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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