Last Order to an Ex-Gay (?) Penguin

I love weird news.

I personally think it’s anthropocentric to call penguins or other animals gay just because of a same-sex relationship.  Sexuality, as we know it and practice it, is a social construct; society, in its strictest sense, is not something animals are not capable of constructing.  When faced with news like this, though, you have an inner sense of personal Schadenfreude. I can bend the rules a bit.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer, of all places, ran a story on a gay penguin couple in San Francisco.  When Harry met Pepper, they fell in love.  They lived together for six years, holding each other’s wings, waddling side by side by the rocks, engaging in friendly fishing trips by the man-made lake.  Yet last Friday, Harry moved in with the recently-widowed female penguin Linda, leaving his ex-partner-for-life alone, betrayed, and so un-fabulous.

Of course, the anti-homosexual Christian folks are saying that nature prefers heterosexual relationships.  I don’t know what’s weirder: gay penguins, or people talking about how nature prefers homosexual relationships but cites the same preference for animal cannibalism.  Or the kind of homophobia that comes with obsessing yourself with “faggot.”  In French, that would be fagot, or “bundle of sticks.”

Let me speak (by that I mean write) here in terms of personal experience: almost every girl I have been associated with in a romantic sense has had a lesbian phase.  Three months after I broke up with my ex (who always happened to have a penguin doll… this is so made of LOL), she had a long-term relationship with a lesbian partner.  I’ve had a long-standing MU with another girl once, and she had a relationship with another girl.  I’ve had many gay friends who had relationships with people of the opposite sex.

I’m sure that Linda and Harry will find happiness together, like the people I know, but we all knew what happened in Brokeback Mountain: Ennis and Jack always had a fishing trip.  Pepper may wish he knew how to quit Harry, but then again, there isn’t a shortage of possibly homosexual penguins out there.  You never know.  All you have to do is look around.

The last order to an ex-gay penguin named Harry will probably be that he’ll grow to love Linda, but will always have a special place in his heart for Pepper.  Not every human – or penguin – love story has a happy ending, but everything does fall into place.

It’s not because of gayness or anything like that, but because such is the way of the heart… be it human or penguin.

No Crossing

If you don’t believe in glass ceilings, you must believe in handrails blocking a perfectly good pedestrian lane.

It’s not that life’s in Ortigas Center, but life’s like Ortigas Center.  I don’t have to get it.  Somewhere in the grand scheme of urban planning, it makes perfect sense to paint fresh lines for a pedestrian lane just across Holiday Inn, while blocking it with this handrail project that has been going on for months now.  It’s the way things are.

Methinks that as you grow older, you develop an immunity – even an appreciation – for the way things are.  You start to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the errors and mistakes of the world, and the guilt-trips don’t happen at all.  If they do, the instances are just temporary and fleeting.

Oh sure, the way things should be is grand.  You hit a certain age, and then you start to develop theories and ideals about how the world should work.  That air of jadedness is shattered, and for the next few weeks or months or even years, you draw upon your life’s experience to point out what’s incorrect, what should be done…

And then you realize that you’re only doing this to compensate for your own past.

After passing by this strange pedestrian lane for the nth time, I realized I’ve had enough.  I’ve had enough of the way things are, the way things are supposed to be, and I’ll be damned if I’ll wait for years to write an apologia for a pedestrian lane, much less the rest of my life.

I could have done what everyone else was doing.  I could have walked to the proper pedestrian lane along Robinson’s Galleria, but I didn’t.  I made a run for it, vaulted over the handrail, and ran along the blocked pedestrian lane to the surprised looks of onlookers.  No police officers, no security guards.  It wasn’t Parkour, but it wasn’t everyone else’s pedestrian lane, either.

Just me, a blocked pedestrian lane, a handrail, and the way things are.  When confronted with those things – or just the way things are – you just do things your way.

Life With Libby

The shirts and jeans they wear in America.  The chocolate they eat every day in America.  The jewelry that all American women wear.  The scent of every American man.  The food found in every American table.

It’s America in a box.

