Barrio Stories and Other Tales

Barrio

My Quixotic Illusion

Welcome my friends, I want you to read the tales I spin, I am your host, Alex Maskara. Who am I? I am a product of someone's imagination... I spent most of my life as empty air, until this writer, who prefers to remain anonymous up to now, gave me life and I started to live... so many lives, wearing so many masks.

I am finally frontpaged! It's about time...I could no longer tell which is which among the stories I spin, and I write because, well, I am not married, I hate to socialize, I am overworked, I'm gay, and most of all, I'm Pinoy. I was brought up listening to the tales of Lola Basyang, well...sort of...I'm not that old yet.

There are voices lingering in my mind, you've probably heard some of them, such as - Ito ang inyong Tiya Deeellyyy. Tiya Dely was the first to consider me a writer. She judged my feature article in a High School Regional Press Conference in nineteen kopung-kopung as one of the ten best articles written by a highschool student in Region Three. Ah...I still vividly recall what I wrote then - it was about ants, how they work, organize, build anthills million times their individual sizes. My winning really boosted my writing ego, you see... I never knew what a feature article was when I wrote it. And I was given only an hour to write the whole damn thing. And I wrote in Tagalog because my English sucked. I won again the following year. Then I won in a UP Manila essay writing contest. I wrote throughout my years as a Physical Therapy student. And wrote on my way from Pampanga to Manila to the United States. Today, I am still writing.

When I was a child, my mother would pull the pencil off my hand so I would stop writing. Still, I traced letters on the wall with my fingers. I have never been published. I have never been quoted. Yet, I garnered prizes worth more than anything in the world - a Briton once visited me to meet the writer of The Very Thought of You. An American shared with me his entire personal account of his love affair with a Filipina (the model of boy luneta). A family member of the illustrous Pampango author Crisostomo Sotto e-miled me to correct my mistakes in Town Bacolor. Someone recently commented I did not know the difference between British English and American English. "You are using an American character talking the British way", he said. Perhaps there is such a thing as Filipino English.

I am the Pinoy writer who was brought up by Liwayway Komiks, Tik Tik and Romance. I was a witness of many a Balagtasan show during our barrio fiestas, where women who walked daily on our street, teeth gone, borrowing a kilo of rice to feed their starving kids, would come out wearing their well ironed clothes and holding the microphone, would release impromptu rhymes I could never imagine them uttering. I was brought up in a town where a typical farmer, who did not know how to read and write, would suddenly burst in the middle of a cenaculo as Pontius Pilate with much mastery. My grandmother, in her senility, would raise her arms in an act of battle, because she was once a star in moro-moro.

I come from a town where people gather in the mornings before work to share stories with each others. Again at twilights, after work, to share another series of stories. We used to have an official joker in town, his name was Joke-a-Vise :while making poo-poo in his backyard, a lightning struck him, he screamed at God for taking a picture of him. We have the famous character named Apong Islo - he got his name because while driving his passenger's jeepney, a kalesa overtook him. After a while, a balut peddler overtook him.

When darkness envelopes our town, we will sit quietly in our houses to listen to the radio - I remember Operetang Tagpi-Tagpi; I remember the horror ang ghost stories in DZRH; I remember Kuya Cesar, so slow he'll make us all snooze before we learn the endings of his advises to love problems sent his way. But we love him, anyway, because, life, for us, must always be slow. We want to savor it in its entirety, to experience it to its fullest. Whatever happened to Jose Batute? Whatever happened to Simatar? Whatever happened to Dely Atay-Atayan? Where oh where is Sylvia dela Torre? Bayani Casimiro? Chuchi? Chichay? Pugo and Togo? Metring David? Ben David?

