Just following a-nine-year-shrinking-program-still-running which has the maxim, “Go out, have fun, you’ll live!” Sometimes I love the shrinkers (damn fuckers).
For Jazz-the-fellow-soon-to-be-a-doctor: here’s a ride.
[And thank you to Dean Alfar for exploring and spreading CNF: symbiosis rules!]
This was supposed to be about the Happy Monday readings last June 16
but upon seeing Carldude Javier there, I squealed to him, “You’re here! Los Chupacabras is playing? Yay!” And that’s that (though I still took down notes on whatever I heard but stopped because Easy Fagela arrived and we yakked to death). Apparently I ditch poetry for the Chupa sound any day of any week. When I first saw them play in Purple Haze in
Which I can’t say for the second time I watched Ang Bandang Shirley live last June 14 because the rockstar antics of the male vocalist got in the way of the whole band’s sound. I had asked, “Is he usually that way when live? Ang kalat eh!” The consensus was: yes. Damn it, sing and work the songs with the whole band why don’t you. RESTRAINT and FOCUS the exuberance, kiddo. Umayos ka hijo, ang ayos ng tugtog ng banda eh. Kung ayaw mo, puede rin consumer-me magbayad uli ng 150 pesos na pinaghirapan para lang tsinelasin kita at ang nakikitang e(klat)mo. Anovayan.
As for singing, I watched before the above a Candy Audioline gig last June 14 and Ayn and I said, “Tangna, Selena pa rin kami.” Yeah, when you say Candy, we hear Selena’s voice. Uncle Fester introduced the vocalist to us as “…pinsan ni Lara.” Ayn and I smiled and said at the same time, “Yeah.” We know. I had quipped to Ayn, “Maglalagare ako sa gigs ngayon gabi. Mamumulubi ako nito!” Then I asked her, “Sumasayaw ka na ba nowadays?” She laughed, “Oo naman, pag reggae. Ikaw?” I laughed, “Tangna reggae talaga eh. Ako? Oo naman! Pag Britney Spears!”
That night, I also bought the new album of Ciudad. About time, it’s been too long. Justin said when he saw me, OMG! Long time no see!!! I asked him, “Where’s Mitch? I thought she’s your number one fan?” He said, Huh? But she and Quark have a band, busy with that you know. So I guess her “Death by Tampon” band is dead. And when I played Ciudad’s new album in the car last June 16, I asked Adam David, “Guess whose new album is this?” And Adam answered after a couple of beats: Ciudad? There you go: sound.
As for new bands that we should also watch, check out Disco Ball. I can’t even trace the band’s dominant influences which means their sound popped out, clean and whole. I asked Ayn, “Si Jeff ba may formal training sa drums? Wala? Tangna galing naman ng tenga and kamay niyan oh! Warrior!”
Just like that June 16 Monday when I was introduced to the drumming of the warrior-lanky-wow-TALL-MONSTER drummer and the sound of Eric Melendez PULP band “Descent” or “Dissent” (?) [Last time I heard live warrior-drumming before these two was Stella’s Notch and before then was in 2002 in
Then this was supposed to be about the Green Papaya Goodbye Readings last June 25
in Green Papaya-Maginhawa that will be soon in Kamuning. Two zombie-fellows from the recent Dumaguete workshop read that night. Lawrence mumbled his poem and M. De Leon read a flash-fiction text “The Good Girl” that was really a travelogue on Dumaguete (and the workshop) and stumbled through not-purple-patches like “warm and fuzzy feeling” which always make me think of Windi Tapawan singing “If I were a fuzzy wuzzy bear, I thank you God for giving me hair!” (Though the text could also be seen as setting anchoring and running the text.)
Yeah, write the virus away from that outer space, write on. And Pancho Villanueva’s poem that night had a very good solid start, by the way, but from the fourth line onwards it flew away and thankfully came back.
And whoever dares again to peek into my notes (left behind while I go the James) without my permission: Next time I’ll seriously fucking stab your uncouth eyes just with my pen and not even my Urban Pal. Peeking into my notes is like peeking into my journal or underwear: my vortex of evil feels violated and will likely curse you with an evil sty.
