Diary 18

"Everybody knows me as a model with a future in Medicine, unaware of what goes on in my life. You probably see me as this aristocratic man walking on the ramp, admirable. But if you go behind the curtains where I go to, you won't see my face because the entire place is covered by smoke. You smell nothing but marijuana, taken in by other models to cope up with pressures and demands of this stupid job, forgetting their clothes and hunger and decency. Dope also is a god in my fashion world. With it, everyone walks awkwardly and sexily. Good God, us bastards are always ready for dope, sex and money. In my modeling world, we lose our souls and identities. Models...it's so ironic!"

"Models?" I asked, I began running down names which were well known at the time.

He was amused. "You talk about models who hardly crept up the ramp. Wait till they become professionals."

"Professionals... you refer to models like yourself?"

He did not answer.

"Well," I shrugged my shoulders. "You can always rely on medical field. Someday. What's wrong with you? Here you are complaining about a fashion career when you make so much money out of it. Look at me, dead worried where I'd get my next money once the two hundred bucks I borrowed from Artemio are gone."

He'd beaten the red light. His was the only car running on this quiet and dark road. We crossed the intersection of Governor Forbes and Espana.

"Ah my future in MED," he sounded weary. "Oh yes, just like everyone else in this city, I thought Medicine is the ultimate profession. Even priests envy doctors. But do they really know the types of people we cure in Manila? How could people afford health care when food is unattainable? As a doctor in this forsaken city, I neither feel the pulse, nor listen to heart thuds, nor lung sounds. I don't study blood and read temperatures. I don't count respiratory rates. Instead, I listen and hear the wails of the mother of a dying son, the confessions a criminal about to die, the last begging of a mendicant. I feel the faint grips of an infant struggling to live. I, in a white coat, sit beside their beds, try blocking Man of Death, preventing his sickle with all my might from descending upon them. And my efforts always end in futility in this godforsaken country. Everything is few here. Few moneys, few medicines, few machines, few survivals."

With that, he turned the car to right and grunted. "Aaah God!"

When we reached Espana Extension, he stared at me. He looked completely different. He had the face of another ghost, looking as classical and white as Count Dracula. It made me think he owned the biggest collection of masks in this country. He must have been trying all these masks in front of the mirror. It would take that, to be good. He looked at you as if you held a camera and ready take a picture of his face, in every shot, he wore a different mask.

"A while ago," he pondered, "I met a meningitis victim with clear clinical symptoms. I don't know why his wife had a very strong impact on me. After I did my usual routine on her husband, she approached me with a grave face and studied me carefully. She looked native, probably five feet in height, kinky hair, button like eyes, bubbly cheeks, flat nose and thick hard lips. She was ordinary, nothing close to the models I knew."

He placed another Marlboro stick between his lips and lighted it.

"She told me they have three children, she dreamt her children to become as successful as I am someday. She saved money for them but now,. . with her husband turning into vegetable like this, how would her children fulfill what she dreamt for them?"

He scooted back on his seat and took another puff. I nearly praised him for his grace. Even in the act of smoking, he'd got some class, a real model. "And then," h proceeded in slow monotonous voice, " I remembered my childhood." His lips spoke words with deep, delicate emotion.

"What about your childhood?" I interjected.

"I won't tell. It hurts." That line brought me in a deja vu. Didn't he say the same line last night, in my hallucination?

"What kind of hurt? Robert, are you in pain?"

"Oh, ah, don't, it hurts. To the left, oh no at the center. Yeah, oh it hurts good."

"Robert, please." I said with seriousness.

He halted the car in front of Trabajo - a marketplace along Espana. Rolling down the car window, he looked at a lonely figure of a waif sitting comfortable at the side walk, staring blankly in the darkness. He threw coins to the waif's direction.

"That was my childhood," he whispered. Impulsively, I covered my nose. He looked at me for a long time.

By this time, the car was running at a slow pace. It passed by the railroad along the BLISS and made a U turn at Washington street. It made a sharp left at E Quintos, released a final cry in front of an apartment building. I wanted to leave right there and then but my curiosity overwhelmed me. I thought this thing - this phenomenon - was no killer, he maybe was neurotic, but not a killer psychopath.

"Here we are." He announced in the darkness of the building.

Inside the building, we climbed a stair that was long, steep and dark. Its old steps creaked as we ascended. Creepy. No wonder he wanted an old Spanish villa. After unlocking the knob we entered the room. He turned on the light. A modest room free of furniture, bed and appliance welcomed us. Like a room ready to be vacated. Packed books and notebooks were the only valuables left. I suddenly had serious doubts about him being a doctor.

