I turned my eyes then to the card in front of me.
Hi, I am a student and I am in lack of money for my studies. I am selling peach sweets to support myself. One sweet pack for 50 pesos. Three sweet packs for 130 pesos. It will be a great help for me if you can buy some.
I looked up again but she was not there. I was willing to offer a hand of support. I put my hand in my pocket and took out 130 pesos. With my light mood at the time, I decided to make a small dirty joke with that young girl since I might not see her again. I took a pen from my other pocket and added at the bottom of the card, “130 pesos for 3 packs. How much to taste you for a night?”
I put the money on top of the card and I was shocked to see her suddenly standing in front of my table again. It was as if she could appear and reappear from nowhere. She picked up the card and the money, and looking just at the money, she withdrew three sweet packs from her long colourful shoulder bag. She thanked me, bowing her head, and then walked away. I fixed my eyes on her to see where she would be disappearing to. After taking a few steps away from me, she just vanished as the waiter walked past in front of me with a new customer. These two persons blocked my view for about two seconds, but the girl vanished within those two seconds. It reminded me of some magic show.
I remember that in my mind I was sure she would laugh when she read that card, or she would be embarrassed when she presented that card again to another person. I finished my Halo-Halo, took my guitar, and started playing again. I gave another turn of my head to find that skinny ghostly creature once again in front of me. I looked down where her eyes pointed and could make out those small digits after my handwritten question. They read “1000P”.
So unexpected but so welcome! I paid her in advance before leaving the restaurant. I had her for the night, and she savoured it. She was as cheap and sweet as the peach candies she was selling. She asked me whether I was an artist or an actor. I said no. She told me that I looked like an actor.
About her, I just knew her name, Joseline, her age, twenty-two, the nature of her studies, marketing, and that she had represented some local shampoo brand a few years ago when she used to be less skinny and more handsome, as she explained. She suggested that if I would like to appear in some posters for a new brand of jeans, they would pay me fairly for it.
The idea sounded fine to me. A couple of days later she introduced me to the lady responsible for the promotion of the product, and I was accepted instantly as the model, after she had examined my top naked body closely with her eyes. The thing Joseline didn’t tell me was that she would be getting paid commission for bringing me. I guess she didn’t do a thing in her life for free, but that didn’t matter to me. I got paid well for my topless pictures with the jeans pants that really didn’t give me any comfort having them on.
I had casual sex one more time with Joseline, and this time I paid for her tuition for the whole year. She said that I was a noble man, but what nobility is there in feeding your lust upon someone young while paying for it? The important point she mentioned was that I could have her for any night I wanted, provided that she wasn’t having exams. How interesting!
After my last session of picture shooting, I took one of those tricycles that can carry five to six passengers to my hotel. Riding in the front seat, I liked to see the view through the tiny front window and the side open. There was a small shoe hanging on the rear mirror by its lace, and it aroused the curiosity of another customer, when she asked the driver about it. He said that it belonged to his first daughter.
Whenever the tricycle stopped to pick a new customer, I would see eyes on me, some in shock as if they had seen an alien. Some girls would call each other and point at me, whispering to each other some words that best remained between girls. All the seats were packed, and still the driver let one more on. A woman dressed in a green T-shirt hesitated for a couple of seconds staring at me, before she sat to ride next to me. The air flowing in danced with her half-wet hair, which kept brushing against my face. It didn’t bother me for the reason that its cinnamon smell cherished my nose and covered the smoky-smelling air that was hanging around.
I was the last customer left in the tricycle and was looking at the landmarks around me, and we were only a short distance from my hotel. But then a medium-sized white truck appeared in front of us speeding fast. There were a few wood boxes on the back of the truck, but nothing attracted my attention to it more than a mermaid creature who was sitting on top of one of those boxes in the middle of the open back of the truck.
I may not see that fascinating picture in my dreams, but I was lucky to see it in reality. How magnificent an artist coincidence can be! The girl was dressed in white with two floral layers attached at the end of each shoulder. The sunlight was very bright at the time, as I recall, and yet that girl sat calmly with the hot rays splashing her brown creamy skin. Her beautiful black hair was set flat on one side of her forehead, and her ponytail appeared on top of one of her shoulders. Her half-sleepy eyes looked deep into me.
I asked the tricycle driver to follow that truck. Why? I don’t know. How? Mostly by signals rather than words. I put my hand in my pocket and brought out notes and put them scrambled in his hand. Giving them a quick glance, the big-chinned driver sped to follow the truck, and with the new speed, the small shoe swung hard. I had to move my head to one side to avoid it hitting me. The truck led us to a small cottage surrounded by skinny cows.
The truck stopped, and so did my tricycle. The truck driver got out and so did I, but concealing myself. The mermaid girl jumped off the truck into the tall grass. My eyes, searching for details, caught the outline of her light red panties from under that white skirt as she performed the jump.
The truck driver, a round-bellied man, walked towards the cottage, but his feet were not balancing properly on the ground. I figured out that he was drunk—at that early hour of the day! And how could he drive so well in that condition?
