[11 Oct 2007: Additional content, in blue text, has been added to this entry. Also see the comments.]

"Well, we usually watch the Nutcracker on TV. I looooove the Nutcracker. I think the English National and the Royal Winnipeg are on tonight," explains Portia when I ask her what we'll be doing tonight. Sarah is wide-eyed with wonder. "I am so excited."

It's about eight pm on December 24, 2004. Christmas Eve. We're eating fish and chips at a family chain restaurant in a suburb of Vancouver called White Rock. I tell Portia that usually at this time, I would be in the Maranan "clan" house in Baguio City with my ate (older sister) and my fourteen cousins, who would be spoiled continuously throughout the night by my dad, seven aunts and uncles, their respective spouses, and the four live-in servants who help preserve the snug and smug life of the Maranan clan. We would have started eating at seven, so by eight we would already be helping ourselves to thirds of lengua, waldorf salad, fried tilapia, pastel, paella, molo soup, and charcoal-grilled chicken. Needless to say, I love it.

But this year, I couldn't afford the ticket to fly back to the Philippines. So I thought that I should, you know, see how other people do Christmas. You know, intercultural dialogue and all that jazz. Which is why I got myself invited to the Sorensen family Christmas. Portia Sorensen is a childhood friend of my friend Sarah, who is also spending Christmas with the Sorensens. For Sarah, who is Jewish, this Christmas will be her first.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I hurriedly make a batch of Skor brownies and a rather miserable but sincere Christmas log to give to the Sorensens. Some of the brownies were burnt, and the sponge cake turned out rubbery. And the sugar in the icing crystallized. I wrapped up everything in a festive sort of way and walked to the bus stop where I met Sarah and Portia. An hour later, we were at the Sorensen residence.

The Sorensens live in White Rock, a geographical term sometimes used to avoid the mention of Surrey, a municipality in Vancouver that is often the butt of jokes. The three of us we were greeted by Mr. Sorensen, Mrs. Sorensen, and two mechanical Santas that waved at us from the hallway. Inside, a profusion of Christmas ornaments were draped over, wrapped around, stuck to, and hung from every part of the house, and a staircase leading down to the basement spiralled around a fifteen-foot Christmas tree.

I instantly felt at ease. At that time, I thought that this was a good sign. Very much like a typical Christmas-obssessed, middle class, Filipino home.

~

"Oh. My. God. She's soooo thin." Sarah drools while watching a prima ballerina doing an admittedly gorgeous arabesque on the million-inch screen of the Sorensen home theater system. "She's beautiful. I hate her," Sarah decides. Sarah, who has been doing ballet since she was four, is one of the most progressive and critical thinkers I know, so her outburst is both surprising and telling.

Sarah and Portia have snuggled into the cushy couches of their basement and are providing a running commentary on the ballet.

"Okay, watch for this. She's about to cut him off... There!"

"Man, he looks p-i-s-s-e-d!"

Both of them are wallowing in post-White Spot bliss. I, on the other hand, am noticing, with increasing panic, the absence of large platters of ham, spaghetti carbonara, ox tripe, or mint brownies. I am muttering under my breath. "No expectations, no expectations. Different people have different ways of doing things. Just enjoy what the moment has to offer." My eyes begin to wander. They appear to be scanning the room for something either deep fried, sugar coated, or 80 proof (at least).

In a rare appearance, Portia's sister, Lila, has joined us in the Nutcracker fest. Lila has been in bed for the better part of the last several months. Depression, I learn, can be that debilitating for some. So can being spoiled.

We turn in at a little past midnight. I've reluctantly accepted the fact there will be no screaming toddlers, no teasing cousins, no endless succession of food, no opening of gifts at midnight. I remember now: the gift thing happens Christmas morning in North America. I have been invited to stay for Christmas dinner, of course, and hopefully there will be some rowdiness then.


~
Christmas morning came, and for the two Sorensen girls, so did the childhood euphoria associated with it. In the gray December dawn of the West Coast, the girls woke the household with a glee that I guessed has persisted through the years despite bouts of depression and fits of uncertainty. This is what Christmas is about for children, I suppose: an anchor to happier times.
At the base of Christmas tree, Mr. Sorensen acted as Santa. Most gifts were accepted by the Sorensen girls with a familiar sense of acknowledgement, followed by an immediate assault on the wrapping.

