(2018) Heights Tomo 66, Bilang 2

TOMO 66 BILANG 2

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heights tomo 66 bilang 2 Karapatang-ari 2019 heights ang opisyal na pampanitikang at pangsining na publikasyon at organizasyon ng Pamantasang Ateneo de Manila.

Reserbado ang karapatang-ari sa mga indibidwal na awtor ng mga akda ng isyung ito. Hindi maaaring ilathala, ipakopya, o ipamudmod sa anumang anyo ang mga akda nang walang pahintulot ng mga may-akda.

Hindi maaaring ibenta sa kahit anong paraan at pagkakataon ang kopyang ito.

Maaaring makipag-ugnayan sa: heights, Publications Room, mvp 202 Ateneo de Manila University p.o. Box 154, 1099 Manila, Philippines Tel. no. (632) 426-6001 loc. 5448 heights - ateneo.org facebook.com/HeightsAteneo @HeightsAteneo Malikhaing Direksyon: Justine Daquioag Dibuho ng pabalat: Justine Daquioag Paglalapat: Justine Daquioag, JJ Agcaoili, Eli Alconis, Liaa Austria, Kat Batara, Jana Codera, Valerie Cobankiat, Enrico Cruz, Casey del Rosario, Pilar Gonzalez, Ninna Lebrilla, Arien M. Lim, Giulia Lopez, Juancho Luna, Anya Nellas, Gabby Segovia, Moira Swann, Tash Parayno Folio Launch Team: Alexis Ferreras, Cam de Luna, Zianne Agustin, Polly Baterna, Rich Labao, Kwan Laurel, Sam Arnaldo, Jacinta Jocson, Giane Butalid, Mabel Ypil, Hailey Ypil, Cesar Fabro, Anton Molina, Shelby Parlade, JJ Agcaoili, Juancho Luna, Jana Codera Inilimbag sa mvb Verdigris

Mga Nilalaman Carl Matthew Rodriguez 2 Lumilipad Siya!

Christian Paul Camposano 4 Gagamba Christian Jil. R. Benitez 5 Sapagkat Pag-Ibig ang Tuod sa Pinakamahabang Bugtong

sa Kasaysayan Jamil Baung 11 Dahil sa haba ng buhok Carissa Natalia Baconguis 12 Kung Paano Ito Isasalin 15 Kasal ng Tikbalang 58 the day I got my period I smelled like oranges Allan Popa 25 Bato Cat Aquino 26 Apparition Nathan Myles Lim 28 The Chase Kenneth Yu 43 Cherry Clubbing Janelle Paris 53 It could be worse Gabrielle Leung 60 Monsoon Watchers Michaela Gonzales Tiglao 67 To the Mother Otter Carljoe Javier 68 The Day the Sexbomb Dancers Came

Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon & Josel Nicolas 97 It Was A Joke John Alexis B. Balaguer 100 Horror Vacui Ninna Lebrilla 101 Night Spirits Pilar Gonzalez 104 It’s All in Your Head Jude Buendia 105 deletion [don’t tell anyone i knew this] Corinne Victoria F. Garcia 106 memories of the blue room Pie Tiausas 108 Sobre Carl Lorenz G. Cervantes 113 Abandon All Hope

Editoryal Iniiwasan man nating sambitin, isang maaari nating aminin sa ating sarili ay kung paano nagagawang hubugin ng takot ang ating pagkilos. Umiiral ang mga ritwal sapagkat may umiigting na takot na mapatid ang kung ano mang bahagi ng identidad sa isang komunidad. Nakukulayan ng takot ang ating mga desisyon sa araw-araw.

Madalas na inilalarawan ang takot at pagkabagabag bilang pagkamalåy sa hinaharap o parating na panganib. Natatagpuan natin ito sa bawat sulok at sandali ng ating buhay—sa paghihintay sa isang mahalagang tawag, sa pag-aalala kung ligtas nakauwi ang isang kaibigan, at sa pangangamba sa hinaharap. Ang takot ay maaaring maging isang multo, sandata, o instrumento ng mga ganid sa kapangyarihan. Ang takot ay maaaring maging katambal ng katapangan.

Isang konkretong bagay na aking kinatatakutan ay ang dilim.

Simple lang ang pinanggagalingan nito—natatakot ako sapagkat hindi ko alam kung ano ang naroroon sa dilim na siyang hindi ko makikita kapag maliwanag. Lumilitaw ang takot na ito hindi lamang sa kawalan ng ilaw—ginagawa nitong kulayan ang aking mga desisyong patungo sa aking pagharap sa dilim.

Sinimulan ng patnugutan ang pagbubuo ng konsepto para sa folio na ito na balisa sa kung ano man ang mangyayari sa mga buwang natitira para sa taon. Napag-isipan namin kung ano ang mangyayari sa nalalapit na eleksiyon, sa pagbabanta ng mga makapangyarihan sa ating gobyerno laban sa mga pahayagan, sa mga balitang pinapatibay ng siyentipikong pananaliksik ukol sa unti-unting pagguho ng ating kalikasan. Ang pangunahing panukala sa pag-iisip ng konsepto para sa mga antolohiya ay kung paano magagawang ipagkasya ang mga realidad na ito sa isang publikasyon. Ngunit sa huli ay napagtanto namin na sa

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iisang buhol umuuwi ang pag-iisip pa lamang sa mga realidad na ito—na sa pagharap sa atin ng mga ganitong bagay na katakottakot ay inilalagay tayo bilang mga indibidwal sa kani-kaniyang mga sulok sa dilim. Mula dito ay hinihingi sa atin kung paano tayo kikilos sa pagharap dito.

Nagagawang ungkatin ng sining at panitikan ang mga kinatatakutan natin sa paglalarawan ng siyang hindi natin karaniwang mailarawan. Sa “Lumilipad Siya!” ni Carl Matthew Rodriguez, hinaharap ng tauhan ang kaniyang pagkatakot sa ipis, at kung ano ang nagagawa nito sa pagtakbo ng kaniyang kamalayan. Sumasagupa ang pagkabalisa sa kagustuhang magsulat at sa mga pahintulot na pumipigil sa atin para gawing konkreto ang ating mga pagninilay-nilay sa “The Chase” ni Nathan Myles Lim. Ginagalugad ng “Sobre” ni Pie Tiausas ang pag-aagam-agam ng konsensiya sa pagsasantabi sa katotohanan.

Makikita natin ang kung paano naaayon ang pagtangkang harapin ang takot sa kung paano binubuo ng isang makata ang kaniyang tula, o kung paano nahuhuli ng isang potograpo ang kaniyang mga larawan.

Sa pagsusuri natin sa mga galaw na nagagawang kulayan ng takot, kinakailan nating italunton kung paano nito nagagawang gamitin ang mga pag-aatubili na ito bilang sandata sa ibang mga bagay na ating kinatatakutan. Sa pakikisalamuha natin sa sarili nating mga pag-aalangan, paano natin nagagawang tagumpayan ang kung ano ang siyang pumipigil sa atin? Sa kalaunan ay masasanay ang mga mata sa tanawin ng dilim—at sa sandaling magawa nating malampasan ito, ang hinihingi sa atin ay ang kung paano natin magagawang hanapin ang liwanag para sa mga nananatiling hindi makagalaw sa takot.

Martina Herras Abril 1, 2019

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carl matthew rodriguez

Lumilipad siya! napahinto ako. Kaharap ang kakila-kilabot na halimaw. Hindi ako nakagalaw. Biglang namanhid ang buong katawan ko. Lagpas hatinggabi ngayon. Natutulog ang buong pamilya ko. Bumangon lang ako para uminom ng tubig, kaso ginulat ako ng kampon ni Satanas.

Ilang taon na yatang nakararaan nang huli ko siyang naengkwentro. Wala pa kami sa bagong bahay namin. Naghahanap ako noon ng laruan mula sa tambakan namin ng lumang gamit.

Kalahati nito’y mga laruang binili ng tatay ko. Pagkausog ko ng ilang kagamitan, may biglang lumabas mula sa ilalim. Napaatras ako.

Kinapos ako ng hininga. Bata pa lang ako dati kaya tumakbo na lang ako sa inang nagalit. Hindi raw dapat nagpapakita ang mga ganoon sa bahay na malinis at pinagpala ng Diyos. Gayunpamang nalito ako, inasikaso naman ito ng katulong.

Matagal mang panahon ang nakalilipas, sariwa pa rin sa alaala ko ang bawat detalye ng itsura niya. Dambuhalang katawan. Maliit man ang ulo niya’y tila plato sa laki ang kaniyang mga mata. Mayroon pa siyang dalawang mahaba ngunit manipis na sungay. Kakaiba ang anyo nito sa ibang demonyo sapagkat nagagalaw niya ang mga ito.

Bukod pa roon, anim ang paa niyang may matutulis na balahibo hanggang hita. Matulin ang bawat galaw niya kaya mahalagang maiwasang lumapit nang sobra sa kaniyang paligid. Nararamdaman niya ang panginginig ng mga duwag.

Namamalayan ko muli ang pagkatuyo ng bibig ko. Tinititigan ko pa rin ang nakasusuklam na halimaw na tila hindi pa rin kumikilos. Lumingon ako sa paligid. Mayroon pa naman yata akong madaraanan upang marating ang baso at pitsel ng tubig.

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Abante ng isang paa. Hindi gumagalaw ang halimaw.

Isa pang paa. Hindi pa rin gumagalaw.

Isa pa. Hinto. Tumigil ang paghinga ko.

Umikot siya nang kaunti, paharap sa akin.

Ilang tapak na lang at maaabot ko na sana ang baso man lang.

Dahan-dahan akong lumalapit sa lagayan ng baso nang bigla siyang gumagapang. Papunta siya sa akin.

Umaalog ang buong katawan ko. Napakabilis ng galaw ng halimaw. Tila sumasayaw ako ng tinikling hanggang sumuko na ako sa tubig.

Tumakbo na ako papunta sa ikalawang palapag. Lumalaktaw pa ako ng ilang hakbang papanik sa hagdanan. Mabilis pa rin ang paghinga ko pagdating doon. Medyo pinapawisan ako kaya lumala pa ang pagkauhaw ko. Binalewala ko na lang. Muntik na akong umiyak.

Nagpatalamat pa ako sa Diyos na nakatakas ako mula sa panganib.

Pumunta muna ako sa banyo para umihi at saka maghilamos para kumalma naman ako kahit kaunti. Pagkalabas ko, nangati ang braso ko. Kakamutin ko sana ito subalit may iba akong nahawakan.

Nariyang gumagapang sa braso ko ang demonyo.

Hinampas ko nang todo at nahulog ito sa sahig. Napaatras ako hanggang tumama ang likod ko sa pader.

Lumaki ang mata ko. Ngayon ko lang nasaksihang bumukas ang likurang bahagi ng katawan ng halimaw. Naglantad siya ng pakpak.

Sumigaw ako.

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christian paul camposano

Gagamba Pinagagapang ko ang gagamba Sa bawat kong daliri. Sinasanay Na tawirin ang bawat puwang Na bingit sa kanyang paghakbang.

Inihahanda sa nalalapit na laban Ng kitĂ­san at saputan.

Kung mahulog at hindi nagsapot O mahulog sa rupok ng sapot Nang paulit-ulit, at panawan ng lakas Na buhatin ang sariling katawan, Ako ang huli niyang makakalaban.

Ako lang.

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christian jil r. benitez

Sapagkat Pag-Ibig ang Tuod sa Pinakamahabang Bugtong sa Kasaysayan* Kung paanong nagsadagat Itong bumbong kung liwanag, At paanong ang liwanag Ay ang bumbong, ay ang dagat, Ay ang langit, ay ang ibon— Itong ibon, walang tikom, Hanggang ito’y sumadagat, Isang araw, nambagabag: Dagat, langit, sabi, dagat, Dagat, dagat, ikaw, hamak!

At ang dagat—ay, ang galit!

Kaya ibo’y sumalangit, Tumatangis, Alon, dagat, Abot, langit, at naglamat

Ang daigdig, dahil langit, Isang saglit, biglang galit Itong lupa, inihulog, At ang dagat, nagkahubog— *Unang gantimpala, Talaang Ginto: Makata ng Taon 2018

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At doon nga ay umahon: Pulo! Pulo! Basta’t naro’n Na nga lamang, isang araw, At kung bakit, di malaman, Kung hiwaga, o hinagap Na kay layo’t di mahanap Na, at noo’y isang ibon Ang humamak at nagsibol Sa sandagat at sanlangit Ng sigalot, ang ligalig Na nagdulot na maghubog Itong dagat, nang mahulog: Pulo, pulo!... At marahan Ding umusbong: kadawagan, At doon, Ay! May sumibol!

May sumibol—pinasibol Ng Kung-Sino, ay marahil, Ngunit walang magpaamin (Dahil di ba’y ang humamon Sa hiwaga’y buong hapong Maglulubid ng ligalig, Magtatali ng panganib) Kayâ, sapat nang manalig— Bumbong, ibon, dagat, langit.

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Ngunit bibig, dumalumat Ng alamat, umapuhap, Sapagkat nga, ang hamunin Ang hiwaga ay ang kunin At hawirin, at awitin Nang awitin, at ulitin, Kaya bibig ay inawit, Buong tinig, labis, labis Ang hiwagang hinugutan Ay kawalan, milaúnang Ibig-bibig: Noong unang Noong una... —mula umang Kay rilim, ay! biglang naro’n: Mga pulo, dawag, dahon, Panahon..., Ay! kay liwanag Nitong bibig, naibálak Mula dilim: Sansinukob, Na ulayaw ang humubog Mula wala. Kayâ súlong Ang salaysay! Kayâ túbong, Alingawngaw, ang ulayaw: Tumubo nga, isang araw, Ang anuman (at kung Bakit At Paano, ay kay labis

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Nang tanungin; matutuhan Kayâ nating kahulúgan Ang tahimik? Ang bigláa’y Bigla lamang, mawawáang Salalayang kasaysáya’y Katha lamang, bibig lámang, Kayâ—basta!), isang araw: Isang bumbong, nataláan.

At iyon nga (o, ang wangis)— Kasaysayan (walang Bakit O Bakit pa), ang Liwanag Na Kawalang-Paliwanag, Ang karimlang paninilang Pagsasapat sa pagwikang Tumubo nga isang araw Ang tumubo na nga lamang —Na ano ba ang pangalan, Nitong biglang nar’ong bagay?

Bakit bumbong ang pantukoyí At ang bakit ay pang-ukol Para saan? Ano’ng bakit, At parating mapanganib, Kung hindi rin itong hapis, At ang dusa, sugat, sákit, 8

Ay, kay sakít! Kayâ bakit Naman hindi, na sa langit, Itong bibig ay tumangis, Sa salita ay gumamit Bilang talim: Bumbong—sugat— At ang tao ang bumungad; Mula tao, ang liwanag, At ang bibig, na ang gáyas Ay daigdig, walang kabig: Nagsadagat, nagsalangit, Nagtatali sa hiwagang Di-mahawan, sapantahang Tanong: Bakit, at Paanong Nagkagayon, at Gaano’y Kakailan? Mahihirang Bilang sugat itong siwang, Ngala’y bibig, ang pag-ibig Nito’y punan, buong pilit, Ang—ano nga? Anong ngalan Bago itong kasaysayan, Pagkaraa’y Bakit, Bakit Nga, Bakit pa? Anong sákit Ang ninais, sa paghawid, Pag-ibig pa sa pasakit 9

Ng sariling bibig, tinig, Umuulyaw sa Sanhímig?

Nakakapagpabagabag Ang kawalang-magagagap Na sarili. Kayâ ibig Ang lumikhang, mula tinig, Nitong bibig: langit, dagat, Ibon, bumbong—Kay liwanag Sa pagbuka nitong yungib, Na ang dilim din ang ulit, At sa dilim umiibig At iibig sa pagpilit, Bukambibig nang tahimik, Bugtong nitong kay panganib: Bakit bumbong kung liwanag At kung gabi’y bakit dagat, At di gabi ang liwanag, At ang bumbong ay di dagat?

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jamil baung*

Dahil sa haba ng buhok Nakalimutan ko lang ang panali ko na galing kay pinsan. Nakapagtataka pala noong naglalakad ako patungong CR. May mga bata na nagsisigaw: It’s a boy!

It’s a girl! Nagkathang-isip ako na may nanganak sa Amerika: It’s a boy! It’s a girl! ika ni doc.

Pagpasok ko ng CR naalala ko kung saan ko naiwan ang panali ko na galing kay pinsan.

*Sagisag-panulat

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Bawat titik mula sa iyong bibig patungo

bastidor. Sinabihan mo ako: Walang ganiyan sa kama ni Olympia

sa parehong tono ng Hindi ako ganiyan.

Huwag mong ipangaral sa akin ang banidad,

Sabi mo, Ayoko rito.

Kung paano ko ito

isasalin, ang iyong pagbigkas: nakikita ko

Nakikita ko: pinagmamasdan mo ang kanyang kumikinang na

pigura, bahagyang pinapansin ang bulaklak

sa kanyang tainga, ang hiyas na sumasakal, kung paano dinadala ng binti ng Venus

ang tingin patungo sa kamay tinatakpan ang gitna, hindi mula sa hiya; dalagitang

tanghal sa puting kobrekama.

Kung Paano Ko Ito Isasalin

carissa natalia baconguis

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Salita ang nagmumulto sa akin pauwi, nagbibihis

sa akin tuwing umaga, bahagyang mukha lamang,

kumikinang hindi dahil sa ginto. Hi, ganda.

Hi, cutie. Pahingi naman ng tamis. Miss

Philippines. Miss Sexy. Miss

Uwian Kita. At sinabihan mo ako na ikaw ay nabalisa:

kung ano nga ba ang aking pinagmamasdan

sa pigurang namamahinga, walang ibang kalamigang nararamdaman

kundi ang kanyang titig. Katulad lang ito ng pagbura: masdan mo kung paano hindi ko naipakita ang bughaw

kanyang mga iri, ang manipis na labi, kung paano ang balat

dito ka na. Venus isinilang sa tadyang. Bahagi

ng katawan iniluwa sa bawa’t bigkas ng pantig, habi

sa hugis walang kapintasan: pigurang ibinalik

upang ilagay sa kahihiyan. Tinanong mo ako

nakikita kita tumitingin sa kathang isip na mga taong walang-ulo, walang mata, Miss Pretty,

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Hindi ito kasalanan.

Olympia, mukha walang bibig, titig walang salita, Olympia: babae sa babae; sa sandaling ito,

kahit ako hindi ko siya kayang ipahinga.

Paano ko isasalin ang pagliligtas. Paano

ko isasalin sa tula

ang sarili. Sino

ka na ba, ngayon.

pabalik muli: hindi sa iyo, tumingin ako

sa kanya muli: tumingin, nakita

katawan: tumatayo, lumalabas sa pintura,

patungo sa akin, wala ka rito, wala na tayo sa loob

ng museo, ako lamang at ang tanghal,

nais kong masaksihan mo ang pagtitig ng mga salita

pabalik sa iyo. Kung paano ko ito isasalin,

itong bantayan. Teka, sabi mo, huwag ka munang lumabas,

Kahit suotin mo man lang ang jacket ko, paano kung

Malalamigan ka, sige ka, hoy—tapos tumingin ako

carissa natalia baconguis

Kasal ng Tikbalang Sinabihan ako ng matalik kong kaibigan na si Gabbie na kinatatakutan niya ang kasal dahil hindi lamang ang tao ang kailangan mong pakasalan kundi ang kanyang pamilya, kasaysayan, at lalonglalo na ang kanyang mga problema. Hindi ko rin alam kung bakit kami napunta sa ganitong klaseng usapan habang dinudugtongdugtong namin ang mga santan sa labas ng bahay ko. Siguro dahil sa ulan; bago dumating dito si Gabbie, umulan nang kaunti lamang sa init ng araw. Naisip ko ang mga tikbalang habang hinahanap namin ang bahaghari. Siguro naisip din ni Gabbie ang aking iniisip sa panahon na iyon, na kahit naglalakad lang kami at hindi naguusap, hindi namin kailangan mag-usap para lang maintindihan ang pinagdadaanan ng isa’t-isa. “Kasal?” tanong ko, kahit alam kong hindi kailangan ni Gabbie iyon para ituloy ang kanyang sinasabi.

“Oo,” ulit ni Gabbie, “kasal.” Tumahimik kami muli. Natapos ni Gabbie ang kanyang pisi ng santan at pinatong sa ulo ko, tulad ng isang koronasyon. Hindi ko rin alam kung bakit ito ang alaalang bumalik sa akin pagkatapos ko bumagsak sa sahig ng banyo.

Sa segundong ito hindi ko kayang umimik, malakas ang sarili kong paghinga at ang hangin ay nakabibingi.“Hello?” rinig ko mula sa pintuan. “Nandiyan ka pa ba, hello?” Si Carla. Siguro pang-ilang beses na siya kumakatok na hindi ko na rin napansin. “Hello?” ulit niya. “Kung wala ka riyan, okay lang ba na sirain ko ‘yung pintuan?”