The girl struggled to push the wooden boxes out of the truck. She couldn’t manage even a single box. Finding her alone, I walked up to her and offered a hand of support. Actually, I picked up the box that she had pushed to the edge of the truck and placed it on the ground. The girl looked at me with eyes full of worldly fear. Then she came nearer and pushed me with her light hands, murmuring something while shaking her head. Her hair was working like a spinning umbrella.
I couldn’t understand her, and I was about to leave when the fat guy reappeared back from the cottage. His bald scalp bore tiny hair buds, and like a frog, his neck was invisible, but in his case it was due to the multi-layered packs of fat. His belly was so big that it made me wonder how he managed to have sex, if ever he did. His grim angry face, with a star tattoo on one jaw near the ear lobe, reminded me of some criminals I had seen on the National Geographic channel.
This fat balloon saw me with the girl, and he started shouting, turning his eyes from me to the girl. I believe he was throwing out some insults and bad words for both of us. Then he walked towards me, but the girl rushed to him pleading. The man slapped her and then, with his short legs, walked back to the cottage. I walked up to the girl and lifted her up, but with tears in her eyes, she screamed in my face. The right side of her pretty face was reddened.
Though the whole scene had been brutal, I thought it was I who had created the whole issue for the family, and so I started walking away with my back towards the drama. But as I took a few steps, I heard a louder quarrel, and another voice was added to the scene. I stopped and looked back to see the fat man, now carrying a butcher’s knife and slowly walking, like a turtle, towards the weeping angel girl, with a woman hanging on to that fat hand of his, weeping as well.
I believed that things were getting worse there and it would be better if I didn’t keep out of things. I started walking back to that group of three without being noticed.
He had thrown the middle-aged woman to the ground with
a real punch and was now holding the butcher’s knife raised in his hand to slash the girl. At that moment, my heart fell, and I saw myself running fast to stop my father slaying my mother, as they appeared in my mind’s image.
My hand grabbed his hand that was carrying the knife. He turned his red bull eyes on me and landed a hard punch on my cheek that pushed me to withdraw a few steps. I raised my eyes and now it was just the image of that fat man that filled the landscape of my wrath. I didn’t see my father any more.
Strangely, the man didn’t approach me. Instead he moved again to the woman on the ground, who was clutching at the long grass with one hand. He raised his knife again, and only then did I put a stop to the whole play. I punched him hard on the centre of his flat nose. The giant ball-like figure fell to the ground with me on top of him. I started hammering his face with my fists. I was in a trance of mad anger.
In the end my body was grabbed by four hands, but this wouldn’t have kept me away from my target had I not decided to back off because of the sad sound of female weeping. I was gasping hard, looking at the man on the ground with his face covered in blood. The girl kept weeping and screaming in my face. The lady embraced her and soothed her. Finally, the volume of the weeping decreased. The fat octopus on the ground crawled on his four limbs and then ran away as fast as he could, leaving behind two yellow teeth on the ground attached together by a string of loose bloody saliva.
The girl, Jemil as I found out later, was the woman’s daughter. The mother could at least talk to me in English-Tagalog words, from which I could pick out the English words and build sentences in my mind. Jemil couldn’t speak a single word of English, or it might have just been her feeling of embarrassment about speaking in broken English.
The mother invited me into the cottage and asked the daughter to prepare a cup of coffee for me. She explained that her husband had died long ago and that the fat man was the brother of her good husband. Though he was always drunk and was always beating the mother and daughter and sometimes even raping the mother, the fat man was supporting them financially. The fat man’s business was to transfer wine from supplier to customer. The mother wasn’t allowed to work, and Jemil was forced to accompany that drunk on his trips. The mother didn’t hide from me that Jemil was even being offered to some rich men in exchange for cash, but the mother had to endure it all because of her fear of that fat man, especially after he had killed a young man who approached Jemil near the cottage and buried the body miles away.
My black coffee came, and Jemil sat next to her mother. Their two faces had similarities, except for the age lines and grey hair of the mother. I sipped the coffee with my eyes slyly settling on the beautiful Jemil, who continuously wiped her flattened hair to one side of her forehead with the bottom of her palm. Her hair was already laying nicely on the front of her head hiding the end of one eyebrow, but it was that unconscious motion that made that beautiful creature even more attractive.
The bitter coffee bit the front of my tongue. I listened to the mother worry that the fat man might come back and murder her and her daughter. I was sure that Jemil couldn’t understand most of what her mother was saying, but the mother’s nervous lips and eyes led the daughter to wrap her arm around her mother’s shoulder.
The light-brown dry skin of Jemil enchanted me. I wished to see her again and again the same way, with her skin gleaming under the slightest spark of light and wearing the same angel-like white dress, but that wish didn’t come true. I offered the mother and daughter enough money to go away and start a new decent life. The mother whispered to me, asking whether I wished to be their companion and marry her daughter. My first question to her was whether Jemil’s heart was free. The answer was that it was already secretly attached to a decent young farmer. We agreed to separate, but my heart was aching; I had not received even a single kiss from Jemil.
