The Crotch-Grabbers.

My street is all haunted by creatures of the dark-the crotch-grabbers. They are a group of elite faggy warriors who possess a heightened sense of smell, that able them to sniff crotches meters away, xray vision that can instantly decipher the size of the male specie's genitalia, strategic positioning included (downward,upward, sideward and 'taped,clamped and obscured), it all depends on the material of the garb, the flimsier it is, the more their body vibrate as if invoking the spirit of some benevolent spirits. Among them lies a mastery of self-defense and wreaking havoc on unwitting victim. If they see you steadily standing and all wrapped up, they will sneak behind your back like a true ninja, kneel to the ground and Baam! You have been proton canonned!It is when they hit the back of your knees with such a great force it renders you instantly paraplegic.The good defense is to constantly horse kick every 10 seconds, it may make you look like a cross between a horse desperate for a shag and a complete moron, but at least, you'll be spared, if you were lucky enough, given that there is indeed a crotch-grabber at your back bracing to strike, you might even get the upperhand and flatten his overly made up face with your wooden slippers.

One crotch grabber, upon my first week of immersion in their area, kept on yapping about his boyfriend's flourishing career as an up and coming print ad model, He would tell the narrative story of their wondrous relationship at the mention of the words "love" ("I love The Bar" and "I love Pateros" included), destiny (even if the only destiny word that can be found was that on the Destiny Cable Van that zooms by the street). His eyes would instantly turn glassy at the mention of romance, and his whole body, spastic, like a posessed blender. And as true as his words, As I was riding a cab along C5 road one day, There it was, the boyfriend's billboard beaming with a knowing smile,It could have been glamorous if it wasnt for the catch phrase "GOT TERMITE? Call 6754568" on the upper right of the billboard. A few questions formulated in my twisted mind, 1. Is the boyfriend the exterminator? 2. Are the exterminators really that good even humans with termite-like quality can be annihilated? 3. Is the boyfriend's picture the closest the ad agency could get to the real termite? A termite personified? 4.Was the boyfriend bludgeoned, tortured and manhandled into posing for a termite ad?

To Be continued..














on the Destiny cable car as it zooms by the street).

to be continued

Departure

Your day began like any ordinary day, you were doing the same stuff and was certain nothing would be any different,until it was not.

It was noontime and the book I was reading had gone a bit dull so I decided to saunter by my friend's small eatery. Fancy is not particularly the adjective one would use in describing the eatery but people gravitate there like it was a soup kitchen dishing out rations to the homeless. It is manned by insanely funny friends who have an unfortunate habit of scalding each other with boiling cooking oil and shoving uncooked squid balls up the unwitting victim's nose. I went inside, observing and helping a bit when a man of around 50 stopped by and started to contemplate the food on display. He was known as Mang Ben, a burly, affable man who barely went out of the house. His funny antics, bawdy jokes and raucous laugh were highly engaging, Its as if Mang Ben was an Uncle you never had. He was cracking everyone up while endlessly poking quail eggballs with a stick and dipping it into the gelatinous sauce letting it sit there a little longer.
A tricycle halted in front of the eatery and disgorged a highschool student, my friend whispered "That's his daughter". Mang Ben,upon seeing his daughter immediately took her bag and quipped "your bag is so heavy, what's inside? a refrigerator?" at which everyone chorused in laughter. I noticed how he immediately planted a kiss on his daughter's forehead and wrapped his arms around her "Are you hungry? go and grab something to snack on" and the daughter started ordering stuff. I also noticed the way Mang Ben looked at his daughter while she was pouring sauce onto her quail eggs. It was a look of sadness, and longing, and pain and tender love. A look people in the airport departure area cast over their relatives on the other side of the fence, the kind which seemed to say something that cannot be said even during the most articulate moment in one's life. It left me transfixed, the spectacle infront of me was an unconditional love of a father to his daughter in the rawest form,it wasnt the nagging type we all tend to get from our parents, nor a restricted show of affection. It was simply Love.
"How's the damage? 12 quail eggs, 2 fries and 2 halo halos" inquired Mang Ben, and upon forking out the bill, off they went with his daughter's cumbersome schoolbag still clung onto his shoulder and arms wrapped around. I watched the two until they turned left and gone.
We went back to business,hours passed and we were all greasy,reeking of smoke and knackered when someone came running to the store "Mang ben just had a heart attack and he didnt make it." All of us looked at each other in disbelief and started muttering "he was here just hours ago, he was full of energy and cheery,how could that be possible?" It was only until we saw the remain of Mang Ben being wheeled into the ambulance did we manage to wrap our brains around the deeply harrowing news.
My friend was steady muttering "It must be my quail eggs that did Mang Ruben in, But we didnt notice him eating up that much, It's as if he was keeping us all entertained with his jokes in order to divert our attentions, If I knew he was downing quail eggs on end, I would have told him to stop"

