Let's Go Mad

by Rob Binkley

  “Nah … too much temptation. We’d never live a simple life. I’d die of alcohol poisoning in a year.”

  “Or a venereal disease.” Brian dove into the pond.

  The next day, it was Easter morning. Back in the States all the good Christians were going to church then off to brunch with their families—not us depraved philistines. No, we were already sinking back into our old bad habits. Vice was everywhere and we couldn’t look away. It was sickening.

  Brian and I wandered over to the go-go bar next to our hotel for breakfast, then (like a couple of sheep) went where all the other barflies were going: the cockfight arena.

  “Wanna pray at the altar of the cock?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said.

  “What would Jesus think of our cock worship on his holy day of resurrection?” I could tell Brian was testing the waters to see if my newfound “moral backbone” had turned to jelly.

  “At least it’s not cock-and-balls worship … Let’s go. It’s what Dad would do.”

  I was using Jack’s debauched rap sheet as an excuse to sink to new lows; I was powerless to stop myself. Was this my gelatinous moral backbone, or my genetic fallacies at work? I didn’t know anything anymore.

  Going to a cockfight on Easter Sunday in an extremely Catholic country may sound blasphemous and insane, but it’s the national sport of the Philippines and a very popular Easter pastime.

  The fights were already underway when we taxied up to the open-air arena. Somehow we got great seats for the gruesome gladiator event. Brian was totally into it while I felt nauseous. I was having flashbacks to when Jack took me here when I was a kid. I used to enjoy them, but I’d grown up.

  I had to temporarily put aside my hatred for animal cruelty by drinking lots of San Miguel, the most popular beer in the Philippines. Brian handed me one. “Once the San Miguels take effect, you’ll ease into the horrific scene!”

  Brian made a habit of advising the half-blind Filipino next to us which cock to bet on even though he had no idea what he was talking about. It was not an exact science. We were just betting on which one was bigger, or which one our bookie told us to bet on. Everyone in the bleachers were screaming bets and using hand signals I couldn’t understand; it was utter chaos.

  Sometimes a person wouldn’t pay up and a fight would break out, which got everyone riled up more. “Can’t we all just get along?!” Brian yelled through the fisticuffs.

  I could only laugh. “When you throw a thousand Filipinos in a cockfight arena and give them five hundred beers on Easter, every peso counts!”

  Midway through the fights, we ran into my old bodyguard, Bong. I used to pay him (in drinks) to watch out for me when I was running the streets alone as an underaged kid. “You Jack’s boy! All grow’d up!” We hugged and reminisced as best we could in the crazed scene. We laughed about all the times we got thrown out of bars together, drunk and disorderly.

  When the dust settled on the event, I won over a thousand pesos, mainly because one of Bong’s friends was placing bets for me. My haul paid for everyone’s entry, lunch, San Miguels, and transportation back into town. After the fights, Brian, Bong, and I went back to Barrio Barretto and spent Easter evening at a go-go bar to celebrate our winnings.

  Praise the lord.

  The next day our altruistic journey for truth went off the tracks and into the muck. I don’t know what happened, but we were a long damn way from the paradise I sought. A long way. The heavenly trip Brian and I made to the secret waterfall seemed like a lifetime ago. Now our fatal flaws were leading us further into the circle of Hell.

  We somehow got talked into going to something called the “Rat-O-Dome” with a rowdy herd of old expatriates and Marines who my dad knew back in the day. Just the name of it made my stomach turn, but when a herd of Marines invites you to a gladiator event, you better say yes.

  The Rat-O-Dome was not for the faint of heart. It was this spot on Capalones Beach where a bunch of expats got together to party over the mass murder of rodents. For the second day in a row, I was peer-pressured into setting aside my lifelong affinity for animals to join in the bloodthirsty commotion. I felt horrible.

  We all jumped in some old trucks and headed out to the remote beach for the day. On the way out, I noticed the large cages of animals in a few of the trucks. Once we arrived, it wasn’t long after I drank my eighth San Miguel that I saw an expat bring out the first cage filled with a very large rodent.

