Yeah, you.

Sometimes I wonder why for 822 days, you were always on my mind.  Not that you consumed me, not that you were my reason for breathing, but you were somewhere there.  You were the lingering thought in my head for over two years.  Maybe it was just too hard to let you go, even if there was really nothing that took place between us.

As much as I hate to admit it, ours was a fleeting romance through early morning text messages.  A few meals shared together, a few gifts exchanged.  Sidelong glances that lasted no longer than what people usually pay attention to interesting strangers, or dogs wearing sunglasses.  There’s no use wondering about the what-could-have-been’s, if nothing ever took place.  Was it my cowardice?  Was it your reluctance?  Was it Cupid’s arrow playing tricks?  Was it just dumb - and damn - luck?  I have absolutely no idea.

It still pains me to go to places where we shared at least one of those three-and-a-half minute conversations, which was by my watch, the longest we ever talked to each other one on one.  For the longest time, memories of you were stuck in my head and tattooed on my mind.  I was at emotional highs when we talked over the phone… for three-and-a-half minutes.  I sank to an emotional low when I realized that in one of those crucial moments, I can’t stand by your side even just to hold your hand… and even in that moment, I realized that save for two embraces, I never really held your hand, ever.

Times have changed, years have gone by, and I was still stuck in the moment.  I have absolutely no idea how many relationships you’ve gone through since then.  You have absolutely no idea how many chances at romance I gave up.  Not because of memories of you, but because of you.  Because I wanted more than text messages and sidelong glances.  But everytime I tried to enter the door… well, you know what happens.

Eight hundred and twenty-two days.  You know as well as I do that there was more to what we were, and there was more to what we weren’t.  So I just stuck with the “what we weren’t” part, and decided that Day 823 is best left to the memories.  Left to the what-could-have-been’s and what-if’s, thrown to the wind, let go, and just… well, left alone.

Ours was definitely not love.  Not in the general idea of it.  Not in the sense that everyone agrees with.  For someone who gets paid for knowing what the right word is to something, I sure as hell don’t know what it was.

All I know is that if it happened to anyone else, all 822 days of it, it will move me to tears… just to hear of a beautiful love story never told.

Postscript: This entry has been hanging around on my Drafts for exactly a month and eight days now.  Somehow it’s only now that I managed to gather up the courage to post it, although it has already been finished for quite a while.  To some extent, the antecedents are real.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may remember that I wrote something about an abscessed tooth a few months back.  It’s only now that I realize how big a problem a single tooth could be, so much so that I may have to undergo oral surgery this weekend.

It’s a good thing I don’t Podcast, or else the little anti-Marocharim bloc somewhere in cyberspace (I never knew they actually existed: took me a long weekend to figure that out) would rejoice in the fact that it only takes a dentist to shut me up.  I still have my fingers, of course, which means that the anthropomorphic cybernetic weasels would have to wish upon a vodun that I either get leprosy or hand-herpes.

I don’t know much about dentistry myself, although the dentist explained that oral surgery ain’t that bad.  One of my molars have been so misaligned - braces weren’t able to save it - that it has to be removed by hook or by crook.  As it seems, though, even massive doses of dental anaesthesia no longer work on me.

Normally, two vials of novocaine would be enough to conk you out and leave you with that puffy feeling in your mouth.  Not for me, though: by the time the dentist tried to pry my tooth out after a controlled overdose of anaesthetic, my knuckles were turning white from pain.  I swear, had I not taken a leak at the office, I would have wet my pants from the excruciating pain.  So after a few more prods with that Freddy Krueger-like instrument, the dentist just gave up and slated me for oral surgery.

And… how much did my braces cost again?

It wasn’t exactly one of those teen love stories with a happy ending.  It was more like Saturday Night Fever, where every man was a John Travolta and every woman was an Olivia Newton-John.  A good part of any guy’s allowance would be spent on those jars of menthol-scented pomade, now used to groom dogs at a veterinary clinic.  Girls would buy miniskirts and striped leggings, which in today’s world would practically defeat the purpose of the miniskirt.

Besides, we’re not dealing with teens here.  We’re dealing with two 28-year-olds.  Teen love story?  I don’t think so.  Happy ending?  Definitely.

Mon was working as a finance clerk at Benguet Exploration, while Sol was working as a cashier at the famous Café Amapola at Baguio City.  At a time where pesos actually meant something to banks that they printed them in crisp blue bills, Mon and Sol were in love.  Mon, for all his problems trying to eke out a living, was very much in love with Sol.  They could have gotten married earlier, but you just can’t make enough money during those days to live comfortably, considering they had their own families to feed.  Sol was cheerfully working the cash registers at the café, smiling as those drunken lawyers and journalists took three hours to drink one mug of coffee.  At least the blind musician playing the piano was playing medleys from The Carpenters.

Such is life… and such is love.

