This is the first erotic short story I've posted entirely in Filipino--or first anything in Filipino, for that matter.

Dedicated to all the members of Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, and the somewhat excommunicated President Noynoy Aquino.

Nakaluhod siya sa harap ni Father Bernard sa loob ng confessional box. Mainit sa loob nito at amoy nabubulok na kahoy.

"Patawarin niyo ako, Father," sabi ng babae. "Wala na po kasi akong matakbuhan."

Tumingin si Father Bernard sa dalagita. Una niyang napansin ang parang pwet ng bata sa dibdib nito. Nakayuko yung babae sa harap niya, at nakasuot ng damit na may malalim na neckline. Mabilis pa sa kurot tumingin sa pader ang pari.

"Ilabas mo lang ang yung nararamdaman, iha," sabi ni Father Bernard sa pader.

"Hindi ko kasi alam ang gagawin ko, Father," sabi ng babae. "Ayaw ko po itong malaman ng mga kaibigan ko at ng mga magulang ko."

"Ano ba yun, iha?"

"Kasi po pag nalaman to ng tatay at nanay ko, siguro--ewan, hindi ko alam!" Hinanap niya ang mga salita. "Hindi naman nila siguro ako papatayin. Pero siyempre hindi na ako makapag-aaral ng kolehiyo."

"Ano ba ang ayaw mong malaman ng mga magulang mo?"

"Balak ko pa man ding maging magaling na aktres," ika ng babae.

Napatingin si Father Bernard sa mukha ng babae, parteng natatakpan ng kanyang buhok. Maputi at maamo ang mukha nito, makakapal ang labi at mamula-mula ang pisngi. Ang mukha niya ay inulanan ng maraming nunal na kulay kape. Tumingin ito sa pari, na siyang biglang napatinging muli sa pader. Nagtaka siya sa sarili kung bakit niya yun ginawa, silweta lang naman niya ang nakikita ng babae.

At saka niya lang naalala ang mukha: si Amy! Siya yung babaeng laging bumibili ng prutas kay Mang Paeng sa kabilang kanto! Naalala nga ni Father Bernard ang babae. Siya yung laging nakasuot ng masikip na damit, na halos pumutok ang suso nito at pumutok ang mga mata ng mga nakatingin dito. Lagi siyang naka-mini skirt, at pag naglakad ay parang tinatawag ng kanyang kembot ang lahat ng lalakihan sa mundo. Marami rin siyang suot na pulseras sa kamay. Kung magsalpukan sila sa isa't isa ay parang maraming sentimos. Paglabas niya ng boarding house, tutunog ang kanyang mga pulseras habang maglalakad siya papunta kina Mang Paeng. Dadaan siya ng Cebuana Lhuillier, ngingitian ang mga boy doon, na siya namang magkukurutan sa kilig. Dadaan siya sa karinderya ni Aling Che, tapos sa isang hardware, sari-sari store, ukay-ukay, computer shop, at saka makararating sa bilihan ng mga prutas ni Mang Paeng. Ang mga nagmamaneho naman ng traysikel ay panonoorin siyang maglakad habang hindi siya nakatingin, at pag tumungin siya, titingin silang lahat palayo.

Halos nangingiyak si Mang Paeng tuwing dumarating si Amy sa kanyang tindahan. "O, eto na ang mga prutas mo," sasabihin ni Mang Paeng. Matandang biyudo na si Mang Paeng, at iniwan na siya ng kanyang mga anak para mamuhay ng kanilang sari-sariling pamilya. Lagi niyang inihahanda ang mga prutas na yon sa isang supot para dadaanan na lang ni Amy. "Salamat, sweetheart!" sasabihin ni Amy. Pakiramdam ni Mang Paeng ay espesyal siyang tao, kahit alam niyang tinatawag ni Amy na "sweetheart" ang lahat. Alam ni Father Bernard ang lahat ng ito dahil nagtapat din si Mang Paeng sa kanya minsan.

"Nakapasa ako sa UP, Father!" sabi ni Amy kay Father Bernard. Nagbalik siyang muli sa loob ng masikip na confessional box.

"Mag-aaral ako ng Theater," ika ni Amy, "at tatalunin ko yung mga mahihinhing bitch sa TV--sila Bea Alonzo, Sarah Geronimo, Christine Hermosa..."

"Siguro nga mgagiging magaling kang aktres--"

"Ang papangit nilang umarte!" ika ni Amy, galit na galit ang mukha. "Lahat naman sila nanggaling lang sa karakter ni Juday sa Mara Clara! Pweh!"

"Kung hindi natin maaayos ang problema mo, iha, baka hindi ka na magiging aktr--"

"Dapat pumunta ka sa dula namin sa Marso, Father!" Biglang nagliwanag ang mukha ni Amy. Kitang-kita ang ngiti sa sulok ng kanyang mga mata. "Gagampanan ko ang karakter ni Juliet sa dula ni Shakespeare!"

"O sige, manonood ako," ika ng pari. "Pero yung proble--"

"Pero hindi ko yun magagampanan kung ipagpapatuloy ko itong pagbubuntis!" Nasabi niya rin sa wakas.

Hindi nagulat ang pari.

"Ilang taon ka na ba, iha?"

"16 po," sabi ni Amy.

Disisais! Susmariahosep!

"Ang bata mo pa para magbuntis--"

"Malandi po kasi ako," sabi ni Amy. "Este, nilalandi kasi nila ako."

"Sinong sila?"

"Yung mga lalaki," sabi ni Amy, "sino pa nga ba!"

"Pero huwag mong kalimutang parte ka rin ng may sala," sabi ng pari. "Dapat kasi hindi ka pumapayag sa mga ganoon. Alam mo namang hindi tama ang pre-marital sex, di ba?"

"Ganon lang po ba yun kasimple?" sabi ni Amy. "E di itutuloy ko na po ito?"

"Oo, sabihin mo sa mga magulang mo," sabi ni Father Bernard. "Kailangan mong sabihin ang totoo. Dito ka lang malilinawagan."

"Pero, Father, paano na yung pagiging aktres ko?!"

"Mas magiging magaling kang aktres pag naranasan mo nang maging ina," ika ng pari.

Nalungkot naman si Amy, at bigla ring nalungkot si Father Bernard ng di niya maintindihan.

"Ganoon lang talaga ang buhay," sabi ng pari. "Pagkatapos mong panagutan ang kasalanan mo, saka ka lang malilinawagan."

"Ganon po ba?"

"Maiintindihan mo rin tong mga sinasabi ko balang araw," sabi ng pari, "pag nanganak ka na."

Kinabukasan, nakita ni Father Bernard si Amy na bumibili ng pamparegla sa may Quiapo. Hindi niya sigurado kung si Amy ito, pero nang nakita at narinig niya ang mga pulseras nito, saka siya naging tiyak sa hinala niya.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, sabi ni Father Bernard sa sarili. Halos hindi na natapos ang kanyang kaka- tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, sabay ng pakaliwa-kanan-kaliwa ng kanyang ulo. Kadalasan ang sinasagot ng tao sa kasalanan, ika niya, ay kasalanan din. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. Gustong tulungan ni Father Bernard si Amy at nakaisip siya ng paraan. Hihintayin niya ito sa may tindahan ni Mang Paeng bukas ng umaga!

Saktong alas otso ng umaga kinabukasan, lumabas si Amy sa kanyang boarding house nang bagong paligo at amoy anghel. Suot niya ang kanyang bagong shorts na hapit na hapit sa mabibilog nitong hita. Ang taba at ang puti ng mga hita ni Amy! Malayo pa lang ay nakita na ito agad ni Father Bernard, at agad naman siyang tumingin sa mga saging at pinya at dalandan at santol at atis at duhat ni Mang Paeng, kunwari bumibili. Nakasuot si Father Bernard ng pang karaniwang tao, maong na pantalon at kupas na statement shirt na nagsasabing, "I'm addicted to Faithbook."

"Magandang umaga, sweetheart!" sabi ni Amy kay Mang Paeng. Nginitian niya si Father Bernard ng walang kamalay-malay.

Nataranta si Father Bernard sa kung ano ang kanyang isasagot at sa halip ay bumalik na lang sa katitingin ng mga prutas.

"Ito na ang mga prutas mo, Amy," sabi ni Mang Paeng, ngiting halos mahati ang kanyang mukha sa dalawa.

Nakita ni Father Bernard na saglitang nagkadikitan ang kanilang mga daliri nang iniabot ni Mang Paeng ang supot kay Amy.

"Maraming salamat, sweetheart!" sabi ni Amy. Ibinigay niya ang kanyang bayad at nang papaalis siya, biglang nagsalita yung mamang nakasimangot.

"Kaya maraming kasalanan sa mundo," sabi ni Father Bernard sa manggang hawak niya, "ay dahil sa mga babae."

Napahinto at lumingon si Amy.

"Nagsusuot sila ng mga seksing damit, lumuluwa ang dibdib at halos kita na ang panty," ika ni Father Bernard sa mangga. Pinag-aaralan niya ang mangga, inikot-ikot ito, sabay sabing, "Magsusuot sila ng maiingay na pulseras, ngingitian ka, babatiin ka, aakitin ka. Pero alam mo ang totoo?" sabi niya sa mangga ng malapitan, parang pinagagalitan ito. "Ang totoo ay sadya nilang ginagawang miserable ang lahat ng tao."

Ibinalik niya ang mangga sa iba pang mga makasalanang mangga, at tumingin kay Amy, nangungupisang kumintab ang mga mata. Hindi niya ito matagalang tignan, kaya dumampot siyang muli ng isa pang prutas, ang duhat. Medyo mabigat, kaya ibinalik ito at sa halip ay dinampot ang santol.

"Alam mo," sabi niya sa santol, "sadya nilang pinaiinggit ang ibang mga babae, lalo na yung mga pangit, at mas lalo--" pumulot pa siya ng isang santol, at dalawa na silang kinakausap, "mas lalo na ang mga lalaki. Kung paano nila pinatatakbo ang utak ng mga lalaki ay ibang kwento."

Bumwelo si Father Bernard at sumenyas ng supot kay Mang Paeng. Inilagay niya ang dalawang santol dito at pinagpatuloy ang kanyang sermon.

"Tong mga babae, pagagandahin nila ang mga sarili nila, maglalagay ng kung anu-ano sa mukha para dayain ang mga lalaki. Tong mga lalaki naman mahuhulog sa mga babae, mabubuntis sila, pakakasalanan, panganganakan, at habang buhay maghihirap sa pagtatrabaho."

Nanginginig na si Amy sa isang tabi. May isang luha na dumulas sa kanyang pisngi, kasama nito ang polbo at blush on at moisturizer na inilagay niya kaninang pagkaligo.

"At kung iisipin mo," ika ni Father Bernard, "kaya naghihirap ang bansang ito ay dahil sa mga babaeng mahilig mag-make up at manamit na parang nagbebenta ng laman at mahilig magshopping sa mga mall. Wala silang ginawa kundi pagandahin ang sarili. Puro sila mga sakim, at walang pakielam sa pakiramdam ng ibang tao."

Biglang umiyak ng malakas si Amy at tumakbo pabalik ng kanyang boarding house.

Napabuntong-hininga si Mang Paeng sa mamang swangit. Nalungkot siya sa kinahinatnan ni Amy at gusto niya sanang pagalitan ang mama pero wala siyang lakas ng loob.

"Ako nga pala si Father Bernard," ika ng mama kay Mang Paeng, habang iniaabot ang kanang kamay.

Nanlaki ang mga mata ni Mang Paeng, at saka niya nakilala ang paring nagmimisa sa kanilang simbahan. Kinamayan niya ito.

"Ikaw pala yan, Father," ika ni Mang Paeng. "Hindi kita napansin sa suot niyo!"

"Hindi ba't tama naman ang mga sinabi ko?"

Naalala ni Mang Paeng ang maganda niyang asawa, ang buong buhay niyang paninilbihan dito hanggang sa namatay at iniwan siyang nag-iisa; at sinabing, "Tama po kayo, Father. Pero hindi niyo sana sinabi yun sa harap ng bata."

