Johnny de Leon, Ngo-ngo and a deck of cards

   
    Grandmother calls out my name. I stood up, dropped whatever I was doing and raced into the house. By the time I ran up the stairs darkness has already crept into the house. Grandmother had gone back to the kitchen. Only the light in the kitchen is on. I would usually flop down on the floor near the kitchen doorway. From under the glass cabinet-- where grandmother kept her best china, I'd pulled out my stash of green army men then line them up for a make-believe reconnaissance mission.

     The AM radio is on, tuned in to the station of Johnny de Leon's program. It was actually the only radio station Grandmother listened to and Johnny de Leon was the king of the airwaves at that time. You could hear his voice early in the morning and again just before the day ends. He would do the news, commentaries and even dish out advices on relationships. On Friday nights there was "24 Oras" where he voices the character that would give resolution or a twist to a story that, you guessed it, happened all in one day.

    At six o'clock Johnny de Leon would break for evening prayers. He'd play a recording of the Angelus-- three Biblical verses describing the mysteries are recited as versicle and responses alternated with the "Hail Mary". After a short pause, a narration of the story of the "deck of cards" would follow. It's about a "soldier boy" who got into trouble when he was caught spreading a deck of cards during church service. He would be brought before the Provost Marshall where he would explain the meaning of each card. He would start with "You see Sir…" something I would mimic later in life whenever I was asked to explain. I would learn many years later that the narrator was the then popular actor/singer Tex Ritter--father of the late actor/comedian John "Three's Company" Ritter.

    Johnny de Leon would come back with his spiels then smoothly segue to one of many commercial breaks where Ngo-ngo-- Johnny de Leon's cleft-lipped sidekick, would do his "Bataan Matamis"  thing. It's interesting to note that in an industry where one's voice is the ticket to success, a novelty like Ngo-ngo could survive. Today where political correctness has gone overboard Ngo-ngo wouldn't even be on radio much less doing a cigarette ad. Ironically still, Ngo-ngo even recorded a song ("Hernando's Hideaway") and even made TV appearances later on. I remember Ngo-ngo as dark-skinned, slick black hair, short in stature, skinny and stands with a slight forward angle-- not exactly TV material either.

    There was no television then. No video games. Grandmother didn't even have a refrigerator. Instead she had this cabinet with screened doors where leftover food was stored precariously perched on a drinking glass standing on a saucer filled with water-- a precaution against ants, she would later tell me. No, there were no cockroaches. Never saw one. No mice or rats either. Grandmother told me that is so because she kept a sawa on the rafters. And, the resident tuko took care of the rest.

   Sometimes I would lie on my back and stare at the ceiling hoping to get a glimpse of the sawa. Nope, I never saw it. The tuko, on the other hand, guards its turf on the southwestern side of the house. You know it's there because he belts out, without fail, a guttural mating call right after the Angelus.



    

The Plight of the Tiger Moth

In 2000, I learned to fly model airplanes. Scale model aviation is not something you pick up and go. There are a million and one things to learn. And until the late 90s, the costs of the hobby soared higher than the planes. Thanks to Chinese bootleggers-- exploiting its bloated, cheap labor force to mass produce knock-offs of well established brands, the hobby became accessible to ordinary mortals like me.

My first basher plane was a "Swallow". My first attempt at remote controlled flight was a disaster; the second was no better; and after about thirty or so more crashes, I got the hang of it and eventually earned my wings. Three months into the hobby, I thought it was time to move up. No more overgrown dragonflies. I want to fly a model plane that actually looked like a plane. And so I got myself a Tiger Moth kit: semi-scale pre-painted foam ARF of the 1931 classic British double-winged two-seater Havilland trainer.

While I have experience as a static scale modeler, it was my first build for an model plane. It took me the better part of two weeks-- working nights, mostly figuring out a work around. For one, the glue that came with the kit wasn't good enough; I experimented and came up with a home brew of Epoxy mixed with ethyl alcohol and baking soda (-- the baking soda made the mix bubble up, making it lighter and was a good filler, too). For another, the parts did not mate true to specs; some even a bit twisted. Another hurdle was keeping the dihedral of the upper wing within recommended specs; it was a challenge by itself. But, overall it looked promising. With all the parts glued together, it began to look like a decent model plane. From there, it was just a matter of putting in the two mini servos and a 2Amp ESC, and the Moth will be ready for flight.