I pattern my stories after the old serials of Liwayway. I spent much of my youth anticipating their next chapters, though in college, I became so sophisticated I thought they were for bakyas. Only to realize now they were probably the best literature I've read in my entire life. Whatever happened to Darna and SuperGee? Whatever happened to Zuma? I remember my town that spent lavishly for its fiesta. When it arrives, all hell break loose - suddenly the girl who spent all her years sneezing and removing boogers from her nose becomes a princess. Ating Sepa, who sells halo-halo and corn cubs becomes an instant abogada. And we always fought for the title Reyna Elena with lines like, "Alright, you become the Reyna Elena this year, but don't blame me when people start asking why you became the Reyna Elena when I, Reyna Empeatriz, AM more beautiful than you."

Ah the feast - we're suddenly the most hospitable people in the world. We, an impoverished people come out on the street pulling people to our houses, offering them a taste of our food. We can easily get offended if they refused. We compete in our cooking - we come up with food names we never heard before. And tasted before. Our entire savings will be spent on the most expensive ingredients, apples and cheeze magically appear in our cupboards. My mother would rather borrow money than serve a mediocre feast. And then, the spirit of Bayanihan comes in full force- all them men take off their shirts to catch and roast the best pig, the fattest ducks, the most delicious chickens, the biggest shrimps, the largest crabs, the sweetest tocino, the most prized longganiza. Then they fix the whole town to give way for the public dance, the amateur singing contest stage, the basketball court, and there in front of the church, we erect the best place allotted for the talents of all our people. Gays become Supermodels, the farmers become singers, housewives become poets, grandparents become actors. It's all for the fiesta, to honor our parish Saint named St Augustine.

Fiesta

Every night, we watch the talents of our townfolks- the peddler of tokwa can sing ala Eddie Peregrina very well. I remember the songs - Pearly Shells by Nora Aunor; Sweet Sixteen by Vilma Santos. And there are still lines lingering in my mind - whoever sang A-kiss a-kiss me in the morning, a-kiss a-kiss me in the night? Or , In the beginning, the Lord made the earth, the heavens, the whatever and the seas? Knock three times on the whatever if you want me? The only singer I wont forget is Mang Tino who introduced the title of his song as Mona Lisa...well..the only words he knew in the song were precisely Mona Lisa. Try singing Monalisa with Mona Lisa all throughout and the whole town was rolling on the grass and running to the bathrooms. When we could not think of standard contests we come up with anything anyway - we had contests like - the first who can cry or the first who can pee. My cousin Artemio was always the winner in both categories. Every year! When the crying contest begins, he'd stare in the open fields, twist his face and the next thing you knew, he is wailing and moaning and groaning like he was raped by the entire Philippine Marines. Everyone thought he would be the next Pepito Rodriguez. He is Pepito Rodriguez alright, selling kalamunding in Guagua nowadays. When the peeing contest begins, he'd pull out his penis in front of the entire town and again, he'd stare into the open fields, and without even realizing it, he is peeing like he drank the whole contents of Yangtze River.

And there is always the basketball contest, whose cheerleaders are the gays in town. The Santacruzan, whose patrons are the gays in town, the fashion shows whose models are the gays in town, the fair whose emcees are the best cross-dressers in the town.

My town never discriminates in choosing its participants in its fiesta, if you were a Caucasian, there's the possibility of you becoming a judge to one of its thousand pageants.

I went through it all my friends, and that's probably the reason why I linger in nostalgia, nearly twenty years after I saw my last town fiesta. My mother told me once she had the premonition I would be a writer someday ; as a baby, according to her, I insisted on watching a zarzuela till its ending, even when everyone else left home to sleep. And she said I would not stop writing because I was destined to do that. My senile grandmother once heard me listening to a dramatic love story in the radio. The woman character was complaining about the futility of her love. She cried, "I'm tired of this...I'm really tired of this love."

My grandmother raised her arms in an act of moro moro and shouted, "Haven't you heard the woman young man? She says she's tired, she is really tried. Will you turn that damn radio off to give her some rest?"

Alex Maskara

Barrio Tales