"Pwes," ika ni Father Bernard. "Darating siya sa punto ng buhay niya na kakailanganin niyang matuto."

Napasimangot lang si Mang Paeng, hindi maipaglaban si Amy. Mabait naman yon na bata, at napakalambing.

Nang sumunod na umaga, hindi dinaanan ni Amy ang kanyang nakasupot na prutas sa tindahan ni Mang Paeng. Sa mga sumunod pang araw, hindi na nagpakita si Amy. Wala nang seksing lalabas ng boarding house, tutunong ang kanyang mga pulseras, at maglalakad sa harap ng Cebuana, ng karinderya ni Aling Che, ng hardware, sari-sari store, ukay-ukay, computer shop, at sa bilihan ng prutas ni Mang Paeng. Wala nang magkukurutang mga lalaki, magsisitsitang mga drayber ng traysikel. Wala nang babati sa mga istambay ng, "Hello mga sweetheart." At higit sa lahat, wala nang magpapangiti kay Mang Paeng.

Kahit na isang linggo nang hindi dumaraan si Amy sa tindahan ni Mang Paeng, naghahanda pa rin siya ng isang supot ng prutas kung baka sakaling babalik si Amy. Pero hindi. Lumipas ang isang buwan at hindi na talaga bumalik si Amy doon.

Nang dumaan muli si Father Bernard sa tindahan ni Mang Paeng, parang tumanda pang lalo si Mang Paeng, mas lalong namuti ang mga buhok at nangayayat.

"Magandang umaga sa ngalan ng Dyos, kapatid!" ika ni Father Bernard kay Mang Paeng.

Tumingin lang si Mang Paeng, at nagbigay ng matamlay na ngiti.

"Kamusta ang mga tinda natin?" sabi ng pari.

"Gaya ng dati," ika ni Mang Paeng, "matumal."

"Dumaraan pa ba rito si Amy?"

Nasindak si Mang Paeng. Ito nga pala yung taong sanhi ng kalungkutan niya.

"Paano mo nalaman ang pangalan niya?" ika ni Mang Paeng, may konting bahid ng galit.

"Paano nakilala?" Napatawa si Father Bernard. Kasiya-siya siyang alagad ng Dyos sa suot niyang sutana at malaking bling-bling na krus sa dibdib. "Paano siya hindi makikilala, eh kung kani-kaninong lalaki siya nakikitulog."

Mas lalo pang bumigat ang pakiramdam ni Mang Paeng.

"Hindi na napapasya si Amy dito," sabi ni Mang Paeng, "mula noong sinermonan mo siya."

Natuwa naman ang pari at gumana ang kanyang plano. Magiging matinong babae at ina itong si Amy balang araw, ika niya sa sarili. Job well done, Bernard! Praise the Lord!

"Sa katunayan," sabi ni Mang Paeng. "Kahapon pa siya nag-iimpake. Babalik na raw siya sa Nueva Ecija."

"Tama lang yun," sabi ni Father Bernard, "nang mabantayan siya ng mga magulang niya."

Sumimangot pa lalo si Mang Paeng.

"Pwede bang humingi ng pabor?" sabi ni Mang Paeng. Lumiwanag ang mukha ni Father Bernard. "Pwede mo bang iabot itong mga prutas sa kanya." At saka muling nagdilim ang mukha ng pari. "Pabaon ko, sabihin mo," ika ni Mang Paeng. "Wala kasing tatao sa tindahan ko kung ako mismo ang pupunta don."

Hinawakan ng pari ang supot, hindi alam kung paano niya tatanggihan si Mang Paeng nang hindi siya masasaktan.

"Mawalang galang, kapatid," sabi ng pari. "Hindi ko iyan maaaring gawin. Ano na lang ang iisipin ng mga tao kung nakita nila akong papasok sa boarding house ng mga batang babae?"

"At ba't naman kailangang mag-isip ang mga tao ng masama," ika ni Mang Paeng, "kung kampante ka sa kabutihang loob mo?"

Nadaganan ang pagkatao ni Father Bernard.

"At marami pa akong gagawin," sabi ng pari. "Magdidilig pa ako ng mga halaman ko."

"Halaman!" sigaw ni Mang Paeng, mas lalo pang nagalit. "Mas may pakielam ka pa sa halaman kaysa sa bata. Baka magpakamatay yun!"

Nagdalawang isip si Father Bernard at sa huli ay kinuha rin ang supot ng mga prutas.

"O sige," ika niya. "Pagsasabihan ko siya ng mas maayos."

Naglakad si Father Bernard bitbit ang mga prutas at nadaanan niya ang computer shop, ang ukay-ukay, sari-sari store, hardware, karinderya, at saka huminto sa harap ng boarding house ni Amy. Naramdaman ni Father Bernard ang tingin at galit ng mga taong nasa establisimentong mga dinaanan niya. Guniguni mo lang yun, ika niya sa sarili. Kumatok siya sa pinto pero maingay lang itong bumukas. Madilim sa loob. Walang bumbilya ang hagdanan at marumi ang mga baitang nito. Inakyat niya ng dahan-dahan ang masikip na hagdanan. Pakiramdam niya ay madudulas siya sa payat ng mga tapakan. Sa ikalawang palapag, mayroong isang mahabang palisyo ng naghilerang mga pinto. Hindi niya alam kung saan papasok. May lumabas na dalagitang pinaluputan ng twalya ang buhok, nagulat sa mamang nakasutana, at mabilis na sabing, "G'morning Father!"

"Mawalang galang, iha," ika ng pari. "Maaari mo bang ituro sa akin ang silid ni Amy?"

"Doon po siya sa dulong pinto sa kanan!" ika ng dalagita.

"Maraming salamat."

"Walang anuman!"

Naglakad si Father Bernard tungong dulo, dinaanan ang maruruming pader at nagpipilasang pinta nito, at naamoy ang mabahong tae ng pusa. Bukas ang pinto pagkarating ni Father Bernard sa dulong kwarto sa kanan. Pagpasok niya sa loob, para itong hinagupit ng bagyo. Ang natatanging ilaw ay yung nanggaling sa maliit na bintana. Nagkalat ang mga papel, at sa dulo ng silid ay ang kartun-kartong kagamitan ni Amy. Nakaupo si Amy sa kanyang kama sa sulok, pinipilas ang mga pahina ng isang libro.

Nakita ni Amy ang mamang nakasutana, bitbit ang pamilyar na supot. Pagkatingin niya sa mukha ng pari, siya'y nabigo.

"Anong ginagawa mo rito?" sabi ni Amy. Tumayo siya sa kama. Nakasuot siya ng manipis na panlalaking t-shirt at jogging pants at mukha siyang bruha. Hindi niya rin suot ang kanyang mga pulseras.

"Pinapahatid lang ito ng matanda," ika ng pari sa supot ng mga prutas. Gusto niya na lang iwan ito sa sahig at tumakbo ng mabilis.

"Siraulo ka ba?" sabi ni Amy. Nilapitan niya ang pari at sinipang pasara ang pinto.

"Nagpunta ka rito para iabot sa akin iyan?" Hinablot ni Amy ang supot, at ibinalibag sa pader. Nagtalbugan ang mga prutas sa sahig at gumulong ang dalandan at santol at atis at mansanas at saging.

Pinanood lang ng pari ang paggulong ng mga prutas at hindi nagsalita.

Kinuha ni Amy ang mga papel sa sahig at ipinamukha sa pari ang script na nakasulat dito.

"Ayaw ko nang maging sinumang hinayupak na aktres," ika ni Amy, habang pinilaspilas ang papel. "Wala nang Juliet. Wala nang dula ni Shakespeare. Wala nang anuman. Uuwi na ako sa amin, naintindihan mo ba?"

Mainit sa loob ng kwarto at tuyung-tuyo ang hangin, gawa ng el niño.

"Isa ka palang pari. Mawalang galang sa iyo kung sino ka man!" sabi ni Amy.

"Ako si Father Bernard," sabi ni Father Bernard.

"Ikaw si Father Bernard wala akong pakielam," sabi ni Amy. "Sino ka bang bigla-bigla na lang susulpot sa teritoryo ko at sisiraan ako sa harap ng matanda kong kaibigan?"

Napatingin muli si Father Bernard sa mga prutas, ang dalandan at santol at atis at mansanas at saging, at sana, naisip niya, sana mayroon siyang nahahawakan ngayon.

"Wala kang karapatan para husgahan ako," sabi ni Amy. "Kung sino ka man, pari o hindi, wala kang pakielam sa buhay ko."

"Ako yung paring kausap mo sa simbahan," ika ni Father Bernard. "Gusto lang talaga kitang tulungan."

"Ikaw pala yung paring walang kwentang magpayo. Pwes," sabi ni Amy, "hindi ako natulungan ng mga sagradong salita mo. Sinira mo lang lalo ang pagkatao ko."

Napatingin na lang ang pari sa napakapulang mansanas sa sahig, at gusto sana itong pulitin.

"Naramdaman mo na ba kung gaano kahirap maging isang babae?" sabi ni Amy, inilapit niya ang mukha sa pari at nagtatalsaikan ang kanyang laway sa mukha nito.

"Hindi," ika ni Father Bernard sa mansanas.

"Naramdaman mo na ba kung gaano kahirap maging maganda at habulin ng mga lalaki?"

"Hindi," ika ni Father Bernard.

"Naramdaman mo na ba kung gaano kahirap lasingin at gapangin ng taong di mo kilala?"

"Hindi," ika ni Father Bernard.

"Naramdaman mo na ba kung gaano kahirap mabuntis nang di alam kung sino ang ama?"

"Hindi," ika ni Father Bernard.

"Natural!" sabi ni Amy. "Wala ka ngang kinalaman sa sex, paano pa sa pagiging babae!"

Hindi alam ni Father Bernard ang sasabihin. Oo, totoo yon. Hindi pa siya nakatikim ng babae sa buhay niya, maliban sa isang french kiss noong siya'y kinse anyos at punung-puno ng tagyawat.

"Tignan mo nga ako," sabi ni Amy.

Inilipat ni Father Bernard ang tingin sa mukha ni Amy.

Hinubad ni Amy ang kanyang t-shirt. Santisima!

Tumingin agad sa malayo si Father Bernard.

Tinganggal ni Amy ang kanyang bra, hinablot ang mga kamay ng pari, at inilagay ito sa kanyang dibdib.

Pumikit ng maigi si Father Bernard, napakaasim ng mukha. Hinayaan niyang ipahawak ni Amy ang kanyang dibdib. Hindi niya alam kung tatanggalin ang mga kamay nito o lalamutakin ang dalawang malambot na kaluwalhatian. Sa di alam ang gagawin, hinayaan niya na lang si Amy na gabayan siya.

"Hawakan mo ng mabuti," sabi ni Amy. Hinubad niya ang jogging pants at panty, at inilipat niya ang isang kamay ni Father Bernard sa kanyang kabuhokan at katambukan. Ipinasok niya ang isang daliri ng pari rito. Napakalambot at napakadulas nito.

Nakapikit pa rin ang pari. Halata sa emosyon ng kanyang mukha na pinagdedebatihan kung ano ang dapat gawin. Ang kanyang tanging depensa, mabilis siyang nag-sign of the cross, at saka tinanggal ang kwintas na bling-bling at isinabit sa leeg ni Amy. Walang nangyari. Sa halip, natawa si Amy.

Hinalikan ni Amy ang leeg nito. Mas lalong nanginig ang pari. Hinawakan ni Amy ang katigasan nito at hinaplos ng hinaplos ng hinaplos, habang diniladilaan niya ang kanyang leeg, at ginagabay ang mga kamay ng pari.

"Hindi tama itong ginagawa mo, iha!" Hindi mapigilan ng pari ang kanyang sarili. "Napakasarap! Para akong nasa alapaap!"