Doon lamang ako nakahanap ng rason gumalaw ulit, at paunti-unti kong binuksan ang aking bibig. Parang kaya kong bilangin ang aking mga paghinga. “May tao!” iyon lamang ang kaya kong sabihin. Rinig ko ang tsk ni Carla bago siya umalis. Magyoyosi nanaman si Carla, inisip ko. Paulit-ulit kong inisip na mag-yoyosi ulit si Carla bago ako bumalik sa kung nasaan man ako. Binuksan ko ang aking cellphone.

Sumilip ako sa pagitan, sa ilalim ng pintuan. Kita ko pa ang sapatos ni Carla, at sa kanyang sandàl sa pader alam kong hindi siya aalis 15

sa posisyong iyon hanggang umalis din ako. Mabilis kong tinext si Gabbie. “Gabs,” una kong mensahe, “busy ba u”. Mabilis lumitaw ang tatlong bilog, sumasayaw-sayaw habang inaabangan ko ang reply ni Gabbie. “call?” sagot niya. Call? Tanong ko rin sa sarili ko. Nginuya ko ang tanging talukap-balat na nakasabit sa aking daliri. Mabuti na lang dala ko ang nail cutter ko para hindi mapansin ni Mommy.

“Call?” ulit ko. Pagtingin ko sa cellphone, nagpadala pala ng bagong mensahe si Gabbie: “?????”.

Sumilip ako ulit. Wala na si Carla ngunit naamoy ko pa rin siya..

Kilalang-kilala ko ang amoy niya—dala niya ito tulad ng pabango.

Nilapit ko ang cellphone sa tainga ko. “Hello?” rinig ko ang boses ni Gabbie. “Gabbie!” Sagot ko. Nagulat ako sa boses ko na parang matandang nakikiusap. “Gabbie,” sa pag-uulit siguro dito ko napansin ang bigat ng sinasabi ko. “Gabbie,” ulit ko, na parang ito na lang ang huling salitang alam kong sabihin. * May kahong nakalagay sa mesa. Matagal na siyang nakapatong sa mesa, kasi pagdating ko pa lang nilagay ko na. Nagyoyosi na naman si Rhys. Isa iyan sa mga bagay na hindi ko gusto sa kanya, pero sa panahong ito hindi ko kayang sabihin. Sa kanyang titig sa akin, alam kong alam niya hindi ko rin ito gusto pero binalik niya ang yosi sa kanyang bibig at humithit. Pagbukas ko ng bibig—“alam ko,” sagot niya sa akin, kahit na wala pa akong sinasabi. Sinulyapan niya ang kahon. Maganda siyang kahon, pulang pelus na lalagyan lang ng mga kuwintas, at hindi rin ngayon nagagamit. “Rhyselle—” simula ko.

“Huwag,” mabilis niyang balik. “Huwag mo nga akong—” Langhap.

“Huwag mo akong tawagin nang ganyan.” Katahimikan.

Hinawakan niya ang kahon, at unti-unting hinila papunta sa kanya. “Teka,” bigla kong nabigkas, mahigpit ang hawak sa kahon, “ayaw mong tingnan ang nasa loob?” Sinarado ni Rhys ang kanyang mga kamay nang napakabilis, akala ko’y dumudugo ang kanyang kamao. “At bakit?” kalma ang kanyang tono. “Ano pa ba ang pwede mong ipakita sa akin na hindi ko pa nakikita?”

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Patlang.

“Rhyse—” “Rhys!” “…Rhys.”

“Ano?” * “Break na.”

“Ha?!” Rinig ko ang gulat ni Gabbie sa kabilang linya. “Kayo ni Rhys?”

“Oo.” Sagot ko. “Binalik ko na yung kahon.”

“Parang ang kalmado mo,” pansin ni Gabbie, “sure ka ba na okay ka lang? Anong sinabi ni Rhys?” Hindi ko na sinubukan sagutin ang unang tanong ni Gabbie. “Matagal niya na raw alam na nangongolekta lang ako ng mga abubot.” Binatuhan niya ako nung tansan ng Red Horse. “Mabuti na lang at hindi ‘yung bote yung kinuha ko.” Hinawakan ko ang parte ng ulo ko kung saan natamaan.

“Aksidente lang naman,” tuloy ko.

Kilala ko naman si Rhys na hindi ganoong klaseng tao, na madaling magalit, hindi madaling magpakita ng kanyang mga emosyon. “Mabuti na lang umalis ka bago lumala pa,” sabi ni Gabbie.

“Kasi kung kayo pa rin pagtanda niyo—nako, magiging tulad kayo ni Lolo Jun.” Si Lolo Jun. Madalas ding binabanggit ni Gabbie ang kanyang lolo kahit hindi sila magkasundo, kahit na pamilya sila, at kahit na nakatira sa ilalim ng parehong bubong. Dahil diyan minsan lang umuuwi si Gabbie sa tunay niyang bahay. Mga ilang beses na rin siyang nakitulog sa bahay ko at sinasabi ko na lang sa mga magulang ko na lagi kaming may inaaral. Mas lumala nga ang sitwasyon noong namatay si Lola Rosy. Naalala ko hindi man lang umulan noong araw na iyon. Kahit si Gabbie, hindi man lang umiyak. Hawak ko pa rin ang ulo ko. “Aksidente lang naman,” sagot ko, habang patawa.

“Hmm.” sagot niya, na para bang matagal niya na narinig ang 17

ganitong klaseng tugon. “Masakit ba?” * “Hindi mo ba alam kung gaano mo ako sinasaktan?” Tanong ni Rhys. Hindi niya ako tinitingnan sa mata. Hawak ni Rhys ang panakip ng kahon, sa pagbukas niya ng lalagyan. “From the very start,” simula ni Rhys. “alam ko talagang hindi mo iniisip na seryosohin ako.”

Hindi ko alam, sa panahong iyon, kung paano sasagutin ang pangungusap ni Rhys, at hindi ko rin alam kung dapat nga ba mayroon akong sagot dito. Ang lumabas lang ay buntong-hininga. Ngunit sa buntong-hininga na ito ay mabilis bumaling si Rhys. “Ano?” Malapit na niyang masigaw. Tumayo siya bigla, at kaharap ko ang tao hindi ko na nakilala bilang Rhys. “Ikinahihiya mo ba ako?”

Unang sulyap ko pa lang kay Rhys ay nagustuhan ko na siya— mula sa kanyang makapal na buhok na kumukulot sa dulo, sa ngiti niya’y nakakahawa, tungo sa mga selfies niya na laging tumutugma sa maganda niyang anggulo. Mabilis akong nag-swipe. Pagkatapos noon, mabilis din kaming nakahanap ng lugar para magkita. Doon ko nakilala ang ibang mga paborito kong mga bagay na natatangi sa kanya—may piercing siya sa kanyang pusod at dila, may isa siyang pusang may ngalang “John Lloyd,” ang paborito niyang kulay ay asul, may mabait siyang kuya mula sa tatay niya at hindi sa nanay na lagi niyang kasama, marunong siya tumugtog ng biyolin, at may tattoo siya ng tutuldok-kuwit na nakatago sa ilalim ng kanyang relos. Sinabi ko sa sarili ko na hindi ako magmamahal nang ganito kadali.

Ngunit hindi ko rin alam kung talagang nagmahal nga ba ako.

Lalo na ngayong tinititigan ako ni Rhys. Titig na galit na galit. Titig na mukhang mamamato. Alam ko namang mas matanda siya sa akin ng ilang taon, pero hindi ko alam kung bakit biglang lumabas sa bibig ko ang—“kamukha mo ang nanay ko.”

Sa kanyang galit at gulat, binatuhan niya ako ng tansan ng Red Horse.

18

* Naging kami ni Alex kasabay nina Gabbie at Jose. Pero matagal na kaming magkakilala ni Alex. Si Alex na magaling sa track and field— kaya hindi nakagugulat sa akin kung bakit kaya niyang tumakbo sa kanyang mga problema nang madalian. Tumakas si Gabbie sa kanyang bahay para sumakay ng bus papuntang Maynila para lang mapuntahan ako. Umiiyak ako at umiinom, umiinom tapos umiiyak.

Matagal na rin kami ni Alex. Hindi ko alam kung bakit, o paano ako sinapian ng ganitong karahasan pero hinalikan ko si Gabbie. Tapos sumuka ako sa kandungan niya.

Halos walang nasabi si Gabbie. Hindi ko rin alam kung masyado ba akong lasing para mabása ang kanyang mukha, pero bago niya sinubukang linisin ang kanyang damit, kumuha siya ng baso ng tubig.

Dinala niya ito sa aking tabi, at sa sandaling iyon nakita ko na may isang malaking pagkakamali.“Gabbie, I’m sorry,” sabi ko, punongpuno ng sipon sa aking pag-iyak, “alam kong mali iyon. Alam mo naman hindi ako ganyan, ‘di ba? ‘Di ba, Gabs?”

“Lasing ka.”

“Mahal mo pa rin ako, ‘di ba? As a friend?”

“Oo, oo.”

“Hindi ko uulitin.”

“Dapat lang.”

Nakitulog si Gabbie pero nasa sahig lang siya. Naalala ko na binigay niya na lang ang kama sa akin, sa tabi ng tubig at planggana sakaling masuka pa ako. Sa paggising ko, naramdaman ko na para akong buntis na inalagaan. Naalala ko rin ang pagkawala ng katawan sa sahig. Naisip ko si Gabbie at si Jose, na magkaibang-mundo ang personalidad ngunit hanggang ngayon ay nagawa nilang paganahin ang kanilang relasyon na pangmatagalan.

Gumawa ako ng Tinder sa susunod na araw.

19

* Inayos ko ang mga santan sa ulo ko. Ito ang huling araw na maaari kong samahan pa si Gabbie bago ako umalis patungo Maynila. “Pag trenta na tayo,” simula ni Gabbie, nakahiga sa bukid, “at wala pa ring nangyayari sa atin. Gusto mo ba akong pakasalan?” Kumurap ako.

“Ha?” Tanong ko. “Siguro, hindi trenta. Baka kuwarenta.”

“Hindi yan ‘yung issue, Gabbie…”

“Alam ko kami pa naman ni Jose. Pero paano kung hindi? Paano kung pagkatapos ng limang taon, hindi na pala namin matutupad ni Jose ang mga pangarap namin sa isa’t-isa?”

Patlang.

“Pagkatapos ng lahat ng iyon, alam kong ikaw lang ang tatabi pa rin sa akin.” Sabi niya habang nakatingin sa akin. Sa panahong iyon, alam na alam kong may nararamdaman ako sa pagtingin ko pabalik kay Gabbie.

Alam ko na ang alaalang ito kasama si Gabbie ay isa sa mga alaalang lagi kong binabalik-tanaw dahil hindi ko malilimutan ang larawang nalikha namin sa isang sandali. Hindi ko malilimutan ang kaunting liwayway samga ulap, ang mga tinik ng santan pagkatapos namin sinubukan inumin ang nektar ng bulaklak, ang katawan naming magkaharap, malapit, magkakilala—at ang pakiramdam kong umaapaw ng pait.

Siguro kaya ito ang alaala kong binabalikan ngayon. Sa alaala, tumayo ako. Hindi ko maalala ang kilos ng pagtayo o ang desisyong tatayo ako. Hindi ko alam kung ano ang hinanap ko sa mga mata ni Gabbie pero kahit na inalis ko na siya sa aking isip ay hindi siya nagmukhang nasaktan o nagulat. Tiningnan niya lang ako na para bang hindi na kakaiba ang aking reaksyong tumayo imbis na sumagot pabalik.

Tiningnan niya lang ako.

Matagal na kaming magkaibigan ni Gabbie pero alam ko sa sarili ko na napakatalino niya. Hindi ko alam ang kanyang iniisip. Sa kathang-isip, umoo ako dahil alam kong mahal ko si Gabbie, pero sa 20

totoong buhay, tumingin lang kami sa isa’t-isa, parang nag-aabang na lamang ng paraan kung paano matanggal ang katahimikang pumapalibot sa amin. “Mukhang uulan,” inisip ko na lang para hindi ko maisip na pangit na pakiramdam sa puso ko. “Mukhang uulan at mawawala ang bahaghari.” Inisip ko kung tapos na ang mga tikbalang sa kanilang kasal—kung ang bagyo ay produkto rin ng mga problema ng tikbalang.

Ngunit katulad ng totoong buhay, hindi kami puwedeng manatili sa sandali, o sa alaala. Lagi kaming ginagalawan ng oras at hindi ito hihinto kahit para sa pag-ibig. “Gabriella—” isang salita na bumulabog sa aming pananatili. Mabilis na lumingon si Gabbie.

Pumasok ang tita ni Gabbie, sa aming pananaw. “Gabriella!” Tawag niya ulit. Tumayo si Gabbie, hindi man lang ako nabigyan ng isang sulyap bago dumiretso sa kanyang tita. Bago pa siya nakapagsalita upang sagutin ang tawag ng tita niya— “Patay na ang Lola Rosy mo.”

Hindi na kinailangan pang magpaliwanag dahil sa panahong ito alam na namin ni Gabbie kung paano siya namatay. Tinignan ko lang si Gabbie ngunit hindi ko kaya tumingin lang. Niyakap ko siya nang mahigpit. “Gabbie, sorry,” sabi ko,ngunit ang mukha ni Gabbie ay para bang matagal niya nang alam na mangyayari ito sa ganitong paraan. Wala akong ibang masabi kundi sorry. Naging statik na lang ang mga sinasabi ng tita niya sa amin.

Sa araw na iyon, may lakas pa rin siyang ngumiti sa akin bago siya pumasok sa kotse ng tita niya. Hindi ko malilimutan ang pakiramdam ko na ngayon kaya kong mabigyan ng pangalan: inggit at takot. * Ang salitang sorry ay ang pinakapangit na maaaring sabihin, lalo na kapag walang kilos na makakapagpabago rito pagkatapos itong bigkasin. Ngunit ito rin ang isa sa mga pinakamahirap na salita na maaring sabihin. Hindi man lang nag-sorry si Alex sa akin katulad ng sorry ng mga magulang ko sa pagsabi nila na hindi ulit sila makakabalik nang maaga para sa akin. Nakilala ko lang sila sa paraan 21

ng mga kailangan kong gawin sa isang araw para lang mapansin, at sa mga pinapadala nilang regalo, ni hindi man lang isang liham. Hindi man lang nag-sorry si Lolo Jun kay Lola Rosy at hindi ako nag-sorry kay Gabbie kahit alam ko ang kanyang pinagdadaanan.

May ginagalawan kaming mundo ni Gabbie na kami lang ay may alam—na hindi rin ginagalawan ng iba. Nakalikha kami ng mundo kung saan hindi lang ang kawalan ang nakabantay sa amin. Siguro kaya napakahirap makita si Gabbie na paunti-unting lumalayo sa aking mga kamay habang lumalayo siya sa kanyang mga pinagmulan ay hindi ko alam kung bakit may pakiramdam ako na hanggang ngayon gusto ko siyang manatili sa aking tabi. Hindi ko alam kung bakit kapag siya ang nagtanong sa akin upang pakasalan ako kahit na mayroon naman siyang Jose, mayroon naman siyang kakayahan tumakbo patungo Maynila, mayroon naman siyang kapangyarihang umalis nang mabilisan, ay pakiramdam ko na ako’y ninakawan.

Mahal ko si Gabbie pero hindi ko alam kung sa parehong pag-ibig ay naging insulto ang usapan tungkol sa kasal.

Galit ako. Galit na galit ako, Gabbie, at hindi ko alam kung bakit.

Kaya siguro pagkaalis niya noong araw na iyon, sa araw na iyon na kauulan lamang, umalis na ang bahaghari at namatay si Lola Rosy.

Nahulog din ang mga santan sa aking ulo at tiningnan ko ang mga bulaklak na ito. Kinuha ko ang mga ito mula sa lupa at nilagay sa aking bulsa. * “Sino ‘yan?” Tanong ni Rhys, sa una naming date. Katatanggal ko lang ang mga larawan ni Alex sa phone ko at binago ko para sa mga larawan namin ni Gabbie ang nasa phone ko. “Ah, si Gabbie,” sagot ko, bago binalik ko ang phone sa loob ng aking bulsa. “Best friend ko siya.” “Ahh,” tumango si Rhys. “Baka mamaya iiwanan mo ako para diyan.” Tumawa siya.

“Hindi, ah,” mabilis kong sagot. Binuksan ni Rhys ang kanyang bibig na parang may sasabihin, pero dumating na ang aming inorder.

Mamaya sa gabing ito bibigyan niya ako ng pahintulot na tawagin 22

siyang Rhyselle. Nalimutan rin namin ang bigat ng totoong pangalan, kung anong klaseng relasyon ang binubukas nito sa kaunting dagdag ng pantig. Sa gabing ito kinuha ko ang tansan ng Red Horse mula sa aming inuman, at ito ang pinakaunang bagay na inilagay ko sa aming kahon.

Mamaya, pagkatapos ng buong kwentong ito, ang sasabihin ni Rhys ay itong proseso ng pagkuha ay ang aking pagbilang sa mga beses na nagkita kami—at ang kilos na ito ay isa rin sa mga paraan ng pagbabalik. “Alam mo na hindi mo ako gusto kaya ka nangongolekta ng mga bagay na ibabalik.” Alam ko na ang kanyang sasabihin pagkatapos ng aming tagông relasyon—sino pa ba ang magsisimula ng pag-uusap sa “Alam ba ng mga magulang mo na nandito ka”?

Walang may alam sa aming pagkikita, at walang may kilala sa mundong nilikha namin ni Rhys kundi si Gabbie.

Subalit nawala ito lahat sa una kong pagsúka. Hindi dahil sa alkohol, hindi dahil sa hilo lamang, kaya ang mundo ko ay biglang gumuho. * Galit ako, Gabbie, at hindi ko alam kung bakit.

“Ano ba kasing nangyari?” Tanong niya, at naalala ko na kausap ko nga pala siya sa phone. “Bakit ka nagagalit?”

Marami akong maaring sabihin na hindi ko alam, tulad ng kung bakit hindi ko kayang maging totoo, kung bakit hindi ako madaling mahalin, kung bakit kinakasal ang mga tikbalang tuwing may bahaghari, kung bakit nagkaka-anak ang mga pamilyang hindi dapat magka-anak, at kung bakit ako nagagalit. Pero alam kong takot ako.

Takot ako at nagkakamali.

“Kasi hindi ako tulad mo, Gabbie.” Ako mismo ang sumira sa pagibig. “Hindi ako ganyan.” Ako mismo ang sinungaling.

“Ha?” Mabilis na sagot ni Gabbie. “Ano ba ‘yang sinasabi mo?”

May kumatok ulit sa pintuan. Si Carla—“Bea!” Tawag niya.

Tumayo ako sa tawag niya. “Bea, huwag mo kalimutan na dorm ‘to!

Matagal ka nang nandiyan, naiihi na ako.” Inip na inip niya akong 23

sinabihan. Nilagay ko ‘yung phone sa tapat ng tainga ko. “Hindi ako parang ikaw—na umaalis ng bahay para lang makita si Jose, na naghihirap para umalis—” “Tungkol pa ba ‘to kay Rhys? Dahil ba nag-break kayo—” “Hindi, Gabbie! Lahat ‘to tungkol sa iyo!”

“Bea! Dadalhin ko pa ba buong hayskul para umalis ka diyan?”

Umiyak ako. Umiiyak ako at hindi ko alam kung bakit.

Katahimikan sa linya ni Gabbie.

“Di ba ginawa ko naman lahat ng makakaya ko para kontrolin ang buhay ko, nag-aaral naman ako, mabait naman ako, ikaw naman ‘yung laging tumatakas, ikaw naman yung hanggang ngayon naniniwala…” Ngunit…. ngunit…!

Hindi ko alam kung ano pa ba ang mga sinasabi ko. Matagal ko nang hinanap si Alex pagkatapos, problema niya rin ito; matagal ko nang pinipilit si Rhys na hindi magbabago ang relasyon namin dahil sa lalaking iyon, at matagal ko nang sinasabi na hindi ko kailangan si Gabbie upang maging taong karapat-dapat sa pag-ibig. Subalit kahit ang mga ito ay bumabagsak sa aking kaisipan, ako pa rin ang pinakamapait sa lahat ng mga taong kilala ko. Hindi ko alam kung sa tinagal kong nabuhay ay nakikipagpaligsahan lamang ako. Hindi ko alam kung tunay ko bang hinanap ang pag-ibig o ang pakiramdam nito, o kung may hinahanap ba talaga ako.

Hindi ko alam kung binaba na ni Gabbie ang linya sa mga sinasabi ko. Alam ko lang ang paglamon sa akin ng takot, inggit, at lubos na pag-ibig at pagnanais na umibig. Hawak ko pa rin ang pregnancy kit pagkatapos kong umihi. May dalawang linyang para bang tinutukso ako na dapat may kasama ako rito. Dapat hindi ako mag-isa.

Ngunit takot ako sa mundo at takot ako sa anong kayang ipamana ng mundong ito. Iniisip ko kung kaya ko pa bang manalangin sa Diyos—saklolo, disisyete pa lang po ako, parang awa niyo na—ayaw ko maging katulad ng mga rason kung bakit ako ganito.

