Prologue to a Letter

The problem with computers is anything can be deleted with a single click of the mouse. And I have repeatedly done so because you seem to always appear behind me when I type away, so I had to scuffle and burn the evidence, of me trying to push you away for some inexplicable, vain, and selfish reason.

I’ve been brought back to my adolescence – those nights of watching porn, keen to the slightest of sounds, like the turning of the doorknob and the silent shiffling of feet. But I type away without the benefit of locked doors, so I turn my head every now and then, checking if you’re already behind me, reading these words. Because I know this will spell the end of us.

Because this is my communique with anonymous comrades, currently engaged in a protracted rebellion against a pointless love affair.

This is supposed to be a letter addressed to you. To an address we’ve shared for almost a whole year. This will not be sent, neither are you supposed to read it. That’s the essence of things, a large part of our lives are not supposed to be read. Our true selves are always in some sort of trash bin somewhere where people are supposed to forget them or pay them no mind. That’s the excuse given by fiction. It’s not supposed to be based on real events. We just give people and places different names. We hide behind metaphors and all those other figures of speech. And they’re supposed to purge all those bad emotions, like a shot of pure gin on a particularly disastrous day.

In fact, they’re supposed to hurt us and tear our worlds apart. And that distance we assume is what makes our world go round in a sickening cycle of tragedies and sobering up. Again and again, ticking like a clock. So we never learn, because when we do, this place won’t be half as interesting. We feed on stubborness, refusal, and resistance.

Rooms like People

The Collegian office, they say, is populated by ghosts.

There are reports that once you step out of the computer room alone, something will suddenly pound on a computer keyboard. Some alumni even related that they have seen a three-year old kid dancing around the office when they were just about to sleep.  Someone even speculated that Mang Romy, the office’s resident senile old man, is already a ghost and that we were just accustomed to seeing him alive and breathing.

I had my share of nights alone in the office, editing photographs that were due the following morning. I am used to climbing the stairs alone towards Room 401 at 3 am after buying a pack of cigarettes from Balara. I have stayed in the office alone even when the power was cut due to a storm. Still, no specter has dared bother my peace. Perhaps they thought I was one of their own.

Meanwhile, one of the reasons my sisters decided to move out from our former apartment in Sikatuna was frequent sightings of a ghost. One of my sisters, for instance, told me that someone once tried to strangle her while she was sleeping.

The neighbors told us that a former tenant had died in his sleep in our apartment unit. His ghost must be the one causing the disturbances, they said. I asked them which room the deceased tenant used. They told me it was my room.

If so, then why did it have to bother my sisters who were on the other room just to get his fix? I was fair game, after all. I’d freak out like everybody else. There were nights when I was left alone in the apartment, I sleep alone with all the lights out, and I’m just as paranoid as everybody else.

I am beginning to think that I have a flair with haunted rooms — they like the way I close curtains or blinds to prevent sunlight from pouring in, keeping them company during a lot of sleepless nights. I never killed spiders or lizards crawling around nor etched my name on walls to impose my own memories. Apparently, I pose no threat to their peace. The silence of rooms cradles me to sleep and my silence allowed them to keep their secrets.

If only people were haunted rooms, I would have known how to keep their phantoms at bay. Then it would be I who will decide when to leave. I’ll be the one to turn the lights off. I’ll be the one who leaves no traces.

Return

Countless things remind me of her. My room, for one, is filled with artifacts constantly summoning a memory – a repaired button in one of my polos, my name stitched in a backpack, labels on books, folders, and envelopes of photos. They were the work of hands that regularly dialed the phone during Sunday to make a long-distance call. Those were hands that gripped the back of my shirt in embrace every time the boarding call for my departing flight was announced.

A month ago, those hands were the very same that I held and refused to let go for their coldness, bidding the most silent and saddest of goodbyes.

Sometimes, things assault us for their trite, unapologetic, indisputable, and abominable reality. The most lucid memories are also the most predatory. They are on top of the food chain in the ecosystem of dim and silent rooms. They tend to seduce their prey effortlessly, after all. The past always had its way at 3 am, the present will always relent blindly. And that is how people lose their sleep – disturbed by the quiet carnage of remembering.

Remembering my mom who passed away a month ago is like dipping my heart in acid. Only my brother made it to her death bed. I was caught in LA traffic, worsened by the fact that I can only commute to wherever since my minimum wage job in a shoe store wasn’t able to afford me a cheap car. I arrived in her hospital room, the blanket already raised to cover her face.

I thought that with all the tragedies that have been fed to us through literature, media, and simple conversations, we might be able to handle these kinds of events better — never shedding a tear, and standing our grounds in stoic acceptance. However, the extremities of human emotions are hardly the realm of language. We return to our primordial form, uttering sobs and grunts instead of words, kneeling on the floor instead of standing, and calling out to gods in forked tongues, hoping that they were real after all.