I wouldn’t have married Jemil even if her heart hadn’t belonged to someone else, and I wouldn’t have hurt or cheated her to get my desire satisfied. It was just my eyes that craved having her, not my heartless heart. What a shame it was, I thought, that Jemil and I couldn’t commune with each other due to language differences. What a shame that fate didn’t put her in my bed. But what a decent girl she was! I wished to frame in my mind the innocent smile she gave me the moment we separated. It was a real hearty way of saying thank you.
21
The last thing I did in the Philippines was to learn the craft of cross-stitching. Though it might seem a girlish hobby, it was art nonetheless, and arts extend throughout cultures and genders. I had seen expensive stitched pictures and I enjoyed gazing at their details, but up to that point I had never decided to learn it.
I had come across the new line as I was roaming in a small local shopping mall. I remember seeing a European guy walking beside a local Filipina girl, and at one point his hand moved from her shoulder down to her ass, where he placed a few gentle pats. He was a good hungry man like me at the time.
Hidden between two big stores, one for hardware and the other for home appliances, there was a tiny store for cross-stitching that offered patterns, threads, and also big expensive ready-made portraits. Some girls and old women, but not a single man, were busy buying, until I approached, at which point all eyes were fixed on me, except for those of one lady who pushed others aside as she drilled her way forward to pick up what she liked. The crowd of females split apart to give me access, as if I was some sort of a special character (which I didn’t wish to be).
Ignoring the murmuring crowd, I examined the different pictures available for sale. I liked a picture of greenery with waterfalls and one of a sitting baby girl wearing her diapers. One attractive picture showed a nude lady in a seductive pose. It was that picture I was holding when I heard a soft voice.
“I see you have an artistic taste.”
I raised my head to see a reddish-brown short-haired, oily-skinned face. The smile showed straight white teeth. A good-looking girl, I told myself. The next thing I wished to see was the chest size. There, my eyes got lost searching for any sign of even immature breasts inside that tight light—and dark-pink striped shirt. But there was nothing more than a flat chest. Then I realized that I was looking at a gay man!
“Do you like stitching, sir?” he asked.
“I don’t know how to stitch,” I replied, and I was preparing myself to leave now. I put back in the basket the picture I was holding.
“Perhaps you would like to learn how to stitch if you can afford to pay,” he said.
I paused and hesitated, thinking about his offer and what side effects might arise as part of that deal. He was a gay, and a very proud one, I saw.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Does it always take you so much time to come up with an answer?” he asked and then continued. “Decisions are to be made in a split second, and that is what makes some more unique than others.”
I thought about how he was so unique and different from the men and women around him. He pushed his head towards me then, and in an instant reaction, my head pulled back a few inches. His shampooed hair smelled good in its herbal flavour.
“You will be safe with me. I am not intending to hit on you. I have a boyfriend.”
That was very thoughtful of him and very relaxing for me to hear. He took my phone number and gave me his and told me that he was going to call me by the next day. We separated, and I went back to my apartment, where I read for a couple of hours and lost track of time. By the evening, my stomach had started generating a sort of noise that suggests I should go on a hunt for food. I dressed and left.
I ended up eating duck products—meat and egg. It was the first time I had ever eaten duck, and it was delicious. I was licking my fingers, when a group of fine-looking young men started walking quickly out of the dimly-lit restaurant I was in. Throwing a quick glance on them, I focused back on my table. But one of them stopped at
my table. Not knowing any of them and not having any interest in doing so, I didn’t raise up my head, but my fist tightened into a defensive preparation for whatever unexpected bad behaviour might arise.
“Your pockets seem to be full,” the young man said.
I looked at him now and raised my eyebrows. His creamy round-brimmed hat was leaning on one side of his head.
“They say tonight they are holding some tits competition over in the bar.”
The idea sounded intriguing, vague though it was. Just hearing that suggestion raised my spirits a little.
“Would you like to join us?” he asked.
The guy looked over at his other three friends; all were wearing caps and all had them pulled to one side. They were waving at him, asking him to hurry. I left my chair and joined them.
I think we looked good together, me and that band of four. To make it look even better, I excused myself near a shop and went in and bought myself a hat similar to the ones they had on, and I pulled it down on the left side of my head. I think it brought me closer to my crazy new colleagues. One of them offered me a drink he was holding in his hand and sipping from time to time. Believing it to be some strong wine, I closed my eyes before taking a big sip. But what a ridiculous joke! It was just a soft drink—Mountain Dew, I guess. I looked at them, and they laughed at me.
“We don’t drink, you see,” one of them said.
“But we like to have adventures,” the other added.
“I see,” I commented.
What adventures they had, being afraid to fall under the influence of alcohol!
They stopped in front of a small room where cheap colourful lights were hanging from the roof like a wedding, dangling in small curves. It was like some fairy room in a children’s bed-time story, where a short funny-faced evil old woman lives quietly, waiting for her victim, which must be a child. The noise inside started getting louder and louder, and the young group I was with rushed in through the narrow door-less opening that was covered with a blanket.
MEMORIES from the EAST Page 11
