Ang Huling Tikbalang

Chapter 1: Claire de Lune

It was a moonlit night. On a night like this, going out to play a game of hide-and-seek was the cool thing to do in those days. The air was hot and humid, my sando stuck to my back like a leech and beads of sweat were draining down my eyebrows, stinging my eyes. It did not matter, it was always fun. And I was good at this game. None of my cousins have ever found me-- not Olan, not Cho-cho, not Chuck, nobody! I've hidden in the most unlikely places and sometimes I just stood motionless in the shadows and let stray moonbeams filtering down through the tree branches to cut me up in unrecognizable parts. But, that night I did something more radical, I climbed up the Duhat tree. It was the best idea I've come out with thus far; nobody ever looks up, they won't find me, ever. 

I climbed on a fairly large branch, sat on it and after a while brought out my Zippo; I was tinkering with it when something snuffled and snorted behind me. I blinked my eyes and stared up at the stars. Then I looked down to the ground and then on my side. It moved from behind me to my side. I blinked my eyes again. It was still there; beside me; it was blocking my way down and I was too high up to jump down. I could feel its presence, I didn't have to look. But, I did look; well, not exactly, I took a sneak through the corner of an eye without turning my head. It was there alright. I searched my mind to pigeonhole the creature beside me.

"Ano 'to?..."

" 'di kaya isa 'tong--" I thought to myself, then tried to push the thought away by thinking of something else; it didn't work, panic seized me. I was a young boy then and would have been afraid if it didn't looked more afraid of me than I was of it. With a hangdog face it spoke gently; it sheepishly said it meant no harm and was even apologetic of how scary it looked. 

It was a man's voice. A voice that, amazingly, sounded like the deep baritone voice of a news reader I listened to on the AM radio. Maybe it was his demeanor and his gentle voice for I do not remember being scared. It is not that I was inherently plucky as a child and I must admit I was afraid of the dark (still am) but I claim kinship with all things that thrive on moonlit nights. Besides, you could see in moonlit nights; it isn't technically dark. He kept looking at my Zippo; seemed to be fascinated by it. I told him I found the Zippo wedged between Dada's food cupboard and the kitchen wall; it was quite old and a bit battered; the hinge a bit twisted. The upper lid doesn't line up with the body and it doesn't close right. He asked if he could take a look. I wasn't exactly sure what happened next; maybe I had a brain fart or something, as if a sliver of memory had been yanked out of my brain. The next thing I saw was that he was holding my Zippo in his hand. I fought off the urge to try to grab it back. Nobody touches my Zippo! His strong hands looked human though, but they were hairy and had overly long sinewy fingers and dirty rending fingernails. He held and caressed my Zippo as if it was a delicate Faberge egg. I grimaced as he took a sniff at my Zippo; told me that it belonged to a private in the U.S. Army; a WW II soldier who fought the Japanese here; who had dysentery and later died of a gunshot wound. "Lahat ng 'yun nalaman mo sa isang singhot lamang?" Then he whipped out a glass bulb; he took off the lid and waved it about; in a few seconds it was full of kulisap; he hanged the glowing bulb on a branch; so he could see, he said. He said the Zippo was manufactured in 1941. Then he held out a humongous locket attached with a spinner ball to a thick chain he wore around his neck, an octagon shaped puzzle box with a mechanical trick lock. He deftly operated the opening mechanism: shifted a few panels and rotated a few pins then held it up in a certain way for a few seconds till it opened up to reveal an assortment of tools and other attachments stowed within the hollow that could be manipulated via a pivot point mechanism much like that of a Swiss Army knife but a lot more complex. Upon opening, a miniature cylinder-- with minute pins on it, started to revolve which then struck the tuned teeth of a metal comb, a tiny drum and a set of small bells to play a tune. He said he adapted and integrated the mechanism of a carillon à musique into his take-anywhere "tool box" because he was intrigued by the workings of it; the tune was Debussy's Clair de lune, he added. He pulled out what looked like a mechanical grab and a tool that looked like pliers. He worked on the lid of the Zippo; replaced the wick and put a flint in; polished it and handed it back to me. I flipped the top lid open then flipped it closed, it clicked. It was like new again. I stole a glance at him and saw his eyes glistened with pride. We talked in whispers for a while longer; then he said he’d seek me out again when I was older.