Hindi sumagot si Amy at itinuloy ang kanyang paggagabay. Sa sobrang basa nilang dalawa, napaluhod si Father Bernard at nabahiran ng dumi at alikabok ang kanyang sutana. Ibinuka niya ang mga binti ni Amy at diniladilaan ang kanyang katambukan. Masangsang ang amoy nito, at pagdilat ng kanyang mga mata, duguan pala itong salbaheng bata. Pero ang di maintindihan ni Father Bernard, mas lalo pang nilamutak ito na parang bampirang uhaw na uhaw sa dugo. Tumingin siya sa itaas at nayanig sa kagandahan ng babaeng punung-puno ng nunal na kulay kape. Kuminang ang bling-bling.

"Birheng Santa Maria!" ika ng pari sa kaluwalhatian ni Amy. "Patawarin mo po ako sa aking kasalanan." Pagtingin ni Father Bernard sa itaas, may lagpas-lagpas na dugo sa kanyang bunganga, pinapanood pala siya ni Amy.

"Pinapatawad na kita," sagot ni Amy sa gitna ng dalawang bundok sa kanyang dibdib. Nakangiti siyang pinapalibutan ng liwanag mula sa maliit na bintana.

Kim shuts the door behind him and looks at his reflection from his bedroom window. It's dark out, and the image in front of him looks at him looking at him. He is clean-shaved, tall, and porkly, and his nose appears to have been punched into his face. He has nails painted black, his "I Google" shirt black, his sling bag black, his Kickers sneakers black. He prefers wearing black because other colors show the sweat marks beneath his armpits. He tosses his bag away and flicks the lights off. Outside, Kim's window frames Frank's house. Frank standing at his bedroom window, emptying his pockets and pulling his shirt from the back.

Frank just moved into the neighborhood a month ago and he and Kim walk together to school and back home. Kim draws his curtains and grabs his binoculars. He takes a chair and spies on Frank. Zooming in, Frank's now half naked, studying his growing beard in front of a mirror. He takes a razor and closely shaves his chin. Then he puts the razor away and looks at his stooped side view profile, his little belly protruding out front. He breathes his stomach in, raising his chest, and stoops again.

They do this everyday. Going home from school, Kim looking at his reflection, flicking the lights off, spying on Frank; Frank emptying his pockets, removing his shirt, and studying his reflection.

But this particular day, Frank looks back at Kim through the mirror, through his window, across the street, through Kim's window. He walks to the window, peers out to Kim, looks around the street, and walks out of view. Moments later, Frank appears again half naked, punching keys from a chordless phone and sticking the phone in between his ear and shoulder.

Kim's phone blares. He tumbles out his chair, gropes for the extension phone on his desk, and clicks the receiver on.

"Yeah," he says coolly.

"Kim," Frank says. "So, are you up for gym tomorrow? Membership's free. Only thirty bucks a day."

"I dunno Frank," Kim says, now back on his chair, peering out his binoculars through the window. "I haven't made my mind up yet. But yeah, maybe. I could give it a try." Kim sees Frank craning his neck on the phone and flexing his arm muscles in front of the mirror.

"Meet you 7 A.M., what do you say?" muscle boy says. Frank's side view reflection, he's tucking his stomach in, and flexing each arm and leg out front. He smiles lustily at himself and winks an eye.

"Alright, seven," Kim says.

"Don't forget to bring a towel and extra clothes," Frank says, now holding the phone, his back to the mirror, his head rubbernecking at his butt.

"Okay," says Kim.

"Right. Bye."

Kim breaks a sweat, and flicks the light back on.

His room is a mess. He has a Kill Bill and a Pulp Fiction poster on a wall, one peeling off from the top. At the opposite wall, a Donnie Darko and A Clockwork Orange movie poster are overmasked with duct tape at the corners. His bed is undone, yellowing socks and an ashtray full of stubbed out cigarettes underneath. There's an unfinished game of scrabble laid on the floor, and three back issues of Geek magazine beside it.

Kim picks up his sling bag from the floor and empties the contents on the desk. There's his reading materials for school, a black iPod shuffle, a Staedtler mechanical pencil, a black Nokia Express Phone, and the XXXL red Chinese kimono he bought from a thrift store during one of his breaks.

He knocks his shoes and socks off, and wiggles his stubby toes. He strips off his ragged jeans and shirt, and pulls the kimono over. The kimono is silk, hemmed black, and patterned with sewn gold dragons. It has slits on the sides that show his sumo-wrestler legs. Its waist is a little tight, and there's a space underneath where a woman's breasts should be. He slides his closet door open, and a mountain of dark clothes almost spills over. He fishes a shoe box from a top drawer and opens it. First he takes out a balled lump of cloth and rolls it up his legs: fishnet stockings. The crisscrosses are too tight, and his flesh pops out in diamond shapes. Next he slips a pair of oversized red high-heel clogs on his feet.

That wasn't so difficult wasn't it? It's his first time to dress himself like this. All those coins and bills saved in his piggybank, it's all for this glorious moment in front of the mirror. The kimono and stockings cheap, but the clogs. The clogs is a pair of Nine West, worth a little less than four thousand bucks.

He looks dramatically at his reflection, saying, "Frank," he pauses a moment, looks away dreamily then back at his reflection, continuing, "I met a boy in our neighborhood." He pauses again, leans closer and whispers, "And I think I'm in love with him." Kim smiles coyly at his reflection and bats his china eyes prettily. He takes a makeup kit from a drawer, samples a red lipstick at the back of his hand, then paints his tiny lips red and smacks them loudly together.

"Kim!" his mother's high pitched voice echoes from the staircase. "Dinner time!"

"I'll be down in a minute!" Kim yells back.

He takes an eyeliner, pulls down one cheek, and traces and retraces his lower eyelid.

"Kim!" his mother yells again. "You get down this minute or I'll have Nipples eat your dinner." Nipples is a two-year-old black Yorkshire Terrier with a chest of brown fur. She is chained to a pipe at their backyard's laundry area.

"I heard you," Kim yells back.

Hearing his mother stomping up the stairs, he snaps his arm for a Kleenex but thinks against it. Instead, he pulls down his other cheek, taking his time, and traces the other eyelid. His bedroom door opens and his mother appears on the mirror standing far behind him. Kim continues retracing his eyelid, not looking at his mother, his red lips puckered down to an O. Then he tosses his head back, shuts the tears out his eyes, and looks back at the mirror.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" His mother says, hands akimbo.

"What do you think I'm doing? I'm prettifying myself," Kim says, glancing at his mother through the mirror. Smash Kim down shorter and wider, tipple his weight a few more pounds, toss in a pair of large boulder breasts, stretch his nose, then put in some bangs and ear-length straight hair. That's what his mother looks like.

His mother gapes her mouth in terror and her chin triples in layer.

Kim takes a blush-on and brushes light-brown dust to paint depressions on his cheeks.

"We have a little play for class on Monday," he lies to her. "We lack girls, apparently." He stands up, swivels around in his heavy clogs, and catwalks towards her.

Her mother's facial expression slackens back to a droop.

"Don't I look pretty?" Kim says, posing in front of his mother, one leg bent, his head cocked playfully to one side.

"Ravishing. You look like your Aunt Miling," she says. "I have a wig in my closet if you need one." She turns her back and walks out the door. "Dinner's getting cold," she says, and stomps back down the stairs.

At dinner, Kim's wearing the drag--the kimono, the makeup, and the puffed up long brown wig he dug out from his mother's closet. He's added black mascara and a thick layer of liquid foundation to his face. He's seated in front of his mother, who looks at him with disgust.

Kim's plate is a diet to thinness. There are ten morsels of boiled green peas, four sticks of raw carrots, a cube of steamed salmon, and a half cup of gravyless mashed potatoes. They've been using this diet for two days now, and Kim isn't complaining. His mother inconsistently jumps in and out of diet fads, loses weight which boomerangs back twice what she's lost. At one point she'd blame her genes and reduce everything to the chemical makeup of her brain. Then she'd see a infomercial about diet pills, fruit-to-juice converters, gym balls, and exercise equipments, and she'd change her mind to blaming her lack of will power and discipline.

Kim thinks beauty is a social construct. He thinks the world is governed by greedy people who create your wish list and overdig your pockets. They create razors and shaving creams and say you should epilate your skin. They create whitening soap and say you should have white skin. They create diet pills and diet fads and say you should be thin. They invent useless stuff and create your needs so you'll buy them and make them rich. This was Kim's reasoning back when Frank hasn't moved in. He still believes it, but doesn't mind being a conformist. So he takes his fork, spears a stick of carrot and puts it in his mouth.

"You father," his mother says. "He's arriving tomorrow."

Kim drops his fork, which clatters on the ceramic dinner plate. With his face caked with makeup, head dressed with wig, he looks at his mother in a comic way of shock.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you right away." His mother wipes her mouth with a white napkin. "He wants it to be a surprise but I thought you should know." At the end of her fork is a lacerated flesh of a marine animal. She shoves it into her mouth and chews reflectively.

His father has been gone eight years now. Works in a luxury cruise in Alaska where he skins eight hundred kilograms of potatoes a day, boils them in a large pot, and mashes them in a big wire masher. This pays the bills, the ground floor's interior designer, the modernized kitchen, the rain forest living room of fake plants, his mother's collection of horse statues and figurines molded in plaster, china, glass, marble, and wood.

Everywhere in the house there's a horse sticking somewhere. A horse statue stuck in gallop by the front door. A family of horse figurines on the living room center table. A painting of a herd of horses crossing a turbulent river, their mane and tail frozen in waves. A black marble horse at the center of the dining table. Horses engraved on mirrors. Horse patterns on the bathroom tiles. Stuffed horses, baby horses, horse souvenirs, horse memorabilia. A glass cabinet of horses. Eight years. That's what the contract said. Eight years of horse collection. His father signed the contract without thinking twice.

Nails cut short and painted black, Kim's sausage fingers picks up the fork and takes a rakeful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. He chews absentmindedly and says, "We don't need him here."

"Kim," his mother scolds him. "Your father hasn't talked to you since, but that doesn't mean he doesn't love you."

That doesn't mean he doesn't love you. The thought sickens him. He just wishes his father was dead, garroted on a cruise's sail rope, or thrown out into the shark-infested sea. Growing up fatherless, he's gotten used to it. It's not as if he needs a father to straighten his closet-gay life to begin with. Ripping his neighbor playmate's new dress, he knew he was jealous being a girl when he was four. He all kept them to himself. His watching Fashion TV. His window shopping for shoes and cosmetics in the mall. His ogling at hunky boys carved and sculptured after Greek demigods.

Ever since he met Frank, Kim has began excelling in school again. He plans to go to some big time university on full scholarship on whatever course and earn enormous amounts of filthy money. He'll grow his hair and undergo a therapy swallowing estrogen pills every day for a year. He'll get himself a vaginoplasty to change his genitals. He'll get himself a labiaplasty and a scrotal electrolysis. He'll have his vocal chords thinned, his trachea shaved, his eyebrow bone reshaped, his jaw contoured, his forehead femininized. Then he'll lose weight and get his nipples sliced open to slip in some breast implants.

Sometimes he thinks he doesn't need to be beautiful to be happy. He'd fantasize a future with Frank, who'd love him without makeup, thin body, women's clothes, shoes and surgery. The Frank who'll love him just the way he is--tall, fat, ugly. And gay. But this dream just seems unreachable, impossible. He hates the grueling idea of womanizing himself. What more, hates the idea of being himself. He loathes advertisements, TV commercials, the sprawling billboards on EDSA, and every beautiful person walking down the street. He hates consumer culture and how it strips you naked and taunts your flaws.

"Is he staying home for good?" Kim says. His red Chinese kimono is beginning to show wet stains on the armpits. His makeup is beginning is run, his eyes all spidery with sweat and mascara.

"I'm afraid he is," replies his mother. She sips from her glass of cheap red wine, leaving a lipstick print on the rim.

Kim looks at his cube of pink salmon and loses his appetite. His father--he can't remember much about his father. All he knows is that his father was always out of the house. His youthful dad would bang at the front door in the middle of the night and yell at the direction of his mother's room from the street. He'd reek of alcohol mixed with a breezy breath of a thousand cigarettes. He would try to undress his petulant mother and they'd end up screaming at each other. The yellow lights from the neighborhood windows would flicker to life one after another. His parents scream and vases are broken. Glass shattering against the wall. Then they would quell down and the neighbors' lights would be snuffed out one by one. Next morning, their room is a landfill of trash that could cut your foot open. And there they'd be lying peacefully asleep, tangled in tentacular embrace.

