Is She? Is She?

Convulsed with laughter. Great One, Amateur Misanthrope!

Meanwhile, misterhubs, I am alarmed that you are becoming more right about Chet and DILF Frank of Hardy Boys! Hahaha. Remind me to steer clear of your hyperwarped imaginings.

~~~

Let it be said to quash all the moanings and bitchings about me avoiding people...

YES, I am avoiding EVERYONE even on YM because I have to pour undivided attention on gasping projects floating in limbo. Even in avoidance I am democratic. Hehe.

Don't even remind me of the unfinished work that gripped the newly-moved in flat.

I'll go berserk.

~~~

Dear Mali,

First, he'll wince. Then he'll dwell on the sting for ten minutes. Then he'd shrug and hum Ben Folds Five's Last Polka especially:

My, my. . .
the cruelest lies are often told
without a word
my, my. . .
the kindest truths are often spoken,
never heard

she said,
"you've been pushing me
like I was a sore tooth
you can't respect me
'cause I've done so much
for you."
he said, "well, I hate that
it's come to this, but baby,
I was doing fine
how do you think that I
survived the other twenty-five
before you?"

Be well and be happy. In your happiness you'll look back at all these things and be kind.

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Give

Don't be a selfish snot. Extend a hand!

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Drifting

Contradictory to even my most conscious denials I am, possibly, already becoming fond of you. Self-respect will always dismiss the ridiculousness of this silly thought. But how else can I explain sliding into sleep at night and the last thing I could muster is a coy half-whisper circling every syllable of your name?

How can I ever justify the jealousy nibbling on my earlobes at the thought of someone else tousling your hair?

How can I commit into words the mad, territorial greed that clouds my mind every time I start imagining fingertips other than mine that glide across the length of your spine?

How can I ever dismiss the warmth rushing in when I hear Elton John’s Your Song and everything liquefy and my thoughts drift towards you?

Apothecaries have no antidote for this mortal affliction. The best I can hope for is to long for a day when this brewing madness dissipates into mere schoolboy crushes, and all will be well in the world again. For me, at least.

For the time being your lopsided smile continue to unrest me.

It’s piercing, this troublesome feeling. Its a form of cruelty: much like catching a glimpse of a lovely face in crowded trains, and, after the overwhelming exhilaration of sudden attraction subsides your heart sinks into despair knowing it will be the last time you’ll ever gaze at such loveliness. This is where my thoughts pitch their tents: the joy and ache of meeting you, of not knowing you profoundly enough before we both retrace our steps back into the neat compartments of our respective lives, struggles and dreams.

In parallel universes there will be a little footnote in the great volumes of What-Could-Have-Beens. It will be about me having the courage to deal with your sly, deep, piercing gazes. Gazes that make me lose grip of my arrogance, gazes that come arrowed with smiles.

It is a difficulty I am too proud to own up to. It is a difficulty I struggle to forego.

Or, maybe, it’s just how it is.

We are all captives in the constancy of wanting. Whether it concludes on tragic or happy endings such hunger will always administer to wound you.

If it doesn’t, then it’s not true.

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Abdoabomination

Synchronicity is not in my glossary these days. Not only do I engage simultaneously in disparate things, my unconscious deeds seemed like that of a confounded parakeet shoved into wandering aimlessly in a Max Ernst canvass.

Incoherence is hysterical. Unfunny if it concerns yourself.

To illustrate how hilariously disjointed things are:

Wading through the unsorted junk littering the newly-moved-in flat I discovered among the stack of dusty boxes a forgotten ABSculptor. This nefarious instrument was abandoned in my apartment like Stork droppings by an irresponsible cousin. It has been with me for seven years and it’s only just now that I dredged up its elapsed existence.

I gave out a hearty, insane laugh upon unearthing the equipment of torment. Like the similarly torturous Nordic Rider Bike which I bought some nine years ago, both implements serve no practical purpose but double as unintended vacuum cleaners. They have been magnetizing dust to put a Dyson blushing. I fear both have developed independent lifestyles by now.

Not that I need the dang ABSculptor at all: my abdominal area has no extra ounce of unwanted flab. But I am warped, so after the hearty chuckle I said, why in hell not.

I stripped down to my whitey white undies, lied on my back in the parquet floor and eased my neck into position and started pulling and kicking. But before I did the mid-body flexes I flicked a button on the stereo controls and the School of Surrealism commenced:

How many pseudohealthconscious people out there do abdominal crunches to blares of Tears For Fears Greatest Hits?!! Hahaha.

And the odd thing was I didn’t notice I was doing abdominal bends and simulated mid-air bicycle kicks while Sowing The Seeds Of Love and Everybody Wants To Rule The World dilute the pungent air of the room (a hired help varnished the parquet yesterday and it hasn’t completely soaked in the wood surface, ergo the mummified smell, and here I am, shirtless and lying on the partially sticky surface. How deranged is that?)

