Diary 31

will take me? He was my only protector, my only guide. "Frank, lets just call this a night and go straight home, alright?" My voice was pleading.

He laughed. "Roberto, I am releasing you from your cell. I am letting you go. I am hearing the voice of the Lady of the Bay." He turned into a blank stare, staring at the Bay. He had a blank affect. Like men who no longer live. Which frightened me.

"Frank please."

"I can't go home, booby traps are everywhere. I'd rather die here."

I was getting desperate. Guilty. Afraid. Unable to move on. I was wondering if I was being punished. Everything in my hands was turning into water, running through the crevices between my fingers. And here, this man, Frank, with whom I pinned all hopes, the man who I depended on for my success was just as lost as me.

He walked away in slow motion. "Don't follow me, please I beg you not to have anything with me anymore", he said.

So I walked away. I walked away without knowing exactly where to go. I had nothing. Frank was my only friend.

I came back to the bay everyday, kept watching over him. We did not talk again to each other. I waited, waited for his sanity to come back.

Until one night.

I was behind him, he was talking to himself. Gesticulating. He stepped on the seawall facing Manila Bay. His graceful body, his flexible arms and his firm legs took the form of a black silhouette against the calm sea. It was the most beautiful form I've seen. It was like a bird floating in the air. I did not pay attention to a taxi stopping behind me. Kids, wearing red headbands got out of it briskly. They assembled among the coconut trees. They communicated only through finger signs. I became aware of them only when I heard sharp whistles. Like birdcalls - irregular. And then, the furtive looks, the silent, tiptoed scampering. I heard the faint cocking of a rifle and saw its muzzle and neck slowly rising, pointing to the beautiful silhouette.

I jumped and attempted to warn Frank, but the speed of sound was much faster. It was followed by another and another and another. Please God, I prayed, turn all these into a dream.

In my fear, I first dropped face-down on the ground, just like everyone else. Realizing it was Frank the gun was pointed at, I immediately took off but I fell again on the grass. I wanted to scream but I covered my mouth, powerfully closing in my jaws, I did not release a sound. When I tried to get up, a gun was poked to my chest. I trembled. A boy of ten or eleven, wearing beach shorts, held a gun in his tiny hands. His eyes were fierce, his lips taut, his limbs shook. He spoke like a man.

"Don't make a move!" he pounded the armalite muzzle against me."Do you know him?" he pouted his mouth toward dead Frank.

I turned my eyes at the bloody and limp body of Frank being dragged to the taxi.

I shook my head.

The boy grabbed my wrist. I thought that was my quick end. My wristwatch was pulled instead and then, he ordered me to roll over and ran his fingers over my back pocket. Pulling out my wallet, he emptied all its cash content. Afterwards, he threw it back to me. "I know you," he said calmly. "You're that guy in the posters. Son of a bitch."

It was eerily silent on the Bay except for their running footsteps and dragging of Frank's corpse. The taxi doors were slammed and the engine started. In leaving, armalite rat-tat-tat were released in the air, mingling with the howls of the young boys.

I remained lying, my head buried in the Manila Bay grass. The commotion dissipated as quickly as it came.

When they finally got out of sight, the people at the bay-side created a pandemonium. The lovers ran around naked, berserk and screaming at the top of their lungs. The paupers bolted from the boulevard. I was the only one left at the scene of the crime, distraught and shocked. I sat with my knees against my chest, my arms wrapped around them. I gazed at the empty space which Frank occupied a while ago; I still could not believe it, I could not think of anything. I was alerted later on by the sirens of police cars and the intermittent buzzing of their radios. I turned my head toward the vacant parking in front of the US embassy, lights flashed and uniformed men emerged. I heard their sharp footsteps and loud orders. "Leave the premises," pushing people out of the way. My fear turned into panic. I retreated until digested by the dark canopy of the boulevard.

There were two headlines that captivated the Manila residents the following day. One was the impending crisis in Malacanang. After the snap election, the widow of Aquino called for civil disobedience due to electoral fraud that favored Marcos. The other was the death of Frank David, the highly regarded fashion designer of Manila. His solemn face was printed under the headlines - the quiet, brooding, intelligent unemotional portrait. If the Sparrow units just knew him. I remembered the same portrait hanging above his bed.

