VERBA. VERBUM. VERBI. Or Kill Me.

Convivium… distinguere… animadvertens… aperuerit…

It’s not a chant. Those are Latin words playing in my mind over and over like an after-taste by some rancid food as I stepped out of the office at two in the morning. I have to stop or I might hit a weird combination of these words and accidentally cause the earth to open up and henceforth a company of incubi emerges from the cracks.

February 5, 2007. Oriental Gardens. I finally got home early. And it’s winter in the Philippines.

Pray it's not like this when I drive back to Baguio on the 24th.

The past days at work have been a killer as equally deadly deadlines fall on my table like rain. Throw in a pint of pressure and a boss who’s contemplating resignation if these pressures from Sri Lanka don’t get a stopper. The other Thursday, I worked 22 hours straight. I downed two bottles of Red Bull to keep me on my feet. Only to find out that on my 19th hour, though my body was well alive and my eyes wide open like I was on shabu, my brain could no longer distinguish between Latin, Tagalog, and English. I have to beg my boss to send me home. But prior to that begging (which I am not known at doing) I was thinking of my Baguio trip the weekend before. Me in my hotel room munching strawberries as I watch cable tv. Me at SM-Baguio on wifi overlooking a fog-swept landscape. Prior to that, me having sushi at second level terrace of SM-Baguio. Rollo and I at Café by the Ruins. The unrelenting flirtation at Nevada Square notwithstanding the threat of being shot by some frat guy. These happy thoughts kept me from hurling the computer out of the window unto a passing car down Ayala, 42 floors down below.

Nevada Square flirting!

An eyesore but I enjoyed it anyway. Again, I'm not complaining.

It's not Japan but I still had Uni.

Mac and Me and Wifi. And that scenery... ah, life.

Hindi ako nang-iinggit. Talagang akin lang ito.

Dressed to flirt.

Today, at last, we were done with our client’s demands. Without completing my daily minimum hours, I picked up my bag to go home. If a 16th Century theological treaties arrive from Sri Lanka, it would have to wait another 500 years to be edited. But before I could walk out of the office, my boss came back from a teleconference. The client has been happy with our work and is sending us new projects such as editing ancient musical scores in Latin, French and German. BUT! They are sending back some of the Latin documents we edited last December as the Greek phrases would have to be edited by us. That part of the news sent shivers down my spine. But then, boss said we would have to train somebody else to specialize on Greek. How reassuring…

Before he left, he went to my table. Seeing that I was killing time, he said “O, since wala kang ginagawa, simulan mo nang pag-aralan ito.” Then a Greek grammar book fell on my table.

I wanted to die right there and then! But instead, I breathe deep and slow, thinking of my next trip to Baguio this 24th for the Panagbenga Flower Festival with family and friends (what’s a flower festival without the fairies). That kept me from hurling a boss to a passing car down Ayala, 42 floors below.

Or, give and take two weeks, when those documents come back, it would be me hurling myself on the cars down Ayala, 42 floors below. Or I’d be happy to smack into a call-center agent or two with my dead and delectable body.

I'm not complaining. I just miss advertising.

Buddha would be sad to know that the tree under which he gained enlightenment was felled down to make an obesce likeness of him.

To make lions roar, kill a tree.

You know cassete tapes when you see lots of them. And they still exist, yes?

SYA, SYA... SUMIKAT MAN KAYO MINSAN.

My horde of reading fans has been clamoring for the most trifling of issues next to: that I reintroduce the characters of my entries. Some of them have been in confusion as to who’s who was I talking about when I was sending names aflying across the pages. Duh! What could I say? Some of them can be so slow. Ahem...

Sure, sure… never disappoint the fans. Even if a horde of them means only three. So let me go through the pains of laying out the credits. And, for those who are still in the mediaeval method of intellection (relying on pictures rather than words for a more potent understanding), pictures are herein provided withstanding libel suits and all.

Well, part of my New Year activity is looking back at the people who colored my life. Resisting selective amnesia, I remember them. Against my mean character, I recall their good deeds. Considering my ungratefulness, I honor their so-called purpose in my so-called life (but that does not mean I am here defining the total purpose of their lives, if any).

List not alphabetically arranged. No order of importance hinted either:

Seamstress first came to this blog as our host in Olongapo. He has recently moved to Singapore. I think I should change his name as he has been recently engaged to a flight steward. But considering the foregoing lifespan of relationships, I think I’d let the name stay (should I, therefore, call everyone “seamstress” following that statement). Seamstress is going to be missed. The generosity (he let us use his pad for days though he wasn’t around). The Ms. Universe smile (while Ryo and I were in the middle of a brawl, his motherly countenance brought peace to the rest of the world). The smile that never fails to welcome us in Olongapo.

Intelligent. Big in humor. One of the only two bitches in my circle whose diatribes I wouldn’t get into with. He bounces around like Praxedes of Kaluskos Musmos (if you’re not 35 or above don’t bother). Cuddly and visually healthy, he once quipped, “Gregg, don’t you get tired of being intelligent? Because I am. Next natin i-achieve ganda naman.” Not in this life, Dear. Not in this life. But he knows he was my crush when we first met, 1996. His Art Consultant calling card caught my attention. Hmmm, an artiste.

