Snippets from My ‘Better Life’ Montage

I.

Late Saturday morning. M and D are in a cab puttering down Katipunan. M’s cel rings.

M: (picking up) Hi Carl.

C: Hi. Where are you?

M: On the way to Divisoria.

C: Divisoria? Why? What’s in Divisoria?

M: We’re buying cloth. For our couch.

C: You’re re-upholstering your couch?

M: Yeah, we’re re-upholstering our couch.

C: Okay, fine.  Never mind. Bye!

M: Bye!

M hangs up. A strange, squinty look — a look of utter disbelief — congeals on her face. She licks her lips, as if able to taste the dregs of ‘Divisoria’ and ‘re-upholstering’ and ‘couch’ in her mouth, as if she had never expected to string such words together so casually, matter-of-factly, so un-ironically, and yet is not entirely bothered by this sentiment.

II.

Thursday evening. M enters her apartment, tossing her bag onto the couch. She opens the kitchen cabinet, takes out a small bag of fusilli, and goes over its cooking instructions intently, visibly virginal in the ins and outs of pasta boiling. She looks over to the stove and notices the frying pan greasy with old oil. She takes the pan, walks to the sink, and is about to reach for the faucet when she notices a very small mouse — a baby mouse — curled up in a corner of the sink, keeping perfectly still. The look on M’s face is not so much of horror as it is of mildly disgusted curiosity. She leans a little closer to inspect the baby mouse. It remains still. M takes her cel out and types out a text message. The cel’s screen reads: D, there’s a baby Rabbi Herschel in our sink. I’m not sure if it’s dead or sleeping. M then puts the cel down and turns the TV on.  She watches a 24 Oras segment on an old, rickety Air Force plane crashing into a house.

III.

Thursday night. M and D are in front of the kitchen sink, which a dying baby mouse is trying to crawl out of in vain. The two are playing bato-bato-pick. M reaches five points first and screams in triumph. She dances a victory dance. Dejectedly, D fishes out a plastic bag from under the sink, takes an old barbecue stick from the kitchen table, and stares at the baby mouse with great uncertainty.

IV.

Any given morning. M is in bed, swallowed by the comforter, sleepy-eyed, comfortable. D is asleep beside her. The apartment is quiet.

Plug ‘Em

Part 1 of my short story “Sweet” is out in this week’s Philippines Free Press (Jan. 16, 2010 ish)! Part 2 comes out the following week. 

I find it very cool that the story’s being doled out in installments. The sudden and literal suspension of events lends a vigor to the story that I hadn’t really intended, as if it’s been especially assured of having a life of its own.

Also, my non-fic piece “Living in Pyramids” is out in Uno’s December 09 ish, the one with Sarah Gaugler on the cover. 

Domestic Blitz Update: A Eulogy for Rabbi Herschel

Tonight, we mourn the loss of Rabbi Herschel. Rabbi Herschel was a good mouse, a mouse that embraced his mouse-ness with a quiet integrity, that skittered through his simple life with much purpose. Yes, Rabbi Herschel had been leaving his gritty, teeny-tiny coal-like droppings all over the apartment the past weekend, true, but to his credit, he had not done anything else much shittier than that, such as gnaw on our clothes, say, or bite us in our sleep, or participate in electoral fraud. But Rabbi Herschel was a mouse, remained a mouse and nothing more, and true to the totally awesome first dialogue in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (which we had seen the day we first encountered Rabbi Herschel [yes, we had named Rabbi Herschel Rabbi Herschel due to said dialogue's equating of rats with Jews, but we are in no way anti-Semitic; we are, in truth, quite Semitic, and have known Adam Sandler to be pretty much God since Billy Madison, and have only chosen this name out of a revoltingly pure, pop culture smartass-ness]), we just really wanted him offed, and quick.

The opportunity arose when I found Rabbi Herschel trapped at the bottom of our bath pail this evening. Our first plan was to fill the pail halfway up and wait for Rabbi Herschel to tire from treading water and drown, but we had found Rabbi Herschel to be quite learned in floating still to conserve much oxygen and energy, and thus decided bitch goin down some other way. That was when D retrieved his bottle of paint thinner (which he would normally use for the purpose of prettifying his Arcane Legions figurines because apparently my love is NEVER enough), and poured a quarter of it into the pail.

Rabbi Herschel died at 9:04 PM this evening. We had had enough faith in his fighting spirit to believe that his having sunk to the bottom of the pail in a stiff, crouched position was just his way of trying not to inhale the perfectly poisoned waters, but we’re just romantic that way. 

