Another Day in the Life of the Unemployed

4:45 AM My daily Wake Up! alarm woke me to a chilly Tuesday morning. I found myself buried beneath ten autumn colored pillows and somehow my earphones got tangled alugbati-like around my neck. I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep. It’s lazy day today, for all the world cares.

9:03 AM I texted my friend Toty, who’s recuperating in a hospital in Iloilo. I wanted to make sure I congratulate him for making it through the operation. He is now minus one very ugly gall bladder. He thanked me, and lamented the fact that he’s in for a strictly organic fiber diet for life. Well, what can I say to that? Not a cute thought at all, especially before breakfast.

Off to eat breakfast. I would have wanted the eggs to be soft boiled yet I smiled to Mom and said they’re just fine. I chopped some green tomatoes and bell peppers to go with the eggs. Not too bad. I ate everything except the whites. I don’t fancy the whites too much, you see.

I saw ham and luncheon meat slices, fried bangus, and mashed squash too. I would have gone solely for the squash, but I remembered the doctor telling me during my physical exam four days ago that I’m two kilos underweight. So, I took a deep breath, piled more than my usual serving of rice and forked five slices of ham and luncheon meat onto my plate. In honor of Toty who couldn’t have meat from this day on, I murmured to myself, as I proceeded to do my noble duty.

10:11 AM I hummed Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You in the bathroom for the third time already. I must have done it subconsciously. What can I do against that charmingly sad there’s-always- someone-leaving-someone song?

Yeah, twice in all my 23 years have I loved and let go. Not exactly record-breaking, but heartbreaking they sure were. Yet, Love remains; it all remains in the heart. And I’d have to agree, letting go is not absolutely letting go. Ah, such drama.

I reached for the soap dish. Nothing there. My left hand holding the salmon pink puff, my right scratching an imagined itch on my nape, I checked one by one all the ablution items in sight: Head and Shoulders sachets, a Cream Silk conditioner bottle, some Peach and Wheat Germ lotion by Asda, PH Care, Palmolive Botani—P-H C-a-r-e… Hmm, ma-try kaya ‘to!

Resolved: If available, PH Care makes a good substitute for bath soap in the event that the latter suddenly goes missing. Just don’t go telling your little sister about it.

1:00 PM I had lunch with James Bond. I had: 10 packs of Nissin’s Creamy Butter Wafers, nakahilera on the plate and smothered with apple jam; plus, a tumbler filled with finely crushed ice and lemon soda. Quite a good fair it was, while the sleek, suave Pierce Brosnan does a great and incredible job tumbling and diving his way through two hours of violence and pyrotechnics in The World Is Not Enough.

He did all that with a broken clavicle, mind you.

3:45 PM I’m thinking as I’m writing this: Is this a kind of giving in to the urge to document one’s life for the heck of it? A friend of mine, Tim, once told me he used to keep a diary wherein he dutifully and meticulously recorded the happenings of the day as well as his personal expenditures and savings. However, he soon got tired of it. It became too taxing a task for him. I said he must have done it too mechanically, which usually takes most of the fun out of it.

Now I ask myself: Am I doing this right? Are these words the hues my soul takes at this moment in time? What I do know is that I don’t feel tired at all, or futilely taxed, doing this. Somehow, though, I feel that is not enough.

It’s hard, chronicling one’s heart; it’s even harder trying to be truthful about it.

4:01 PM I saw my dad clad in stonewashed denim heading for the door. He said he’s going to the drugstore. “Would you get me a large pack of barbecue Chippy at a sari-sari store, please dad?” I asked. “Copy,” he said (like most other dads, he has slight delusions of military life.)

He came back with two packs of Pee Wee Pizza. To the politely disdainful look on my face, he quipped: “The girl at the sari-sari store said they didn’t have any Chippy left. I asked her what junk food is closest to Chippy and she said Pee Wee.

I pointed out that Chippy is made out of ground corn, like Mr. Chips, Tortillos, or the now rarely available Humpty Dumpty, whereas Pee Wee is made from cassava starch.

“Teh, better luck another time. And make sure then that you’re the one making the actual purchase,” he winked.

“Copy” I countered. It was him alright who made the trip and bought the chips with his money. All I did was make the request. It’s not only beggars who can’t be choosers, sometimes.

I made an attempt at diplomacy, “Dad, I’m putting on Golden Eye this second. Care for agent double-O-seven?”

“Sure. And maybe some Pee Wee too.”

That junk hadn’t been a problem to me at all.

7:21 PM I’m all set for a prayer meeting at Grandma’s. I’m going to it on my new polka dot—red with white dots—slippers just to give me a kind of festive feel. Prayer meetings, in my meager experience, are usually a somber affair.

When was the last time that I really prayed, pray tell? When was it that I truly let my heart speak, make my soul reach for the Supreme Being?

Whenever I really pray, I become too self-conscious and I end up not uttering a word, verbally or mentally. If God knows everything, God must know what’s in my heart even before I say it. What are words anyway but mere inert symbols: they can’t really convey what we truly feel. I’ll pray in whatever way I can, for all the world cares. I’m not praying to the world anyway.

Mom called for me. It was time to go. I grabbed my cherry red jacket, turned off the light, and went out.

7:55 PM Tita Rosie came looking for my sister Mot. She’s giving Mot the third of four Hepa B vaccine injections. I told her that Mot’s still in school and that I haven’t had that shot before and I’d like to find out what it’s like. She asked me to get a cotton ball and some alcohol.

