Riverrun Page 11

  I slung my blue jacket on my shoulders and stood up from the stone steps of Benitez Hall. My classmates had gone ahead of me. The sun was beginning to dip behind the trees, leaving a wash of colors—pink and salmon and red, with tints of gray that deepened with the night.

  The emcee was a short young man with hair slicked to one side. He introduced the Director of the 20th Quezon City High School Senior’s Conference, a big, muscled man with a voice to match his build. The emcee also called onstage the coordinators for accommodations, meals, security, secretariat, and socials. Polite applause. From where I sat at the back, the newsletter coordinator was a plain-looking girl, tall and skinny. The coordinators were last year’s students; this year, they volunteered to help run the conference.

  The French windows in the newsletter room were wide open. A chill wind roamed inside. I buttoned my jacket and turned up its collar.

  “Hi!” called out a voice that was warm and even. I turned around. The newsletter coordinator. She was nearly as tall as I, her head tilted regally to one side. She had a big mouth and bee-stung lips. She looked like a model.

  “Hello,” I said. “I’m Danny Cruz, and you’re the newsletter editor, right?”

  “Yes, I’m Roxanne, Roxanne Gonzales.” She had high cheekbones and a wide forehead. Her jaws were angular, the kind of face you’d see on a magazine cover. She looked like Margarita Mon Amor, Miss Universe of 1974. Her eyes were large, and they had a way of turning brown in the light. But when she smiled, I thought I saw sadness in those eyes.

  “Please fill in the personal data sheet. We’ll wait for the others to arrive.” She turned around and walked to the door, pasting a piece of paper scrawled with “newsletter” in blue pentel pen on the door. Her shiny hair flowed down her shoulders. Black Levi’s hugged her long, long legs.

  Roxanne presided over the meeting. “Jhun-jhun, Let-let, and Mai-mai, please, you can interview the delegates for the Gazette issue. Ask them about the trip from Manila. First impressions, fresh impressions.”

  “What about me, Roxanne?” said the guy across from me. He looked like an airhead, one of those guys who had nothing between his ears, except earwax. His name was Jonathan Livingstone Sy Go.

  “Okay, Jon. Can you write an editorial based on the theme of the conference? The theme is—”

  “Oh, yes, I know: ‘Youth: Moral Values in the New Decade.’”

  “Oh, nice to know you know the theme. Now write an editorial, please, around 250 words, okay, Jon?” Beneath the cool voice, I noticed a quick temper. And then she looked at me.

  “Danny, could you please do the literary page?”

  “Okay. Will do.” Then I smiled to catch her attention.

  She ignored me, then she added, “Please turn in all assignments by five P.M. If there are no more questions, you may go to your rooms and rest. There’s an acquaintance party tonight. Enjoy.”

  Everybody stood up and left the room, except me.

  “Aren’t you going to the party?”

  “No, I’ve two left feet, you know. How about you?”

  A sigh. Then: “I’ve to finish this for a paper in class.” She showed me a small book bound in black cloth. A Farewell to Arms. “Don’t let me keep you here,” she said.

  Oh, you only want to continue reading the sappy story of Catherine and Lieutenant Henry, I wanted to tease her, but all I said was goodbye.

  Inside my room, I took off my jeans and changed into the blue Nike jogging pants my father gave me last Christmas. I lit a cigarette, a habit I began only last month. Like many of my classmates, the first time I smoked I did it in the bathroom of our house. It must be those ads (Come to Marlboro country), with the cute cowboy in tough brown leather jacket and boots because I had a hard-on the first time I smoked.

  The cigarette butt glowed. Smoke quivered in the air. I wanted to be alone, to think, because I was confused again. I heard the wind, a sound lost instantly among the pine trees. I thought I heard a familiar voice, floating from another country. I stood up and closed the windows. What shall I give the Gazette? A poem, perhaps?

  I picked up my pen and yellow pad paper. Writing. Writing was like a sudden urge, an itch, a kind of lust even. The words ran inside me, like blood.

