MEDITATIONS OF A PISS ARTIST

by Menchu Aquino Sarmiento

2002 by Copper Sturgeon

JOJO was idly tracing arcs and swirls on the rooftop of the Faculty Center. He was alone and his urine fi led slightly on the pleasantly warm concrete with the hiss of rain. As in the unforeseen wor!ings of mimetic magic" there did then arise from the heat#swollen earth" the $apors of a slight precipitation to come. Jo%o felt triumphant" a personal sense of accomplishment. Maybe he was some !ind of shaman" and he didn&t e$en !now it' a still untapped power which was his by right of his (ndo#Malay cultural heritage and through the di$ine wor!ings of that mythical hole in the s!y" the same one through which go$ernment subsidi ed psychics during the fabulary Marcos regime had disco$ered supernatural powers streamed forth. Maybe it was because his was an astrological water sign" )isces" that he could ma!e water with such s!ill" channeling through well#considered sphincter and priapic muscle control" the purposeful and selecti$e release of his electromagnetically charged bodily fluids" delicately balancing the rise and ebb of ions and protons in the atmosphere. A few minor ad%ustments and with enough practice" he could raise up a storm or e$en a light summer dri le. He bestowed a genial benediction upon the acacia trees whose susurrant lea$es and splayed" interlacing blac! branches always made him grateful he had gotten into the *iliman campus.

Another name for acacia was raintree. Miss Farrin" his third year high school +nglish teacher in Masbate had taught him that. She had as!ed him to read a sentimental lo$e story about rain trees set in ,aguio. Jo%o had been aware that she was watching him read all the while with a moist" intent earnestness as though she had handed him a treasured memento" a part of her soul" and now wanted to see how he would recei$e it. -ith a la y spitefulness" he&d told her that acacia timber was also !nown as mon!ey pod wood. A hint of pained distaste creased her perpetually an.ious features. (t was as though he had profaned a shrine" so he had considerately added that he li!ed the name raintree better. She had tremulously pronounced him sensiti$e" telling him that she sensed in him from the start a special $ibration and had as!ed him to wal! her home as she had all the fi$e sections& final quarter e.ams and reports to carry. (t had rained" %ust li!e in the story they&d read" and he had to wait it out in the little room she rented behind the pro$incial bus station. After helping her arrange the piles of test papers and boo! reports according to section and in alphabetical order" they had sat side by side on her army surplus cot with the faded" blue#flowered Chinese cotton co$erlet and the line of troll dolls and stuffed toys. /eil 0oung was wailing away on her portable audiocassette player and she had leaned gently against him" her frail body redolent of -rigley&s Spearmint 1um and Johnson&s ,aby Cologne and told him of all sorts of insights she&d had into his character that he had ne$er e$en reali ed were there. 2hen for lac! of anything better to say or do in response to her utterances" and wanting to see besides how she" an older woman and a figure of authority" would react to such o$ertures" he had boldly grabbed her" suddenly turning and landing so hea$ily on her" he practically squee ed the breath out of her as he pressed her against the thin mattress. 2he bedsprings shrie!ed while his smooth large hands cupped her bony buttoc!s through her nylon bi!ini panties. Sus ginooArru-uy! Agu-uy! Miss Farrin had inter%ected" forgetting the carefully enunciated +nglish that she had culti$ated all those years since she&d been a 3otary scholar. And that had been Jo%o&s first time" when he was %ust a boy of fifteen" and he was proud of it. 2hey had done it three times that afternoon. He was proudest though of not ha$ing had to pay for it and that it was with a woman who was eight years older" had been baccalaureated in a Manila uni$ersity and passed the go$ernment licensure e.ams. (t was as though being with her would allow some of her accomplishments to pass through in some weird form of capillary action into his own underachie$ing being. Miss Farrin ga$e him money to ta!e a tricycle home" fussing o$er him with a re$erent and diffident tenderness that made him want to laugh.