For 14 years, Mon has been trying to project a love that cannot be denied.  You could only imagine how many times Mon went to the local branch of Goodwill Bookstore to look for those Hallmark cards with those gilded red roses.  If you can’t afford the real thing, you might as well have the reproductions.  I guess the monotony of Mon’s job as a clerk unleashed the poet in him, every time he wrote those odes to “Solly” in his love letters.  Believe me, he’s no Romeo Montague, but in his eyes, Sol is always his Juliet Capulet.

Mon had a way with love.  Every Friday night, after treating Sol to dinner - at great expense, I might add - he helps her to a taxi and takes her home.  After a few minutes, when he’s absolutely sure that she’s inside and she won’t notice, Mon will walk home.  Granted that those dinners and taxi rides put a big dent on Mon’s budget, but there will not be an old soul in Bonifacio Street who’ll say that Mon didn’t skip merrily home with the kind of springy step that comes with a man hopelessly in love.

All this wasn’t lost on Sol, who saw how thin Mon’s wallet was every time he paid for dinner, and saw Mon walk off home instead of riding the same taxi he took her home with.  All those love letters and Hallmark cards with gilded roses were treasures Sol kept in photo albums, in shoe boxes, in just about everywhere.

And so it went on, and on, and on, for 14 years until Mon finally picked up the courage to ask for Sol’s hand in marriage.  Today, 14 years of waiting may have someone run off to the next good-looking person who happens to be rich, who happens to own a car, who happens to be able to afford real gilded roses.  But not for these two lovebirds who, 25 years and six days ago, exchanged their vows in the Parish of Saint Joseph the Worker, and were pronounced husband and wife, in sickness and in health, till death do they part.

Yes, this is the love story of my mom and dad.  Twenty-five years later, Papa’s thick and shaggy hair has turned into one of the most ridiculous combovers I have ever seen.  Mama is no longer the cute cashier of the popular café, and herself gained more than a few pounds.  The mines have long since closed, the café has long since collapsed from the earthquake, and they both started new and very different lives since then.  Not to mention having three kids: one’s a game programmer, one’s a Nursing student, and then there’s that chain-smoking manic-depressive obsessive-compulsive alcoholic who happens to be a “writer.”

Although those menthol-scented pomades had to give way to Ben Gay.  Like love, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Happy silver wedding anniversary, Mama and Papa!

Recto, Manila, 3:00 PM

It’s not too often that I find myself freaked out.  Not that I got robbed at this infamous place, but because of the many things I found out about this seedy section of the capital city.

In a word: ammonia.

The long weekend, no thanks to the President herself, leaves me bored on the very first day.  Once again, I decided to commute to wherever the road will take me.  In this case, the train tracks.  After a lunch at some eatery at Katipunan, I decided to take to the LRT station and go to Recto.  After all, I have to buy a book for my sister back home.

The moment I left Recto Station, the rank smell of piss filled the air, so much that I just had to smoke.  As I walked along, the ammoniacal smell of urine grew stronger.  Then I came to the source: a woman was pissing right on the sidewalk like it was a normal thing.  As she stood up and walked away, you could still see trickles of piss falling from deep under her skirt.  Even the most perverted won’t go there.

As I was walking along asking vendors for book titles, I realized that I didn’t have the monopoly of questions at Recto.  Save for those kids tugging at my jeans asking for loose change - which I didn’t have - the enterprising cheaters and tricksters that populate this section of the Metropolis ask me to violate my honor in my face.

“Boss, resibo?”

“Boss, pagawa ka ng diploma?”

“Pards, transcript?  Mura lang.”

So I bought the book needed by my sister, and decided to walk around to see what these sidewalk bookstores have to offer.  Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed.  Maybe it’s because I don’t have patience, maybe because I’m in the wrong section of Recto, or maybe because this is Recto.  By the time I got to the infamous seedy bars and GROs who start hawking their… services, at 2:30 in the afternoon, I was entreated to “literature” that pass for “erotica.”  Right by military supply stores you would find all sorts of pornographic magazines and novellas that discuss everything from incest to sadomasochism.  Rags that talk about “love tunnels” and onomatopoeic transcriptions of primal coital screams.

Then, seeing it from the corner of my eye, an insane man was defecating near a pile of construction cement.

“Now I’ve seen everything,” I said.  Maybe saying it out loud sent the wrong message to a scantily-clad woman in a red tube top and an extremely abbreviated miniskirt, who asked me if I could take her to the nearby Sogo “for P500.”  In broad daylight.  Then she told me she needs the money for tuition.

That did it for me, as I walked far away really fast, huffing and puffing on the filter of my Philip Morris, knowing that maybe there’s no semblance of decency in Recto.  If there is, it’s very hard to come by.

