This is for Elektra.

Happy Birthday, sistah.

Wrapping up my Day 19 last night, I found myself  running to the Metro to meet my old friend Elektra at Mall of the Emirates.  It was 6:30 PM and the train was packed with the pungent smell of the early evening and torrid spirits thinking Christmas carols.  My spirit, on the other hand, was focusing on my hand, as it grows and radiates to the sound of whistles, then like a rubber band, reached a man in his 20s who was staring at my bespectacled face – ready to create sounds with my aloofness.  I looked at him steadily and he looked back, not knowing where to look because I locked him with my unmoved eyes.  I felt his eyes darted to the windows but he saw me there too.  He looked down.  I was there again.  He moved away suddenly, looked back at me and smiled.  I did not smile back.

I reserved my smiles for Elektra.

I was about to meet a queen in her castle at the Mall of Emirates and I knew I will be propelled into her vaccum.  Purple lipstick, glitters, fur, peacock eyelashes, icy deep voice, red red nails and crossed legs the size of the Everest.  I was concerned with my hawkish posture as well.  I sniffed myself.  Salvatore Ferragamo.  I ran my hand on my hair and separated the soft straws of my hairline into three lest it covered my entire face.  I affixed my specs and floated to the swarm of the castle’s tangy mien.  Little did I know, I was already suspended.  My hands trembled nervously netting her invitation as she awaits.  I, at her service, breathed in knowing that she was not just expecting me.  She was about to tell her story too.

Elvin was born 34 years ago in Malate.  He loved Jesus and stitched hallucinations as a child.  He looked at himself naked in the mirror and flinched to his chivalrous habitus hissing back at him.  It was a nightmare.  He surged on anyway, picked up stones in the streets and wondered why evolution is unfair at times.  Stones can metamorphose through time and history, why can’t he?

Born under the sun sign of music and good luck, he studied the world through the lyrics of his favorite soul music.  He worked at McDonald’s while in school and adapted through the sizzle of burger patties and amenable co-workers who dressed his burgers at daytime and greased his bed at night.  Throughout this metagalactic world of boys and burgers, he celestially groped on Aretha Franklin’s dumplings and rocked his regions with saxophone, crocodile tears of lost love and turned himself into a workaholic.  Oblivious of the fact that his body did not respond to love inasmuch as his heart screams to belong in a man’s fortress and be his queen.

The Queen’s Castle:  Apres / Mall of the Emirates

Jon:  Did you always like Mariah Carey?

Elektra:  Yesssss.  Mariah, Toni Braxton, Whitney Houston . . . all the soul girls, you name it.  I looove them.

Jon:  I liked Mariah before she became a slut in the recent years.  Why the soul girls?

Elektra:  I don’t know.  I think because as a girl, it makes me feel even more of a girl.  There is something about R and B that bequeathes realness of emotions to the physical self.  I mean, look, Get Here by Oleta Adams is so unsurpassed.  They had to make an acoustic remake of that song to give it a new sound.  But never a new soul to it. You did not ask me who I idolize among all of them . . .

Jon:  Who?

Elektra:  Regine Velasquez.

(high fives, shrills of laughter)

Jon: Tell me about Regine.

Elvin:  Oh wow.  She is so brave.  She is so original.

Jon:  Original?  She does remakes more than original songs.

Elvin:  Gaga, I mean, her voice is so distinct.  And her journey from rags to riches, from a nobody to the Philippines’ songbird is simply inspiring! A drag queen’s life can be dotted by her ups and downs, especially her climb to superstardom.  A frail, angry 12 year old sissy wanting to wear his mother’s clothes can be a daunting experience.  Seeing Regine wear her boobs-out, almost bare, body fit gowns can inspire that kid to be her!  To be as brave as her.  Come on, Jon, don’t tell me you were never tempted to buy a Regine CD ever in your life?!?

Jon:  I have her very first CD.  There is this song called Will Really Be A Morning? that I particularly liked.

Elektra:  See?  Ikaw din pala!

Jon:  Of course! We watched her concert here in Dubai in 2007, remember?

Working in an advertising agency years later, Elvin found his Wonder Woman circle through the Maristelas.  This became the era of syndicated gayhood.  The Maristelas, a cluster of florid she-males who were also business associates, dentists and advertising agents cultivated little Elvin’s head and made him repair the blemish of the male body that started with liquefying his toned muscles and turning them into soft petals through pills and exercise.  Overnight, his skin became melodious and while his vocal chords hooted, it became magically silky.  Elvin walked in the drizzles of his own recreation and sang On The Wings Of Love, entertained by his prism of the heart and the sunshine that gracefully came with it. He laughed with glee one day when he woke up one morning with . . . breasts.

The Queen’s Castle:  Apres / Mall of the Emirates

Jon:  Why did you not fall in love again after Malik?  I mean, that was 5 years ago?

Elektra:  I don’t know.  That is the dreamboat of being a drag queen, I guess.  Living in a fantasy of unreturned love and soaking in it. It is a sad place to be but it takes more than cosmetics and silicon to be called a drag queen.  Dragging is easy, even a kargador or ugliest of all men can do that.  Put lipstick, skirt and a head dress on a monkey and it becomes drag!  But being a queen is another story.  Your sashes and crowns from any gay beauty pageant won’t be taken into account for being a real queen.  I mean, being a queen is an attitude.  It is language, DRAMA, facial expression and the way you walk.  A brainless sissy will always be bakla or gay but a shrewd sissy can always be a queen.

Jon:  Isn’t that grotesque?

Elektra:  GrotesqueLY queenly!  Look.  When I visited Australia last year, their version of gayness looked so grotesque to me.  I just do not get the macho thing happening . . .

Jon:  You did not answer my last question.  Why did you stop falling in love?

Elektra:  And end up like you?  Falling in love with practically everyone at any time?

Jon:  I am a slutty basket case, your highness.

Elektra:  Yes, you are.