I chose a calm late afternoon for its maiden flight. I drove out to the Global City where High Street is now. The Moth is classed as a ITF Park Flier which meant it had a small motor; flies only at slow speed and is better off flown indoors. I chose to R.O.G the Moth for its maiden flight, it veered to the right then lifted three feet off the ground. I put in too much up elevator and it lost its lift. It stalled and crashed on some thicket, damaging its flimsy landing gear. I trimmed the rudder by dialing an offset to the left. Throwing caution to the wind, I revved up the motor and hand launched the Moth; it flew straight; then it lifted. I pulled in too much elevator again, the plane started to go on a stall again. But, before it did, I pushed the elevator down a bit. It recovered. It twitched to the right. I let go of the sticks. The wing dihedral did it job and the plane corrected. I pulled in a bit more up elevator. Slowly it climbed up to about 20 feet cruising majestically at less than 8 kph.

The damn bitch was flying!

It was a great day. It was followed by more glorious days.

RC flight offered an escape from my demons. Maybe, I think, if I can focus on controlling a model plane, I’d have respite from the things that went wrong with my life. Besides, it seemed to be a great idea having control for once… of course, I was wrong (again). You don’t. You listen and feel model planes. You adjust to its mood and idiosyncrasies; and the will of the wind-- much like this wretched life; and beg the mercy of wind gods for gentler gusts, minimum down draft, less rain, more sunlight; more clouds and a forgiving sun so you could have a second more of that magical moment… nay a communion, with the Big Guy up there who is truly in full control.

I’m still here, you bastards…
-- Papillon, the movie; Steve McQueen as Henri Charrière

Into the Abyss

After a year of camping out in an unfurnished 3-bedroom condominium unit in Manila, I packed up and headed for Makati. Well sort of, although the neighborhood is geographically and technically within Makati and shouldn’t be more than a 3-minute drive to Ayala Avenue, it is a different part of the city altogether. The neighborhood is separated from the Makati CBD by J.P. Rizal Avenue with Buendia Avenue providing a sort of a mid-gradation in between. It's astonishing that as you go farther away from Ayala Avenue, even if you're just a block away, you'd feel that you're not in Makati anymore.

It wasn’t the first time I lived in Makati though. It was in Makati that I first chose to live in after I left home. It was in Guadalupe Nuevo: specifically in Camino de la Fe Street and later in Anastacio Street. Guadalupe Nuevo was separated from the Makati CBD by the perpetual chaos of EDSA-- literally the wrong side of the street. To get to the good side of Makati one takes the pedestrian overpass either in Guadalupe or in Estrella, that is, if you could get pass the venders during the day and the hold-uppers at night. Then you take a short bus ride southward, only then will you be in Makati as the general population know it. The two neighborhoods I've been in exude the same mood with Guadalupe Nuevo offering a more edgy feel in terms of fear for your life and property.

The apartment I moved into was a block away from J.P. Rizal Avenue. It was a 2-storey house in the landlord’s backyard; the ground floor windows offering a view of the landlord’s laundry area and garage while the second floor windows offered a commanding view of their roof. After a while I transferred to a smaller two-level flat perched on top of the garage; here the windows offered a view of the other half of their roof and a glimpse of the street. I tried to make a go at making my apartment as normal as possible but no matter what I do it had that fly-by-night feel and ambiance; I tried to cook dinner but somehow it made me feel more miserable than I really was. So I got back to my diet of junk: early morning breakfasts at McDonald’s; and alternating between Jollibee burgers or Buddy’s pancit hab-hab and Lukban longanisa for lunch and dinner. It was just a short drive or jeepney ride to the Power Plant Mall at the Rockwell Center; a place which offered new weekend haunts. My usual weekend itinerary was: buy a book, coffee at Starbucks to read the book, walk around like a zombie, have lunch while still reading the book, walk around like a zombie, continue reading the book at a coffee shop while having dessert and coffee, take a long zombie walk, have an early dinner of Brother’s Burger, walk around till nightfall then repair to my crash pad and read some more. I have accumulated quite a number of books that I've stacked around my mattress, the books walled out the rest of humanity.