  “Oh Christ, what are they gonna do to that poor disgusting rat?” Brian asked.

  “You don’t wanna know.” I felt ill, so I kept drinking until I felt nothing at all.

  I should have seen the warning signs—one being the fact that no women were allowed at Rat-O-Dome. I asked one of the Marines where all the girls were, and he said all the go-go girls had to stay away. “No tips for them today!” he shouted. I don’t think any woman in her right mind would have wanted to attend anyway, unless they were Green Berets.

  At the Rat-O-Dome’s makeshift arena—chalkboards were brought out on the beach—we were instructed to place bets on which rat would get eaten by the “friendly” pit bulls. They brought out the pit bulls and marched them around like prized ponies so we could see the cut of their jib.

  “It’s like Thunderdome … but with rats.” Brian was horrified. Then he started placing bets. The goal of the game was to bet on the exact time it would take a certain pit bull to track down and play ragdoll with a rat. The good news was that, while you watched, for six dollars you got all the food and San Miguels you could throw down your throat.

  So there we were sitting around the beach watching the rats scurrying out of their cages. A timer would go off and twenty expat Marines would yell and cheer, rooting on their bets. Inevitably, a poor rat would scurry the wrong way and the pit bull would tackle it and tear it to shreds. It was a gruesome and sobering sight if one weren’t drinking many, many San Miguels—and even then it was pretty unsettling.

  It got even weirder between the death matches. While they prepared more rats for slaughter, the drunken Marines fired off rocket launchers and various weapons into the water and jungle for fun. It was our own tropical fireworks show.

  I was afraid the booze-fueled light show might get even uglier than it already was when one of the tattooed expats, who was holding a rocket launcher, looked down at my toes through my flip-flops and asked, “Hey, son … are your toes colored purple?”

  “Uhhh …”

  “You some kinda goddamned fruit boy!?”

  I had to think fast. I couldn’t tell these insane men some crazy old hippie painted them in Australia while I was drumming on the beach one morning. So I whipped up a lie, “Some chick in Australia painted them! I did it to cover my toe fungus from trekking across the Outback!”

  The Marines processed the lie and then busted out laughing. “You California boys!”

  Brian just looked at me, shook his head, and smiled.

  Night fell; the go-go girls couldn’t take being ignored any longer. A few of them emerged from the jungle at the other end of the beach giving off catcalls in broken English. They wanted to come see their “sexy boooooyfrieeeeends.”

  The drunk Marines were not so happy to see them. They pivoted their weapons in the girl’s general direction, cackling like mad.

  “This will not end well!” Brian yelled.

  These poor girls probably should have known better. This was a testosterone-fueled event, kind of like football back home. So like any drunken football fan would if he had access to heavy artillery, the expats started shooting various machine guns and rocket launchers straight down the beach.

  “What the fuck!! They’re shooting at them!” Brian laughed. In my Marine pals’ defense, they were aiming high, but the women didn’t see it that way. They were pissed off and fled, cursing everyone to hell while the Marines laughed like the drunken sailors most of them were.

  After the bloody beach bacchanal, we drove back to town and partie
d at all the go-go bars. We got so inebriated I lost, then found Brian at my dad’s old bar with a bunch of girls.

  “There you are!” Brian shouted while holding onto three of the go-go girls from the Rat-O-Dome who were nearly shot by rocket launchers. “I told these girls the only thing I’m gonna fire at them is my ‘sea men’!” And then he fell over laughing while the girls giggled. I told them I had seen a similar rocket launcher–type scenario unfold while tailgating at an Oakland Raiders game a few years back. Then I left and went back to the hotel to pass out.

  The next day, we took a bus to Angeles, a city not far from Olangapo in central Luzon. On the bus, it occurred to me I never dreamt of Jack while I was in Olangapo. Was the old rogue still lurking in my subconscious? I mentioned it to Brian. He said, “Jack’s got more deserving people to haunt around here. This place is trouble with a capital T. Not exactly the ideal place to get our shit together.”