Sensing that he was about to turn around to go, I gathered up enough wits to ask him or it what he or it was. But, he seemed to have anticipated the question and didn't wait for me to finish. He grunted. It sounded like he was suppressing laughter. It was enough. It confirmed what I had in mind. And with that, he disappeared into the darkness of the night.

It took me quite some time to get down from the Duhat tree even as it took me less than a minute to climb up. And when I did got down, everybody had gone home. It seemed I spent only a few minutes up the tree but when I looked up the sky, it already had a tinge of orange on it, it was almost daybreak. And even as the tree was just a few steps from Dada's house it took me sometime to find my way up the stairs. Curiously too, everybody in the house was in deep sleep when I finally got to my bed. I must have lost track of time. 

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.

Sweat Dreams

??: Still awake?
JT: Shucks. Wide awake! Why don’t you leave me alone.
??: ... can't sleep, huh?
JT: ... and you figured that out all by yourself, huh?
??: Are you upset?
JT: Hell, I am.
??: You’re not scared of me, are you?
JT: You give me the creeps. Are you happy now? Go away, I want to sleep.
??: So, what scares you?
JT: You’re not going away, are you?
??: I got nowhere to go. You got nowhere to go. We’re here in the middle of nowhere. I got nothing to do. You got nothing to do. You can't sleep. I got all the time in the world. Let’s talk.
JT: (holds pillow over his face)
??: Come on, let’s talk...
JT: (holds pillow even tighter on his face)
??: So, what scares you?
JT: Shit man, you just won't quit...
??: Come on... what really scares you?
JT: ...
??: Come on, dude.
JT: ... hmmm... I guess betrayal... deep water... stray dogs…
??: Yeah. I was betrayed once. But, who cares?
JT: Only the betrayed…
??: Yup, only the betrayed. In Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, the 9th circle of hell is reserved for betrayers. A glacial wasteland shared with traitors.
JT: I wonder if there is a place for the betrayed in the afterlife, too.
??: Isn’t being betrayed hell enough? The problem with the betrayed, I think, is that they just feel bad about it but do nothing.
JT: What do you want them to do, kill their betrayers?
??: Well, it’s totally up to them. It’s just that they should do something about it. For not doing anything about it, they truly deserve the anteroom.
JT: The what?
??: The anteroom! In Dante’s vision of hell, these plateau drifters-- the do nothing guys who doesn’t move and just wallow in and out of misery, are condemned to be vagrants outside the gates of hell. They have done no evil to be condemned to hell but have done no good either to deserve heaven. They don’t go to Purgatory because this half-way station is for those who have actually committed sin-- indeed, have done something about it, though in a forgivable way; and after serving time progressed up to heaven. The “sin” of not doing anything is apparently not a forgivable one; I say sin because if it’s not a sin then I figured they would have gone somewhere nearer heaven; perhaps outside the pearly gates-- where, presumably, the conditions would have been a tad better. It is a sin of being neither good nor bad. And, deservingly, their punishment is to be relentlessly bedeviled by wasps and flies. A punishment, in my opinion, that is neither hellish nor benign; I guess just in keeping with their “sin”. It is said that the cries and lamentations of these lost souls-- yup, the same lost souls your priest talk about, could be heard in the stillness of the darkest nights. But I digress, my point:-- the betrayed should do something…
JT: But, what freezes the betrayed, most of the time, is that the betrayer is someone they love. They can’t kill them because they love them and so they do nothing or worse they kill themselves instead.
??: Ever considered killing yourself?
JT: I think so… when I was younger and didn’t know better.
??: Was it because of this love you speak about?
JT: In my immature mind, maybe. The thought crossed my mind, but I figured life is a lot more dangerous than death. Dying is a cop-out. Death is what happens when you fail in life. It’s inevitable so why rush it. Besides, there are still a lot of things I want to try and other reasons to live for.
??: But, aren’t you scared to die?
JT: What’s scary about it? After you’re dead, it’s done. And in a week’s time, you’re completely forgotten.
??: Oh…
JS: Do you mind moving away from me a bit?
??: Ummmph… So, what’s your beef about dogs?
JT: When I was a boy, an uncle’s dog attacked me. It was a colorless muscular dog they kept in a cage too small for it to move around. It got loose and dashed out for a romp around the family compound-- until it decided it was more fun to eat me instead. It charged me. It was big (or was I small?) It leapt and with snarling jaws went for my throat. Instinctively, I grabbed its throat as I stumbled over on my back. It was on me; sharp teeth millimeters from my face; drool dribbling on my neck; I could smell its breath. Its two paws were digging on my chest. We struggled a bit then a household help came and pulled Cujo off me. I’ve kept a distance from dogs since then.
?? : Was it one of those Pit Bulls?
JT: In those days dogs are what could be called “natives”-- a mongrel or a mix of no particular breed. Pit Bulls, any purebred for the matter, are unheard of. Well, at least, in our part of the woods.
?? : What’s the pride in that? Why keep a mongrel as a pet anyway?
JT: It’s a bit different then; they start out as puppies-- constantly cuddled, fed and cared for by children after having been given up by a neighbor who had a bitch that had more puppies that could be cared for. Then these puppies get bigger. They’re not fun anymore so they’re thrown out of the house: chained, caged if space won’t allow otherwise; unwashed except when it rains and fed with table scraps. These dogs have no place to go so they camp out in the periphery of human tolerance. Most live independently on the streets-- “self-supporting” dogs we used to call them; supplementing their meager diet by scavenging; staying within a radius of their camp where there is, at least, an assurance that they’ll be cursed, kicked and beaten less than in any other place. It’s more like a co-existence with humans rather than being kept as a pet.
