Dear Austin

From and To Deus-Ex-Macchina-Flags: From and To a Happy Monday

May 20, 2008 5:09 pm – 8:43 pm

I see flags and if I don’t know I wonder who?

So, you found me.

I wonder how and why.

You know that about me--- my mania for passive omniscience, to keep track of my sign posts as always. We can’t have all our intertwining worlds going absurd anymore, can we?

It is you, isn’t it?

The you in the who reveals itself in time anyway.

Like last night a Maple-leaf-flag had revealed “It was I” when it told me that it knew about the My-Unholy-Marriage-With-Satan project. I found that flag when I was in Kuala Lumpur. (Or was I in Singapore?)

I asked the flag, “How come you know about that?”

The flag said, “I read blogs and my sister told me You’ve got to see this.”

What the flag saw and read was my calling it a robotic butcher.

I asked, “Did I offend you?”

The flag laughed, “It was true enough.”

I laughed, “It’s just business, this business of criticism. We all have to do more of it. Funny thing is that people think that when you write you can’t be a critic. Ever thought that a creative work might be the critique itself?”

The flag and I talked. It had asked me if “nakainom ka na ba?” because I was talking to it.

I exclaimed, “Why? Do I reek of booze?!”

“No, no,” but the flag said it usually takes booze for these things like someone talking to it to happen.

I laughed, “I really wanted to talk to you even before but it just wasn’t the time. You were busy talking to someone anyway.”

I liked talking to the flag--- it was very intelligent and eloquent, considering that the flag was more of a listener than a talker. I like it when the listener talks. All listeners should be made to talk and they deserve to be heard. The listeners would never say anything silly even when they’re being whimsical.

I told the flag, “25? You’re too young to be that oh-so-serious! Have fun! Loosen up! Get laid you academic stud! I would like to read a story from you that’s so different from all that you’ve written before. Because you already have the damn language and craft for stories but I want to see one of your stories POP OUT. And hot damn you’re funny!”

The flag was funny when it said, “I don’t know if Mr. Butch Dalisay was giving me a back-handed compliment when he said this about me.” Then it showed me a book and pointed to a blurb about itself.

This was likening the flag to Charlson Ong's flag.

I laughed, “I think it was a compliment but I can see why you would feel that way.”

The younger ones mostly find Ong’s flag boring.

We talked more and laughed more.

The flag said, “But I’m really so nerdy!”

You know that about me---- I find the nerds sexy.

These are intrinsic requirements for any intercourse with me: intelligence and eloquence. Really, what the hell am I going to do with someone whom I find stupid therefore boring? And I’ve already had more than my share of talking to pretty boys and bad boys in elementary and high school and freshman-college who had pre-school communication skills.

Weird, that’s what my sister Egg fondly says of my taste in people.

Anyway, maybe I was wrong about that flag or this flag.

It is you, isn’t it?

Well, then, I break five years of silence here.

You know that about me, that I could talk and listen and chatter and shatter with my silence---

I heard last night from Saint Diego that you will stay there for a little more while before you return here. Saint Diego sure can sing Jeff Buckley and hallelujah! I’m liking more and more Saint Diego’s recent poetry and it’s something that made me hail “YabadooWap!”

I heard one night years ago that you returned here for a while.

I had asked about how you were.

Austin’s good, they said and I was asked that night if I wanted to see you.

I said, “Not yet. I know it’s been years but it still seemed like yesterday to me.” I was still hurting because of what happened to us, our friendship. I would even sometimes get angry when I would remember, then, but I never hated you.

I saw one night years ago a picture of you, somewhere, I don’t remember where--- your eyes looked sad there, older--- you had cut your hair. Is it back to being long now?

I’m trying to grow my Red-Brown-Mahogany hair long. (I’m thinking of having it streaked with platinum.) It has reached my chin and covered my nape—almost--- with all of its uneven strands. Sometimes it tickles. Most of the time it makes my chin and nape and cheeks itchy.

Then I think of cutting it to a faux-hawk.

Maybe I will one of these days but I’m keeping my dream alive of having long-Pocahontas-to-my-ass-hair for now. Even if I don’t know how to grow or what to do with long hair. Besides, it makes my face look softer and makes it easier for me to blend in crowds.

I was young and you were younger and we were all playing our games.

I was cruel to you, wasn’t I?

I shake my head now.

It’s done.

I don’t play badminton anymore.

That has always been exclusive to you ever since you took me for a whipping in Valle Verde Country Club. I hated it that those old and fat men could make me scramble with a drop of the damn bird. I had liked watching your form though--- so macho-butch-dude--- and it spoke of training.

I played once though a year or so after with Joey, my brother and Jamie Rivera in Club Filipino. I had stumbled from a scramble again and I remembered you.

The singer worriedly asked, “Are you ok?”

The way you did.

I stood, wanting to cry but I just smiled, “Yeah” and muttered, “Goddamn shoes with laces.”

I remember that I cracked my toenail from badminton with you.

You were supposed to take me to the parlor near your house to get it fixed after but we were just too tired and there were other things to be done. I remember that we took our showers in your house.

I had heckled, “Unless we’re taking a shower together?”

You laughed, “Dude, we’re not that close!”

Showers together have only been shared with three loves anyway.

I was too sore and tired that night that I remember after leaving your house and going straight to Big Sky to meet Joachim: I could not even drink.

I said to him, “I’m so sleepy. Going home.”

That night was one of the most peaceful sleep I had in 23 years.

Are you still making films?

I always thought, Yeah, my wedding film is set. You’re going to do it.

And Joachim would take care of the pictures. He said last night that I talk more about the things that would surely have gotten people killed with my bitch-blast if they even dared to ask me about them. He likes the open-vibe I have nowadays.