Nobody looks forward to the tin cans that line the bottom of the Balikbayan Box, although they are found there by default.  Salmon, corned beef, potted meat, and other goodies do not get the same respect as shoes, but they do occupy a most honored and esteemed place on the cupboard.  After all, why would you eat imported Libby’s Vienna Sausage when Phillips costs around P29 a can?

The Vienna sausage is a quintessentially American product, one of the end-products of mechanically-separated meats.  It’s on the same level as SPAM, Chicken McNuggets, kikiam, and those alphabet-shaped fried things that my nephews are wont to eat.  In Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, the joys and pleasures of mechanical separation isn’t lost on the reader: boys falling into lard vats, for one.  Or women losing their fingers to gangrene from stuffing sausage in cold rooms.  Or old men dying from sores poisoned by pickling.

Of course, we’ve gone far beyond the stockyards of 1906 Chicago.  Meat is as safe as it’s going to get.  Yet there’s something about the texture and flavor of Libby’s that’s left in question.  It’s like an existential crisis on your taste buds.  Too smooth, a little plastic-like.  It does dispel the myth that you should throw the “poisonous” broth away.

Lasang Amerika, to put things lightly.

Maybe we, as a people, are lost in translation to the American experience.  I think that fifty years of American colonization, and over a century of cultural domination, has made us closer to the American mindset than any other nation on Earth.  The lot of us who have not stepped on American soil would know the tree from its fruit.  The struggles of the OFW may escape the empathy of people who do not understand – or refuse to understand – things like earning in dollars and spending in dollars.  Where clothes are often rummaged, not bought new.  That white picket fences and barbecues and everything about the American Dream are mere possibilities.  Distant ones, so it seems.

Yet those Libby’s cans will occupy a place of honor on our cupboards, perhaps many of us making stockpiles of them for years to come.  For some of us, these are things not meant to be eaten.  For those who bring them in, they are trophies of hard work.  Yet for those who take them in, they are tokens of a dream.  Not of an American dream, but of a dream of America.

Like an American box, or a box from America.  Or American Vienna sausage, or Vienna sausage from America.  There’s a big difference, and it’s more than just semantics.

"Mamser"

Tricycle, boss?  Saan tayo, bossing? I got a feeling, and the feeling is good.  When the Corporation treats you as a perennial subordinate, you look for respect in all the wrong places.  The Big Boss may be an e-mail away, but getting around protocols and SOP is like climbing stairs with a pogo stick.  Once you find a bit of loathing for the tambling of everyday life, you value random terms of address like “Boss.”  After all, I’m not the boss of anyone.

The guard greets me, Morning sir! Suddenly I’m feeling ever more powerful.  Granted that Manong Guard will greet every guy at the office and call him “Sir,” whether he’s an employee, a visitor, or a part of the administration.  When you’re in your workstation, you’re just another rat in the cage.  Yet no, not to the guard.  You’re “Sir Marck” to him.  You make sense beyond, and are more important than, your ID number.

I’m liking the grand scheme of things.  I am important.  My elementary school guidance counselors called it “IALAC:” I Am Lovable And Capable.  I am Boss.  I am Sir.  The world is perfect.

Hi Mamser, welcome to 7-Eleven!

Good morning Mamser, welcome to MiniStop!

Hello Mamser, welcome to SM!

Good evening po Mamser, ano po order nila?

Thank you po Mamser, come again!

The grand scheme of things is a conspiracy.  ”Mamser” makes me generic, fleeting even.  A customer, an instance of sales quotas, a possible shoplifter.  Nameless, sex-less, gender-less, a number in a receipt.  Just another guy who passes by the metal detectors and the doors, and only becomes somebody – for 15 minutes, at most – when the alarm goes off.  The world sucks.  I am “Mamser:” a purchase, a meal, a plastic bag.

In one fell swoop, my jovial mood and positive view of the world collapsed all around me.  I turn into the brooding, angst-driven, antisocial version of myself.  The sunshine turns into an eclipse, the bluebirds turn into crows, and the happy song in my head turns into a funeral dirge in heavy metal.  I find my permanent frown somewhere in my mixed bag of emotions, wear it, and literally storm out of the shop.