Then one night, as I was staring at my illegally cabled television the 9/11 attacks happened.

Thereafter, the 9/11 tragedy was casually included as a plot device in lots of insensitive fictional dramas in films and television series. I recently saw one of them: Reign Over me (--which comes from the song "Love, Reign o'er Me" by The Who, the film features a cover version recorded specifically for it by Pearl Jam), a comedy-drama film starring Adam Sandler as Charlie and Don Cheadle as Alan.

In the film, Charlie suffered terrible losses in the 9/11 attacks and he has completely shut himself off from the outside world; to cope he uses his iPod and headphones to selectively filter out the world. The film opens with Graham Nash's Simple Man and throughout the film Charlie listens to two songs from Bruce Springsteen's The River-- "Out In The Street" and "Drive All Night" and the music of The Who. People cope in different ways, I guess.

The film ended positively for Charlie; on the other hand, fate is not done yet with my life. My life will crumble further.

The Dork Night

I’m on my own now. I got a room in Makati. It was on the ground floor of a two-storey building of seven rooms. Perpendicular to it was a freestanding structure that housed a common kitchen and two toilets/bathrooms. There was a dinner table, but none of the tenants took there meals there, all preferred to eat in their rooms. One-burner electric stoves-- one for each tenant, was lined up on a counter on one side. The tenants shared an old battered fridge, filled mostly with Tupperware tumblers of water and leftover food. A common laundry area was on the far end of the ground floor. There was a small garden in the middle that served to screen off the main house from the apartment building at the back where, according to the landlady, her pigpens once stood. The door on each room is framed by jalousies, and each room had a built-in cabinet, a dresser with a chair and enough space to fit in a double bed.

The landlady was quite a character; on most mornings, I would be roused from sleep by her loud voice; she would be bad-mouthing the housemaid or her husband or both of them. Other than that, it was generally quiet and peaceful.

The tenants kept to themselves and other than a nod of acknowledgment when we bump into each other on our way to the bathrooms or the kitchen; there was not much social interaction. Tenants come and go: two Ilokano brothers occupied a room on the second floor, a pregnant woman occupy another, a young couple occupied the room above mine; I could hear them having sex on the floor every night, they'd switch positions then they'll go again. The others were like ghosts that I could hear but never ran into.

It will soon be Christmas.

Christmas is a curious thing. We were brought up to believe that Christmas should be the happiest time of the year; yet it is the time of the year when the suicide rates are the highest. It seems that we have been misinformed. Contrary to what we have been told, statistics show that it is the most depressing time of the year. The problem I think is that people expect to be happy each time Christmas comes around; and when that expectation doesn’t happen people feel depressed. There’s nothing like being required to be happy and if you're not, being made to feel that everyone but you is having a good time. Suicide is usually a good option.

When I was younger, I remember being genuinely happy only in some instances of Christmas so I thought I would be immune to this holiday malady, but being alone with nobody to try to be happy with on my first Christmas alone pushed me over the edge. An unrecognized emotion reigned over me; before I knew it I was on a bus in EDSA intent on spreading Christmas cheer. Bad idea.

"May bisita pala!"

It was in that tone that I knew very well. It's astonishing how harmless words can be turned into toxic weapons of mass destruction simply by the way it is said, its inflection; its tone. While cuss words were taboo in our household we grew up to recognize annoying tones and inflection that could hurt more than the baddest cuss words a boozed up Tausug pirate could regurgitate.

Most families have eccentricities and quirks: maybe a subservient mother silently suffering spousal abuse or a father who wears only his underwear in family gatherings, but I had a childhood that could have been taken from a Charles Dickens novel. I was an orphan trapped in a big family of siblings. I never figured out what brought about this detachment, this estrangement. But, it was there: the prejudice, the aloofness, the hostility and that feeling of inconsequentiality. I’ve always felt alone. I would have been a good study of how a quirky childhood had an affect on the mind of an adult.