My gift from the Sorensens was soft and rectangular. I held it with some wonder in my hands before carefully unwrapping it, in case the Sorensens wanted to reuse the wrapping, as is the practice in many Filipino families. Halfway through I realized that in this particular context, this was silly, so I followed suit and tore the wrapper with a crescendoing sense of glee. Ah, I thought to myself. Now I understand.

The gift turned out to be a gray Trailer Park Boys sweatshirt with a funny, ironic front. It was a thoughtful gift, and I was touched.

To my surprise, however, Mr. Sorensen held another gift in his hand and announced my name. Two gifts? I thought. It was a pair of pajamas. A gorgeous plaid flannel piece, actually, which up til now remains my favorite nighttime wear.

But it didn't end with that. By the time Mr. Sorensen finished the gift allocation, I cradled in my arms the sweatshirt, the pajamas, a complete shaving set, a bubble gum machine, a shirt, and a stocking full of candy (I was the only one to receive saltwater taffy, apparently the most coveted stocking-stuffer in the Sorensen household). As the parade of gifts made their way to my lap, my initial surprise turned to silent horror not just because of the sheer amount of material wealth on my lap, but because I felt so ashamed that all I gave this family was my rubbery attempt at a Christmas log and some burnt brownies. I felt like I entered into a bargain and didn't live up to my end. In short, I felt that some principle of reciprocity had been broken. Let me explain.

Monetary reciprocity in gifts is a common practice in my circle of friends and family in the Philippines. I recently gifted a very old and dear friend a pair of earrings made of Murano glass. When I gave it to her, she held it tentatively in her fingers before replying with a hint of embarrassment in her voice, "Oh, Diego. I can't give you anything expensive in return." The comment surprised me, partly because I bought the earrings for a song, but mostly because the comment revealed the pervasiveness of the principle of monetary reciprocity in gifts, even among very intimate circles.

In many of my Filipino circles, if you give something, you expect something back. Similarly, if you receive something, you ought to give something back. The exchange has to work both ways, or it doesn't work at all. The principle of monetary reciprocity also explains why the holiday game of "Monita Monita" (equivalent to"Secret Santa" in North America) is so popular with Filipino co-workers and students, who set among themselves stringent and affordable limits for the prices of gifts. When the monetary value of a gift I send more or less equals the value of a gift I receive, I know that an analogous, non-monetary valuation of relationships has also been successfully negotiated.

I am not saying that monetary reciprocity in gifts is necessarily a good or bad practice. It is simply a practice that was observed in my circle of friends and family when I was growing up, and it is very strongly embedded in my value system. On the other hand, many people believe that monetary reciprocity in gifts is utter bullshit. "When you give," they claim, "you should expect nothing in return!" Again, I am not saying that this is necessarily good or bad practice either. What I am saying is that the Sorensens probably practice the philosophy of unreciprocated gift-giving more frequently than I do. So while I strongly believed in monetary reciprocity in gifts, the Sorensens did not, and this is where the problems started.

After I had gotten over the initial shock of receiving so many gifts, I decided to take it all in stride. I became overconfident. When Mr. Sorensen gave me a "gift to open", I thought he meant that the gift was for me. It turned out to be a DVD, and I proclaimed my delight. "Oh, I don't own this one yet! Thank you!" A small, embarrassed silence filled the room. Then it hit me: the DVD was a gift by Mr. Sorensen for the Sorensen family, and I was merely allowed to open it for them so I didn't feel too bad watching everyone else open gifts. It was the Sorensen's way of trying to make me feel included, but I overshot the mark. At that moment, I retreated into the fantasy of the living room floor opening up and swallowing me whole.

I left by noon. They invited me to stay for Christmas dinner, but I said I had other plans. "So it's just take the presents and run, eh?" asked Mr. Sorensen. The voice was light-hearted, but the accusation was there. I knew it would be very rude to accept their presents but not stay for dinner. But I felt confused and panicky, and the idea of returning their presents would have been even more inappropriate. I knew that if I stayed, however, I would become physically ill.

