Diary 17

The jeepneys were either filled with passengers or were laden with whatever cargo they were meant to carry in the early morning. I waited along the lonely road of T.Kalaw thinking, just thinking. I was feeling something that I could describe as intimacy with the night. I was feeling like a vampire, someone who got so used to the dark that he eventually fell in love with it. For the night can become better than a human friend. It can make you mysterious, or dangerous or vulnerable. it can hide you. I was falling in love with it, with its moon, stars and sea breeze blowing heavily. A guitar was playing a Spanish melody from a distance, it began to soothe my edgy nerves. From afar, two headlights moved toward me. When close enough, it slowed down. I heard a voice call my name.

"Antonio Salamanca come, the streets are dangerous. Hop in."

I thought the driver was one classmate. That 'd be alright but a client hiring me for sex would be preferred. I hastily got into the car. I looked at the driver. It was Roberto Policarpio.

His face this time was neatly shaven, there was a touch of make up, the kind you would see on the face of David Bowie or Duran Duran. He was wearing a white tuxedo, widened by shoulder pads which made him appear bulkier than the previous nights. He drove without looking at me. Like a vampire. He concealed his eyes from the glaring lights of passing cars. I took a deep breath. I was getting used to these hallucinations by now. He never troubled me, really. If these would continue, I must as well enjoy them. I sat comfortably, amusing myself about sitting beside a famous someone or a ghost or a figment of my imagination, I don't know. To be truthful, I was feeling proud and elegant inside his car even in my pathetic altered state of mind.

"I've modeled a while back," he said. His almond-shaped eyes were brown, smiling eyes.

"I know, I know, I've seen you." I said, pointing at the Philippine Village Hotel which I had just left.

"Nope." He said. "I was at Silahis International."

I maybe hallucinating and seeing ghosts but I am not that stupid. I just saw him in the Pipo fashion show. I saw him pierce a needle in Arnie Te's nape. I saw him stupidly walk opposite the directions of all the other models. The point is - I saw him even in my abnormal realm. I am pissed. "I just saw you Roberto Policarpio."

"That was not I."

"This is getting out of hand," I retorted. "There are limits to games. You were the one I saw walking beside those female models, the one who pulled me to the dark room, the same one who killed Rolando Magbanua. The one who just caused Arnie Te's seizure."

What are you talking about?" His lips widened into a grin.

"Roberto, please. I'm poor and tired and stressed out and haven't had a client for days. Enough is enough. Please spare me or leave me or get out of my life now for I am getting increasingly confused as the days go by."

"Okay, so I've modeled at the Philippine Village." He pulled out a Marlboro stick out of his pocket case. "Cigarette?" he offered, I shook my head. I didn't smoke. He lighted it, opened the window and puffed smoke out. I shook my head, "Roberto , what's really going on?"

He giggled.

"Are you a ghost or am I hallucinating?"

He turned the car to the right at Lawton bringing the ghastly appearance of Manila Museum, standing like a haunted house facing the statue Triumph of Science Over Death, a nude woman was atop a human skull.

"Where would you like me to drop you?" He answered my question with a question.

"Aren't you supposed to be dead Roberto?" I persisted.

He gripped my hand cold and tight. "Roberto Policarpio is dead. But I am alive, can't you see?"

I felt I was jolted by electric current. "Get your hands off me!"

He pulled them away just as quickly. His demeanor became pondering. He slowed the car down. I could no longer comprehend the meaning of all these. What have these gotta do with me? - a poor hustler making an honest living. Why would someone or some thing invade my quiet life and use my dead parents as baits for my hallucinations? That is damn cruel. I just wanted him to stop. This vision, this Roberto Policarpio came to my life and soul without invitation, wove magic, created apparitions, committed crimes, invented illusions, and now is slowly killing me too. When I responded to his crimes, he froze me. Damn him. I did not ask for these. I just wanted him to stop.

The car slowed down as I fixed my gaze upon him. I saw the emergence of lines on his forehead, making him appear much older.

Count me out. Modeling is one profession I would never get involved with, not that I were qualified. It is a game of exploitation where rules often change as needed to feed someone's whims and where body and guts count a lot. Once the models lose their handsome faces, due to ravages of time or vices, they would be disposed like condoms. That leads to a lot of desperate acts. I know what desperation is all about. It is like going to a party prepared and wearing your best clothes, sure that you'd be one of the important guests. And then, someone pokes his head through the door and his hand pushes you back, "You don't belong here. I don't even know you, ugly bastard. Go away." Your entire life collapses right there and then. It is worse for a gay person to experience that, a gay person who's links to self esteem and the outside world is usually through his grandeur and beauty. Like this person or ghost beside me, this entity claiming to be Roberto Policarpio. Who is he? Really? Is he a thrown out over the hill model, an outdated beauty, an antiquated star? I don't know. Or is he one whose amusement is to play Christ who has died, risen and will come back again believing that in his hands, lay the fate of the living and the dead?