  “A huge error in judgment on my part. But this place is still home to me,” I said.

  Brian rolled over to try to sleep. “That explains a lot.”

  The ride was absolute hell since we were hung over and tired from the Rat-O-Dome. I don’t know why I chose to visit Angeles other than it used to be the old Air Force city where all the “flyboys” and their groupies used to party. This was another huge error in judgment on my part, but I wasn’t thinking anymore. I was just reacting with what limited brain cells I still had sloshing around in my pickle jar.

  While Brian was licking his wounds, a cute innocent-looking girl sat down next to him and started rubbing up against him. Brian was somehow smitten. They held hands all the way to Angeles. I had never seen Brian hold hands with anyone, not even his mom when he was a little boy. He’s not a big PDA guy.

  After an hour into the bus ride Brian looked at me. “This is a very friendly country. You can develop an amorous relationship without talking, and while crammed between five people, no less … I think I’m in love.”

  I had to break it to him. “Dude, she’s a prostitute.”

  “How dare you say that about … what’s-her-name?”

  “Just wear a condom.”

  “C’mon, those are for sailors.”

  “Uhh, to be used in places just like this…. It’s your life.”

  We arrived in Angeles City, a large urban metropolis known for its casinos and go-go bars. “Every city here looks exactly the same—the opposite of Utopia,” Brian said as we got off the bus.

  He hugged his bus girl and we went looking for accommodations, which we found in a cheap hotel called the Park Inn. “So, did you get her phone number?” I had to ask.

  “She doesn’t have a phone.”

  “Did you get her name?”

  “Apparently she doesn’t have one of those either. The only word she said to me was lovey.”

  “Sounds like the perfect woman,” I said.

  “I have no idea how to find her … I need to find her.”

  “It’s a small town,” I lied. “I’m sure you’ll run into her again.”

  The first night out, we walked the main drag and stopped into any bar that had a door. We had thrown our beer-only rule overboard and were back to our wicked, wicked ways.

  Every time we walked into a joint, the go-go girls would scream “Tom Cruise! Brad Pitt!” and come on to us immediately. Brian enjoyed the attention. “They’re trying to sit on our laps while we’re standing up!” They, of course, wanted us to buy them drinks but we didn’t care; we felt famous simply because we were Americans.

  One dancer ran up to me and played with my long blonde hair, “It’s sexy-man Brad Pitt! Buy me drink?!” There seemed to be no other backpackers in Angeles City—only old expats, drug dealers, and pimps. Brian and I smiled. We were young, fresh meat for these girls, and we liked it fine.

  By the end of the night, since there were twenty bars on the main drag all bunched together, we had over four hundred “friends” who wanted to have their way with us. We drank in the adoration; we poured Red Horse down our gullets (the high octane beer of the Philippines) and bought way too many drinks for way too many go-go girls. This was a big no-no, but the beer was potent and cheap.

  Right before I went into complete blackout mode, something magically horrific happened. We ran into Brian’s “bus princess.” It would have been a fairytale encounter if she weren’t gyrating on the pole at the Y Bar. But there she was, much to Brian’s dismay. “Oh my God.” Brian pushed whatever dancer was sitting on his lap off him in order to get a closer look.

  His worst fears were realized. His innocent sweet thing was in fact another go-go dancer in a sea of them. I, of course, being a horrible friend, laughed in his face. “At least she has a job!”

  Brian was crushed. “Shut up.”

  I tried to console him but couldn’t stop smiling. “So much for true love.”

  “You really can be an asshole sometimes.” Brian skulked out of the bar, pulling away from the go-go girls who wanted him to stay. I tried to process what just happened. Out of all the girls we had met on the trip, Brian seemed to like this one girl he never spoke to the best.

  Love works in mysterious ways.

  The next day we decided to switch to a nicer hotel for the same price called the Americana. At breakfast, Brian admitted he made a terrible mistake last night trying to get over his “bus princess.”

  “I think I had some extracurricular activities with the local go-go girls and forgot to protect myself.” This, of course, is another big no-no.

  “What did I tell you on the bus?”