(Laughter and choking over my Chardonnay)

Elektra:  Like I said, Jon, love is not like the speed of sound.  It is like Wonder Woman in slow motion that comes to you in times when you least expect it.  I have been a drag queen for years.  I have become accustomed to the faux of things. I mean for crying out loud, my breasts are even fake!   5 years ago, Malik came into my life and it became an obscurely dizzying life!  It was insane.  But it was real.  With all the pretensions a drag queen’s life demands of them, I still want LOVE to be real.  And so, I await its coming.  I will embrace it with my overly-accessorized arms once it arrives.  As long as it is real.

Along with the Maristelas, Elvin arabesqued to the stage and fought for what he believed in:  God, love and sense of worth.  Clad in long gowns and 2 inches thick make-up, Elvin smiled her wildest, lighted the whole stage with his winsomeness and posed his lithe body for everyone to see. They called it Gay Beauty Pageant but to him it was beauty in randomness.  It was dimensional.

The boys in the audience regressed their erections and chuckled through their ache to bed him.  Even for a night.  To taste the fathomless lust gyrating in front of them, lipsynching to Donna Summer, half wishing he is a bona fide woman so they can marry him right off.  What can a man ask for?  Elvin is funny, provocative and witty.  The perfect wife.

Elvin, on the other hand, took the stage many nights thereafter.  He saw himself come back to life.  He also saw the same frail 12 year old boy ostracized by his own father because he was a homosexual.  The boy who was not allowed to enter the church because he was gay.  The same teenager who worked his way to college to prove his worth to himself and to forget the cold shoulders that dominated his early years. One night, he got the crown and was named The Queen Of Soul.

Elvin, in drag, a queen, gave birth to a complete being.

That same night, Elektra was born.

The Queen’s Castle:  Apres / Mall of the Emirates

Jon:  The Queen of Soul, wow!

Elektra:  Yes, the pageant was called Search for The Queen of Soul . . .

Jon:  Very nice!  Imagine, it is like an allegory of your penchant for the rhythm and blues.  I mean, didn’t you feel like you have represented all the Mariahs of the world?

Elektra:  No, sweetheart.  The Queen of Soul because the pageant was held days before November 1, the Feast of the Dead!  How do you translate The Queen of Soul in Tagalog?

Elektra and Jon in unison:  Reyna ng mga Kaluluwa !!!

(roars of laughter that almost broke the wine glasses at Apres)

Jon:  Tell me about these pageants, Elektra.  Did you ever get into a catfight?  Is it really that competitive?

Elektra:  Masking tape. Before the glam and the fab, it is all masking tape, push up brassiers, third base make up – the works.  It takes hours to prepare before a pageant!  and days before that in terms of shaving and waxing. It is grueling.  Believe me, I don’t look at myself in the mirror once fully made dahil mukha akong multo (I look like a ghost) with all that make-up!  But once on stage, with all those lights, I transform into a goddess!  It is so uncanny . . .

Jon:  I am sorry to interrupt, but don’t you guys tie your penises somewhere between your legs or something?

Elektra:  Masking tape!  Tape it! Tape it until it is flattened.  Tape it until it becomes invisible from the face of the earth.  Masking tape!

Jon:  Does it get political?

Elektra:  Not from where I came from.  It is fun actually because from my experience, when we get the cash prize, we spend it on bulalo that came with a lot flirtation and loads of talking about the pageant that has just come to pass.   You know what, we actually do this not for the money.  We do this for self-expression.  Something that you don’t do everyday belonging in a society that ridicules the subterrenean and the weird.  Beauty resides in what you represent, not how you look at the end of the day.  I mean, I may not be dressed as a queen right now and have decided to run away from that scene a couple of years ago, but I know that I was remembered for my winning answer.

Jon:  And what was that?

Elektra:  I was asked  to define self-worth.  I said, “Working in an advertising firm have exposed me to beauty and independence of the mind.  As a gay man walking with his head held up high, I affirmly believe that we must backbone our lives not only through independence or beauty but also through self-belief, self-belief and self-trust.

Jon:  Winner !!!

(High fives and more laughter)

Jon:  Hey I will call this interview Confessions of an Ex-Drag Queen.  Happy Birthday, girl.

Elektra:  Why ex?  I am spending my birthday in 5 days and I will be turning 35 – the dreaaaad !!! – so I am throwing a birthday party slash concert.  Yes, Jon, this is the last time I will show my friends that once a queen, always a queen. That’s why after my party on Friday there should be The Last Concert of an Ex-Drag Queen. It’ll be perfect!  Costumes and repertoire galore!  I am calling it THIS IS IT, ate !!!

Jon:  Like the Michael Jackson documentary?  Wow.

(Laughter laughter laughter)

Elektra:  I so love you Jon.  Thank you.

Jon:  Love you more!

Note:  I would like to thank my literary idol Franz Kafka, in all his amplified greatness, for speaking to me throughout this entry tonight.  Rest eternally, my love.  Your brilliance lingers on.

savagely dedicated to my girl chosera Kookie Valdez-Mills, with love and earnest adoration to leather boots and Corona

C.F.  (abbreviation for control freak)

a dimensional noun and adjective for Jon Verzosa

Origin:  Kookie Valdez-Mills, co written by Maria Lourdes Verzosa and Mark Ian Verzosa)

Terminology:  a derogatory term for a person who attempts to dictate how everything around them is done. It can also refer to someone with a limited number of things that they want done a specific way.

U.F.C.F. (abbreviation for Unbelievable Fucking Control Freak)

a dimensional noun and adjective for Jon Verzosa

Origin:  Alexandre Viaud

Motion in Speech:  with rolling eyes, looking up to the sky with arms open wide making a sound emphasis on Fucking!

My close friends and family call me CF.  Short name for control freak.

The conspiracy, if one can estimate so, stemmed sometime last year when I opened Facebook accounts for my sister Dess and my brother Mark.  My lovely, intrepid girlfriend Kookie Mills, along with my sister and brother, ganged up on me behind my back and named me C.F., mocking my sordid whatchamacallit that derogatively implied on how I manipulated my younger siblings’ lives, to a point of opening my choice of social networking for them.  Of course, my other manipulations was laid on the table too like deciding where to have dinner, which apparel should go with what, what time we should arrive at a party (or how late should we arrive at a party), what movie to watch, how long should we eat and (the famous one), how one should act when sad, happy, ecstatic, horny and confused.  As it went along, my brother in law Alexandre called me U.F.C.F. (unbelievable fucking CF!)

