How and Why I Won a Philippines Free Press Literary Award

…Is a goddamn mystery.

Last Wednesday, my story, “Blind Spot,” landed on second place [which I’ve uploaded on the Skirmisher
for the uninhibited reading pleasure of the morbidly curious] in this
year’s Philippines Free Press Literary Awards held at the Mandarin
Oriental Hotel in Makati. I wasn’t there, but my sister was.

It’s
one of those genuine surprises that only rarely come. It’s like those
times you’re facing a horde of Eastern Europeans with a silver MAC-10
Elite ready and loaded in your hand, only to be instantly shotgunned to
death by somebody who had sneaked up behind you [Black].
Or running across no-man’s land and storming a bunker, grenades ready
in your teeth, and suddenly you kick the bunker door open and Lo! There’s
the smoking muzzle of a machine gun with a sniggering Nazi behind it,
who proceeds in blasting you to a thousand little yucky pieces [Call of Duty: Finest Hour] [I’ll try to come up with pleasant similies next time once I get to play pleasant games].

The surprise of winning felt more or less like those things, only in this real-world instance, it felt good. Really good.

I never took “Blind Spot” seriously. I realize maybe all writers who win something always say they didn’t take their winning works seriously, but I’m stepping out of the shadows to say I really
didn’t take it seriously. But so what? Big deal. It won. It probably
has something that I’m just too blind to see, which is bad for me: this
means I can never be trusted when it came to judging literary worth.
Which means I’m a chronic hitter and misser, mostly misser. Which means
this is one gaping, bleeding tsamba.

The first surprise was when Paolo Manalo
emailed me several months ago that “Blind Spot” was in the short list.
I didn’t even know it was accepted and published. I had emailed it I
think in February 2005 without even bothering to tighten it in places.
When I received no reply from the Philippines Free Press
(which usually is either the bad “Oh no, please, no” or the good “We’re
publishing this something, something, something”), I just shrugged it
off and moved on. Last week, Paolo emailed me again and this time, it
was a shotgun blast to the face: he said something like, You won, dude.

Usually, I’d gush. What Paolo didn’t see was that I was laughing my head off in genuine disbelief.

I have two reasons why I’m so happy winning in the Free Press.
One, it’s the shit when you’re a guy with nothing to do but write down
some daydream that hit you while doing some non-amazing household
chore. Oh, did I say “chore?” Replace that with “mission.” That’s
better.

Second is, aside from being one of this country’s most
respected, most desired, oldest annual literary competitions, it also
pays pretty good prize money – 40 grand for “Blind Spot.” Forty
thousand bucks for some daydream you wrote one boring afternoon is like
shit hitting the fan and discovering yeah, you can eat that shit and
even like it. Ask anybody
around and they’ll tell you forty grand is forty grand is forty grand.
And there’s the trophy, made of glass, which my sister says is so cool
it’s almost “sacred.” Like you could kneel before it and pray ten Hail
Marys and feel guilty about the profanity. What makes it cool is that
it says something about me having made a “great contribution to
Philippine literature.” Say something like that to Gina my Guinea Pig
here, and she’ll bite your testicles to make you swallow back whatever
nice things you say about me. That is, if Gina were human and allowed
to have some scrap of an opinion. I’m saying this because I know my pet
detests me so much; whenever she sees me, she suddenly stops chewing
her food and glares at me. I also stop chewing my food and glare back
at her; we’re like Newman and Seinfeld greeting each other in mutual
disgust. But we both know I’m boss, so I tell her things just to rub
that fact in like, “One day I’m gonna sacrifice you in the name of science,” or “You know, in Peru, they fry their guinea pigs alive.”

The
feel-good is double because for many Filipino writers, or maybe this is
me speaking for myself, writing fiction is like fishing – you do it in
your spare time. You do it when you’re through with the bathroom, when
you’re done with the girlfriend, after all the day’s crap and real
work. You do it when that very rare moment actually arrives where
there’s only you and a blinking cursor, a tumbler of iced tea/mug of
coffee/beer and old Brazilian jazz. And that’s rare. Which even makes
the feel-good triple.

After I was told I won in the Free Press,
my head grew so enormous you could see it from outer space. I realized
it got very large and swollen when I tried walking out the door moments
after reading the wonderful emails from Sarge Lacuesta (Free Press incumbent literary editor) and Paolo Manalo (Free Press
former literary editor); I couldn’t go out because the sides of my head
wouldn’t fit through the door. When I managed to somehow slip through
by using many jars of KY Jelly and a handy chainsaw, some girl at the
fastfood was so shocked at the size of my goddamn head she ran out
screaming.

The old lady in the line with me tipped her eyeglasses and looked me over. She asked, How’d your head get so swollen like that?

How big you think this is, I asked, because I had no idea how grotesque my head had become.

She said, I think that’s even bigger than the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.

I
shrugged, in that awkward, tottering way anybody with an enormous head
could be able to shrug. I told her I’m a chauvinist male pig and that
when my ego gets inflated, it’s literal. I told her I just won in the Free Press.

Free what?

I said never mind.

I later tried the time-honored cure of getting my ass kicked in Fight Night
by the likes of Erik Morales and Muhammad Ali. I haven’t discovered the
strategy with this game yet. So I always end up a bleeding pulp on the
canvass, the world spinning all around me, Mr. Padilla the referee
counting, “8…9…10… You’re out!”

I took a long, cold shower. I
paid Gina my Guinea Pig a visit to annoy her by scratching her nipples.
She hates it. Touch her nipples and she flies up in the air, squeaking
and grumbling like an old lady.

I then checked the blog, and
checked the progress of my other two “top-secret” web projects whose
content will be “magically” supplied purely by algorithm, just like Techmeme.

Then I asked my sister “remotely” for pictures of the event.

She
said she forgot to bring the necessary gadgets. She told me there was
Up Dharma Down’s female vocalist, who’s very pretty in person, but who
would believe her without at least some pictures that she could email
me?

My sister’s the type who impulsively gets off the bus on
Roxas Boulevard to take snapshots of dead fish and ugly birds on
Baywalk. On ordinary days, she takes pictures of her friends straddling
some lamp post in Luneta and pretending to be hookers. You send her to
an important event at some swanky hotel, you tell her it’s some fucking
big deal for me to vicariously see it, and she doesn’t even bring at
least a camera phone. She should’ve at least sketched the whole thing
on a napkin. She should have stolen some ashtray, or one of those
gold-plated metal things you always see on tables of respectable places
(my office drawer in my former job was half full of Eastwood City
silverware from those years of doing PR work–slash–stealing shiny
things on tables—slash–convincing my female officemates to do the
same—slash–assembling pirate ship made of stolen silverware inside a
bottle). But no, nothing.

So I asked her, Did Cristina Hidalgo
bring with her that niece or daughter or whoever that was with her at
Jorge Bocobo Museum some years ago, some girl who oozed with so much
hotness she gave off her own sunstorms? A girl who looked so good she
probably sometimes fainted whenever she saw herself in the mirror?

She said, Who’s Cristina Hidalgo?

I said never mind. Then I either went back to Gina to snap a rubberband on her nipple, or tried reading Cory Doctorow’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom,
I just don’t remember which. My head was fast deflating back to normal
size, and I felt dizzy and depressed and acutely caffeine-starved.

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