The last moment of Mang Ben's earthly existence shows me the fragility of life, that there are so many reasons to be alive,but too many ways to be dead, even the most innocuous thing as a quail egg can put paid to a life.
We all get to think that Death happens, but not to us, and not to all the people we love and care about, we are immortal and so are the people we share great swaths of life with, its the mere concept of immortality that makes us put off the love we feel for another until tomorrow, and until the next day, and the next, until death knocks on our door to ferry someone that's close to our heart away and its just a little too late. Its easy to talk about the death of someone who is remotely connected to us, a death of a stranger, but what if the loss we have to deal with is that of someone closer to home? Is it really possible to be strong and see all the sense of it? Does it even have a sense to start with? Can we really get over it and move on or will we just be a piece of hollow ragdolls, forever walking through half-life, devoid of substance? Can we really still find the will and the reason to live when we have been mercilessly wretched to pieces?

Death happens.Death is in all form.

Don't strew with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!

Life in Slow Mo

Ysabelle,

The pain of not being with you makes me all hollow inside, it's the kind of pain when someone loses his core, the mainstay of his existence- everything turns black and white, you never live, you just drift through life while trying to make sense of it. I miss those days when I would wake up to your kisses, times when the only option was to start the day swinging you in my arms while you laughed, oh that wondrous little laughter mahal. I close my eyes and think of your sweet little face, the thought and the possibility of seeing you again, that what keeps me afloat,somewhat. Through all this flurry and madness, my unconditional love for you is the only thing that is sane.
Tito misses you more than anyone can ever know. It pains Tito not being able to walk with you in the park, not hearing your first words, your songs, and not carrying you up into his arms.
In silence Tito suffers. I love you mahal. Until we meet again


With All the Love in the World,
Your Tito J

My Top Ten 2010 List

Pateros

I have been living in Pateros for nearly 4 months now, Its funny that when you live in a city, you measure your stay simply by looking at the accumulated bills, disconnection notices included, 4 white Meralco envelopes mean that you have been shacking up for 4 months, 2 5gallons of mineral water make up for 2 days and a once-in a-month visit from a petulant neighbor to whom you have clung your cable wire on means it's been a month of Travel&Living and time to fork over the cable bill, or half of it for that matter. This must be how an adult lives, eternally worried and sometimes harried by bills.
When I first came here, I was overwhelmed with too many people, the place is a typical urban underbelly- decadent, decaying- Crammed spaces, too much variety of humanity (typical humans, almost humans-for some freak of nature never quite look like humans, may resemble racing horses, shake rattle and roll all time favorite creepy characters, used to be humans- used to posess a natural beauty and charm but because of too much shabu and snorting of god-knows-what,have turned into creatures of the dark, the undead, seemingly humans, think they are superhumans- those with higher-than-though attitudes, humans of other specie- fairies, twinks, closet queens, and queens that out the closet queens for no any other reason than to annoy and put them to shame. and genetically engineered humans -humans that can filch your valuables in a fraction of a nanosecond) Narrow street that used to be my everyday battleground with merciless and ungiving automobiles that wouldnt give a flying fart if you lie face flat to the gutter or pop your arms out of their socket, the space is such small you instantly feel like going on a 'toothbrush sharing' terms with,lets say the biggest slob of the vicinity.
But despite the squalor,the decay and the gut-wrenching smell of abnoy, I am having a glorious time here. The people, regardless of their genetic make up and smells that persist to linger in your noses and flirt with your olfactory nerves are the same humans I have come to call my friends. This is the place where I can do brisk walking at the wee hours of the morning without the fear of being stabbed, held up, chopped into pieces, mugged, turned into sacrificial stuff to some deities or to a more cinematic context, hung and offered to King Kong. This is where every house invites you in and practically shoves the content of their fridges up your noses (thus the added 30pounds, which makes walking in the narrow street all the more life-threatening, I am like a walking bowling pin- Target by default). And more amazingly, this is the place where everyone glugs alcohol in a fashion that can put all the members of Alcohol Anonymous America look like wimpy, pubertal schoolboys.
Alcohol industry is especially thriving here, the whole street alone imports innumerable cases of alcohol on a daily basis, you wouldnt wanna see them mad, they all turn green and maniacal.
Another staple of Pateros life is the videoke, almost every gathering and "made-up' celebrations (collection of garbage day, the miraculous survival of Buday the dog from imminent demise, The outing of Brando, the long awaited comeuppance of Nene's tormentor in Katorse). Everyone here sings, but do they sing well? Thats another issue altogether. I know someone who sings like a drunk person with terminal asthma, It may seem okay,since ingesting alcohol can be an effective excuse for the voice that can call forth the rain of scorpions (I sing terrible! must be the alcohol wreaking havoc on my voice box!), But what can you do if you sound like a drunkard ashtmatic in a nebulizer even before you take your first shot? Let everybody's sense of propriety gets pickled by alcohol! they wouldnt know the difference between a frog's croaking and your voice singing, they may even find it charming, you might even get laid!
Life can truly bring you to places you never even thought of going, places you only heard so much about but not actually intending on going. It's as if being singled out by the whimsical, playful universe and carelessly plop you into the lives of people you never imagine liking and wouldn't wanna be seen dead with, until the magic works its way, you discover the generosity of their hearts and their unpretentious love of life and eagerness to live, and together you create a raucous,tone-deaf music while enjoyably swigging cheap booze.
To all my friends and my adoptive family here in Pateros, Thank you for letting me into your homes and into your lives, and yes, thank you for shoving everything you can offer up my nose. =p








