The end is built into the beginning

On Sunday afternoons, she sits on a little bench right beside their gate, all dolled up. Sometimes she wears a strong perfume. Sometimes she just smells of soap. She likes wearing black, or skimpy, something that shows her hips and belly button. She chats with her girlfriends in a voice that seems louder than necessary, or they have giggling fits over private jokes only they themselves know. Anyone who passes by them and compliments her about her hair or dress, she acknowledges it with that distinct laughter that reminds you of rutting pigs. I realize “rutting pigs” is somewhat derogatory, but in my world it isn’t. It’s one way of saying it’s fun, visceral, arousing and innocent at the same time. Something inappropriate like that. And sensual.

When her girlfriends are not around, she focuses her attention thumbing her cellphone. Unlimited texting is all the rage, and she will use every cent of that P25 Whole Day Texting promo some telecom has the genius to market. So she texts. The intensity you see in her face suggests an ongoing exchange with someone of absolute importance. The president of some First World country, maybe. Or some shirtless dude she’s recently “friended” on Friendster.

The deeper the afternoon gets, the greater her anxiety. The source of that anxiety is not visible. It only touches you as something electric and sad and almost hysterical. She’s laughing even louder now. She’s shouting “look at me! look at me!” except the actual words sound like “ha ha ha ha ha ha! giggle giggle ha ha ha ha!” When night falls, she becomes extra friendly: there’s no acquaintance, remote or not, that gets by without a flattering word, a kind note, from her. The small spontaneous conversations –mostly about shoes, food, favorite color, things you put on your hair, sounds that toys make when you stomp on them — are sustained in this way. Anything. Anything she’ll do just to be out of that house, outside that little life.

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When this is over, when the things the world wants from you are all gone, you’ll have time for small silly things

How to mess with friends who don’t know crap about basic computer stuff. This happened not too long ago.

Friend: hey, r u online?

Me: it isn’t obvious, is it?

F: I’m trying to watch this movie on my PC. There’s no subtitles.

Me: what movie is that?

F: ghost town

Me: Ricky Gervais, British guy?

F: yeah, think so

Me: you’re using what player?

F: VLC

Me: then why do you need subs?

F: the dialogue, the accent, I can’t get to it

Me: okay, do this. Play the movie. Once it’s running, right-click on the center of the screen, a drop-down menu appears

F: okay, wait…

Me: can you see Audio?

F: where is that

Me: right above Video, in the drop-down menu

F: oh, right

Me: Audio, then Enhancements, then click “Remove British Accent”

F: where is this?

Me: I just told you

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That’s the thing with greed, Archy. It’s blind.

Aww, lookie that. It’s Andrew Tan, Megaworld Corp’s Overlord. Seems like only yesterday I was writing the guy’s “I used to be as poor as fuck, just like you!” speeches for the still-dirt-poor people at UE (he’s an alumnus). Look at him now. He’s all grown up! He could save a gazillion starving Filipinos, but he won’t! His kindness is for employees only!

I’m so proud of you, Andrew. So proud. You need somebody to make your daughter’s thesis so goddamn awesome, or you want a truckload of your money vanish like magic, you know where to find me.

Image is from the “10 portraits of power in Philippine business,” Rogue magazine, March 2009.

If you’re an adult, you have the IQ of a squeezable ketchup bottle and deserve to have a car battery shocking your testicles

I got an offer to write for Maxim magazine. One of the blogs I write got their attention, and based on that blog’s “popularity,” and of course due to my awesome ninja writing skillz that almost always make me include the word “vagina” in the text I produce, Maxim’s top honchos probably thought, “Hey, we’re selling twat, this guy talks about twat all the time. Get him!”

I’m still thinking about it. Should I accept it? It’s flattering that some top editorial person from that men’s magazine would email you out of nowhere and not only wanna hire you, but also features your blog in the magazine’s March 2009 issue (it’s out now, folks! Guess which of the websites featured in The Internet Underverse page is mine). It’s a major relief from the usual “make your penis bigger!” emails I get. But while the offer is very tempting, I have lots of (unmentionable) stuff on my hands right now, and saying yes to the offer and not being able to deliver would be pretty sad.

So I said let me think about it, let me kill some chicken, offer it to the right anito, and get some answers. I’m not playing a hard-to-get, look-who’s-talking douchebag, I’m just being frank about what I think I cannot do in the coming months.

But uncertain of the wisdom of my own decision, I sought the advice of three people I respect. I’m hiding their identities so they can still live normal lives after this blog post, merely referring to them as Gurus numbers 1, 2 and 3.

I went to Guru No. 1 and told him my dilemma. He said, “You’re a dick!”

I went to Guru No. 2, and he said, “Mocha has been making out with women and you’re here not taking videos of it?”