So I had read that night (thanks to a Miss Paredes and thinking of Joseph Saguid) Alfrredo Salanga’s “For Edwin Thumboo and All of Us Who Suffer Through English in
It’s a fuck-you.
After all,
“Poet,
Can verses in your language
feed me?”
“Poet,
Can verses in my language
feed me?”
Or
will your verses
remain
food for the few
I also officially miss Pocholo Goitia’s presence in the readings. [How’s the inconsiderate pooch, Poch? You know, the scout who taught me semaphore and bowline-done-with-one-hand in high school is your namesake and almost failed in teaching me da-di-di-dit.]
Anyway, the featured poet that night was Angelo Suarez. (And he and I are trying to set a date for time away from our individual whoredom to sit down and talk so that I can write about his poetics without making him appear like an idiot. Because as Carldude would usually say That ain’t right.)
“What kind of talk?” Jello asked.
I said, “Not kinky-talk or writing-tips-talk. Just talk. Curious about your brain, man.” Interesting and funny: your ek-ekphrasis among other things.
He laughed, says by the way to “visit www.ubu.com for more amazing idols!”
But I’m really writing about lesbian love minus the sex.
Well, I don’t know if you would call drunk kissing/making out/exchanging candy sex because the latter would mean that Selena and I already had sex in Millenia-Now-77. But I can’t write about that topic yet, it seems, because that’s unconfirmed history and ticking bombs, too.
I’m trying though because last Monday night I made a clown delivery of Gender Studies and all its mechanical production hoopla readings to Princess Charming. She introduced her wife and I just made them laugh and laugh.
That’s a short story: “Princess Charming and the Seven Dwarves of PMS”
[Finally! The damn block for that one eases!]
Well, I said to them, you can always go to
After I left, Princess Charming laughed, “Thanks! My wife likes you! ‘Wants’ you! Hahahahaha!”
I laughed and said, You’re welcome! Payaso ititch eh! You two take care and I’ll see you lovebirds soon!
Yes my dear boys: humor always gets the girls.
As to why some girls like me, that’s what I’ve been trying to write here, too.
After which it was off to Mogwai with Champoy and our teasing her with “You can take the girl out of Poveda but you can’t take Poveda out of the girl!”
Champoy reminded Sly, Joey and me about her ex in college who broke her heart. She said, “Mi, he really thought something was going on between you and me!” Incestuous: Preposterous. And her frat-boy-ex almost started an all-out-three-way-frat-war because of drunken-jealous-testosterone which had him poking my stomach several times with his finger in anger… A long Valentine’s ago.
Sly said, “TJ never forgave him for that, you know.” I thought, Yeah, that’s my brother all right who would say fuck you to his brothers if something bad was done by a brother to any of his sisters.
I laughed, “I couldn’t simply slap him around because that would mean more trouble for TJ and Champoy and everyone. That motherfucker didn’t even know how close he was to being gunned down. Because guess who they were warring with at that time? And if it got out that he actually laid a finger on me? And guess whose frat-night that was? So of course Scoobs was there. And Joey had already stopped Scoobs that night from getting into a fight.”
And guess what my brother and my friends would do when they were rumbling against each other? They joke with each other, “Oh sige punta tayo sa CR at magkurutan na lang tayo! Ay! Mama! Wag masakit ha? Appear! Game!”
And because I was who I am I would always get a bark for a message or a call before all testosterone-hell broke loose, “Where are you? Where’s…?
If I were in UP I was ordered to get out of the campus. If someone’s warring with someone then it was the same order plus to tell someone to get out of the campus. And Don’t argue! Move! We can’t have you running around and disturbing us! to my “No! You want me to cut class?! No! No! No! Fine! Ang mapuruhan tanga! I’m going to get a drink.” While I bit my nails through smoking and more drinking hoping that no one I love ended up comatose or dead or going to prison. Really, the others could all kill each other and die for all I cared. And it just wasn’t right if those I love ended up killing each other in a testosterone-haze.
Such a violent hormone: college testosterone.
Then Champoy said, “Di ba nga nagkasuntukan pa sila ni Pao that night?”
I sighed, wistful. Joey was teasing me one time while we were with Oso, “There are only two guys who would make Mia swoon-in-glee and one of them is ‘Hiiiiiiiiii Pao!’”