24

allan popa

Bato Inosente ang tawas.

Pero ang mga kilikili, natatakot.

Takot mapagkamalang gumagamit.

Takot mahulihan ng bato na mukhang bato.

Namamaho ang mga kilikiling namamawis sa takot.

Namamaho tulad ng nagkalat na mga bangkay na walang tumutubos.

Kilikili ng inosente at hindi inosente ng Pilipinas.

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cat aquino

Apparition After Teresita Castillo There is a vine in the garden of Our Lord where no vine should be. It awaits you, young and virginal, its tendril thick like an oiled snake beckoning.

Come closer. Listen for the voice. Kneel to behold it in your ear saying, Child, do not be afraid, kiss the ground. Do whatever I say.

Above you, there is a light in the shape of a woman you almost recognize, her neck slightly bent as the smell of roses penetrates your nostrils, telling you to take a bite of grass. Fill your mouth with dark wet compost, feel the dead ants sweet on your tongue.

Do not spit them out.

Keep listening. Ask, beautiful lady, who are you? Through lips unmoving and eyes

26

still, she tells you she is your mother and she only wants you to be good.

Pray, my daughter, pray much.

Eat some grass.

I desire that an image of mine be placed here.

Give way to the tremble under your habit that you cannot name. Call it hunger.

Call it desire. Willingly pick the grass from the dirt and press it to your lips, worms and all. Swallow in obedience.

Do not spit the excess.

Look up with a burning throat to find her gone, the world made ungodly in her shadow.

27

nathan myles lim

The Chase “Someday I’m gonna call me up on the phone, so when I answer, I can tell myself to shut up.”

—Miles Davis i remember it must have began at the party: Nathaniel asked me what time it was (to which I responded dumbly elevensomething) and then, following a queer gesticulation of hands, whose house this was (information I unfortunately could no longer make out) and then, emptying his strong strawberry daiquiri, if I was reading anything at all right now to which I responded yes of course handing him this ancient book and then him giddily taking it, reading aloud from it but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels before, laughing, returning it to me, asking me if I was writing anything at all right now to which I hesitated—said I was but admittedly was not so sure what I nor it was attempting to do upon each of ourselves, feeling so stupid also purblind like ancient sightless Tiresias (only, unfortunately, without his divine clairvoyance)—whereupon Nathaniel abruptly left, leaving me pretty much to my own devices speaking with this inebriated Thalia and Mel, talking (inarticulately) about art, music, cinema, literature, etc., and then about the wild Werewolf of Wysteria Howard Hamilton “Albert” Fish (I asked them: how was it possible he never got tired of murdering children?) before something I had felt dawning on me quite a bit earlier finally did so: I wasn’t so sure if I had actually spoken to Nathaniel in this party. Of course, sensing something inside me become then so fundamentally unsettled, I asked the girls, but the girls then only shook their drunken heads, stared at me like praying I had just finally lost it, and then walked away in this senseless furor (and in unison too), cussing coarsely, whereupon I so recall I tore myself away from the slowly untamable crowd, began talking to this amusing eccentric old carpenter figure by 28

the simply ridiculous moniker of Furious Alec (aka Implacable Toto) who may or may not have been a former Nazi currently moonlighting as a classical history professor (published in one popular academic journal too, he exclaimed)—and so I enthusiastically asked him if he was carpentering anything right now to which he responded warmly yes yes yes he had just finished this fancy wooden birdhouse for his lonely enfeebled (he said it had a learning disability) imported cockatoo shaped like an inverted witch’s cauldron: tiny swinging door on top about the size of this cockatoo’s tail (I asked Toto how the cockatoo was supposed to get out to which the man only shrugged, sniggered, patted my shoulder cryptically). I asked him also about Howard Hamilton “Albert” Fish and he told me the man could have been unstoppable given the right opportunities, the right tools, the right—and then I asked him about the Aryan race—and then the next thing I remember I was getting up out of bed around ten o’clock in the morning with this unreal headache, sensitive eyes, unirrigated sinuses, etc.. I also remembered I’d set an appointment to meet with Nathaniel again at this new pseudo-Mediterranean café across his place (Masangkay Street down in Binondo, eleven o’clock sharp) to talk deeper about what else I did not understand but so badly badly needed to about better writing, creativity, disciplined work, etc., et al—and so hastily I snacked, brushed, showered, dressed, left, rode a sidecar to there (seventy pesos), arrived around quarter to eleven, spotting Nathaniel immediately sitting alone hunched strenuously over a (probably pitch black) cup of smoldering coffee, looking somehow agitated fiddling with his spoon.

Hello, I said.

Hello.

I got hold of a waiter, asked for some iced coffee, potato salad. San ka pala pumunta kagabi?

He sat staring at me, rather unsure. Sa bahay lang naman, bakit?

Ah wala wala, I nodded stupidly. Wala.

Nathaniel’s bagel arrived: chocolate. Well kamusta naman 'yung big project mo.

Anong project.

29

Kamusta pagsusulat.

I looked down, shrugged. Told him I haven’t been writing.

Ha (he leaned away) e'di ano yung pinagsasabi mo sa kin nung isang araw.

I slumped studying the scratched vermillion floor, flames painted across it tastelessly like some wild cartoon hell unamiably plastered (I was so sure) with many years’ grease.

Nathaniel shook his head, began this lecture about always— always—writing regardless of sentiment and then trying to never think about it too much (to avoid over-rationalization) and then to never ever lie (he shot me one sore remorseful glance I did not appreciate), etc., followed by (to round everything off) his trademark quote-unquote artistic and creative rules-of-thumb supported by the innumerable apparently hi-la-ri-ous semi-autobiographical anecdotes about writing, creativity, and what he instead liked to call his generative process (and upon this sensational final topic it seemed he could find no favorable end allowable). I remember noon as in sobrang magagalit pa ako if you started speaking to me habang nagsusulat ako, he sniggered, studied his smoking black coffee.

I nodded, (just barely) concealing contempt. Looking up at him in this aged dark charcoal suit (no doubt a loving homage to the likes of the great Borges’, Cortazar’s, and Sabato’s), speaking as he did eat of it this sad crumbling chocolate bagel hunched over like crazy-eyed Saturno devorando a su hijo, blowing every now and then preemptively at his fuming coffee, talking about some brand new spiritual purpose following his supposedly very official retirement from genuine creative writing following the recent September republication of his longtime brainchild (one heady police procedural novella about one rookie cop after this old veteran jewel thief) which was to act as a sort of dependable amiable mentor—and even father—figure to the myriad struggling young insecure unpublished writers roaming the mean artistically—and culturally!—malnourished streets of gritty grimy downtown Binondo, Manila, going on and on about great ambition, fear, introspection, and solitude—I realized we’d never actually spoken about anything else and I wondered (surely out of 30

some bitterness) if he had any life at all outside of his writing and this (honestly) overeager attempt at—somehow—encouraging me.

Pero, ano, what’s your story about ba?

I shifted uncomfortably. It’s about uh this writer din.

What about him.

Well, he’s trying to write something din.

Nathaniel stared at me.

Pero he’s medyo failing.

Paanong failing.

He’s gotten stuck.

Paanong stuck. Be more specific.

Like he really doesn’t know where the idea’s going na.

Ano pa. Details, details.

Well, I hesitated. He’s may pagka-isolated, may pagka-neurotic.

Scattered din. So result’s medyo makalimutin siya minsan.

Pero why can’t he write?

It’s medyo a mix e. He can’t take na what he’s putting out isn’t quite living up to 'yung standards niya pero, at the same time, napakatamad niya and sobra talagang di makapaghintay.

'Ayun lang ba?

Also he’s medyo worried na 'di totoo yung mga pinagsususulat niya. Na people will find out soon na di talaga totoo and, most likely, walang sense.

Nathaniel nodded.

I guess medyo hirap din kasi siyang mag-articulate ng ideas?

And he— What has he done about any of this though.

An awkward beat. I told him nothing.

Nathaniel drank from his coffee. Precisely. Baka you should consider that.

I nodded glumly. Okay.

What else, what else, Nathaniel cracked, rubbed his white knuckles.

I took a drink from my coffee. He’s scared a lot. And mabilis siyang mahiya.

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Nathaniel rolled his eyes.

Like, he can be so full of shame— Sorta comes with the territory, Nathaniel mumbled.

Which I think is contributing to 'yung nervousness niya.

Is yung pagkatakot niya?

Oo ata.

What is he mainly afraid of ba?

I sat mesmerized by the gentle tornado of my chilly chestnut brown coffee. Na he really doesn’t have anything to say na totoo. Na he’s really just puro words and nothing more and other people might start calling him out.

So what does he really want?

I could feel I was about to shiver. He wants a taste siguro of 'yung bigger thing na matagal na niyang pinipilit hanapin.

Which is?

Like, whatever it is behind yung great books natin.

So he thinks na there’s some huge central thing every great artist borrows from?

No no no—hindi naman, hindi naman. He’s not that naïve.

Ah then what do you mean.

I shrugged. I get the feeling na parang he really just wants to see better.

Nathaniel nodded and sat quietly a moment. Do you have any desired conclusions na ba? Para sa kanya.

I hesitated. I seem to feel I do, I said. When I imagine an ending for him there’s this weird feeling na parang relief pero not quite, not quite.

What do you mean.

Parang may pagka-ironic siguro yung dating.

O ayun pala e, you have the overt feelings down na pala.

Sana. Kasi— Nathaniel signaled for our bill.

There’s another element pa, I said timorously.

Our bill arrived. Ano? He’s been having a hard time sleeping.

32

Bakit?

Kasi he can’t stop thinking about uh yung what he has to write.

'E tapos?

Then tapos—minsan—hindi na siya masyadong sure kung he’s just imagining certain situations lang ba or if they’re actually happening. Like medyo nawawala na yung mga boundaries.

What do you mean?

Parang…parang he’s medyo floating in and out of reality tapos medyo nag-o-overlap na silang lahat. So there’s this element ng unreality versus fragile reality niya.

Nathaniel looked up from our bill. May difference ba dun sa dalawa?

Ah usually may pagka-wish fulfillment yung dating nung mga imaginary situation.

Nathaniel did not look up again. And what’s he writing about ulit?

Oh he’s writing about himself lang.

Nathaniel set our bill down. So you might be onto something, he slipped in a few uncreased blue and orange bills. Might be onto something.

I sat considering the window: the general cars, tricycles, jeeps, motorcycles, container trucks, all crisscrossing this smogbelabored city, and then remembered again almost instinctively but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that’s tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity as I tried desperately to calm my excited ego.

Gnomon, I meditated. Gnomon. To be wholed through brash onelegged passion.

Start figuring it out na later the moment you get home.

I looked up at him woodenly, nodded.

It’s all about starting lang talaga, he said. It really does get sobrang easier pagkatapos nun.

I looked around the café. There were not many people left. I still wasn’t sure what to do but did not want to go ahead and talk to Nathaniel any longer, the haughty ignoramus. I looked outside the window, glaring burning sun there lingering hatefully. Alright, I said quietly and then a little louder: Alright. Alright I’ll do it.

33

In the afternoon I set out to work: I began by reorganizing my desk. First evaluating its chaos of papers (scattered, folded, half-used, all-used, coffeestained, torn, cut, scratched, inkblotted, crumpled, damp) as well as pens (blue, black, red, fourcolored), pencils (Mongol No 2’s mostly), miscellany (one sharpener, eraser, roll of clear Scotch tape, stapler with staplewire, small waste book à la Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)—the papers I sorted according to type; the others I absentmindedly shoveled away.

Second I prepared my customary work materials: one black ballpoint pen (ideally non-bleeding, at hand, operational), one Mongol No. 2 lead pencil, one red sharpener (portable), one eraser, one available waste book (for catching any and all miscellaneous delinquent ideas), and then of course—and most definitely dry please—one great ready sheaf of empty white bond paper whereupon, already scribbled pusillanimously along the vast intimidating first page was the sharp word nothing. Nothing in this embarrassingly effeminate script followed by an aimless succession of clauses, violent doodles, parentheses. I looked into my mind, consciousness, subconsciousness, what-haveyou—and there still this great burning nothing—so I thought to look immediately outside from me: still nothing nothing nothing, just my now less untidy writing desk, incidental writing paraphernalia spread out there across it—otherwise nothing nothing nothing. I wanted to curl into my blundering self, return home to some ancient impossible uterus. So much indecipherable nothing in my impossibly vacuous head beyond this hideous thin veil of terrible clodhopping no-sense.

I looked even farther beyond this, noticed the tall condominium and apartment buildings, wandering people, dusty smokebelching vehicles, roadways, this one hoary constipated cluster of apocalyptic clouds almost a warning to shutter everything which I did of course rather nervously, scrambling about the place, clattering windows, before finally returning to my chilly seat before this window where— almost instantaneously, miraculously—I caught onto this one stray 34

beautiful word, this smooth stray magnificent word: Summer.

I wrote it down: Summer. Summer summer summer. Summer.

Summer afternoon. Summer afternoon in the. No no no. In the. All the. All the. Yes yes. All the summer I had been so. All the summer he had been so. Caught up. All the summer he had been so caught up. In this terrible miserable world. In this terrible miserable slump. Wordy.

This one lengthy miserable slump. Caught up in this long. I wrote it all down as quickly as I could, much enthused by the (surprisingly quite enabling) initial mysterious non sequitur. I twiddled unsteadily with my black pen, asked myself what now. Perhaps the man’s name.

Indeed a man’s name. I looked across my now-organized desk towards this old photograph of me and Nathaniel giggling in some blustery wheat field. I thought I looked really stupid there, ever awkward, mawkish, temperamental at thirteen. That he could not.

That he could not ever. That he could not compel himself to write.

I reconsidered the name. All the summer long Nathan had been.

No no no. All the summer Nathan had been so caught up in. Yes. All the summer Nathan…had been so caught up…in this one long miserable—I paused, the windows watching, sheer anticipation— slump that he could not compel himself to write (upon which I more restfully set down the pen).

But why was he in such a slump. He sat before his indifferent writing desk supposedly working (really just arbitrarily daydreaming for he was just so terrifically out of it he could feel his already quite delicate thoughts become only more vulnerable and disorderly— troublesome, he thought—with each passing minute). He could feel his mind recede, revealing this unimaginable mess. I picked up my enlivened pen again, sought to bring all of these fresh new loose ideas as firmly, quickly, and precisely to the crinkled page as was humanly possible. In rushed feverish fonts: He sat now lamenting old merciless Father Time, that one undefeatable deity he’d come to live in fumbling fear of having hardly faced a single clock or wristwatch since his goddamned eighteenth birthday some 347 days ago without something like a sharp wince, conspicuous cringe 35

coming across his face atop an ever-destabilizing frustration at the implausibly shallow limits of his unbelievably inadequate facilities.

I wrote in another sheet: He has not left home a whole week except to entertain an already quite alarming alcohol dependency, living in tremulous terror of this one new incorruptibly opaque literary conundrum he had, to start his year, so audaciously set upon himself: to write as authentically and precisely as was possible about anything, anyone, and anyplace (in this case: himself in his natural—or perhaps unnatural?—habitat). He’d gotten so far only up to this curt opening line: It was the 347th day and he had not written a word. He stared at this despondently now, sitting empty and uncertain, pen hovering over the mocking period, somehow ashamed by the innumerable insecurities so suddenly become flesh in this one brief inauspiciously lifeless sentence. He wondered what any of his idiot past selves must have done to cost him this this this— But then that pretentious, contemptuous, totally insensitive bastard of a cousin Nathaniel (whom he’d slowly learned to detest— admittedly—out of this inexplicably cynical, indiscriminate, really myopic will to petty jealousy) would call him up asking about his progress to which he’d always say furiously that he was having some trouble with the ending, smacking a fist across his work desk like some psychopath, upon which Nathaniel would always remind him to calm down and to take it easy on himself. Wag mo naman sobrang seryosohin. Writing is just supposed to be writing lang. It’s supposed to be fun. And then Nathan would mumble something rolling his eyes like, say, sure alright and then, mustering all of his patience, listen to Nathaniel’s further lecture about whatever else came to mind really, towards the end of which, Nathan would always sternly say alright and then goodbye and then hang up, come muttering back to his neat conceited writing desk, swearing never to do whatever it was he had just been told to do by the older and better-experienced Nathaniel regardless of his lecture’s efficacy (if anything, just to preserve his little ever-dwindling ego), begin to seriously again parse through the innumerable nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc., unwilling to yield to his thought.

Here I had to pause a moment to relax my severely stiffening 36

hand, listened to the steady smash of raindrops across loud rattling windows. Soberly continued: He had grown tired of these tedious routines: 0425 rise, 0430 write, 0730 breakfast, 0800 bathe, 0830 read, 1100 ready lunch, 1200 lunch, and so on until 2130 bedtime—these once-critical routines now only felt to him tauntingly inconsequential. He felt helpless serving them and they in return only left him feeling totally exhausted. He thought crossly: Ernest Hemingway was a liar and so was William Faulkner—Virginia Woolf! All of them liars, all of them.

These routines did nothing but destroy a person, diminish him and what little material he preserved lovingly in his bumbling head. And so he blamed all of them for his own terrific misfortunes: his lack of productivity, creativity, confidence, his mind’s general impossibility, his overall caustic nihilism, vanity, cynicism, egotism, etc., et al. And then suddenly, unimaginably (as mine did), some stray confessional words began trickling from his as-of-yet so taciturn pen: It had gotten so bad at times, he wrote, that he often found himself doing nothing at all, just imagining he was writing instead of actually writing, leant forward there athletically like some undernourished impuissant Hemingway or lesser skinnier Mishima. He felt a nervous shiver run up and down his spine remembering the one time he’d imagined himself making breakfast at his desk. It was the sheer reality of it that scared him: the bread (toasted brown), the eggs (sunny-side-up), the jam, pancakes, syrup, and coffee. He held a silver knife and fork.

What he figured he should really be fearing was the possibility of this sub-reality becoming realer than the reality: his mind becoming so completely lost, totally flashwhite, distorted by hot curdling desires, digressions, mutilations, permutations, he’d’ve forgotten then how to properly construct a good sentence or phrase.

(I paused here again. My hand now trembling.)

The kid felt he genuinely knew nothing. He knew only to repeat bettersaid things, knew only to become generally aware of them as they passed in and out of his gaze, to attack any business with this messy marauding drive and not necessarily with his intellect. He felt he could barely read into anything, could barely read into what he 37

himself was wondering—really could barely read anything at all—as a result often making himself feel like he was one beating vacuum, and always terribly terribly uncertain, generally unsatisfied, often feeling he was missing out on something greater or better, and also very forgetful. Gnomon, he thought. Gnomon. He looked down at his feminine cursive, wondered if it was indeed really him writing whatever it was he was writing or just somebody else masquerading as himself, because often he did feel like a confidenceman dancing around suspicious circles, always grimacing archly, pulling everybody’s legs, but never ever once cutting to the chase—something Nathaniel always recommended him to strive for—and indeed it was almost physically tangible, this—an apparent division between the two polar conditions: the latter much like prolonged unanesthetized testicular amputation, however way easier to achieve; the former so like swimming through a thousand layers of effervescent vanilla— but rather difficult to maintain. What he noticed was necessary for the former state was quickness: one needed to outrun the brain, the ever-judgmental brain. The minute the fingers slowed was also the minute the brain took over—not necessarily a good thing. The brain then tricks the body into apprehension in the face of trials boundless.

What the body needed was to unthink. He smiled at all this nonsense he was writing. Thought he saw a white whale. He knew there was some truth in this though. Writing quick made him feel much more like a child: haphazard in his wordproduction, wordselection, without a care for source so long as their thoughtsprings felt genuine or beautiful. A child always cuts to the chase, he thought.

He rubbed his eyes now. Gnomon: he wondered where he’d heard that. He felt unbelievably tired (as did I), started noticing a few words redundant, repeating, grammatical inaccuracies—he felt there was this one time he felt he was writing really well and all his invincible words were like some insurmountable landslide become apoplectic desert plague locusts. He wondered if that was how it was supposed to feel. He wondered if that was how Ahab must have felt the few times he thought he had a spitting chance— I set down my sweaty pen, began stretching my legs.

To conclude he related two dreams he was quite convinced were 38

thematically-interrelated (he wrote these words down on a separate sheet): The first he imagined himself wandering along this beautiful white sand beach, his feet blanketed in lowtide, the sea flickering slow as though near death, and then, silhouetted by deep early gloaming, he noticed this one long bellshaped figure bobbing up-and-downand-up-and-down in the spotty distance covered in what seemed to me a heavy dark velveteen blanket, the parts left uncovered by the impervious matte there glimmering vigorously. I presumed the material to be of either revived copper or bronze. I felt somewhere deep deep deep inside that I had to retrieve it. Something almost religious, spiritual about it. And then I woke up.

The second I scrawled hurriedly below this.