I went to Guru No. 3 and he said, “Just die.”

I’m totally confused – clearly, those three answers merely indicated how much these gurus admire me, and not giving me a direct answer. So like any normal person, I did something Nina Jose would have done on a Thursday afternoon –

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“Eat Poop And Die”

I have recently moved to LA from providence RI, quite a lot to
adjust to. For one thing they have a whole other level of Christian
out here. I mean back home it’s just Catholics, who don’t want to
convert you. In fact, they won’t let you join them. If we want more
Catholics, we’ll make them.

And we had the Protestants, et al. They are too polite to force
their beliefs on you.

Out here you can’t go ten feet without some Born-Again Christian warning about the evil of your wicked ways. I can’t even afford to be wicked anymore. Hell, I’d settle for naughty.

The other day there was a Muslim trying to convert a Fundamentalist by buying him breakfast and discussing the nature of God. Okay, let’s face it, discussing the nature of God is as useful as discussing the Easter Bunny, and not the history of the Easter
Bunny, but the care and maintenance. What does the Easter Bunny like to eat, where does he like to sleep? Does he eat colored carrots?

Anyway, the Muslim balked because the Christian insisted on bacon with his breakfast. The Muslim quoted about how the pig is an animal only fit for the disposal of garbage and said he wouldn’t eat pig because pigs will eat their own shit. I almost jumped in. I had to hold myself back by my own collar.

Okay, what I was going to ask the Muslim, Do you eat chicken? I have seen chicken eat their own shit. How about rabbit? You know they are descended from predators and are so bad at digesting vegetable matter that they have to eat their own shit to get any nutrition. How about fish? They not only eat their own shit, they swim in it all day. I would say that in order to really eat kosher (or halal) you should be a vegan — but wait, guess what plants eat? That’s right! Shit! In fact, they thrive on it. Maybe Muslims should stop worrying about who eats shit, and worry about who talks shit.

But I just ordered breakfast instead. That was some good bacon.

(Words not mine (and I wish they were), but written and emailed to me by one awesome Canadian atheist.)

From Innocence, To Knowledge And Disillusionment

[Depending on the sense of humor of the universe at the moment, these text things may or may not have appeared in a recent issue of the Adamson Chronicle]

Hi. My name is JB Lazarte. I’m what you may consider a self-absorbed, self-obsessed, anal-retentive, English Nazi slash editor slash netrepreneur slash selfish bastard. But before I became this, a million years ago, I was a self-absorbed, self-obsessed, anal-retentive editor-in-chief of the cool student paper you’re holding. Now you call it the Adamson Chronicle. Back then, in a time when dinosaurs roamed and ate slow-moving animals, we just called it “the paper.”

Ah, the 1990s. Good times. I was an easily frightened, impressionable freshman in 1993 when Arlene Villaluz-Paredes sort of told me to take the editorial board exam. Arlene was a hot new English professor back then, and I’m sure she still is now. That was second semester, maybe November 1993, when she tried to seduce me — “seduced” me with the idea of joining the paper. And because I was the sort of “retard” who said “yes” whenever people around me said yes, or killed frogs when other kids killed frogs, I didn’t need much convincing. In February of the following year, 1994, I took the exam. By May, I would receive the telegram (this was the state of the art before texting) informing me that I made it to the cut.

Fast-forward three years later. In 1996, maybe November, I remember this one afternoon, I was all alone at the Penthouse’s terrace on top of SV Building. For those who don’t know it, the Penthouse was the office of the paper, so chosen in the same way the location of Medieval castles had been chosen. The relative isolation gave the paper a kind of independence, gave it some perspective, probably balls, too. I remember the smell of coffee from the mug in my hand, the briny late afternoon breeze from Luneta, the lengthening shadows of the Jai Alai building, and me thinking, “How in hell does one serve as the editor of this place?”

Then as now, it wasn’t easy to find the answers. You were practically just a kid. Sure, as an editor, you probably have some facility with language, but that wasn’t good enough. Here’s an idea: hit William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, pay special attention to how the children form some crude, even savage, kind of politics and self-government based on their instincts and early prejudices and fears, and you get the picture. The “savage insanity” of “managing” a supposedly independent student paper was, in many respects, very Lord-of-the-Flies-y. There you were, barely understanding the first thing about justice and journalism, and you already have the “ginormous” burden of being able to publish all your foolishness. Note that I used the word “ginormous” in a non-boobs-related context. Which means I’m actually serious.

Back then I had only been beginning to figure out the opposite sex and what to do with the opposite sex (to borrow a line from Butch Dalisay), but already I was supposed to “enlighten” other students. Keep them on their toes. Make them aware of the world they live in. Crazy shit.