I was soon on my way back to Makati. Smiling revelers on the sidewalks and on the bus constantly reminded me of how miserable I was. I made it back to my rented room before 12 o’clock. I sat alone in the dark and stared at the luminous dial of my wristwatch watching the minutes and the seconds counted down. Tears ran down my face. At 12:01, I perked up considerably. I actually felt good and was uncontrollably laughing at myself. It was over. I've survived Christmas.

"What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger"
--Friedrich Nietzsche

Auring

"Aalis na ako..."
 
I croaked as I walked pass her on my way to the kitchen door. She was cooking dinner. She glanced at me then looked at the two plastic grocery bags dangling from my arms-- all my worldly possessions in two wrinkled used plastic shopping bags. I must have looked stupid; pathetic even.
 
"'di ka na babalik..."
 
It wasn't a question. It was more of a conclusion. The house was empty but for the two of us; everybody had gone to Sunday mass; the only light that was on was at the kitchen; her voice though soft and gentle echoed on the walls. There is so much unsaid; there had been years and years of mutual silence between us; so much time has gone that now there is neither time left nor a suitable language to even begin to talk about the things we could have talked about. Now we only talk in syllables.
 
Three years ago I asked her to give me her blessing and allow me to go on my own. She refused. I asked her the same question every day for a week and each time she said it was not yet my time to go.This time she wasn't stopping me.

"'di na..."
 
I took a step toward the door and for a moment lingered on its threshold. The horizon was a swirling collage of dark blue and gray. Dusk slowly blurring into night. The night breeze was cool. The shadows hunting down what little light lingered after sunset. A chill that had nothing to do with the December air stole over me. Then a sharp sting swept over my face and a wisp of cool breeze slithered down my spine. Random thoughts were spinning in my head-- it's the end of a decade; next month will be a new year; what will I eat for dinner tonight; it will be her birthday in two weeks; so many questions; there were no answers. I held my breath, expecting to feel some cord draw tight on my neck, holding me, binding me. But there was no tether, no lurch. I took a deep breath and walked into the gathering darkness.

 

"Good-bye, Mommy".
 


In Memoriam: Aurora; 30 December 1932 - 16 August 2007

Sanctum of Solace

After bombing out of High School, I was exiled to Frisco. Dada was there to welcome me. She did not judge me; neither did she tell me what I should have done or what I should do. She was just there for me; and it was all that mattered. She was a Hippie, I think. She was cool.

Forced idleness is dangerous. Days seem long with no promise of a tomorrow. Today was the same as yesterday and the day before that and it will be the same tomorrow and the next day after that. Nothing. I played basketball with the neighbors in the afternoons until it was time for dinner; I wasn’t good at it, but sweating it out was good; but still I had nothing to do in the mornings. It was when I began to read. I started with the stacks of Philippine Graphic magazine buried under the bed. After I was done with that, I read all the books I could find; I first read the only book I could find in Dada's bookshelf, it was Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. It was my first detective fiction story; in fact it was the first detective fiction story in literature. The character of Dupin is an eccentric but brilliant detective, there was a bumbling constabulary, and the story was told by the first-person narration of a close personal friend; tropes that I would later find in Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. I scourged for other books and found a trove of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books wasting away in a cousin’s house (the books were sent from Guam by his father but he never bothered to read them):-- I read about Rodin, Papillon and many others. I even asked that all my school textbooks be brought over; I read through them, too. I saw a shelf half full with books in an uncle’s house; it was locked. I would later on sneak into their house and pick the lock to get at the books. My uncle's books were mostly about WWII. I couldn't stop. I devoured all the books I could lay my hands on.

In the meantime, Marcos declared martial law.

By the next school term, I was ready to go back to school. I’ve figured it out:-- I would do good at school; get grades that would be above average but not so much I’d be marked as a nerd; just enough to get me comfortably through. I would hang around just enough to be cool but not too much so I'd be labeled as a bum. Something happened to me; maybe a synapse in my brain snapped with all the whacking I got from all the fist fights I got into; and maybe when I stopped going to school, it healed but got connected the wrong way; I don’t know. What I do know was that I was more focused in school. I listened and concentrated. I took notes during class. I did my homework at the library; but I did not study at home; there was no need to, I remembered everything. I had more time to read what I want. I read through all the encyclopedias in the library-- thrice. I’d hang out at the National Bookstore an hour or so after class to read the books on the shelf without buying them.