??: Ummphh…
JT: There used to be a phenomenon that a newly built house comes with dogs, too.
??: How’s that?
JT: Well, if you’re having a house built or renovated, the construction workers come and establish a community within the construction site-- they build makeshift rooms to sleep in, on their free time they stake out the housemaids around the area, they shack up eventually; with the housemaid minding a carinderia-cum-store while waiting for the baby to pop out. Dogs-- and a sprinkling of cats, turn up much the same way. When the construction is done, the puppies and “left-over” dogs-- those not eaten, are left behind just like the ex-maids and their babies. When you move in the house, there’s a bunch of dogs hanging out on your doorstep and if you’re really lucky a housemaid could be waiting, too.
??: Well, I guess you could say that native dogs have no breeding… (laughs)
JT: On the contrary, I think native dogs are more intelligent and better adapted to the unique Filipino psyche than purebreds. A native dog is a demonstration of Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. On the other hand, a purebred lineage could be traced to a Petri dish. There is a lot of in-breeding in purebreds to obtain a particular characteristic making them look good but genetically inferior; which is probably the reason keeping them as pets cost a lot of money for immunization vaccines and commercial dog food. Anyway, I think the askal could pass for a breed in itself.
??: I’m more of a cat person myself. Stray cats fare better than dogs, I think. They start out much like your askal but they keep a greater distance from humans and they’re less deprived than dogs because they’ve added stealing in their survival skills repertoire. They have gone beyond survival and actually live exciting lives.
JT: You just referred to yourself as person.
??: Oh, it’s more like a figure of speech. Convenient for our purposes, that’s all.
JT: Really? I think you’re not at all sure what or who you are…
??: Let’s not go into that… So why are you scared of water? Did you get washed away in a flashflood? Were you in the Titanic or something?
JT: Nah, it’s just that being in chest deep water makes me panic. I can’t swim... at most I guess I could paddle around a pool like a dog, but that's it. So instinct dictates that waist deep is just about right. Anything deeper would be pushing my luck.
??: Do you think deep water dredged up the terror of the dog attack?
JT: I don’t think so. My fear of water came much later in life. I almost drowned more times than I care to remember but I don’t think those episodes increased or decreased my fear. I’m not sure how or when it started, but just to be on the safe side, I now limit my interaction with liquids to drinking and showers.
??: Do you think there’s a connection; the mean dog standing on you and water crushing your chest? A man’s fear is built on another and the sum total is paranoia.
JT: Maybe you are the sum total of my fears. I sense that you’ve become bigger and bulkier through the years. What have you been doing, feeding on my fears?
??: Freddy Kruger!
JT: You’re Freddy Kruger?
??: Shit no! Freddy is a deadhead character in a B-movie. I’m for real. But that’s what the Freddy character said: He feeds on fear. People are scared of him because he is the personification of fear. And as people get more and more scared, he gets stronger and stronger.
JT: Is that what you are trying to do, scare me?
??: Hey, it’s just a movie we watched.
JT: You were with me when I saw the movie?
??: How else could I have seen that crappy movie...
JT: You been hanging around since that time? Since when?
??: Well, let’s just say that I’ve been with you for some time...
JT: Were you with me in November 1999, in Bambang? Or, that night I spent in a Legaspi City motel in 2003? How about that night in 1977 when I slept alone in a seedy hotel in the corner of Avenida Rizal and Aranque? Or, maybe that night I spent alone in Camiguin Island? How about that night I spent in a pension house in Infanta, Quezon? How about that night in an abandoned building in Bukidnon?
??: Wow, you’ve been around the whole block, haven’t you? Well, I could spin a tale like that corny Footprints on the Sand song but I don’t think you’re going to go for it…
JT: Were you with me in 1977 when I went for days without food and water?
??: Whoaa. No food? No water?
JT: It was after my fourth day as stok-wa; I made a promise to go back home; when I did, I went straight to my room and stayed there in the days that followed; lying on my bed, not eating nor drinking. I’d come out in the dead of night, move in the shadows, slip out of the door and sit in the moonlight. I’d sit there motionless for hours; thinking about nothing, pursuing random thoughts, holding it in my mind for a while and letting go. Maybe, I was hallucinating; lightheadedness induced by lack of nutrition-- mesmerized by a phantasmagoria of two-dimensional grayscale images moving in and out of focus in my mind’s eye. Maybe I was in the brink of insanity. Then before daybreak, I'll sneak back in and sleep. There was no way out of it. It’s one of those things that began with no clear ending; until one night my mother can’t take it anymore and she broke down. She screamed. I ran up the stairs, jumped over the banister and embraced her. She asked me to stop. And, that was the end of it. The next day, I begged leave to go out. I went out for a walk; then it hit me; I have a plan; for the first time in my life everything was clear: I now know what I have to do. And, in a cool December night in 1979, a few days before Christmas, I walked out for the last time.
??: That’s it? You just walked out?
JT: Yeah, with just the clothes on my back and a change of clothes in two small plastic shopping bags.
??: You never came back?
JT: Nope, that was the plan.
??: Just like an askal, huh?
JT: ...
??: .... a pusakal?
JT: z…
??: ?
JT: zzz
??: ??
JT: zzzzzzzzzzzz
??: ???
JT: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
??: zzz
JT: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
??: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
JT: How long has it been?
??: zzz… What?
JT: How long did we doze off?
??: I think it was around 2:00 a.m.
JT: Shit, just an hour of sleep.
??: Let’s go back to sleep…
JT: ?
??: ?
JT: So, what is it that scares you?
??: ?
??: ??
??: What???
JT: Do I scare you?