His father's moving back in fills Kim's head with a hundred possibilities, including military discipline--having a clean room, no stink in the house, waking up early, lights off early, spanking the shit out of Kim's faggot butt--that his father couldn't even apply on himself. Then his father would make a man out of him. Father and son camping trip perhaps. Go out scuba diving, wall climbing, kayaking, bungie jumping--his father loves the outdoors--compensate for the lost time. Say it now or never: an idea descends on Kim's head.

"Ma," he says in his watery makeup, muffin-shaped sticky hair, and dragon-patterned red kimono. "I'm sort of, like, you know, gay."

His mother freezes, lips open slack. Mute, unmoving, anticipating, Kim stares at her slit eyes and half-open mouth. The scene is a film stuck on the reel. There is so much noise everything falls silent. Then suddenly, the scene lurches forward. The chair scratches on the marble floor, and his mother walks out on him into the kitchen. Kim hears the food cabinet opening and banging shut. The tap water fills in a glass. Then his mother shuffles back into her seat, pills on one hand and a glass of water on the other. Anti-depressants. She gobbles the pills up, three, four maybe, and quaffs the glass of water audibly. There's an arc of water on both corners of her mouth. She sets the glass on the table.

Without warning, her mother screams.

Her scream drills into Kim's ears, fills in the room nearly shattering all glass, all windows, stretches across the street.

Then she says, "I am a failure." She dabs a tear out her eye with a napkin.

Kim looks at his food, looks at his mom, then back to his food.

"This is all my fault." Her mother sobs. "I should've given you more time."

"It's not your fault, ma," Kim says. He doesn't know what to say, but he thinks he ought to say something. Fill in the silence.

"I'm partly responsible for whoever you become," says his mother in a tremulous voice.

Kim interlocks his fingers, his free fingers thumb-wrestling with each other.

"It just sort of happens, you know," he says finally. "I don't know how. I just am."

"Oh, Kim. I don't know what to do with you," she says regrettably. Frowning, she lifts her glass of wine, checks the lipstick print, and sips from the same area.

Kim looks at his fat toes underneath the table. His right toe is sticking out the fishnet stockings.

She picks up her fork, inhales deeply, then exhales, her body collapsing.

"So that's why," she says, stressing with her fork. "The way you turn your head." She whirls her fork around. "That's why." She says this as if turning your head meant everything.

Kim straightens up his neck, now self-conscious by the way he turns his head.

"There's something feminine about you I couldn't tell." How feminine, he couldn't tell either.

"I found that makeup kit in your drawer but no," she says, stretching the ‘no' far to the moon while pointing the fork, "No. My son couldn't be, you know, queer."

"I don't like that," he says. "That word. Queer."

"What do you want me to call you, hm?" His mother leans forward.

"It's just that," he staggers. "It's just that you can't cram everything that I am into one word."

His mother exhales again, head shaking. "You can't do this now, Kim," she says, "Not now when your pa's coming back." She shakes her head again.

They finish their meal in silence.

That night, Kim visits the attic with Nipples. He's changed into purple pajamas with yellow stars and moons on them. Nipples's on a leash with a little bell jingling at her neck. Why ‘Nipples', she has inverted nipples that's why. Chinese nipples, they call it. That when you're born female with inverted nipples, you can't nurse your young.

The attic is one invisible trap door away from the second floor. You pull the door from the ceiling, and the door falls slanted to the ground with a ladder behind it. Like a portal into some horror movie. The attic's dank, moldy, dusty, and it reeks of wet, rotting wood. Kim gropes for the light switch, and flicks it on. The attic is cramped with large corrugated boxes, three boxes stacked over another three. There's the antique glass cabinet at one corner and a large shelf of broken equipments at another. There's their old fifteen-inch black-and-white television, a cassette tape player, and the old school rotary phone.

Kim goes over the rotary phone, the floorboards creaking beneath his feet. He hovers his face two inches above it, and picks up the handle. He dials a random number and says, "Hi dad! How are ya? How's the weather out there? You know what? I'm gay." Nipples barks in his arm. "Yeah? You're gay too? That's nice. Mom's a lesbian, didn't you know? Oh, you knew? Wow. I'll see you tomorrow, alright? We miss you too." He replaces the receiver, snorting to himself.

At the far end wall is a small square window of four quadrants. Nipples struggling in his arm, Kim walks towards the window. The window is thick with dust and grime, light impenetrable. He wipes a circle with the side of his fist, and peers at Frank's window one floor below, its light turned off. Nipples barks, shifting her head around, her bell jingling. She jumps from Kim's arm and skitters to the glass cabinet. She sniffs the foot of it, raises one hind leg, and relieves herself. Kim grunts and plods towards Nipples, who scampers away to sniff the old boxes.

The glass cabinet is stuffed with old books and bundles of Cosmopolitan magazines and Philippine Daily Inquirer newspapers. Kim slides open the glass and randomly picks out a dusty book. Meditations for Manifesting by Wayne Dyer. The book's writhed in ripples, probably from the rain water seeping through the back of the cabinet. Kim puts it back and takes out another. Anatomy of Hatha Yoga. He riffles open a page and finds a picture of a pregnant woman meditating on a rubber mat. Flips another page and finds the subject title at the top right, Yoga for Losing Weight. The stuff his mother buys. He puts it back and slides the glass close.

Nipples barks, jingling her bell. Kim turns around and finds Nipples waggling her tail and circling around on top the stack of boxes. He takes one box and hauls it to the floor. The layer of dust leaps and settles back on the box surface. He blows the dust off, sneezes, and opens it. Inside is his father's stuff. Grunge and retro fashion, a motley hue of red, indigo, and forest green; two photo albums, and a moleskin notebook, among others. He takes one album, parks his ass on the other closed box, and flips open the front cover.

The first one's a picture of his dad, twentyish, in a binge with his drunken friends. His father is smiling idiotically, all his horse teeth exposed, posing with a bottle of beer. Below it is a picture of his parents, his mother's belly swelling out her hanging shirt, her bellybutton popping out. On her belly leaning one ear is his father, eyes closed, grinning the same horse smile.

"Look, Nipples," Kim says, showing the photograph to the dog. Nipples barks and cocks her head to one side. "That's me inside mum's tummy." He scoops Nipples off the box and sits her on his lap.

Next page is baby Kim naked in a plastic tub of water, his father shampooing his baby hair.

"Look how tiny I was," says Kim, grinning to himself. Nipples barks and pants her tongue out.

Kim flips another page. His parents' church wedding. Kim about four years old, carried by his grandma Lilia. His face is red, streaked with tears, his mouth stretched wide open with one missing front tooth. His parents are both wearing white, faces scowling at the camera.

"I'm so thin back then," Kim mutters. When you look at a picture it's always your image you first notice.

Kim closes the album and tosses it back in the box. Nipples leaps off his lap and sniffs around the attic. Now Kim glares at the moleskin notebook, the rubber string tied around it seemingly unknotting and beckoning him to peek inside. He lifts it out the box, loosens the string, and whisks the front cover open. Kenneth Uy, it says, scrawled in loopy handwriting. Inside is Kim's firsts: first cut nails scotch-taped on the page, first cut hair in a stapled sealable plastic, a photo of the first time he crawled on his belly, first baby food, first word uttered--it was "Pa". Skips two pages. First time he walked, first scraped knee. Skips a few more pages. First jeepney ride, first trip to the zoo, first birthday celebration, first baby playmate--a pretty girl named Olivia. Skip. First stroll to the mall, first crap on the toilet on his own, first night to sleep in his own room, on his own bed. Skip. First music instrument, a kiddie plastic flute, first visit to McDonalds playground, first walk at Luneta Park. Skip. First day at school, first uniform, first pee in the classroom, first finger painting. Kim shuts the notebook fast, his eyes welling and blurring, an invisible lump choking down his throat.

Seven in the morning the next day, Frank's walking back and forth at Kim's front door. A green sweatband's wrapped around his head and right wrist. He's wearing sweats, trainers, and carries a Nike duffle bag. By the way he prances back and forth, you can tell his mind's doing the jumping jacks. Moments later Kim steps out the door wearing black. His shirt has a neon orange print of a cartoon skull. On his sweaty hands, he's carrying a towel and an extra shirt.

"Mind if I shove this in your bag?" Kim says.

Frank shrugs, zips his bag open and crams them in.

The gym's four blocks away. The sky is the color of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel. The weather cool, the grounds wet. The suburban village consists of unremarkable cube houses with picket fences. Saturday morning, the arthritic Mr. Terrano's mowing his lawn, the widow Mrs. Perkins's manicuring her rose garden, while the college kid Peter plays catch with his Doberman Barky. The street is empty, save for a middle-aged couple bursting with energy, brisk-walking in unison, their lips framing all their purple gums and pearly dentures.

"I bought me some DVDs," Kim begins.

"Yeah?" How Frank walks, you'd know which foot's ahead by the way he moves his shoulders.

"The Incredible Hulk II's one."

"Awesome," says Frank. "I have part I. Seen it?"

"Nah." Kim wipes his sweaty palms on his shorts.

"Let's watch both later," Frank says. "Haven't seen it either."

"Cool, cool." Kim grins.

"My place?" He glances to Kim, raising twice an eyebrow.

"Sure."

"My room stinks though." Frank laughs.

"Mine's stinkier." Kim snorts laughing.

"You know El Laberinto del Fauno?" Frank says.

"Haven't heard."

"You should watch it. Same director with Hulk, I think. Kickass plot and effects and everything." Frank swipes the air with his hand, a puzzle ring in his middle finger.

They turn right at the end of the block, where they see a dog pumping at another dog's behind. Kim and Frank, they look at each other and burst out howling with laughter.

"About what?" Kim says, laughter subsiding. "Is that the kiddie movie?"

"It's not like Nar--" Frank gags with a whooping cough and continues, "It's not like Narnia or those dumb kid movies." He wipes a tear with his sweatband and sniff back a runny snot. "It's got some fantastical stuff, pretty neat monsters, and the plot forks into two worlds, one fantastic, one realistic."

"I might've seen the poster. The ones with a kid girl innit?" Kim says.

"They story's adult stuff. Donnie Darko kinda level, only fantastical." Frank shifts the duffle bag to his other shoulder.

"Yeah? Borrow it later alright?" Kim makes a quick glance at Frank, takes a snapshot of his face.

"Yeah. No prob."

They pass by Jake's house, Mr. Manigo's convenient store, which is still closed, and a local bakery brimming with bug-eyed people, some still in pajamas. The smell of oven-baked bread wafts through the air. Coffee lingers from the adjacent coffee shop.

"My dad's arriving today," Kim says.

"Really? Your potato-peeler dad or your mom's boyfriend?"

"Gary's not my mum's boyfriend. He comes over our house and they just play mahjong."

"Only the two of them?" Frank twists his neck left and right, cracks his knuckles, a mannerism.

"Most of the time. Big deal."

"Ha," spats Frank. "You never know, boy. My mom, she dates college kids when dad's out of town."

"Yeah? Well my mom's not like that."

"You never know."

"I don't care much anyway. Let them screw each other, I don't mind. She deserves to be happy."

Frank laughs. "Your for-real pa's coming home then?"

"Yeah. I can't imagine what he looks like now. Probably older and wrinkly."

"Your dad's not that old."

"Thirty-five's pretty old. Middle-age old," Kim says.

"You must be excited," Frank says.

"Not really. I hardly even know him. Never calls. Never writes."

"Navy people're like that," Frank comments. "I've got an uncle in the navy--"

"--the ones in Olongapo."

"Yeah that one. He works five years straight, comes back two years, fucks his wife and makes a baby then goes back to the sea."

"Really."

"Some of them jump off the ship," Frank says. "Or throttle themselves off the cross beams. Bunch of depressed asswipes, really."