I laughed to Champoy, “Ay tangna oo nga no! Natawa lang si Pao eh kasi labo raw ng bf mo. Hay, si Batch. Paolo…Did you know that he used to take me home before?” He would also call me Cinderella because I would arrive for his house parties at midnight. That boy sure could throw parties: whatever fun you want you get.
Champoy said, “I think he was sweet on you eh!”
Hey, if you’re “batchmates” in pistols and rifles and your “batch” or “buddy” has a possessive crush on you then taking me home secretly is what you do. What he also did was to teach me how to drink beer because he said, “So that no guy would ever be able to take advantage of you because you end up drunk”. At that time I would only drink hard like gin and I couldn’t even finish a bottle of beer. Alcoholics were so proud of me when I could successfully finish two bottles of San Mig light by 2001 without vomiting.
Eleven years ago I lived in a world of guns wherein there’s this rule that if you passed out from drinking then you’re free game for kissing, licking and biting marked and signed with a pentel pen. I passed out around 2:15 a.m. and woke up at 4:40 a.m., woke up from our final induction in our pistol coach’s house into the big bad world of guns with pentel pen marks on my neck, just above my chest, below it, my waist, my back, and then just below and underneath the waistband of my jeans.
I woke up calling out Paolo’s name and he came with me to the comfort room while I tried not to be upset about the marks I couldn’t reach. He was rubbing them off with his wet handkerchief, saying “Sorry” because he was supposed to watch over me.
I forgave him: after all there were thirteen of us who were required to finish a whole San Miguel keg and he and I were the only ones really drinking. That meant drinking all that and taking the shots of whatever in behalf of our non-drinking batchmates who drank but didn’t drink therefore drunk after one hour into the drinking. I asked, “The others?”
He answered, “Erwin’s watching over them.” Then he made coffee for me and I sat limp on his lap while he hugged me. The pistol coach saw us; I had seen a mark with his name. He had been the one who had rescued me from more of drinking beer and told me to sleep in one of the rooms (with the rest of the passed out drunks). Paolo almost went crazy that night looking after and for everyone because the drunken others would wander away from the house, swerving or puking.
The coach said “Good morning!” while frowning at my sitting on Paolo’s lap.
I snarled “Fuck you!” to him as my coffee and I snuggled into Paolo’s neck which always smells good.
Paolo stayed with pistols while I shifted to Walter and C-60 rifles.
Paolo would often drink until he puked and then resume drinking. The last time I saw this was when we were with this Indonesian prince on the early morning of March 18 1998 in one of those billiards places in
(--- not during that party in Mimosa in 1999 when he would come in the room now and then to check on drugged-sleeping-me)
(--- nor the last time I saw him a year or two ago when he just nonchalantly introduced the girl with him as “Batch, si…” whom he laughingly said as his new girl but not the mother of his kid(s) and later said the mother of his kid(s) but not his wife)
---maybe because he has been drinking since he was maybe three or four. As to my so-called game (that people accuse me of hiding) in poker and billiards, that’s all his doing, too. One of these days I’ll set a billiards date for Paolo, Basha, Oso and hopefully when Howard Roark is in the country. I’ll even throw in Joel Toledo. They all play beautifully: I’m just not sure if they all want to play with each other.
And really it’s not about always winning. Most of the time it was about finding out how much losing purposely you would allow yourself before your Darwinian instinct kicks in and says “Enough!” Ever tried to purposely suck in something because you’re bored with being good at that thing? Ever tried winning just to see how people fall apart and become snarly animals because they’re losing it?
This is one way of learning that elusive thing called “composure” so that you don’t become a trigger-happy-finger-psycho when under pressure. So that you smile just when you actually want to drop to the floor and be a human helicopter of “Waaaaaaa!” And winning games have to be fun for me to really play because of the fun stakes. That’s all in the programming in my head.
A long time ago Paolo would usually say, “Batch, if I’m not in UP just call me at this number.” It was the number of Pink House, a billiards place in Katipunan. If someone female called at that place and it was for him that meant I was the caller (or whoever else was his keeper at that time). Usually it was to tell him that “my classes are done so where are we off to?” or to nag him about doing his plates in Architecture which were due for submission.