I realized I am working out to illogical soundtrack somewhere between the chorus line of Woman In Chains and Everybody Wants To Rule The World.

So I flicked the remote again to switch the disc (my trusty 50+1 CD changer proves its merit once more).

Hillary Hahn’s Bach Concertos drenched the air. Just great: amplify the Salvador Dali moment! Too preoccupied by the splitting sensations in my stomach as I continued the crunches Daniel Hope’s Bach immediately followed Hillary’s. Which jumped into The Jayhawks Rainy Day Music, which jumped to Viktoria Mullova’s Bethooven-Mendelssohn’s Violin Concertos, Which jumped to Nelson Freire’s Chopin & Villa-Lobos, which jumped to Interpol’s Antics.

The music accompanying the impromptu abdominal work out will give an onlooker a Rene Magritte moment.

Not me.

I was too busy yelling obscenities in between gasps for air every time the blasted ABSculptor rips and shreds my stomach into kingdom come.

Read More......

Fünfzig *

“Talent borrows;”-a distorted brainiac once famously announced-“Genius steals.”

In the same vein I will rip off misterhubs' most recent entry because despite all the insane incidents and universe-realigning original topics swirling in my head (maniacally winking to be blogged about) I, for (bleep!)'s sake cannot muster to sit five minutes in a row without getting butt blisters. Add to this chronic restlessness my occasional impotence in the coherence department. I would sit with a germ of an idea that will no doubt mature into a monumental literary opus and my generally-dormant but irresponsible wart of a mutant chromosome starts kicking in and my thoughts would disperse like Paris Hilton's IQ at the Hollywood Mensa bureaux.

This entry is also mired by unblushing narcissism because my drivels got casually wedged in his list--the mere mention of my blog elsewhere gets me sexually aroused. I begin to get turgid and my lungs constrict, my breathing gets labored as I reach for my...

Ok, let's not go there.

I also have an excuse: I want to distract my mind off mind because if I dwell on the fact that my newly-moved-in flat remains a striking dead ringer of Kabul after the great American sodomy I'd sooner go stark raving mad. Compounded by a series of homicide-inducing dustups with a consultant to a client over an ad campaign last week, I am increasingly prone to waving at members of the clergy with four fingers bent. That, or start open-firing at a Rotary Club convention. Or start knitting spindles of dental floss into miniature flags of member states of the United Nations while humming a gravelly Ray-Charles-meets-Macy-Gray-on-speed before hitting the allegro molto crescendos of It's A Small World After all.

You get the drift.

Fifty random things I like:

01. Oversleeping. Sadly, this activity hates me back because I'm not getting enough of it.
02. Brilliant Warpedness - Dilbert, Krazy Kat, Cathy, The Far Side, but one will get a special billing:
03. Calvin & Hobbes.
O4. Mcflurry. (a toss up with Cookies & Cream flavored ice cream)
05. Mangoes.
06. Brilliant Warpedness 2 – David Sedaris, Cathie Pelletier, Dave Barry, Mike Royko, Erma Bombeck, The Gangster Of Love, Woody Allen, The British Version of The Office
07. Music. EXCEPT: all those Wimp Rock “I Hate Myself I Wanna Die” EMO Shit; “Woe Is Me I Am Bluer Than Picasso's Series That I Wanna Overdose On Prozac” country music; the vaginal shrieks of Celine Dion, (sorry attorney hubs!) Mariah Carey, and the retardation conducive sounds of Shania Twain, Britney, Hanson and Backstreet Boys.
08. Sarah Silverman.
09. White boxerbriefs.
10. Downy white sheets.

11. Books.
12. Magazines: The New Yorker/Atlantic Monthly/Radar Magazine/Adbusters/The Believer/McSweeney's/(the now defunct) Zembla Magazine/ 032C/Matador/ Domus /Casa da Abitare/ Wallpaper/Monocle
13. All Cameron Crowe films. Yes, even the calamitous Vanilla Sky.
14. Nick Hornby
15. Maison porn: Vitra, Capellini, Herman Miller, Artek, Philippe Starck, Tord Boontje, Bang & Olufsen, Rose Lovegrove, Yves Behar, Ron Arad
16. Fierce Modernists: Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano
17. Indie films.
18. Scalding hot showers after a nerve-grating day at work.
19. Waking up to very soft music in the morning.
20. The TV series, House, M.D.

21. The color blue.
22. The mind-bogglers: Rene Magritte, Salvador Dali, Mark Rothko, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Paul Klee.
23. The Sixties. (No, I wasn't born during the sixties. If you are in the creative industry you'd know what I mean.)
24. The Thursday Group! (pronounced Tars Day by the German Moreno School Of Mangled Phonetics) Fatima Alvir Forever! Nyahaha.
25. Seiko Films.
26. Scrabble.
27. A great argument.
28. Laughter.
29. Striking up hysterical conversations with complete strangers in foreign airports.
29. ZOMG talking fruits!
30. skinny neckties.