  *

  In Bulacan, I saw farmers in threadbare pants and faded shirts. Behind them lay the fields heavy with ripe grains. When we reached Pampanga, a mountain broke the smoothness of the horizon. Mount Arayat. The familiar mountain of memory. Above it, the sky was an immense blueness.

  We stopped for lunch at the Vineyard, a restaurant in Rosales, Pangasinan. After lunch and pissing in one of those toilets where you held your breath so you would not have a migraine later, we went back to our buses. We passed a bridge with steel girders and high arches. But below it lay burning sand and stones, not the mighty, roaring river I had expected.

  When the air became raw and sharp, I knew we were going up Kennon Road. Suddenly, smoke came from the hood of the La Mallorca, “The bus is burning!” cried the girl behind me.

  The driver stood up, a stocky man with a beer belly and skin the color of dry earth. “We only need water. Don’t worry, we’ll be all right,” he said. My teacher, Mrs. Genova, noisily volunteered her Tupperware filled with water. We snickered.

  Then we continued with the trip. Mountain and sky, river and ravine. The sight of a landslide made us shift in our seats again. But it was a four-month-old landslide, cause by Typhoon Miling. One side of the mountain was gone. But the landslide had created a wide and calm lake. From the lake, a young tree was beginning to grow.

  And when we reached Baguio, the first things I saw were the poinsettias, like blood on the face of a hill. My Biology textbook said the red petals of the poinsettias were not really flowers, but leaves.

  Thus, you can say that the poinsettias are masters of disguise.

  *

  I would have awakened later but for the noise in the room. “That Ruby from Holy Family Academy has a very soft body,” said Bing Bong.

  I plumped my pillow into a fat missile and aimed it at him.

  “You’re just jealous. Where did you go last night?” asked Bing Bong.

  Mario was my new classmate. He was wearing only his undershirt and his shorts, showing his young, hard biceps and hairy thighs. I always looked at him surreptitiously in our Physical Education class, when he would be wearing his abbreviated shorts and sleeveless gray shirt. When I met Mario, the face of Luis began to blur slowly in my mind.

  And now Mario said, “I saw him in the newsletter room. Seems like he’s making a pass at the newsletter coordinator. Remember the Vogue model?”

  I wanted to say, “You’re just jealous, Mario,” but I held my horses. I found Mario cute, and he always teased me. He must have sensed that I liked him, even if I did not show it directly, which was my wont. I said, “Hey, I wasn’t making a pass at her.” Then: “But of course, I’d love to—”

  Mario just smiled at me, a wicked glint in his eyes.

  After breakfast, we went to the Session Hall. The list of delegates and the groups they belonged to were tacked on the bulletin board. I belonged to Group 5, with my classmates Edgar Allan Pe and Daffodil Tulip Pastilan. During the first session, Daffodil was elected secretary and I, chairman. In the afternoon, Attorney Honey Boy Velez in a dark-blue suit bored us to death when he gave a two-hour speech on the theme of the conference that began with Jose Rizal’s quote, “The youth is the hope of the Fatherland.” Lolo Pepe must be break-dancing in his grave by now. I sat at the back and did doodles.

  After the sessions ended, I left my essay in the newsletter room, with a short note for Roxanne. After a dinner of fresh Baguio vegetables and fish escabeche, I walked back to the room and saw her, but she was busy reading Hemingway. On the table lay my essay, unread.

  I rushed back to my room, fist deep in the pockets of my jacket, gnats of annoyance following me. My classmates were all there. Mario said we should drink. We pooled our money, then sent Angel, Gerry
, and Mandy to smuggle a case of beer in. We tried to be quiet since drinking was against the house rules, but as the empty beer bottles multiplied, the noise level also rose. My classmates told stories and jokes about women with boobs like the bumper of a car, or what they would do if they met Bo Derek on the street. We smoked and drank and burped. A haze began to form before me. Then a hiss of words: “I like you, but I’m sorry …” I had met Sheena in first-year college, and I liked her immediately. She said these words that evening in their yard, the garden perfumed with ylang-ylang and jasmine after we had been dating for six months. “My family is moving to Canada in summer. Let us write to each other. Good luck and best wishes …” The beer bubbled and foamed, and I drank my San Miguel cold and bitter. Afterward, I was so drunk I just staggered to my bed and fell asleep. Good luck and best wishes. As if she were congratulating a mere acquaintance on her graduation day. Sheena and I would watch movies at Virra Mall and fumble with each other’s clothes in the dark. But being convent-bred she had her rules. The navel was the border zone. Everything below that was a no-no. So while watching Blue Lagoon I would give her a French kiss and run my tongue around her nipples and try to pull down her Bang Bang Jeans, but she always slapped my hand. The noise of a hand being slapped would bring snickers from the other lovers around us. We would stop and look at each other, and then begin kissing again. I whispered to my Catholic girlfriend that the pillar of salt wanted to see the burning bush, but she would not hear of it. She would just kiss me back and run her fingers down the spine of my back. I always had a case of blue balls. Those were truly, ah, painful moments.

