“You
wanted to see me,” she says, a little suspicious again of my
intentions, unable to look me in the eye however.
“Well,” I begin, “it’s not as though my intentions are
closed. But we have to arrive at a decision as to what further and
sublime use I may have for you.”
This troubles her. Because it means she would again have
to endure all the gossip and the lies and the contrivances that go along
with trying to sell a tale. As she’s acting in it.
“What do I do?” she finally says, putting on lipstick
rather nervously.
“Well, this is really just another story about a woman
seduced by her male best friend.”
“And that’s you?”
She puts her lipstick back into her bag.
“It could be me.”
I help her finish her pizza, then we go out to the veranda to
think of what else to do.
She
folded the blanket neatly, so I said, “no, no, you’re supposed to be
a rather scatterbrained woman and that should reflect in your
housekeeping.”
“But I need to have this all fitting into the laundrybag,”
she protested. “Besides, a scatterbrained woman can be prim and proper
with her housework and clothes, don’t you think?”
“Why do you have to launder it? What’s the point?”
“Why did we have to make love, has it got anything to do with
your story? What’s your story’s point, by the way, can’t you this
one time tell me? Hnh!... I’m washing this myself tomorrow, the
laundrywoman would frown at semen on my blanket.”
“Don’t be banal. You’re supposed to be confused but yet
elegant — “
“You’re supposed, you’re supposed, you’re supposed. Why
do I have to be something I’m not! You’re dragging me into this
story as me, right, why do you have to create gossip on my character?
What does it serve you?”
“Linda, sit down. Listen, ... I’m dragging you into my
story as a symbol. And if you are to be a symbol, ... you must not end
up an emblem. See? So ... in the beginning of the story, we must begin
with the impression or misimpression that you’re somebody you’re not
so we can end the story with the realization — by the community, etc
— of your having been labeled falsely.... Okay?”
This calmed her some, I think, she began to eye me with
amusement.
“Okay?” I repeated.
Yeah, that calmed her some, all right, because she put down her
pack of cigarettes. I took it before it reached the table, about three
sticks still in there, threw it into the trashcan. We were friends
again, hero and heroine.
“So you’re supposed to be the good guy in this thing, hm?”
she asked, smiling now.
“Linda, ... what is your idea of gossip?”
“Ah-hahahahah,” she suddenly falsely laughed, “so now
you’re trying to demystify my person now, the person at the beginning
of this. I think I get it. I think I ge-e-et it,” she added, singingly.
“Hahahahahah.” This last was not a laugh but a clowning type of
teasing, actually happiness at having overcome the puzzle, but actually
still meaning she there tried to make fun of something rather sad.
“What’s your problem?” I asked.
“What’s your problem? You have me entering here
nervously, and then you have me fuck you, and now you want to hear what
my brain can say. Right? Is this a sort of sensationalist biotechnology
thing, using women as amusing pets in a private zoo?”
“Linda, you were not listening. I am not a mere fictionist. I
am an essayist, do you see? Do you see? I have, look, you enter here
nervously, ... then we make love, then you’re a real fine housekeeper,
then what, you suddenly come on as intelligent. What could be the point
in that?”
“What?” Her interest was real.
“Certainly not that women make amusing subjects. I use your
story for my essay point.”
“But this is a story!”
“A story’s an essay,” I insisted.
“W-w-w-wait. A story’s an essay. So why write a story?”
This was an argument I didn’t want to happen, I never like to lecture
in my stories.
“For the simple reason,” I sighed, “that parallels
poetry’s continuing to exist even as we already have opinion
writers.” Quickly I hoped she got it.
And so on, and so on, and so on, I had to tell her everything
there was to know about storywriting. She was a good listener, too. I
avoided symbological dogma, eschewing any further criticisms from her
untrained ear.
“Still,” she continued, standing up, opening the
refrigerator to get us orange juice or something, “still, I think
you’re using me here.”
“Because you’re significant. You’re significant to me. I
wouldn’t be writing about you if you weren’t significant to me. I
love you.”
Now, that stunned her, unable suddenly there to separate
fiction from reality, or unable to decide if this was worth listening to
at all. She held the pitcher steady.
“JoJo, please. Please?” Seriously, she went to my glass.
Then just as suddenly she was lightheaded, cheerful, saying,
“please please please don’t ever say that again. You don’t love
me, it is only I who love you.”
She sat on my lap, I turned off my Walkman.
Thus did develop our partnership here, flattering for the
meantime my readers.
I
went to see her brother, the writer, the recluse, who painted grasses
— all kinds of grasses! — in a modest studio in dirtier Malate.
I went to see her parents, asked them about her childhood.
She
entered the room and flailed her bag at me, hitting my back.
“Get out,” she whispered. “Get out! GET! OUT!”
“Okay. I’m getting out. Will you tell me what’s bugging
you while I put on my shoes?”
“Why did you see them? Why are you dragging my family into
this?”
“Linda, you’re simplifying me too much. Do you think I
believe in all this Freudian nonsense? I had to see them to kick
Freud.”
“And how do you pursue that, Mr Genius, kicking Freud? I’m
quitting. I’m giving you all your money back. I don’t think I still
like this fiction thing of yours!”
“Linda, you’re already in it. There’s no way you can
escape my pen now, babe, unless you shoot me. I’m going to finish
this, and I’m finishing this proving my point.”
“WHICH IS WHAT! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO
KNOW IF YOU’RE JUST MAKING A SENSATION OUT OF MY SELF! I’VE SUFFERED
ENOUGH ALREADY, JOJO, I CAN — ”
“God, Linda,” I said, running to her. “Come here, baby,
take off your sweater it’s so hot here ... oh babe. Look, I want to
marry you.”
