on, chiefly because the mountain bore with it an undeniable air of secrecy, as though walking down its half-concealed trails was proximate to plumbing for the answers to very dark, somber questions like Will I be able to take a dump somewhere down this path because my colon feels massive now?

Or, when you are blessed with bad eyesight the way that I am, you can be speeding up the trail with your 50-pound pack on your back, gloating over your supposed agility and much-improved reflexes. You feel like Samson! Which is definitely apropos, because Samson had long hair, and so do you!!! Your pace seems much like flight itself, and you're going at it so that the features of the trail become smudged together like some piece of impressionist art. You're about to thank your own nearsightedness for making everything seem so dreamlike when POW! you ram your left thigh right into a small tree trunk, something which your eyes did not pick out from the shadows. The pain is incredible, you double over from it, and your nerve endings are braying out their protests like a herd of beleaguered cows. Moooo, they say, you idiot, we told you it was time to get contact lenses!

But since I couldn't get contact lenses at 2,000 meters above sea level, the same dumb accident happened to me at least two more times on my way to the summit. As I type, I can see a family of livid, purple bruises peeking out from my shorts, and I've grossed out friends and officemates alike by showing them off. Reactions have ranged from the horrified, awe-struck Oh my god to genuine disgust, with people covering their eyes and making gagging sounds.

Honestly, people shouldn't be so damn sensitive.

But let's talk about the mountain. Mt. Kalatungan, while not as wildly popular as nearby Mt. Kitanlad, was perhaps more beautiful, primarily because not as many trekkers usually venture over its body. The trails had a somewhat robust look to them, with the plantlife creeping in from the sides to prevent the paths from widening any further than they should.

Most breath-stopping, however, were the large sections of mossy forests sprawling down the mountainsides. I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill moss here, the kind you see on the walls of derelict buildings, although we certainly still found the same type at different points in our trek. What I'm speaking of, really, are the varieties you will see only in tropical rainforests such as those rooted in Kalatungan, mosses of a wraithlike green, dangling off in whispering tassels from branches overhead, embracing the trunks of stolid trees, beds of them carpeting the damp earth. Walking through these stretches of terrain was like intruding into a place so sacrosanct, precisely because they were far-removed from the filth and artifices of daily, urban living. As we made our way down one mossy forest, Mau Alcazar, one of the senior members, remarked that it felt like we were suspended in some fairy tale, and we all had to agree with him. If there had been a forest spurring on the imagination of the Brothers Grimm, it must have been close to what Kalatungan's mossy forests looked like.

However pleasant most of the climb had been, it wasn't without its difficulties, most bullheaded of which was the cold. As was expected of high-altitude climbs, the chill came at us in a stealthy march, and the higher we went, the more pervasive it became. The cold was something we'd come armed for, but by evening, the temperature had dropped to such a frigid degree that we all found ourselves cocooned in fleece jackets and multiple layers of clothing, shivering and cursing at the icy wind hissing through the trees.

The situation was compounded by the rain, which visited us nightly and seeped through our small tent, whose waterproofing was shot and rather hopeless. Small puddles of rainwater collected on the belly of my sleeping bag, and I was turning paranoid with such macabre thoughts as the possibility of hypothermia; I imagined myself a stiff corpse, blue-lipped and empty eyed, my tentmates shrieking at the discovery of my motionless body, weeping friends and relatives, pancit and pusoy dos and Coke making the rounds during my funeral, which would most probably be on a sunny day, I thought, and they should play Don't Change Your Plans by Ben Folds Five when they're scattering my ashes over the ocean, I do love that song to pieces, it's such a tender, tragic tune, so pretty, yakkety yakkety, and the train of thought would go on until nothing else but exhaustion drove me to consummate sleep.

And then hours later, I'd wake to my skin warming and the sun glimmering through the foliage, and I had never felt as exultant as when I'd zip open our tent and find the dew forming shyly on my sandals, my own blood quickening from beneath my flesh, the heat piping down to the tips of my fingers and toes. Oh, there it finally is, I'd think. The world once again offering you its open hand, the way it always has and will, its surprising friendship without fail or demand.
.

Send The Chairs And Lamps All Scattering

And I'm brain-dead, I keep smiling.
- The Beta Band

October is proving to be the most recalcitrant month of the year, proceeding the way an impossible two-year old kid would, running around in wild zigzags and foiling all your attempts at capturing him. I can't recall missing as many hours of sleep in such a concentrated period, and the last time I let the stress score one over me was – well, in college. Now, my days are frighteningly predictable – I can hear the deadlines snarling away at me even before I get to my cubicle in the morning, way before I snap open my Inbox to check for new messages, updates, new assignments. Perhaps a message from some hotshot lawyer telling me that a rich, distant relative has died and named me the sole beneficiary of his sprawling estate, how about that, such a lucky lucky girl I've turned out to be!! Such good fortune, oh my god, can you belie--

Forget it, I don't have any rich, distant relatives anyway. And hotshot lawyers can't be expected to bear good news. And I want to have a donut right now, a Boston Kreme from Dunkin Donuts, all warm and yielding and sweet.