Si Bal, si Al

Si Bal ay Bisaya at si Al ay Batangueno
Kapwa ko kasama sa trabaho at kinalaunan ay naging mga kumpare
Sampung taon kami magkakasama sa isang unibersidad sa dakong Maynila
Nag-aayos, nagbubuhat at nag-lilipat ng kung anu-anong mga bagay bagay
Minsan ay ilalagay doon at minsan naman ay ilalagay dito
Isasabit at tatangalin at isasabit muli
Walang katapusan na utos ni Ma’am
Tagaktak ang pawis ni Bal gayun din si Al
Kawawa naman
Hayaan n’yo at mam’ya ay papainumin ko naman kayo
Pero sa ngayon ay sige at buhat na naman tayo
Kailangan matapos ngayon gabi at bukas ay simula na
Ay naku may utos pa uli si Ma’am
Ilipat daw yun dito at ilagay ‘to dun
pasensya na mga pare ko
Sige at iusog mo pa na kaunti
Pareng Bal pagkatapos nito ay lampasuhin mo uli ‘yun banda ‘dun
Sige t’song
Pareng Al pagtapos ay walisan mo ‘dun
Sige p're
‘di nagtagal ay ako ay lumisan
at sila ay iniwan
paalam pareng Bal, gayun din sa iyo pareng Al
matagal muli bago kami nagkita-kita
matanda na si Bal, gayun din si Al
minsan pa muli ay kami ay nag-inuman
sinundo ko si Al at kami ay nagpunta sa bahay ni Bal
medyo nagkaiyakan pa ng kaunti
at medyo nagkayakapan
masaya naman kami kahit ganito lang
aba pagkaraan lang ng ilang araw ay nagpaalam na si Al
Pareng Bal, wala na si pareng Al
Magpahinga ka na pareng Al
sadyang malungkot magpaalam sa isang kaibigan
lumakad ang panahon at si Bal naman ang nagpaalam
Pagod na rin siguro si Bal sa buhay
wala na si Bal gayun din si Al
Paalam mga mahal kong kaibigan
Magkikita kita tayo muli para mag-inuman
At dun ay wala na si Ma’am
‘di na kayo magbubuhat at ‘di na rin pagtutulak
Paalam pareng Bal, ganyun din sa iyo pareng Al