A slim girl jogs by, cutting in between them, her perfume whipping up their nostrils.

"Nice perfume. Must she saturate innit," Kim says.

"Damn," Frank says, pausing a second to ogle at her butt. Her butt scrunching loose then tight, her legs long and lean. They move along.

"But my dad," Kim continues. "He's practically nonexistent."

"You'll forgive him."

"Perhaps."

"He'll make it up to you."

"I wish."

"Eight years is not a fucking joke."

"It isn't."

"Think of it as a sacrifice."

"I'll try."

"His and yours. Be happy you're not selling drugs on the streets."

"I guess I should. Doesn't matter any more, does it?"

They turn left and cross the pedestrian lane. The street is dotted with kids playing bike and rollerblade hockey using planks of wood.

"Show at least some gratitude. Your next life happy or fucked up with your dad around. Your choice."

"Fucked up's not bad. Mine's fucked up just the way it is."

"Oh come on." Frank whacks Kim's back and dislocates his spine. "Loosen up a bit. Your life's not that bad."

"You have no idea, Frank." You have no idea.

The gym bathroom equates to a large rectangular box of pale-blue tiles with the shower line jutting out the two opposite walls. Kim and Frank, they're naked, wet and soap-clad in suds and bubbles next to each other. An hour back, they worked out mainly on four exercise equipments: the treadmill, elliptical trainer, rowing machine, and exercise bike. They hardly talked to each other. And Kim simply surreptitiously gloated over the sweaty sexified Frank every time he got the chance. This bathroom scene is Kim's faggot-princess dream come true. They are an arm's stretch away from each other, their body heat almost intermingling, their twats dangling limply. Frank's eyes are shut, face thick with white foam. Kim smothers Frank's nakedness at the left corner of his eyes.

"We should do this again tomorrow," Frank says, hands briskly rubbing his thick forearms and chest. "You feel the energy? It's fucking incredible."

"The endorphins surging up your brain," adds Kim, rubbing his twatsicle with a small bar of soap.

"It's a different kind of high, you know?" Frank says, palms gliding over his firm legs.

Kim turns to Frank while rubbing himself, having a different sort of high, saying, "Yeah, I still feel it. I still feel the high."

"Better than drugs at least," Frank says. "The junk people pump into their system--"

"--this detoxifies," Kim says. "Healthier, even."

"I think Immona jump start a diet," says Frank, rubbing his balls, his armpits, the crack in between his butt cheeks.

"Protein-vegetarian, my mum and I are on it." Kim's one hand stroking himself, the other extending toward Frank.

"Fish crap and veggies?" Frank stops in midmotion, eyes still closed, face angled at Kim.

Kim's hand retreats back into rubbing the rest of his massive body. A split-second spasm of failure. "We started three days ago." He collects his wits back. "Curbs your hunger pangs at the very least."

"I have an appetite of a whale," says Frank, continuing his scrubbing.

"You should try it. Say, a month. Then quit if you don't like it."

Frank turns the knob open and a rainshower falls over him. Kim does the same, and together they rinse the soap off. They twist the shower knob shut, and head for the lockers, hips wrapped in a towel.

In the locker room, Kim inhales a lungful of courage, faces Frank and says, "Frank." The line feels like a stage play unfurling his rehearsed script in front of his bedroom mirror.

Frank starkly looks at him, saying, "What?"

"I met a guy in our neighborhood."

"Really--who?"

"And I think I'm in love with him." There. He said it. He's said the words bursting out his chest.

Frank stares at him awkwardly for five seconds or so, eyes glazed in ice.

"Frank, I love you." He's said the three most worn-out words you'll find in any script.

"What the." Frank picks his bag quickly, swirls around, about to walk out when Kim grabs his arm and pulls Frank towards him.

"I love you," Kim emphasizes the word, almost spitting at his face. "I know you'll never accept me or whatever--I just want you to know--"

Frank's fist looms over and strikes Kim straight homebound at the nose.

A tiny river of blood gushes out Kim's nose. "--I want you to know that I never meant to--"

A punch smacks Kim at the cheekbone.

"--feel this way, it just sorta happened--"

A meat-punch at his left eye.

Kim's one eye swollen nearly shut, squinting and quivering, he continues, "--an outburst I never expected--"

Another punch zeroes in on his jaw. Kim's head twists, blood spits out his mouth.

"--you're the greatest thing"--punch--"that ever happened to me"--punch--"and I'll always be grateful"--punch--"despite all the pain you're giving me."

Another heavy full-swing punch in the face. Smack down.

Blood oozing out his nose, lips broken and shuddering, he whispers in between blood-stained teeth, "I love you." That was Kim's final words. I love you. Kim's half-kneeling on the floor, face wet, bruised up and knuckle-printed with blood. Frank walks away, chest heaving with anger, a trail of fire tracing him from his behind.

"Just what the hell happened to you?" Kim's mother, her face is mud-caked with mango-green facial mask, her short hair a crown of plastic rollers. "Are you alright?"

Are you alright? Are you alright? Are you kidding me? "Yeah, I'm okay." Kim slumps into a couch, his face a finger painting of blood. One fat palm on his aching jaw, he continues, "Just a little fight is all."

"And just what sort of trouble have you gotten yourself into, young man?" Her mother walks back and forth in front of the center table of horse figurines, then stops abruptly, her freshly manicured foot tapping on the floor.

"Frank--"

"--What about Frank?" Her foot tapping faster and louder.

"Frank punched me over and over in the locker room of the--"

"Frank! Of all people, Frank!" She strides towards the telephone.

"I told him I love him."

Her mother freezes one step in midair, turns around, eyes wild, a vein throbbing out her forehead. She slogs towards him in slow motion, back hunched in a monster-like fashion, nose flaring and breathing heavily. She stops in front of him and slaps her big fat-ass palm on the side of his head. Another spurt of blood spews out Kim's mouth. "What the hell were you thinking? Of course he's going to beat you up!" She's screaming and she hasn't brushed her teeth.

Kim blocks his face with his forearms, his polar bear body curling back into the couch.

His mother raises the back of her hand, about to give him another slap in the face when the door bolts open, and in steps his dad. Lo and behold. A moment of surprise.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Jaw hanging on hinges, his father glares at his monster wife, whose hand is suspended in the air, then at the blood-smeared Kim peeping in between his forearms.

"Holy sweet Jesus fucking Christ," his father says through his horse teeth. "What in the world did you do to him, Quincy?" He strides towards them, leaving behind four trolleys at the doorstep. Since Kim last saw him, his father has turned maggot-pale white, save for the rosy cheeks. Wrinkles pleated around his mouth and branched at the corner of his eyes.

"Your son's been beaten up by that boy from the other side of the street."

"That so? And why did he beat him up like that?" One hand covering his mouth, he studies Kim's bloody, bruised up face. His father's hands, if there's a significant detail about his father, it's his hands. His hands have spindly, knotty fingers, a mountain range of knuckles, calloused and warty palms, and veins thick like green worms burrowing underneath his skin. He has an overgrown pinky fingernail.

"He told that boy out front he loves him! Your son is a homosexual, that's what!"

"Ma," Kim reprimands his mom.

"Really now?" His father's eyes the size of saucers, all glued at Kim, his hand still covering his mouth in disbelief. "Well I think," he staggers. He puts his hands on his hips, elbows sticking out like spikes. "I think. What I really think is, I'm gonna go get myself a drink."

Before his father could even move, Kim leapfrogs from his seat and wraps his rib-breaking bear-hug arms around his father. He buries his face into his shoulder, blood blotching red inkblots on his shirt, and cries shuddering and sniveling.

"That's what you always say!" screams his mother, her green mask cracking and chipping off around the mouth. "Every time a problem comes along, Oh I'm gonna go get myself a drink. I'm gonna go get myself a drink my dimpled ass! You stay right here, Ken. You've been gone eight years and just when did I hear from you again? Two days before your arrival, that's what! Two days!" She's hysterical. "Look at your son! Look at him! Look at what he's turned himself into!"

"Oh, shut up, Quincy!" his father yells back, his hand patting his overgrown baby bear at the back.

"You figure things out!" His mother throws her palms in the air and disappears into the kitchen. "I'll just get an ice pack."

Father and son, they sit on the three-seater couch while Kim sinks deeper into it, the frame underneath almost snapping.

"There, there," his father says. He lifts Kim's chin, and Kim opens his bloodshot teary eyes, one quivering to crack open, a little pool of snot streaming down his nose.

He sniffs it back up, swallows, and says, "Pa, I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry."

His father wraps one arm around his son's fleshy shoulder and says, "You know what?"

Kim looks at him sniffing his nose red. "What?"

"Back in the ship," his father begins, Kim staring at his horse teeth the size of tomb stones. "A lot of people escape their dreary lives for a week-vacation. Away from everybody." His father looks distantly out the door, beyond his abandoned trolleys, and continues, "Most of them are miserable. They sleep in expensive suites, eat expensive meals, wear expensive clothes, talk pretentiously, but they scowl. One look in the face and you know right away that they're living the life they don't want. But I met this one man." He looks at Kim, eyes glinting with cut and polished gems of wisdom. "Old and wealthy man who greets every crew by his name. He says to me, ‘Know what Ken, when I'm in this ship I forget everything. I forget my mansion, my tractor business, my bitchy wife, my friends, my past, my miserable, phony life, everything.' He says that in the bar with me manning it for tips. ‘In this ship,' he continues, ‘I can dip my ugly body in the pool, meet other nameless people, drink, dance, sing. I'm happy,' he says, ‘I'm happy because no one knows me here.' He becomes happy for a week of his life."

Kim looks at him, not knowing where his father's point is going.

Then his father continues, "Life is a cruise ship, Kim."

Kim almost gags at the mushiness of this moment, but says, "Oh Pa, stop it. You're making me laugh." For the first time Kim smiles, and his eyes disappear momentarily. His father smiles back, a reject from a toothpaste commercial.

"Forget what happened, Kim," his father says, patting him at his greasy nape. "Just forget what everybody thinks and be who you want to be."

Kim melts in his father's arm, and hides the smile off his face. Inside is a fireworks display of a new beginning.

Plastic rollers hanging by the end of her hair, Kim's mother breaks into the scene, carrying a pack of ice. She smacks the pack on Kim's bruised cheekbone and says, "Why don't we go out on a picnic? Right there on the lawn outside?"

Dumb story. Boo, I say. Booooooooooooooooooo.

I love thinking and thinking about thinking and thinking why I think about thinking and thinking why I love thinking about thinking but sometimes I don't think as much as I do especially when I'm walking really fast because I have to look at where I'm stepping otherwise I'll trip or fumble and one time while I was walking fast and thinking at the same time I stepped on a little crevice and toppled over and hit my head on the corner of a bench and suddenly I woke up in the hospital with blood all over my face and the doctor said the x-ray shows I broke the bone around my left eye and left cheek so that the left side of my face looked caved in and the beautiful doctor said she had to put metal plates on my skull to join the bits of bone together and oh it was all so complicated she had to cut through my eyelid and my gumline and piece together the jigsaw puzzle of my bones and she said it was for free because she works for the government and she was talking and talking and talking very much but I didn't understand everything else she said because she was such a curious creature to look at always prattling and making noise and her face was animated eyes widening and narrowing cheeks hiking up and down her face flashing and hiding her teeth then suddenly I blurted "you're beautiful" and she just stopped talking to me and my daddy and I didn't want her to stop talking because just then she looked like a photograph and I wanted her to look like a movie then she laughed and said "why Lee, you have such a sweet son--" "I'm not sweet" I interrupted her "you can't taste me" but maybe she tried licking me when I was lying asleep on the surgical table and no one was looking but why oh why would she taste me whereas my mother says I smell sour most of the time and then my dad added "what she means is you're nice, Patrick, you're nice is all"--

Where's the soap?