31. Clear summer afternoons.
32. Splash of androgynous CK One on women, Hugo Boss on men.
33. Seafoods
34. The poetry of Sid Gomez Hildawa, Rilke, Neruda, Lourd de Vera, and Angelo Gelo Suarez
35. Contemporary fiction.
36. Scandinavian/Nordic Design.
37. Swiss typography.
38. The vibe of Tokyo
39. Piquant Antics: ian's, misterhubs, datu, coldman, q, agentboytoy, xienah, cofibean, kwentongbarbero, noisy noisy man
40. The mind-melders: Freud. Kafka. Chekhov.

41. Deliriously slow, sensual fuck.
42. The sudden rush of connection with someone.
43. Hearing 'Thank you,' 'I'm sorry,' and 'Apology accepted.'
44. Lancing the touchy-feely, fragile egos of idiots.
45. The mobile phone not ringing on weekends.
46. Horse-back riding.
47. Pedaling downhill a steep slope with the brakes acting up.
48. Seeing a smile race across the face of a cynical client during tough concept briefings.
49. Smart, funny people.
50. Brilliant Warpedness Part Trois: Daria, The Simpsons.

50 and a half. My new ex-next door neighbor.
50 and three fourths. Beer.


* Fifty if I do Gestapo Speak

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A Is For Avocado, Apathy, And In This Case, Amentia*

Pearl Jam was the paste.

“I love Pearl Jam,” you blurt out, and before you can further accessorize such declaration of worship for the brilliant drawls of Eddie Vedder (who ranks as one of the Rock gods in my book) my head began spinning. In a blinding flash my over-agile imagination immediately constructed lewd landscapes. Words like bed, sex, you, me, destiny swirled like windmills that went haywire in my carnal mind. I used to steal probing looks at you when I thought you were unaware I am staring and all I saw was a magnetic face. Beautiful but shallow. Uncomplicated but attractive—too attractive for comfort for mortals with shaky self-esteem. Too attractive enough to reduce others into feeling like fungal mold standing next to you. But your abrupt declaration on Pearl Jam pulled the rug under my conceited feet. It made me look at you in different light.

Suddenly a combustible crush crept up my spine, and realizing it's infantile manifestation, I shivered. I shook my shoulders to ambush the ridiculous thought, before it germinates into something terminal. But who am I kidding: your gorgeous face, the easygoing charisma and suddenly, Pearl Jam. Love.

But being me, self-preservation prevailed. My alert defense mechanism sprung into knee-jerk cynicism and self-annoyance slapped my smitten daze back into sobriety. This happened in split-seconds before I totally slide into irretrievable pits of fatal absurdity. Apathy and mild disdain demolished the sudden awareness of your newly-discovered charm. Yes, I was a prick. A qualified idiot. A self-defeating schmuck who had the last shred of restraint to save us both from ourselves.

~ ~ ~

This drivel was inspired by this album:

which I rediscovered among jumbled mountains of CDs randomly tossed like a salad by the charming hired hands who helped me moved into the new flat. The CD was intended to be a holiday gift for the subject of this blog entry (who also happened to be one of the more recent friends). However we drifted away a couple of years back and the CD remains a pristine, sealed duplicate of the album I already own.

It will remain that way, a dust magnet, eating space.

* idiocy, retardation

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Dreadful Departures

Reluctance, sadness, acute nostalgia—they grip me as I finally say goodbye to you. We have been together for eight years. Eight ripe years! Given the shelf-life of Hollywood marriages our shared number of years together borders on the naïveté and endurance of old fashioned romance. So it is with pinch of melancholy that I will be moving on, leaving you behind. I felt the wave of embarrassment floating up my nose like a flagrant lover diminished of gratitude and devotion.

Farewell 25th floor, Unit (X).

As I move many many floors up, I glance sideways and I can see, lucidly, as if for the first time, speckles of stories soaked by your fading walls. Beautiful stories, heartbreaking stories, carnal stories, insane stories, hilarious stories, tender stories, and stories laced with secrets, malice and lust. I will carry every unwritten word of these memories with me.

When I finally close the door, and twist the knobs to seal your emptied rooms for the last time all these fond remembrances will come rushing back like ignited fireflies swarming a tree branch in the calmness of midnight.

I will remember the struggles I’ve had some years back when I was in-between jobs. Those bleak times of pork and beans and toasted bread weeks in a row because I was too proud to call home to bail me out.

I will remember tossing and turning past three in the morning either pining over a beloved or outwitting the potent spells of insomnia over difficult deadlines that make me have self-doubts about my professional worth.

I will remember casual encounters and the rush of guilt and regret when morning arrives and my lungs are reminded of stale sex clinging on the sheets.

I will remember quiet moments when I lay on my back on the cold parquet, staring at the ceiling with very soft music soaking the deep joys of solitude.