Or as I like to call it, normalcy.

I think it was Douglas Coupland who wrote, “All events became omens.  I lost the ability to take anything literally.”  ”Mamser?”  I don’t take it in jest, nor do I take it seriously.  It’s just another epiphany in the grand scheme of things: no grandeur, no schemes, and things – like “Mamser” – just move along.

Burning Keys

I used to play the keyboard reasonably well.  Among the instruments that I’ve tried – from guitars to wood flutes to harmonicas to drum kits – it’s in piano where I first learned to read (and tried to write and compose) music.  I didn’t have a piano teacher, so I never really became a virtuoso with the instrument.  I think I’ve un-learned a lot of the things I know about piano and keyboard, in favor of lyrics translations and a few attempts at songwriting.

There’s something about learning music that can get so frustrating, and at the same time so rewarding.  When you play a piece or write a song, the end result is almost always in your head.  You want to sound like that melody or that voice in your memory, imagining that performance as you go along.  I almost always write my songs in a notebook with pencil marks, and wear out a few erasers along the way.

Keyboards are somewhat uncool, though.  There will always be that appeal that a guitarist or a bassist will have when they carry their guitars around, but you can’t lug a keyboard around, or wheel a piano about your destination every day.  Piano players are either for the frou-frou crowd, or for those interested in recitals on “Chopsticks” or “Canon in D.”  I played things by ear, so I struggled with notes.  Many kids play better piano than I do, so when I found a keyboard that I was very good with (one with 104 keys, not 88), I gave up on piano altogether.

I don’t remember who exactly said it, but there’s something lyrical or musical about a bunch of words put together.  When you recite a poem or an essay out loud, there’s music to be found in it.  The “hidden meanings” we’re after can be found in the way we associate metaphors and images, but there’s a different and almost transient meaning that there is in sound.  There are hidden bars and notes in a poem or in a story or in an essay, and can only be discovered when they’re read out loud.  I think it’s that “lyric” that gives a piece its character or personality.

Yet I digress.  Sometimes I wish I could sit in front of a piano again and play a few bars here and there, but I don’t think that’s possible when you forget everything about it with time.  I couldn’t play a canon or a symphony, or even a round, but maybe I can play something by ear.  Maybe.  Just maybe.  Something fiery, of sorts: not to the ear, but to the soul.

Shirt the Shocker

One day, you’ll understand.  One day, you’ll have kids of your own and understand why I did what I had to do.  The fatherly sermon translates almost immediately to Darth Vader versus Luke Skywalker… I am your father.  Search your feelings, you know it to be true.  It is your destiny!  Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!

Rather than fall into a bottomless pit in the vast expanse of space, I found myself wearing the latest in fatherly fashion: collared polo shirts.

NOOOOOOO!!!

Dad disapproves of my “fashion sense,” because I come across as a grungy suicidal teenager in the throes of moral crisis.  “It’s too… you,” he says.  “You sometimes have to make compromises to succeed in life.  It all starts with presentation.  So cut your hair.”

I shook my head like a grungy suicidal dog making a choice between Kibble and its own poop.  “No.”

“Would you at least try… dressing up decently?”

“No.”  The response came from a guy who reported to his job interview in jeans, and can count the number of times he wore slacks in his adult life in one hand.  “What next, you expect me to wear creased jeans and carry my cellphone in a carrying case on my belt?”

“Well, yes.”

Shit, I said.  I can imagine myself 30 years from now with a combover, Lacoste polo shirts, Attitude slacks creased and folded at the bottom, and shiny leather shoes.  I’ll end up being the archetype of Every Dad on the Face of This Planet, raising my children to the taste of the Sunday Happy Meal.  Or getting that evil eye from my wife if she sees me ogling some lady at the mall.  Or reeking of the smell of Ben-Gay.  Or meeting a balding acquaintance, dressed in the same way as I am, and say, Oy, pare, kumusta na?  Long time no see, how’s the business going, partner?

My future just flashed before my eyes, and I don’t like it one bit.