  He explained what he remembered of the hours after our mutual blackout, which involved some sort of stripper orgy. He said, in a heartfelt manner (which was strange for him), that along with the “hangover and broken heart,” he had “buyer’s remorse.”

  “My loins burn like the dickens.”

  I quietly took in Brian’s news over the morning paper. It didn’t help that I opened the paper and saw the front-page headline screaming, MORE AIDS CASES THIS WEEK.

  I shoved the paper in Brian’s face. “I told you! You’re probably going to die now.”

  “Shut up man!”

  “I can’t be seen with you … I’ve gotta go.” I pretended to get up and leave. Since I was much safer the night before, I kept rubbing it in pretty hard over coffee.

  Brian sulked. “My bus girl does not have AIDS. What bar is she at? I’m going to marry that woman tonight!”

  I laughed, “Y Bar. You better hurry. Your ‘Rodney’ will probably fall off by sundown.”

  That night, Brian and his Rodney went out alone, soberly looking for his bus angel at the Y Bar, then other strip clubs … then at the pier … then at the bus station. He never found her. Love can be cruel.

  After Brian’s quasi-STD scare, we took it easy the next few nights and tried to regain what little composure we had left. “As much as you liked that girl, we’re never gonna find what we’re looking for between the legs of a go-go dancer,” I said.

  “I know,” Brian said. “I need to look between my own legs. Look within. Restart my spiritual journey. I’ve totally ignored my soul the past few months.”

  “Join the club.”

  How do you rehab the souls of two man-children? We decided to get far away from all these cities of sin and start looking for paradise.

  We found a driver to take us across Luzon to Batangas Pier, which was the jumping-off point to the other islands with Utopian possibilities. The six-hour private ride was infinitely better than the bus to Angeles. It gave us room to think about what we were going to do with the rest of our lives.

  There were thousands of people swarming about when we pulled up to Batangas Pier. By now, we were fairly savvy travelers so when all the “touts” approached us to say, “No ferry! You take special boat!” we weren’t biting. Touts are always trying to scam stupid tourists by directing them to other piers where they corner you and try to make you pay ten times the price for a private boat. Not this time
. Being two seasoned travelers, we just slid through the crazy crowd and found a pier that had a sign reading, MINDORO ISLAND.

  While we waited for the ferry to Mindoro island, which is the seventh largest island in the PI, just southeast of Luzon, we played pool with a few local girls who were amazing players. After a few hours of losing our ass to these pool sharks, we got on the ferry and crossed over to Mindoro island.

  Mindoro has a mountain range called the High Rolling Mountains that splits the island into two very different provinces. If you’re on vacation with some money to spend, go east to the province called Oriental Mindoro. If you want to backpack through rugged terrain, go west to the province of Occidental Mindoro.

  We split the difference and went to the dive mecca: Puerto Galera on the north coast of Oriental Mindoro, which is famous for its beautiful beaches and diving, and not as expensive as some of the other resort towns.

  The first thing I did to better myself was sign up for a rescue diver course to continue my education. My instructor was named John, a big English bloke who taught me how to save people in all diving situations. Our first dive was incredible. We saw a ton of triggerfish, corals, butterfly fish, and turtles.

  After my dive class, an old lady named Mama Lopez helped us find a room in Sebang Beach. It was one room with a kitchenette and bathroom for ten dollars a night. It had a ceiling fan and a refrigerator, so it wasn’t bad. It was definitely better than the flea-ridden hotel where we stayed the previous night, at which a cockroach ran up Brian’s body in the middle of the night and he totally freaked out.

  That night we went walking around Sebang Beach and watched a comet scream through the sky while we relaxed with the locals. Life was beautiful again.

  The next day, Brian hiked around the rocks and I went diving again.. The program was very laid back. Since I was the only student, I’d meet with John for classroom work around ten in the morning, then go for a pleasure dive around two o’clock where we did a lot of wreck dives and swam over amazing coral. It was usually a three-day course without dives (just rescue work), but John turned it into a six-day course since he liked me and it was just the two of us.