He has one of the most elegant pair of hands I’ve ever seen. Once, twice, thrice I actually saw him rush plates--- cigarette in one hand, putting it in his mouth, to stroke a straight line with the pencil without using a ruler and without thought, inhale, puff out, the cigarette back on his hand and so on… You would mistake the clean lines made by his hands for made-by-UST-Fine-Arts-hands.
Paolo got bored with being smart and said “to hell with UP”.
All these coming out nowand smart Chuck ditched me on the 21st because I can’t sleep episode.
Yeah, the hot nerd-herd-head just conked out.
I once taught someone named Chuck. I thought of writing about him and calling it “Where’s Chuck (Norris)?” By the way, Katitang just loves Chuck Norris and how Chuck Norris is so cool even Superman has Chuck Norris pajamas. And that Chuck Norris went to the
Anyway, Chuck is one of those smart ones who got tired of being smart in the classroom and thought to bring his smarts outside to make money.
Chuck thought he was a failure. Then he gave a speech in class and crying---- just crying through his speech--- happy that he was made to talk, finally achieved talking and saying that he was not a failure (just because he got kicked out of UP
I cry when I’m tired, minus the snot. But I don’t know if this one girl I taught who was bawling snot was tired or anxious or distraught. Another speech delivered through all the crying and snotting: that one was about her daughter and how much she loved her. Yeah, I told her, just love your daughter and maybe stop loving your boyfriends who are really just fuckers.
Once I made another girl cry. Her heart was broken by this guy and I asked her to read aloud Pablo Neruda’s “If you forget me”. Just an exercise on stress and intonation. She choked and ran out of the classroom, crying. Well, that’s that, I said and later, It all felt so cruel and damn that made me sad and damn if I don’t hear Madonna’s voice.
Persevere--- I said to the class after she ran out--- We all have to do what we have to do no matter how shitty we feel. Exasperated really at all that drama. The guy who broke her heart impatiently said, “Don’t be sad. Not your fault that her heart was broken.” All frozen and knee-jerk-junky babies and “You are all now growing up,” I laughed last Monday to that girl’s present boyfriend who was (also once my student) talking to me about telling the truth when drunk and corporate screw-over.
I’ve always wondered how many times a heart can be broken to be finally broken. Then cry it all out. Cry it all out, I had so many times said to so many hearts broken. And what of you? I only cry when I’m tired or made to cry which is an exercise, really, because I just can’t cry. And if you had made me cry then you’re one of the most special special. You’re special because you’re special or you’re just the meanest motherfucking special in the planet and I happen to love you.
I cried for one whole year about all those things that I never allowed myself to cry about. Then the tear ducts cried themselves dry. Onto laughing then. Then sometimes I would still cry and Egg would ask me, “What is it that you really want?”
I would answer, “What I want I cannot have. I cannot have it back.”
I once read that there’s a place where children go because the world doesn’t know what to do with them. It’s a place where they go to cry. I went there once and then left. Sometimes I want to go back there but I can’t. Sometimes I feel as if I never left.
I don’t want any child going there especially our children.
Pao-Pao would wake up her Mommy and Daddy with her writhing from stomach pain. Her Mommy said to me, “Just like you were as a kid, her toes would actually curl because of the pain. I just hug her wishing that I could take the pain away from her. Ako na lang, akin na lang yun pain.”
I (thought Damn, way too early for her but) smiled, “While hugging her, whisper to her that you’ll always be there and that you won’t die. Her Daddy will be there, her Kuya Biboy will be there,
Then I laughed to her Mommy, “Ma used to say that she would sometimes wish that her children weren’t so smart. Because look at the pain of being smart has given us.”
Onto laughing then: Biboy is off to nursery while Pao-Pao is going to college with her Mommy. When it’s time to go home she would tell her Mommy that she doesn’t want to go and wants to stay in school, in college for christ’s sake and she’s only two.
She likes striking model-poses which is almost as freaky as Dakota Fanning being so adult. She sings too and her singing is like cats-on-crack and she praises herself after with “Pao-Pao Galing!” She also demands for her notebook and pen with “Pao-Pao chulat! Chulat Pao-Pao! Galing!” even when she has already fallen asleep while writing on her notebook. I’m trying to figure out how she can pronounce the perfect –t but not –s because it comes out as –ch.