So, yes, my dear brethren, our beloved Rabbi Herschel has passed on. I myself had the honor of flushing him straight off to the Sparkly Sewer in the Sky. Oy. We shall miss him dearly.

We must also remember however, that in the greater scheme of things, Rabbi Herschel has never really left us, not really. Rabbi Herschel is everywhere around us. He is everywhere: underneath our kitchen sinks, within our cupboards, behind our toilets, at the bottom of our trash bins, deep inside our gritty, teeny-tiny coal-like hearts. Rabbi Herschel is right here with us always, and most of the time, we don’t even know it. We really, truly don’t, and such is the forbidding and unfathomable and insurmountable mystery of our lives. I am so buying Raid tomorrow.

Kaya Palaaaaaaaa

The longer I work in a hospital, the more convinced I am that I was brought up all wrong. A few weeks ago, for instance, I was sitting in on an interview with a developmental pediatrician, and learned that parents should never, ever 1) scold their child often (and with vigor, physically or verbally), 2) allow their child to thumbsuck past 7 months of age, and 3) fight in front of their child. These acts would, more often than not, result in 1) the child’s equating parental attention (which he craves, even unwittingly) with his capacity for bad behavior (thus, the kid has a subconscious tendency to keep being an asshole), 2) an extreme sense of dependency on outside factors (e.g. money, achievements, thumbs), and 3) the child’s acceptance that hatred is the norm, respectively.

See? Now I know why I’m an insecure abusive delinquent!  

But seriously, this at least explains why I feel so inept in social situations. My folks have inadvertently primed me to dislike, or to feel uncomfortable with and untrusting of, myself. And thus, I can’t stand being around other people, because it is a most grueling exercise in projecting a positive self-image. It explains why I feel so physically beat after mingling in a crowd, or why tiny niceties sting like big, fat needle pricks. Again, it’s not that I don’t like the people I interact with; it’s the interacting that saps me. And this explains why I’ve been such a hermit for the past year, or why it seems like the best thing to do, once seen, is disappear.

Wankers

I should have been born British. Considering that most of the things I’ve obsessed over hail from way, way, way across the pond, I was highly likely a soot-stained Victorian urchin in a past life, begging for tuppence, thinking of pies. Every point in my development as a human bean involved British culture one way or another. Most of what I’ve read as a kid were by British authors or at least set in Britain — The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, every Roald Dahl story in existence. British bands were my music of choice — Oasis, Portishead, Blur, Suede, Massive Attack, Elastica, Radiohead, Pulp. Even my preferred TV drivel was British — Absolutely Fabulous,The Crystal Maze, Brittas Empire and, later on, Little Britain. I guess Mr. Belvedere counts too. I like my culture gloomy and twee, I like to appreciate things that are thickly glazed with an accent, I like that British people are such a lovely, perverse people.

So when I heard that MTV is currently developing an American version of Skins, I really wanted to punch somebody. Skins is the most awesome TV show about delinquent teenagers EVER. And it’s incredibly British in a heather-tinged, Topshop-clad, I-love-Hard-Fi kind of way. I’ve watched all three completed seasons on DVD over and over and over and am immensely impatient for the upcoming season. I am emotionally involved with 2/3 of all the characters to have ever appeared on the show. I cried like a bitch over Sid and Cassie, and Chris and Jal, and Effy and Cook. I don’t care if I’m not giving substantial background on the show right now; it’s best that you grab your own copy from your friendly (or ornery) neighborhood pirate.You can thank me after you’ve stopped convulsing from the first season’s finale. Skins is a delight and MTV’s plan to appropriate  it for a place that is not grey, nippy Bristol is — if I may borrow from the Brits’ sumptuous terminology — bollocks. Bollocks bollocks bollocks. Hairy, gritty, ungainly bollocks.

It was a miracle of the highest order that the Stateside version of The Office got it right. And that project was helmed by Steve Carell, who is a legitimate creative person. But MTV? The channel that got more and more tawdry the more it shed its beautiful, unorthodox past (Liquid Television! Alternative Nation! Aeon Flux! 90% of  airtime dedicated to full music videos!), emerging tanned, toned and like so totally set for Spring Break? They’ll just make something like The Hills, only poorer and exploitative of real social agendas. Granted the original Skins tackled chestnuts such as homosexuality and drug abuse, but there is a wry humor, or a quaintness, or yes, an actual intelligence to the rendering of these issues, and I highly doubt MTV can match the quality with a cast likely to compose of at least one wannabe rapper and at least one dude who still hangs on to Dashboard Confessional. God save the Queen.