“Dad, clothes don’t make the man,” I replied.  He looked at me with that particularly odd-bordering-on-disgusted look on his face.  Black shirt, faded jeans, boots, trench coat.  My hair was all right, if not for handfuls of shampoo and a pass with a plastic hairbrush.  That was “all right.”

“Would you just… get another jacket?”

I went back to my room and found my black fleece jacket.  “Okay, let’s go.”

“You look like an addict.”

“No I don’t, I’m just being me.”

“One day, Marck, you’ll understand the virtues of looking presentable.”

“No, he won’t,” my brother said, dressed in the same way Dad was.

Wrapped In Plastic, It's Fantastic

Me and a few friends tried to score tickets to some frou-frou independent film a couple of days ago at EDSA Shangri-La when we came across the woman herself, my own personal writing idol, Miss Jessica Zafra.  I tried writing like JZ at one point in my life and realized I can’t do it.  I still respect and “idolize” her very much in the way she uses the English language.  I was about three feet away from bowing at her feet, or at least stealing her glasses.

One of the most memorable essays I loved from the Twisted series was her series on wrapping books in plastic covers.  Since tomorrow marks the beginning of the school year, I’m reminded all of a sudden about plastic school supplies, and books and notebooks wrapped in plastic.

I never really did master the art of wrapping anything in plastic covers; Mother and my cousins did all the wrapping work for us.  The first day of school greeted you with a schoolbag with plastic-wrapped everything: books, notebooks, plastic envelopes with the multiplication tables and spelling booklets wrapped in plastic, your plastic pencil case with your plastic pens and plasticine erasers still in the plastic packaging, the crayons still wrapped in tamper-proof plastic.  If it rains, Mother packs everything up in plastic bags before packing them up into our school bags.

Every parent in elementary school pretty much did the same thing Mother did, and that had interesting consequences at the classroom.  When we took out a notebook, the plastic covers were stuck to each other, and we ended up taking out three or five notebooks at once.  We all took out ballpens from their plastic packaging, and the garbage bin eventually gets filled up with plastic rubbish.

Mother always took the time to bring us lunch, until we were old enough to go home for the lunch break.  The rest of our classmates had lunchboxes.  The days of Army-style tin lunchboxes weren’t hip back in the early 1990s.  Only thumb-sucking baby-types came with those Panini Disney Princesses or Lion King lunchboxes that were effective containers for Tupperware.

Everyone was (literally) saddled with a giant hulking schoolbag, so the in thing were those all-in-one lunchboxes complete with juice container and plastic forks.  White-and-red Coleman containers were made of awesome, but the black ones with small containers for viands and rice and cupcakes were the standard for us.  If you didn’t like the corned-beef-and-eggs or luncheon-meat-with-eggs or hotdogs-and-eggs your mom spent around ten minutes cooking for you.

That didn’t do much for eating habits that meant using up more plastic.  Lunches were usually left uneaten or thrown away, so almost every kid made a beeline for sidewalk snackage.  Or Trump cards and goma for sipa or Chinese garter.  Zoom Zoom cheese snacks were cool, because of the plastic soldiers – or if you’re lucky, dodecahedral two-peso coins – that you get for the fifty-centavo snacks.  Snow cream was popular although it did taste like plastic (and led to mild cholera), but the highlight of everyone’s day was cotton candy spun from converted Singer sewing machines.  Iced Gem Cookies were cool and all, but I’ve always had a soft spot for strawberry-flavored Yan-Yan.

These days, the backpack is now a convenient container for non-school-y stuff; a laptop, some pens, a portable ashtray, some knick-knacks here and there, and bus and train tickets that remind me that my innocent childhood – spent ostracized from playgrounds and playing around with Legos – has come and gone.  No more plastic covered stuff, no more plastic stuff.  Kids are off to their Neverland of learning and building up their memories tomorrow.  For us, who wax (rant) lyrically and nostalgically about days gone by, those memories will stay just as they are: days gone by, wrapped in the plastic of time itself.

Bollocks on that, but yeah, “starstruck” was a good way to describe being just a few feet away from Jessica Zafra.