—So. Kamusta si Denominita?

—Umiiyak parin, every night. All night, right there beside me until she falls uconscious at four and I have to get up to work. There are times I go through days without sleep. And I spend my weekends laundrying mucussed pillow cases.

—Di parin maka-get over? That’s a pity.

—She hates it when people say that’s a pity, or give condolences, or claim to be sorry for her loss. I told her once that people meant well when they said those things. She told me to go fuck myself.

—Really? What did you do?

—I did as she told me. You know I could never refuse her.

—You did what?

—I went and fucked myself.

—Oh. Well. Did you enjoy fucking yourself?

—Very much, thank you.

—Good to hear. Pano nga pala namatay si Amadoro?

—Run over while on a donut run. Tragic. We always thought he’d be done in by the sickness first. We had a pot going.

—That’s a little insensitive.

—It is isn’t it? I know her pain must be unimaginable,and I'm sorry for her. I try to be understanding. But things have been heavy on me too. I'm sorry. You know, she still says his name in her sleep. I'm ashamed of myself. I really am.  

—Olats. You don't need to be. Olats nga nun.

—Oo nga. Pero kailangang intindihin, siyempre ... Pare, teka, pa-segway lang. May napapansin ka bang mali? 

—Ano yun tol? Wala naman.

—Mali talaga e, tignan mo. What are these dashes doing in front of the dialogue? And where the fuck are the quotation marks? And what the fuck are our names!?

—Easy lang tol. Wala lang yan. Di nga nababangit mga pangalan natin no? Your name is _____. Mine, I care not to mention. About the dashes: It’s a little funny if you think about it. The queer eye writing this shiznit is going through a James Joyce [who writes dialogue w/ dashes] phase. ‘Di halata sa sulat no?[Whispering:] He’s going through a big quarter-life depression of some sort. 

—Gets. I think he mentioned that last week. He thinks an attempted tackle at the mountain of modernist literature—i.e., Ulysses, which was considered by some the only good thing to ever come out of the WWI years and was therefore looked upon as a masterfully rendered finger up the nose of man’s unscrupulous munchies for war, hatred, and violence—will save or at least sufficiently distract him from the pangs of his melodramatic afternoons and sleepless nights. He’s trying to drown his ‘great’ pain in something ‘greater’. Yet he knows, he's perfectly aware, that he’s resting his sanity on the words of the insane and long dead, and that Ulysses won't help him, and that love-song junkies have it better. 

—His life is sad. Our lives are sad. And the ozone lair is doomed.

—It's unrighteous. Unwell. It is corn on a cob.

—As in púno ng my God?

—As in putanginang shet.

—Betamax sa pwet!

—He's unfit to live …

—Too stale to kill …

—Too bland to adore

—Two three to ignore

—Being the place that it is, the world isn’t his.

—No it isn’t. The world is mine.

—Okeeeyyy …

—And nothing is certain. But we’d like to believe otherwise as we contemplate our tombs. Remember:

—In darkest night

—In drear’est day

—When even the proudest mountains cry themselves to dust

—And your loved ones are gone 

—Fear

—But fear well

—Because 

—Hope

—Kontra to what they try not to say—

—Springs

—Eternal 

{‘Ano ba naman yan.’ ‘Woooooo!’ ‘There goes the neighborhood.’ ‘Ano yan, Sheksfir?’ ‘Alexander Pope, bobo!’ ‘Ahhh ...’ ‘Kambing!’}

{ ... }

{Kambing!}

¶ 4:53 PM