Terrible Twos

There’s a toddler in the office today. Not a baby, mind. A baby is a small, bundled, poop-filled thing that is generally harmless, whereas a toddler is slightly larger, far more mobile, and much more able in the ways of deception. She was adorable the first few hours, looking at the hospital’s brochures over and over and babbling numbers to herself like Rain Man, but now she is a hissy fit made flesh, and has been brought over to the elevator hall where buttons may be pressed to appease her roiling spirit.

She hasn’t paid any attention to me at all today, but then again, I haven’t been going out of my way to amuse her either, unlike my officemates who have waved either Hershey’s Miniatures or hundred-peso bills in her face. This dynamic, or lack thereof, reminds me of the one between myself and some of my co-workers. I have no qualms with them, but it’s just that I’m no good at this casual office interaction thing. In fact, I”m no good at interaction, period. I tire of interface far more rapidly than most people, I think, feeling like whole blocks of concrete are setting around my shoulders and ankles whenever I make small-talk, or go through other niceties such as saying hi and goodbye.

This is why I’d make a horrendous mother. I can’t even look at a kid without thinking, “Wow. I am, like, so socially inept.”

WATDAFAAAAKKKK

So there was a fire at our apartment building today. It was 6:30 in the morning: D and I were dressed for work, and I was just about to partake of a nutricious and delicious bowl of oatmeal, when we suddenly heard all this hullaballoo from upstairs. Lots of screeching and bellowing and heavy objects crashing to the floor. We thought it was just some old married couple getting all pissed and married at each other, so we rushed outside because we’re so, like, usisero y’know.

But the guy hurtling down the stairs was screaming ‘fire,’ and we saw the rest of our neighbors running out of their apartments with all their stuff. I was scared, but it was more of an unnerved, weak-kneed kind of fright since we still couldn’t see anything ablaze.

D and I rushed back in to grab our prized possessions. We first scuttled around plucking out what was most crucial to us. That hypothetical question/ice breaker “If your house was on fire, what would you save?” just hung over my head the whole time, and I couldn’t believe it was being asked of me for real. I more or less grabbed what I always thought I would:

1) laptop, iPod, cellphone

2) wallet, passport, other official documents

3) my copy of Perks of Being a Wallflower

4) my signed copy of Circles of Life, Imelda Marcos’s batshit-crazy guidebook on how to live your life batshit-crazy (ibebenta ko kasi ito sa eBay pag desperado na)

We then got as much of our other stuff once the valuables were out of the way: the DVD player, the TV, clothes and shoes. This stuff ended up dumped on the sidewalk facing our building, and we spent the next hour or so with the rest of our neighbors in our little compound, all of us pacing the street with that same sullen, watdafaaakkk look.

We found out that the fire started in the apartment directly above ours. A short-circuit or something. The room was cooking bad — windows popping  to pieces, bright orange flames shooting out. We lucked out by living on the first floor since we got to evacuate fairly easily, but the downside was that, once all the firetrucks came, all the water used seeped into our apartment, ruining some of our books (D is very much in mourning as I type) and basically turning our place into a kiddie pool. Kinarma kami sa Ondoy.

We’re fine now. It’ll take about a week ’til we can move back; the electricity’s kaput and much of the upper floors need fixing. But we’re fine. And I guess we won’t be too much of a stranger to our neighbors anymore, even though we’ve only started living there 2 months ago. They’ve seen D fling a plastic bag of my underwear to the side of the road. They’ve seen me slumped by the road against a pile of books, hair still wet from the bath, weepy.

Just last night, we were sitting in bed, eating dinner with our brand-new set of pretty plates and bowls c/o Shopwise, watching E! News and formally acknowledging our happiness. I mean, I  know we still are, but hot-damn, Powers that Be, your sense of humor is WHACK.

Mandatory Post-Party with Workshop Co-Fellows Blog Entry Which Nobody Else Will Give A Fuck About But Us

Reasons Why I Love My Dumaguete Workshop Co-Fellows:

1) They are funny.

2) They will eat anything you put in front of them.

3) They will stretch a party out to 12 straight hours and, at around 4 in the morning, will skip out to the street outside your apartment, ignoring an entire barkada of hiphop poker boys and, later on, a tranvestite fresh from a night in (it’s a good neighborhood), choreograph a dance number, rehearse it, film it on cameraphone, and put it up on FaceBook (incriminating link to follow). Special mention must be given to Ms. Carmela Tolentino who, with no narcotics and a bare minimum of sweet, duhat wine in her system, orchestrated the damn thing.