I told him last night when we talked about lost friends that things would never return to the way they were before but we have now and time to move on.

I told him, “Anyone can say what they want about my found and lost and found friends and I will listen but leave my friendship with them alone.”

Year after year there is more of peace and we can all begin.

I told him that I dreamt of you last Sunday night.

The wind brought you to me, too.

Oh, there’s this one filmmaker whom I want you to meet: John Torres.

He’s Joey’s batchmate in Ateneo and I’m beginning to like more and more of his stuff.

I love his voice.

I laughingly said to him last night, “Dude, when I hear your voice I think of the movie Virgin Suicides and ang sarap mag-suicide sa boses mo in the background! O di ba? Pamatay talaga ang boses mo!”

I want to write something that he would read aloud, something for him, a gift, and he can do whatever he wants with it after he has read it. I like the man’s vibe: easy and kind and light.

Actually, I found this elegy that Joey wrote for his grandfather and I can hear John’s voice reading it.

I want to write something that you can make into a short film…

I already did.

It’s called “Blink, Wake Up”.

I thought of how you will put it in film while I was writing it so that I write a short film through a short story.

Unless you want to do a bronzed and beautiful zombie movie set in Boracay?

Or this homage to Rashomon but it’s a whodunit-castration? I received this from Elena last night, “Just heard on d news, a live-in couple, d guy forced the woman to have sex even if she didn’t want to because she has her period. For that she got a kitchen knife and cut off his penis. Now she’s d one going to jail for body mutilation. And they call it justice. WTF?! And oh, she flushed his penis down the toilet. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Or how about a first date that lasts forever with a dead man in a gasoline station with Poe’s If you were here in the background?

Or maybe this one story that I’m writing.

This reminds me of the old man (you remember him?) and a gift he gave me the other night.

He said, “I have a story line for you. I keep a glass jar where I stuff in everything I refuse to throw away. Every now and then I open the glass jar. Check out what isn’t in it.”

I had replied, “Yeah. You have several of my clips in there. I suppose you use them on your hair, too.”

He laughed.

I saw two or three of them in that glass jar when I borrowed a pencil from inside it. I will write that story as a gift for him and the blueprint will be written with that pencil…I already gave the old man my “Black Hole” poem and he’s been re-making it into a song. It’s a birthday gift for me, he said, and that I will bloody sing it.

I said to him, “Sing it?! What?!”

He laughed then later said, “It’s a very technical piece. You have to get your voice trained, doll.”

I said, “Whoa…What?!”

And I believe the song has Electronica woven into it.

Jesus, why couldn’t it just be sodding Blues and not a Black Hole singing blue light?

The old man has a glass jar.

Selena has a baul.

I have locks and cans and boxes and other things.

I’m wondering what’s yours nowadays.

I still have that Starbucks magnetic toy you gave me one night. You came late because you were with your friends in Starbucks Katipunan and that you also had to leave at once. It was your “sorry”. Still, you came and it mattered. It’s in a box though, kept.

Oh, and I still hate Mulholland Drive: maybe I have to be stoned to really appreciate it.

I don’t know if I ever told you why I loved Moulin Rouge: I was stoned when I watched its premier with Pooh and Joey in Glorietta 4. I remember that people were looking at us when Pooh and I laughed so loud before it started--- when they showed this ad about faulty gasul and it blew up on the face of this person who miraculously survived it.

Sometimes when I need money and I think of asking those who owe me to pay up, I’m tempted to tell Pooh about them. You remember Pooh? And how she will always be the perfect accountant-treasurer-kubrador-hoy-walang-hiya-hiya-awa-putang-ina-mo-bayad-mo-kay-Mia-gago.

And I still want those blue but too-small shoes you wore for drinks in Moomba.

I laugh and shake my head.

What have you been doing all these years?

Did you add more daggers to the seven you have inked on your left inner wrist?

Do you still look like a chipmunk?

Did you gain weight?

Do you have someone with you who loves you?

Have you found at least a part of what you’ve been searching for?

I remember how we talked and how you held my hand.

You held my hand and guided me as I walked with a cane when I first came out of vertiginous hiatus. Then you took me to Watering Hole that night to drink. Of course I couldn’t dance on table tops anymore there the way I used to on 1999 nights because vertigo prohibited that.

Joey used to tease me by holding out bills to insert into the waistband of my skirt while I danced there that crazy year. His friend, Bob, had joined in but took out his credit card instead and deadpan, “Where would the receipt come out?”

I danced with Bob, once, in that Karport bar in The Fort years ago. He liked to do funny-silly-dance the way I do. I know I danced most of the time while sitting or walking or standing with Budoy and he’s been gone for thirteen Mondays now…

I remember your acts of love and kindness.

I remember how we waited for sunset in that bar in Eastwood and we talked and later Ahmedalla joined us. He had been wondering who and what you were and why I was spending so much time with you. I think this was when your driver used an SUV that had an 8-plate or something-government-plate. You and your driver picked me in UP.

Do you know now how to drive? I remember how you made me dance in Ipanema with Froddo. I remember how you dance. Do you still smoke like a man? I remember the trick you taught me with the Zippo. I remember that you would sneak out of your high school by hiding in the trunk of the car. Do you still have to sneak? I remember what you said on a Christmas and that Santa came for a toke with this ho-ho-ho-joke.

I had forgotten those and I remember now…

And the rest that I remembered had hurt and angered had become gray.

When I remember you now, my heart tells me that I miss you.

When you come back, please let me know.

It’s easy to find me when you know whom to ask.

You know.

I would like to see you now or then.

I never stopped loving you.

It is your flag, isn’t it?

I wish it is.