The world had turned upside down. The Sorensens opened their home to me in the only way they knew how to, offering the best of their hospitality. Yet all I could feel was bewilderment over the turn of events, and an overwhelming sense of inadequacy.

On the bus back, I realized that not only did I fail to understand the rules of the Christmas game in the North American suburb, and not only did I play the game badly—I also failed to realize that I wasn't actually expected to play. I was only supposed to be watching the game from the outside, and enjoying what it had to offer.

When I arrived back at my place, the first thing I did was make a thank-you card to the Sorensens. It was a guilt-ridden card. I mailed it within a couple of days. As I saw it disappear down the Canada Mail chute, a mild sense of loss filled me. Christmas, for one, will always be the season that reminds us of our fall from innocence. Erma Bombeck once bemoaned the shiny, practical gifts that we as adults give to each other, instead of the clumsy constructions of glue, popcorn, and colored paper from our childhood.

Christmas will also prompt questions of where home is and who we choose to share it with. For those who have chosen to live at—or who have found themselves thrust into—the peripheries of social and cultural boundaries, the answers will always remain incomplete, mutable, and never entirely satisfying.

Posted by Diego at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments

An example of self-insulting, Filipino humour. I don't know if I should even be posting it here, because I long for the day when this sort of thing would be considered internalized classism/racism. So perhaps as a piece of history (and because I still get a mild, resigned kick out of it... sigh), here it is:

Where flight attendants rest

KLM

Canada Air

SQ

Airbus 340

Philippine Airline

Posted by Diego at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments

Ang aking mababaw na kaligayahan sa gabing ito ay ang ginawa kong tatlong salad dressing. I'm so proud of these salad dressings that I made for WEDPRO's christmas party tomorrow that I just had to share them. From left to right:

• maple, mango, and garlic vinaigrette
• pesto dressing with basil, pumpkin seeds (hand-peeled!), parmesan, olive oil, and tarragon wine vinegar
• creamy dressing of roasted eggplant, tomato, and onion

tadaaa! ah, the simple pleasures of life.

Posted by Diego at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments

We have just consumed---on toasted bread ("toast"), with penne in aligue---about five teaspoons of the THC oil that I had prepared by gently simmering crumbled leaves and buds in oil for 4 hours. The others prepared all the food. Later on, as we proceed to get ever more stoned, there will be asparagus, fried eggs, fish, more crab fat, rice. Later on, one of them will ask me whether food is a Filipino thing, and I will say that only the the type of food is, but food trips and munchies cut across cultural borders.

It's the first time in ten years that I have been invited as a guest in someone's home in this country. We are hanging out.

My hosts are Alex, who became my friend for a very brief period in 1996; his girlfriend Bing, who met Alex in a professional sports league; and Pi and Hop, Alex's roommates. Pi is a graduate of Political Science at the University of the Philippines; Hop probably also went to UP, but I never got to ask. Or if I did, was too stoned to remember his answer.

"Puta, may nakita na akong nagsusuot ng mga cleats," Hop exclaims. Fuck, man, I'm now seeing people wearing cleats. It's completely ridiculous. Those things aren't meant for concrete. You should see them trying to strut; they look fucking unnatural.

I finally clue in. Hop, who wears cleats as a professional sportsman, is mocking the fashionistas of Manila. I whisper a silent prayer of thanks (why do I keep calling myself an agnostic!?) that I am dressed in a simple (although somewhat fashionably tight) shirt, a pair of shorts from Divisoria, and sandals.

I think of a dancer from New York that I met in Vienna. She picked up a black riding hat from a local fleamarket because riding hats were part of Balenciaga's fall collection or something. She's a lovely person and a fabulous dancer, but I bet that she, sporting a riding hat, would look as ridiculous to professional equestrians as cleat-clad runway wannabes and Manila's hipsters would to professional frisbee players.

Later on, we are watching TV. Everyone has melted into individual puddles of flesh: on the sofa bed, in a chair, on the floor. Well, I'm the only one of the floor. It's the only place I can stretch comfortably. The oil has loosened my joints.

Hop says, "Parang bata". He (or she) is just like a kid.