"So Roberto Policarpio is dead?" I asked.

"He must be." He said this with tightened jaws. He pressed his leg on the accelerator.

"But you claimed to have been Roberto Policarpio," I replied. "I want to understand all these. I just don't know which is real or illusion. Please be kind to me. Tell me the truth."

"I was once Roberto Policarpio. He is dead now and I don't wanna hear his name anymore." His almond-shaped eyes were angry.

It occurred to me then that I was seeing the true face of a psychotic.

I remembered what Arnie told me - he had multiple personalities that if you're caught off guarded, you will fall into them.

"My impression is," I proceeded. "You are denying your past. What did Roberto Policarpio do to deserve his death?"

He answered me with silence.

In a while I heard him again. "Come with me tonight," he said. I knew he was avoiding my inquiries.

I won't allow that. "How did you get away with Roberto Policarpio's picture in the tabloid?"

He turned his eyes again on the road, without speaking.

I remembered the scenes of the murders he committed. How would he explain those? If all of them were illusions and hallucinations that were due to the deaths of my parents, I was over that, over that. There was no reason for me to play childhood nightmares. Those were over, over.

"Maybe you can drop me here, Mr. Whoever-you-are." I finally said.

"I didn't kill him," he answered without shifting his eyes from the road. "He was an abandoned cadaver in the hospital. I bought him for six thousand to replace me."

I could not believe what I just heard. "And nobody noticed it?"

"Everybody body noticed," he screamed. "The police noticed it, the hospital noticed it, my co-interns noticed it, you noticed it, fuck!"

I smiled, nervously. "Amusing eh?"

He calmed down. His face was becoming relaxed, youthful again. "Can you come with me tonight?" his voice sharply changed from screaming to supplicating. A very intriguing change.

I played with it. "Are you planning to rape and kill me?" I said.

He looked at me playfully, "Do I have a reason to?"

"Oh you son of a thousand bitches."

Suddenly, his voice became very very sad. I am quite sure by now that this person has some psychological problem. His eyes were swelling with tears. "Antonio Salamanca, I need your help. I am always alone every night. What else can I do? I came to my classmates and colleagues for help. They did not even let me get close. This society would not give me a chance. I think my problems run in the genes. It'll take a mutation to change me, but then," he sneered. "I will be a mutant like ET or Alien. And better off dead by then."

"All you need is to accept yourself. You are gay. Once you do that, all your problems will go away."

He cleared his throat. "Then what? Make love with other men, buy one night stands, cruise around, be among the hairdressers and fashion designers, wear fancy earrings and clothes?"

"I did not suggest that. Why do closet queens have to always fear those stupid scenarios?"

He stopped the car in the middle of the road and said :

"All I want is to settle inside a comfortable room, in a baroque Spanish villa with shiny floor, chandeliers, a piano in a corner. Above the piano is a wide-open window. My bed is large, on its head are feather pillows, clean, covered with immaculate sheets, a black comforter. I want to wake up in the morning staring at the blue sky, listening to the soft chirping of maya birds. I want to seat beside the piano, to play a Chopin concerto, while sipping cappuccino, looking at the view outside the window. Standing up beside the window, my gaze reaches wide farmlands and rolling hills and mountains that hide the morning sun. Everything is green, sprinkled by flower gardens. Cool wind blows. Reeds dance. Then I sit down to read a gentle novel like that of veterinarian Herriot's."

Silence followed his long monologue. I closed my eyes to picture the images he spun. I suddenly wished to leave him in his trance forever. That way, he would rest.

"But," he cut himself. "I am here with a fast car, a young career in Medicine and flesh trade. Every day, I see glittering lights, I feel pain, I see abuse. I see the face of death."

"I want to pee," I said, hoping he would let me out of the car. Ignoring me, he turned on the ignition. His piercing presence froze me. Was he that desperate for a company, freezing people so they would stay with him? How I pitied him. I came back to my senses beside the crowd-less Lerma, and the dark University of Santo Tomas. It was too late for me to get out of his car. I regained my bladder control.

I broke the silence between us. "Your career is what everybody wants. Modeling, Medicine, gosh, what else do you want in life?" "Myself," he said. "I want myself back." That answer hit me hard.

Alex Maskara