There was a time when I had to force Kookie to smile with her teeth out because she has been displaying that famous Nicole Richie smile of hers for centuries and I just felt it was time to show some pearly whites.  At work, one time, I asked one guy to buy a shaver and  shave his stubbles one hour before his duty was over.  When Gracie was alive, I would pout my damndest if she declines a drinking invitation whenever I am thirsty for alcohol and ends up drinking Stellas with me 30 minutes later.

Just recently, here in Dubai, my sister and I along with my co-everything, Catherine, watched the magical Kitchie Nadal gig at Wafi Rooftop Gardens. We were friends with her drummer Zuriel Enchin, so we got the close-ups.  After the gig, the two girls, salivating and all wanted to have a pic with Kitchie but was too bashful to ask her.  Crumped with the satanist crowd, Dess and Catherine stood there, gawking, in front of Kitchie, muted with starstruckness.  I literally pushed Catherine and told her, “Move it girl!”  and simultaneously whispered to Dess, “F.A. attitude Dess! “  F.A. being flight attendant.  But they stood there like stoooopid and did not do anything.  I finally had to tell Kitchie, “Hi.  We were the ones who were shouting for you to sing In A Big Way . . . “   We heard her say, “Awww”  and then boldly, I said, “Can these girls have a picture with you?”  Kitchie smiled her biggest one that night and said, “Sure!”   Had it not been for my CFness, this picture never would have come to pass.

<———– (Catherine, Kitchie Nadal and Dess)

I mean, hello, is that BAD ?!?

Let’s look at the forensics:

1.  I am a first born son.  I am also the very first grandson.  Everyone called me kuya (older brother in Tagalog), even my mom and dad.

2. I was the president of the English Club in high school.  I was also the Features Editor of our school newspaper.

3. I majored in Literature and Creative Writing which means I am a God.

4. Once a restaurant general manager, I now work in training which means I author the books.

5. I am a bohemian by heart and I use my heart more than my head which makes me stubborn and absolutely free from reprehensible speech, detestable opinions and flaky neuroses.

Makes sense? 

See my creations . . .

Well, apart from my harbinger credentials and Mesapotamian origins, I am also a natural born dementia. Having an irascible childhood who dissected frogs at 6, built ant farms way until my 10th year and ate all kinds of leaves (thank you Angeline for making me remember) by the time I was in 5th grade.  All of these maddened juvenile activities was participated and attended by my sisters Kit, Angeline and Noreen, who are now recovering psychos like their kuya.  If you saw us 20 years back, we were literally children who spoke to themselves, replicating dialogues for our paper dolls and spent weekends in the terrace, lost in our world of exotic half cooked malunggay leaves and prismatic imagination.

——(Verzosa kids, shot taken in the 90s)————————————————————->

I remember telling my sisters that they should take care of their dolls because they walk at night and will get back at them if treated crudely.  I told them they will walk like zombies and strangle them to death in their sleep if they felt mistreated.  My sisters would pee in their pants and speak to their dolls nervously, “Don’t do that to me, OK?  OK? OK?”, running their fingers through their doll’s hair, kissing them before putting them to bed.

Summing it up, all my siblings grew up with me, listened to the same music I grew up with (of course I always had the remote), watched movies that I liked and read the books I voraciously read.

Oh, and apart from recovering psychos, Kit turned out to be a songwriter / poet, became a Marketing Director and currently works in Tourism.  Angeline is a professor at De La Salle University in the Philippines and a wonder mom of two boy monsters who became valedictorians.  Noreen runs her own business and gave us Apple – her daughter – our 24 carat niece known for her mathematical ingenuity and sensitive heart.

When my sister Dess was in 4th grade, I gave her Sophie’s World, a fat book on fictionalized philosophy, and she read it for the next 4 years of her bantam life.  She still blames me to this day for making her hermetic and a version of her own cult.  When she was studying at the University of the Philippines, making her own Sophie’s world and tripping through it as well, she half-wished I did not CF’ed her on reading SW at an early age because it genuinely captained her early years and drove her crazy !!!

Every time we fight and I run out of words to oppose her egghead logic, I would scream, “Tumigil ka na!  Kuya mo ako, ako ang masusunod!” “Shut up! I am older than you, I should be obeyed!”

Eventually, Dess became a resident actor in the Cultural Center of the Philippines, have starred in short films and is currently going around the world.  Not just Sophie’s.

When my brother Mark came to Dubai four years ago, he lived with me for four months.  It must have been dreadful for him!  He never really told me why he took off one day, got his own apartment and left me.  But I think I knew why.  He could not stand me.

Mark is a person who wants to be alone most of the time.  Well, not exactly.  He would rather be alone than be with me. What can I say?  I like breaking and entering in his droopy life.  I would bring my cleaning truck and dust it until it polishes.  I also use shock proofers so as not to electrocute his existence and make sure he reads the right things.  Mark listens to me.  I guess.  I know for a fact that he idolizes me but somehow, does not admit it.  Well, I could care less, as long he is breathing right and not drinking too much.  For crying out loud, he is my favorite brother.  Well, he is the only I have, so I don’t have much choice but to make sure he knows that I am always right.

Mark Ian is everyone’s darling.  Everyone loves him from his friends to my friends because of his unfeigned kindness.  He is a competitive worker and a dimensional leader in his field.  Thanks to our CF parents and well, thanks to me.

When I met Kookie Valdez in 2006, I did not like her at all.  I told myself, “What is this chatterbox of a woman doing in my midst?”

The “it” girl of her time, as our adorable friend Pearl Villareal would say, I literally suspended myself from Kookie’s pantomime lips because she tells stories and acts with it too.  Her shrill voice can ape a thousand crescendos, bringing the entire house down.  She was, without a doubt, a party girl central and someone who will not go in a relationship because she is narcissistic and loves herself as much she loves her signature apparel and fabulous boots.