I rested a moment, considered what I’d written, wondered if I’d forgotten anything, left anything unfixed (because really I still very often did so). I read through all of it, felt this beatific relief I believed akin to postcoital lethargy or seraphic parturition, and could not be removed from my writing desk, could not even be kindly asked to reorganize it for next day’s use because I was so happy I felt amalgamated, perhaps, married to it. The last I remember I was caressing my prose with my forehead, allowable with all its meanderings, unevenness, ridiculousness, totally desirable to me and this very moment. I could hear some distant lowtide again and again (perhaps the tender flirting waves of sleep) and then I tried to remember what the bright bellshaped figure looked like and then I could hear this cosmic aum across the chasmic waters before finally dissolving into dreams.

Groggy I rose out from my chair, remembered I had this other party to go to, speculated Nathaniel would be present also because I was quite sure most of his cognoscenti camerados would—a prediction later vindicated the moment I stepped into the boisterous house hearing: the dhvaja represents the Buddha’s victory over all the four 39

maras…ang tanong is kung sure ka ba na totoo yang mga pinagsusulat mo…I mean talaga ba?…does it ring true?…it just sounds a lot like you’re hysterical…life is rough, uneven, circular…the better version, I think, is seldom the original one…now did I leave anything out?—I sat down this pristine leatherbound couch, Nathaniel later joining me with an iced whiskey cola, visibly intoxicated, wobbling like some overweight clown, asking me what time it was (eleven-thirty-five, I said) and then of course where exactly we were at (why do you keep asking me that ba, tinanong mo na rin to sa 'kin kagabi—kasi I don’t know anymore ha-ha-ha—pupunta ka sa bahay ng iba tapos di mo pala kilala—he kept silent, just swayed there in his seat). He downed his low rust-brown drink, began musing about his glory days (glory days at twenty-two—I thought: what a huge tragedy—somebody call Melpomene) and then about how he was so very very sorry he could sometimes be so totally overbearing, arrogant, petty, pretentious lalo na kapag dumating sayo, Nat, kasi, he said, I sometimes made him feel sobrang insecure daw, like I was already catching up to him by leaps and bounds na raw, he just didn’t know talaga how to deal with 'yung bagong stressor na 'yun other than to stamp it down (nip it in the bud so to speak) ASAP. I told him it was okay lang. He said he was also very sorry our conversations were only getting more and more senseless and difficult and that he was actually having a harder time communicating with me ngayon compared sa noon because really he didn’t know what to say to me anymore—and his shameful petty agenda pa raw on top—of course, he couldn’t hold me accountable for that. I said nothing. He took one long final suck at his whiskey cola then turned to ask me how I was doing writing. I coughed, said I wasn’t doing any better, but had gotten a lot of work done since he’d just told me to bull ahead and just do it—I was starting to warm up din to the fact na this was material coming from within me (it used to be kasi na I couldn’t write anything unless the words came out classically perfect kaagad, so it was usually me either writing inauthentically to compensate or just minimally writing talaga—he sat forward, nodding pensively). I told him about how I thought it felt like a timewarp à la 2001: a space odyssey whenever I felt like I was 40

writing something nearer to the truth. I get sobrang crushed in its staunch bid to be discovered, I gestured (he held his limp hands across his face), and now badly wanted more of that confession, more of that truth revealed or—at least—hazily illuminated, intimated. Also wanted to define this self of mine better because really there was still so much vain risible ambiguity in me and I didn’t think that that was a good thing at all. Then he asked me if I was still reading anything (the book) to which I answered yes of course, my eyebrows then knitted abstractly, feeling for, handing him the dense book I could barely remember bringing to this party. He looked over it casually, leafed through to its penultimate pages and, grinning nostalgically, read: Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf (I started to tell him about this one weird dream I had had just the other night that seemed to confirm another weird dream I had had just a couple weeks ago); a sullen white surf (I told him about how there was this one gigantic pillar thing, like the ones na nasa Parthenon, Washington, and I was being chased around it) beat against its steep sides (by this ugly old man with this humongous head in a moth-eaten toga); then all collapsed (and he kept on screaming WALA AKONG ALAM WALA AKONG ALAM WALA AKONG ALAM and I kept running away from him—really we were just going circles), and the great shroud of the sea (it was only later—when I noticed na he was just trying to imitate my speed lang pala—na I realized it could have been na I wasn’t being chased at all pala; could have been na I was the one chasing him pa nga) rolled on as it (and I felt this grabeng relief) rolled five (and, really, I think, what I’d really like ngayon) thousand years ago (is yung ganoong relief)—he handed the weathering book back to me and leaned back. I had never before seen him drunk. Doesn’t that remind you at all of 'yung mga crazy animal dreams you were having nung bata ka pa. Which ones? I flinched. Yung mga kinekwento mo pa sa kin. The ones about yung mga giant animals chasing after you tapos hindi ka pa magiging safe hangga’t sa nakarating ka na finally sa kwarto mo. I sat quietly a moment, observed him there beginning to fade away bit-by-bit, thought him in this pale light painfully pitiful, washed-up—almost like an orphaned infant. In due time he 41

began easily to doze off-and-on and so I stole the whiskey glass from him (hey! he called, though he would hardly try to wrest it back— only fall down again listlessly into the couch, almost immediately falling asleep), took it back to the kitchensink for washing where I could see him and all the raucous party from where I was. I fondly observed him laid out there, decided I should be bringing us home shortly. I dropped the stout slippery glass, shattering it, then felt all this lukewarm sweat washing gingerly across my face, and then the roisterous people cheering at our dear invisible host, Mr. The Same Thing Everyday & Never Ever Tired of It. (Uneasy) I thought again: gnomon, wholing. Next thing I remember I was waking up and there this brilliant colossal sky and before me across my untidy desk this broad tepid puddle of my own copious spittle fusing at once brashly like the Caspian Sea.

42

kenneth yu

Cherry Clubbing* hey. hey!

Francis? You’re... Frank, right?

It’s me, Richard. Dicky! We met in Bangkok some years back. We joined that private beach tour group to Thailand together.

Smooth sand, clear water, blue skies? Tropical sunshine to die for? Ring anything? No? Heh. Can’t blame you for pretending. We’ve got to be careful nowadays, but there’s no need to be coy with me.

I know you.

You really don’t remember? Heh, sure. Okay, I’ll play.

I was the one who lost his balance and fell off the boat when our group went off to chase dolphins. You had to come back and get me, remember? We lost the dolphins after that. I probably scared them away. Everybody got pissed at me.

Yeah! Yeah, me! That’s right! I’m Dicky, Frank! Good to see you!

Geez, you weren’t shitting! You really didn’t remember me! So how’ve you been, you dumb hairy fuck?

Me? I’m fine. A little bit more flesh around the pate, a bit more of a paunch, but never been better. I’m still up to my old tricks. Same ol’, same ol’. Ah hee hee. And you? Same too, huh? Busy as ever, like bees, that’s us. Ah hee hee.

Hey, man, you got time? I’m not doing anything right now, just hanging around, looking. You, same? People like us, we’re always looking. Let’s park our asses somewhere and catch up, what do you say? Guys with our “shared interests” don’t get to jaw often, so this is a special occasion!

Hmm... this is a pretty big mall. Open-air, too. Smells funky without air-conditioning, but that’s the way it is here. You know another thing about the Philippines? Their beer is excellent. San *Inilathala sa “Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing” (2013)

43

Miguel, they call it. Saint Michael, in English. Heavenly when chilled in ice. Let’s get a couple of brews, my treat.

Come on, let’s try that place. It looks cheap, good and clean. So does the waitress. They don’t hire our “types” here, but she still looks like she hasn’t developed yet. Perfect for the both of us. Ah hee hee.

But naah. We’re just “reading the menu”, 'kay? Here, grab that table. We’re not “ordering”. I want to make that crystal. Let’s just say that we shouldn’t shit in this backyard. Here, as with most places, it’s either “to go” or forget it. S’funny, for some reason they say “take out” instead of “to go” in this country. Anyway, we shouldn’t send out any smoke, if you know what I mean. I’ll tell you why later. Special reason.

Trust me, it’ll be worth your while.

That got your full attention, didn’t it? Ah hee hee. I knew it would.

Anyway, later.

Two San Miguels, chickie. No, not the light stuff, the ones in the brown bottles. Yeah, the Pale Pilsens. And hey, cutie, you sure you’re over? Aww, don’t give me that look. I’m sure you’re fine. Just sayin’, that’s all. You’re cute, you know. You’re fresh. That’s a compliment, chickie.

See, she’s smiling! It’s in them, Frank. It’s in them, I tell you, like it’s in us. I don’t know why only we can see it and the rest of the world can’t.

Aww...I’m sure she understands English, c’mon! Maybe she doesn’t get everything, but this is the Philippines, baby! They speak English well enough. Funny-sounding, but fine. They love Hollywood here!

To them, anyone from where we come from is a fucking movie star!

Even with our “shared interests” I didn’t expect to bump into you.

What’re you doing here? Hell, I mean I know what you’re here for, same thing as I am, but a classy someone like you runs in different circles than I do. If not for that Thailand tour, I doubt we’d have ever met. What’re you technically here for? Trade convention, huh? Buying the native handicrafts? Cool. No? Boring? Hey, sorry man. Then you’re lucky you got away for some time off.

Alone? Sucks. Your company’s running on the cheap, sending their best man halfway around the globe without help. But that’s 44

just the way we like it, eh? Ah hee hee. And you’re not alone anymore.

You’ve got me! Ah hee hee!

Thanks, chickie! Here’s the cash, with a little something extra for you. Keep the change. Remember me kindly when I come back. And I will be back. For you. I promise.

See? See? She’s still smiling. Love her dimples. Drink up, pal.

Good, eh?

Don’t you just love the pointiness of their ears? Makes their eyes bigger, doll-like. So sweet, especially when they’re at just that right height. They’re perfect that way. That’s how you started out, I’ll bet.

That’s how I did. Hell, that’s how we all did. We started with one of them pointy-ears, then there was no turning back, and it was on to greater things. Better things.

It’s fate, Frank. Fate. There’s a reason we met today, here of all places. You’re looking, I know. ‘Coz that’s the way it is. Those like us, we’re always looking.

What happened to who? Scarface? Oh, you mean Ronald! You remember him? Hey! Why’d you remember Ron but not me? Oh, his scar. That’s right, he had that scar down his cheek, that’s why the nickname. Of course, stupid me. Evil-looking cut, made him look like a crook, but he was the complete opposite. As big and as strong as a bull, but what a great guy. The best. He was a good friend.

Yeah, “was.” Got caught, he did. Sad. Shit happens, even to the best of us. How’d it happen? Long story, but we’ve got time. You ready for a long listen?

Ron and I had been traveling together for years, even before Thailand. They finally got him about two years ago when we were in Cambodia. And of all things, he got caught with some pointyears. Yeah, just the pointy-ears, same as that waitress, nothing more, but enough to bring everything down on his head. What a way to go. He was with several of those elves, in fact. It was his own damn fault, really. I like to say it was bad luck, but Ron, he was the reckless type. He always was. Once the mood hits him he forgets to be careful and just goes for it. Shoot from the hips, full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes. He even forgets to lock the door sometimes. It’s not good 45

to be that way. It’s never good. You always got to keep some kind of control going until you’re sure you’re safe and alone.

Scarface... Ron... was living on borrowed time. The only reason he lasted as long as he did was because of me. I was the one watching his back, making sure we did things safely, that we didn’t rush. It was his fault, I know that, but I sometimes blame myself for what happened.

What if I had been there that night to watch his back as always, instead of sick in bed with the flu? He’d be here with us now, that’s how it would’ve played out. But I couldn’t lift myself out of bed back then, and the dumbass couldn’t keep himself inside. That jerk-off followed his hormones and he just had to go and do it without checking that all was clear. I warned him to play it safe, to make sure that everything was clean. I knew he wouldn’t listen though, and there was nothing I could do. “Yeah, sure,” he said, then he smiled at me, closed the door to our room and left me alone with my virus. Those were the last words I ever heard him say.

The next time I saw him it was on TV. Bad, real bad. They showed the full raid on primetime news. A raid! Yeah, I can smell your fear right now. I can see you sweating. A fucking raid. There must’ve been a dozen warning signs but Ron walked right into it blind.

I still remember exactly how I felt when I found out. It was a few hours after Ron left. My fever had gone down and I was thinking of going out after him. I switched on the TV for some noise—it was too quiet for comfort—and the news came through. I froze and nearly puked when I heard the reporter say, “We are broadcasting a live raid here from Svay Pak, Phnom Penh.” Ron was headed there.

He had been eyeing a group of pointy-ears the night before, fresh from the provinces.

It’s our worst nightmare. I watched it unfold right there on the TV, and I couldn’t wake up because it was all real. I remember how the screen shook as the cameraman followed the policemen up the narrow wooden stairs to the “safe-rooms” behind the bar and restaurant. I remember the heavy pounding of their running feet, shit to them. They banged on the door twice then kicked it open.

Ron got caught red-handed in the full glare of the lights. His eyes 46

were large and white when he turned to face the camera. I can still see the shocked expression on his face. His scar stood out like a black shadow, and with his long hair plastered to his head with sweat and blood he looked like some kind of pirate. He was holding his favorite riding crop, the brown one—you remember it from Thailand, don’t you? Yeah, that one—he was holding his crop up in mid-stroke, about to bring it down again. He was licking blood off his other hand at the same time.

Everything stopped. I swear, no one moved and everything became quiet, like hitting the pause button except I could still hear the whimpers and the moans in the background. Then someone offcam swore like a sailor and it was like a signal to act. The camera shook again, followed by more cursing, shouting, and crying. The screen blurred. I could hear Ron’s screams through it all. I heard breaking glass, falling furniture, and whacking. A lot of whacking.

When the TV cleared, Ron was crouching on the floor. His hands were cuffed behind his back. Someone pulled his head by his hair and showed his face to the camera. One eye was half-closed, puffed, and it looked like his mouth and his ears were bleeding. A policeman spat in his face, and another kicked him and he fell and hit his head with a sick thud. “Let him know what it feels like to be on the other end of the stick,” someone said.

They panned to show the elves on the bed. There were five of them, two boys, three girls, naked as a brand new sunrise and fucking beautiful. Clearly our “types”, all of them. Man, if Ron was reckless he made up for it with his energy. Terrific work. He’s the only one I knew who could do five at a time in one go, and then be ready for five more not an hour later. And he knew how to work them, work them hard and work them well. Ron did a great job. They were gorgeous.

Of course the damn cameraman played it up for all it was worth.

Sensationalism rates, that’s the law of media in any country. He showed close-ups of their bare backs and chests, their tight butts, their legs, their faces. I loved the way they looked into the camera, the lights glowing in their wide eyes. The tear streaks on their faces were precious, and their sniffling and whimpers turned me on, in 47

spite of everything. Ron, he raised these lovely, long, criss-crossing welts all over their hard, tight, little bodies. So red with blood, so angry. I ran my hands over the TV screen and I could almost feel the bumps. Mmm. This is how I think the story went down: our dumb friend leaves me and he forgets everything except for the fun he’s going to have. He heads straight for Svay Pak, probably pays the cabbie double to run the red lights and get him there quick. He has the cab stop right in front of the bar and he gets down. He doesn’t tell the driver to stop some blocks away so he can walk and check the area out like we’ve always done. Any new cars around? Anybody who may be watching the place? Hiding in the shadows? Nope. He just walks in all excited and big and goes directly to the boss and asks in a voice as loud as he is tall for the elves he met the night before. The bosses, they never know anything either. It’s all money-money-money to them. They’re more reckless than Ron. If I was a boss... well, later. So Ron, he’s told to go out back to one of the rooms and to wait there, and he does. Then the boss brings in the elves. None of them know that it’s all a set-up.

The news crew and the police have been waiting, probably saw the whole thing from their unmarked cars parked outside. Or maybe it’s their man inside who sees Ron walk in the bar, sees him talk to the boss, sees him go out back. Then he sends a signal—tips his hat or something while sitting by the window—and the cops and the crew move in and it’s all over.

When Ron left me that night, I prayed hard that nothing would go wrong. The percentages were on our side, after all. What are the stats? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, nothing happens right?

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred you’re left alone and you get to do what you want as long as you’ve got the cash. That’s my personal rule number two: always have enough cash, because if you’ve got enough you not only get to do what you want, but if something goes wrong, you can always pay your way out with no questions asked. No problemo. But there’s no way you can pay your way out of a live TV camera in your face. Not enough cash in the world for that.

What’s my number one rule? Well, it’s two rules in one, my friend.

48

It’s that important. Always, always play it safe, and always leave no trace. Better that than sorry. Keep my rules to heart, you hear? I’d hate to see you go down like Ron. The newscaster ended her report by calling us criminals and monsters that needed to be hunted down and brought to justice.

Tight-assed bitch. She just didn’t get it early enough, otherwise she’d loosen up and know what it’s all about. She’d love it the way we do.

You and I know better. There are more of us out there everyday, and I’m sure that one day we can all come out and not have to worry anymore.

And it’s not like we’re hurting anyone, right? I mean, these elves and those like them, they live forever! They just go on and on and we, we’re old and our years are numbered, but they’ll still be around.

Nothing hurts them, or if it does, they’ve got years and years and years to get over it. We don’t. Their whole lives are ahead of them, and they love it. It’s in them, and we... we need this. It’s in us as much as it’s in them.

I beat it out of there faster than a bolt of lightning, flu or no flu.

Spent the night at the airport shivering in a jacket. Took the first available flight out to somewhere, I can’t even remember where. I played it safe. I couldn’t risk Ron not ratting me out, not with what I knew the police had in store for him. Poor guy.

Aww, shit, Frank. All this reliving is painful. I miss Ron. He was great to be with. Why’d he have to go and be all stupid?

Remember what he did in Thailand? On the beach that night when the fishermen brought in their fresh catch of mermaids and merlads for us? Remember what he did? Yeah, you do. Hahaha! I’m glad you remember. I’m glad I’ve got someone to share that memory with.

That idiot really couldn’t control himself. Heh. Careful there. You’re snorting beer through your nose. Heh. The night was so clear, the moonlight and starlight were so bright on the water when the fishermen came, do you remember? What time was it? Midnight? No? You’re right, that’s too early. Maybe two or three in the morning. I can still see their boat gliding through the waves. I can still hear the crunch when it hit the sand and they pulled 49

it up onto the beach.

The lead fisherman came to me first. The old guy reached into the boat and he lifted out a bundle wrapped in wet canvas. The bundle was wriggling when he brought it to me. The fisherman grinned as he pulled the canvas aside and revealed the most delightful sight. My first mermaid, you know, my very first. She looked up at my face and I could see the stars reflected in her eyes. Her hair was stringy and long and I pulled it aside so I could see her small, precious breasts.

Exquisite, my friend.

You got a merlad, you say? Golden scales on the tail? Whoah! You lucky bastard! Well, we were all lucky, weren’t we? That tour was expensive but worth every cent.

Ron, that bastard, hahaha, he couldn’t wait for his catch to be brought to him. He ran up to the boat, reached in and lifted two bundles up all by himself. Carried them under each arm, walked to the nearest stretc.h of open sand, threw them down, pulled off the canvases and went at them with his crop, his fists, his elbows, his knees, and his teeth like there was no tomorrow. The sounds they made were intoxicating.

That broke the spell for all of us, didn’t it? I brought my mermaid to the space beside Ron, pulled off my belt, and began to do my thing.

The rest of you were all over the boat like sharks in a frenzy. Massive, man, massive. Our cries and theirs were crazy wonderful, all around us, all over the beach. Shit. Loved the way they mixed with the sound of the surf. I got off real good, more than thrice, I think. Best group action I’ve ever had, hands down. Haven’t experienced anything like it since. Gawd, we all needed to help each other back to the huts before the break of dawn. I couldn’t walk straight. My body was that sore. Ron had that goofy smile on his face too. What? Me too? No kidding? Hahaha! Then you too, you sonofabitch!

Hahaha! Oh my, good times, those were. Great times. We need more of those. Oh my. Oh my my my my. Sometimes it’s really worth it to be alive.

Hey, hey, which brings me to this. I’m about done with my beer.

Are you? Good, hey, I think it’s time I share with you my little secret.

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Bend over closer, will you?

Heh. I’m a boss now. Yeah, well, one of them. I have me some partners. Been here in the Philippines for a bit more than a year, and my job is to bring people like you, who don’t have a clue in this country, to where you want to be.

We’ve got everything. Elves, mermaids, nymphs, satyrs, dryads, you name your type we have them. They have different names for them here, but it’s all the same, it’s all good, and I can do the translating for you. You want to go wing-pluck some sprites and fairies as a teaser? I can show you where. You want a dwarf, or a satyr or two, either with full beards or shaved smooth, just let me know.

Since we’re old friends, you get yours at a special rate, the wholesale rate. I guarantee you it’s all safe and hidden. You know how I work.

The rules, man, the rules. You won’t have to worry.

I’ve sampled all the merchandise, ah hee hee, one of the perks of being a boss, ah hee hee, and they’re wonderful here in this country.

The local varieties of the elves and nymphs and what have you, man, they’re great! And there are a lot of them. There’s a different taste to them, too. Delicious! Exotic! This place is a goldmine, a fucking paradise, I tell you.

