To Police The Chicken And Egg Of Dumbass

You are laughing from just enough beer and talk that took the grit off the rusty mill that is your life--- recycled news, schizoid weather, impossible bills, inhuman deadlines, mourned deaths, missed friends, messy marriages, sick children, absurd memories, the future --- these quotas. The thing that is really making you laugh was being asked, “How did you two begin?” How did all these, this love, begin eleven years ago---

Walking and laughing, you see something--- clear and it did not make sense--- for you could see the inside of the car that is parked very near the entrance of the restaurant where you just spent a good amount of your salary. You rush closer and you see that the window has been pushed whole into the backseat. Your unasked question is answered by a disbelieving roar, panicked running, frantic asking Did you see who did it, raging The laptops!

You call yourself a dumbass for thinking that the world might be safe now; that just this once (in your good citizen exhaustion) you slip and leave two laptops in the car believing that it would be safe.

You scream through the car tires towards the nearest police station in P. Tuazon but what can the cops do? They are sleeping when you come in, mumble in their awakened indifference and “We can’t say” through things. You direct them to take the fiberglass car window from the backseat--- see, you can see fingerprints. After more of their sleepy jotting, you ask them where the Barangay Tanod outposts are so that you can talk to the people who were supposed to be guarding the cars parked in that place (since they couldn’t be bothered to do so). You are given vague directions. You finally say to the cops, “I’ll pay 50 000 pesos to get the laptops back.” All the good cops seem to be just on TV series and movies and people say “What do you expect?”

In this country, in this city named after a dead man who became the president in 1935, from memory--- cops are crocodiles only good for certain times of the day like lunch, merienda, or dinner wherein they stop you and tell you about bullshit traffic violations for pay-off. Nowadays you call the crocodiles The Trolls Of Guadalupe.

When it’s raining, you see them and their big bellies in the shelter of thin trees, street stalls, bridges, overpasses or certain eateries where they always act as if they own the place. (To hell with the traffic jam or people screaming that they are being robbed.) Come to think of it, you never saw any of them pay.

Oh well, they are also good for sources of drugs like Shabu. But generally people don’t even think of asking for their help because, really, what can they do--- especially if you’re not a celebrity or connected to some powers-that-cause-lazy-asses-to-move.

And so you find yourself asking the same question in rants--- Where do my taxes go--- as you go to one outpost but they are also asleep and useless. You feel yourself shifting selves---becoming your hard self---- to talk to the people who are (as young as the college students you taught and the kind of students you teach now so that they get jobs) hanging outside. They look a little under the influence but they tell you that it looks like an inside job for you were the only one robbed. That the perps most likely know you always go to that place and see that you bring down laptops. That the culprits are likely the squatters from the nearby Escopa area. That there’s a Barnagay Tanod outpost there, too.

But you don’t want to go there at this time---look, it’s almost dawn--- or any time Ma’am, they said, Dangerous place.

You give your number and you all know the drill.

It’s been hours and you are running out of time for you know that stolen laptops sell like stolen cell phones so to get things done you reach for the underground--- just when you think you can walk safely in the light now---and you state your problem.

You are called a dumbass for leaving two laptops in the car and you want to laugh (as is expected from your agreement) but you don’t.

You only quietly say that the world’s unsafe once more and you are feeling--- raped and only those raped know how that feels--- this helplessness, this anger, this violation, this fear of everything and everyone around you. That you just want to stay in your room once more where it is safe, for you know that the outside is again unsafe. You even hack your hair and dress once more like a boy. You would not even think of what was taken, what you have to begin tallying and reconstructing, for it would bring all the other things you knew have been lost---taken from you.

You are solemnly asked about your rage’s desire: You want the neighborhood to be torched, You want the cops and robbers fuckers dead…

Once more you want to laugh for you know how easy it is to have someone beheaded and the body stuffed in a garbage bag for the cops and reporters to find (and declare “salvaged”) with a sign taped to the body with something like:

NO TO CHA-CHA

or

DON’T VOTE FOR PRESIDENTIABLE/POLITICIAN

or

TAMA NA SA VIDEO SEX SCANDAL NAKAKSUKA

or

KILABOT NG QUE RICO

or

PUSTAHAN TAYO DI MAHUHULI GUMAWA NITO

(You were just saying to your students a couple of days before that salvage really meant “to save or recover” but in this country it meant “killed” or sometimes “justifiably killed”.)

It can be done, just to make you laugh.

But you just say, “I want the laptops back.”

You even offer to buy what are rightfully yours.

You are told that it is hoped that there are no sex videos in the laptops, but on second thought the underground hopes that there are.

You laugh this time and there’s relief.

And so you wait for a report that means “They are found” while the cops’ telephone line do not even work---- you called, kept calling.

Two days later you find out for yourself that there wasn’t any cop or tanod supposedly guarding the parking area of a stretch that is a thief’s usual paradise because the nearest police station had recently changed Colonel heads. Ergo, change in policy and the stretch is lost in transition. And that all the Barangay Tanod outposts are pointing to each other and nowhere. Also, the cop who is supposed to be in charge of the case isn’t doing anything because he wants to be transferred to another station.

The cops tell you to just wait for their call and to stop coming to the station.

You laugh, remembering a young mother who told her four-year-old son who wanted to ask a cop in the beach about his badge and gun and being a good guy, “Anak, ‘wag ka dyan, kalaban natin ‘yan.”

At the same time the report comes--- four laptops; none of them yours but still searching; easier to get fuckers killed, you know; still, apologies to your highness.

You ask straight, “How feasible is it to get the laptops back?”

Too many fucking operations like that and we don’t own that area.

You hiss, “Start owning it. But it’s not as if I’m going back there.”

It’s been fourteen days now and the cops haven’t called.

So what’s the point? What’s the use? You know that the laptops won’t be found or returned even if you say, “You take the laptops, just give the data back. Puede rin email niyo na lang please. Thank you.”

Lost, stolen, your unsaved life of words.