We, rather I, prepared supper in her kitchen. I was an expert
with fried eggs, and I didn’t mean anything erotic by it. We had a
nice little meal that night, love is always splendid when the woman is
in tears.
Now,
re that last item above, her sister Carmel the feminist would not agree
or dance with jokes like that. Oh, she would look me in the eye after
delivering that and would tell me, “prove that to me and I’ll fall
in love with you like a bitch.” But this is not a feminist story, we
are not dragging that here just so we can please certain rational
causes. Anyway, I only mention it (“why do you mention these
things,” as Linda always screams on things that bug her natural
integrity — oh she’s my inspiration) to state here clearly the
unnecessariness of that stance with me since I’m the dependent one
here and Linda’s the one in control. I’ll clarify that below.
“Do you expect me to believe this?” Linda said after
hearing me dictate the above paragraph to my tape recorder. “I don’t
think you include everything I say. I don’t think you quote me exactly
as you ought to — ”
“Linda, I confess, the control is mutual. I do edit your
concrete manifestations, but that’s because I want to be loyal to your
very self, your very you-ness. I take in only ‘the telling,’ those
that display what you represent.”
“Or, rather, what you want me to represent.”
Okay. A lot more of these arguments that seemed like daily
ritual, forcing me to confess process.
“All right, all right.... I’ll go to Makati1
tomorrow,” I decided. “I’ll see my psychiatrist, ask her what she
has to say about this.”
“She?”
Now:
Reader, what my psychiatrist saw was very educational. I learned
something. She said that this is apparently a story about a normal love
affair, where two people end up helping — wanting to help — each
other, although with reservations on the woman’s part in that she’s
not sure whether the man’s love is sheer fiction or real, considering
said man is a Creative Person, a storyteller/writer to be specific.
I called up Ulysses, Linda’s painter brother who also writes
poetry and experimental plays, asking if I could see him without his
telling Linda. Although I’ve been his classmate in Art History I (he
was in third year Painting when I was in second year Literature minor in
Art Criticism), he disliked me now that I had been living with Linda. My
affair with Linda was of course none of his business, and that was not
my business in coming to see him again, so I told him all these once
more and confronted him as a professional.
“You’re older so you probably know some things I don’t
know yet. But one thing that puzzles me, why do you paint grasses?”
“That’s none of your business, I suppose. Neither do I see
how it might have anything to do with Linda, since I know you didn’t
come here to do an advanced art review,” he said to me, rather
charmingly. “How is your story coming along?”
“It’s the reason why I’m here. I want to know why you
paint grasses.”
Putting down his brushes, opening a bottle of beer he drew from
the tiny refrigerator (not offering me a bottle), he sighed, looked at
the window, and cried. I realize some of you foreign critics would read
I’m here trying to imply Ulysses is homosexual, with all that bottle
symbolism, that sighing, that crying. But he was far from that. I saw
how he had been a survivor; here was a portrait of a painter as a
Filipino, misunderstood by an absence of understanding, unable to
clarify himself further within the limits of his codes.
“JoJo, you want to know why I paint grasses? Well, I don’t
know why I paint grasses.” He
gave me a ‘search me’ kind of look.
“I’m sure it’s not to be shocking, knowing you.”
“Haha, of course not. If it’s any bit shocking to some
people, well it’s been shocking me perpetually that I should do things
merely to be charming.”
“And well-off.... Why the bohemian lifestyle?”
“Haha!... All right, go get yourself a bottle, brother,” he
told me.
He had me ‘shocked’ for a while there, but to continue:
“the bohemian lifestyle ... is a part of the audience’s and the
critics’ expectations — ”
“Oh, sorry, not anymore with critics,” I interrupted,
regaining my composure from this sudden brotherliness.
“Their expectations are still with craft, or with poetic
pictures from established styles. I used to paint arguments. Well, ... I
think beer is better.”
I opened my bottle, and we began to talk about the future of
art and creativity in this ‘provincial nation,’ as we both —
half-drunk so soon — agreed to call our immediate art market.
Now, reader, if I don’t know you already. Especially since
I’ve mentioned the unintended ‘bottle symbols’ prior to this last
mention of the bottle, I suspect you’d still probably read
irresponsible conjectures of your own into our drinking, considering
here the seeming fact that Filipinos tend to treat fiction works as
intelligent gossip, not constructed “arguments” that belong to a
whole....
We
didn’t really get drunk, and neither of us smokes (you could’ve read
further gossip stuff here, in case, with your structural ignorance, or
is it structural irresponsibility), oh we just discussed things, until
Linda arrived.
“Oh, ... I see you two have become friends again,” she
said. “I called home you weren’t there. So you were here.”
“Linda ... Ulysses, you’re my witness. Since you’re a man
of integrity I’m lucky to have you around for my announcement of this
— Linda, ... I want to marry you tomorrow.”
Silence.
Then, after a while, “Is that because you’ve seen how you
can use me in your arguments and points and — , oh spare me. Spare me.
Is that why!”
“Well, yes! Linda, isn’t that what love’s about?”
She wouldn’t answer. She was smoking again, trembling again.
“Well, let me tell you, woman ... ”
I began to raise my voice again, Ulysses merely smiling there, “I
think you come from a family of cowards.”
Ulysses began to laugh.
“Linda, why do you have to pretend that you yourself cannot
write good fiction? Must we end this story with what we started it with?
C’mon, please marry me? We’ll live happily ever after, for
Christ’s sake!”
Of course I felt stupid saying that last thing, but it had to
be said, for the sake of clarifying our setting, or our confused
religion.
“Well, ... “ she said, trembling (a bit fakedly now), her
lips touching my beer, “yes. I know. But ... “
All my ink now focused on what she might soon declare.
“ ... what about your psychiatrist?”
We there looked at each other for about a whole
minute. Then went outside, hailed a taxicab. [P]