Guilt overpowered me - I betrayed him. I did not warn him. I did not run to him. I did not ask him to go out of Manila. I did not ask him to see the Doctor. I ahould have dragged him out, away away from Manila. I could not sleep. In my night visions, his black silhouette appeared, arms spread, head raised to the sky, diving into the bay. Beautiful and graceful form. Afterwards, his face popped out from the bay, decomposing, covering the entire surface of the bay, I fell in its wide open mouth. I woke up. I jumped from my bed and uttered his name, "Frank, Frank, forgive me." The night answered me with silence. I walked towards my window to stare at the moon. Crying bitterly. Waht will happen to his carcass?; What is his family doing now? Will he be buried decently? I found myself wandering, on the same streets I crossed during my hungry years. I was mistaken in thinking I'd never trek them again.

The days of misfortune turned into days of danger. The rise of rebellion became a tidal wave, its deadly claws raking in the squatters, crawling up towards the quiet roads of Pasay, Taft, Ermita, Escolta, Makati, it branched out into the generally peaceful Quezon City, Pasig and Alabang. When it touched the gates of the universities, it splashed and broke the walls of traditions and rules. The separation between the rich and poor, the provincial and urban was shattered and the agitated students swarmed the roads and lit fires in the parks. The dragon-man of Malacanang, unable to contain it, resorted to violence and murder.

The death of Frank was a premonition of a more momentous conflagration. The Aquinos unlocked the door of a room full of clutter accumulated through years of suppression. No one had a chance to clean it. It burst open and released a pressure too hard to contain. My university played along with this tune of times.

The first noticeable change was the empty ground-floor, as if all the wealthy students were chased away. I would later see them climbing up the stairs and joining the crowd on the second floor. Out of fear. Finally, the Marxist students got the upper hand, emboldened to show their illicit connections with the underground communists, they exposed the corrupt professors and pushed forward a platform guided by a revolutionary and vengeful ideology. It was too premature though, the Malacanang dragon was still able to exhale its fiery breath. One by one, the young brave men disappeared. Abducted in the middle of the nights, they were eventually executed in graves they dug themselves. (Years later when sanity returned, their bodies were found in unmarked mass graves)

This dangerous polarization claimed victims from all sides of the society. In all social levels. The prophets of doom walked on the streets announcing the imminent civil war.

Tia was the biggest surprise. She became louder, her appearance more scandalous, her good looks vanished. When the students formed the alliances and rallied, she positioned herself on the sidelines, waited for her turn. Instead of Chanel, she wore soiled T-shirt and faded Levis. True to her old style, she forced her way into the gatherings, squeaky voice and all. Booed, resented and rejected, she remained firm and persistent.

"I don't care what the fuck you'll do to me," she protested surly, "I'm here because I want to fight too."

Suspicions arose, verbal battles ensued, once or twice she was pushed away. In one of these rejections, she came running to me like a lunatic, eyes wide gaped, screaming. I shielded her from the mob. "Bitch!" her chasers called.

She fell in my arms. I managed to block the pursuers. "Turncoat!" they accused. We hid in my apartment. She was trembling. I served her beer to cool down. During this crisis, she finally turned to me like a friend.

"I ran away," she confessed. Her words came out like sharply, brutally frank, coarse, like weapons in the middle of a war. She pushed back her unwashed hair that stuck in lumps, odoriferous and making her appear like tramp. I did not flinch from my char. Seating across her, I felt joy in her casualness, her fearlessness and straightforward verbosity. "I ran away from home."

I did not care about that. She was divine! Look at me, away from home for four years now, numbed by the plight of my own parents and resigned to my fate.

"Aren't your parents worried?" I inquired.

"Oh damn! Last week they sent me to Hongkong to get away until all this craziness in the university will end. After awhile, that son of a bitch, my father ordered me to proceed to New York. What the hell shall I do in New York? I came back on my own. While strolling on the hallways of the university, I heard the cries of the students. Their words hit me hard," she struck her chest with fists three times. "I've been crazy for a while, you're a witness of that, but the students woke me up - all these years my mind was occupied by a jumble of thoughts. I could not figure what I wanted in life." She raised her head and looking at me, I noticed the thin lines on her forehead, on her Camay-soap skin. Drugs must have hurried her ageing. She paused and searched for a cigarette in her shirt pocket. "Do you mind?" she asked while waving her lighter to me. I shook my head. When she exhaled the coils of smoke and rested her head against the back of the sofa, I instantly lusted for her.