Then I was told it was time to go back home. The sojourn is over. Dada never liked good-byes. Dada once had a housemaid who had stayed with her longer than I could remember and when asked to go back to their hometown, didn't want to go. Dada pushed her out but the housemaid hanged on to Dada's leg crying. Dada sternly told her she should go. When the housemaid was gone, I saw tears on Dada's eyes.

When the day came for me to go, Dada didn't say good-bye. She packed my clothes in a brown paper bag and left it by the door. She gave me a hug then went to her kitchen. I didn't follow because I know she didn't want me to. I sat on the stairhead with my brown bag and waited for Boy Genius to come and fetch me. After a while, Boy Genius appeared on the gate at the south end. He waved and signaled me to come; I stood up and started to walk to him, dragging my feet. Down the wooden stairs and through the concrete pathway out of the garden I walked; I glanced around and felt the images burn into my memory. As I reluctantly stepped on the stone stairhead to go down, a big wind puffed out of the west, picked some leaves from the garden, threw them up in the air and sent them flying and whirling down like paper planes. Then, without warning, pins of rain pierced through the midday sun. I stopped by the Duhat tree and touched its rough bark; I looked up and felt the thin raindrops danced on my face. No hawk was in sight. Then giving in to an overwhelming undertow, I stole a glance back at Dada’s house. And out of the corner of my eye, through a haze of developing astigmatism, mizzle and tears welling up on my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the boy I had left behind. He stood, with arms insolently folded across his chest, at the hollow that led into the silong. And just before he blended into the dimness; just before he stepped back into the black water where shadows swim, a smirk tore on his face. He ticked his head in a cynical reversed nod.

I smiled back.

The Last Page

I’m getting old. Frankly, I don’t care. Adding up more years to my age would only make it official… that I’m old. I suspect I was born with an old soul. A soul that carried remnants of memories of its past life and infecting mine with that of its own. My salt and pepper hair now has more salt than pepper and seems to start further up my forehead-- a forehead that had feigned a receding hairline long before that line actually moved up. My eyebrows now have more errant hair making it bushier and had accented the arch giving my face a stern somewhat snobbish almost devilish look. Generally, my whole face is drooping and converging on my chin. My ears that seemed to have stopped growing when I was probably nine now looked too small for my head especially with the added bulk of sagging face muscles. My eyes had bulged out more than before and betray how much time I actually spend reading in poor light. Under the eyes are permanent eye bags that seem to be in direct competition with my bulging eyes. Eyeglasses are still perched on the ridge of my nose-- with the distinctive downward nibble of flesh at the tip which gives me a vague hawkish profile.

When I was a young boy, an aunt took me for a drive to Cavite. "We're going to see a Shaman" she said. She said she'll ask the Shaman's help to get back money embezzled from her. The Shaman was at the dining table on the kitchen. He was a wiry old man and looked more like a sabunggero than a medicine man. He smelt of coconut oil. In the middle of the kitchen is a well with water that changes color each time a bucket was scooped from it-- I wasn't impressed, Dada could do it with just a drop of food coloring. There were a number of people lined up to see the old man. Most had brought a bottle with them and would ask for a cup of the colored water before they leave.

After my aunt's turn, we got up to leave. But, the old man waved for me to sit down with him on the dining table. The old man whipped up a big sheet of manila paper whereupon he wrote and drew symbols. I warned me about women when I grow up, but I don't remember what about women I should be careful about. He also warned me about riding jeepneys. He said he'll give me a good oracion to utter just before I get into a fist fight. The old man wrote several oraciones that he said I should utter in case I find myself in any of the circumstances he warned me about. Then he rolled up the brown paper and handed it to me. Then, as I stood up, he whispered to me my age when I would die.

From that day on I became obsessed with my death. I began to have a recurring dream that when I go, it’s going to be on a cool afternoon. I’ll be waking up from a catnap on a wooden bed. There will be a big calendar on the left wall. Beyond the foot of the bed there would be a big window that would let in the cool breeze. A slight drizzle would have just eased up and the breeze will be flavored with the smell of freshly cut grass. White light shines through the doorway on the right. Then I would close my eyes.