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I am delicate like plastic

Last week, I was at the hospital. I had a terrible case of hypocalcemia, which I had suspected (totally incorrectly) to have been some fancy shit like Münchausen syndrome, which explains why it took me three days to get help. But before all that, I was shitting liquid.

Wait, backtrack. Here’s how it happened, in a convenient, chronological narrative we all love.

I was having diarrhea during Manny Pacquiao’s bout. I ignored it, because ignoring it was easy: there was Manny beating the crap out of the Golden Boy, and although having liquid shit squirting out of your anus might be fun (especially if it’s really colorful), it couldn’t possibly compete with the “Dream Match.”

By evening, when I finally took notice, it was semi-too-late. I was too dehydrated; I had lost too much of the electrolytes that count. I couldn’t even flip the finger, or poke my dog’s butt with a long stick so he’d get annoyed and run after me.

Funny thing is, I actually held out for two more days, trying to use my old Jedi mind tricks to will myself to be well. Those two days were a half-conscious bout with oral rehydration, intermittent fever, and screaming matches with a ghost who looked like one of my long-dead childhood enemies and that called himself “Your Personal Motherfucker.” By the second day, I was half-dead: no amount of Gatorade or soft, boiled food would pass through my digestive system. So I continued losing water and energy. On the third day, I was a zombie at the emergency room telling the doctor there’s a bunch of little ninjas in my stomach who kung-fu whatever I eat back up my mouth. “So you vomit everything you eat?” doctor says. “No,” I say, “there are little ninjas…”

Doctor does her examining thing, makes me lie on the table, feels my abdomen, and declares I’m not as fucked as I think I was.

Doctor: Oh, you just have hypocalcemia.

Me: Is that like when Ripley had this alien inside her and eventually it broke out of her chest, screaming like a nasty baby alien?

Doctor: Uhh, no, actually, you’ve just lost lots of electrolytes. Your stomach muscles have stopped moving.

Me: [looks at the ceiling, imagines stomach muscles actually stopping with a steam engine hiss].

Doctor: We’ll have to stick needles in you and hook you up with an IV. And drugs. You’ll be fine.

[A nurse preps the needle, which looks absurdly large for my vein].

Me: [stares hard at ceiling, thinking happy thoughts]

And like magic, in just a few minutes, I was well. Just like that. All I needed was intravenous hardcore rehydration. Damn, I should have one of those at home.

I have to tell you this was the first time in years I had ever been to a hospital, with me as the patient. I was so bored I had to ask my sister to bring me some books to read and a notebook I can scribble stuff on. She brought Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield and Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers On A Train. I told her “Charles” and “Dickens” are both slang for penis, like “Woody Johnson” or “Rod Cockburn,” and I wonder if Charles Dickens had been the butt of schoolyard jokes just because of that.

I had to bring the IV bag, with it attached to my left arm, with me to the restroom. I didn’t allow anyone to assist me. I discovered when you lower the IV bag enough, gravity immediately makes my blood drip back into the IV line, instead of the other way around. This fascinated me. I showed it to my sister.

Roch: What’s that?

Me: That’s my blood, dripping into the line. Look, I lower this bag, my blood begins flowing out. I hold this high, like this, the blood retreats. Cool!

Roch: Eww!

Two friends, Tito and Marilyn, came by in the evening. I told them I was totally fine, that visiting me at the hospital makes me feel a little mushy, as if I were an old man. Tito was hilarious: he was wearing that formal barong office get-up that the hospital people probably thought he was a funeral parlor rep visiting to negotiate with me about the “best funeral package.” It cracked me up. Jokes were exchanged. Good post-liquid-shit-slash-hypocalcemia jokes.

Back at home, my two dogs hysterically greeted me with their dog version of “Welcome back, asshole!” As if I had been gone for a very long time. I missed a lot of things. I celebrated it by playing, in full almost-inhuman blast, Alpinestars’ “Burning up” over and over and over and over… Then I poked my dog’s butt with a long stick and ran like hell.

[The Spinal Tap]

And in the afterhours, you’ll see, I love you, almost madly

Two years ago, a female friend told me about another female friend who was so infatuated with some guy that she actually stalked him. She would shadow him, hide in the bushes, jump into a taxi when he drives away. She was totally crazy about him that all the shit she did deserved at least one Judd Apatow movie. The funny thing is that that female friend isn’t your typical crazy — she taught English in some prestigious school, well-educated, not totally a loser. But she was doing this, and I thought, what the outrageous fuck was that?

Sufficiently “inspired,” I went home and spent the night pacing about my room, looking up at the ceiling, scratching my butt on occasion, and whispering to myself, “Jesus fucking christ there’s a story here, there’s a story here…” At some point, I actually sat down and began writing. I wrote a story about a stalker, but I told it in the first person, made the main character a man so I can relate, and increased his general aura of loserness and desperation. And hey, I also made him a “struggling writer” so I can put things in his mouth I’d usually say (I guess I’m not the only person guilty of that).