2hat was also the first time he&d been !issed on the ears. He didn&t li!e that part" and had recoiled at her tongue lathering warm sali$a along the ridges and hollows of his ears. 2he ne.t wee!" Miss Farrin bought him two 2#shirts from the town viajera, genuine ,ossinni and 1iordano" and blac! hightop Con$erse snea!ers. 2hey had gone on seeing each other for a while until she left to ta!e up post#graduate courses at F+4. Miss Farrin had written to him hopefully se$eral times during his senior year and sent him more 2#shirts. She must ha$e heard that he was in Manila" too" but he had ne$er gotten in touch with her there and e.pected that one day" when he was home on $acation" he would learn that she&d married" or e$en better" gotten the teaching position she&d dreamed of in 1uam or ,runei. On hindsight" Miss Farrin&s %udgment may ha$e been as good a reason as any for Jo%o&s decision to be an artist" besides not being smart enough to get into one of those quota courses on the 4) College Admission 2ests. He had gotten in on a certificate course but had planned to shift to a bachelor&s degree program later. *uring the talent test" they&d been as!ed to draw a human figure in charcoal" a detail from a calendar reproduction of 5una&s Spolarium. He&d noticed the college dean staring intently at him and had insolently spread his legs" ad%usted his crotch and stared right bac!. 2he old man&s mouth had made a little 6o7 of schoolgirlish surprise. 5ater" all a#dither with a$uncular good will" he&d offered to gi$e Jo%o a pri$ate scholarship. Jo%o accepted. He had been quite an innocent then. 2he only gay men in Masbate had been" as e.pected" hairdressers and dressma!ers and the ,oy Scout Master. He&d ne$er e.pected to meet one in such an e.alted position and was fran!ly curious. ,esides" the dean always made it a point to be seen with young girls at discos and to be photographed bussing some high society lo$ely at an artsy e$ent. 2he summer before that freshman schoolyear" Jo%o had gone with the dean and his current fa$orite" Ferdie *anao" to one of those gay Santacru ans in Malabon. Ferdie" a somewhat pudgy bemoustached mesti o who loo!ed li!e a Super Mario ,rother 8he was also an ad$ertising model9 and had tried to paint li!e Anita Magsaysay#Ho" had chattered cheerfully about this up and coming couturier who had a hea$y crush on him. *ean ,atumbacal&s s!in rash shone through the layers of his ma!eup foundation under the acidic gleam of multicolored incandescent bulbs strung along the streets. Se$eral times" he discreetly rubbed his paunch against Jo%o&s rump" and %ust to tease him" Jo%o had wriggled e$er so slightly bac!. 2hat was as far as he went for now. He belie$ed there was integrity that on principle" he would ne$er do it with another man although he en%oyed their unabashed admiration. Otherwise" he was bored. 2he spectacle of these urban queens with their well#defined" o$erarched eyebrows and tricolored

hairdos" demurely parading in clouds of lime and fuchsia organ a and ruffles" or blac! satin sheathes and tulle was disheartening. (t was so safe" so predictable and pro$incial" loo!ing for all the world li!e a Masbate cotillion. 2his was his first outing with the beau monde and it was li!e he had ne$er left home. Jo%o wasn&t e$en supposed to be up on the Faculty Center roof. 2oo many horny !ids and frea!s were using it to ma!e out" to drin! tequila or $od!a and to smo!e grass" so the ,lue 1uards had hammered a waist#high wooden barrier at the foot of the stairs. ,ut so what:there was no door at the top anyway:it had long been ripped off its hinges: so e$eryone %ust climbed o$er that practically useless fence. 3ight now though" it was still broad daylight" so he had the place all to himself. He&d %ust been to a screening of a French documentary about that American e.pressionist artist Jac!son )olloc! who&d !illed himself way bac! in the fifties. Jo%o wondered why Filipino artists so rarely committed suicide. A deficit of angst; Offhand" he couldn&t thin! of e$en one. On one of the walls of the Faculty Center roof dec!" someone" probably a colegiala, had scribbled some lines from Saint +.upery&s !"e #ittle $rince in a wa$ery" sensiti$e colored chal! script. Miss Farrin had been gaga o$er !"e #ittle $rince and had been disappointed that he hadn&t shared this passion. She&d insisted that e$erything in the slender little boo! had some deeper esoteric symbolic meaning" including the three $olcanoes on the 5ittle )rince&s planet. 2he one that was dormant" she interpreted to be his se. dri$e. Jo%o couldn&t remember what the other two were supposed to be and wondered why it was e$en important that they be about anything. 2hose academics who were fore$er analy ing and categori ing and setting limits and gradations on thought amused him. 2he integrity of their footnotes and their bibliographies left him cold. He had no qualms about stealing other people&s ideas if he could. He had no respect for intellectual property" especially not 2hird -orld intellectual property. He wondered how someone from Masbate could be such a snob and was amused by his own presumptuousness. Jo%o tapped the head of his dic! e.pertly and the last tiny drops spattered close to his foot li!e a signature. -ith insouciant grace" he ipped himself up. He had gi$en up wearing underwear because it sa$ed him money" was less laundry for him to do and more of a turn on for some girls. (t wor!ed for him that he resembled a bulol icon with his angular features and the glints of $erdigris in his s!in" an effect he&d since learned to emphasi e with layers of brass sla$e bracelets that reached midway up his sinewy forearms" rings strategically pierced through one earlobe" and tattoos around his wrist. A real chic! boy"