<—(shot taken in 2007 the Party Year)——Along the way, we became very close. When Kookie came into my life, apart from the hip parties we bared our souls into, our beach moments at the Beach Park and our brainstorming about the then-Bible The Secret, I saw a girl needing love more than anything else.  Clad in fashion statements, bejeweled and wearing Coco Chanel, I raked into her and found a lonely spot in her heart.  Eventually.

A yearning last born who longed to be validated and be reassured, I CF’ed my way to introducing him to William Mills, primo chef, co-alcoholic and English billiard master. The first time Kookie saw William, she was primadonnaying, telling me, “Not my type, guuurrrrllll !!!”  I curbed her head, with my chocolatey assurances, and told her, “This is the man for you, biatch! Trust me!”.

Being always right, I knew back then that William will chill out Kookie’s hyperacidic mindset and restless sanctum.  Well, both of them are psychos anyway so it did make sense.  Likewise, I knew that Kookie will calm William’s diabolic worship for beer.  Moreover, William’s Leo heart is a perfect match for Kookie’s indecisive Libran heart.

They fell in love.

A year and a half later, William married Kookie.

Footnotes of BEING A C.F.

Use sparingly.

• It’s difficult for you to trust people.
• You make lists for everything in your life.
• You can’t stand it when you’re in a car but not driving.
• As much as possible, you need to do everything yourself.
• You rarely think that you’re wrong.

• You love to be the center of attention.
• When it comes to social gatherings, you prefer to do the planning.
• You get bored when you have to listen to other people talk.
• Your vacations tend to be structured and active.
• You tend to think that you know what’s best for other people.

• You don’t like people touching your stuff.
• When you’re in a relationship, you like to know where your significant other is at all times.
• You are definitely a perfectionist – and your own worst critic.
• It’s hard for you to get used to a new hair style or new pair of jeans.
• You would not really enjoy a surprise party thrown for you.

2:59 PM

The Beach

Dear Chiz,

Once again, it was amazing how the universe have brought us together today.  I mean wasn’t that amazing, indeed ?

There I was, riding the metro, on my way to JBR, flimsy and unbecoming, drowning in my annihilated psyche with the chill of the morning and waking up quite late.  I was in my conventional walking form trying to sedate myself with the dazzling morning of fast lights and concrete grandness as the train sped up to Sheik Sayed Road.  I made love to my MP3 as usual, repeating Over You by Chris Daughtry 5 times throughout the commutation.  I am still in love with this song and I really do not know why.

I fell in love with morning and its metallic atrophy.

I reached my stop after 20 minutes and galloped to the walkalator, Peter Panning through the morning hustle – such decadence! – and reached my bus that will bring me to JBR (Jumeirah Beach Residence) proper.  I was happy I wore my favorite walking shoes as I tagged my ticket.  It simply has wings.

And then there you were.

Out of nowhere, you popped out from the decaying crowd and stepped in in the same bus with me.  It was such a swirl because just a night back, we were together drowning in wine and laughing our wits out. I even wrote you a letter yesterday because I ascertained that we won’t be seeing each other that soon.

But then again, the universe is a laughing gypsy today and of all people, she brought you upon my grumpy midst to, well, perhaps, pluck me out of it.

The cosmos may have a keen sense of humor that it rode its magical head to our axis and produced me – the snappy Peter Pan heading out to work – and you – fresh from a pause with the fortnight’s wine to sun your anima and cook up a tan OFF to JBR, on the same train, on the same bus . . . to create rhyme, reason and resonance all over again.  It is funny indeed how impetuous events can become.  It is funny how two complete oddballs, vulgar in their confessions and at the same time, high-spirited in all sense, can pamper the humor of the intergalactic space.   If liquor can split the body into three, how much more the terrestrial sphere?

Chiz, we are beginning to be fast friends and the whole enchilada is being served right in front of our face.  Does it signify something?  Are we meant to bring our two heads together and create our very own never-never land?  Ever consider being the male Tinkerbell?  You may consider replacing her sprite highness because as of today’s empyrean tale, you sprang from one wing to the next, doused in your suntan lotion and potent flip flops.  Your voltage can detonate the whole of Dubai ! Perhaps, we are the modern day disciples of Jesus Christ.  We could have been consecrated to spread the word of love and we need to discover that together.  Or maybe, dear dark father Lucifer (the god of our darkest emotions) wants us to redeem the fragrance of pain?

and then ………

Lunch was good.  I hoped you liked the Diavola Spaghetti.

I envied your tan.  I wished I enjoyed an hour dip in the ocean with you but I had to work.  I am glad that you had lunch with me nonetheless.

There was no wine but it was frenzied just the same.  It was hilarious when we realized that we know both know this girl - what a small world - but even more hilarious when we came back to where we took off earlier in the morning, at the Metro station, where it dawned on both of us that a bigger hand is working in the midst of chances and that perhaps, an even bigger hand working to bring us together to save the world.  I know that sounds dense but I want to linger on that thought.  There is always something tangible about wishing for big things.  It gives us an overview to hope for good times.  It steers our wishes into certitude.  It makes us smile for being silly.  It makes us children all over again.

Two years back when I began reading a lot of new age philosophy and the law of attraction, I subsequently have gone from hopeless to complete lapse of memory.   It was a process I guess not a procedure.  It was a process to bring forth to your acumen the ways of nature, the reality of basic love which is self-love and to make sure you feed your mind with good things.  The things that make you feel good.

I know you will agree with me when I say that rhyme is easy between two people.  It all starts with similarity of views, conscience and spirituality.  It gives us a reason to talk the panoramic photographs of life and it blends nicely to the music that two people create.  Reason, on the other hand, invites two friends to explore the optic linings of the vernacular and find essence in building comfort zones.  This is when two people are already preordaining beliefs and where symbolic representations are ultimately theorized.  The birth of resonance is a marriage of reason and rhyme.  Like an infant between two individuals, it is the beginning of the power of two and the celebration of an explicit union.  Harmony begins. Smiles become collective.

A new dominion is created.