I'm not sure whether he is talking about me or something happening on TV. I'm too embarassed to ask. I think that it's me because I'm playing with my feet, something that I suppose no self-respecting, boring adult would be doing in public. Dorsiflex, supinate, pronate, relax. Dorsiflex, supinate, dorsiflex, plantarflex, pronate, supinate, dorsiflex, relax.

He couldn't have meant me, I tell myself. It would be astounding if Hop thought it was appropriate to comment on me as if I weren't there. But inwardly, I noted the many times in the past in Vancouver where I have been shushed for audibly commenting on people nearby. If I'm bad, my mother is certainly worse. Nanay, myself, and an older, balding man were once the only customers in a small cafe. Nanay turned to me and, in hushed Tagalog that was still loud enough to carry across a room much bigger than that five-table affair, said, "See that man? He works in TV. He knows me and he keeps trying to catch my attention. I'm ignoring him. I'll tell you why later." I looked at her in alarm, thinking, "He heard that. My god, I'm sure he heard that."

Smiling in what I knew was a weird way, I look at Hop, and then back at the screen. I am embarassed, amused, and afraid, all at once. Dorsiflex, supinate, pronate. Relax.

Everyone's eyes are glued to the screen. Speaking a variant of Manila Tagalog too fast for me to understand all the nuances, they are analyzing the events of the movie with a deft objectivity that impresses me.

"Look at how his expectations were totally dashed by the girl!"

"Wow, she said so much just by the way she walked. What pregnant pauses!"

"Jack Black is licking his balls!" (I laughed at this one, too.)

Then, in English, Bing turns to me to ask a quesion, "How long have you been away?"

"Ah, sampung taon." I say embarassedly.

"Buti pa diretso ka pang mag-Tagalog," Hop interjects. A thought bubble forms above my head. Diretsong mag-Tagalog? Are you kidding me? I can barely squeeze out a coherent sentence without having to resort either to very old, formal Tagalog, or to Canadian-scented morsels of English. "Ah, oo naman," I weakly agree.

"I've been on vacation for the past several months. I haven't been working or doing sports at all,"Alex confesses. "Is that bad?"

"No, it's totally important to be on vacation!" I say, guiltily remembering Amsterdam, Venice, and Vienna. I wanted to say that Filipinos are both inveterate workaholics and complete sloths, but I'm learning to be wary of sweeping statements like those.

Over the past few months, I've heard people say, "Nahihilo ako," to mean, "I'm confused." Literally, it means, "I'm dizzy." It's an intriguing turn of phrase because it implies that confusion is not merely a mental state; it's a physical one, too. Well. Nahihilo ako. It appears that this is reverse culture shock. In my absence, people have moved on. Upon my return, I revert to the state---physical, emotional, mental, social, political---that I last occupied. Basically, I'm back to being seventeen in Manila.

Alex and Bing drive me home. Bing, who works in the TV industry, has a 6 am call time at La Mesa dam. I shudder at the thought of even being awake, let alone functional, before 7 am. God, I've been spoiled.

"Hey, I hope you enjoyed yourself tonight," Bing says in the middle of our goodbyes. She seems apologetic.

"Oh yes! I'm sorry if i was a bit quiet tonight, but believe me, I had a great time."

I thought: More than you know. Oh boy. More than you know.

Posted by Diego at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments

Ooh, totally politically incorrect. I feel guilty just posting them here. Whatever. On with the insanity that is Christmas!

1. Schizophrenia -- Do You Hear What I Hear
2. Multiple Personality Disorder -- We Three Kings Disoriented Are
3. Dementia -- I Think I'll Be Home For Christmas
4. Narcissistic -- Hark The Herald Angels Sing About Me
5. Manic -- Deck The Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets
and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and ...
6. Paranoia -- Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Get Me
7. Borderline Personality Disorder -- Thoughts of Roasting on an Open
Fire
8. Personality Disorder -- You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm
Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why
9. Attention Deficit Disorder -- Silent Night, Holy ooh look at the
Froggy - Can I have a Chocolate? Why is France so Far Away?
10. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder -- Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells

Posted by Diego at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments

One of my relatives, Lira, suffered a stroke two weeks ago. It was linked to something known as an AV malformation, where arteries and veins in the brain are congenitally tangled. The stroke happened while she was out of town, in a city in the Philippines where there were no facilities to diagnose properly---let alone treat---her condition. Her mother had to fetch Lira and fly her back to Manila in a wheelchair. For two days, Lira was non-responsive, although she would constantly be murmuring in her sleep. It turned out that she was suffering from severe headaches because of intracranial pressure due to swelling.