But that was all. Lust. I could not understand it. For the first time, I craved for the woman that made my life miserable. Was it mere lust or something more? Like control and power? Did I really want to subdue her? Call me evil but this was a brutally sexy woman, in seeing her helplessness I felt an internal boldness, sinisterly; it was my nature. She was a beautiful fish in an aquarium whom I dreamt of smashing to death. When the water drained, I wanted to enjoy her gasp for life, to keep her in my pocket for safe keeping. I was lured through her helplessness.

"Maybe, maybe it is better for you to stay in my place." I offered.

She looked at me like a queen being offered a tavern, stared with cold barren look, brazen, domineering, mocking me.

In my apartment, she took a shower and changed clothes. We became instant friends, went together in the rallies. When we walked together, her charm and my mystery sparkled. We cowed the recalcitrant gatherings into submission. We forced them by mere resolve. We sat and we listened. We marched and shouted slogans. In no time, we were a part of the group. True to her character, she became the most avid rebel and this pleased the group.

At nights, after making love, she laid awake beside me on the bed, chain-smoking, a telephone rested on her supple breasts, chatting the night away with her old friends. I resented this because I was led to believe that the world we lived now was exclusively ours, off limits to the past, especially past acquaintances.

When these people, the same people that humiliated me re-emerged in my apartment, thanks to her invitations, I became baffled, then angry.

"Hey Robert, nice apartment eh?" beamed Mario Montemayor, the head of the devils, siding and cheering me with praises. "You're the best, man. It's tough to let people like us to stay in your place, you know. Especially that darling girl Tia," he winked at me conspiratorially, suggesting the lady is a whore. True to my old passive self, I just laughed with him, a lascivious laughter.

Deep inside I was angry. The nerve!

Being their victim before, I did not have the confidence to throw them out. These devils had broken my spirit. I smiled and joined their laughter as if by doing so, I gained a place equal to theirs.

"You are a sick man," Tia joined in, pinching Mario's side. "Ouch bitch!" Mario reacted; he pulled her, they dropped on the floor and wrestled like mad dogs.

How I wanted to fracture his skull, but I was not man enough. I watched, astonished, stupefied at their sight, yet afraid of spoiling their game - a game of the rich, taught by their governesses, their boarding schools, the convents, the nuns and priests. I was not there, I should not interfere with their own separate world.

At nights, I could not erase from my mind my jealousy when I'd kiss Tia's lips and share passions with her; when I'd run my tongue in her white, flawless body, and see not myself but Mario doing it.

One night after the lovemaking I whispered in her ear my suspicions."Why do you do this to me?"

"Do what?" she asked, staring at me, panting.

"Why do you play with your ex-lover that way in front of me. Do you know how it kills me?"

Bewildered, her voice became shrill, "Excuse me, what do you mean my ex-lover, who are you referring to?"

"Mario."

She jumped off the bed, pulled the sheet and wrapped it around her naked body, in the dark, she groped for her pack of cigarettes and with the luminous rays from the streetlights, her figure looked like Venus with a cigarette sticking out from her mouth. Gesticulating, she said,"How dare you call that homo my ex-lover. Can't you tell from his looks and mannerisms he's the biggest faggot in this city?"

Liar. The way she said that with the intense emotion just fired up my suspicions. "You don't have to be so defensive of him!" No way was Mario Montemayor a homosexual. What about his famous sexual escapades, his rumored long list of girlfriends that were replaced every week or so? There was no trace of softness in the muscles of his body - the softball captain, the basketball center, the volleyball champion - no way jose-he couldn't be.

The burning flame in my chest went from dull to sharp, the heat in my head burned. What the fuck was she trying to pull? After all these passionate lovemaking, after the intimacies of repeated sex, she still had the guts to play the spoiled brat tantrums, lies, lies, and more lies. Cut



Alex Maskara