The universe is a vast zone and it has bigger rooms for people like you and me.  IT IS A RECEIVER and it gives.  Like the great Jesus Christ once said, “Ask and you shall receive.”    I think all you have to do is ASK.  And then be grateful and hope for the best.  Simple.

Always trust yourself and trust the infinite cosmos because in all its vastness, the bigger hand is enveloped in an energy that yearns for one particular YOU to hold on to.

Be good to yourself.  It all starts from there.

Cheers,

Jon

PS

This is a good second day between you and me.  More chance meetings in the future I hope.

The Morning After

27th of November 2009

Dear Chiz,

Our date at The Belgian Cafe last night was still buzzing gladly as I dragged myself out of  bed this morning.  I saw your SMS message and I had to rewind the images in 3D all the way to my coffee.  What’s tricky about a beer / wine-induced night is the fact that it can get faceless the morning after.  Then I remembered a word you said last night.  From the abysmal monologues twinned with the rancid kick of the morning, I heard you once again.  Your big measured voice saying, ” . . . you are not a player, then. “  And then it all came back to me, in my morning coffee.  I smiled all the way through smelling the fresh mussels all over again, lazed on the couch and drifted on last night’s voices.

When you told me that I am not a player, I wanted to tell you that I am, actually, someone who loves to play.  Of course, I knew what you meant, but on a larger scale, my gut tells me that I am a silent player because I always study the rules mindfully.  And then I break them.

This lovely view from last night got us both spellbound.

I guess I would agree with you when you said that we all need to relax being in a city where everyone seems to be self-indulgent and competitive in a sense that their existence becomes the proxy of Dubai itself, with all its metabolistic thumps.  And its superficial herd of fair-weather friends and idiotic bosses.  On the other, as I enjoyed the floating Dubai, looking out at Business Bay with all my trusting soul, I replicated your views and wondered why, of all people, it was me who remembered that the trail to my head was, plain and simple, the key to unlock my heart.

I am sure that would have been a give away.  It has been years (and I mean years) since I allowed myself to sing my head out.  After 5 excruciating years living in this androgynous city, it is only now that I began unleashing my head out to everyone again.  I used to write verses and things back in Saudi Arabia because I worked less back in Saudi Arabia.  That was over 6 years ago and thanks to MY LIFE IN 50 DAYS, I was able to scratch my itchy head with its constant drone of approximations and sexless doctrines who screamed for a much-deserved permanent gender.  It is amazing how I actually heard you coveting on the same G-spot.  Was I too idealistic?  Did you even ask yourself why, among all the people you have gone out with, you lusted for life’s vexation through memore than discerning what you are really lusting for?

True to form, I felt that your hostility over the city has embodied your scheme of thoughts.  Come to think about it, you are a nomad.  The lion inside of you always longs for perfection and is, veritably, perfect in perfecting perfection.  Certainly, you are smart enough to relocate your judgments if found innocent.  Admittedly, you do accept your mistakes but fearlessly fight for the things you find equitable.  No pun intended.  In a lot of ways, you are full of passion and unknowingly have used this perspective in building your undertakings, haplessly misinterpreting heroism to hereticism.  As discussed last night, we always tend to scourge ourselves than actually realizing how lucky we are, especially in this country known for its luckless expatriates.

Dressed not as your fairy godmother nor your red-lipsticked dominatrix, I recoiled away from the Belgian Cafe’s guzzled semblance and dialogued on being like you:  enrolled at Fitness First, eating right and genuflecting on Self-Discipline’s image everyday.  Unfortunately, it was a dream I clung to for years.  To iron out my bohemian idolatry and put order into my divine disarray.  WELL, I have inflicted, de facto, your suitabilities and sang my cosmic gypsyness throughout night as you listened intently.  I was half eaten by your intensity – a befallen flower child -  but you altoed my sopranos that rosed to a crescendo and we left the bar symphonizing our newfound frienship on soft core mismatches, a hymn that went along with the nippy air that enveloped Dubai nicely.

At The Cellar, we had wine.

Most fledglings does the tango in idle steps.  You did not.  You had this quality of jumping into the bandwagon of things that you are not accustomed to.  I, on the hand, saw your face lit up as we sat, sipped our wine, and overlooked the swinging people across the Irish Village, with their mindless dancing and spirited disconnections.  In a split second, we actually found ourselves gyrating to their cues and laughed to where our asses were situated, being the audience, rather than the players.  I guess you’ll agree with me when I say that liquor splits the body into three:    the willing, the ferocious and the bold.  Which one did you see yourself lounging on last night?

I was happy that we came to the right places last night.  We both agreed that the salacious bars of Dubai have become overrated though the years.  Some people may think that The Cellar and Belgian Cafe are wanton watering holes with its appeal to Japanese businessmen and stalwart Euro trash crowd but it is far better than coming to the Asian clubs with its cheap thrills and gossip ridden orangutans obsessed with vanity and partisanship.

More than anything else, I was happy I found you once again.  The first time I met you six months ago, I had this feeling that we will go a long way.  I went out with you last night and realized that the possibility is sound.  I particularly liked it when I told you,  ” . . . I was crushing on you back then.”   YOU looked at me, smiled and did not bat an eyelash.  Seconds later, we were lost in the rhythmical patterns of our laughter.

See you again.  Soon I hope.  Meantime, let’s swerve to the reality of Dubai:  work to the grind, then, we pause, relive the wine and yes, the sparks.

It was a lovely night.

Cheers,

Jon

“I am so tired of mirrors, pour me a glass of wine . . . “

Nelly Furtado/Hey Man

The Dawn of the Eid Holidays

10 PM

Dubai

Since I began writing MY LIFE IN 50 DAYS, it has become the thief of my nights, robbing me of the universal self that I was once.  I yielded inside its hardcore barbwired fence every single night, doodling through its muddy waters, locomoting through its pink and purple ventilating pipes, seeing things coming.  Living through my other selves and ultimately getting to know each and every one of them all over again.

I like it.  For the past 16 days, I went through defiance, judging my psyche and exhaustion, both physical and mental, that after each entry, once published, I crawl to bed, both happy and worn out.