***

After my mom’s funeral, I was immediately tasked to pack her clothes and other personal items. My father failed to pay the month’s rent for our apartment, due to the steep costs of the funeral service. My appeal to extend the deadline for payment fell on deaf ears, the apartment manager already called on the LA Sheriff’s office to intervene, that is, to force us to get the hell out. Due to the United State’s financial crisis, a lot of homes were foreclosed, people are moving by the throngs towards apartments. Kicking us out during that time of despair made things easier for them, the high demand for apartment units prompted apartment owners to raise the rent, and you can’t just raise the rent for current tenants.

Her clothes could fit a ten-year old girl perfectly, my mom’s condition took its toll on her body, weakened it and sapped it of blood. Thymoma, complicated with Myastenia Gravis, the doctors said – alien words with all too familiar images. Nights with fits of cough, the inability to carry loads, and the slow pace of her walk as we cross streets towards the grocery.

I hugged her clothes as if her body was still inhabiting it, uttering the goodbye that was caught in traffic.

***

Once again I find myself in the heat of the early morning airport. My luggage strolling behind, my knapsack sagging because of books.

I have no entourage, only a taxi waiting for me to take me to my room and prepare myself for the coming months, indifferent to my return.

I find myself back to the fray.

The Science of Introductions

Fowls expand their chests to emphasize wider wing spans, some lizards change their colors, rams engage in a death match, while lions show off their manes.

For people, it is easier and more mundane — they introduce themselves to each other, using words to tell potential mates that they are on top of the food chain.

And then there’s coffee and casual conversation, small talk and subtle hints of interest. It’s been a year since I last went out with a girl. The last time was with someone who took off after a mere 30 minutes of cold but electrically-charged conversation about her messy relationship with a married man, her fears of being pregnant, and suspicions that the man in question is having another affair besides the one he’s having with her. Then there was the text message from her telling me she was still, you know, “in love” with me or whatever lie they tell people nowadays.

Blame it on my friends who can’t seem to ponder why a boy my age is still single, wrathful, and miserable. That’s the decisive difference between people and animals. People, simply put, have issues.

So I find myself in another conversation over coffee. I have never been good at handling small talk and casual conversations. I always told myself that if I don’t have anything good to say, it’s better to just shut up. But when you’re forced to, then there’s not much choice is there?

Being on top of the food chain, for people, is about being highly marketable, i.e. having the potential of scoring a high paying job. Sometimes, it’s about having the most cultural capital — measured by how obscure your favorite movies and music are and how spiteful the authors of your favorite books are. On the other hand, everything leads to your potential of accumulating capital someday and, of course, the likelihood of spreading beautiful genetic material.

Sadly, I realized, I’m nowhere on top so I needed to stretch my imagination a little bit. She said her friends called her _______, a pretty girl I suppose, who liked to watch plays and concerts. She revealed that my friends have long aimed to set the two of us together for a date. “The idiots”, I remarked than smiled and laughed with a hint of fondness.

“So what do you do?” she asked. The hardest query to substantially answer.

“I’m a CW major, I… ummm… write?” I said. (No need to add that I used to be a Political Science major who got dismissed for being too delinquent and missing a whole year of school because the family decided to migrate… it tends to complicate things)

The books I read: science fiction, Harry Potter, and a lot of comic books.

The food I like: anything with potatoes.

Affiliations: former columnist and photographer for the Philippine Collegian (that piqued her curiosity a bit, I seemed to hit a right button. But being part of the said institution never did give me a bit of leverage in anything no matter how prestigious it supposedly is. It just gave me migraines and nasty hangovers)

Political leaning: FORMER radical (I only answered after much prodding. But I stressed on the “former”. We were in a neoliberal space after all. Activists don’t belong on top of the food chain, they get killed. Good thing she didn’t ask me about my opinion on different issues, otherwise the afternoon would be spent defending and asserting a political view which I swore not to subscribe to anymore)

Things I look for in a girl: sanity (clearly, the conversation is gradually moving towards the edge of a ravine)

If I was asked to break down the time, I would conservatively estimate that around 30 minutes were spent stirring my coffee and looking at my watch.

Then comes the hardest part: disengagement. Letting the person know that, obviously, the conversation is going nowhere and that you had a great time and that you could be friends and plan to go out again sometime with your other friends.

We exchange numbers and smile towards the looming sunset. A sigh and a minute later, I offered to accompany her to the jeepney terminal. She said it was ok and told me that I could go because I might have another engagement.  I kissed her cheeks and told her sorry for boring her to the brink of extinction.

When all I have waiting for me at my dingy apartment is a coffee stain that needs to be wiped, some papers that I need to write, and comic books that would help put me to sleep.

People like me are evolutionary dead ends.