“It’s going to be an intramuscular shot, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Uhuh, right on your shoulder,” she replied swabbing the said body part with the alcohol-soaked cotton.

The shot was a bit painful, especially when the minute stream of vaccine came in contact with my deltoids. The length of my left arm suddenly felt fatigued, as if I shook and waved it around nonstop the whole day. I went back to my room and passed by Dad’s. I found him there, blinking the sleep off his eyes.

“I took an anti-Hepa B shot dad.”

“I see, but where’d you get it? Who gave you?”

“Tita Rosie. It hurt a bit but it’s something you don’t get to do everyday, isn’t it? You should try it.”

I didn’t hear what he said because I was trudging back to my room. Taking that shot was a fast, on-the-spot decision on my part—one which I relished immensely. As for the other decisions I’ve been making in my life, particularly those which were made too quickly with little prior thinking, I wonder when I would get the time to sit down and think through their various ramifications.

Then Mot appeared and asked me how I’ve been. Brimming with a ridiculous boyish pride I told her how I braved a Hepa B vaccine shot. “It hurt, you know,” I bragged, raising my brows for emphasis.

“You should try an intramuscular shot of distilled water. It’s cheaper but it hurts more,” she replied, her smile emitting just the right wattage of condescension.

9:02 PM TV time again. I whipped up a fast snack. Here’s how:

Slowly pour half of the contents of a litro-pack of Eight O’ Clock Orange-Mango powdered juice into your favorite glass tumbler. Make sure the powder forms a decent mound at the bottom.

With a heavy steel mallet, crush some ice. Make sure you get really finely disintegrated ice. Thinking of your worst enemy guarantees excellent results.

Fill the tumbler to the brim with crushed ice. Pour cold water into the tumbler and slip the cap to seal the brim. Shake as James Bond would have liked his drink to be shaken.

(Oh, the tumbler needs to be made of glass to ensure a more interesting aftermath should it slip out of your hand when you’re shaking it.)

On your most favorite plate, arrange a bed of saltine crackers. Next, top it with chopped bananas and smear some white cheese on the bananas. Then, trickle some grapefruit jam over everything (the messier the pattern, the better.)

Finally, be sure to pat dry your face from all the exertion before serving.

On Pinoy Fear Factor Argentina, South America, I saw the stand up comedienne Janna hanging by her foot which was trapped in a net suspended from the base of the helicopter. A staff hurriedly jetskied to where she was but untangling Janna took sometime, for the rescuer couldn’t get a secure foothold in the chest high water and the chopper couldn’t stay put in midair. Poor Janna had to hang on for several excruciating seconds before falling, as a general rule of nature, into the water.

Accidents. They happen when they want to. As much as we want to prevent them from happening, we should hope to get lucky too.

10:02 PM Speaking of accidents, my friend Christine texted me that she stepped on a protruding nail yesterday and that she feels a little ill tonight.

“Get a shot of anti-tetanus toxoid fast,” I told her.

“I’m fine. The nail wasn’t rusty at all,” she replied.

Either she’s superbly uncaring or I’m too easily agitated, whatever, pwede ba ang rason na iyon? I told her to inform me ASAP when she begins to feel that her condition is a matter of serious consequence worth any sane human being’s anxiety. Her “okay” made me feel I’d be waiting a long time for an update of that nature.

Another friend, Bem-Bem from Cebu, who works as a Quality Assurance specialist in a call center that does political surveys in America tells me she’s feeling lonely and homesick.

“It’s different being home, where you can simply run to some real friends anytime for anything,” she imparted.

“Makes one of us then,” I replied.

What I really want now is to get away, somewhere really faraway where everyone is yet to know who I am. It would be like starting anew in a new place. I want to get away from all the things I’ve become so used to. Life can’t be made up only of all the things that we’re used to.

11:50 PM The night is old, dying. I can hear the trucks speeding along the highway. The dialogue with the Self, however, rings loud and clear, every word precise and sonorous, every thought determinedly aglow.

What is it that you most fear?

The murder of my soul by myself.

When do you hurt the most?

It matters to me that I’m something, an entity that counts in the grand scheme of things. I hurt the most when I’m reduced to nothing, when I know for a fact that I let that injustice happen to me. Self-inflicted violence cuts deep, you know.

What about unrequited love?

They never knew about it. Who could be so sure they were both unrequited?

Whether they knew or not is immaterial. We’re looking at the act of them loving you back in that special way, which never happened.

Yeah, I guess you have a point there. But did you have to sharpen it so?

I thought you welcome pain. Weren’t you the one who proclaimed it to be your, uh, what was that, Protector?

Yes. It still is like that. And I’m well aware that it’s turned just a tad too overprotective for my own good.

There’s the rub. I see you’re beginning to get the hang of all this.

What’s ‘all this,’ huh? What’s so damn important about ‘all this?’ Why can’t ‘all this’ simply not matter?

Keep that yarn of questions spinning, fratello, because somewhere in the intersection of your mind and heart you know the answer. Until you stop pretending to be asleep, that yarn will be spun, and no one, not even the blades of Fate, would cut it for you.

Give me a break! I need to think, and you’re making it impossible for me to do so.

Do you ever get enough room in your mind to really think?

I don’t need room. What I need is a respite from harpies like you.

I wonder where you get all this resentment from.

I generate it!

Ah, like a nice tough reactor of resentment.

At least make an effort to make an effort to be more picturesque in speech.

I see you risk an overdose of Juvenalian sarcasm yourself. Sadly, even that won’t save you from the less mighty part of yourself. And you know it.

(A knowing silence ensues.)