Despite its ups and downs (Day 13: Erotica was such a swirl because I had to do it at different times of the day, thanks to my day job and other things like chores and facials), I feasted to its effervescense, knowing that I had done something.  Believe me, I wanted to stop doing this on its 4th day, as I was in the middle of my 2010 P and L projections which was already grueling, but I chose to be good to myself.  I gave myself a pat on the shoulder and said, “If getting fucked is hard enough, what more this?”  I decided to carry on.

Of course, when I saw my stats getting higher each day, knowing that people are actually reading (and reacting), I had to pat myself on the back even harder and said, “Carry on, whore.  Who would’ve thought?”

Tonight, on the other hand, I am attending a pre Christmas party.  I had second thoughts of not attending as I prejudged the elasticity of things to come, but I told myself, “WHY NOT?  I have not done any partying in a while.  It will be my gift to myself for being such a good boy for the last 16 days!”  Besides, everybody is out watching that puerile  movie called New Moon.  I will trek to my own version of new moons tonight.

The Party

I dragged my happy ass home at 4 in the morning from a pre Christmas party.  First of all, it was amazing how unseasonal the party was but it did well for me.  It was my first Christmas tree of the year and absolutely my first tequila in 2 weeks.  It was something new.

I knew the people who were there.  Most of them are my brother Mark’s former office mates from Citibank and it was a woozy catch up of things particularly on weight gains, break ups and basically life’s disgruntlement.  I went to the party with my one and only co-everything, Catherine, who wore 3 inches heels and a schoolgirl outfit.

It was noteworthy to say that parties do not amaze me as much it did years ago.  My prerequisite changed through the years I guess.  OR better yet, is it the end of an era?  When I was once the “it” factor and my friends were euphoric accomplices – whose water became vodka and whose bodies bailed out with the onset of exotic antidotes, marijuana and pathological lying – parties were always held in the seventh heaven.  BACK IN THE 90s, when the sordid homage to good fun was drinking cheap alcohol over usapang barbero or classic fabricated stories, there was always this suspension of disbelief that reenacted in itself.  A bridge over troubled water episode of teenage hurt balled in frenzied litanies over Guns n Roses and alternately, Anita Baker.

Over the years, the yuppie years, parties became a tin can of house music or bartendered cluster of fictionalized tales and over the top equivocations of emotional blockages. Of oourse, it was essential to bring home the human bacon at the end of the night.  Breakfast was even more delectable with a party residue called one night stand.  Or two nights depending on who is fucking who.  The dance clubs were empirical asylums of our lost souls and fidgeting collegiate minds.

In my 30s now and naturally annoyed with the club scene, I submitted to house parties and viscerous pubs because in more ways than one, as you go along, your heart desires for the intimate.  The real.  The more tolerable and I guess, the less toxic.  It all comes down with getting older I guess.  Life remains to be a wildfire of sinewy alcohol induced happenings that the physical state eventually clamor for spiritual communion.  The dizzying move to get closer to the self and the people surrounding the self.

Why do I go to parties ever so often anyway?

Tonight, I was giving myself a break after 16 days of working and writing nonstop, but here is a thought:  I party to get lost. For a time.

It recreates you instantaneously but most importantly, it connects you to your alliances.

Of course you would not mind a gossip or two

and

accidental flirations.

Happy Eid holidays everyone !!!  Party on !!!

. . . and remember to bring your fireworks, OK?

“So I’m back, to the velvet underground. Back to the floor, that I love. To a room with some lace and paper flowers. Back to the gypsy that I was.”

“To the gypsy that remains faces freedom with a little fear
I have no fear, I have only love
And if I was a child
And the child was enough
Enough for me to love
Enough to love . . . “

-  Stevie Nicks, Gypsy

6:54 PM

Dubai

The entire day was forlorn.  The mauve sky breathed rain and the cabs danced to the streets without passengers.  The sound of the city is of static house music, ambivalent and insecure.  I went up and down the elevator the whole day at the headquarters, half hoping I did field work instead.  Ironically, I felt claustrophobic today so there you go . . . I made my green tea and did not drink it.  I received emails and pouted through them.  One estranged bird landed on the office window and I hummed I’m Like A Bird by Nelly Furtado, wishing indeed that I was that bird, not knowing where my home is, not knowing where my soul is.

The entire day was forlorn.  I was too.  My immobile blood survived 9 hours of work eating Penne Alfredo at Chilly’s and monitoring the clock over meetings.  Such highlights of the day.  I couldn’t wait to get to my cab that would bring me home – to ancient history – to upland hysteria – to my little bohemia – to Day 15 whose chief drive is yet to be discovered.

When I finally did, as I was inside the cab, I saw a couple shouting at each other on the sidewalk.  I looked at them and sighed inside.  Love each other please.

And here I am.  Writing about the slowness of this particular Wednesday.  Can it get any faster?

I sighed inside and took my dogeared Beloved by Toni Morrison.  I decided to read.

9:34 PM

My sister Dess dropped by the house and spent time with me before flying to Birmingham.

That gave me quite a lift because she was gawking at her heavy luggage full of winter clothes.  Birmingham weather is 10 degrees tomorrow, so, it was essential of her to play The Emperor’s New Clothes.  It was funny because it was just 3 pairs of apparel and it weighed like rocks. I wondered how her leather boots weighed.

I asked her to eat something before being picked up by Alexandre, betrothed of her highness, but she grimaced and said, “I may burst in my uniform, kuya“.  Dess, ladies and gents,  is 5 feet 8 and a half inches tall and weighs 54 kilos.  There’s no way she’ll ever burst.  Isn’t she the craziest thing?  Who declines on bulalo, ginataang tilapya and crispy dry jasmine rice?  Was she too lazy to eat?  Immensely handsome to pork out a wicked banquet?  Well, knowing my sister and her penchant for organic food, I rested my case.

Dess took a shower and I played R.E.M.          . . .             still floundering the meaning of this very sluggish day.

After awhile, I went to Facebook and took this quiz called What Does Your Name Mean?  I was excited, so, I answered 4 completely bruised questions and pressed the meaning button :  Your name means SEXY.  I almost threw up!