Come here, get closer.

It’s so wonderful here, we were able to find something extra special.

Angels.

Yeah, you heard me right. Ah hee hee. Our stars. The demand for them is high. We got lucky, found them, and caught them. Pretty easy.

You take anyone or anything by surprise and it’s all easy. You want seraphim? We’ve got them. You should see, no, feel, what they can do with their wings. It’s nothing like you’ve ever felt before, I promise you. And their blood, flows like liquid light and tastes like rainbows.

You know what? We have cherubim too. No kidding. Yeah, I know.

Hard to believe, eh? Ah hee hee. We’ve got them. We’re the first in this part of the world to have them. I tried one of them cherries myself. A nice, plump, rosy-cheeked one. Beautiful dark-brown curls. Ah hee hee. Oh, wow. Heaven. You should try one. Highly recommended.

Elves and mermaids sound like old car engines coughing exhaust 51

compared to an angel when it sings. If we could set up some mass action like we did in Thailand, I’ll bet we could experience an entire choir. It’s the heavenly host treatment, baby!

Ah hee hee. I hope you’re feeling strong. These angels, they may have smaller bodies and slighter builds, but they’re twice what any elf or dwarf is made of. Takes a lot just to hold them down, and a lot more to get them to sing. I doubt if even Ron could take more than two of them at a time. His riding crop would be useless. You need something heavier and harder, but the effort’s worth it, believe you me. Me? I took an aluminum baseball bat to mine. Needed two hands too, like a caveman with his club. Some of my customers prefer crowbars. But I think a stiff plank of wood would be fine, as long as the wood is the tough kind and you’ve got strong enough arms. Yeah, wood is good if you want to, you know, savor it. To make it last longer. If you’ve got the endurance, go with wood! Ah hee hee hee! Ah hee hee hee!

So, you want to give it a try? I can take you to our place right now.

Like I said, wholesale price for you, pal. You high-rolling, jet-setting executives have got all the cash, anyway. What do you say?

Great! Let’s finish up. Fate, Frank. It’s fate. We were meant to meet here today. Bet you had no clue where to go before you met me.

Bet you were just taking your chances.

Ahh, that San Miguel beer is sweet, as sweet as cherry blood.

Almost. Ah hee hee hee!

Hey, chickie! Thanks for the beer! Remember me, and remember what I said. I keep my promises. I’ll be back for you.

Smiling. They’re always smiling. Damn gorgeous. I swear I’ll never get tired of them.

Come on! Let’s go get you some cherry!

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janelle paris

It could be worse The Filipino Diaspora, our collective of modern-day heroes, swallowed my father. He has worked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for 22 years. His company works for Saudi royals; he shows us pictures of the King’s palace, the theatre inside he helped set up. On Fridays, he plays tennis. I know him only in the summer of each year. *** My siblings have two fathers—my father and my uncle. The latter would bathe us, put baby powder on us after, dress us up for bed.

Because he was home. To me, he could only be my uncle. I had only one father, and it was the father who toiled abroad and came back smelling nice, with gifts. *** I did not realize until high school that fathers were not all required to work abroad to be good fathers. To be good. My best friend in grade school also had a father who worked overseas. So do many other children. Sometimes it is their mothers who are away. Over dinner, my grandmother and mother would talk about uncles finally applying for visas to work somewhere abroad. How proud they were, and how sad. How necessary it was. *** About 11 per cent of the Filipino population is abroad. I tell my nonFilipino friends this: that surely there’s a Filipino community in any capital city. I read in the news that a Filipino restaurant had just opened in Armenia. Maybe you wonder where Armenia is, too. It is 53

just fact that there are Filipinos in Syria, in Yemen, in a cramped attic with no heating in the winter in a posh district of Paris. You visit the Vatican and Filipinos walk right up to you, ready to offer their best bargains of Vatican paraphernalia. They own restaurants, clean up after foreign masters, install entertainment systems in the palace of a tyrant; they are chefs, they are domestic helpers, they are engineers.

Some spent more than a decade in Canada before moving to the United Kingdom. The OFW is a trope and we know the narrative. *** One time my uncle showed us pictures of his daughter who lived a world away. She looked so much like him. His camera roll also had pictures from porn that he watched. Woman on woman. Man on woman. Woman on man. A screenshot of what looked like flaps of skin folding into each other. There was hair. I had never seen mine before, only touched it. Soft and hairless. *** A report on OFWs goes, OFW children grieve, worry and fantasize about their parents coming home. In time, they become numb to the absence: they become like orphans. *** Before my father left for Saudi Arabia, he lived in a house by a dirty creek with his widowed mother, six of his eight siblings, and the families that extended from them. When he was studying to be an engineer, he would also be a jeepney driver on weekends. I know all this through context clues and overheard conversations. These are things children are not privy to. My father started working abroad in 1995. He had not yet met my mother then. He worked there for two years and came home after his older sister killed herself.

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*** About 10 million Filipinos are recorded to live or work overseas each year for their families. Among these millions the undocumented.

Among them the abused. In the Middle East, many are seen and treated as slaves. You hear their stories: a domestic helper jumping from her window to escape an abusive employer, another being murdered, chopped up, and stored in a freezer for getting orders wrong. They are so often victims. *** Must I talk about the Diaspora when I mean to talk about something else? *** The Filipino Diaspora also swallowed my uncles. My mother’s brother and other uncles too. Uncles who would drive the car for your mother because she could not drive farther than the next town. Uncles who would come over the house and sit next to you and touch you in a way you didn’t want to be touched but did not know how to react to. You had no language for it then. Was I 14 was he 37 were we not related by blood. Was such a touch not a touch only you gave yourself on that patch of skin where hair had just begun to bloom. When he said goodbye I cried. He touched my arm and left for the Diaspora. *** The year I lived in another country, I remembered being touched again. On that week I had sleep paralysis every night and decided to tell a friend. She told me I’m sorry that happened to you and I decided this would be my secret. Until another week I had stomach pains from reading too many stories of women coming forward about abuse and decided to tell another friend. I do not remember what she told me 55

then. But I think I remembered what I was wearing, where the table was and the hand and the fingers and the lizard in the ceiling and, after the act, my mother calling out for dinner. *** How are these connected? I am making sense of it myself. I do not know how to tell this story, but I know it is mine. I am a trope too, but nevertheless. *** I have seen videos of women filming men who decide to stroke their dicks in buses. I have seen lengthy posts online about women whose breasts get fondled in jeepneys. I always use the women’s wagon when I take the train to get around the city. I rarely take the bus anymore. *** At work, we are asked to pitch stories that tackle gender. I suggest, What about sexual harassment and belated trauma and a co-worker talks over me, says, Yeah, my friend was sexually harassed and the amount of support she has received is overwhelming, we could find more case studies and I blank out and do not speak until our meeting is done. *** Memory is if I may overstate cruel because you know you did no wrong yet you feel disgust whenever that part of your body twitches from a seven-year old touch and when the slight shiver in a place you did not think could shiver makes your hairs go up it begins again that self-blame that is not quite self-blame that disgust that is definitely disgust but with yourself and why are you disgusted with yourself you’ve asked so many times are uncles bad and fathers good and do all uncles and fathers do this and you see the news and listen to other 56

stories and think me too me too me too and realize that it could always be worse. That your trauma is not real trauma, it is insignificant in the hierarchy of pain. Nevertheless— *** My mother’s brother has a daughter my age. I am older by a month.

She is close to my sister; they go out on weekends and know the same people and watch the same TV shows. I imagine if my father had done what hers had done. I shrug it off. If I had been born later, would I have been spared. I wonder who makes the rules. *** I wish I had the vocabulary for each act of inappropriateness. A malicious touch. I wish I did not remember. *** Perhaps too cruel: It wasn't just him in the same way it wasn't just me.

It was because I was sick of men like him. Because I'd seen them all, each as unoriginal in their selfishness as the next. * *** He does not make me feel sick. I often picture a world in which none of this had happened. What a tiny world that would be. I will look forward to my uncle greeting me on my birthday, during Christmas, the New Year’s. He will offer me his home in London when I am in Europe and he will show me around and I will have a good time. I will mention his name. And we will talk when his daughter puts him on video as he calls the whole family. I wish never to see him again. I know he is a good father— nevertheless. *From Eggshell Skull by Bri Lee

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58

a few days after I turn fifteen I am squeezing oranges as if there is something to expect from this sour liquid crushed flesh—my mother tells me, see, rip it from here. I open one with my nails now dyed yellow and pluck out a bright juicy kidney I open my mouth, swallow even a seed. I am afraid I still believe that in my stomach there will be a tree while I am swishing the juice with my fingers all the seeds look like eggs

the day I got my period I smelled like oranges

carissa natalia baconguis

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and eyeballs. forming mush in the colander I imagine a tree growing out of me and suddenly, an opening something dripping.

I am fifteen and before this I am more of a child than I am now almost too late to grow a tree. body too young to know what it is like to be thankful and regretful. here, you take what it bears and squish. keep pushing lest your reluctance is rejection.

I am afraid of the tree, or what my body is hiding. or I fear that the future is sweet and sour, or what tenderness is lost.

gabrielle leung

Monsoon Watchers in the tender days of summer, as May crawls to a close, something changes in the wind. Some years, it happens slowly, as the winds flip back and forth in a struggle for dominance. This year, it happened overnight. The sun blistered and the sky was bleached the shade of laundry bluing and all the nation’s sidewalks droned with the same makeshift breeze from lazy hands and just as the day edged into tedium, all at once before the feverish hours were even memory, all at once before anything could be done about it, the season turns monsoon.

Habagat, we call it, which means a time for rain.

Before it comes to the Philippines, the winds blow sluggish loops over in every which direction, ambivalent as to where to go, or whether to go anywhere at all. They sweep up and down the mountainside, or else from sea to coast and back again, unhurried in their wander, unremarkable in their disarray. The habagat begins elsewhere, of course, as the weather always seems to; what we receive only ever the aftermath as such. Thousands of kilometers away, in the sky above the Indian Ocean, an air current begins to form, winds pressing from the cool waters of the sea towards the Himalayas across the searing continent. Over the course of a few weeks—if barely even one planting season—the monsoon crosses magnitudes.

This whole place is monsoon-land: the mountains of Nepal to the jungles of Vietnam to the very edge of this map as the system curves its way north into Japan. The monsoon comes to us at different times, and we have different names for it, but there is something here the same. A kind of identity, we are people of these seasons, who count the years with the changing of the winds. Who wait to see what news it brings to us, what foreign shadows on the winds we soon make ours.

The atmosphere knows no borders, only motion and the endless there of its goings.

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From ocean to ocean, island to island, the monsoon coaxes local wind patterns into gradual agreement, a prevailing breeze that pushes in the same direction for months on end, unyielding, restless, as it makes its way to this archipelago, here, now, filling the skies with arrival.

Manila Bay opens in the direction of the wind, facing a point slightly to the left of its famed orange sunsets. If you stand at the breakwaters at precisely the right time, perhaps you might catch the first gust of it. There is no way for you to tell, of course, that this is the habagat—certainty will have to wait until the weather bureau releases the official documentation. The letterheaded paper. The words onset and monsoon in bold capital letters across the top of the page. The date carefully checked by a small army of meteorologists poring over indices and weather station measurements. This is a precise science, you know, but there is no way to be certain. For now you might as well pretend it so, the monsoon of your imagining come to brush against your cheek, listen.

The Intramuros grid is aligned along the same axis, and so see it in your mind, the walled city receiving the monsoon like a longawaited guest, catching the breeze to temper the sweltering of the cobblestones. The winds have always been harnessed in this way, in a time before electricity or steamships: the galleons would sail from Cavite to Acapulco on the southwest monsoon, and back on the habagat’s inverse, the amihan. For centuries before that, the monsoons were carefully watched for by traders from the mainland, waiting for a way to carry their ships home.

These days, sailors find other ways, but the habagat still carries rain. In its journey across miles of open water, it picks up water meant for elsewhere. On the Indian peninsula where the monsoon first makes itself known, the burst of rain keeps people anticipating.

It turns brown mountainsides verdant, the dampened earth smelling of mud and celebration. People listen for the pew-pew-pew of the Jacobin cuckoo, songbird of the rain; watch big black ants swarm in the dry dirt; taste the summer mangoes lose their tartness; see the sky turn the dirty yellow of dry thunder.

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Anywhere you go, to speak of rain is to speak of anticipation: of tins of corned beef placed in reserve at the back of kitchen cabinets, of a new year’s schoolbooks carefully folded into clear plastic covers to keep the text unbled, of acres of cropland laying parched in their ache. The timing of it is essential—too late and the harvest withers away, too early and the seedlings cannot yet bear the weight of water.

You must be ready when it comes. In Guimaras, fishermen move their nets to northern waters where the wind is calmer. In Benguet, farmers watch for reports of coming storms and ready themselves to harvest at any moment. In Siquijor, the old who alone remember wait for the clearing of the fog across the bay over Negros at sunrise. There are always signs for those who know what to keep watch for, a way into knowing, the briefest glimpse of what the winds will bring today.

If you know where to look, you can brace yourself.

Some people say they can feel the habagat coming in their bones, that they know the smell of it, their bodies learned to curve into the whispers of dew you might not ever hear. Elsewhere, there is talk of monsoon migraines, usually attributed to dust or changes in atmospheric pressure. The body knows, it always knows, an old song written into the back of your memory.

Here, the monsoon brings what we call wild diseases. This has nothing to do with feral, only an acronym; it stands for water-borne illness, influenza, leptospirosis, dengue—these afflictions seem to ride along the habagat, the face masks at the line for the jeepney, the pants hiked up to knees to wade through the flood, the relocation centers with sleeping mats close enough to feel your neighbor’s breath, the overflowing wards with buckets to catch the ceiling leaks, the children in their hospital beds dying of unquenchable thirst amidst the downpour. Look at all this wilderness, what is blown in with the rainstorms.

Wilderness: Habagat, in Tagalog mythology, is the god of the southwestern wind, ruler of the kingdom of silver and gold in the sky.

The story told in the middle of thunderstorm to restless children. You must remember the one. Habagat falls in love with Amihan, goddess of the northeastern wind, beautiful but cold. Habagat is a spurned 62

lover; he sets out to destroy the earth with rain, perhaps tears, though you would suppose this remains unmentioned. Later, he sets out in competition against all the other gods of the sky to win Amihan’s favor. His fiercest competition is Buhawi, god of typhoons. The two battle for days on end, letting forth streams of rain and gusts of wind, flooding the earth and stirring up ocean waves.

I imagine the destruction.

That is never the point of myth. The point is the passion is devastating, a force beyond anyone’s control. There is nothing to be done but marvel at it. The point is that the battle is meaningful, that those who pay the cost are always silent. Collateral damage does not speak. Shattered houses are statistics are silent. The point is not that a typhoon can enhance the rains from a monsoon, though it can, you know. The cyclonic motion pulls up the monsoonal winds in its inflow arms, dragging the, across the islands, amplifying. Inch by inch, the rain does what it will. Even without making landfall, the typhoon leaves these ruins.

In 2012, the habagat caused eight days of rain around Manila, the monsoon winds pulled over by two typhoons which would have otherwise been near-misses, the rains pursuing the gales in quick succession. A full meter of water. La Mesa Dam overflowed, releasing water by the gallons. Marikina River overflowed, the statues of carabaos by the banks fully submerged. Manila Bay overflowed, water along the bay flooding Roxas Boulevard and the city hall.

The old building is easier to consider than this: by the time the storm cleared, more than ten dozen were dead. Lives ended. Nine killed in a landslide that buried their houses. Thousands more left without homes to return to, mostly in low-lying areas near crowded tributaries and cramped housing conditions, or else in informal settlements where residents have no claim to the property that can outlast its impermanence. The mud that coats every surface left with nothing to cling to. I can think about the mud, the smell of soil and rock and rain something concrete to hold on to, in the absence of true memory. I was elsewhere—after all, if the rain is there, then it cannot be here, we remain as safe as we are—I cling to what conjured image I can name as it slips like silt between my fingers.

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What you can be certain of from the news reports is that people called it Bagyong Habagat. As though the shattering force of the rains had earned it the distinction of typhoon. Technically, the storm never satisfied the required parameters to be considered a typhoon. Technically, the monsoon is not even the rain itself, but the wind—but they would be forgiven for blurring the distinction. It is easier to overlook a pattern of the seasons, invisible forces stretching across weeks, months. A pattern means this is normal, and thus that it leaves us to forgetting as it leaves. There is no need to remember what returns, and returns, and returns.

It came without warning. It was the ordinariness of it, the reporter says, the ground that sounded only like flowing water as it crashed onto houses. The man on the television waits for his wife—he says they were all sleeping, the water trickling in under doorways and through cracks in the wall, but they moved their things to higher ground as those used to the floodwaters do and they slept. The man is dazed, says his wife is still trapped. Perhaps. He isn’t certain. Pan to the rescue operations, the frantic digging. More than an hour with no new survivors. Return to the man, his name is given only as JC. He stands in someone else’s living room, a photo of Christ on the wall behind him. The rain has not stopped yet. He is waiting for his wife, the rescue. They bring a woman out of the ruins and the news segment ends there. The waters rise from beyond these houses in Commonwealth all the way to the sea.

The weather is an equalizer, they say, it rains on us all. But here the ground gives way, where houses stand cinder block to cinder block, where the dirt is loose and unbarricaded. It is easier then to make sense of it to say these people built on risky ground. That they in some way courted disaster, the wrath of an angry god.

People whisper their speculations, hoping to etch some reason.

Someone says that a nearby chapel is missing its monstrance, sacred vessel of adoration taken by a godless thief. Others proclaim God’s vengeance on the whole nation—three days before, interpellation on a new reproductive health bill was ceased, the country one step closer to the much-condemned contraception. What do you make of this cruelty, how many lives are worth a few thousand condoms and a 64

piece of sacred metalwork, but this story says that God once made it rain for forty days and forty nights to cleanse the earth of its impurities; easier to look out for their blessed ark, signs of the ends of the earth upon us, if you know how to watch for them.

I want to say all they search for is the wind, but there is no right in the world that would allow it. That is not the point of it. They want something to make sense of, settle. Easier to accept this sin and retribution than to think this means nothing at all. That these things happen, that the atmosphere is ever-unpredictable, the oceans of air drowning us in danger as we sleep, as we watch them, as we see the waters rising already, unable to do anything but wait, uncertain what to watch for from the winds.

There is a word for this uncertainty: meteorologists call it the monsoon’s vagaries. The monsoon is stronger or weaker depending on the year, the amount of precipitation vacillating dramatically even from day to day. There is no telling what the day’s weather will bring— too many variables for us to forecast reliably. We can understand, but mostly in hindsight, only explain, describe what mechanisms we were unaware of as we slept through the monsoon’s onslaught. I pretend, too, this makes sense of it. That we can tune into the signs.

Today, the weather report predicted a downpour, but the skies were met with only a brief drizzle and a purple sunset. The day before, the water on the roads was ankle-deep. The forecast for tomorrow: the super-typhoon will make landfall, intensified by the monsoonal flow. I keep watch of the weather map, the winds circling around the eye of the storm. The night is quiet. Elsewhere, people brace for the worst of it.

I think of the call for relief goods, misfit items that inevitably turn up alongside the requested donations—a wedding gown, a red thong, a jar of olives, dozens of expired canned goods. We are at our best, the news anchor says, in times of need. Another narrative about resilience: that the monsoon season brings us tragedy every year, and we are able to forget it. That it returns, and returns, and returns. That our stories are all worn out, the rescuers in their rubber boats grown weary, the winds as they always have been.

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Before long, the habagat will leave us to milder weather, as it does every year. We will rebuild as the memory leaves us. The monsoon will return. The signs will all be there. You offer an egg at Santa Clara for fair weather. You check the weather forecast to be reminded of your umbrella. You listen for the changing of the wind, think of the ground parched with waiting. We will not be ready, still, for what comes, of course. We are a people of the monsoon, hanging on the whims of what the day will bring us. A season of catastrophe, expected and unpredictable. If you watch closely, you can almost smell the wind coming. I would like to tell myself that, at least.

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michaela gonzales tiglao

To the Mother Otter I imagine how it is: how the river is a current that is formidable and bent on ripping our grasp. How small hands mean I must lie on your back but I could fall and I am gone into the river that is formidable and bent on breaking my grasp from you. There is seaweed to curb the river, but it stings. I imagine the slightest lap means danger: danger you are gone, have let go, have left behind. But I know you well enough. The river is a current that is formidable but you have carried me far longer than this river has carried either of us, will ever carry.

The river cannot understand warmth.

I imagine the river is a current that is bent on breaking my grasp from you, but I fear hands that are large enough to let go.

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carljoe javier

The Day the Sexbomb Dancers Came sometimes it got to be a real drag for Jeremy being on a generation starship.

But then when you think about it, wouldn’t it be a drag if you were on one, too?

There’d be nowhere for you to go, except around the starship.

There aren’t many places for stopovers, since a planet with a hospitable atmosphere rarely comes along. The only friends you could have would be on the ship, and they’d get pretty boring too.