I will remember the excruciating moments when editing the perpetually growing number of books, CDs, DVDs, magazines that spill over the shelves and the agonizing option paralysis over what to cast out and what to keep.

I will remember the accidental brushes with voyeurism when I flung the canvass curtains open and beheld the next-door neighbours fucking like crazed rabbits with their lights burning bright and their windows wide-ajar like the legs of a two-dollar whore.

I cannot even begin to imagine the copious volumes of books I can write about our time together and maybe, if things conspire to be so permitting I may start that first page.

Such is life, though. We have to embrace even the most awkward of changes. But life itself cannot expunge these memories. Memories define us. They will sit quietly, waiting for the precise opportunity to spring back to mind and unfold a smile upon our face.

Farewell 25th Floor, Unit (X). It is my fondest wish that your new occupants will dwell in you with deep affection in the same manner you have been kind to me in the rich expanse of those eight beautiful years.

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Suffer The Suffrage

Vote! Come on, vote! Like you’re getting paid to do it, dagummit!


And join in like the suspension of your very own mortality depends on it!

Thank you!

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Tome Foolery

Paying no heed to the gongs of alarm clanging at the back of my head I splayed my anemic wallet wide open and bought the marked down books despite the shrill protests of my semi-existent practical conscience.

Enough of this monograph fetish!” it screeches in horror.

Which I cheerfully ignored.

Here is my recent loot:

I went home blissfully bankrupt.

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No Prada, No Thanks

Plenty of Cute people swarmed last night’s ϋmobile launch at the Rockwell tent. I decided to attend at the last minute because the friend I was to meet at Starbucks decided to intrude the occasion.

ϋmobile, from what I gathered from the breathless hype-o-rama is a new ad-centric mobile service but whoever designed its identity systems must be on federal-regulated substances. I was like: Come on! An umlaut over a Nickelodeon splat? How very…distinctive. No, not quite. It’s kind of creepy; like a grape that got run over by a ten-wheeler truck and still smiling.

“LG Collins will be raffling two hundred fifty phones!” someone from the PR team beams.

“Is it the LG - Prada phone?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. No.” came the reply.

“There goes my erection, then.”

He stared at me in the same way you would at a petri dish growth.

My friend nudged my ribs. Before I could protest he shoved a bottle of beer into my hand.

I didn’t win the phone because I left early. When my name was flashed onscreen as one of the winners I was already home furiously beating my...

...

...

...

...

...

...


...deadline.

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Withrawal Syndromes

Banks are institutional equivalents of purgatory. You voluntarily fork over your cash to them, watch it diminish before your eyes, and expect assorted shades of torture to hit you back. Doing banking transactions might as well be classified permissible masochism in contemporary civilization.

OK, now, that's a sour note for a comeback entry but I just can't help it. Banks never cease to get my goat. Here's why:

Being up till five in the morning beating deadlines three days in a row didn't put me in a sterling mood. I was practically walking around with nerves made of bundled dynamites waiting for a trigger to detonate. And the charming bank people are just a bunch of beaming lighters too eager to ignite my fuse.

Bleary eyed and surly from the back-breaking deadline-meeting spree I rushed straight to "You're In Good Hands Of Satan Bank" (from hereon referred to as YIGHOSB.) I was ready to collapse from the exhaustion but I need to pay some bills and cash a cheque. After a lengthy wait my transaction number dinged at the electronic wall counter and I was ready to burst into tears from sheer joy.

My exhilaration's short-lived. As we all know, it is engraved somewhere in the gold bouillon of banking code that it is the prime duty of bank staffers to wipe the smiles off the faces of clients. Failure to do this requires mandatory disciplinary action of being imprisoned in time-delay deposit boxes with Celine Dion Greatest Hits looping till you peel the paint off the wall with your molars.

Anyway, I shoved my cheque for encashment and the charming teller shot it a quick glance, continued punching God knows what in her fucking keyboard and without looking up mumbled:

“Go to counter 4 for the bank manager's approval.”

You know that shower scene in Psycho? My thoughts exactly.

I waited for my blasted turn and the amount of time I spent was enough for me to scale the Great Wall of China! Only to be told I have to slide into another queue. I can hear my teeth clenching under my breath.

Eaaaaaaasy, Hannibal. I know you're upset, but please do not snack on the cheerful teller.

After almost two hours where my lower extremities evolved into another life-form I was face to face with the bank manager.

“I have encashed so many cheques from the same clients before how come this one requires your approval?” I said in a struggling-to-be-calm manner.

Charming manager replied “Let me check.” then casually stood up, walked away and approached a steel cabinet in another corner, rummaged through files, pulled out a client sheet and stared at it intently like any given moment words like Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin will suddenly appear. That, or the Secrets of Life itself. Or the winning Lotto Combination. My paranoid suspicion had another slant: she's doing it to know how long can she hold me hostage before I meltdown or disintegrate into a quivering protoplasm.

