10 April 2006
THE ANGRY KID (I thought i've already grown. I spoke too soon.)
APRIL 9, at three and I shout towards the general direction where my dad could be: I’m going somewhere. I hear a voice say: “you’re telling me? That’s new.”I want to shout back that I wasn’t really intending on telling him; mom just forced me to do so. More of nagged me and hostaged my allowance. I don’t do this. Instead, I walk away. Walk straight to the car and turn on the ignition, the fanbelt screaming, shrieking--always the best signal that I’m going, my broken fanbelt. The best reply to a smart-alecky statement.
My dad and I really don’t get along. We just don’t. For one, I’m his eldest, his only son and I turned out to be gay. On one level, how do you tell someone who’s addicted to sports, who’s a reserve colonel and who bashes gays that his son is in fact gayer than the mardi gras? He already knows of this, of course, but he's not to be reminded. On a different level, how do you show acceptance for a gay son? How will you make it comfortable for him to be around you when it is second nature to you to laugh at those gays you see on TV. You can’t.
We both can’t.
We know this and we’re just waiting for the time when I can finally set out on my own, I think. But the freshest reason for our demise is that he came home from abroad with nothing but a souvenir shirt for me, which went straight to my mother’s dresser. If we are family, you don’t pick up something for me at the airport because god knows how I searched high and low a foreign city just to get you things that I knew you’d like. If you forgot about me, then don’t give me shit just for the sake of giving me something.
I prefer to receive nothing.
***
Alabang Town Center at four and I am smoking by the court. I used to hate smoking. I used to hate smokers. Dad smoked a lot and I hated it when he smoked around me.
The south is a far cry from the hustle and bustle of Quezon City and amidst their quiet, I set out to get a perfect gift for Lar. Lar is having a baby boy next month, her firstborn and I am on my way to her shower. I’ve no idea what to give a friend who’s bound to have her own boy--her own set of parental problems, a son who might in the future throw a spoon to the wall to make her shut up, like what I did last Saturday.
I am looking at mittens when I see the rack of baby books. My own baby book is blue with a really cute design. I used to look at it a lot and my mom would get mad at me because she feared that I’d destroy it or lose it. There were more pictures than what the lay out asked for and there were sappy captions I cannot read with a straight face. The invitation to my christening was stuck--custom made, mass produced white card with green letterings. Creepy.
I just found out recently that I came a little later than my parents wanted. At that time, it was considered that they got married late, the virgin bride being twenty eight years old and the groom being three years ahead. Since my mom would not get pregnant, they tried doing it in different places and finally, I was manufactured in Germany. The first story was that I was made in Singapore but recent computations yielded Germany as result.
I am standing by the counter with a babybook within the tasteful midrange. I wonder how lar's son would be twenty years from now. I go back to get the best one from the rack.
***
Starbucks at ten, and Ler is spearing the core, the yummiest part, of my cinnamon roll with a fork. And then he asks if I would have been dead by now if not for modern medicine.
When I was five years old, just a couple of weeks before my birthday, the hospital gave up on me. My aunt says that even my mom at some point was praying to the heavens that they take good care of me there. It was a bonanza and I am sure I had given my clan some excitement in their otherwise predictable, conservative lives. I got the biggest suite in the hospital but the only thing I got to see was the area where the hospital bed was. There were always people and I swear I vaguely remember a pray-over. You know, where a bunch of people speak in tongues as they put their hands above you. This, of course is not confirmed—I cannot get myself to ask if such thing really happened.
Some more reports: my sister who was at home saw me talking to an angel, as her nanny swore. The household staff started crying at that point. Simultaneously, over at the hospital, my own nanny insisted that I was talking to an angel, REM-eyes and spastic state and all. Me, I think this as delusion due to heavy medication. Maybe my sister was being medicated at that time too. Or our nannies were just high on something.
Still, I am here.
My dad transfused blood to me directly. I cannot imagine that: me and him lying side by side in the operating room connected by a tube in which blood flows from him to me. That was the best parting gift I’ve ever received thus far.
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