A white bar of Safeguard is always here on the soap dish right below the shower nozzle and once it becomes a small size I dry it out in the sun and collect it in a jar of other small dried soaps and I leave the jar at my bedside so I can sniff the contents right before I sleep and the smell is just so clean and comforting but right now the soap is missing and I have shampoo inching down my forehead and I have to soap really fast so I can wash myself right away because if the shampoo reaches my eyes they will get red and itchy and painful and I won't be able to go to the special school I go to which is just five houses away from where I live so I yell out the bathroom window "mom where's the soap" but I don't hear any reply but that's just how my mom is she doesn't talk very much and she gets irritated easily and right before I knew it I hear footsteps stomping up the stairs and a loud banging on the door like she was accidentally nailed alive inside a coffin and then my mother yells "open the goddamn door and let me find the soap where I can see it" so I scamper opening the door and my mother walks in with her eyebrows knotted at the center and she smells of garlic rice and Tender Juicy hotdog and she says with one arm stretched "there's your bloody soap you stupid nitwit! And cover yourself for chrissakes" and I forget I'm naked but what really matters is the soap so I go "where is it I don't see it" and then she pushes the hair out her eyes and steps into the shower cubicle and picks up something from the floor only then I realize there's the soap and I wonder how it got there when this has never happened before but maybe there was an earthquake while I was still sleeping and the soap must have slipped from the soap dish and landed on the floor and yes yes yes there's a dent on one corner of the soap and really there must have been an earthquake and right before my mother steps out the bathroom I ask "was there an earthquake this morning" and she goes "just what the hell are you talking about?" and after she slams the door her voice echoes from hallway saying "there hasn't been any bloody earthquake in years!" and now I'm stumped about the mystery of the dented soap but I get over it because I have to soap myself really fast so I can wash myself and not get a red eye and be able to go to school where I can play chess with the new kid named Sheila who I met two days ago and she's really good at chess but she can never defeat me because I'm the best chess player in my special school where the other special kids are so certainly we're the cream of the crop and I'm the best chess player of the cream of the crop so most probably I'm the best in the whole town that's because I spend most of my time playing with a chess software which my father installed in my computer because no one else can defeat me except the intelligent chess software and now Sheila's come and she's not that bad and I like playing with her because I've never played with a human for about a year now but yesterday she didn't like playing with me because I scratched my butt while we were playing because my butt was so itchy and I smelled my fingers to see if my butt smelled bad or not but really I like smelling things specially the smell of pigsties and poultry because they're just so concrete in my mind and the only way I can picture my own butt is to smell my fingers which I scratched it with and Sheila said "what are you doing" and I said I was smelling my fingers and she said "gross" and then I continued thinking about the grand attack that would end our game because she was losing because she moved her center pawns carelessly but then she drummed her fingers on the table and suddenly my whole complicated grand attack vanished from my head but I forgave her and thought about my complicated grand attack again until she was drumming her fingers again along with the tapping of her foot and she kept on looking at her watch and my complicated grand scheme suddenly flew out my head again and never came back so I said "will you stop it" "stop what" she said and I forgot what we were talking about and she just kept repeating "gross" all the time but I thought smelling my fingers was just as natural as eating and sleeping and taking a bath and then she said we'll just play tomorrow because she has to go with her mom to the dentist but I thought she wasn't really going to the dent--

A curious voice laughed outside like a hysterical hearty laugh that came from the stomach and I tiptoe and peak out the window only I can see because I'm six feet flat unlike my mom who is five feet flat and there's our next door neighbor Mr. Zinggapan who looks real tiny from up here despite being as tall as I am and there he is chatting with my mother like they always do in the morning which I like because my mother rather looks different when she's talking to Mr. Zinggapan because it's the only time I see her calm and happy unlike being angry and cranky all the time and I wave my hand from the window yelling "good morning Mr. Zinggapan" and his face shoots up and he says "oh hi Patrick come on down here and give me a hug" like how he always says it but I've never heard him laugh real hard until now which is just so curious because his laugh doesn't sound like him at all and I know Mr. Zinggapan pretty well and I know he loves watching war movies and drinking red tea every five o'clock in the afternoon and he also plays airsoft where he pretends to be a soldier killing other fake soldiers in the fake battlefield of a forest far away from here and he loves wearing camouflage clothing and he always hides behind a bush and surprises me when I'm walking on the way home at three-ten in the afternoon and we share the same passion for reading National Geographic magazines which he's collected stacks upon stacks of it all crammed into a giant bookshelf and he gives me puzzles and toys every Christmas the latest one he gave me was a Sudoku Rubik's cube on my birthday and it has numbers one to nine on the sides and that you can't repeat the number on each side and it was nice because it kept me busy for a whole Sunday but after I learned how to fiddle with it I just lost interest and moved on to playing chess again but it was nice he gave me the Sudoku cube because he makes me feel the special person that I really am and then he tells me all about Greek gods and goddesses but I just listen to him because I don't believe in Greek gods and goddesses although he's said they're just myths ancient people made up to explain things they can't explain like thunder and lightning and rain and floods and death and stuff like that and I don't know why people believe in such things like my mother she forces me to go to church every Sunday at seven in the morning even if I already told her I don't understand this concept of God even if I try really really hard because the first time I did that I cried because I really can't force myself to believe it because I can't really understand the logic behind it but I don't tell my mother that because I don't want to break her heart so I pretend I now understand this God person and I go to church every Sunday to accompany my mother and after that she takes me to Jollibee which I like very much because I think I'm addicted to burger steak which neither my mom nor dad can cook the exact same way as Jollibee does but sometimes I also eat burger steak with tuna pie or chocolate sun--

This pair of socks is not a pair at all!

My mother always prepares my clothes on my bed after I wake up at six-thirty in the morning and sometimes my socks have the same color but different in material which I can't wear to school because I'm not comfortable wearing unpaired socks with different textures but I can wear socks in different colors but the texture and material and thickness and length should be the same otherwise I'll think about my pair of unpaired socks all throughout the day and I won't be able to talk to Teacher Mitch and Sheila and my other special classmates and Mr. Zinggapan and I won't be able to concentrate on playing chess and I get sweaty and jittery all over until I come home and remove my socks and just collapse in my bed without eating dinner and then I'll eat too much for breakfast the following day and vomit on my way to--

No more pair of matching socks in my socks drawer!

Maybe I can go to my parents' room and get a nice pair of comfortable socks from my dad's socks drawer and I love my dad's socks he wears slippers all the time because his feet sweat inside socks and stink so bad and he wears his socks and shoes only on special occasions like birthdays and Christmases and weddings and baptisms and fiestas that's why I like his socks very much because they're practically new and tight unlike mine which are loose and rather look like bacon strips around the garters but they don't bother me if they're loose as long as they're the same pair or at least the same texture and thickness and length and I like things like that because the doctor thinks I'm also sensitive to things that touch my skin which is true because I hate rough surfaces and I like smooth or soft ones like the surface of glass and marbles and spoons and the surface of my Mirror Rubik's Cube which Mr. Zinggapan gave me last Christmas but the surface I like the most is the surface of water because it's nice and flat to look at especially when I have to keep myself from touching it because my hands will get wet and I'd just wish I was a bug like the water strider which can walk and skate off the water surface while carrying things fifteen times heavier than its body weight without sinking and drowning in the water but what I really think is that water is simply magical because it can turn into three states of matter and it makes up 70.8% of our planet and 55% to 78% of the human body depending on the height and gender and it has so many uses especially my favorite which is taking a bath and it also baffles me when I put a pencil inside a glass of water because the pencil is bended into an optical illusion which is just mind boggling because I haven't studied that in school yet but what I really want to see with my own eyes is a little piece of diamond cut and polished and shiny like those things movie stars wear but I don't like the glamor part because I want to keep the diamond my own little secret because I can't tell anybody else why I like it because I can't talk straight when discussing about its face centered cubic crystal molecular structure and the covalent bonding of its atoms which makes it the hardest material on the planet and its optical dispersion when light hits the diamond surface like how it does when it hits a prism except that the color spectrum in a diamond is multidimensional and there's this diamond the size of the sun fifty light years away out there in the constellation Centaurus except that I'd need the Hubble telescope just to see that and it's funny how it became like that because it's actually just a crystallized white dwarf which used to be a star like the sun until it exploded on its last atom of fuel and collapsed in itself to form like that and five billion years from now the sun will explode just like that and turn into a cosmic diamond but I don't know if either the sun's diamond or the sun's fuel has more financial worth but I do know a diamond is just a useless dead gem that used to be a gas ball that can power millions of home planets like ours because the sun nourishes every single living thing on earth and I'd rather worship the sun than worship my mother's God because I can see and feel the sun and it has scientific evidence of its existence but I don't tell people any of these things because they stare right into my eyes and I get distracted and then my thoughts would just pop out of existence like bubbles and they will think I'm a stupid nitwit like how my mother calls me all the time but it's alright because I love my mother even if she treats me like a pet cockroach like the ones I kept in a shoebox underneath my bed last summer because she loves and hates me at the same time and I love her because she takes care of me all the time and she's worried all the time so even if she treats me like a nitwit it's alright because I love her just the way she is especially how she cleans everything in the house because messy things keep me locked up in the room because I don't like the sight--

"I told him that a bazillion times, Lee. He just wouldn't go away."

That's my mother's voice and I think she's arguing again with--

"What if we just pay him? I can give him fifty thousand pesos just to stop seeing Patrick, how's that?"

Who's seeing me why does he see me how long has he been seeing me do I know him is he spying on me does he want to kill--

"No, no, no. I just can't do that, Lee. Berting wouldn't accept that. All he wants is to be with Patrick, or at least see him everyday."

But Mr. Berting Zinggapan has been our neighbor ever since I can remember and he sees me because he likes me and he thinks I'm special and he has never spied on me and I don't think he'll ever kill me any time soon but why does daddy--

"But this has got to stop, Dolor. It hurts to even think you're talking to him again. I thought this issue was done and over with? It's okay he can talk to Patrick but not you, Dolor, not you again."

My daddy doesn't see them talking every morning because he always wakes up late but Mr. Zinggapan hasn't done anything wrong to my mommy or me except for the first time he surprised me from behind a bush--

"But we were just talking. He can stay--"

I don't know what they talk about but mommy never look threatened or suspicious or anything and they rather look like real friends for a real long time until they stopped for--

"The point is, this is just too much, Dolor. I want him to stay away from you and Patrick."

But Mr. Zinggapan is a good man and the only threat I can think of he's done to me when he leaps at me from behind a bush outside but I don't think that's wrong although my heart sank a little but after that he made me laugh and it felt good and every time he surprises me my heart doesn't sink any more even if his surprises aren't surprising any more because I just like him doing that over and over and over and over and I laugh just as much as the first time he surprised me but maybe he's just being nice so I could trust him and then he'll kidnap me and take me away because he doesn't have a family of his own and I don't want that to happen because I don't want to leave my mom and dad and I want to stay here where everybody I know is because new places make me uncomfortable and I almost forgot that Mr. Zinggapan is waiting for me outside so I can give him a hug but why oh why oh why don't I understand any of this I wish he'll just go away for a moment so I can go to school because I'm one minute and forty-two seconds late because of the mismatched socks but I have no other choice but to wear them because I don't want to interrupt my parents in their room and I don't want them to know that I know what they know but I don't know what to do because I like Mr. Zinggapan but I don't want to hurt his feelings but my parents are more important to me than Mr. Zinggapan even if Mr. Zinggapan is nicer to me than everybody else so I'll just avoid Mr. Zinggapan so my parents will stop arguing over it and there will be less noise in the house and everything will be back to normal except that I won't have any more presents for Christmas which makes me sad but I don't like sad things because they depress me so I'll just think of happy things like this pair of shoes my daddy bought me last year at Baclaran but my socks inside are not the same and I feel like my left foot is bigger than my right foot and my left toes are rubbing against the insides of my shoes making my toenails hurt but I have to go now so I yell to no one in particular "I'm going to school" but my parents don't hear me or nobody in particular hears me because I didn't say that to anybody in particular in the first place so I shouldn't be worrying about my parents talking back but sometimes they hear me sometimes they don't it doesn't matter it's all part of the routine of the everyday happening over and over and over and over in an endless repetition but today is going to be different because my socks are mismatched and I walk like I have poliomyelitis but I have to run now fumbling as I run and there's Mr. Zinggapan and I force myself not to see him and hear him but I can't because the peripheral vision of the human's iris is the most sensitive part of the eye so I see him even if I pretend that I don't and I hear him because I can't put my palms on my ears because that would look like I deliberately don't want to hear him but I pass him by and his voice echoes in my head saying "what's the matter Patrick? Give me a hug! Wait, are you crying?" but I'm not exactly sure that's what he said I wasn't listening very well because I'm thinking of something else and I have to focus on where I'm stepping at because I might trip again and hit my face because of the socks but birds up overhead just wouldn't shut up and they're circling around and around with their heads looking down at me while shrieking "Haaaaaaaaak! Haaaaaaaaak! Haaaaaaaaak!" which sounded like the bird language for hug and there's Manang Piring the grandmother with no teeth and she's all gums and her wrinkly lips are sucked in but now she's smiling at me saying "Hiiiiiiiii!" which I thought would end with a G to sound like haaaayyyg but I look back at the ground stepping left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right left right the plodding of my shoes sounds like the Chinese gonging of a clock which calms me down because I don't have to look at everything around me and be distracted on my staggering but here comes that taho vendor following me on his rusty bicycle and pointing at me and saying "Mongoloid! I want to hug a mongoloid today!" but I am not a mongoloid I am not a mongoloid I am not a mongoloid I am not a mongoloid "Mongoloid!" "stop it" I yell at him but "Mongoloid! Mongoloid! Mongoloid!" "stoooooooooop" "Huggoloid!"