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Bloody Tale

I hate blood, or rather, I hate the sight of blood, and when you are living with friends whose primary source of amusement is to see you wetting your pants and trembling like a posessed blender in fear, disclosing it is like peddling a basement bargain priced gadget up their noses. There was this one moment that they locked me inside the room only to find out that we were up to a movie marathon-the movies in tow were the whole collection of SAW, I would have fervently prayed to Zeus to strike the television (and my friends) with his fiercest lightning bolts, if I wasn’t too busy banging them with an electric fan. I am not a thoroughly squeamish sort of guy, you see, I have no problem downing 3 baluts (aborted duck fetus) or let us say stopping by a mobile lugawan, and sit alongside pedicab drivers, pimps or hookers while trying at small talk, (I have learned that in order for one to get the best and most innard parts, one should pal up the stall owner, you don’t necessarily have to introduce yourself, because no matter how frequent you drill into their skull your name, you will always be known as just “pogi” “boy” or in the cases of women owners “darling” sweetheart” or yes, “pogi”, although you’d start questioning their sincerity and credibility when the person waiting to be served next to you looks like a cross between the bride of Frankenstein and something that escaped from a mad scientist’s petra dish. Just shut it, sometimes it is comforting to know that in shedding a dirt cheap amount, one can fill up his stomach and get his ego bolstered up.

So where is this blog leading? Surely my train of thoughts is dancing freestyle again. From point A to point D and then back to point B. No wonder Ive only got 3 readers, the rest have died of motion sickness and vertigo..

Oh now I remember what this is supposedly all about. The other day, My friend/housemate’s mom asked me for a special favor. Why does my heart impale itself upon my ribcage everytime I hear someone use my name as an opening salvo? Perhaps it is because,in all the serious confrontations of my life, its always been like that, someone mentioning my name as if to warn me to steel myself from the sting of the next verbal shot (“Dadge, I think we should stop sending you allowance” Dadge, hold my hand and let us pray to God that he banish the devils residing in your decrepit body” “Dadge, I hopelessly heart you, This is Brando by the way”).
You see, my mom is in the states, so my friend’s mom is the closest I could get to having a mother. She needs a blood donor for her Dad who just recently had a blood transfusion.
I swear that the moment I heard it my soul left my body and hover away screaming as if it was on fire. I am deathly afraid of the idea of someone as inexperienced as an 18year old nursing intern poking a large needle into your vein and drain the blood out of you, its as if my mental search engine has brought scores of grim pictures of blood donation.

To be continued..

The Horror Queen of the Right Wing

Probably the reason why I'm having this constant need to strangle anyone within arm's reach is because I stopped blogging months ago. A lot of things were going on, short course,teaching job and front desk stint, albeit a fleeting one. Front office course was a refreshing experience,I got to revisit the feeling of getting late again, bringing my trusty backpack and sometimes packing lunch and hurtling it on unsuspecting classmates. Part of the curriculum was the 100 hour practicum time and so off we went to Subic, the nearest and the most convenient place for us to wreak havoc on hospitality institutions. We decidedly stayed in the hotel where we we would also be doing the training and the raucous mirth and drunken merriment are still ringing in my ears. The excuses not to go on duty varied from melodramatic ("I just got into a serious fight with my boyfriend, I'm afraid the tendency to crack open the skull of any approaching guest with the keyboard can be so tempting, I fear for other people) to cinematic ( "I saw a girl clad in white dress cavorting in the hallway"), we later found out that it was a gay classmate rehearsing his Japanese catwalk, It wasnt exactly a dress as one would aptly assume under the dimly lit corridor but layers of fitted queen size linen, thrown in a recognizably decent ensemble. That fag! no wonder my classmates would immediately feign any sicknesses known to the history of mankind. (one classmate even claimed of having a candidiasis, and she stated it while putting an act of a severely and incurably itchy -----)) just to play hooky from duty if assigned to clean the right wing, it was haunted by Ms. Marian Rivera aka Renato Dela Cruz.
To Ren, I hope,by now, you have completely mastered your walk of horror.