Wow, that was incoherent, even by my standards! Good job, Peachy. Oh yeah.

-----

Well, a number of folks have pointed out to me that this blog hasn't seen a new post in quite some time, and you're going to have to excuse me for that. I am not kidding when I say that this month is insane, this month should be bound up in a straitjacket and herded into the nearest sanatorium, it is a threat to society!

Look, work-related deadlines normally don't get to me this much, but work isn't the only thing I've been fretting about; since October reared its ugly head into the scene, I've been hounded by a slew of requirements for the Basic Mountaineering Course (BMC): the Orienteering make-up exams, the Red Cross Basic First Aid training, and the 15-kilometer run, among others. While I have all three cleanly out of the way, I still have Thursday's Interview to go through before I can properly qualify for the Induction Climb, which we're already planning obsessively for.

I'm getting the inaccurate, apocalyptic feeling that all this madness will never end. But it'll be over in a while. I have to trust that if I intend to remain functional. HOLY SHIT MY RIGHT HAND FELL OFF! Just kidding.

Hiya, Thing.

-----

So around two weeks ago, during a particularly oppressive week in the office, I stood up from my seat in my cubicle and tottered over to the washroom, hoping to rest my eyes for a minute or two. I hadn't gotten much sleep in the previous night, and by the time 2:00 rolled in, I was all set to fall into a coma, lovely and all-engulfing.

You're probably recoiling and thinking, Sleep in the bathroom?? Eeeww. But wait!! Because, look here, you haven't yet seen our office's washroom. It is a beauty, a real piece of work - or at least it is, as far as office bathrooms go. It's almost always kept immaculate, and the cleaning lady sees to it every night and makes sure it's spotless. And the tiles are all in this charming, dark shade of red, and the chrome bathroom fixtures wink at you when you flick open the light, and the toilet bowl always flushes in this agreeable, comely way. It's a peach of a bathroom, I swear to god.

Flush it all away, go!

Anyway, the plan was to sit in the corner with my knees drawn up to my chest and my back resting against the wall while napping for a few minutes. I'd done it before and pulled the stunt off without a hitch, so I was pretty confident about the whole enterprise; anyway, all I really needed was to close my eyes for just a few minutes. God, that feels so good, don't you just love catnaps, hmmm? Delicious, absolutely deliciousdsdgfl;ansd;f;askd;kwfkwdadlfkandfasdfddfjurwrwo--

--and the next thing I knew, somebody was bent over me, shaking me awake. "Peachy? Peach?"

I cracked open my eyes, blinked for a few moments, then shot up from the floor. "Huh-- um, ah, wow, oh my god, I'm so sorry, shit, I totally fell asleep, oh god, oh shit--"

"Um, okay ka lang?" It took me a second or two before I finally recognized Tin, one of the girls from the IT department. She had in one hand a set of keys, and she was looking at me curiously.

"Ah, yeah, I am. God, I'm so sorry, were you waiting a long time?" I stammered out.

"Mga 30 minutes. Tulog na tulog ka ah." She said, smiling.

It didn't take long before the entire office learned about it, and since then, I've been the butt of jokes, the sitting duck looking right at the end of a rifle barrel. Later, I learned that while I'd been knocked out on the bathroom floor for at least half an hour, folks had been trying without success to open the door, knocking on it fiercely to make sure that nobody was inside. And since they got no response, the only recourse left was to ask for the spare key from the Boss, and when they opened the door, voila! Peachy prostrate on the floor, drool curving down her chin. Quite a fetching sight, really.

People here haven't shown any signs of letting the incident pass, so when I'm making my way to the bathroom, they start grinning and saying stuff like, "Oy, huwag kang matulog, ha?" Or "Naku, baka inaantok ka nanaman." Or something like that. One of the guys even told me that they've reserved an award for me, which I should be receiving in one of the office's future parties. The Sleeping Beauty Award. I mean, WOW, I am touched, all this concern is just warming the cockles of my heart, you know? I have never felt more loved in my entire life, no shit.

Honestly, the situations I get myself into.
.

With Mind Bullets!

I am not afraid, I can hardly wait.
- The Juliana Hatfield Three

Stuff You Gotta Do Before You Croak
1. Go bungee jumping.
2. Have a room in your house where every wall is lined with books from the ceiling to the floor. Not an inch of space spared.
3. Ride the most awesome roller coaster, wherever that'll be by 2030.
4. Establish contact with extraterrestrial life forms.
5. Walk from Ortigas Center to Katipunan Avenue. Alone.

So, then. Walk from Ortigas Center to Katipunan Avenue. Alone.

Check.

Now I know that I can whip out some pretty watertight lies if I wanted to, and that I tend to kid around a lot, but this time, I am dead serious. I am so dead serious, I can feel myself decomposing on account of the sheer power of my own seriousness. I AM SERIOUS! I AM REALLY SERIOUS!

I did walk from Ortigas Center to Katipunan Avenue last night. Alone! From 9:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.! With the cars zipping past me and the smoke from the tailpipes hovering dumb in their wake!