I was sitting there, huffing and puffing, battling to contain the leakage of my homicidal tendency.

After another lifetime, she returned to her desk, and with the proficient skill of professionally avoiding eye contact grabbed the desk phone. Then she kept on dialing and dialing digits like she's too determined on sending Morse codes to Jupiter.

“Is there a problem?” I asked, my voice slowly belying impatience and annoyance.

Again she mumbled about trying to contact the client.

“I'm not cashing in the entire Bill Gates Foundation Trust Fund!” I quipped to dispel my aggravation.

The humor is lost on her.

Finally I snapped.

“Look,” I said slowly, emphasizing the syllables, “There is a very good chance that they are not in the office yet. Ever thought of dialing their cellphones?”

Her face lit up like the belfry on the Vatican on Easter Sunday. Then she scanned through the client sheet and dialed the cellphone number in it. My nerves assumed the condition of grated Mozarella.

She then talked to the client's finance person and after the alien babble scribbled Martian scripts on the cheque at hand and declared the most wanted instruction of the day:

“Please fall in line in counter 6 for encashment.”

It's fortunate for both of us that I don't own or carry an Uzi.

The day is determined to escalate my aggravation quotient, obviously. After encashing the cheque, I had to rush to a nearby branch of "We Find Ways To Screw You Up Hahaha Bank" (WFWTSYUHB) to deposit the cash into my current and saving accounts.

This is where I am fully convinced that the Banking Industry is Satan's tool for even the most pious of people to effortlessly violate The Lord's Sixth Commandment.

(continued...)

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Junk Salad

Terribly lacking of better things to say I feel I must terminate April’s havoc with yet another mindless exercise in recycling. Recycling forgotten old entries, that is.

So be it that May sow better things. Meanwhile, crunch on these short junks from the past.

satan doesn't own a freezer
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 11:58 AM
not that i'm giving up, but trying to achieve a fun, shitless chat online is like rummaging around hell in an attempt to find an ice cube. yep, that's me. grand patron of skepticism.



the law of natural ejection
Created on: Jan 01 2006 @ 07:02 AM
wouldn't it be fun if someone asks "how was your new year?" and you reply "i have had fun time disposing of the bodies of people who annoyed me last year" matter-of-factly?

if they start running and shrieking towards the opposite direction you know you have eliminated a bore. if they give you discount coupons to rent american psycho and hannibal you know it's a start of a beautiful friendship.



curve your enthusiasm
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 09:27 AM
exciting conversations online abound. consider the thrilling one i just had.

chatter: are you gay, straight, bi?
me: are you nuts?

silence. glacial silence.

it's safe to assume i can kiss the possibility of friendship goodbye.


venus is from hell
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 09:33 AM
women are desperately seeking for love. then they want brad pitt.


are you retarded?
Created on: Dec 30 2005 @ 11:42 AM
little did i know that the earlier entry on annoying conversation idler such as "are you straight, gay, bi?" would incite amused reactions from people. it only shows how rampant such situation is online. in the interest of unsolicited public service i am compiling a list of possible retorts to such question. when asked, you're armed with a deadpan ammunition.

annoying chatter: are you straight, gay, bi?
you:

• i have genital warts/ebola.
• i'm a mormon.
• i'd be glad to answer that but i fear your head will burst.
• is your mom a lesbo?
• wanna see close up shots of hemorrhoids?
  
• i'm positive for hepatitis/chlamydia/siphyllis/gonnorhea.
• if i answer THAT will you buy avon products from me?
• it is against my religious and moral principles to answer retarded inquiries.
• *quote something from soddom and gommorah*
• i know voodoo.
• this is the fbi online surveillance task force and we're tracking your IP address.
• do you have insurance yet? wanna buy a plan?
• so! what's your view on cannibalism?
• incest is a fascinating subject, isn't it?
• let me describe my prostate examination to you.
  
• can you be my downline?
• have you found Jesus yet?
  

naturally you can bet your rump the conversation will screech into a grinding halt. which is swell, knowing you got rid of one shallow hormone-crazed chatter.

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The Barbra Non-Fan Club

Sacred shit! I failed! I am beyond comfort! How could I be so heedless and sink below THE hollowed standards? I am ruined! Julia Phillips' book You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again keep on flashing like a nuclear leak blinker in my head! (Yeah, even this melodramatic burst is my desperate, pathetic stab at keeping up to feel adequate.) It's a friday night and instead of gallivanting outside having mindless sex and getting my liver mummified with tequila shots I chose what Karen Carpenter would do: play solitaire. While listening to ABBA. I'm kidding! I'd rather hit my gonads with a steel mallet than get my life's decisions done by Karen Carpenter! Truth is I can't listen to a Carpenters song without nursing homicidal thoughts.