  The sunlight streaming from the window woke me up. I got up from bed with a hard-on. My classmates were still asleep. All bombed out. Mario slept on the bed next to mine. His woollen blanket had already fallen on the floor. He was wearing his gray jockeys. He also had a hard-on, which tent-poled his jockeys. I had to tear myself away from the Tower of Babel so my morning could begin. I took a shower, lathered my face, and shaved. I remembered my dream last night (Mario and I taking a bath together, at dawn, our fingers exploring each other’s bodies), and I slapped cold water on my face. I had to pull myself together, because later in the day would be the panel interview for the Ten Most Outstanding Delegates of the conference.

  The Director, the Conference Secretary, and the dean of an Opus Dei university interviewed us. The results would be added to the scores each candidate got for their performance during the conference. We were interviewed individually, behind closed doors. It was all beginning to sound like the Miss Universe beauty contest, and so while they interviewed me, I sat straight, with my right foot pointed forward.

  The first two questions were a breeze. The Opus Dei dean, who looked like any of your kind uncles, asked the third question: “What do you think of such adolescent preoccupation as smoking, drinking, and drugs?” He spat the word adolescent from his lips as if it were some illness.

  I was uneasy because I had expected a question about the conference itself. He was sooooo damned smug and so I said, “Well, sir, I think drinking is not so bad especially if done in a social way. Smoking you can do if you want to have yellow, nicotine-stained fingernails. Drugs, I would like to believe, would be too expensive.”

  “So do you smoke, or drink or take drugs?” he said, taking off his thick glasses that looked like goggles, and then fixed his sharp eyes on me.

  What the hell do you care? I wanted to tell him, but I kept my cool. He who blows his top first, loses. “Of course, as I said, I would drink socially, which means when my peers pressure me. I smoked for a while, but the nicotine stained my fingernails and teeth and so I stopped. Drugs? I don’t know where to find them, maybe you have an idea where?” I would have rambled on, but the dean had told me to stop.

  During the awarding ceremonies, after the emcee had called the names of the tenth down to the third Most Outstanding Delegate, I knew I had lost. I was sitting beside Mario, inhaling the fragrance of his Brut. The night was cold and our warm thighs were grazing each other. I was thinking of the many things I could do to his hairy thighs when my name was called as the Most Outstanding Delegate. Mario gripped my hand tightly, and then he hugged me. I wished he would never let go. But he did, and so I walked to the stage and received my heavy gold medallion and a certificate done in sheepskin. My classmate’s Instamatic cameras kept on popping.

  The Opus Dei vote could only pull me down a few points, I heard later from the grapevine that always clung and grew after the results of any contest had been announced. After the awarding ceremonies, there were some more boring speeches so I asked Mario, “Would you like to take a walk? It’s cooler outside.”

  Down the footpath we walked. Dusk had already settled among the leaves, and the air was heavy with the fragrance of pine. A moon hung in the sky, ripe and full and yellow, like a harvest moon. Is there still a man on the moon? I wondered suddenly, remembering our housemaid Ludy’s tale one childhood night so many years ago. But I let the memory go.

  Mario and I sat on a concrete bench encircling a dry fountain. A mermaid in stone sat in the center of the fountain.

  “Congratulations again,” Mario said as he sat beside me. Vapor rose from his lips as he spoke.