You go around Malate and you call everyone Sis. Or Tita. Or just blunt bakla. No matter which address you call them, the term is just a term. No matter how dear. But when I call this one “Ateh!” everyone knows I’m calling my sister. Biiig Sistah! Because Nympha and I have stock to each other through thick and thin enough for our lovers and ex’s to suspect that we once did “The DEED.” C’mon, girls! You don’t want another tsunami. I think we will stick with each other till the time we have to check on each other’s doses of anti-rheumatic medicine or check on the progress of our yarn-works projects. And if that has to happen, I'm telling why I name him Nympha.

You have your exes, your exes’ ex. And there is Porto. Porto, the Portogezo, said he has the Portuguese genes. Whatever that means. This kid has annoyed me so several times but I still keep him close just like my inner-circle friends. Because Porto, after his relationship with my ex, Ryoichi, has displayed that innocent countenance that endlessly clamor for a mentor, a teacher, a guardian. That’s me. He calls me Baybag the way Ryoichi would. And I respond to him as I would to Ryo. Because somehow, that innocence is Ryo’s the first day we met back 1996.

I used to have a personal secretary. “Gigi! Check on my bank account. Call Chenes. Call Chuva… Gigi, we’re moving; call moving company.” But when I moved out of my place in Amorsolo, Gigi was no longer under my employment. I was at a loss. What could have been done in a day or two did not happen even in two weeks. Rollo Dolphino – poet, academician, housemate – came to the rescue. I remember very well: he came to my place in an FX, profuse in sweat as he came all the way from his teaching job so I could have some of my things transported to where I now live. And during those depression days, Rollo came in handy to give me a knock on the head with what-he-calls “The Art of Conscious Forgetting.” And, yes, thank you for bringing me to Farenheit.

There are friends you would want to be close to when you’re drunk and some whom you wouldn’t want to be around with when they’re drunk. Especially when a friend gobbles up loaded bownies. Unless you would want to be mistaken as his lover when he starts a commotion in the middle of Orosa St. ("Iniwahn moh ahkoh!") Ninghao is one friend. Well, he’s my only friend who is like that. Why I name him Ninghao is because ninghao is the only Chinese word I know. And he’s the only Chinese I know who doesn’t know Chinese. Maybe that’s the reason why he couldn’t keep a long-term relationship. His guys get disappointed when they find out that he’s faux Tsinito. He’s reliable; at the same time a liability. He’s loyal but can be fickle. Funny and pesky. He has been sensitive to what I may have told him sometimes, especially when he thinks I was the only one who could listen to him. But I never stopped telling him. We had so many memories together. And most of them are un-publishable.

Ning, thank you for coming home (as if you had a choice).

I was 27. He was 20. I doubted if our relationship would last. It sailed off to eight years. Then a fly pooped on our cake…

Shoo, Fly, shoo!

He got engaged to a Japan-OFW I once called in one of my blog entries as Nameless. He would drop Japanese phrases then enough for me to call him Ryoichi. But he really speaks Chinese better than Ninghao. For some reason we did not become lovers again but rather remained best of friends characterized by intense closeness. One that has raised eyebrows and jealousy from our current lover(s) and/or date(s). No, it’s not a Brian-Michael of Queer as Folk thing. Theirs is fictitious. But no matter what everyone suspects, as no one may understand, the bond between me and Ryo is a phenomenon that has yet to be decoded. He’s my nephew; I’m his big bully brother. And to his admirers, I send this message: admire him, hate me. You can’t do the former without the latter.

I used to call this one Anabelrama as he seems to be capable of murder if somebody would think somebody else is prettier than his daughter. Lately, because of his “charitable” tendencies towards men of lack and want, he demands that I call him Mo. Teresa K (for kalikot). My blood best friend since high school, though Brunei-based, comes home to the Philippines, ruins my sleeping and working schedule so he could paint the town menstrual red. He’s a man of superlatives (don’t take him seriously when he finds this and that super cute and super graveh!).

Queenship is earned by heredity. Or one can zip through a beauty pageant. But this friend of mine got his through babble. Gab is Praxedes’ tenant. But Praxedes, more than a landlady, also dabbles as a rumor mongering neighbor depending on what role-play he and his lover is portraying in a particular night of epic sex. But I envy him. He can do this back-breaking gyration of gay-bar strippers dancing on Guns and Roses.

Some other characters come in and out of my stories. These are some of those who made my life burst in colors. I will continue to write about them. That’s their risk for getting into my life.

And in the year past, I thank them for being there and watch me make it, lend a hand so I could make it (again), and cheer me up so I could win that prize. Well, with what they have done for me, I could honestly says – bullying aside – that I can’t thank them enough.

Here comes 2007, and I owe them another thank-you’s.

RURSUS (ante introductio amicorum)