I stop on my tracks and glare at him and he stops his bike four and a half feet away from me smiling his upper teeth missing and his hair is dyed brown and his tattered shirt says Vote Senator Whatsisname "Huggoloid!" I run after him and he just pedals and pedals like those circus monkeys on Discovery Channel while he's screaming "Huggoloid! Huggoloid! Huggoloid!" now I ought to be mad and I ought to be running after him and I ought to punch him in the face and I ought to hurt him really bad because he is a bad person but the wind on my face is sweeping up my cheeks and into my mouth and through my hair and passing through my armpits and my arms and my eyes dry out and tears spill sideways to my temple out of happin--

...

I open my eyes. There's a bright white light.

"He's awake! He's awake!" Who's that?

I call my mom and dad. Nothing comes out my mouth.

"It's alright, honey. You were hit by a motorcycle." What motorcycle?

I reach for the person talking. I raise my hand and it's green. My hand and arm are green. Both my hands and arms are green. All my body is green. My body is green and I am a plant. I am a plant on a bed with a bright light overhead. The bright light looks like the sun. The sun is a light in the sky. The sky is blue. Blue is the color of the ocean. The ocean is a body of water. Water is transparent. Transparent things permit light. The light is bright overhead. The bright light looks like the sun. The sun is a light in the sky. The sky is blue. Blue is the color of the ocean. The ocean is a body of water. Water is transparent. Transparent things permit light. Light is bright overhead. The bright light looks like the sun. The sun is a light in the sky. The sky is blue. Blue is the color of the ocean. The ocean is a body of water. Water is transparent. Transparent things permit light. Light is bright overhead...

Today is another ordinary day. And Pedro begins his day with the climax, an erection. He does this by committing suicide. You see, this isn't his first time to die--it's his sixty-eighth. Call it endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, what have you. The chemicals in his brain give him the high in adrenaline thrills, striking arousal.

Last night, Pedro failed an erection again. He met a girl named Rina, who works as a grocery cashier at Waltermart, two buildings away from where he's standing. Maybe it's middle-age crisis, erectile dysfunction, or just ennui, but Pedro doesn't find sex in the bedroom exciting any more.

He's lived 214 years and life doesn't get any more fun than killing his immortal body. Pedro doesn't believe in the soul. Beyond death, it's just a frottage of earthworms and maggots having a rave party on decaying flesh.

So today he decides to jump off a building, blowing himself in the process. The building is a thirty-five storey condominium crammed with the middle-class. But Pedro doesn't live here. He lives in the shanties thirty-five stories below behind this building. This is the building where he sneaks into to dip in the pool right here at the roof top.

The pool is a few feet behind him, filled with rainwater, piss, sex discharge, and microorganisms. Beside it is a jacuzzi that never works.

At the ledge Pedro is standing with a bulging threadbare trench coat with nothing but explosives inside. And the sun right in front of him is peeking out the horizon to humiliate his day. Perhaps this could be his last day, perhaps not. It doesn't matter. If his charred body parts reassembles on the pavement and he walks away without a scratch, he'd just walk back to his little shanty, where Rina is asleep, naked. Then he'd begin another dull day at the airport where he works.

In the airport he works as a janitor. He doesn't like to be a janitor but that's the closest thing he could ever get to an airplane. Before this he pasted stamps in the post office. Before that he sold vibrating slimming belts door to door. And before that, you wouldn't want to know.

At the ledge he looks down below and his palms and armpits begin to trickle sweat. Layers of tiny floating rectangles speed by left and right thirty floors below him. Didn't I tell you this is the future? Nothing much changed really, except for the less traffic. Dots of black heads pass by the lane he imagines he'd smack into. He can faintly hear a sweeper cleaning the street with his hard broom. The sound is like a fingernail scratching on dry skin. In his vertigo, he feels a novel kind of high. And his flaccid member twitches in its early sign of life.

He takes a lighter from his coat pocket, strips the coat off, and tosses it behind him. When you see him, he isn't really naked. His skin is covered with a mixture of vaseline and gasoline. The explosives strapped on his arms, torso, and legs, they look like his body's all covered up. Except that behind you see the butt cleavage, and in front, the penis. Not yet so alive.

Let me tell you something about his penis. I warn you this is graphic. If you're under eighteen, you stop reading this and wait until your eighteenth birthday.

Good. You're still here.

His penis is just as dark as his elbows. This is the first time his penis sees the sun. This is the first time Pedro ever gets naked killing himself. His penis is covered with wrinkled skin bunched up together. On some sides there are veins. There on the underside of his shaft is the thickest vein, which distributes blood straight to the head. At the bottom half of the head is a tiny piss slit. The peep hole where his urine and semen pass. Inside that peep hole is a throbbing sound. His heart is pumping the first spew of blood to this organ. And his balls, they don't get much attention, really.

His penis has penetrated exactly three women in his life; the first vaginal, second anal, third oral. There's also the fourth, but given the failed hand job and failed blow job, it doesn't count. The first woman is a virgin named Portia. She is young and stupid, and she grew old and died near the mountains still stupid. The second is Corinne, a giddy call center reject in Bataan. The third, the fourth, they're all the same, some lowlife drunk enough to take to bed with. The fifth, Rina. Oh my Rina, another failed project. He stimulated her with his tongue and fingers instead.

Down below someone shrieks, arm stretched, finger pointing ninety-two degrees at the black-covered man, save for his penis. Pedro's first instinct is to step down, cover up and go home, but he thinks against it. The complete attention of one, two, three persons isn't so bad. He looks at them and he exposes his crooked teeth in a smile.

Pedro is biologically twenty years old. It just means that given his age, he has the body of a young adult. There's nothing remarkable about him except for his perfect nose and perfect skin, which he acquired from his father.

His father, Pedro doesn't know much about his father. All he knows is he was a bioengineer in some big time university in Los Angeles. It just so happens that Pedro's mother worked for him as a housemaid two centuries back. His father, his last name Richardson, he did something that could cause a revolution. He's done it on a jellyfish. He's done it on a rat, a dog, a chimp. Now he's done it on a human being. And the test tube subject was Pedro's mother.

Pedro has managed to attract a small crowd of about thirty people, all gawking at him heavenward. The height alone makes him feel like a heavenly being, a bird, an angel, something up in the sky. He feels the adrenaline with the people face up moving around. His penis stiffens and climbs an inch from where it's limping.

Prior to this he nosedived off a cliff in Mount Maculot. The cliff is unwittingly called Parrot's Beak, and it is hanging over jagged rocks. Before that, Pedro jumped off the San Juanico Bridge. He just smacked his body on the water surface, head then hitting the riverbed, and woke up on the shore gasping for air but stopped, realizing there was nobody around. Way before that, he jammed a utensil in a wall outlet. And before that, he choked himself with hairball, and left a death note saying his pet Fluffy killed him in his sleep. That was pretty creative, only that the one who read the note was himself. You don't want to get to the root of this, do you?

One car skidded off the main road, and parked somewhere near and elevated to watch Pedro's fall. Unlike in other countries, the cars here cannot fly beyond sixty feet high. And unlike in the past where there was the Speed Limit, now we only have the FHL or the Flight Height Limit. Cars crashing against each other is no longer a problem. Thank you, Newton. Thank you, magnetism.

The driver in the parked car, he steps out wearing reflective sunshades and climbs up the hood of his vehicle. He takes a cigarette, lights it up, and rings a smoke in the air.

Nothing's more pathetic than a naked man with not so much of a manhood in him. But the explosives make an excellent entertainment.

Pedro studies the man. The man has one knee bent, one elbow supporting his weight. With a cigarette in between his fingers he waves at Pedro in a retro peace-sign kind of way. Pedro smirks and waits for more people to form into an ant colony.

He has deprived himself of the fruits of science that promise longer lifespans. Next to Charles Darwin, one theoretical scientist has made it to the hall of fame by developing molecular and cellular rejuvenation. His name, Aubrey de Grey. It is this scientific giant who's led man's rise to immortality. Food has been enhanced to delay the process of aging. All disease and sickness has been terminated by medicine and technology. Man can live to as long as one hundred and fifty years and soon, longer. Without cryonics, the only disease left that separates man from immortality is senescence, the metabolic process of aging and dying eventually.

But Pedro's case is a different banana altogether. He can live for thousands, even millions of years if he wants to, and die only from the cosmic explosion of the sun.

The people below have gathered to about a hundred. Some are standing, looking skyward, others darting back and forth, touching antennas and exchanging bits of information. Surrounding the parked car are six more cars. No one has bothered to call the authorities just yet.

Pedro raises a foot forward and the crowd gasps collectively. All this attention, it's better than all the years of his life combined. All those two hundred years, much of it is just blah, like some vague dream.

It appears to him that newer memories replaced the older ones, given the limited space in his brain. The earliest memory he could think of is him with his mother in Cagayan where he grew up. He was slicing an apple in half and cut his palm in the process. To his surprise, not a single drop of blood oozed out. The blood vessels contracted quickly, and the layers of skin regenerated. Seconds later, it left no trace he thought he was hallucinating.

Pedro's genetic makeup is his father's underground laboratory experiment. His father inseminated the spliced regenerative genetic code of a hydra and a salamander into an artificially fertilized human zygote (his father's sperm and his mother's egg on a petri dish), and injected the zygote back into his mother's fallopian tube. His mother agreed to this in exchange for an enormous amount of dollars. Enough money for his mother to run away and go back to her native land.

The traffic slogs forward. Some people poke their heads out their windows to take a glimpse of the naked spectacle. A police car hovers a hundred feet above a ground opposite the street. That's the FHL police cars can get. The two policemen lower their windows, the one on the driver's seat talking to a radio wired elsewhere.

Pedro flicks the lighter, sparks, but no flame appears. He flicks it again. A flame shows momentarily, but the wind snuffs it out. Then he hears a voice.

"Pedro," the voice says.

Pedro turns around, exposing his butt cheeks to the spectators, who clap and hoot distantly away.

"Rina," says Pedro, somewhat surprised. The girl she picked up on the street. Out here under the broad daylight, she really isn't that pretty as last night. All right, she's butt ugly. No, she's hideous. The color washed out from her face, eyes half way out their sockets, the over-overbite, and the chin almost nonexistent. She looks like a different life form that crash-landed from outer space. Who is this woman?

Surprised herself, Rina looks at his half-erected member.

"What are you doing?" Rina looks at her watch and continues, "It's six in the morning." Wrapped around her shoulder is the flimsy blanket they covered their bodies with last night. It's cold out, the sun just warming things up. "I woke up alone, and thought I'd find you here."