agreed the guys who had called themsel$es S.M.+.1.M.A.: Ang Sama"an ng mga %goy at &ago na 'atitigas ang Ari( &inayuma mo )ata, p*re, they %o!ed with a trace of en$y and admiration. He ne$er had to pay for it and e$en had to a$oid them when they waited for him" unin$ited at his dorm. Since Miss Farrin" there had been more girls than he could count on his fingers and toes. /ot bad for a guy who was not yet eighteen.

AS he left the building" Jo%o mulled o$er a pro%ect proposal to co$er the entire rooftop of the Faculty Center with the bodily fluids of one hundred Filipino artists in celebration of the Centennial" sort of li!e a liquid Cristo" that 1ree! guy who he&d heard got Fortune <== corporations and go$ernments to gi$e him a lot of money %ust to wrap things in tarpaulins or parachute sil!. ,odily fluids being as ephemeral and transient as time and ser$ing as a metaphor for the corresponding illusory nature of our freedom and nationhood" which were li!ewise ephemeral and transient" e$er changing and impermanent and all that" along with some !ind of profound statement about political and artistic consciousness in the 2hird -orld being as ephemeral and transient as bodily fluids etc. He %ust needed to find the right *errida#ish:or was that Foucault;:diction for it and hoped Mr. ,eltran the art theory professor had the right te.ts. 2he guy in the mo$ie had piously di$ided )olloc!&s wor! into style periods' le drip" le dribble and le splatter" and he really meant it. 2he French are so serious about e$erything especially high culture. A $ery attracti$e man" )olloc!" Jo%o decided and wondered if it was true that he had swung both ways. Ferdie *ayao" being half#white himself" claimed that although Caucasian penises were generally larger" they were not as stiff as Oriental ones. He had preened prettily before Jo%o during their last outing" when they went s!innydipping at )ansol. Jo%o had loo!ed on politely" with detached curiosity. He wondered if piss" pu!e and spit would pass for a pro%ect as hallowed as the coming Centennial. 2o enhance the whole pro%ect" he would put in a bac!ground of ethnic music and maybe some tribal dancers. 2hen he could call it a multimedia e.perience. Once he&d as!ed Mr. ,eltran what the whole art thing was all about and he&d stared coldly bac! at him" li!e a bilious fish through his rimless o$al reading glasses then rumbled deep in his narrow scholar&s chest" his rounded shoulders hunching up aggressi$ely' 6-hat do you thin! it&s about" Cru ; (&m sic! of all these pretentious pseudo intellectuals who read art re$iews then pass off the opinions in them as