9:59 PM

I think of Dubai.  This is one of the most exciting cities in the world.  In 2008, it was named by the New York times as “the travel choice for partying of the year”.  I so longed to be out in the night – tonight! – and have drinks at Madinat Jumeira, particularly at Bar Zar, where they make the best mojitos in town.  I remembered my friend Eisa around two years back when we were there.  He ate my mint leaves (from my mojito) with his Amstels.  It was such a reprimand to conventional drinking.  I just thought that was awesome.

After a few minutes, I considered going out anyway.  Then I remembered my sister napping in my room.  I had to be here to send her off to Birmingham!  It is a sign. I am broke anyhow waiting for salary day.  I chose to stay indoors.

Oh shit motherfuckerfuckshit !!!

10:50 PM

My friend and co-everything Catherine arrived from her galaxy and spent time with me.  The previous night, she was out on a til morning party with her friends and spent the next day drooped in the office wearing the same clothes.

She slaughtered the couch and drowsed through her epiphany.  Still zoetic to the bone, she recounted how she flung her dispirited body to the kick of Bullfrog (psychotic drink of blended vodka, blue curacio, tequila and Red Bull), brisking to the thumps of music and being fatuous with her friends.  It became the fabulous Bonfire of The Gorgeous Lesbians.

Snaking through Catherine’s allegory of her own version of The Vagina Monologue, I joined her in her world of blue roses and thought about being a lesbian myself.  Mmm.  What a thought.  Well, I had a few girlfriends back in high school and I am basically, a gypsy at heart, so that would not be a problem.  Besides, lesbian sex is noted as the best kind of sex act known to man.  Imagine, two multiple orgasms at the same time?  You do the math.  Now that is something worth being a homosexual woman for.

Thursday

12:35 PM

The coffee from 5 minutes back is kicking in.

I wonder how long this night is going to be.  I am basically anesthetized.

I think I could use some sleep.

Good night.

“born between 1965 and 1980, GENERATION X is
characterized by a propensity for technology, skepticism to
advertising claims, and attraction to personal style rather than
designer price tags."

-  Jennifer Jochim

somewhere in Abu Dhabi

somewhere between last night and today

Fresh from my episode of erotica yesterday, which felt like 5 minutes ago, I went through the day juxtaposing my restrained self and my staid, disoriented self and gradually moved away from Day 13.  I had to emphasize gradually because it was a sublime world to be in for a day and if escaping swiftly would mean leaving it all behind, then I chose to move slowly.

Around mid afternoon, I accidentally stumbled upon After The Rain, a number one song by Nelson back in the early 90s from my sister’s MP3 cd and I remembered my days back in Manila, a long-haired bohemian, wrapped in his own distortions.  Days of Rene Descartes and Stephen King’s The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition.  Days when we were walking in the rain in the university and when my high school acne vanished overnight.  The world was looking at Imelda Marcos, as she goes on trial for embezzlement and Germany was one happy nation at last.  The air stank of gasoline, Fahrenheit and the Gulf War.  We, way past adolescence, watched the world disintergrate.  Ultimately dissatisfied with our college courses, we turned to MTV, held on to our past, seeing our successful parents dissatisfied with us, and aspired for the truth in individuality.  Descartes, four centuries later, redefined his route and threw us his perspective in plain and simple words:  I think, therefore, I am.

Is this the reason why after thirty something years I am still groping for my identity?

In 1985, I did not know that we were called the Generation X. It was something alien to me.  The only thing I knew back then was that the Philippines was home and it reared a thousand typhoons a year.  Nintendo was the talk of the town and I did not have one.  I was living on bottled Coca Cola and I peed in my pants watching my childhood friend Jocelyn ape Cyndi Lauper in We Are The World.  I remember listening to Madonna for the first time and the cool kids all looked like Duran Duran.  I knew my parents were busy people and we had someone to cook for us and I still take baths with my sisters.  Africa was the worst place to be because children who live there looked like sticks.

Little did I know that our age group, years later, would be hailed and criticized as the generation who did not live up to their parents’ expectations but found their mark as individualists, believed to prefer personal life over work compared to their predecessors, their Baby Boomers, whose bright-eyed appeal of life seems to be perfection and well, the reproduction of the species.  Generation X, on the other hand, people born between 1965 to 1980, named as Group X for having the lowest birth rate in years after 1965, the erratic laboratory rats, surged on.  Journaled as borderline yuppies and eternal global teens who had a deep sense of aim, an insecurity of their parents’ manicured, Stepford life and a scornful outlook on bureaucracy and commercial politics.  I was one of those very few lab rats, mind you, thus, I am a Generation X’er.

Who did not think Molly Ringwald was cool?  She was the coolest girl in the world when I was a teenager.  Girls did not copy her because she mostly played the pretty but awkward, angry and intelligent girl.  Back in the late 80s, when Sixteen Candles was already a teen flick classic, my friends and I would watch her and be astonished!  She represented the girl that nerdy boys like myself would’ve wished our girl classmates were ;  spunky, a reader and someone who wants to fit in in the midst of social divergence.  Unfortunately, there were more Phoebe Cates in those days than Molly Ringwalds.

A decade after Sixteen Candles was released, Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke came out flawlessly as torchbearers of our generation through Reality Bites.  It was a film that attentively tackled the Gen X’ers plight to the latitude of job hunting, grunge music,  promiscuity and AIDS, rebellion against the system, celibacy and coming out (Steve Zahn, as Sammy, was phenomenal here as a closet homosexual, by the way) and more importantly, the playstation between the yuppie and the slack, played by Ben Stiller and Ethan Hawke respectively.

The film’s margin centered around Winona Ryder’s character, the Molly Ringwald of the 90s, as the angst-ridden videographer, who documents her days, hoping one day to rewrite the rules of life through diversity.

I was so drawn to this movie not because of what it embody but by the mere fact that this was also the year when I decided to take  a semester off in the middle of my final year in college . . . to know myself through Nirvana, Pearl Jam, coming out, reading lots of Milan Kundera and soul-searching.  This film may have smothered our generation’s focal point, but I felt, back then, that I was walking it too. 