Your parents would have been born there, you’d have been born there, your kids would be born there, and you’d probably die there.

What made things even worse was that Jeremy was weird. It’s not that he was a freak or anything like that. It just so happened that Jeremy didn’t like big groups, or loud people, or speaking in public, which was pretty much speaking anywhere on a generation starship.

Unless you were married, then you got your own living quarters. But then you wouldn’t be alone either, because you’d be there with the person you were married to.

He liked to brood.

And on a generation starship, brooding was extremely weird.

He liked sitting around and thinking, sometimes talking to himself about things, figuring things out like why they were there or what his purpose was; deep things that didn’t really have any answers.

When he was a little kid he’d be sitting somewhere and brooding when the other kids would run by and slap him on the back of the head. As teenagers it was found that they were the first generation to start developing telepathic powers. So when the other kids weren’t making out with each other in their minds, they’d swing by and interrupt Jeremy’s thoughts, just to annoy him.

To stop them from invading his mind and flashing nasty thoughts, he developed a neural band which he could wear around his head and 68

use to block out any external forces. During the time when he was developing the neural band, being on the generation starship wasn’t that much of a drag. It was actually kinda fun.

Well, he had to admit, it wasn’t always a drag. The place was pretty big, with different simulated ecosystems, a holodeck that could transport him to any time or place, and a humongous library where he could read all the knowledge of the Earth, at least up to the day that the ship left; they couldn’t have any idea how things were going on Earth because it would take years for any communication to reach them, so the people on Earth didn’t bother to send messages and the people on the ship didn’t expect any.

His liking to read in the library made him even weirder. Everybody else preferred the holodeck, since the virtual world was created there for you. Besides, it was the main instructional tool used in their education. He was the only kid who liked even going to the library.

He was so weird, in fact, that he was the only kid who understood the Dewey decimal system. These days you’re weird enough if you understand the Dewey decimal system, so what more on a generation starship that had been in space for, well, generations?

But then who else on the generation starship should this story be about? What fun would it be if we just talked about one of the normal kids? All we’d have is a fairly typical story of an ordinary youth growing up on a generation starship. And most of the other people on the ship wouldn’t have any recollection of what really happened on the crazy days that started when they began receiving the TV transmissions that had traveled all around the universe and back and into the generation starship’s receptors. This is a story about scantily-clad women and zombies and a weird boy named Jeremy. *** On that day Jeremy, as usual, was brooding in a corner near his family’s apartment. He was thinking about something philosophical, probably something existential. After all, didn’t the meaning of things become more complicated on a generation starship where 69

the designated purpose of your life was to survive and reproduce so that there would be one generation or other still alive when the ship reached its destination?

Then his brother and sister ran in, back from their sessions at the holodeck (the number of offspring per couple allowed on the ship was limited to two, but sometimes some couples were sterile so another family was allowed to compensate for one child. And everyone on the ship thought Jeremy was so weird that he wouldn’t wind up having kids anyway so they didn’t think it a problem that his parents have another child). By this time Jeremy was exempted from going to the holodeck, since he had read about most of the things being shown in the holodeck. But the teachers didn’t exempt him because he’d read a lot, rather it was because they found him weird and irritating since he knew what they were teaching even before they taught it, and that embarrassed them for some reason. So they didn’t want him around when they were teaching class. Who needs a know-it-all in class anyway? Especially if the know-it-all apparently doesn’t need class either. They told him to keep up his reading, go home, and keep out of the classroom.

Jeremy thought that this would impress people. Make him more interesting and maybe even a bit cool since he was so smart that he didn’t have to go to the holodeck for class. Instead, it made him even weirder.

Now you’d think that there would be some weird scientist on this ship that Jeremy could turn to as a mentor. Someone who was a bit weird too, someone who was interested in science and literature and philosophy or other things like that. Things that they could both brood about. But it turns out that Jeremy missed the last smart guys on the generation starship by a few generations.

When the ship left for the far off planet that was its destination, there were a lot of scientists and scholars and specialists in various fields on board who were there so that they could ensure that things went right on the ship. They would help to study the way that people reacted to living on a ship and in space. They would record the ship’s progress, passing on the responsibility to the next generation by 70

educating them.

There were also a lot of families that were there just so that they could leave the Philippines. The smart guys thought it would be alright to bring in people who weren’t experts so that there would be people that they could study. And so that they could educate these people’s kids, providing education that the kids probably wouldn’t have been able to receive on Earth. This sounded like an idea that could work out alright, but the smart guys didn’t count on politicians sneaking on board the ship.

Of course the first few generations of smart guys weren’t susceptible to the temptations that the politicians offered. But the other families were. And as the Earth became a memory and the integrity of the first generation was lost or corrupted by politicians, competition and factionalism developed. It seemed like the great ideals of the first generation had gone out the exhaust pipes along with the consumed space gases. Only remnants of it, like scattered space dust on the airlock floor, remained. It wasn’t enough to make a mess for the politicians.

For generations there was feuding among the politicians and scientists-turned-politicians. Massive debates would be held and factions would be exiled, left on the next hospitable planet. Unless they could pull off some coup and overturn things, thus leaving the other faction on the planet.

Then the smart guys that Jeremy missed by a few generations came along. These were just a few guys who tried to bring back the ways of the first generation, tried to get focus back on the development of their knowledge, and tried to turn people away from politicking. Tried, of course is the operative word there. They wound up climbing into an escape pod together and making their way to the nearest hospitable planet where they hoped to establish a colony without politicians.

So here Jeremy was, without anybody as weird as him to turn to, brooding about existentialism on a generation starship, when his brother and sister come running in to interrupt his brooding. His brother and sister were too young to realize that he was brooding, and they thought he was just bored. So they decided to entertain him.

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“Kuya Je-my, look what we learned in holodeck,” his sister Janine uttered; it was something between speech and a giggle. “Watch, hehehe,” and then she began to dance in front of him.

“Wait, Ate, you have to do this,” Jeremy’s brother Jon-Jon said.

He pulled his shirt up halfway so that his baby-fat belly showed, then pulled the slack part of his shirt taut.

“Oo nga ‘no,” then she tied the front of her shirt into a bunch, revealing her belly.

Jeremy’s eyes widened in shock as Janine continued her dance.

She began by putting her hands up and making Ls with her index fingers and thumbs. Her hips gyrated in a way that Jeremy had never seen before in real life. He may have been a weird boy, but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t look up certain things when he was in the library video archives alone.

“Where did you learn that? You’re just a kid, you shouldn’t be dancing that way! They’re teaching you that in holodeck? When I went to holodeck we didn’t have anything like that!”

Janine kept dancing, then screamed in as high a voice that she could make, “Ow!” This surprised Jeremy, so he jumped back away from her.

Jon-Jon just laughed at him. “Kuya, you’re weird.”

“Laban-laban,” Janine and Jon-Jon sang together as Janine made Ls with her fingers and Jon-Jon clapped the beat, “o bawi-bawi.”

“Stop that! It’s disgusting. How can your teacher let you do something like that? You’re a kid and you’re dancing like a—” Jeremy bit his lip. He didn’t know any word that he could use that he could allow into his little sister’s vocabulary.

“But Kuya, it’s fun! And everyone else is doing it, too. Look,” she said and she stopped dancing so that she could use her chubby little fingers to point outside.

Out in the front yard, in the simulated park, outside apartments and in the hall he could see children dancing, some grouped together, some alone, showing their parents what they had learned in the primary level classes. Instead of looking appalled, as Jeremy expected, the parents were laughing and clapping along. Some of the mothers 72

were even learning the steps and dancing along.

“What’s going on here,” Jeremy said to himself. He whipped off his neural band and rubbed his eyes, for dramatic effect, since in the movies he’d watched people would take off their glasses to make a point. He didn’t have glasses, but he thought the neural band could provide the same effect.

It’s the newest craze, he heard in his head. It was Lena. Wow, Jeremy thought, a girl actually went into my head for a conversation.

She was so pretty and he thought she didn’t notice him, or maybe she did notice him but only because he was weird and he didn’t know which one was worse— No, I won’t make out with you, she said next.

Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to think that, Jeremy said.

Would you stop thinking that! She said.

Sorry, I’m really sorry. Can you meet me out front? I want to ask you what you know about this. Jeremy thought it would have been fine if it were a mental conversation, but he was having a hard time getting the image of Lena dancing the dance in a skimpy dress out of his head. He had to get the neural band back on.

Okay, meet me there in three minutes. And will you stop thinking that! *** “So what’s going on?”

“Let’s talk over here,” Lena said. She brought him to one of the storage rooms just outside the park. She may have wanted to be nice to Jeremy, but she also had to take care of her reputation, and being seen with the freak was sure to send her cool points with the boys plummeting.

Jeremy, of course thought that she wanted to be somewhere private for other reasons, and he ventured to take off his neural band.

No. Put that thing back on. No wonder all the other girls say you’re so weird.

“Sorry.”

“Okay, so what do you want to know?”

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“Well, what’s going on?”

“It’s a new dance the kids learned. You know how rare it is for us to get something new, so naturally everybody wants a part of it.”

“What do you mean new?”

“It’s new. It’s not something in the archives.”

“Where’d it come from?”

“I don’t know. You’re the geek genius around here. Well, I gotta go. Holodeck in five minutes.”

“Wait, you’re going to holodeck? Then that means you’ll be learning that too?”

“Yeah. Well I really have to go now.”

“Oh, sorry. See you later,” Jeremy watched Lena as she walked away. He was torn between wanting to find out where this weird dance was coming from and wanting to talk to her some more. He got to talk to girls so rarely, since most of them were busy with other boys or busy avoiding him. And it was so rare for him to talk to such a pretty and popular girl like Lena. He called out with his mind, Wait Lena, don’t go yet, but his neural band sealed his mind off from the rest of the world. *** “What are you doing here?” Mr. Santos asked as soon as he saw Jeremy peeking into the holodeck. Mr. Santos was one of the teachers who had petitioned to keep Jeremy out of the holodeck classes. But despite his dislike for Jeremy he was one of the few teachers who used the neural bands that Jeremy had made.

“I just wanted to know what this new dance is about. It’s kinda nasty, you know, I saw my sister dancing it and it was so—” “Oh, so now you’re criticizing what’s being taught in here? Just because you read all those books in the library doesn’t mean your opinion is more important than anyone else’s. You think you’re so smart.” The class kept quiet. Normally, if this had been any other subject or any other teacher, the class would have jeered, made jokes, laughed, or called him weird while the teacher chewed him out. But when Mr. Santos locked onto a target, no matter who it was, you 74

couldn’t help but feel sorry for the person.

“No, it’s not that, it’s just—” “Oh, what now? You’re trying to show off here? Ooh, I’m so smart because I spend all my time in the library so I should have a say in what the teachers teach on this ship. I know so much more than them.

Huh? Is that the attitude you bring when you come around here?”

“I don’t think that way. I just wanted to know where—” “Oh, it’s like that. Talking back because I’m not your teacher anymore? Where’s the discipline? Where’s the respect? You spend all that time reading those books and you don’t have any time to learn manners. That’s why we had to ban you from the holodeck.”

Jeremy was tired of hearing these things every time he ran into Mr. Santos, he’d just come to ask a question, he thought to himself. Why did he have to get this? “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Santos.”

Jeremy didn’t wait for a reply. He left the holodeck area and headed to the library. In the library he logged onto the computer archives.

Once in, he hacked through the security network and observed the class.

On the ship, there were cameras everywhere, and if someone were to break into the system, then he could be a Peeping Tom with a view to every single room. For that reason only the security force had access to the cameras. And they had to have a reason that would be logged by the computer to activate cameras in private areas. But Jeremy, thanks to some old books on computer hacking, had learned how to work his way around the security systems. He could observe any room for five minutes, which was how long he had before the shield he set up lapsed.

From his terminal he watched as the class began.

“Class, you see what happens to people who want to be too smart?

People who know too much for their own good?”

“Yes, Mr. Santos.”

“Good. Let that serve as a lesson to you.”

“Yes, Mr. Santos.”

“Okay, good. Now remember the homework I gave yesterday?

Please submit it to the front. We won’t discuss it for now, because 75

we’ve just received something that the officials have decided should be shared by all. The ship received it this morning.”

Mr. Santos walked to the back of the holodeck and said, “Holodeck, activate Sexbomb video.”

The holodeck produced a two-dimensional image of a scene from Eat Bulaga. It was a shot of the Sexbomb dancers dancing behind contestants who were being quizzed.

Abruptly, the dancers yelped, “Ow,” and the music stopped as the contestants were asked a question. Jeremy not only recognized the “Ow,” but also the skimpy clothes and seductive moves. He shivered to think that his sister was trying to imitate those steps and those girls.

“Holodeck, jump to dance segment.” The holodeck displayed a different scene, where the dancers were doing their thing.

“Isolate humanoid figures, eliminate background.” The flat images of the Sexbomb dancers moved in the air.

“3-D enhance images. Repair pixilation. Repair and enhance sound.” And in all their glory the Sexbomb dancers gyrated and swayed, called out to the boys with wicked seductive taunts of their hips and breasts. Eyelids opened up so wide that the boys could have stuck their tongues into them. Their tongues too, were hanging out.

Most of them had made out with the girls on the ship, at least mentally.

And a few of them had even been able to sneak their girls to secluded parts of the ship. But this, this was something else altogether. And this dance, these moves, this music— The girls, for their part, were shown something they too had never seen. Never mind that by this time there weren’t any sexuality issues anymore, that more or less men and women were treated equally.

They’d never had to struggle against being objectified, and they weren’t educated on the struggle that women had to go through to achieve their status at present. The girls suddenly wanted to be this sexy, this seductive. They wanted to be icons, symbols of sexuality; they wanted to be Sexbomb dancers. They wanted it, this dance, these moves, this music— The Sexbomb dancers displayed their moves, their universal appeal. They were pretty, but not as pretty as models. They were 76

reachable. They were the every-woman for the every-man. They danced dances that imitated actions like washing clothes. They were seductive, yet sweet.

Jeremy too was mesmerized. So mesmerized that he was almost caught. The computer buzzed at him, warning him that his shield would be down in fifteen seconds. He logged off the system with just three seconds left. He breathed a sigh of relief and put his tongue back in his mouth. Then he noticed that a pool of drool had dripped down his jaw and onto his shirt. *** Where did they come from? Jeremy thought to himself. I’ve got to know, got to find out. He had watched the recording again, this time from the main server, so not only was he on an authorized channel, but he had a clearer view of the recording. He had it enhanced in front of him.

He was alone in the library, alone to see those 3-D images dance before him as if they were real. He could almost touch them. They were perfectly spaced, and Jeremy could weave his way between these images, get so close to them that he could almost believe that they were dancing for him. And he did a few other things in that library.

Let’s just say that he enjoyed himself.

He slumped back against one of the library walls, exhausted. He was zipping himself up and he wiped his brow. He couldn’t get to the sweat beneath the neural band, so he took it off.

That’s when it hit him.

It wasn’t like a mental conversation. It was something more subtle, yet more powerful. It was the dance, the moves, the music, and he could feel them invading his brain. It wasn’t like a catchy tune that gave you Last Song Syndrome, it was like a computer virus that comes in as software, unsuspected yet filled with the potential for destruction, and begins to eat away at your hardware. It eats away at your hardware until your computer is nothing but a heap of metal that needs to be reformatted or replaced. But you can’t reformat or replace 77

your brain. And it seemed that this virus didn’t destroy, rather, this dance, these moves, this music, they took control. But Jeremy didn’t know that yet.

As it flowed through his unprotected brain, it felt like it was wrapping itself around Jeremy’s consciousness, he wanted nothing more than this dance, this music; he was content, he was happy, and that euphoria was sweet. It was almost like his brain was being dipped into a vat of caramel, his mind becoming sugar-coated and he could feel that sweetness seeping into the deeper recesses of his brain.

But suddenly, Jeremy’s brain resisted. It pushed back the sugary sweetness that was so tempting to succumb to, those figures, that music, the feelings that it all gave him. Jeremy’s brain, because of the way he’d developed it over the years in the library, and his inventing and wearing of the neural band, had become more sensitive to threats. And though his conscious mind had succumbed to the lure of the Sexbomb dancers, his subconscious had interrupted the flow of the message’s entry.

Snapped out of the trance, Jeremy rushed to put the neural band back on, because he knew he could block those messages out for only so long. And he might be the only one who was aware of what was going on. He had to take action, quick, before the whole ship fell under the spell of the Sexbomb dancers.

He whipped the neural band back on his forehead, but in his rushed movement he’d forgotten he was holding his zipper in the other hand.

He fell to the floor, the signals from the Sexbomb dancers shut out of his brain, writhing and trying to get himself unstuck from the zipper. *** Now, anyone who’s been circumcised can tell you, there’s no worse time than those weeks of recovery. The actual act of circumcision can’t compare to the walking around holding everything away from your lower body, praying to God that nothing touches it. Even air blown by an electric fan at the lowest settings or a mild breeze pressing against the penis can bring tears of pain to the eyes.

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And the cruelest thing that you can do to someone who has just been circumcised is to give them an erection. Come up to them and flash, say a lingerie calendar (preferably Victoria’s Secret), and the victim will scream out in pain; because they’d just been stitched up, wounds are going to be stretc.hed out and all that healing that the victim had been trying to do all day will be for naught as the erection pushes the stitches out. Think of it this way if you haven’t gone through it: Imagine putting on a thorn of crowns. Then, inflate your head to three times its size. Consider also that your skull is made of bone, so it wouldn’t hurt as much as something made of muscle and nerve.

Jeremy was somewhere near this kind of pain. He knew he had to get up, he had to warn people about the subliminal messages being sent off by the Sexbomb recordings. But each time that he tried to work, tried to think, the Sexbomb dancers would pop into his head and he’d pitch a tent. The wound he’d inflicted on himself from the quick zip would rub up against his jeans and shoot pain straight up to his brain, sending Jeremy to his knees.

He focused, tried to get them out of his head. What do I do first, he kept asking himself. No one would believe him if he just told people to turn it off. And he had come to the conclusion that the reason why no one else was sensing the messages was that the older folks didn’t have mental powers developed enough to detect them, and that kids his age and younger didn’t have the sensitivity built up by wearing a neural band to detect the difference between their mental conversations and the subliminal messages. Or if they did, their minds weren’t developed enough to fight the messages back as his was.

He wasn’t sure what effect it would have on people. For him it was just that euphoric trance that actually wasn’t all that bad. It was peace and surrender to the Sexbomb dancers, which on second thought, didn’t seem so bad, thought Jeremy. If it could keep people happy, then what could be so bad about it?

Maybe I’m just being paranoid, he thought. Jeremy decided to take a look outside and see how people were reacting to it. Maybe he 79

was just resisting it because he was weird and it would be alright if people listened to it and danced it, dreamed of being with and being the Sexbomb dancers.

Jeremy moved to the library door and walked out to the hall outside the holodeck room. He saw all the kids in a trance. The girls had ripped off parts of their shirts and pants, leaving them scantily-clad and dancing “Laban o Bawi” turned up full blast in the hallway. The boys stood with their mouths open, swaying to the music, drooling over the girls and groping occasionally. When the girls would be groped they’d leave formation and dance with the boy who’d groped them.

Then, after a long dance, the girl would get back into formation.

The girls saw him, then began to move towards him, but still in rhythm with the song. They sang as a group, yelled “Ow” simultaneously, and their movements were in perfect coordination.

Jeremy’s eyes widened. He saw all these girls that he’d been lusting over for so many years, now stripped down and moving towards him.

There didn’t have to be any subliminal messages floating around, just the sight put him into a trance.

Then he felt the shot of pain rising up from his pants and he was back. On any other day this would have been a dream come true, but he knew the way the messages worked, and now he’d seen the effects.

They turned into Sexbomb zombies.

He tried to run, but then the wound rubbed against his zipper and he lost his balance. He took a few shaky steps more before going down on one knee. The girls, even though they were dancing to the rhythm, were steadily gaining on him.

He held his pants away from him with one hand and began to limp steadily down the hall, back to the library. There he had full control of the computer systems, which would keep him relatively safe.

He was limping, and the girls were gaining.

“Ow!” Jeremy limped, sweat trickling down his forehead, popping up all over his body. Just a few more steps he thought.

Then he heard it, “Ow!” They were right behind him. Just a few more steps and one of the girls would have a hand on him. He 80

wondered how bad it would be to succumb to these girls. He saw Lena, and she, like all the other girls, was reaching out to him, as if to accept him.

He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder and singing almost straight into his ear, “Laban-Laban, o Bawi-Bawi.”

He panicked. It was just a few steps away and he lunged into the library. He was at the foot of the door and though it hurt like Hell the adrenaline helped to deaden the pain and he rolled into the library.

What Jeremy didn’t notice was the hand and voice belonged to Lena, and that when he’d lunged for the library, he’d dragged her in with him. *** Jeremy couldn’t see with the tears in his eyes. “Computer, seal doors.” He heard the doors close and for a second he felt safe. He tried to stand up, but the wound stung again and he fell to a knee.