if they were their own. -hat about it" Cru ; -hy don&t you tell me what you thin! it&s all about;7 6-ell" sir" ( guess (&m %ust another pseudo#intellectual myself"7 Jo%o had softly said" and he really meant it. He was not insulted. 2hat sort of got Mr. ,eltran off balance" li!e by a mental %iu%itsu tric!. Jo%o was not about to get into a discussion with a guy who probably %er!ed off to Art +e,s. He felt that it was a really >en e.perience" e.cept that if he could say it" then it probably wasn&t" and he probably was not >en either. ,ut it was good %ust the same to ha$e e$erybody slapping his bac! and gi$ing him high fi$es after the class" and saying 6O!ay -a, pare, li!e he&d done something really heroic. -hat a lot of shit that was but still !ind of fun anyway. (n one instance that was meant to parta!e of an unaccustomed confidence" Mr. ,eltran had told his class in his gruff" somewhat muffled $oice which was his normal way of spea!ing how he had been turned on to painting by those photo essays in #i.e maga ine about the /ew 0or! art scene. 2hat had been %ust after the Second -orld -ar. 2here were no glossy art maga ines in Manila then. (t was not unli!e seeing the world by the light of dead stars and Jo%o had found it all quite touching. (t reminded him of how it had been for him in Masbate" how he had rented used boo!s and remaindered maga ines and had de$oured 2? shows at the only home with a satellite dish in those years before cable 2?. He tried to imagine Mr. ,eltran as a young man li!e himself in the throes of a %ust re$ealed passion" albeit an intellectual one and only $icariously e.perienced from the pages of a pictorial wee!ly. Or had Mr. ,eltran as a young man been as turgid and stultified as Mr. ,eltran the old man" parsing his opinions" measuring his reactions" calculating their correctness against a standard greater and higher than any !nown of in Masbate" or e$en Metro Manila for that matter. 6(t was this whole idea of flatness:the flatness of the actual painting as well as the flatness of the mechanical means used to reproduce it" meaning the photograph"7 ,eltran had tried to e.plain himself. He always seemed dri$en by the need to hypothesi e" to formulate a theory which was why they must ha$e had him teaching art theory anyway. He was made for it. +$ery M#-#F" Jo%o came into the classroom to find paragraphs culled from art critics" painsta!ingly printed out in neat bloc! letters on the chal! board. 5i!e a mother pelican feeding its young" Mr. ,eltran had thoughtfully distilled and regurgitated these for their edification. 2hey should ha$e been more grateful to him and tried to understand him instead of speculating on his se.ual orientation and gossiping about his ostensible mates.

2his girl that Jo%o really li!ed also too! the Art 2heory class. He always came in after her so that he could sit in the row behind her" a little to the side where he could watch her profile" the soft cur$e of her slender young arms. He had to !eep his s!etchpad or a %ac!et on his lap because sometimes %ust loo!ing at her made him hard. Ma!ati girl" he called her in pri$ate. 2hat was his way of saying that she was e$erything fine and abo$e him. She wasn&t e$en from Ma!ati but Jo%o %ust thought that she had real style and class %ust the same. Funny" but her friend Aenid ,lanco who had won the Miss )hotogenic title in one of the past year&s beauty pageants thought it was she whom Jo%o li!ed. She assumed that all heterose.ual men desired her abo$e all other women. She was from Silay and was always $olunteering details about her pri$ileged upbringing. For one thing" the ser$ants in their household outnumbered the family members. 60ou !now" it&s so different where ( come from. -e ha$e three coo!s because my mom and dad are gourmets. 2hen there&s a gardener for the orchids and a gardener for the lawn and the other ornamentals"7 she said in her irritating singsong. +$ery now and then she would pause e.pectantly" waiting for the usual e.clamations of polite awe. She !new that most of them did not e$en ha$e maids. She made no secret of it that she was drawn to what she saw as feral and lumpen in Jo%o. She thrilled at the contrast he presented to the somewhat soft e.clusi$e school boys with their puerile speech. Ma!ati 1irl was genuinely nice to tal! to. Jo%o had ne$er heard her start a sentence with Shit@ the way the other girls say it with the short 6e7 sound in the middle which he found especially contri$ed and irritating. She didn&t punctuate her sentences with Fuc! in that coy and petulant way the other girls did when they wanted you to thin! they were cool. Ma!ati 1irl laughed at the stories and %o!es that the other guys would tell:stories that would gross out the other girls who had all these hang#ups about their being colegialas. She lac!ed the con$oluted prudishness that afflicted most. -hen the Figure *rawing class had to submit their life#si e nude self#portraits" she was the only one who did hers with full frontal nudity. +$en the boys in class coyly mas!ed their genitalia with carefully placed hands or a bent leg. Jo%o felt his insides churning as he loo!ed at the way she saw herself. She was so honest" she had drawn herself with one breast slightly smaller and higher than the other" and the lotus labia of her tender pudenda clearly outlined through the fine fronds of her pubic hair. Ma!ati 1irl tal!ed to %ust about anyone. 2here was a coAo !id who was so in lo$e with her" he would come all the way from *e la Salle to *iliman in his rich father&s ,eemer %ust to loo! at her and to tell her