Pedro shouldn't have asked her to swim in the pool with him last night.

She walks toward the ledge chest-level and looks down below.

"I'm just playing around," Pedro says, grinning stupidly.

"Playing," Rina snorts. "You know you can get arrested for this." Her hair is flowing in waves at the side of her head.

"I want to die," Pedro begins.

"Come on," she says, offering a hand. "Let's go home."

"I want to die," Pedro says again.

"Then jump off already," Rina says. She looks up to him as he inches his heel to the edge.

"Don't do this right now, Pedro," Rina says. "Just because you can't make me come doesn't mean I hate you."

The crowd outside is booing and hooting for him to face front.

"It's not that," he says. Actually, it's partly that. "It's just that I have nothing to lose in this place." One hand cupping the flame, he flicks the lighter on.

"Look at this," Pedro says.

Rina steps in front of him, ignoring his penis.

Pedro burns the palm of his hand and his penis rises a notch.

"Pedro stop," says Rina. Then her eyes widen, seeing the burnt palm, the layers of skin, the bones underneath. His palm is healing itself. She looks at his penis, eyes wider still, then back at the palm.

"Rina," he says. "I think I'm a mutant." A mutant. Pedro's genes is part human, part salamander, part hydra. The salamander is the only animal that can repair itself and regrow body parts--including bones, tissues, nerves, skin--perfectly on its own throughout its lifetime. While the hydra is the only animal that never ages. Given both elements, Pedro is indestructible and unaging.

"What do you mean?" she says.

"Remember when I told you I like airplanes?" he says. "That was a lie."

"It doesn't matter."

"What I really want is I want to go to America," he says. He says this in a far fetched sort of way that Rina closes her eyes in disgust. Then he continues, "I want to visit my father's grave and find out all about this stuff that I'm capable of doing."

"Where's your mother, Pedro?" Rina says.

"She's in Cagayan," he replies. "She's dead too. Just before she died many, many years back, she said, she said the closest thing that I'll ever get into an airplane is if I'm the janitor."

"And your family?"

"They're all rotting underground," says Pedro.

Rina wraps the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

"Rina, I don't die," he confesses. "I mean, my body. It just heals itself."

She looks at him like she doesn't believe it.

"I'm two hundred and twelve years old," he says. "That's why I can't get a better job. My birth certificate isn't credible. And my anal records show I'm already dead."

"Dead? Like a zombie dead?"

"Something like that," he says. It was years back when he garroted himself on a flagpole. With nobody to claim his body, he was crammed into a morgue drawer. Next day the body was gone, walked away.

Pedro glances behind him, and finds the ant colony dispersing.

Looking back to Rina, he stretches an arm and says, "Come on up here. I want to show you something."

"Oh no, you're not making me come up there." She begins to step back towards the rain-piss-and-sperm infested pool.

"We're not going to jump, I promise," Pedro says.

Rina takes his hand and Pedro lifts her up, both of them about to topple and fall, but they're alright. They stand up on the ledge, hands together, and the crowd hoots and claps, goes back to their places.

The police car at the other side of the street, the policeman just talks forever into his radio.

"You see all these little people," Pedro begins. "We're one of these little people."

Rina inhales and exhales heavily, nose flaring and showing her nose hair.

"Little people thinking little thoughts, living little lives," he continues. "Just a face in the crowd, an occupied seat in the bus, a nobody. When I'm gone, no one will even notice."

Rina looks at him with a sour grimace on her face. "You're even more pathetic than I thought you were."

"But this." Both hands cutting through the air, Pedro exposes his hairy, unwashed armpits. "This is a fifteen-minute glory." The crowd howls at him, worshipping a god as if in a communal celebration.

"I don't care none of this bullshit, really," Rina says. "If you wanna die just go ahead and do it."

"I did," he says. "A lot of times. But none of them worked."

"Then this is your big day."

"To a mortal," he says, "those in between being born and being dead, it's just a list of things to do."

"Alright, I'm going home." Rina turns around but Pedro holds her back.

"But to me," he continues, "life is a long procrastination to the grave."

Rina scrunches her butt on the ledge anyway and steps down.

"You know what?" she says smiling. "You're a big time fucked up loser." With that she swivels around, and Pedro follows her with his eyes as she disappears into the door towards the elevator.

Back to the crowd, Pedro raises his arms like Jesus and stretches his lips far back to expose all his plaques and crooked teeth. This is the greatest day of his life.

In a distance, two more police sirens come wailing above the layers of other cars below. Still in a distance, the media men crammed in a van inch forward to catch a sight of Pedro. A video camera is jutting out its window, recording his big leap.

Pedro raises a foot, and the crowd cheers in unison. His penis jerks. He withdraws his foot back.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!" someone says faintly from below. The police sirens gain volume. The crowd picks up the chant and altogether they stomp their feet in succession, saying, "Jump! Jump! Jump!"

The wind still, he ignites the ligher.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!"

One inch, his hand moves forward his chest. His penis distends and rises a notch higher.

Pedro indulges himself in amusement, thinking about wasting all these people's time on some superficial event.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!"

Few inches more, the light is almost there. His member elongates and thickens, blood surging up the head.

He thinks about how this jump will grant him fame, his big leap broadcasted in every viral video network, his name printed and preserved on paper.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!"

His hand perspiring, the lighter is two inches away. All the wrinkles around the shaft smoothen out. The head pulls its skin taut.

In a flash is his immortality, his name on every news coverage shown in every television, every computer screen, in every known corner of the planet.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!"

Palm all drenched with sweat, almost there. His penis is sticking out like a lever, hard and engorged in its full glory.

He has never felt the god that he really is until this moment.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!"

There, a tiny space in between the flame and his chest. A drop of sticky fluid seeps out his piss slit.

The sun blazing in full view, he squints his eyes almost shut.

"Jump! Jump! Jump!"

With one twitch, the light touches the vaseline and gasoline on his skin, and he jumps off the building. The flame quickly spreads throughout his body, licking every inch of his skin, including his balls and penis, licking every explosive. Half-way down, boom, his body explodes and a fireworks display of body parts pelts on the fleeing onlookers, smacking them with bloody pieces of charred flesh.

The crowd goes into a rampage. A blasted cave entrance has formed on the side of the building. But nobody's hurt, save for a few who's incurred shallow burns. An hour later, the traffic flows normally, and everybody resumes their jobs.

Just an ordinary day. Nothing to see here. Move along now.

His body parts are collected in a box, jiggling, but fortunately, lifeless.

It was Christmas Eve, and I heard hooves running down our roof and screeching to a halt. Ho! Ho! Ho! said a faint jolly voice of a man. Santa! cried I. I scampered from my bed and woke my brother up. Santa's here! Santa's here! I said, yanking my brother's arm. He winked an eye open and moaned he was still sleepy. Santa Claus isn't real, Gina, said he, Go back to sleep, I need a shuteye. But I heard! I heard! said I, pulling his sheets and tugging his arm. I heard hooves galloping and stopping at the roof and a voice saying Ho-ho-ho! Stop it, Gina, said he. He pulled his bed sheet up his neck, and turned his back at me. You're imagining things, he said, it's all up in your head. But I'm not imagining things, I said, And mum said Santa is real! But my brother snored back to sleep so I left him at that and peeked out the living room to see if Santa's there.

The coast was clear: the living room was lit, the Christmas tree stood by the fireplace and the presents sat below the tree. The table! It was empty. I stepped out the room and dashed to the kitchen to fix Santa some milk and cookies, and set them on the table as quickly as I could. I heard footsteps up the roof circling the chimney and I hid behind the couch. He's up there! thought I.

What a little chimney you got! I heard a voice echo from the fireplace. Help me down here Rudolph, said the voice. I heard an animal neigh, ambling nearer the chimney. Stay right there on my behind, the voice said, And push my butt up, will you. The fireplace stirred, and ashes rained on the chopped wood. I can't fit myself in this! said the voice. It's too tight! Step on my shoulders, Rudolf, there, right there, and move your hips right behind me. Now push! I heard more ashes and dust shaking down the fireplace. Move closer, said the voice. The reindeer neighed. I need to hold your head, said he. I peered from behind the sofa and anticipated the sight of his red shoes from the fireplace. More gray ashes and black dust rained on the firewood. Oh jolly! said the voice. I might have to pull my tummy in to fit myself in here! Oh my, my palms are getting sweaty from holding your head, Rudolph. Mighty good thing yours is hairy. Just bear with me while I slip myself in this. I heard the voice heave, and with one fast movement, Santa slid down the filthy vent and crashed on the burnt firewood. All were a cloud of smoke and dust, and I hid myself from view, blinking stunned. Wait till Derick hears this! thought I.

I heard the firewood bash against each other, more bits of ash and dust spread in the living room. Oof! said the voice. That was a long dark tunnel up there! I peeked from one armrest of the couch and saw Santa sticking his head inside the fireplace. He was huge and fat, and he was wearing something red with white hairy things on the hemline. Rudolph! he bellowed from the fireplace, his neck craned up the hole. Throw in my big bag of goodies will you! In a second a heavy red bag flopped on Santa's head. Dangnabbit Rudolph! he cried, shaking his clenched fist. Damn animals, he said, dropping things on your face without warning. He set the bag on the floor and stretched his arms and back. There was something that was swelling and growing big beneath his clothes. His tummy! It was growing back to normal, protruding out his waist and sagging down his belt.

Oh, milk and cookies! Yum yum! said Santa. I watched him nibble my cookies and drink my milk down to the last drop. Deeeelicious! I want more! he said. I wanted to fix him some more milk and cookies, but right when I was about to step out from behind the sofa the door of our room bolted open and out stepped my brother Derick, first yawning and blinking droopily, then his eyes nearly bounced out his head. Derick! I cried and ran towards him. I told you he's real! I told you! I told you! I was jumping and bouncing and pointing at the big old fat guy in red suit. Blow me down! said Derick. He was a few inches taller than me. He was stunned for a moment then Santa hollered, There you are my little rascals! He whipped up his giant bag of goodies and the bag fell on his back. I have something in my bag for you! said Santa. He strode to the couch and sat his big fat ass on it. My brother and I clapped our hands, ran up to him, and knelt on the floor right in front his giant bag.

Gina, said Santa finger-pointing at my nose, You've been a naughty, naughty girl this year! He opened his bag, rummaged, and drew my present from it. It was seven inches long and two inches wide. A milk bottle! Oh Santa, I said, this isn't what I asked for! I'm not a baby any more! Derick laughed, snatched my present, and nursed it in his mouth. I asked for a hotdog pillow! I said. I need a hotdog pillow to put in between my legs so I can get to sleep! Santa pulled my present from Derick's mouth and handed it to me saying, You'd have to do with this one; you've been doing very bad things this year little girl.

And you, Santa said pointing at Derick, You've been a naughty, naughty boy yourself! Naw Santa, Derick said, I don't want another milk bottle! Oh nononono! said Santa, as he put both his hands inside his bag and took out something long and hard and two balls with it. A golf play set! But I don't want no golf play set! said Derick. I don't even know how to hold this shaft! Oh it's pretty easy once you practice long enough, said Santa. Just hold the club like this, Santa said, performing the right handgrip in front of my brother, and swung it to shoot an imaginary ball into a hole. Like this? asked my brother, bending his back, his legs apart, and holding the shaft in a particular angle. Yes, yes, very good! said Santa. Now fire that in the hole. Derick swung the club, hitting the ball which shot into the fireplace. I cheered and clapped my hands. Nice swing! said I. Derick put another ball on the floor and shot it with his club. Down the fireplace it went, a perfect shot. I walked to the fireplace and said, You better wash your dirty balls, Derick. They're all smothered with ash and soot.

My work here is done! said Santa, standing up and carrying his bag on his back. So soon? Derick and I said. Why, yes, said Santa, I have more presents to deliver! Never you worry, I'll give you bigger presents next time! So he walked into the fireplace and shoved his head up the hole. See you next year! he finally said, tucking his tummy in and crawling up the chimney. Good bye! we chorused. Derick and I went into our room and played with his club and balls until morning.

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