Condemonyo

A week after I moved in to a Manila condominium building, an earthquake rocked Luzon. I was terrified and felt helpless as the walls creaked and moaned for a few seconds and then it stopped; after I few more seconds it swayed again as the building's foundation shifted and settled back to its original position. The earthquake jolted back the images I saw on television in 1968-- a few days before my birthday, when an intensity 7 earthquake hit Manila and flattened Ruby Tower, a six-story apartment-building on Doroteo Jose and Teodora Alonzo streets in Sta. Cruz, in a rubble of twisted metal and hollow blocks. The street corner where Ruby Tower once stood is just a few blocks from my condominium building.
Almost 400 of Ruby Tower's more than 600 tenants lost their lives. I remember seeing in television the badly injured survivors being extricated from the rubble in rescue efforts that lasted for more than a week. Two hundred seventy survivors were rescued but twenty-seven among the injured later died. An undisclosed number of tenants, mostly Chinese-Filipinos, were never found.

Like the Ruby Tower, my condominium looked out of place. Manila is a city where the homeless and fringe dwellers congregate and somehow condominiums doesn't fit into the dire landscape-- a slap on the face of people who are down in their luck. The sprouting of condominium buildings even in the seedier parts of the metropolis is the main reason, I think, why nobody goes to the Manila zoo anymore. These condominiums had allowed people who had more in life to observe people who had less-- much like people watching animals in a zoo, while safely perched on a balcony beyond spitting distance of those wretched creatures called the urban poor-- the great unwashed.

The Manila Zoo offered a similar visual treat in reverse-- people could observe a solitary ape in a cage. When I was a boy the Manila Zoo was always one of the stops whenever our school would have a field trip. Everybody eventually gravitated to the famous ape in a cage. People who visited in the 60s and 70s will remember this ape (He’s probably dead by now; probably shot dead by one of his unsuspecting victims). You can’t miss him. He was some sort of a celebrity then-- the main attraction. Nobody could come close without being exposed to the hazard of being inflicted with the salivary excursions of the bored primate. One time, I remember going for a closer look and sure enough the damn ape was accurately spitting to his heart’s content. I later observed, and I could be wrong, but it seemed then that it wasn’t random spitting. He was only aiming for my better-dressed classmates. Boy, this ape had issues. Or, maybe he was making a statement; whatever, but he sure did it with the chutzpah of a rock star.

There was also an island where a bunch of monkeys were allowed to roam free within the small environ of the artificial island and there was a group of juvenile delinquent misfits who threw trash to onlookers; but, their accuracy paled in comparison with the spitting ape. Juvenile delinquents in the poorer sections of the metropolis would later copy the antics of these monkeys; calling themselves gangs they would terrorize neighborhoods at night; they would throw bottles and stones at each other; attacking and retreating throughout the night causing little damage to themselves but wrecking parked cars and the display windows of commercial establishments in the neighborhood. In my brief stay in a condominium in that part of Manila I have watched quite a few episodes of this senseless destruction of property. I have witnessed a few bag and cellular phone snatches, too; a hold-up and a knifing.