You see I have a megalomaniac's ego. Despite glaring evidences I persist on a misguided belief that I am never in lack of self-confidence. This very trait advances my easily-bored-i-couldn't-give-a-flying-fig air which naturally irks cutey-pahootey snots out there. So imagine my seismic shock when confronted with the very proof that yes, I am an inadequate retard.

I was rummaging through shelves of magazines at home and for some sick cosmic joke the forgotten old issue of Tina Brown's defunct Talk Magazine found its way into my (now) outraged hands.

The story that blew a huge splinter in my self esteem : Are You Gay Enough?

In what was touted to be “fresh voice in American conversations” the article outline the preferred and ideal for modern manhood among contemporary women: Just Gay Enough. Meaning the guy should possess all the standard masculine attributes and aspirations but wouldn't wince wearing a salmon tinted cashmere shirt. This article preceded the bizarre demographic-constructing insanity called metrosexual so shut your trap and let my drivel roll on.

Given the daunting standards of the article, I can safely assume and displeased to report that I am not gay enough! What? Me? Not Gay Enough To Make Women Throw Caution Out The Window And Fornicate With Me Like It's The Last Hour Before The Ozone Completely Snaps, Backstreet Boys Release Another Album Or Apocalypse Hits Whichever Comes First?! The writer must have inhaled contraband.

Anyway, this got me into thinking. Maybe it is true.

Many gay people, especially bloggers and guys4men members detest me for self-slapping that dirty word 'bisexual' into my blog. This automatically disqualifies me in the taxonomy of human sexuality namely male, female, lesbians, Michael Jackson and The Rock. If I am to consider the bitching and moaning of true blue gays whenever the B word is sidled in a conversation I must as well be a polygamous Mormon in terms of hypocrisy. Which gives a riotous new dimension to the phrase “Bi now, gay later.”

I'm getting sidetracked.

What I'm trying to hiccup about is I am not gay enough because:

• 01. I can't stand Barbra Streissand. Like listening to The Carpenters/ABBA/Barry Mannilow, Ms. Prince Of Tides ignites my dormant Jack The Ripper to surface. I made a faux pas on this over dinner hosted by a flamboyant friend. Talk shifted to Streissand and a wiseass guest tried to fish out swooning opinions on Ms. B from me. Lubricated by bubbly white wine, I unblinkingly replied “I'd rather gargle Gillettes!” Deathly silence fell like a guillotine and a straight buddy snickered, and in doing so shared my fate as official persona non grata in the host's dining room for life.

• O2.The color pink makes me gag and musicals make my ingrown nails throb.

• 03. Male Armpits disgusts me but a woman's smooth underarms make me imagine rocky road-flavored Popsicles.

• 04. I have a nonexistent gaydar. During a client photo shoot some hags' tongues were twirling like a dutch windmill over the supposed homoerotic trysts of Piolo Pascual and Sam Milby and I matter-of-factly asked “Is Piolo really gay?” to which a loud queen snapped at me: “Ha?!! Ikaw na lang hindi nakasex ni Piolo?! (What? You're the only guy Piolo hadn't had sex with?).”

• 05. Women very much turns me on and I get turgid looking at pictures of Eva Green, Emanuele Beart, Sophie Marceau, Monica Belluci and Mayumi Cabrera, a proposition that sends shudders of revulsion up the spines of my gay friend.

I can go on and on in what you snots may call a Denial Spree but it's almost three in the morning. I will continue the list if the mood suits me. Meanwhile I need to hit the sack. However, negative nellies, you have ammunitions to discredit me. Four words:

Marcus Shekenberg.

Travis Wade.

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The Scourge Of April

Unhappiness seems to have polluted April abundantly, farther than it intended to wreak, I must add. T.S. Eliot, in Wasteland, incriminated April to be the cruelest month and given all the tales of despair, personal and otherwise, I am prone to agree with him. People I know in real life (and what I gathered among online friends) confess to moments of despondency. A young poet drowns misery in temporary escapism of alcohol, another one braces for untidy anguish of marriage annulment with nobility and quiet misery. Two other friends have had brushes with eviction and the same threat dangles above the head of another acquaintance. Everywhere I look I see sadness looming, loyally waiting for a prospect to sink in. Yet sadness overlooked humanity's deep reserves of tenacity. Refusing defeat we try and dismiss its presence, move on with a brave face. Inside, in silent hopefulness, we mumble the unspoken prayer that we will outwit its relentless pursuit. We quicken our strides and dissolve into anonymity in the hurried pace of the evening crowd.

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Drought

Dear E,

Drought arrived without preamble. It came out of nowhere, an intruder puncturing the stillness of things with cunning and stealth of a kingfisher that plunge upon the lake, burning with malice and hunger.

It caught me unaware. My thoughts reeled, my composure scattered in every direction like yellowed leaves being plucked by fury of unsympathetic north winds. Blankness soaked my waking hours and I tally every dissolving minute into restless anticipations of midnight when tiredness and emptiness finally submit to slow gravity of sleep.