Then he heard the footsteps on the library floor, footfalls coming in rhythm. Coming closer. “Ow!” Jeremy wiped the tears from his eyes and saw it was Lena. She was above him now, and she made the Ls inches from his face. Then she grabbed the neural band.

Jeremy held onto it, tried to keep it on his head. It was a struggle, Jeremy holding the band with one hand and his other hand holding his pants away from the wound, and Lena’s body swaying to the music in her head and just her two arms yanking at the neural band.

And Jeremy’s most intimate friend betrayed him.

They say that when it’s a struggle between a man’s head on his shoulders and the head between his legs, it’s always the latter that gets its way. As he tried to keep the neural band on he couldn’t help but watch the way that Lena’s body moved, and though his thoughts were focused on keeping the band on, he got sprung. The wound scraped against his zipper and the pain shot up, making him lose his grip.

The sugary sounds began to fill his brain and then his subconscious kicked in. It gave him something he hadn’t thought of before.

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“Computer, room lockdown.”

After he uttered the words his brain surrendered, and he laid his head back, feeling no more pain.

The computer initiated the lockdown, and the blast doors came down. The blast doors were sturdy enough to block out all kinds of radioactive waves. In seconds the room was sealed off from the rest of the ship and the Sexbomb transmission. Jeremy regained consciousness, waking to the pain in his crotch.

Lena was standing there, the neural band in her hand.

You bastard! she screamed at Jeremy as soon as she saw the state she was in. What am I doing in here with you? What did you do to me?

To my clothes? She jumped on Jeremy and began slapping his arms, which he’d used to cover his head. Jeremy started crying because her body was scraping against his and the zipper was scraping off even more skin near the open wound.

Please, stop. Please. Jeremy pleaded but Lena kept slapping and scraping. But she heard the repeated pleas and their sincerity in her head, so she felt sorry for him and stopped.

Jeremy wiped snot and tears from his face and tried to compose himself. He was still breathing heavily and being the weird kid that he was, he wasn’t used to such adrenaline-driven situations. He wanted to unzip his pants and check the damage he’d sustained.

Tell me why I’m in here and what happened, or I’m gonna kill you!

Lena said to Jeremy, standing over him and planting her foot between his legs, just centimeters from his threads.

Please give me the neural band.

Tell me what’s going on.

I will, but please give me the neural band.

Why should I? What’s it going to do?

I’ll show you, but we have to wear the bands. Please, trust me.

Lena was scared. How could she trust him, she had just found herself alone in a room with him, her memory blank as to how she got there, her clothes tattered—everything was just too weird.

She sat down in front of him. She held the neural band with her left hand. She held it behind her, so that Jeremy could see it, but it was 82

out of his reach. She planted her right hand on Jeremy’s thigh and he winced. Jeremy held back tears as he pitched another tent.

Here’s the deal, I’m going to hand this over to you, but if you make any quick movements, do anything funny, I’m grabbing your dick and I’m squeezing and bending it until it looks like a slinky. (She didn’t actually say slinky, though, she referred to one of the children’s toys they’d grown up with on the ship that resembles today’s slinky, but then letting her say slinky here makes things easier for us.)

Jeremy whimpered at the thought.

Lena handed him the neural band, then put her left hand on his other thigh. Jeremy thought that his hard-on couldn’t get any more painful, but it did as he shivered and scraped against his zipper. He put the neural band on.

“Okay, Lena, now I’m going to command the computer to open a box.”

“Okay.”

“Computer, open my storage box and bring it to me.”

The computer’s robotic arm brought a small metal box, about the size of a lunchbox, to Jeremy. Lena eyed the robotic arm warily, and as the arm approached she moved her hand down Jeremy’s thigh, as if to threaten.

“Lena, put on a neural band.” She looked into the box and saw all kinds of weird gadgets inside.

“You made all this stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“Thanks. Please put on the band.”

She put it on and suddenly she felt a kind of melancholy, a feeling of immense isolation. Neural bands were available for anyone who wanted to shut in their thoughts or shut out everyone else’s, but she never even thought about using one before. Her mind had always been so open, had always been the place of imagination and conversation, of interaction with others. Now she was all alone with her thoughts, and it felt terribly lonely.

She looked at Jeremy with pity as she realized the loneliness that he 83

put himself through by wearing a neural band. But then she realized that if he knew what everyone thought about him then it might make things even harder. She remembered all the pranks they had played on him in his head before he’d made the neural band, all the times when everybody would get together to send him mean mental messages.

She wanted to take the band off. It was depressing. She couldn’t understand why he was making her go through this. She felt sorry for him, sorry for what they had done to him, but she also hated him now because he was making her realize these things.

“Lena,” Jeremy called to her, snapping her out of her daze, “here, look at this.”

He moved out of the way and let her sit in front of the computer terminal.

Lena’s eyes widened with shock as she saw the whole ship converted into a giant dancehall, everyone singing and dancing like the Sexbomb dancers. *** “What’s going on, Jeremy?”

“Wait, could you turn around for a second. I kind of got scratched up in my family jewels (of course by that time they’d evolved some other euphemism for their private parts, probably something to do with space objects or stars or something or other, but again, family jewels helps make things clearer for us) and I want to see how bad it is.”

Lena turned around, disturbed by the idea that Jeremy was zipping down right behind her while all this weird stuff was happening. At the same time she was thinking that it might just be par for the course.

“So, how bad is it?”

“Well, you did a pretty good job scratching it up, but it was messed up when you got started on it. I’ll live, but I’m having a hard time walking.”

“Sorry. So what do we do about this?”

“I don’t know, I can hardly think with all the pain I’m feeling down 84

here. Besides, if we try to go outside everyone’s going to attack us and turn us into dancing and drooling zombies too.”

“We can’t just stay in here. I thought you had access to all the ship’s controls? Why not just shut it off? Did you ever find out where we got it from? And how’d you hurt yourself like that anyway?”

Jeremy zipped up and went over to the computer terminal. “Okay, let’s find out. Computer, review most recent data received from outside the ship.” The computer beeped and flashed out a display of the files.

By this time the starship was running into the transmissions sent centuries ago. It could be explained by the idea of the movement of waves around the universe, and that waves are also particles so when they travel they also disperse, and they bounce off other things but they can also be collected, and some other complicated stuff. If you’re really interested in it then you could probably read something by Stephen Hawking. But for our purposes, just think of sonar; say how a dolphin uses sonar.

So a dolphin is swimming and it emits a sound wave which, if it hits something, bounces off that thing and returns to the dolphin.

That way, the dolphin knows if there’s something out there because the sound wave returned. Now remember the sound wave has been broken up and that the parts of the sound wave that hit something returned. But there may be parts of the wave which just kept going.

So now think of a TV station, beaming out shows via satellite, and its waves are going to hit the satellite and shoot those shows down to your TV, but there are going to be some stray waves that are going to keep going, and going and going, until they bounce against something big enough to make it bounce back and not just divide it.

With these kinds of things coming in, the computer had a firewall to protect the ship against dangerous waves. And now Jeremy was checking if the firewall had gone up.

“I can’t believe it,” he said.

“What?”

“The computer firewalled it. It’s there, it’s right there, the computer firewalled that transmission and someone opened it up 85

anyway. The computer has a self-protecting system that keeps any threats out, stops them even before they reach us, so this should have—but no that’s impossible, is there something wrong with the computer or—” and in those seconds of contemplation the opening theme of 2001: A Space Odyssey boomed in Jeremy’s head. Lena was lost around the time Jeremy said firewall. After that, for her Jeremy had just started mumbling on and on and now he was in some sort of daze. This guy’s really weird, she thought.

“Hey, what does that mean?” she said, pointing to one of the quarantined files that had an X on it. Lena leaned in to look at it and Jeremy started to feel uncomfortable. Her skin was touching his and there was another struggle between his two heads to stay focused.

“Accessed. Wait that means someone on this ship accessed the file!

Someone let it in.” He kept typing, brought out the reasons for the quarantine. “It says here that there were slight subliminal messages laced into the program. Just some minor things, nothing that should do this much damage. I’m going to put some of the scanned images onscreen for us to see the nature of the program.”

On the monitor were shown some of the Calendar girls, which got Jeremy up again and he did his best not to show that he was in pain so that Lena wouldn’t notice. One shot showed Joey de Leon grabbing a girl’s ass. Another showed the hosts ridiculing contestants. They switched scenes to a song and dance performance where the goodlooking singers were perfectly out of tune. They switched again to segments with the Sili King and the Ulo King. First the Sili King chomped down as many chili peppers he could in a minute. At the end of the segment he was crying. Then it was the Ulo King’s turn.

An industrial electric fan was brought out and turned on to show the audience that it was in good working condition. Then its cover was screwed off and the Ulo King stepped up. He waited until the fan reached full speed, then he stuck his head in to stop the fan from spinning.

Then a scene from the Laban o Bawi segment where they were tempting the contestant with money while showing her the possible cash prize she could get. There was a line of stands and on each 86

stand was mounted a placard with the number zero. But on each end, which was supposed to signify the first and last number of the possible amount, there were red cards covering the number. It meant that, depending on which stand held the number one, she could win either one million pesos, or one peso. The hosts tried to tempt her, taunted her by pulling the red cards up in small increments, then abruptly letting the cards go so that they would fall back down to their original spot. They did this over and over, prolonging the woman’s waiting until the she was almost in tears, confused by everything. And all the while dancing behind her were the Sexbomb dancers. One of the hosts fanned her with the money they were offering her to Bawi, but still she chose Laban. And when they pulled up the red cards it showed she had won one peso. She began crying and then the shot went back to the dancers.

Jeremy and Lena were shocked. They’d never been exposed to anything like this. The scientists of the first generation had made sure the ship was stocked with the finest art and literature and cinema and music and anything else that could enlighten those who would be born on the ship about the great cultural achievements of Earth.

They even allowed a lot of pop art, which was one reason you could find Sandler and Schneider on the same row as Spielberg. But they’d never been exposed to anything like this and they didn’t know how to approach it.

Of course let anyone today see this stuff and it’s nothing. Especially when you’ve seen Jackass, or better yet Jackass: The Movie. But they’d never seen Jackass. And seeing this, they could only come to one conclusion: “Oh my God, it’s some kind of torture show that they use to entertain people.” Lena said.

“I’ve got it. In the morning, when my brother and sister came home, no one was affected by the subliminal messages. It was only when your class went that all this started happening. It’s because their telepathic powers weren’t developed yet. But with you guys, it’s like you amplified the message with your minds which got the whole ship like this.”

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“So let’s just turn it off. Turn it off like you did when we were in here, when you got me free of it.”

“I can’t. The person who accessed it has higher authority than me.

Even if I hacked it, that person could just turn it back on. We’ve got to get to the main server. If we get there I can delete the whole program and all the copies of it.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“But I can barely walk.” *** Jeremy knew some shortcuts in the ship, through ventilation and maintenance shafts and service corridors, and that got them through most of the way. It was really tough for him though. Slow going because if he was in front he’d be crawling along gingerly until Lena would get impatient and start telling him to hurry up. Or they’d switch and Lena would be in front of him with her butt shimmying and he couldn’t help but pop a boner. Still they made it through. Down to the last hallway that led to the computer’s main server. They were in a shaft that would drop them into the middle of the hallway.

“You ready?” Lena asked Jeremy, who was fumbling through his pockets for the card he’d programmed. It would act like an anti-virus, deleting anything that had a similar code as the Sexbomb recordings.

He didn’t know how much long-term damage it could do to the server or the other programs, but he had no choice.

Then they heard it, “Ow!” And the dancers began moving into the hall. It was only about a fifty-yard dash to the room doors, but in Jeremy’s state they could catch up with him easily.

“How long will it take you to hack through the doors?”

“A minute or two.”

“Okay, let’s do it!”

“Wait I still—” and then Lena pushed Jeremy out of the shaft and into the hallway. He fell on his belly and then he tried to stand but it was too hard with all the pain he was feeling. Lena landed on her feet beside him, and she pulled his arm onto her shoulder and began 88

dragging him to the doors.

Jeremy stumbled and slipped, blinded by the pain from the fall. He could hear the footsteps and the singing coming closer.

“Move faster, Jeremy,” she said and she doubled her speed, pushing him and almost carrying him to the doors.

When they were finally at the door Jeremy opened up the latch and started hacking. Lena stood with her back to his, covering him. He didn’t dare break his focus to look behind him, but he knew that the dancers were nearly on them.

Then one of the dancers’ hands reached him.

Lena, who luckily was a kung fu movie fan, had spent a lot of her free time in the holodeck practicing the moves she saw. She grabbed and twisted the wrist, then delivered a foot sweep. The zombie-dancer fell and knocked her head on the floor.

The others kept coming. Lena did a roundhouse kick, clearing her front. “Jeremy, get in there!” she said as she kneed one in the stomach, then elbowed another’s sternum.

Jeremy almost had the door open. The dancers weren’t bothering him anymore. They were focused now on Lena. They were all grabbing for her neural band and for a time she was able to stay out of their grasps. She delivered double flying kicks, jumping into the air and planting her foot into one chest, then using that impact as momentum to kick with her other foot. She ran up walls, confusing the dancers as she landed behind them to push the dancers into each other. They fell like bowling pins, but still they got up, got into formation and rhythm, and kept coming.

Jeremy opened up the door, and when he looked back he saw Lena surrounded by the dancers. He moved to rush over and help her, but the quick movement pushed his zipper towards him and he stopped in pain again.

He knew there was only one way he could help her. He walked through the doors and commanded the computer to seal them.

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__________ The main server room was dark. The only light came from the blipping on the consoles and the stars that could be seen through the observation port. The port was the size of a hockey goal, made of glass, but reinforced from the inside by a metal panel and from outside by a protective shield. The shield consumed a lot of energy, so usually the metal panel was left closed to prevent any breach. If something were to break the glass then the vacuum of space would come rushing in and it would look a lot like the endings of the Alien movies.

The metal panel that covered the port had been disengaged, and the vacuum of space was only inches away. A figure stood, in a Darth Vader-esque fashion, with his hands behind his back, his back to the doors. He faced the stars outside, unsurprised by Jeremy’s arrival.

The darkness in the room seemed to suit him and his slow, deliberate movements. Jeremy could feel a coldness emanating from him.

Around his head he wore a neural band.

“Jeremy, you’re always too smart for your own good.”

Jeremy limped to the main server console, but Mr. Santos was on him. He felt a hand smack across his face and he fell down.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why I’m doing this? I’ve always wanted a chance to explain my motivations.” Mr. Santos said, then he chuckled. “Or perhaps I should try to convince you to join me, to turn your back on these people who’ve never helped you before, and give you a chance to help yourself.”

Jeremy shrank away, unsure of what to do. He looked up at Mr. Santos and wiped his nose, which was bleeding.

Mr. Santos kicked him, not hard, but as if to get him to talk. “Well, you think you’re the only one who has read those books or seen those movies in the library? I know how this goes. I know you think I’m the bad guy and you’re the hero, here to save this ship from me.”

Jeremy could feel the blood flowing down to his shirt. He wiped again.

Mr. Santos slapped him again. “Say something dammit!”

Jeremy tried to hold back his tears, but they came anyway.

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“Yes, you’re some hero. You found out what I had done, and now you’ve come here to stop me. Well, stop me now.” Then he kicked Jeremy, this time in the chest so Jeremy fell on his back. You think you’re so smart, but you’re weak. You are weak!” Mr. Santos said it not for Jeremy’s benefit, but his own. He had to let Jeremy know that he was weak. He’d been wanting to do this to Jeremy for so long that he was hoping that Jeremy would be wearing his neural band when he played the Sexbomb video for the class.

“You are a fool. You spend all your time in the library, or in some corner thinking. For what? Will anyone ever appreciate you? You are the only person on this ship who has ever invented something like this,” Santos pointed to the neural band, “and have they done anything to thank you?”

Jeremy was inching away. He didn’t want to hear anymore.

“You’re scared. You think that it’s your duty to help everyone on this ship. All these people who made fun of you when you were a child, all these people who ridicule you until now. Take things in your hands boy! They are all gone. It’s just the two of use here. We can change things right now.”

Santos picked Jeremy up by his collar, and Jeremy winced. “Here, sit down. Computer, chair.” A robotic arm came from one of the panels in the wall and set a chair beside Santos. Santos pushed him into the chair.

“Ever wonder why we’re here on this ship? Ever get tired of it?”

Jeremy didn’t respond to the question, but Santos knew anyway that Jeremy knew what he was talking about. Jeremy wasn’t shivering anymore, and since Santos had stopped striking him he’d calmed down enough to listen.

“I’m going to crash us into the nearest hospitable planet. It should be just a half a day away. We’ll move everyone to the side of the ship that will be away from the impact. We can do it from here. I say we because I want you to be a part of this. After all, without you,” Santos pointed to the neural band on his head, “I would never have been able to do this.”

Jeremy wanted to pounce on Santos, wanted to tear the neural 91

band off Santos’s head, wanted to gouge Santos’s eyes and scrape out the sockets, wanted to ram a rod against the back of his neck. He knew he couldn’t do any of those things. Not with Santos watching him. Not in the state he was in.

“I want to leave this ship, Jeremy. Don’t you understand that?”

“Then get off at the next hospitable planet and leave us alone.”

Jeremy was surprised by his smart remark and expected another blow, but instead Santos just chuckled. “Ah, after taking a seat you’ve regained your bravery. So, ready for a chat then. I’ve always loved the part in movies where the villain reveals his plans to the hero, because he believes that the hero won’t escape. I wondered what I’d do all alone if no one else had a neural band on. But since you’re here I suppose I shall enjoy this.

“It’s not enough for me to get off. Then I’d just be on whatever planet alone. What would I do there? I want everyone on this ship freed. And the only way to free them is to control them like this. Trust me, I’m not the only one who has decided this. They just didn’t wear bands because I only told them my plans, not my method of getting us all off this ship.

“What are we on it for? Some journey that we and every generation after us must endure. Some journey our ancestors decided we should take, to finish on their behalf. Damn them! They control our lives even though they have been dead so long. No, when we crash, we will leave this ship, and we will start our own colony. We will abandon this ship and this way of life. On a planet, somewhere rich and fertile, we will find our happiness. Not this wretc.hed ship.”

Jeremy could hear the sense in what Santos was saying. He could imagine living on a hospitable planet, just like the Earth that he had seen in so many movies. He could see the sunrise and sunset every day of his life. He could have a place to explore, maybe a place where he could find happiness, a happiness that he could never find on the ship.

Then he heard the thumping on the door. The scream of “Ow,” booming through the door. He imagined what everyone on the other side of the door must look like. Lena would be a Sexbomb92

zombie again, his brother and sister and mother and father would be somewhere out there, just like her dancing and drooling, singing to the song.

Not this way, he thought. No, we have a duty. Things became so clear to him now. It was his burden. And it was their burden. He knew, he had read their histories, he knew what the first generation believed in. He knew what they were really traveling for. It wasn’t for any one of them on the ship; it was for some greater ideal. He could give up, succumb to the Sexbomb dancers or to Santos’s mad ideas, but then he would know that there was a reason that the ship was traveling.

The first generation of scientists believed in their destination, that planet that they would finally settle on. They believed that the journey would be long and hard, and that’s why they had built and stocked a generation starship. But they believed that this place that they would finally arrive at would be well worth all the sacrifice and hardship; that it was worth the journey, no matter how many generations long.

And Jeremy believed this too.

Jeremy knew that if they crashed and settled on some planet then most of the people of the ship wouldn’t complain as long as they were able to live as comfortably as they had on the ship. But Jeremy knew that they all had a responsibility that they were entrusted with.

Santos relaxed. He humphed at Jeremy, who he thought was accepting his offer. It seemed to Santos that Jeremy had quit, had given in to the idea of crashing the ship. Santos felt confident in himself.

That feeling of superiority he got whenever he attacked a student in class was surging through him. It was his euphoria, his drug, and with it he settled into his own chair, looking out at the stars, dreaming about the crash and the world they would settle on. He dreamed of how we would tell everyone, with their memories of the past day wiped out, how he saved them all from doom by maneuvering the starship out of an asteroid’s way and fighting a planet’s gravitational pull as it pulled them down. How when the ship crashed he evacuated the ship and saved the children from the fires. He would be the hero.

Then he heard the card snap into place.

Jeremy had gone from his chair and shoved the anti-virus card into 93

one of the console slots. It was active and began to eliminate all the Sexbomb recordings from the ship.

Santos was furious. He jumped out of his seat and moved toward Jeremy. “Computer, cancel last command.” The computer continued working. The monitor just read out the amount of time until the delete would be complete, five minutes.

Santos punched Jeremy, then held him by the collar with one hand and punched Jeremy again with the other. “Stop the delete.” He gave Jeremy a backhand slap. “Stop the delete.”

“I can’t. It’s irreversible,” Jeremy said.

“Why you little bastard!” Santos threw Jeremy against the port.

The glass cracked, but it was held in place by the energy shield. “You just have to ruin it, huh.” He kicked Jeremy, who was on his hands and knees, in the ribs.