The morning after the earthquake, I fancied taking a walk to the site of the Ruby Tower. I found out that the 1,293-square-meter property where the Ruby Tower once stood was donated to the survivors; a two-story building now stands in the property that houses a shop selling industrial gaskets, lubricants and heat insulation materials, a hardware, an eatery and a cultural club. On the building’s top floor is the Ruby Tower Temple, built a couple of years after the tragedy by the survivors who formed the Ruby Tower Memorial Foundation. I climbed up the stairs to the temple; but the gate leading to the temple was padlocked. The grid iron gate is rusted, it needs a new coat of paint. Nobody seems to go there anymore. Maybe people have forgotten the tragedy that happened here. As I climbed down the stairs, I felt a slight tremor; it was an aftershock.

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

The Walking Wounded

When I was younger, I would ride buses that ran the length of EDSA whenever I get hit by life’s curved balls. Buses back then were reconditioned and refurbished army trucks and re-fitted with Lawanit body panels; the floor were wood planks; seats were wooden park benches; and most were red in color. I prefer to sit up front beside the engine mound. While it’s hot due to the escaping heat from the engine, it had a window all its own that could be opened or closed as the passenger pleases. I keep it wide open to feel the blasts of wind on my face; I'd keep my face on the window until my eyes tear up then I would half close my eyes and everything would be a blur. It was also a good way of covering up my tears when I cry. I'm not exactly certain why I rode buses back then; maybe it was not unlike a mustang’s wild run to a comfort zone.
Now I drive. It is, I should say, I step up but it is still a medium for flight. I'm still running away, but today I actually have a purpose and a destination. I’m heading for a clinic down south. The drive on the SLEX was easy and in a matter of minutes I have eased out of the highway and the concrete is slowly giving way to provincial vistas. I was making good time.
The clinic wasn’t hard to find and I arrived much earlier than expected. It’s not hard to miss. Curiously rendered in orange and green; it stuck out like an afterthought on the front lawn of a bungalow along the highway. It was still early and it's bolted shut. In a while, people congregated on the two bamboo benches out front. An overhang offers shade but it also funneled the heat— much like a chimney, unto the waiting area.
The heat was getting to me so I walked to a nearby sari-sari store and bought a bottle of water; I drank most of it then offered what’s left to a man who was nervously smoking beside me; I saw him earlier sitting on the waiting area with a girl. I casually asked him what’s up. He said, still with a nervous twitch, that he just accompanied the woman with the girl. I inquired further and learned that the girl— barely in her teens; in scruffy cheap bootleg jeans and a still scruffier bootleg shirt, was raped by a fifty year old man. The girl looks a bit emaciated, had an ordinary looking face bordering on ugly and looks like she terribly needs a good scrub. These say much of the kind of predator her attacker was— not that the animal completely robbed her of her future for clearly she had none. The girl looked oblivious of what had happened or what was happening on that particular afternoon, but the people with her seemed more lost than she was.
In a while, two women walked in with a teenage boy in wrinkly high school uniform. He had a tattered backpack for a school bag and shoes with uneven wear on the heel and sole echoing the boy’s clumsy and hobbling gait. The trio sat on a bench across from where I sat. I would catch the boy, who held on to the woman beside him, repeatedly sneaking a glance at me with increasing uneasiness. The boy would whisper to the woman’s ear and the woman would nod with assurance and sometimes a sheepish smile would break up her tired face. The other woman is a generation older than the other and had a stolid countenance. Both women are modestly dressed that would have been more appropriate in a funeral. The boy looked sad and seemed to know that something was definitely wrong with him.
Hovering at the periphery of the assemblage’s guarded social interaction is a ghost of a young man— in a gray walking shorts and white cotton T-shirt. He had a decent wristwatch, an item missing from the other people there. He kept on looking at his watch as if he would rather be anywhere but there. Obviously a regular for he had that blank intense look of a young man seemingly balanced on a tightrope strung between cockiness and despair. In his hand he held a crumpled piece of paper— he was there to re-fill his prescription.
It was a circus of the walking wounded— a boy with a bleak future of pain, ridicule and shame; a half-wit rag doll whose only respite from deprivation is sexual abuse; and a young man looking forward to a lifetime of steady doses of controlled substances. I could feel a headache coming on...