Being a Gen X child, my friends and I had hippie uncles and aunts,  seeing through their Fleetwood Macs and smoking habits something that we wanted to become.  Provincial life back then were mostly filled with BBQ beach parties, television watching Gorbachev take the stage, eating Pritos Ring with our fingers as we put on our audio cassette tapes to listen to British bands and half-listen to our father’s rants about learning how to read the newpaper.  In my opinion, it was a burning sensation of being different and of being intensely private.  When Boomers actively marched in the streets, burned brassiers and told the world to change, we chewed our Bazooka bubble gums, bowed our heads and swore to live away from the blares of the world when we grow up.

Back in the 90s, we voraciously read Sophie’s World, a fictionalized tale about the history of philosophy in between takes watching FRIENDS on television, hanging out with fraternity brothers, pestering our calves with our mountain bikes to school, from Anne Rice and Stephen King and listening to Wilson Phillips.  We were merchants of our own spirituality, inspired by the philosophy of Socrates but likewise, enjoying the freedom of self-abundance.  We began forgiving our past and looked to the future without prejudice.  Hopeful and animated at the same time.  We knew that we can key up the world’s inadequacy because we came from the darker side of the moon.  We believed that basic education and our own journey to life is imperative because the academe will never really teach you a lesson with real life.  Music does.

We were named after a time when almost no one in this world was being born.  We were called X because we almost did not exist. But we did. That did not even make us more of a fashion statement but it did make us the mislaid breed of experimented rogues who attended the artistic riots of the 70s and 80s to the peace loving decade of the 90s.

Born in the 70s, growing up through the 80s and becoming a man in the 90s, I have absorbed my fanaticism with friendship and technology, married my poetry and promised to be devoted to it, chose originality over trademark, remained pragmatic in all sense, accepted change and the subversive, have likewise survived and most importantly, prolonged the idealism of untainted individuality.

I am a proud X’er.

Still is.

And will always be.

“Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.”

-   Blaise Pascal

Saturday

9:57 PM

Dubai

Arriving home from work, I took my hard drive and started looking at archive pics of the last three years and saw this photo of my sister Noreen and me – in 2007 – a snapshot taken sometime after Easter Sunday, on a brownout, and we were just giggling and talking baloney over something that I have already forgotten.  What I do remember, though, is we took the picture for the heck of it.  Or perhaps it was indeed a union of sorts.  Extraordinarily forgettable, atypical in all sense.

Then I called Noreen.  She did not pick up.  Only to find out it is already 3 AM in the Philippines.  I wanted to say hello and ask her what drove us to take this picture that night.  I rang again much to my in-born tenacity to disclose irresolute episodes of my blurry past.  I gave up after the third ring and pouted my way towards this entry, not really knowing what to write.  Feeling obscure about the absence of Persephone tonight.  I tried pawing Cleopatra’s feet.  She was busy too.  I wanted to tell her to sip Shiraz with me and talk about masculinity.

10:17 PM

I miss Noreen.

I do not really know her.  In my shamelessly well-articulated patois, every time someone asks me who she really is, I say, she was a beauty queen in college, she knows her way with mathematics and she is a shopaholic.  I could not go on any further because if I did, I would be fabricating.  There was a time way back when I was so frustrated with her for being so rebellious and self-destructive.  She is not your typical Cancerian.  Her moon sign is Pisces.  A double water means the inhabitable seas.  She is a sea foam, a creature of Poseidon:  powdered in salt and breathing in gills.  She can lunge to the deepest pains and stay there for a time.  Sleeping in her pink pajamas that will last for two days, her glassy eyes staring mindlessly . . . praying for her mermaids to come and take her.

At times I just look at her and feel entertained.  Her skin mirrors your erroneous credence.  It is so flawless it embodies the pain, regret and furtive chapters of your own fear.  Noreen’s smile deceives.  It is so beautiful and homey and yet, it begets condolences.  It outshines the emphatic reality.  It is surreal.

I miss my sister Noreen.

Sunday

Past midnight

This unsubstantial night of absolute indolence brought Nirvana to the scene.  My brother in law Alex, disguised as Wyclef Jean, rummaged through my cds and found his high school national anthem – Nirvana Unplugged – and plugged us with his stories of weeping over Kurt Cobain’s alleged death, under Cobain’s repertoire of goodbye, hugging through the recounts of his parents’ divorce and growing up at 14 years old.

I was mesmerized.

Tomorrow seems like an century away and it is almost 2 AM – we drowned in San Miguel beer and vodka – thank God for transatlantic alcohol transfer, and channeled our discussion to utopia.  The gift of love and family.

Amid the swirl of hectic work schedules, the fragile nuisances of Dubai and its pollution – its insufferable consumers – the anti Christs – the Siberian representations in each resident being competitive in more ways than one – WE, Alexandre, Catherine and myself -  inhabited the glorious wrath of the soul, induced in alcohol but very much in love with life, to the remnants of our man-child origins:  UTOPIA.

Catherine, in tune with the world, storied on the same plane, her sisters being her armor.  Perched on discoveries, good vibes but still hoping for the realness of love, she hovered on fate’s shoulder and looked at the moon.  She was high.  She was on top of the world.  She finally reunited with herself.

I, on the other hand, nailed to my so-called compassion and consequently loving squid balls dipped on green seafood sauce, hoped that God tasted the same victual, happy in my serrated mental lucidity.

The epilogue of the night – the early morning – is unadulterated love.  Have you been hurt so bad that there is no other choice but to broaden the gospel of love?

Have you been HURT so bad that you would rather surrender such hurt to the advocacy of LOVE?

I am drunk now.  I am suspended.  I am as whole as the earth.

Goodnight.

My friend Pol Arellano, the girl from Connecticut, my ally and accomplice in MY LIFE IN 50 DAYS: Day 11, is a multicolored poet, photographer and writer whose elemental work is just a click away. The right of passage is the tag button on the left side of your screen. Be brave and bring lollipops.