Luck
I was 12 when I won a frying pan for Mama Lucing at a Bingo game at the Hotel Intercon. I completed an E formation on the card. Apparently, the pan, called a teflon pan, was a big deal as it was no-stick and saved you precious cleaning time. It put a big smile on my Mommy Fely and Mama Lucing’s face showing it to everyone around the house. The lucky streak has never left me. I won another Bingo game again recently and scored a mini-fridge this time around. But here’s the thing: whenever I don’t think about the money and just play, I always win.
Star-Crossed Sun
One afternoon, while playing in the streets of San Nicholas in Sucat, I saw the setting sun split like a pie and the cuts formed a cross on its surface. My playmates and myself stopped what we were doing and knelt on the ground. I was 6.
Flirtations and Bobbels
On two separate occasions, I became a squealy spectator of Manila’s lively flesh trade when friends “initiated” me into the clubs. I saw stripteases and women doing splits on the stage and wondering if their vaginas hurt. I stuck a twenty peso bill onto a man’s waistband for the privilege of touching his very large penis. I squealed like a pig and my friends laughed and the world was kind of fucked.
Ka Guru
While working on my college thesis in Sulu, Aba dispatched his bodyguard Ka Guru to bring me around town so I could safely interview people about my thesis, called Ban On The Run (about the electoral gun ban and why it was never successful in my father’s hometown). Ka Guru was a bearded scraggle of a man with cocoa-colored skin and a most serene pair of eyes. His rifle looked too big for his seemingly fragile frame. Strangely though, I felt safe with this little big man. Later, my brother H told me how Ka Guru had the power to summon any piece of missing stuff to reappear, like a pair of goggles lost at sea magically resurfacing close to shore. He was mythical.
Aratiles
In San Nicholas grew an aratiles tree in front of the Sabile house. One summer, while everyone else played patintero in the street, I climbed up the tree and helped Emerson scoop the sweet cherries into a tabo. I leaned on a branch and ate away while the sound of laughter filled the air. You sucked the fruit off its skin and spit out the tiny stem and the world was perfect.
Loboc Watchtower
I have traveled many places and seen many seas. But there is something about the blue waters by that watchtower at 3 in the afternoon. Past present and future collide and I feel it in the breeze.
Ligao
Jet black beach, dark blue waters. Mayon Volcano close by. Mama’s friend Kuya R, the almost-priest, brought me to Ligao, Albay when I was 8. In the mornings, his sisters would have me stand naked in the center of a large plastic basin so they could bathe me. Their house was right by the newly-built highway, but cars were rare, so we would stand around, chat, and watch Kuya ride his bicycle on the perfectly paved road in the late afternoons.
RQ
I never thought a rockstar music video director, at the peak of his career, would ever love me and leave the spotlight to have a quieter life with me. His love is invisible – he isn’t showy – but it gives my life a most sublime atmosphere. He makes me beautiful to listen to and wonderful to read. He has given me a boy and a girl, quota agad. He is the best thing to ever happen to me, and perhaps to Paul Weller if he were gay and loved men.
Cloud on my tongue
Finally: being able to spit out clouds! Just like in the movies. We arrived in Vancouver in November 2018 and the weather was eight degrees celsius, more than twenty degrees lower than Manila’s. While Rosy, Jolly and Jackie helped us with luggage, Sof and I pretended to drag on a fag and blew fog into the thin air. A month later, we saw snow for the first time. We ran to Rosy’s balcony and took slow-mo videos of us picking handfuls of snow and throwing at each other’s faces. We couldn’t get enough of it so we went to Whistler and Alon threw himself on the first pile of snow that he saw at the bus stop. We are still throwing ourselves on soft snow to this day.
Blundstone
Perhaps only Canadians will understand why this is a peak experience: on Christmas Day, I unwrapped a very unexpected present – a pair of black Blundstone chelsea boots.
This pair, and most especially this one, is essential to Canadian life. Easy to put on, can go with any outfit, will help you not slip on black ice and die, will make climbing mountains a joy. Roux researched my shoe size and my lifestyle and her attention to detail touches my heart today. I want to keep learning from her so I can finally give you a gift worthy of your love.
Vernon-Claire -KF-Annie-Joey–Luis–Denise
And all the editors and writers at Pulp music magazine circa 2000s. Irreverent words and images on beautiful full-color matte paper printed all the way at a press in Hongkong during its early years. The day I saw doll-like Shauna being keyed into action by a midget on the cover of the first issue was the day I realized that I wanted to write for that crazy publication for the rest of my life. What a fucked up bunch of creatives they were! I so loved my time with these unholy ones. My Canadian colleagues are still in awe that I got to interview the Burnaby-schooled and North-Vancouverite Michael Buble and even hung around in his suite at the Shangri-la Manila after he’d left. We were actually more interested in his fancy digs than anything else, wearing a bathrobe, sitting in the tub and having photos taken with the beautiful Manila sunlight streaming through the glass windows. Whatever the fuck happened to those photos, eh Erik? Gari? Dave? Paul?
Maglaba Canadian
More than 80 percent of immigrants to Canada eventually become naturalized as Canadians, and in October of 2023 I added myself and my family to this growing body count. I am now a pan-Filipino, still in love with her pan de sal, leche flan and tuyo. I still cook kare-kare at ninanamnam pa rin ang lasa ng hamog na namumutawi sa iyong mga labi.
I am bigger.
I am better.
And I love you.
Lucky you – don’t you think?
PA-Q World 