It’s not too often I find myself disgusted by Metro Manila, knowing that I made the choice to stay here.  I’ve seen my own fair share of “dark underbellies” in this complex of 17 cities and municipalities over the course of three months: the motels and “dance clubs” of Pasay, the poverty of Commonwealth Avenue, the annoying traffic of Cubao, and the tasteless pomposity of Ortigas, Eastwood, and Makati.

I’ve always thought that whatever moronic report is broadcast on primetime news is merely fantasy.  Like murders, robberies, pickpockets, rapes, and the literal diploma factory that is the “University of Recto.”  I thought wrong.  There’s ammonia everywhere here: not only in the urine of old women and the feces of madmen, but also in the very souls of people who make a living out of whatever soul that there is in the bodies of the desperate.

And then you feel it stick to you.  I am a cog in the wheel of this abyss of skyscrapers and congested roads.  Every day - whether it’s work day or a day off, is a time for ammonia.

(DISCLAIMER: This is going to hurt.) 

I am not a big fan of Jun Lozada, I am not an avid reader of his blog, yet I feel a need - call it a messianic urge - to step up, cast away some of my aspersions against the guy, and to come to his defense.  There are things I will respectfully disagree with, as far his claims on the NBN-ZTE deal go.  There are things I will respectfully disagree with, especially for his “blog launch.”  Make no mistake about it, there are a lot of things I do not like about Jun Lozada.  I am not a card-carrying member of the Jun Lozada fan club.  To pose with him and to post pictures on a Multiply account is completely beneath me.  So there.

Yet even for every disagreement that I have against what Lozada said, and for every disagreement I will have for what Lozada will say in the future, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.  Jun Lozada stood up for causes like “truth,” “accountability,” “transparency…” causes that very few Filipinos these days will stand for.  I may not necessarily like Lozada’s interpretations of those causes.  Hell, I may not even like Lozada because he gets more comments in five entries than I do in 500, to be perfectly honest.  But again, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

This is not a “Mabuhay ka” defense of Jun Lozada.  Instead, this is an attack on every single lemming - you heard me right, I said “lemming” - who casts stones and aspersions against Jun Lozada, yet do absolutely nothing to act upon the crises and problems of this nation.

You demand nothing more than silence, consent, blind obedience, passivity, apathy.  We could debate on perspectives, if you had some.  We could debate on issues, if indeed you are truly affected.  I myself would rather have a better, more credible whistleblower than Lozada, but he blew the whistle way before you lemmings ever did.  Make sure you heed these words: you have no more stake on the very future of this nation than that very moment you surrendered - no, castrated - yourselves of the very demands and responsibilities of being a citizen.  Pardon my crooked Filipino: tinanggal ninyo sa sarili ninyo ang karapatan na makinabang sa kinabukasan ng bansang ito nang inyong isinuko ang inyong mga responsibilidad bilang mga mamamayan.

The hell with planting camote on your backyards to “help alleviate the food crisis,” to vote for “lesser evils,” and to cross pedestrian lanes.  Every problem and every crisis you confront today is anything but the fault of Jun Lozada.  It’s painfully obvious it’s not my fault, either.  Not only are you barking on the wrong tree, you’re pissing on the wrong one.

Let me ask you this: what exactly have you done to help this country get out of the mess that it is in?  What?  Speak up because I want to know.  I want you to show me how you - in all your bravado of representation, in all your claims of speaking for others, in all the infinite wisdom that comes from the passage of time - are taking steps to spare the Filipino youth of the indignity of living in the shadow of this political mess.  More than that, I want to know what you have done.

I’m 22 years old.  I’m just a kid.  I have plenty of time left to change this society for the better by the time I die.  And I believe I have already done my share.  I’ve wrote, I’ve blogged, and I’ve rallied.  I admit, it’s still not enough.  Not enough to “do something about it,” but it’s more than what you lemmings do on weekdays that you watch brain-dead game shows allowing yourselves to smile when you have absolutely no reason to.  And you are freaking twice my age!  And you have the gall, the balls, and the stomach to put the very responsibility of making a better nation while you engage in a witch-hunt against Jun Lozada?

And you can actually stomach calling yourselves Filipinos?  Taxpayers?  Citizens?  Taong bayan?  And you can actually stomach giving me a dramatic excuse that you did this all for me?  What in the blue hell did the youth ever do to you that you have saddled them with a future bordering on hopelessness, and expect them to make a shining beacon out of this country?

That’s why as much as I don’t like - fine, as much as I loathe - Jun Lozada, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.  But unlike Lozada - unlike you - I will not wait until I have a family to feed until I start worrying about the future of this country, and doing something about it.  Like you, this country is all I have.

The only difference is that I want to make this country better, and I’m doing more than my own fair share to compensate for your inactions.  You lemmings, on the other hand, are proof that hope is indeed wasted on the hopeless.

More from Jun Lozada’s blog: a message for the youth.