Lira is my cousin. She's 23 years old.

When Lira's mother received the hospital bill (there's no socialized healthcare in the Philippines), there was a caution:

"If payment is not received within four days, all non-essential treatment will be withdrawn. Please ignore this bill if payment has already been made and accept our thanks!"

That same week, one of my aunts died from brain cancer. In "Disease as Metaphor", Susan Sontag examines (and cautions against) the metaphors of cancer and tuberculosis as diseases of emotions: cancer as the buildup of unexpressed anger, tuberculosis as the wasting away of excess passion. In my aunt's case, Sontag may have been wrong, because the correlation certainly fits. My aunt was one angry woman, and I believe she had good reasons.

I came here hoping to take care of my nanay, who has harboured her fair share of anger. I'm realizing, though that there's really very little I can do to "save" her. All I can do is be there for her when she needs me. All I can do is try to make her life a little easier. When my father arrives next week, ending a stay in London which lasted an excruciating 13 years (during which time he had developed a host of health problems), I am likely to make a similar discovery.

In one of my favourite fantasy books, which I first read when I was about 14, there's a line that has stuck with me: "it's the people we love the most that we cannot save."

(The book also features a really hot scene between a muscular, blond, ponytail-sporting warrior-dancer and his one-armed, bookish brother. But that's another story.)

So. I'm having a difficult time adjusting to life here. There's so much suffering, so much pain, so much death, partly because the population density is so high (and hence there is lots of suffering per square meter), and partly because the living conditions are atrocious in the first place. Healthcare is expensive, wages are abysmal, and pollution is severe. (I've developed asthma again, after being free from it for over ten years.) To add salt to an open wound, the country is smack in the middle of the hurricane belt. Two typhoons in the last three weeks killed a combined 1,400 people.

At night, I walk down Manila's streets in fear. Hunched over, I put on my meanest, toughest look and swagger down the road. I pray to the god that I supposedly don't believe in that no one will assault me. I swerve past the thin, oil-blackened bodies asleep on sidewalks and past the drunken men carousing in dimly lit karaoke bars where singing "My Way" out of tune can get you killed. I ignore all the prostituted women, the 6-year-old beggars with their neatly penned signs ("Merry Christmas! Even one peso [2 Canadian cents] will do!"), and the sightless, toothless senior citizens wordlessly holding out plastic cups salvaged from garbage bins. I jump over puddles of putrid canal water and skip across alarmingly ragged chunks of pavement, glass, and metal.

During the day, it's not so bad. The frantic, consumer-driven joy of the masses distracts me from the misery on the streets. I can even find some humour in the seven year old boy that quietly crawls to me and dusts my shoes half-heartedly before I even realize what's happening, after which he looks up at me with an expectant yet somehow fierce look. I might ignore him. I might give him a peso or two. And then I would walk away without giving him a second glance, sipping my Starbucks latte, which costs exactly what it would cost in Canada... which is ridiculous in light of the fact that the government wants to push a minimum wage equivalent to a rate (non-adjusted) of 80 cents Canadian per day.

It's 6:13 am. I haven't slept all night. I need to pull myself together. Nanay and I are going for a walk around the university grounds, where it's quiet, cool, and clean. This is the first physical activity that she's volunteered to undertake, and I want to be at my best.

Posted by Diego at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments

I feel like I have to come out of an unusual kind of closet.

I've never said this explicitly, but pretty much everything I do, I do it for either love (as in an is-this-burning-an-eternal-flame kind of love), or for the good of the Filipino people. I was ashamed of my nationalist sentiments particularly while I was living in Canada. In the West, patriotism has been used to justify anti-immigration laws and imperialist, expansionist policies. But here in the Philippines, nationalism has so far been the only viable vehicle for a continuing anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, pro-human rights struggles.