about all the shit he was ta!ing and the sin!hole that his life had become. Jo%o seethed whene$er he saw them together" Ma!ati 1irl sitting on the cream colored stone ledge by the library steps" framed by bamboo" santan and hibiscus blooms" li!e a $irgin in a grotto" and the %un!y standing a little below her" leaning on the ledge" loo!ing longingly up at her. He was telling her how ashamed he was about being so deep into drugs. She listened to him with such a rapt" solemn and gentle loo!" that he had to go and get stoned because she actually made him feel worse about himself. All the metaamphetamines and cough syrup had clogged up his lungs and pitted his nose and chee!s. He sniffed constantly at a mentholated inhaler. She had such perfect s!in and clear" calm eyes that still held that pure" direct loo! of childhood. She hardly wore any ma!eup. 2hat poor %un!y %ust wanted her to stay pure fore$er. He ne$er touched her. Jo%o was almost certain that she was a $irgin and the thought was alarmingly poignant.

A C3O-* was milling about the College of Fine Arts lobby. (t was odd because artists generally do not mill. (f anything" there was a customary desultoriness" a muted fragmentary quality:almost li!e single#stop animation:about their mo$ements. 2hen Jo%o heard' ,enny 1ra%eda had !illed himself. (t %ust blew his mind. 2here he had been" %ust a scant half hour ago" mulling o$er why so few Filipino artists were suicidal and now one of his classmates had actually %umped off the top floor of the )alma Hall and left some of his teeth embedded in the asphalt below. ,oboy %ncanta/o, the aged madman of Mt. Ma!iling" was down there now" trying to pry ,enny&s bicuspids out of the hot stic!y blac!top with an etching stylus. He wanted to use them for a retablo that he had conceptuali ed as an installation piece. 6Jo%o" you !new him" didn&t you; 0ou were friends"7 it was Ma!ati 1irl actually tal!ing to him. Jo%o felt a rush. (t was one thing to piss and con%ure up an afternoon dri le" but this was actual life and death. He nodded. 6He was always !ind of weird.7 he said. (t sounded lame. /ow a Filipino artist was dead" although ,enny wasn&t famous and was barely half#formed as an artist. Actually" Jo%o thought his paintings really suc!ed" no disrespect intended for the dead" not that it would matter to him now anyway" or e$en then" as pig#headed and tasteless as he was. 3easoning that retro was in" ,enny had been into this pattern painting thing" all precious#li!e with the mas!ing taped grids and the airbrushes. ,oring blah blah statements about the qualities of color and light. 2he !ind of stuff you see in the reception rooms of