Inside, he became lively, "I'll get something to eat."

He did not give me time to answer. He threw me the key, "I am permitting you to snoop and take anything you want. Everything in there is for disposal."

As if there were a valuables in that empty room. How can we ever have sex here? How can he kill me here? There was not a knife, not a gun, just empty floors.

His footsteps descended swiftly down the stairs until they faded.

"Hurry up," I shouted back.

Virtually nothing was inside the room. I walked on the empty floor and felt peace in just being there. At least for now, the man who invaded my dreams and vision was real. In the last days, I was swept into apparitions too big to handle. Thought I was going crazy. I picked up the scattered things in the apartment. There were assorted books, novels, Gray's Anatomy, Physiology, Biochemistry and other medical titles which were tied by nylon rope. Nearly covered by cobwebs, they reminded me of the time I saw his face in the public library. Cola soda, I should have asked him about that commercial. I noticed dust all over this place. He must be living somewhere else now, in a fancier place, I suppose. He could afford it. Or he could be staying in the hospital quarters. His reading novels included those written by Archer, Uris, Michener, Crichton, Hailey, and of course, Harriot. I was amused upon the sight of a large volume of Tale of Two Cities and a tiny version of Don Quixote. In the far corner of the apartment, I saw, just lying on the floor, magazines about ninja, karate, tae kwan do and other martial arts. He had a taste for literature and martial arts. How odd.

There was a particular item that grabbed my attention. A neatly packed heap of notebooks on top of a table similar to what I saw in my visions. A table in the middle of the room, standing as if waiting for dinner use. How were we gonna eat? Standing or sitting on the floor? I came closer and struggled to flip one of the notes under the nylon, careful not to disarrange them, I don't want to snoop on others' properties. I saw handwriting on the pages. I realized that the pile was a collection of personal diaries.

Above the table was a window covered by capiz shields. Opening them, I felt the dawn's morning air. It was very relaxing. I looked down on the street. I was on the third floor. Something puzzled me. His car, and I was sure of this, was parked right below this window. I made sure about this before I came up with him. I wanted to know the windows every time I went into any place with a stranger just in case he turns against me. Exits are always my protectors. I knew we alighted below this window. The car was not there? Did he leave? I did not hear his car engine run in the quiet morning down Espana street.

Or maybe I was hallucinating again. I sat against the wall of the apartment and waited for him.

It took me twenty. Thirty minutes and he didn't show up. I became drowsy. As I was about to fall into sleep, I heard a different sound. In a second, I was wide awake, listening intently.

It was an Earl Klugh Down To Earth flute sound emanating from the walls of the apartment. Who in the world would play flute at dawn? I checked outside. The sound was coming directly from Robert's room. I took a quick look at my watch. It was four thirty in the morning.

Scared, I knocked at the adjacent door. The knocking must have been too loud because the face that met me showed all signs of irritation.

"Do you play the flute?" I asked the man. The man frowned in bewilderment and then agitation.

"And who are you?" he answered angrily.

"My name is Antonio, a friend of Roberto Policarpio." I extended my hand, as if adding more insult to injury.

"Why don't you get some sleep, faggot!" He slammed the door to my face.

My fear turned into anger as I walked back. I heard the man's door open again. "Hey, Mr. Tootsie doesn't live here anymore. He is dead. Better clean the mess he left." The door was slammed the second time.

It sounded like a command, a tall order, a shout. My hands tightened into fists but I tried to control myself. I imagined the son of a bitch spurting blood and gasping for life. I pictured him being ran over by a truck, left flat and uglier. Darn, he was even shorter than I and dead older. I stopped for a moment, I wondered often why men feel they could treat you this way simply because you are gay or associated with gays? How could they enjoy this superiority by humiliating their fellow men? This man, who gave him the right to shout obstinately at those who he thinks are different from his gender? Difference didn't mean inferiority. And fitting to social standards and patterns didn't mean superiority. It was mean to be awakened by a neighbor asking about a flute in the morning, but did that give him the right to be rude? I am telling you, deprive this man of sex and food, he'll beg the world for it as if it were his god.

And that fucking Roberto Policarpio, what was he trying to prove? That he was Christ who died, risen and came back. For what? To mess up my life? I'd never been so mad at a ghost.

The flute sound was gone. In my possession were his keys. I picked his diaries and hurriedly left. I saw neither Roberto Policarpio, nor his car, nor any marks of his car.

Alex Maskara