Even when it appears that I'm trying to scale the ranks of power; even when it seems that I'm merely trying to promote myself or my career; even when my aspirations seems so staunchly petit-bourgeois, in the end I am merely maneuvering myself into positions from which I can exercise ideas that I think might benefit the Filipino people.

...

As I'm writing this down and reading it to myself, it sounds scary, of course. Marcos might have said something like this in his early years.

Forces of history, I pray to you: Guide me to do only good, if there be still---in this pluralist, postmodern age---such a thing as good. I am your vessel.

Posted by Diego at 6:08 PM | Permalink | Comments

One of my relatives from my nanay's side of the family died at the beginning of this month. Cancer. Her doctors gave her a month to live; the universe gave her three. Her daughter---who lives here in Manila---tried to secure an emergency visa from the Unites States Embassy so she could see her mother beore she died. They denied her. Twice.

Assholes.

In Manila, you can request your local church (Catholic, of course) to dedicate a regularly scheduled mass to someone who's just died, which the family did. Nanay and I sat in the back pew of the church because we were late. (I spent too much time looking for my wallet, which was probably stolen the previous night while I was getting smashed with high school friends. That's a good story for another time.) After the mass, we gathered at my grandmother's apartment and did what all Filipinos do in times of tragedy: eat a lot of good food. (Actually, it's what all Filipinos do all the time, assuming they can afford to buy food that day.)

I saw some of my nephews and nieces for the first time in a long while. One of them, the two year old bundle of joy pictured above, makes my heart melt; he was born a camera whore, and does he ever look good. I also saw my five year old niece who wore pink and hite, sported toy jewelry on every limb, caked her face with talcum powder to look "white", and asked me repeatedly whether I thought she was pretty.

But the one that got to me was Honey Lou, the granddaughter of my unlucky aunt.

In parts of the Philippines, it's a commonly held belief that unlucky people have birthmarks on their bums. I haven't plucked up the courage to ask my aunt or her children (who seem to have inherited her bad luck) to show me their asses, but I'm willing to bet that they'll have 'em. My aunt told me today how one of her children was hired to work in a retail store selling CDs and records. There was a seven day training period. On the seventh day, he couldn't find any transportation money or the courage to ask for or borrow some. He quit his job entirely due to a lack 15 to 30 pesos (60 to 80 Canadian cents) that one day.

At any rate, it happened to be Honey Lou's birthday today. Nanay handed her a 100 peso bill and asked her lightly what she was going to buy with it. Honey Lou quietly replied, "Pangbabaon ko." She was going to use it to pay for transportation to go to school and pay for her food. She then turned to her grandmother and just as quietly reminded her that her tuition fees were due tomorrow, and was wondering if there was enough money to pay for it.

Nanay and I sat there with stunned looks on our faces. Breaking the silence that was only beginning to crystallize, Nanay quickly cracked a joke about how responsible Honey Lou was at such a young age. Then she turned to me and, as quietly as Honey Lou spoke, handed me a two hundred pesos. "Give this to Honey Lou later."

When I tried to give Honey Lou the money later on, she was in a stubbornly uncommunicative mood. I don't think she liked me that day. But I liked her. There's something in the way she walks that reminds me of someone much, much older than a seven year old. There's an old soul in that body of hers, I'm willing to bet.

I don't know if I would bet as willingly that her bum is completely birthmark-free. But I am praying as hard as my devoutly ambivalent, agnostic soul can bear.

Posted by Diego at 5:09 AM | Permalink | Comments

October 5

My mother has just picked me up from the airport, and we're not-exactly-cruising down historic but car-clogged EDSA, where in 1986 over a million Filipinos came together and brought the end of Ferdinand Marcos's twenty-one-year dictatorship.

The cab stops and waits for cars ahead of us to untangle themselves. A girl---no more than 6 years old---approaches the cab. Ragged thin, she is cradling a bundle of homemade dishcloths in one arm. She is clearly trying to sell them. As she approaches, my mother reaches over me and locks my door.

I look at her in disgust. "Nanay, you shouldn't have done that!"

My mother has (or feigns) a puzzled look. "Done what?"

"Locked the door as that little girl came to us."

"I didn't do it because of her. I didn't even know she was there," she protests. "I would have locked the doors earlier, but I forgot. Besides, do you know, my son, how many thieves approach idling cabs and hold people up for money?"