people who thin! they&re so slic! because they&$e got abstract art" and to go with it all this dar! leather and bright chrome ,auhaus style furniture set against distressed paint finishes" soapstone sculpture" shiny (talian granite tabletops" ony. obelis!s" fau. ionic pillars for pedestals" all for what their decorators hoped was a post#modernist effect. 6( feel so sad for him. Maybe he %ust didn&t ha$e anyone to tal! to" to share his thoughts and feelings with"7 Ma!ati 1irl said" and she really loo!ed li!e she meant it about being sad for him. Jo%o felt his heart going out to her and casually positioned his s!etch pad before his groin. And then again" ,enny was basically a bastard" a real sadist" and e$eryone at the College !new it. +$ery time it rained" he would be down by the lagoon" systematically stomping with his steel#toed boots on the little brown and green frogs that came hopping out of the ran! matted tala"ib. 2hose frogs must ha$e been e$olutionally unprepared for such an unnatural enemy as ,enny because they were so easy to catch and to !ill. 2hey ne$er !new what hit them. ,enny e$en had a pet" a rhesus mon!ey with a belt and chain around its middle. He would swing it around and around way o$er his head while it screeched in wild terror. 2hat tiny emaciated creature was so scared of him that whene$er it saw him coming it would $omit and defecate in mindless panic. Jo%o wondered what would become of the mon!ey now that ,enny was dead. (f he had !nown that in some African pro$inces" they made mon!ey meat into a !ind of tapa, smo!ed or salted and air#dried" what $ile recipe might he ha$e come up with; Just two months ago" ,enny had brought cat meat asa/o siopao to the college on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday. He was mechanically inclined and had made a machine to electroshoc! stray cats so they&d pass out" then he would s!in them ali$e. He&d sniggered o$er his cle$erness as he&d told his disbelie$ing classmates how there really was more than one way to s!in a cat. He&d handstitched the cat fur into a *a$ey Croc!et style cap" e.cept his had three stringy cattails" instead of a fat coons!in one hanging from behind. Some of the fur" he&d made into watercolor paint brushes. On what turned out to be his last birthday" he&d come to school" wearing his cats!in cap and with his cat meat asa/o siopao in a green plastic san/o bag" loo!ing $ery pleased with himself. At least he was decent enough to tell them what was in the siopao. 2he girls were so upset and offended by ,enny that one of them reported him to the Assistant *ean" Miss Caymo. Howe$er" ,enny was per$ersely pleased at getting so much attention on his birthday that he

stapled a Bote. pad to the fly of his blue %eans. He declared that this signified his solidarity with women and his reali ation of the female principle inherent in e$ery man. 2he little provincianas %ust wal!ed past him with a$erted eyes. He ga$e them quite a giggle though in pri$ate and something to tell their friends bac! home about how bad and cra y the Manila boys were. 2hen a hus!y frat guy threatened to ma!e ,enny eat the Bote. pad and push all his cat fur paintbrushes up his ass" so he too! it off that same afternoon. Miss Caymo was at a loss about what to do with him. 2he Bote. pad had been flushed away" and bringing asa/o siopao to school or wearing a fur cap were not causes for disciplinary action. She&d tried to share the 1ospel with ,enny instead belie$ing that he may ha$e been possessed by Satan&s minions. -hen he !illed himself" she was more than con$inced and as!ed the Jesuit priest at the parish office to bless all the premises that ,enny had frequented in his short troubled e.istence in order to ma!e sure that he would not return to haunt them. Miss Caymo was also going to ha$e all the loc!er doors painted o$er as ,enny had co$ered these with poetry fraught with ill feelings and apocalyptic images of death" dismemberment and the coming chastisement. For diminishing the number of starcrossed artists" his death had a !ind of purpose and nobility after all. 6( thin! we should go to the wa!e after classes"7 Ma!ati 1irl now said" loo!ing appealingly at Jo%o. Of course" he would go with her. 60es" let&s"7 echoed Aenid" loo!ing at him" too. (nwardly" Jo%o rolled his eyes" not feeling ready for Aenid %ust then. ,ut still it was a chance to go somewhere with Ma!ati 1irl. Also he was curious to see what ,enny loo!ed li!e after a fall li!e that.

