In protest
THIS COLUMN will be happy. It will revolt against itself. The words will slick on red lipstick; the verbs will step into high heels. Sentences will saunter barelegged in a blackout, will swing up to the painted green top of a damp table to dance in the blinking light of mobile phones just before the batteries die. Punctuations will boogie to graffiti and bop to vodka, will dance until the heels slip on spilled ice and a sky the color of Juan Ponce Enrile’s hair opens in needle-lashing rage.
It is July in Manila, where the weather is manic-depressive; the World Cup is a national obsession without a national team, and a news channel gives up its much-loved resident jackass for the sake of the national interest. Mel Gibson has announced he is a racist. An octopus gets police protection. The world unites in agreement over the glorious Spanish ass. In the tradition of Tom Robbins, because this column is written on the wings of a hangover without structure or thesis to hold it together, I offer my prayers now to Elmer, the Greek god of glue.
Understand that this is written under the influence, only that the influences contradict, particularly the alcohol and the bottles of energy drinks and the opinion of this nation’s last living hippie. My ponytailed mentor now mourns the murder by political intrigue of his Pollyanna, shakes his head over the loss of one more writer into the convenient pit of casual cynicism. In the bar where we sat with drunken poets on a Friday night, the smoke stung the eye, the singer crooned of love blowing in the wind, and the scotch-swilling captain with the LeBron James obsession demanded lightness. Write of raindrops, he said, and roses. Write about friendship and football and fried chicken wings. Write light as a feather, write happy, write like you’re sixteen.
It is difficult to be told to write lightly when your consciousness is dependent on a haze of Anhydrous Caffeine and Sodium Benzoate and Aminoethyl Sulfonic Acid, that and the fact you have no idea what lightness now involves. Senator Miriam Santiago sues an airline for the moral damages of waiting, the weather bureau blames a storm for behaving like a storm, a female toady to the corrupt (she of the electric blue and leopard print scarves) now claims to be the most eligible official to punish thieves and scoundrels, and a preacher’s son has been told by the high court that being young at heart does not quite cut it when it comes to representing the hope of the nation in the lower house.
That all these have taken on the grapey stain of Kool-aid purple farce may be of interest to those of us whose lives are tied to the odd workings of the state, but that is not the point of this column. That there is no point is beside the question, the point is only not to make that point.
I ask forgiveness from those who have read this far and expected depth – it is a baseless expectation, and one that needs correction. I am, after all, a girl in her early twenties with a leather fixation, who includes among concerns of firewires and monitors and wi-fi routers the vital question of where to put a piercing the bosses will not notice. Pretending maturity is a difficult undertaking, especially when you make quiet deals with fairies and turn around three times to keep bad luck away, when you believe, reality and history notwithstanding, that Prince Charming will eventually come rampaging into your story on a souped-up Harley to pound at your door, and when you hope, against all reason, that Triumph lingerie will someday reverse itself to end its discrimination against the smaller end of the cup-size continuum.
And so to lightness. This column is in pajamas, checkered and blue with yellow bunny rabbits. This column gets haircuts from ex-boxers; this column wears four-inch heels. This column can survive crashes into steel poles with only minimum damage to the pole. This column sings in the rain. This column will subsidize condoms if the universe will subsidize its life.
This column can see stars out of the balcony and occasionally has hot water in the shower. This column has seen both John Lloyd Cruz and the Duke of Buckingham, and will trade the Duke’s handshake for a photo with Lloydie. This column believes plagiarism is relative, and that anonymity has no balls. This column is about Dear Darla pizza and cans of Sprite Zero and taking pictures of the fat white moon while waiting for the truth to appear on the inside of a napkin ring. This column will trade cows for magic beans and will assassinate ellipses wherever they hide. This column raises a toast, to a barefoot brown gypsy with a painted butterfly on her ankle and a smile so sweet that kittens and writers and the odd dreadlocked diver all fall a little in love.
This column is in revolution. This column will tattoo the letter “s.” This column will buy the cheapest of cheap knee-high boots and will take a bikini to Hawaii. This column is glad to see a mayor in Manila and a rebel dispensing justice. This column will give yellow a chance. This column has hope. This column believes in sacrifice and citizenship, but protests that Ricky Carandang is just too much to give up in the name of patriotism.
This column will ignore the half-naked filmmaker, who justifies arriving late with the announcement that he comes from the future. This column is about words, and language, and the swirl of sentences, about boys who wait outside locked bathrooms with glasses of water, about lost girls and the people who look for them, about gentlemen called Madame and fathers who send pink Valentine roses to their daughters.
This column will lose its temper and find it at six in the evening in the freezer with the last hot fudge sundae. This column will wait for the Irish postcard. This column will go to Book Sale; this column is lucky; this column is tipsy; this column believes, this column will buy pepper spray in defense against egos that go ping in the night.
In a universe of many columns, this column is glad to be a part. This column will be happy; it will revolt against itself. It will slick on red lipstick, step into high heels, toss politics out the window, and stare at Spanish ass on a borrowed TV.
This is this column’s one truth: the only way to live is to live alive. This column may not be a column today, but right now, this column is mine.