Jeremy fell to the floor, his pants scraped against him and he could not stop the tears from coming, things becoming blurry. He had already figured out the next part of his plan, but he couldn’t give a command through the sobs that he was suppressing.

“You’re just too smart for your own good, aren’t you?” Santos said as he picked Jeremy up and threw him against one of the computer terminals.

Jeremy’s shoulder banged against it and he was down on one knee.

He felt like all his body was throbbing in pain now, some unique ache within each part. He knew he had to act now if he wanted to get out of this alive.

He began crawling to the other side of the room, toward the energy shield regulator. Santos just thought that Jeremy was trying to crawl away from him, so he kept kicking Jeremy, just hard enough to hurt him, but not hard enough to stop him from crawling. “Where are you going? It’s just you and me here, no one’s gonna help you, boy. Stand up and fight and you may get out of this.”

Jeremy kept crawling, kept fighting back the pain, biting his lips until they bled just so that he could divert the pain in his crotch, even if it was only a little bit. He could taste the blood in his mouth, and with Santos kicking and taunting him he almost wanted to give up.

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The shield regulator seemed so far away. He kept going, inching his way on, enduring the kicks from Santos and all the pain that he could feel throughout his body, especially what felt like a katana blade slicing the tip of his penis, then drawing back, then slicing again.

When Jeremy finally reached the shield regulator, he turned around to face Santos. Santos was still standing above him and Jeremy was on the floor. Then he bit Santos in the ankle.

His teeth drove through fabric until he bit down on a good chunk of flesh. The blood smeared his cheeks and when he pulled away he had to spit out the chunk of Santos’s ankle before he could say, “Computer, have robotic arms secure me at the shoulders and waist.”

Two robotic arms came out of their panels, clamping on Jeremy so that he was stuck to the spot where he was. He took off the neural band and the sounds of the Sexbomb dancers began to enter his brain.

Santos lay on the floor, holding his bleeding ankle. He was limping, trying to stand up and thinking of all the things that he would do to Jeremy once he got his hands on him.

Jeremy used his subconscious to drive back the Sexbomb assault, and with those few seconds he rammed his neural band into the shield energy regulator, causing the shield to malfunction.

The shield went dead and the broken glass was the first thing to be sucked out by the vacuum of space. Next went all the small loose matter in the room. Santos tried to grab hold of something, but the pull of space was too much and he lost his grip.

Jeremy was held fast by the robotic arms, though his own arms flailed as everything rushed out of the main server room. He didn’t even feel the vacuum because by then he had already succumbed to the caramel-like sweetness of surrendering to the Sexbomb dancers.

Of course a few seconds after the shield failed the computer activated and closed the metal panel to the room. It was just enough time to get the main server room cleaned up for the end of the story.

Jeremy woke from a restful sleep in the main server room. The rest of the people became conscious sooner, and thanks to Lena they were 95

able to understand, somewhat, what happened. They couldn’t really fathom what really happened, but they got the idea. And everyone agreed that it was better that way. Like a night of hard drinking when you’re not exactly sure what you did the night before, sometimes it’s just better if you know you were drunk but you don’t get the details.

So you won’t really have to live with what you did.

Waking up, Jeremy found that everyone else looked a lot weirder than him. They looked hung over, drained. But then it seemed right that they look hung over, because when you think about it, hangovers are about being dehydrated and all these people had been dancing without regard for their personal well-being for a pretty long time.

Jeremy wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but it had to be a long time because all files and related files on the Sexbomb dancers were completely removed from the system. They were tattered and beat, and you could tell which of them got a taste of Lena’s Kung-fu moves.

That morning, the only weird thing about Jeremy was his limp.

When he unsealed the main server’s door people were outside waiting for him. And he thought this was extremely weird. He’d never seen people excited to see him. Lena rushed towards him and gave him a hug. This too, he thought, was weird, but rather enjoyable.

Then he popped a stiffy and had to push her away. Just give me a few days he told her.

So you’re thinking all this is weird?

Yeah.

And the generation starship continued its long journey. Things got back to the way they were.

But from then on it wasn’t as much as a drag for Jeremy anymore.

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Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon & Josel Nicolas. It Was A Joke (series) 1.

Digital illustration.

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It Was A Joke (series) 11. Digital illustration.

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It Was A Joke (series) 111. Digital illustration.

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John Alexis B. Balaguer. Horror Vacui.

Photomanipulation.

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Ninna Lebrilla. Night Spirits (series) 1. Pen and ink. 5 x 6.5 in.

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Night Spirits (series) 2. Pen and ink. 5 x 6.5 in.

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Night Spirits (series) 3.Pen and ink. 5 x 6.5 in.

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Pilar Gonzalez. It's All in Your Head, Psyche.

Mixed media on canvas. 9.5 x 11.8 in.

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Jude Buendia. deletion [don’t tell anyone i do this]. Photomanipulation.

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Corinne Victoria F. Garcia. memories of the blue room (diptych).

Mixed media (watercolor, acrylic paint, ink, gold leaf). 9 x 12 in.

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Pie Tiausas. Sobre.

Zine. Digital illustration.

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Carl Lorenz G. Cervantes. Abandon All Hope.

Zine. 105 x 108 mm.

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Cat Aquino (3 AB Literature-English & BFA Creative Writing) Cat is a writer and a collage artist from Manila. She is a former bookstore employee and the current Associate Editor of Heights Ateneo. She dreams of having enough time to write stories about women and monsters. bit.ly/MarginaliaBlog Carissa Natalia Baconguis (4 BFA Creative Writing) “Apir tayo, Sumakit ang ulo ko.”

- Ancient proverb Si Carissa Natalia Baconguis ay estudyante ng Creative Writing at ang kasalukuyang Katuwang na Patnugot para sa Bagwisang Filipino ng heights Ateneo (2018-2019). Marami siyang mga palayaw. Berde ang kulay ng kanyang buhok ngayon.

Maraming salamat sa inyong suporta.

John Alexis B. Balaguer (AB Communication, minor in Creative Writing 2012) Lex is currently finishing his MA in Art Studies in UP Diliman. He was a fellow in the first Ateneo Heights Artist’s Workshop (AHAW) in 2010 and received the Loyola School’s Award for the Arts for Illustration in 2012. He currently works at Ayala Museum as a writer and researcher.

Jamil Baung Si Jamil Baung ay isang feelingerong manunulat. Lumalabas naman sa pagsusulat niya ang kanyang feelings. Naghahanap pa rin siya ng trabaho kung saan maaaring ipagkakikitaan ang kanyang pagsusulat.

Ayun.

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Christian Jil R. Benitez (Kagawaran ng Filipino) Hinirang bilang Makata ng Taon 2018, si Christian Benitez ay nagtapos ng AB-MA Panitikang Filipino sa Pamantasang Ateneo de Manila, kung saan siya kasalukuyang nagtuturo ng panitikan at kritisismo. Nailathala ang kanyang mga akda sa softblow, Diagram, Kritika Kultura, at iba pang mga dyornal sa loob at labas ng bansa.

Nakatira siya sa Rizal.

Jude Buendia (2 AB Development Studies) “You still make sense to me.” –Vance Joy, “Mess is Mine” Christian Paul I. Camposano (MA LIT-FIL-I) Si Christian Paul I. Camposano ay guro sa pampublikong paaralan sa Marikina at kasalukuyang kumukuha ng MA Literature (Filipino) sa Pamantasang Ateneo de Manila.

Carl Lorenz G. Cervantes (BS Psychology 2015) Carl Cervantes is an actor-host, artist, and zine-maker. After graduating, he has appeared in various TV shows and commercials. He also creates zines for sale.

Instagram Profiles Personal: @ginoongcervantes Art: @cerebralepitaph Poetry: @sanktasomero Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon (AB Communication 2017) Marguerite Alcazaren de Leon graduated from ADMU in 2007 with a degree in AB Communication. She received the Mulry Award for Literary Excellence and the LS Awards for English Fiction that same year. She came out with her first short fiction collection, People in Panic, in 2015, and continues to write and publish stories independently. She works at Rappler.

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Corinne Victoria F. Garcia (BFA Information Design 2018) Corinne Garcia is a Fine Arts graduate who has since been working on her visual art practise full-time. Her visual & written works have been previously published in Heights Ateneo folios, and exhibited in the Puón Tadiar Library. She enjoys the chirping of Golden-bellied Fly eaters in the morning. Her artworks can be viewed on instagram.com/cuckoographs.

Pilar Gonzalez (2 BFA Creative Writing) “If every porkchop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hotdogs.”

— Greg Universe Pilar is a self-proclaimed professional dog hugger. When she’s not overthinking, she spends her time either drawing, reading, or writing.

She loves combining writing and the art, expressing her thoughts and ideas through visual narratives like comics and animatics. She loves film, particularly through the medium of animation, and aspires to work in the industry one day.

Art Portfolio: https://bit.ly/2J509lz Blog: https://bit.ly/2NTkRUh Carljoe Javier (Fine Arts Department) Carljoe Javier wrote “The Day the Sexbomb Dancers Came” a really long time ago, and has since then published books of fiction and essays, written and edited comics, and tried his hand at a lot of other writing. He was the Business Manager of UST Publishing House, the Deputy Director for Marketing of the U.P. Press, and the Managing Editor who helped relaunch Anino Comics. He is currently the Chief Operating Officer of Puma Public Productions, a podcasting and audio production startup.

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Ninna Lebrilla (5 BFA Information Design) “Why can’t we give love that one more chance?”

—Queen and David Bowie, “Under Pressure” cargocollective.com/nnnlll @nnnlll.ig Gabrielle Leung (5 BS Physics) “A love of self or of God which does not issue forth in justice for the least of their neighbors is a farce.” —Fr. Pedro Arrupe

Nathan Myles Lim (2 AB Economics) “I don’t understand why people would want to get rid of pigeons.

They don’t bother no one.” — Mike Tyson Takin up EC. Likes pencils (Mongol No. 2’s please), the Holy Bible, Fridays, the UN, Bob Dylan, and bubblegum ice cream. Dislikes un-cash-money folk, window-shopping, K-Pop, Social Justice Warriors™, parmesan cheese, and Adolf Hitler.

Josel Nicolas A graduate of the University of Sto. Tomas, Josel Nicolas has been making comics since 2009. He edited Piko, a children’s anthology of comics, as well as GBCCC, an underground comics anthology. He is also the creator of Windmills, an autobiographical comic, and has worked on Erik Matti’s Buy Bust and other projects.

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Janelle Paris (AB Communication 2017) “And all along the highway, there's a tiny whispering sound Saying I could find you in the dark of any town But all that I am hearing in the poem of my mind Are silent twisted words finding their way in every line” — Maggie Rogers, “Back In My Body” Janelle currently works as a researcher/writer for The Most Biased Media Network in the country. They have lawsuits against them but they’re doing fine. She lives in Taft, Manila, which may well be a different country. She wants you to watch Fleabag, a BBC show by the amazing Phoebe Waller-Bridge; she will not stop talking about this show. She’s doing okay.

Allan Popa (Kagawaran ng Filipino) Si Allan Popa ay nagtuturo ng Panitikan at Pagsulat sa Ateneo de Manila University. Awtor siya ng sampung aklat ng mga tula kabilang na ang Damagan (UST Publishing House, 2018), at Narkotiko at Panganorin (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2018). Ginawaran na siya ng Philippines Free Press Literary Award at Manila Critics Circle National Book Award.Nagtapos siya ng MFA in Writing sa Washington University in Saint Louis at Ph.D. in Literature sa De La Salle University.

Carl Matthew D. Rodriguez (2 BFA Creative Writing) Author of the children’s book The World, My World, In My Eyes (published in 2016 by Bookmark, Inc.), Matt has been trying to write since high school, hoping to pursue a career with it through the BFA CW course. Although more accustomed to writing in English, he has been trying to develop his Filipino by experimenting more with works in his mother tongue. He has no idea how to do bio-notes though. “…ang hindi ko alam, hindi ko inaakalang alam ko.” —“Apologia” ni Sokrates (Mga Sinaunang Griyego ni Roque Ferriols, SJ) 124

Pie Tiausas (4 BFA Information Design) Maraming pangarap pero maraming pero.

Chaela Tiglao (5 BS Psychology) For Toby and Rhys.

Kenneth Yu (BS Management 1990) Kenneth Yu is a reading-advocate, writer, and editor. He is also the founder of Philippine Genre Stories (philippinegenrestories.com), one of the first—if not the first—genre serial magazines and websites in the Philippines. His own stories have been published both locally and abroad. This story, “Cherry Clubbing,” won third place at the 3rd Fully Booked Graphic Fiction Awards, and has been anthologized in “The Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards Prose Anthology” (Fully Booked, Manila), “D.O.A.: Extreme Horror Anthology” (Blood Bound Books, USA), and “Flesh: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology” (Buku Fixi, Malaysia). He makes his home in San Juan City, Metro Manila, with his wife and two children. He graduated from Ateneo de Manila University in 1990.

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Errata In heights 66.1, a section from Joshua Uyheng’s poem, “Original Justice”, was cut.

After “A creature born...” should have been followed by: “and reborn into your avarice. Did I create you?

There was a sense in which

I believed in such relations—one body

nestled in the other, one body content with this” — Carissa Natalia Baconguis’ poem, “Kung Paano Ito Isasalin”, was meant to be published in heights 66.1.

The heights editorial board would like to apologize for the aforementioned oversight.

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Pasasalamat Fr. Jose Ramon T. Villarin, sj at ang Office of the President Dr. Maria Luz C. Vilches at ang Office of the Vice President for the Loyola Schools Dr. Roberto Conrado Guevara at ang Office of the Associate Dean for Student Affairs Dr. Josefina D. HofileĂąa at ang Office of the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Dr. Jonathan Chua at ang Office of the Dean, School of Humanities Dr. Isabel Pefianco Martin at ang English Department Mr. Martin V. Villanueva at ang Department of Fine Arts Dr. J. Pilapil Jacobo at ang Kagawaran ng Filipino Mr. Allan Popa at ang Ateneo Institute of the Literary Arts and Practices (ailap) Mr. Ralph Jacinto A. Quiblat at ang Office of Student Activities Ms. Marie Joy R. Salita at ang Office of Associate Dean for the Student and Administrative Services Ms. Liberty Santos at ang Central Accounting Office Mr. Regidor Macaraig at ang Purchasing Office Dr. Vernon R. Totanes at ang Rizal Library Ms. Carina C. Samaniego at ang University Archives Ms. Ma. Victoria T. Herrera at ang Ateneo Art Gallery Ms. Yael A. Borromeo at ang AretĂŠ The mvp Maintenance at ang mga Security Personnel Dr. Vincenz Serrano at ang Kritika Kultura Ms. Geming Andrea A. Alonzo, Executive Director of sos clans at Mr. Allan de Vera, President ng Tunay na Alyansa ng Bayan Alay sa Katutubo (tabak Phils) Ms. Michelle Abad at ang The guidon Ms. Jessica Gayo at ang Matanglawin Ang Sanggunian ng Mag-aaral ng Ateneo de Manila, at ang Council of Organizations of the Ateneo At sa lahat ng nagpapanatiling buhay ang panitikan at sining sa komunidad ng Pamantasan ng Ateneo de Manila sa pamamagitan ng patuloy na pagbabahagi ng kanilang mga akda at sa patuloy na pagsuporta sa mga proyekto ng heights

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Patnugutan Editor - in - Chief Martina M. Herras [ab lit (eng) 2020] Associate Editor Catherine Lianza A. Aquino [ab lit (eng)/bfa cw 2021] Managing Editor for External Affairs Jamie Anne B. Gutierrez [ab is 2019] for Internal Affairs Sandra Nicole V. Añonuevo [ab dip ir 2019] for Finance Ryan Gabriel C. Molen [bs lfsci 2019] Art Editor Fernando Miguel U. Lofranco [ab ec 2020] Associate Art Editor Aisha Dominique Q. Causing [ab com 2020] Design Editor Diana F. David [bfa id 2019] Associate Design Editor Justine Gabriella A. Daquioag [bfa id 2020] English Editor Nigel Renzo C. Yu [bs cs dgdd 2021] Associate English Editor Patricia Sarmiento [ab lit (eng) 2020] Filipino Editor Dorothy Claire G. Parungao [bs ch-mse 2020] Associate Filipino Editor Carissa Natalia DT. Baconguis [bfa cw 2019] Production Manager Charles Bernard J. Yuchioco [ab lit (eng) 2021] Associate Production Manager Brianna Louise M. Cayetano [ab com 2021] Heights Online Editor Tamia Gloria F. Reodica [ab com 2021] Associate Heights Online Editor Zoe Arianna T. Andin [ab is 2021]

Head Moderator and Moderator for English Martin V. Villanueva Moderator for Filipino Allan Popa Moderator for Art Yael A . Buencamino Moderator for Design Tanya Lea Francesca M. Mallillin Moderator for Production Enrique Jaime S. Soriano Moderator for Heights Online Regine Miren D. Cabato

Mga Kasapi Art

Zofia Lyne R. Agama, Jude Buendia, Enrico Cruz, Antonio Rafael Florida, Genesis Gamilong, Pilar Gonzalez, Celline Marge Mercado, Aquirine Ong, Jayvee del Rosario, Caitlin Ann Sioson, Yuri Ysabel Tan, Clare Bianca Tantoco, Julienne Uy, Justine Valdez, Katherine Sophia Wong, Dexter L. Yu, Charles Bernard Yuchioco

Design

JJ Agcaoili, Eli Alconis, Liaa Austria, Kat Batara, Jana Codera, Valerie Cobankiat, Enrico Cruz, Casey del Rosario, Pilar Gonzalez, Ninna Lebrilla, Arien M. Lim, Giulia Lopez, Juancho Luna, Anya Nellas, Gabby Segovia, Moira Swann, Tash Parayno

English

Nathan Myles U. Lim, Ariana Gabrielle S. Domingo, Gabrielle Leung, Sophia Bonoan, Elissa Joy C. Ofilada, Ma. Arianne Aleta, Ana Martina R. Nevada, Aleiana Zelin T. Duque, Justine Psyche B.Villanueva, Andy Reysio-Cruz, Tim Yusingco, Mikaela C. Regis, Trishia Fernandez, Mika Alexei G. Tan, Madeleine Sy,Karl Estuart, Michaela Gonzales Tiglao, Miguel Santiago, Lia Pauline P. Paderon, Sofia Ysabel I. Bernedo, Trisha Anne K. Reyes, Danielle Michelle Cabahug, Ignacio Lorenzo C. Villareal

Filipino Paulo Alviar, Winslet Anne Bartolome, Ignacio Bunag,

Reesha Marion, Cata-al, Alyssa Gewell Llorin,

Cymon Kayle Lubangco, Jose Alfonso Ignacio Mirabueno,

Jelmer Jon Ochoa, Mikaela Adrianne Regis, Nina Lyan Romero,

Aubreylaine Salazar, Maria Isabel Santiago, Loreben Tuquero, Josemaria Villareal Production

Hanna Mabel Ypil, Alicia Pavia, Seph Tamayo, Sam Arnaldo, Robert Kwan Laurel, Hanna Alyne Ypil, Daniel Manguerra, Luigi Reyes, Alexis Ferreras, Julia Abella, Jacinta Maria Jocson, Pauline Baterna, Shelby O. Parlade, Ma. Camille Alessandra J. De Luna, Louise Dimalanta, Giane Ysabell Butalid, Justin Barbara, Zianne Agustin, Anicia Guanlao, Cesar Miguel V. Fabro, Louis Anton Dominic M. Molina, Sofia Andrea K. Guanzon, Rich Labao, Justine Psyche Villanueva

Heights Online

Ticia Almazan, Marianne Antonio, Angela Arguelles, Billy Caluag, Julia Carpio, Andrea Gerada, Micah Avry Guiao, Luisa C. Jocson, Hazel Lam, Ice Macatangay, Maiko Aira Ng, Kayla Ocampo, Aga Olympia, Aletha Payawal, Carla Reyes, Arnold Manuel Rillorta, Ryo Rodas, Ada Tabanao, Miguel Tarrosa, Sam Wong

24th ateneo heights writers workshop february 23-25, 2019 Balay Indang, Cavite Panelists Mark Anthony Cayanan Conchitina Cruz Allan N. Derain Gabriela Lee Christine Lao Allan Popa Jerry Respeto Vincenz Serrano Beverly Siy Martin Villanueva Fellows Alvy Alviar Emmanuel Lacadin Gewell Llorin Camille Ong Marty Nevada Chesca Palattao Aisha Rallonza Mikaela Regis Nico Santana Miguel Santiago Workshop Directors Cat Aquino Sophia Bonoan

Workshop Deliberation Committee Christian Jil Benitez Nicko Caluya Catherina Dario Jerome Flor Carlo Flordeliza Jonnel Inojosa Jasmine Nikki Paredes Stephanie Shi Workshop Team JJ Agcaoili, Oey Mirabueno, Patricia Sarmiento [programs and logistics] Gabrielle Leung, Michaela Gonzales Tiglao [online] Finance Hazel Lam Ryan Gabriel C. Molen Design Jana Codera Diana David Pilar Gonzalez Workshop Moderator and Head Moderator Martin M. Villanueva