Visits

Dad,

Hello there!

You've been frequenting my dreams again, really it is alright but here's my deal: maybe we should cook up themes that are tad less scary?

Apparently, your frightening visits are well-timed for the Halloween but my guess is that you're on for a haunting spree in my dreams.

I did not really mean to make mom cry. Understand that 'bread winning' is not exactly the most promising career path. I am complaining, yes, but I'm not the type who peters-out from his obligations.

I hope that rests you in peace.

Since today is supposedly your day (along with the many who have gone to their rest in the hope of rising again), I wish you a rokin' and rollin' time.

Dreaming of your divine pinapaitan & heavenly (pardon the pun) dinuguan,

Bryan



P.S.

I travelled a bit and have dined on expensive and cheap tables alike and I'm proud to say that you remain to be best cook in the whole world!

MY FRIENDSTER IS SWARMED BY TINY BALD BEINGS

Unless some magical shit has turned my friends into midgets suffering from severe case of hair loss and some dental disease, I’d like to think that all of these profile photos of bald, toothless beings in my Friendster list are human babies.

These babies aren’t my friends. They’re my nieces, my nephews who will one day show up at my doorstep with a warrant of arrest for multiple gift evasion suits.

I wonder why they are posing as my friends.

My friends party hard! My friends eat Cosmopolitan for breakfast and devour Vogue for lunch. They chain smoke. They drink too much coffee and live on tequila.

They don’t watch Tagalog movies (at least they pretend that they do not). They pick-on my bad English. They’ve been to an Alanis tour and would be at a Tori Amos’ given a chance.

They gyrate with INOJ. They sleep late and wake-up later.

Gad I miss my college friends.

Perhaps they’ve left.

Cry-fitting infants are standing-in for them while they’re gone to some where-adults-should-be-when-they-turn-30 convention.

Diaper clad kids have taken their place.

Maybe they’re all gone.



Maybe I stayed behind.

I Wish the Tales of Mother Goose are true.

I feel lazy, gang-raped tired and sleepy.

In many ways a week long repose in Pangasinan is a viable relief. But getting haunted by VISA receivables department people for months end may not worth a few weeks of fucking rest.

Wouldn’t it be great if we humans can elect to die temporarily?

I’m not talking about being medically dead and then waking-up from coma later or the excommunicable undertone of death and resurrection and the founding of a new religion. I’m thinking more in the vein of death-like deep sleep—ala hibernation.

Falling into a cavernous sleep ala Sleeping Beauty without the need to eat and excrete, do debit-credit, answer phone calls, send tuition-money back home, add weird people to your FRIENDSTER list, blah blah blah and wake-up like you’re zany Cameron Diaz the morning after an earth-shattering Justin Timberlake shag is not too much to ask, is it?

Dear Sibling

Dear sibling,

How have you been spending your first pay? I say spend it all on something lavish and I’ll answer for the rest of your expenses until your next wage.

I can only assume how you feel about the board examination result. I am not happy of course. I am not sad either. I understand.

I rang up the night before day-1 of the examinations. We went on and on cracking old jokes. Then you mustered your courage to tell manong Bry that someone broke your heart—your first time.

I can tell as you blether hate, anger and hope that you’re in a flat spin. I can feel through each sob, you’re smashed to smithereens.

Your phone line's end is flooded with tears.

You tried haplessly to put into words your pain.

You told me it’s unfair and then asked me why?

Hey, you didn’t tell me there’s someone there to cause all these in the first place.

No sibling, I don’t grasp it no more than you do. Love is messy. Sorry, but that’s the best I can come up with. At any rate Manong will be here to help at every turn.

Sibling, hang on there. The raining and pouring shall end.



I’ll remain,

Manong Bry

Filipinos You Meet in Port Moresby

"Seven Kinds of Filipinos You Meet in Port Moresby

1. The Pioneers.
Legend has it that they paddled their way to pre-independence Papua New Guinea fleeing the Imelda Inquisition.

This is the bunch I don’t know much about but ever so easy to spot in a crowd.

From the grannies with faux Australian accent and their SM-deprived offspring they’re almost always vexingly together anywhere they go thronging the ever few expatriate-safe locations in packs like a grade school fieldtrip.

2. Second Generation.
The OFWs.
Like the Pioneers, they are ever present during them infamously banal June 12 Independence Day celebrations where you’ll die of boredom from the shitty appearances of minor over-sensationalized Pinoy celebrities, Bingo craps, Christmas whatnots and basketball blahs.

3. Cross Breeders.
For socio-economic reasons, they breed exclusively with Caucasians.
If there’s too much carats going on, that’s them.

4. The Entertainers.
They’re prostitutes.

5. Churchgoers.
Well, you see them in church every Sunday and at majong tables after mass.

6. Accountants.
Grace Adler once said, “I hate clowns. They think they’re so funny”.

Delete “clowns”. Insert “accountants”. Delete “funny”. Insert “smart”.

7. Then there’s this gang of five. You’ll live life regretfully if you never get to meet them.

Nothing extremely special about this party of five but they guarantee an experience second only to that feeling of orgasmic headboard-rocking coitus.
Ever genial and handy, they paint the town red onboard a green Mitsubishi."

Rambling to 2007

Fridays uncommonly serve me as downers.

I’m guessing it’s that feeling of sadness and longing to be home with family and friends.

Hello control dramas, my trusted friend!

Still, in my state of destitution, in the face of all my fashion transgressions, as my spa/sauna-deprived circumstances, I am thankful.

My nomadic, adorable Filipino friends in Port Moresby keep me at bay from insanity-ville. My Caucasian comrades keep me intoxicated every so often and have them to thank for things like yacht in social vocabulary.

I might exploit this into a long, mushy, rambling story. I better do something else.

No, I don’t masturbate anymore. At least I lie that I don’t.

Ever Belina

It was our first heated argument. At the Burger King, of all places. Somewhere at Seoul’s gay district—we had our very first conversation without any mention of Miss Dominican Republic’s national costume for last years’ Miss Universe.

Some remark I made on his lover from few lovers ago ricocheted as retaliatory I-hate-this-and-that-about-you. Like a tong-its game (gin & rummy) in your neighborhood wake abundant with M.Y. San crackers and commoners’ coffee, things went hardcore and hate cards were laid.

Consciously, we’ve been avoiding any altercations on matters that matter. Like that homo sitcom, we were Will and Grace, Karen and Jack: spatting over the artistic merits of Bata Bata Paano ka Ginawa versus Titanic, what is the capital of Gabon, our waist lines and other people’s non-gym-going waist lines, commuting on jeepneys and my I-don’t-eat-at-food courts policy. It’s comfortable stuff only.

It’s as like as chalk and cheese this time: embarrassed stares, wrinkled noses. We said things to each other that we meant to say ages ago. Things we never thought the need to discuss them may arise…like Ever Bilena on cosmetics.

I’m not going to write about it though. I tell about other people too much.

Here’s what I can share though:

One is ever grateful to the heavens for a best friend with
1. two co-dependent nervous systems—for his penis and for himself,
2. with a taste for the mongoloid-ish oriental boys which cuts down any competition between us, and
3. with a twisted understanding of love but with the generosity to parade his broken heart and sore, sometimes violated ass once or twice once and again to set example to the likes of me who understands the game of love less.