  “Thank you,” I answered. He looked good in his black long-sleeved denim shirt, with one button down, and black jeans. His eyes were big and penetrating. I wanted so much to touch his face and lips and tell him I liked him. I knew he knew what I wanted to tell him, but the words remained frozen on my tongue.

  It was he who broke the awkward silence. “Perhaps we should be heading back?” Then he snickered. “I think any moment now a snowflake will settle on the tip of my nose.”

  Which I would melt with a kiss, I wanted to say, dangerously witty to the very end. But all I could say was “Yes, you’re right.” Then I swallowed, down my gut, all the words I wanted him to hear, all of them. Suddenly, the brightest young person in this gathering was struck dumb. Like gold medallions to the thumb.

  We walked back to the hall, the heavy darkness and mist smothering us. We sat down and tried to make small talk amidst all that noise. I knew then he had let me go. I was crushed, but I never showed my defeat. Early on I have learned that you could always sheathe everything with irony and wit.

  The farewell party went on. The DJ played that stupid song about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But when he played “Morning Girl,” Mario suddenly stood up. He walked clear across the darkened hall, to a girl in a pink dress. Barbie smiled and stood up and walked with him to the center of the dance floor. His arms tightened about her waist and they danced so close to each other. For once, I wished the dean from the Opus Dei were here, to tell Mario there should be distance between him and his doll, “so your respective guardian angels could pass by.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid my face would just crack from all the sadness inside me. Quietly I slipped out of the room, ignoring everybody who was congratulating me. All along, my gold medallion as the Most Outstanding Delegate hung on my chest. I only forced a smile when I saw Roxanne, who was asking me if I had seen my essay published in the last issue of the Gazette. I just nodded, and walked away. I was walking through a door, another door, an infinity of doors.

  Down the stairs I ran until I reached the dark yard. My arm brushed against the poinsettias hanging like bouquets in the empty air. But when I turned to look at them, beads of water had begun to glitter on the red leaves.

  YSL

  “LAURENT, YVES SAINT,” said the Manila paper tacked on the board.

  I was enrolling for college at St. Ignatius University and in front of me was a big version of the registration form I had to fill in. “Laurent” (surname), “Yves” (first name), “Saint” (middle name). I wanted to correct the entries and put “Saint” as part of the surname, but what the heck! Five hundred freshmen were enrolling, so what was the problem with a snooty example?

  I had been lucky with official letters, so far. After graduating valedictorian
from high school (but feigning tonsillitis so I could skip the Junior-Senior prom), I had been receiving letters.

  The State University said I could take Business Administration and Accounting in Diliman. My father recommended this course to me, since he said it would make me rich.

  Then St. Ignatius University said I could take English Literature in Loyola Heights, but only on a partial scholarship since my father was working abroad and I was an only child. My mother smirked. “But we have a thousand relatives knocking on our door, and the inflation rate has been rising like anything!”

  And the third letter solved everything for me. It came from the Director of the Bureau of Posts, no less. He said that I had won the First Prize in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Essay-writing Contest for high-school students. My prize: 3,000 pesos, five albums of ASEAN stamps, and a four-year scholarship to a college of my choice. A monthly stipend of P500 and a book allowance of 1,000 pesos per semester sweetened the scholarship.

  And that was how I became classmates with the sons and daughters of landowners and owners of factories, corporate lawyers and government ministers, generals and movie stars, ex-priests and tycoons. There were so many good-looking boys but I found them too fair, too flabby, too loose-limbed. There were so many good-looking girls but they chattered in a language only they could understand. Syet, the ulan is about to fall na!

  Later, of course, the stereotypes all came tumbling down, like a house of cards in Alice in Wonderland, and some of these rich brats even became my friends.

  The Heart of Summer

  ON THE FIRST DAY of April, we moved to a row house in a subdivision carved out of the Antipolo hills. A row house is a nice word for houses that somehow managed to fit into 120-square-meter lots. They looked like matchboxes, really, built near the riverbank. The larger houses, of course, stood grandly at the center of the village, in front of the chapel. We’d be renting the house from the mayor’s mistress, one of three houses she owned there.