I have my doubts - well, “doubt” is a nice way to put it - on Lozada, and I’m not exactly his biggest fan.  The day I have dinner with Lozada is the day I get invited, which is not going to happen anytime soon.  What I do have a problem with is that far too many people twice my age send me messages; messages that seem to be exhortations of the ought-to-be, what was supposed to be done.  If anything, the adult mea culpa would be a lot like a Cat Stevens song.

We, “the youth,” are the “future.”

I’d like to take off from that perspective: we, “the youth,” as the “apologists” of history.  It is possible to excuse yourself from history if you’re too old to make things right, to depend upon the mistakes of the past to build upon an edifice.  It seems that adults are wont to make mistakes, and pass them on to the next generation as “lessons.”  Yet it is impossible for the youth to excuse themselves from history: it’s either you’re idealistic or naïve.  After all, time heals all wounds.

I can’t help but be recalcitrant and impertinent, but I don’t see any reason why the youth should be challenged to “make something” out of a political impasse.  For once, it behooves grown-ups - yes, myself included in this case - to face the jury before the bar of history, and pay for the consequences of making that history.  What is inexcusable is for grown-ups to depend upon the youth for the redemption of the nation.

I do agree that the youth are the hope of the Motherland.  Yet to echo Aristophanes: “Youth ages.  Immaturity is outgrown.  Ignorance can be educated and drunkenness can be sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”  If grown-up Filipinos continue to excuse themselves from political action on the grounds of pragmatism and practicality, yet continue to chastise the socially-aware youth for their naïve idealism and courage to stand up for ideals that “would not feed them,” then there is truth in the words of Aristophanes.  Stupid lasts forever.

For once, after his rather outlandish and unbelievable stories, there is some merit in what Jun Lozada talked about.  The youth are next in line before the bar of history, and we will be judged for our actions in due time.  Yet, we are next in line.  The generations before me will be judged by history way before we, the youth, get our chance, our verdict, and our sentence.

I don’t know what exactly Lozada is fighting for, but I sure as hell know that the youth today are fighting for exactly those things that roll off the tongues of old men: justice, truth, freedom.  I think that it behooves Mr. Lozada not to speak to the youth, much less to “represent” the youth.  He should speak for his generation - those who are twice my age - who regard with suspicion even the most purest and the most sincere of virtues and actions.

To that generation I, a 22-year-old not-a-boy-not-yet-a-middle-aged-man-with-a-prostate-problem, pass a message: fix your mess.  Take responsibility.  Act with the same idealism that you expect of us.  Soon, your generation will pass before the bar of history, and it is your inaction, your selfishness, and your disregard for justice, that will be the better judge of the future you have already passed on to us.

Lozada may not be a hero, but he did something about it.

Sometimes, I can be so idealistic that I lose touch with the realities of life.  As I was reading Jun Lozada’s blog, recently launched through a Bloggers’ Kapihan event, I was a bit lost in thought.  I’m not a big Jun Lozada fan, but I sure am not a card-carrying supporter of the President either.  I’m lost in thought in that maybe even the pro-GMA bloc would be right on one thing - that we don’t really know what happens next after this.

Quo vadis?

These are the moments that I descend into my morose, pessimistic, cynical self.  It’s not that the Filipino is hopeless, it’s just that even justice is no longer a reward in itself if you fight for what you believe in.  Like, say, “motive.”  Political aspirations, monetary incentives, fame.  I guess the worst part is that we’re better off with the status quo than to make an effort to change our situation for the better.

I guess that’s what happens when you grow older, when eight-hour jobs start to become the norm and that you start complaining more about traffic than the legitimacy of the President.  It’s when skepticism takes over idealism, and inaction itself becomes “resistance.”  Even political participation - the most basic demand of citizenship - is no longer held with as much value as before.  It’s not about rallying or marching in the streets.  Instead, it’s about making a conscious effort towards political and social awareness, taking a stand on the issues of the time, and basically being a pain in the ass.

And yet we do need a motive.  We need piecemeal for taking a stand.  It’s a mentality of, “I’m not affected, so I don’t care.”  Or “I’m not affected, so I shouldn’t care.”  You hear that from a lot of people these days, that the only time you should act upon the situation in general is when you get affected.  Anything other than that is “bullshit.”

I guess when the basic demands of citizenship - heck, even the most basic demands of being a human being - take second banana to whatever problem is there to problematize, there really is something wrong with this country.  Quo vadis is not a question you ask if you do things in the name of your country.  Resistance is not about who should replace Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, or what would happen if everyone who knew about NBN-ZTE came out and said what they knew.  For all the failings, the shortcomings, and whatever errors this country has committed towards a citizen, the Philippines is well worth taking a stand for.  Anything other than that is bullshit.

This is why I was a bit lost in thought reading Jun Lozada’s blog.  Connect the dots.