,+//0 was laid out in his high school graduation barong, with his cats!in cap on. 2hey had left the coffin open e$en if he had lost most of his teeth in the fall. Jo%o was ama ed at how ordinary ,enny&s family was' the dad" a ci$il engineer who&d gone to SaudiC the mom" a math and science teacher at an e.clusi$e girls& school" the other three siblings" forgettable and unremar!ably plain. 2hey smiled wanly at their condolences but seemed cheerful enough" if a bit baffled about his sudden death. 2hey seemed to ha$e no idea of what ,en%amin had been really li!e. Only the first page of the guest boo! had any writing still. Miss Caymo had sent a mass card but no one else from the College had been there yet. 2he three of them stood in respectful silence loo!ing at ,enny in repose. Ma!ati 1irl then went to !neel at a pew with her head bowed. She must be praying for poor ,enny. Aenid as!ed Jo%o to stay with her outside while she smo!ed. She was the

most pruriently suggesti$e smo!er Jo%o had e$er seen" continually tossing her head" shifting her hips and arching her nec! bac!ward to call attention to how she had left the top three buttons of her shirt undone. After the wa!e" they decided they&d go to a mo$ie. Aenid ga$e Jo%o some money to get her a !ilo of lan ones from a fruit $endor at the pedestrian flyo$er. She was full of coy gratitude when he returned and acted as though it meant something special and intimate had transpired between them. She too! his arm and placed it around her waist while they wal!ed through the mall" as she giddily swung the bag of lan ones. Jo%o gently disengaged as they stepped onto the escalator" Aenid on the higher step and himself %ust below her. 2hen Aenid turned" and with a melodramatic flip of her pre#3aphaelite curls" lunged at his throat and sho$ed her pointed little tongue in his mouth. He was nearly bowled o$er. 2hey were quite a spectacle" Jo%o stri$ing to !eep his balance as they roc!ed bac! and forth. Aenid had twisted her limbs around his" and entwined her fingers in his hair while the plastic bag of lan ones that she still held went wumpph#wumpph against his nape. He practically had to carry her off the escalator. Ma!ati 1irl loo!ed pu led and stooped to pic! up some of the lan ones that had rolled out of the bag onto the tiles. 2he fruit were brown and bruised from all the e.citement. 6-hat&s the matter with you;7 Jo%o as!ed Aenid" in e.asperation and alarm. Just as abruptly" she composed herself. 2he people sitting on the benches to one side were smir!ing and whispering among themsel$es. 6-hat are you loo!ing at;7 she tartly as!ed them 6*on&t you ha$e anything better to do with your li$es than to mind other people&s business;7 2hen grabbing Ma!ati 1irl&s arm" she wal!ed on in quiet dignity to the theater with Jo%o following behind them. 2hey each paid for their own tic!ets. /o one spo!e throughout the mo$ie. Jo%o&s only consolation was that Ma!ati 1irl sat in between Aenid and him. After a while" he was able to discreetly press his leg against hers and she did not draw away. (t was less than perfect. (f Aenid e$er came on to him again" he guessed he might gi$e her a tumble. She was a good !isser" after all. Also" her father was an "acien/ero and she did ha$e a beauty contest title and that was worth some points. (t would be a shallow triumph getting to her first. ,efore that Chinese casino operator who was nearly twice her age got to her anyway. Her mother was trying to di$ersify and e.pand their financial interests through marriage now that the sugar trade was down.

2o ma!e up for the escalator scene" Jo%o offered to ta!e Aenid home. Her eyes brimmed with tears but she let him. 2hey rode the ta.i in silence to her condo. She !ept her arms around him all throughout the ride" with her hands clasped as though she were praying and her face pressed against his chest. Occasionally she mumbled what did sound li!e praying. His hands rested limply on her hip. (n bed with Aenid" he pictured Ma!ati 1irl as he usually did e$en when he was with some other girl and felt a little weepy. (nstead" he banged away e$en harder so that beneath him" Aenid arched her bac!" clawed and bit him. She wailed despairingly that she really lo$ed him" no matter what happened. -hen it was o$er" he shut his eyes" trying to imagine what he would do if he had Ma!ati 1irl with him instead of her best friend' how he would hold her" how she would loo! up at him as she lay in the croo! of his arm. 2hey would laugh about nearly nothing in that irrationally happy and secret way that only those who are $ery much in lo$e do. Mostly" they&d %ust !iss. D EF==G by Menchu Aquino Sarmiento
2his story has pre$iously appeared in print as 6Arcs and Swirls.7