April has almost left me speechless. Pages I need to fill out remain empty and I have seem to have lost my grip and self-assured reins on creativity. Even my freewill remain motionless like a dulled heart that seemed to have given up, forgetting even to dream.

Storms abound and voids outline the hours like constellations looking for proper orbits to occupy. This is when I miss you the most and your perpetual absence that scrapes craters in my core. I can't help but ask: Are you thinking of me in equal frequency the way I do about you?

This cheerless state of affairs I’ve sinked in this month defies description. I wish I can just walk into your kitchen, poke my nose inside cupboards, rummage for something delicious to perk my spirits with, or, simply sit beside you watching reruns and breathe freely.

We both know this is mere wistfulness on my part. The distance bisecting us is not simply geography. We have drifted into dissimilar lives and only faint voices of each other occasionally surface to remind us of those midnight whispers, bedtime geometries, vocabularies of endearments populating a language that is entirely our own.

When deep reveries of you touch my vacant stares a smile would sprout in my mind and warmth would permeate my saddened self. I would harken back to Christmas morning eight years ago. I remember it well like the full wakefulness of noontime: I stirred from sleep and beheld sunrise bathing your face in luminous glow. I marveled at the ghostly trellis of shadows your long lashes have conceived, brushed like delicate calligraphies in protrusions of your closed eyelids. It was a lovely moment. I think my heart skipped a beat and I kept that splendid memory private, unspoken of, even to you.

Nowadays I am struggling to make every single day mean something but circumstances are less compassionate. Yet I forge on, floating, kicking my feet below the water in stubborn gasps for endurance. I sometimes slide into defeat and skepticism but my irrepressible determination always swerve back into blurry glints of optimism. I sometimes wish I’d plod on easy streets and live an easy life, but that would do me more harm than good.So I persist, despite of inescapable times of momentary weakness.

However, there are afternoons when I felt like I am standing in a hall filled with junk drawers spilling over with overlapping choruses of remorse, exasperation and guilt that would pour out and scatter on the floor. Again, in a time like this, I would think of you. Your giggles. Your mixed tape masterpieces. The way you would ignite a room into sudden explosion of buoyancy just by flashing a smile.

Beloved E, I wish I have the patience to absorb your relentless positivism, especially during trying times when horizons never cease to alternate between blue and grey. But of late, my attempts and determination are constantly assaulted, eroded, and nothing seems to help. Even silence draws me more into pensiveness than clarity.

When evening arrives I feel like one of those crumpled widows, who after a love is gone, sit in porches, behold the infinite sky, drink in the ecstasy of distant years and whisper:

“I used to be fine, I used to be beautiful.”


Remembering you
in ways words cannot substitute,
Loudcloud

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You, Assassin

Irrespective of how successful, how uncomplicated your life is, a certain restlessness arrive in tiptoes and when an opportunity presents, shoots up shudders of dread and doubt into the very nucleus of your deepest, most secret insecurity.

The list would reel in your mind in multiple shadows of panic, regret and loss:

What if you let true love pass you by? What if you didn't recognize it smiling warmly in the laundromat, cordial in the hallway, indecisive among the pile of lettuce in the grocery, staring far and lost in thoughts in the airport lounge, approachable in the frenzied food court, because you are blinded by the pursuit and fail noticing it when it's staring right back at you?

What if all these years you misconstrued the true one with convenient substitutes just because the substitutes were around at the precise moment of your most yearning hunger?

What if you've had it in your hands but were too foolish to honor its presence because even if you do your kisses were empty and you embrace while wishing your arms were longer? When you endure tepid conversations over a cosy dinner while your eyes dart from the cutlery to the doorway in anticipation of a dashing trade up to walk in?

You see this is a dilemma I suspect happens to all but have refused admitting to. You fall into clutches of tenderness with same simplicity as unraveled leaves drifting in the gentle hum of summer breeze. It is an annoying habit, a compulsion, like a noble, earnest pup too enthusiastic to beget affections.

You would be inching in crowded trains, and, emerging from a reverie, spot someone. Waves of warmth for that person would kick in like violent surge of waves on the torso of thoughtless shoreline rock. You would begin to roll the reels of probabilities in your mind and they become vivid images of dancing, selfishly choreographed in your head: what would it be like to have meaningful conversations with this person? If you run out of conversations would silly ones do and still not lose a beat?

Is this recognizable? You sit in a bus, overwhelmed by timidity, and censor that strong inclination to spark a conversation. You sense a strong connection with the one next to you and you shift restlessly because even the most innocent brush of skin wires your consciousness with shivers of electricity. You sense that the object of your enraptured attention is furtively waiting for blinking signals like a vagrant fisherman would for a lighthouse on moonless midnights. But you allow logic to override your instinct with fabricated excuses of personal space and the right to be left alone. You begin to nullify the rising billow of feelings by flashing scorecards of impossible requisites and ideals.