All right, since we're in a serious mood – since I'm in a serious mood – I'm going to talk about how it all began. It all began last May, when the notion to walk all the way home from Ortigas began to grow tentative shoots in my head until the concept itself hardened into a mighty tree trunk, stout branches, heavy globed fruit. And the idea persisted all these months, but I kept on dismissing it and furnishing excuses for myself, most of which were pretty valid.

For instance: you can't walk the entire distance between Pasig City's business kernel and Quezon City's university area if you're wearing a skirt, particularly if said skirt happens to end in any region above your knees. Which is the case with most of my skirts. Also: if, by any chance, you are wearing three-inch leather pumps, you are dead meat. You are carrion and the hyenas will slink out of the roadside bushes to rip you apart.

Those hee-hee-Hyenas.

So the feat demands the satisfaction of certain conditions.

1. Be certain that you are at your frumpiest state so that drugged-up perverts will find you a questionable target. Not that drugged-up perverts will care if you look like shit, but you're pretty much inviting trouble if you execute the act while you're dressed to the nines. Bad idea. The trick is to look as though you're too poor to subsist on anything but bread and water.
2. Be certain that there is nothing else you want to do but walk all the way home. The impulse should grip you by the throat and refuse to let go.
3. Be certain that no other true options exist, and that you can't commute home because you were an absolute bonehead and you forgot to withdraw money from your passbook account while the banks were still open and you have no cash at all and are too proud to borrow money from your officemates.

That is exactly what happened. Monday found me looking like a wart with arms and legs, a dowdy wart masquerading as an office employee in Ortigas Center. Peachy the Wart. I'd also forgotten to withdraw money from my passbook account and was too concerned about my ego to borrow a few bucks from officemates. And for some reason, hiking back to Katipunan seemed like a ridiculously good idea, a brilliant opportunity I would be a fool to turn away from.

At exactly 9:30, I began walking from our office building, wove my way through the sparse traffic and over to Meralco Avenue, then up the Valle Verde area. I'd already decided to forgo EDSA altogether and picked the White Plains route for the sake of efficiency. So there I was, hurrying energetically down the sidewalk, coasting along on my feet with the rhythm of omnipotence thrumming rich beneath my skin.

I climbed up to the long stretch of road between Valle Verde and White Plains, where Corinthian Gardens sat smugly and the houses rose from the ground with their forbidding faces. A few cars roared by while the streetlamps gasped out their slow, feeble light. The night crept on further in its menacing pace, the darkness a hungry animal with jaws swung wide open.

Isn't this fun? Hehe. Wait till Ate Monique finds out that you walked all the way fr--

Shit, I'm getting scared.

Shut up.

Okay, seriously, this is getting scary. Is anybody following me? Fuck!

Nobody's following you. You believe in the basic goodness of people.

Basic goodness my ass, what if somebody leaps out from behind that tree with an ice pick and asks for my wallet and my cellphone??

You don't have any money. And you don't have a cellphone, you dolt.

OH MY GOD, HE'S GOING TO KILL ME BECAUSE I'M POOR!

He won't! Nobody's there! All right. Listen. You believe in the basic goodness of people.

I believe in the basic goodness of people. I believe in the basic goodness of people. I believe in the basic goodness of people. Oh dear God, if you're there at all, pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleas--

Calm down.

All right. Okay.

Good girl.

But then the busy artery that led from White Plains to Katipunan Extension took me into its stream, and a gale of relief swept me up and carried me down to where the flyover dipped its concrete head into Katipunan Avenue. I was almost hysterical with happiness, snickering to myself as I made my way down to Aurora Boulevard, feeling lightheaded under the sodium lamps.

It was already 11 when I swaggered up the apartment building and swung open the door to our flat with a triumphant flourish. Ate Monique, who lay curled up in bed, stirred from sleep and frowned against the light.

"Turn off the light," she grunted.

"Guess what!" I said, stretching my arms up for effect. "I just walked all the way from Ortigas! Swear to god!"

"What? "

"Yeah!!!"

"WHY??"

"Well, I, ah, felt like it. You know, for kicks. And, ah, I didn't have any money, I forgot to withdraw from the bank—"

"That's just stupid. " She drew the blanket up to her neck and shut her eyes. "You gotta plan your day and make sure you withdraw early enough before the banks close. What if anything happened to you yakkety yakkety yakkety mumble mumble."

All right, forget it. Don't listen to my sister, even if she has a point. I mean, holy damn! How many folks do you know have walked all the way from Ortigas to Katipunan by their lone selves? I'm ready to bet that nobody in my immediate circle has even come close to doing that. Nobody! I know I've done a lot of foolhardy things in my life, oh, I've lost count of them, and maybe this takes the cake, maybe I was stupid, but look! I do not have an ice pick lodged between my ribs. I am still in one piece. Unassailably so.

Away with you, Ice Pick.

Is anybody willing to take me up on that bet? At stake is fifty pesos. Which is just about enough for an FX ride from Megamall to Katipunan! Because honestly – the whole excursion was a huge thrill, but I have never been so fucking scared in my entire life. And I am not doing that shit again, unless I run out of money once more and fall victim to my own sense of bravado. Tangina.
.