Trannies

Back in 2006, horror pimp Karl de Mesa and transgressive fic overlord Iwa Wilwayco sent out a call for contributions for Wasak! Stories of Pinoy Trangression and Deliverance, a trangressive fiction anthology they were building which, alas, was postponed for an eternity and three quarters.

Finally finally finally, through the sheer stubbornness shared between Karl, Iwa and yours truly, it has been resurrected in blog form as a continuous online antho. The basic concept of Pinoy Transgressive is to provide folks with fresh, transgressive fic stories for their pleasure or, for those with their own stories up their hoo-hahs, a venue to send in their works for publication. If approved, stories’ll be posted in the next batch of blog entry uploads and, thus, will always provide something new and depraved to read, yehey.

The current batch of works uploaded are:

Imports, a short story by Carljoe Javier

Panalong Regalo ng Sistema, a short story by Iwa Wilwayco

Cleanser and A New Demise, a short story and an essay, respectively, by Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon

Penitence, a short story by Jonathan Jimena Siason

Faith in Poison and Sophistichaos, a novella and an essay, respectively, by Karl de Mesa

You can email your works for consideration (English or Filipino, no length restrictions, labeled “Pinoy Transgressive Submission”) to weepy.devotchka@gmail.com, or tzaddi.salazar@gmail.com.

sent out a call for contributions for

Mandatory Post-Cataclysm Blog Entry

I think D and I win the Philippines’ Biggest Morons award for our total unawareness of last Saturday’s horrors. We had acknowledged that it had been raining  scary-hard nonstop, so much so that no daylight was coming in our windows, and decided we would just have to stay indoors, diminishing supply of food and DVDs be damned. But we still had no idea apocalypse was on-going most everywhere else.

Our ignorance stemmed from a few things: our apartment has incredibly shitty signal on any given day, we had not applied for internet yet, we didn’t watch TV once, and we just plain lucked out choosing to live in a place that was calamity-free then. Thus, the people who were trying to contact us couldn’t, we remained oblivious to images of Hell on Earth, and we ended up just bumbling around in acts of lazy assholery. To make us even more naive of Ondoy’s actual wrath, we even managed to have dinner at a nearby resto complex which, save for a couple of closed establishments, catered to the usual rowdy barkadas and familias. We thought it was a particularly wet and only potentially dangerous day.

The reality check commenced first thing Sunday morning, when terribly delayed text messages started trickling in — friends and family asking where we were, if we were okay, if our apartment had gotten trashed, if we had managed to stay safe somewhere somehow. Getting more and more shaken by this eerily belated stream of panic, we turned the tube on and got hit by the very harrowing realization that whole chunks of cities were completely underwater, so many people’s lives had been wrecked, and that our own friends and family could have gone through Very Bad Shit too. Our families, fortunately, are fine, but some of our friends didn’t fare as well, with stories of floating refrigerators, all-night hunger, practically swimming down Commonwealth (and being verbally molested and pickpocketed by tambays in the process [I heard some cops have even raped stranded women they'd brought to motels for 'shelter']), but we are immensely relieved to know that they’re safe and dry now, that their ordeals were a fraction of what so many people are still going through now.

Since then, it’s been totally Twilight Zone in Manila. For instance, supermarkets are crammed with folks cramming their carts, as if post-nuclear fallout, cleaning out shelves of basic edibles both for donations and themselves. The woman in front of me yesterday bought two carts-full of Lily’s Peanut Butter, while the guy in the opposite aisle filled his cart to bursting with Lemon Square’s Cheese Cakes (useless aside: Lemon Square doesn’t sell lemon squares, and those are technically cheese cupcakes). Other people were stocking up on candles, instant noodles, towels, and other oh-my-god-we’re-gonna-die goods.

And amidst all this post-traumatic stress, I feel perturbed not only by the actual chaos that occurred, but by the fact that I knew squat about it until afterwards. I’ve been bound to the TV since Sunday, staring in dismay at blurred corpses, wrecked homes, lives that had been dragged all the way back to zero, forced to start anew. Something abominable had slipped right past me, and it was sheer luck that the worst hadn’t befallen me or the people I cared about.

To the people who dropped a line, I really, really appreciate it. And for the Powers That Be that bestowed upon me the title of  Complete Dumbass in the Face of Calamity, I totally deserve it, thanks. Here’s to getting wiser.