It is sad, Bobby, that you died without having to play with me the game, which I believe was not invented for enemies to quash each others’ brains, rather, it was invented for friends so they may stare at one other during critical mental moments. When they stare at you, while you prepare to batter, to conquer, to kill; while you refuse to surrender, to be conquered, to be killed, all they can see is a face, or a hand supporting the weight of your head, a resolute warrior reduced to sweat. I see more, I see more. It is sad, Bobby, that you died without having to talk with me. While you were in Baguio discussing with pine trees how you pine for another life, confiding with the moon the origin of your madness, inviting the passersby to drink from the bottomless well of your dismays, the world wondered: where the hell is Bobby? You answered silently to yourself: Bobby is in a haven, in heaven, in Baguio, home to Ben Cab, the national artist who was once either a caterpillar or a cauliflower. And I wanted to be there, not because of the geography or the strawberry, but because I wanted to encounter a deity in disguise; a poetry in the flesh. But I was young then and Bagiuo is eight hours away. Now I am old enough to know how far is Reykjavic and how sad that my stories never reached you: Marx and Engels were playing tic-tac-toe during the conception of the manifesto, Mozart was a Jew, Lincoln was a girl, my cat is a masochist. What makes you laugh remains a mystery to me. Spassky? Coffee? I’ll ask Torre. But what for is to know what makes a dead man laugh. Maybe you don’t laugh at all. You just sneer at people falling so readily for the many gambits of life. You just smirk at the thought that this world is teeming with blunders of all kind: the rain when it pauses is blunder, a pair of smelly feet is blunder, your neighbor’s pregnant daughter is blunder, TV is blunder, religion is blunder, America is blunder and this list as it extends, gets blander. Life, as it extends, gets tougher an opponent—that the will to live becomes as desperate as an attempt to draw a match with perpetual checks. But for someone as great as you are, death doesn’t come. Life has just ended with a stalemate, therefore not done.

Of course the governor is enraged with the idea that his youngest, his unica hija fell for a bum just like that. "How pathetic, you child of a God!" he sreamed. "A farmer could have been better!" He repeated sermons and some tedious platitudes over the phone. "But I love him papa, I’m willing to starve!" she retorted crying. You need not be a fan of melodrama to know that the more they try to sway the girl who is at the height of her frenzy, the more she will stick to her love, no matter how much it would cost her. The governor is not alone resenting it. His former colleagues in congress mourn the monumental mismatch. Even the supreme court is quick to cast a verdict: "it’s a crime for a bum to be loved by the governor’s lass." But long before that, the president has issued an executive order to hunt down and persecute any unemployed, underheight, underground bard who is capable of fishing girls of importance. Yet the bum, quite skilled an escapologist, decided to submit himself before the court and pleaded guilty. Maybe all he ever waited is the love, for him to cut his hair, to cut his freedom. All he ever wanted is some changes, he wished to stay in jail. A thousand miles away from him, the girl gave up her lavish lifestyle, her basketball players and one-night-stands. Determined to prove her love, she went home to free the bum and marry him in La Union, where her father is not a Godfather but a God. There, the governor has all the means to kill the bum: he can slice him in half, lengthwise, or even cut him into microscopic bits, whichever pleases better. But then the governor, though still a little troubled, softened, he played a trick instead; a trick so trite it is predictable, the bum for sure had smelled. One cold november night, his daughter is away, he asked the bum to have a walk somewhere. Out they went into the woods and in an hour they reached a dead-end. "What now?" asked the bum. Both of them panting, the governor stopped to catch his breath. Then all of a sudden, he spoke demanding: "Kill me here and now so you can have my daughter; let me live and she’ll be gone forever." Not a moment of silence the bum replied: "That’s it? Just be sure you are unarmed and please do not resist." He started him by kicking in the groin. Another one in the groin. And another one. But before he could pull a fourth, the governor yelled, writhing in pain: "Enough of this stupidity, you won!" Since then the governor, a mighty aging lord, gave the two all the comfort and solace, all the money they would need, all the freedom they deserve and they all died happy.

I hate Olongapo because Lolito Go, who is still

on the loose impersonating me, was born and

raised there. I hate Olongapo because it claims a

Wowie de Guzman and a reggaeist named Blakdyak.

I hate Olongapo because the legend of "Ulo ng Apo"

sucks. I hate Olongapo because it is four hours from

Manila, eight hours from Baguio and a lightyear from

Jeddah. I hate Olongapo because they have a mall

the size of a urinal; beside that mall sits a statue

of Freddie Aguilar that looks like a squirrel (raccoon?)

I hate Olongapo because their city library, I guess,

updates only every after a century or two. I hate

Olongapo because beach and bitch are homonyms.

I hate Olongapo because just last Friday I bumped

into a tree and aloud the people laughed. I hate

Olongapo because videokes operate there per one

hundred square meters but it’s not the machine I hate

it’s the singers, I mean, the stingers who won’t let me

sleep. I hate Olongapo because, honestly, I was having

a hard time thinking what else I could hate about it.