The result is the story “Blind Spot.” I showed it to friends, and the various reactions can be summed up as one-liners: “too sappy,” “characters’ names are corny,” “where are the gratuituous sex scenes?”, “no gun duel?”, “OMFG, I hate Beck,” “I like it, reminds me of my crush!”

Between “too sappy” and “Oh my God, I like it!” I decided to give it a shot. I emailed it to the Philippines Free Press.

However, I received no response from the editor, so after a while, I forgot about it. Around that time I started Skirmisher and worked on a long story that I had hoped would develop fully into a little novel. I never finished that “little novel” but I received news that made me not depressed over that failure: it was from the Free Press editor, saying that “Blind Spot” won and was getting Second Prize at the magazine’s century-old Philippines Free Press Literary Awards, which I learned is second only to the Palanca in terms of prestige and badassness or something like that.

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Your reality, sir, is all lies and balderdash. And I’m delighted to say I have no grasp of it.

“So which is it? Groundhog Day or [title of 1993 movie I forget at the moment]?”

My brother, Marvin, winces and makes a face as he surveys the posters. We’re in Glorietta, and this is the summer of 1993. The whole family was supposed to watch a Russian circus, but something had happened and the performance was canceled. And this being the pre-texting and pre-Internet age, we learned about it only when we’re already standing right outside the circus tent.

The circus had pitched their huge yellow tents in an empty lot at the corner of Buendia and Ayala in Makati. In 2008, this lot would be occupied by the RCBC Tower. Not wanting to waste what is an otherwise fun sunny afternoon, somebody suggests we see a movie. So the five of us troop to the nearby mall, then we split – Marvin and I to watch the movie we like, my Father, Mother and my baby sister to go eat somewhere, look at expensive things, and drool.

“This looks fun,” I say, my finger trailing tentatively on the glass case that held Groundhog Day’s poster. It looks Christmas-y: there’s snow, there’s Bill Murray with that sardonic bored-as-hell face, there’s Andie MacDowell who at this point reminds me of my high school crush. “Let’s watch this. Groundhog Day. It’s really funny.”

I have no idea what the movie is about, but I’m choosing it because of the woman in it.

Marvin doesn’t put up a fight. We go and buy the tickets. Inside the cinema, it’s Christmas.

In the movie, as some of you know, Bill Murray is reporter Phil Connors, a TV weatherman who covers the annual Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pittsburgh. Somehow, something happens and he finds himself trapped in repeating the same day over and over. And like a normal person, he reacts to it by engaging in hedonistic pursuits. Then he gets increasingly desperate – he tries killing himself, only to wake up every morning at the same hour, on the same bed, to the tune of Cher and Sonny Bono’s “I’ve got you, babe.”

Well, you know the story. Things get resolved in the end. Bill Murray is able to re-examine the meaning of his life, and (this the movie doesn’t actually show but I’m sure) he gets laid in the end.

I remember all this because in 2004, 11 years later, having lunch at this French-themed dining place on the ground floor of the RCBC Tower, I am thinking of how Bill Murray, knowing he couldn’t die, wolfed down all those donuts! I am thinking about the Russian circus, and how this fancy new building – some say the equivalent of an entire IT Park – was a dusty lot sprawled with huge yellow tents. The tarpaulin flapping in the wind. The dry dust of a summer afternoon swirling, the air shimmering in the heat.

“This is a big project,” the woman seated across my table says now. “We get this, we’ll split the fees fifty-fifty.”

“Uh-uh.” I steal a glance at her legs; she’s wearing a mini-skirt and any slight movement inevitably shows more skin. If she moves in the right way, I’m sure I’ll see underwear. If this day repeats itself, like in the movie, there are things I can choose to do…

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The real ‘Vagina Monologues’

I enter a hotel room. Somebody obscenely rich is having a cocktail party. Nobody’s there that I know. This bothers me for a few moments, until I realize why: everyone’s face is a huge, pink vagina.

I approach a gentleman in a suit, whose face is of course a huge vagina. I try to make conversation. But all that comes out of my mouth is the word “vagina.”

Me: Vagina vagina.

Gentleman in a suit: Vagina vagina vagina

Me: (very confused) Vagina! Vagina! Vagina!

Gentleman ina  suit: (becomes nervous, tries to calm me down) Vagiiiina… Vagiiiina…

Me: (I step back in horror. I look around me. All the vagina-faced people — guests of the party — are staring. I snap angrily at them) Vagina!!! Vagina vagina vagina vagina!!! Vagina!!!

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