So you sit there, basking in the fierce gush of warmth and nip its germinating bud before you make a fool out of yourself. You get off the corner of your stop, cast one glance backward, and mourn.

You walk on, hollow, consoled with the familiarity of convenient substitutes.

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Silence Among Other Things Crowding The Days

Dear E,

Exhaling in relief these days is nothing short of picking with chopsticks the beads of pearls swimming in a bowl of grease.

In times like this your lovely face floats from my memory and I think of you as you sleep warmly pillowed in the arms of another love while I toss and turn like paper boat quavering in brutal tides of a rocky stream.

I cannot even begin to flesh out the cocktail of frustration, despair, disappointment, betrayal and letdown crowding my professional and personal life these past few months. There is, however, the soundless ache, a dimly-lit corner I inhabit in moments of meaninglessness.

Silence.

Silence is a fate worse than wearing strings of misery, a necklace of grief. It is more vicious than a stab in the gut, wounding and leaving without a footstep. Silence is blindness in another guise that walks around in a foreign name. It is easy to weather furious cyclones of angry yells but silence is altogether a deceptive terrain to navigate. It is always pregnant with unsolicited mirages. It is an unforgiving mirror in which we discover our concealed fears. It is terrifying, menacing, a province we have no clout over.

How do you truly cope with silence? How would you gather your thoughts in a place shivering with soundless tremors of self doubts, rage, and hopelessness? Is it why we flee towards superficial, noisy nightspots? To drown the howls of our self-defeating selves?

What else can I say to you now except “It’s beyond difficult these days?” The more I ponder on life the more I become ever more nostalgic of the plainness of my childhood. Oftentimes I catch myself resenting the curse of adulthood, the trappings of indebtedness swimming alongside it's very nature. I begrudge being responsible for the sake of those who rely on you for unfaltering decisions and directions. I get weary of being a man whose reason to desert the comforts of bed in the morning is a strong sense of obligation. And for what? If there is a prize being handed out for perseverance and courage, then I'd hate to be pushy but I want to have my hands on it now.

On clear summer afternoons (like what we had today) I didn’t see forever like a song lyric would go. I saw glimmers of my own inadequacy laced with a nasty sneer of uncertainty dressing up for a field day. I am not giving up, however. You, of all people, are aware of my persistent nature and it is difficult to convince me out when my resolve is wedged firmly into a certain dream. Forgive me if I sound less and less optmistic. I did not write you to uncork a river of complaints. I did not write with intent of flooding your neatly-organized life with details of my personal woes. I am writing because maybe, just maybe, if I commit these thoughts into words they wouldn’t sound so bad after all. Only then I can exhale. Only then I can shrug my shoulder, and anticipate another sunrise with prayer and vigilance for an intangible smile to punctuate this seemingly messy day.

Humorless and weary, Loudcloud

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Blunders

Best intentions, no matter how you undertake to have favorable endings, are prone to the cruelty of unwanted disasters. It would be easy to slide towards self-righteous protests of innocence, especially if the blame resides outside your control, but that would still be suspect. I wouldn’t make any excuses. I wouldn’t assert the fact that I have misplaced my confidence based on repeated assurances of people I thought wouldn’t let me down. The sad affair certainly now adds a resonant learning dimension to that age-old expression that if you want to get things done right you have to do it yourself. Too late; it happened: the unthinkable. What was planned to be an evening of fun got assailed by stress, embarrassments, frustrations, disappointments and that catastrophic end of having to take the blame regardless of situations I didn’t anticipate. I take responsibility and own up to the misfortune that ensued.

This is quite vague for those who are not privy to the event but let me say this in all sincerity: I am truly, regrettably sorry for the miscommunication. I am sorry for having to mire the credibility of the one person who deserves to be happy that night yet ended up in a very discomforting spot. I am sorry that I have to ruin the mood for all concerned. I am sorry that I have failed on this. More than assigning blames or demanding an accounting for all the trouble I am kicking myself. Harder.

There is nothing I can possibly say to make up for the sour episode. I am not going to utter a defense. I am asking for earnest apology.

And it is my fondest optimism that in a better time you’d all accept it.

~~~

Also, to everyone leaving a comment here, I'm sorry things are very tough at work and I don't have that much luxury of time to respond or blog. I'll be back in full blogger mode soon.

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Breathing. Barely Blogging

Scoured the exotic books and magazines section of Chatochak and survived its dense, labyrinthine stalls. And that's the short of it. (I'll probably write about all the hilarious messed adventures.) So, yes, misterhubs, I am still alive but barely blogging. I was busy with work. In another corner of the earth. In my haste because of trip details fuckups I never really had the chance to blog or inform people except X that I was exiting Manila. It was so hot. And I just didn't mean the spicy food and the weather. Hormone-crazed dorks, wipe out that nasty grin off your face.

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Risen

This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

- PSALMS 118:23


Jesus Christ is risen!
Happy Easter Everyone!

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