"Okay," I say, exasperated, "but imagine what it must be like growing up with people locking doors everytime they see you. I mean, how would that affect your sense of self-worth?"

"Oh son." My mother looks sad, bewildered, and amused all at once. I know what she is about to say, the obvious fact that she is about to point out, and I had known it from from the moment I started this conversation. "Oh son," she says, "you've been away for far too long."

November 13

It is boiling hot. The A/C ("aircon", in Manila parlance) obviously does not work. The cab driver is jovial, an poorly disguised attempt to counteract the passengers' discomfort. It fails. My mother's temper rises with the heat, and Edna (who sits at the front) and I are helpless to do anything about either my mother or the temperature.

We are on our way to attend the court hearing of Dodong Nemenzo, the former President of the University of the Philippines, who has been accused of "obstruction of justice for allegedly harboring fugitive rebel soldiers ... which the government believed to be involved in a July 2003 [...] failed coup". The hearing was supposed to start at 10 am, and it is already nearly 11. The traffic is severe, even by Manila standards.

Near the courthouse, we realize that traffic was being held up because of several protest rallies being held in support of Nemenzo, which in turn was preventing Edna, my mother, and me from lending Nemenzo our own support.

The hearing was a sham. It turns out that there were no formal protests actually filed against Nemenzo. This is less a victory than yet another example of the utter ineptitude of the Philippine government.

We didn't get to see Dodong that day, although we did see his wife, Princess. Both Dodong and Princess are friends and colleagues of my mother. Princess is a cross between Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly and what I imagine Gabriela Silang would have been like. She saw me, kissed me on the cheek and squealed in delight ("Oh you're so fit!"), and then, fixing her hair, she turned to the TV cameras to denounce this latest fumble by the government.

November 23

I'm sharing a cab with a friend after having drinks at a local bar. We met each other through our sexually deviant, mutual friends in 1996. We were confused and awkward sixteen-year-olds; nothing happened between us then...

"And nothing will happen between us now, too," I had thought to myself as we sat at the bar. No chemistry. He's too much like a younger cousin, and not in a hot way. I sent no signals. I listened to his stories and exploits, collected over the past ten years. There was a nervous energy about him.

In the cab, I give the driver my address and ask him to drop me off first. As we pull up, I begin to think about setting a date for our next friendly chat over drinks, when my friend turns to me and says, "Actually, I was hoping you'd go home with me."

I am taken aback by the abruptness of his offer. I think I give an apologetic grin while I try to manage the many thoughts that are jostling in my head. The one that actually makes it as a coherent spoken sentence must have come off as an arrogant response: I smiled weakly and said, "Sorry, I don't work that way." It was all very awkward.

Other thoughts include the recollection of a similar meeting I had in Vancouver a couple of years back, but the roles were switched. I was the nervous, infatuated kid who talked a mile-a-minute about the achievements I had accomplished during the time I hadn't seen my drinking date. I was the one who was leaning eagerly forward, energetic and animated; my dinner date leaned back with a wan smile on his face. And I was the one who wanted to go home with my date, although I never asked.

Another response from another guy, when I came on to him too directly: "I want more mystery in the process!"

After ten years of living in the cold shores of Northwest North America, I now find myself in the shoes of every boy I had wanted to fuck from the moment I laid eyes on him. Now, I stare in horror as they throw themselves on me, demanding affection and attention, and showering me with the same.

A week ago, I invited a boy I met at the gym for drinks at my place. My mother is at home, and interviews him over dinner. She pulls me aside later and warns me, "Maganda ang mukha niya, but he didn't finish high school, he's from a far-flung rural area where his father abondoned him, and he obviously likes you. Do NOT pursue this. The power relation is severely unequal, and you know it."

I ignored her, and the boy and I ended up cuddling in bed the same night. He turned to me. "Will you miss me? I'll miss you when you return to Canada." I am shocked, but in some ways my mother's warning prepared me for this. "How could I miss you? I don't even know you very well!" He responded with a command. "Tell me you love me." In one final, unintentional act of cruelty, I burst out into laugher, disbelieving.

I have been away for far too long.

Posted by Diego at 2:25 AM | Permalink | Comments