Biboy (at almost four) would tell his teachers in nursery when one of his classmates would fight with him. Then after he would call the kid(s) “Loser” or “Baduy”. He gets reprimanded by his Mommy for that but I laugh, “Yeah! That’s my boy!”
Oh yeah, his Mommy would scold me too for being too consenting to Biboy (and I get scolded all the time for reading or showing stuff to the kids that I shouldn’t like Plath’s poetry or the movie “The Descent”). My defense: the kid(s) pointed and I followed.
Yeah, Mr. Biboy is so famous that the nayari-ka-sa-workshop-ng-panelists line by last year’s fellows came from him: NANA-NANA-PATAY!
Once his Mommy sent me to the time-out-chair too because I gave him bread and water when he was on time-out for not eating/finishing his breakfast. I pleaded to his Mommy, “He cried. I gave him bread because he likes bread and he hasn’t eaten anything and water because he might get dehydrated, you know.” Not good enough so I was on time-out, too. On time-out Biboy and I are not supposed to talk to each other about the universe or play with the universe.
His Mommy and Daddy sometimes call the time-out-chair the prospect-chair. (Laugh away ye balatengga-alumnae).
And when the kids get too incorrigible, they tell me “Mana sa yo!”
I would reply, “Me? Di naman mga yan galing sa matres ko ah! Kasali ba ko sa paggawa ng mga yan?!” God was there (probably) when the kids were made (the way Janice de Belen claimed in See True to Inday Badiday when she and Aga Muhlach made a baby) but I sure wasn’t.
Before I left home to go back to
I looked at his Mommy and accused, “Did you put him up to this?!” His Mommy didn’t want me to leave as usual and would automatically tell her Kuya Joey, “Pa-gas ka na? Sige, alis ka na tapos derecho ka na
His Mommy said, “No, that’s all him.”
I picked him up and cradled him with his head on my shoulder as I carried him to the living room. I whispered to him about my job and that who will take care of Itay if I don’t go back with him or Mamay and the rest?
I said to him, “Balik naman ako uli. Be a good boy ha? Take care of Pao-Pao and
The night before we were eating dinner and Biboy suddenly said to me and his Mommy that he wanted one of my friends (whom I and we haven’t seen in a while) to be there on his birthday party. I silently swore “What the hell triggered THAT name and why the hell is it in his consciousness?” then swore then not to expose the kids ever again to friends.
I was so mad for messing up in this way that I was tempted to say to him, “Ah, that friend? Died and went to heaven” but instead I said (and let’s say it all together now), “BUSY.” And I wanted to jump around to “fuck, fuck, fuuuuuuuuuck” so yeah the house(s) and the family have been on a lock-down from my friends for a while now. Disappear from me and my adults and that’s okay with me: disappearing from my children who has seen you is not okay.
I whispered to his Mommy while I cradled and kissed Biboy’s head, “I know I love the kids all equally but he’s the first.”
Biboy is primus inter pares: first among the equals. Hot damn all the Latin seems to be coming back, including CARPE DIEM with Aoux’s ‘the past and the future are real illusions, they only exist in the present, which is what there is and all that there is’ after I greeted him and extended Katitang’s 34-Cindy-Rothrock-flicks to his nuts.
Now, who said that what I just said all happened?
Think about all the things that happened to you…
Now think about all the good things you that happened to you…
Then think about all the bad things you alone remember that happened to you…
Maybe you remember them wrongly…
Maybe you remember them the way you want to remember them…
Maybe it was just you and your head constructing reality the way you want(ed) or need(ed) it to be?
Does that make it/all real?
Which was real?
Did they really happen then (those things that made you who you are now)?
Did they really happen?
Says who? (Those people who could verify it for you? Guess what they would say?)
Says you?
Are you valid then?
Are you real?
And this whole text was brought to you by a tic-king-bomb called David Hume (Sick Killer of Reality) applied and written because bugged by request.
Yeah, killed Time, killed God, then killed Reality so guess what’s next…
Now I’m off to Friday-Night-Fun-Programming.
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