Smooth Rubber Sole

As a young boy, I had a shoe fetish. To cut myself some slack, my shoe thing wasn’t as bad as the crazy sex-fetishist, but getting a new pair of sneakers was so stimulating to me, so exciting, that I could barely contain myself. I would bring the new sneakers home, lock myself in my room, and for hours my hands would examine, like a crazed connoisseur, the unmarked soles—and all the while I’d be tingling madly.

Over the months to come, I would examine the soles, watching them as they degraded over time, their little crevices and swishes and jagged edges reduced to smooth flat rubber.

I guess I was so into it because of the tactile part: I loved the rubber, the feel of it. Why, I don’t know, but I may have been learning how to use my sense of touch, the way we learn what we like to eat by tasting different kinds of food. And I must have loved that bouquet, because I associated it with the tremendous feeling of hope that came with new sneakers—that with this pair I would run faster, have greater adventures, more fun.

Like most kids today, I took my identity from my sneakers, whether, depending on the year, they were Keds, Pumas, Adidas, or Nikes. With my “cool” sneakers, I could face the world. They were both my shield and—if I needed to flee—my means of escape. It is the childhood version of the way twentynothings judge themselves and others by the cars they drive.

But other people didn’t perceive my sneakers the way I did. I vividly remember one time when I was in Grade 5 playing tennis—one-on-one—with the best player in the batch. He was a brutish fellow and he was surprised at how well I played—I was in the honors class, despite all the hours I spent feeling sneakers—and he jockishly complimented me, “Hindi ko alam na ganito ka pala kagaling.”

I was surprised by his surprise. I thought he should have noted before we began playing that I was wearing my special Adidas sneakers with their green and white stripes, and that this should have indicated to him, despite my geek/nerd reputation, that only a good player would have such sneakers. In response to his backhanded compliment, I said, “Hindi mo ba nakita yung sneakers ko?”

He simply looked at me like I was nuts.

You’re a boy. You have hobbies and passions. Under no circumstances share them with women

The first time I took a girl to watch Rugby in Laguna, someone hit her hard at the back of her head. It was a horrible, hot, dry evening in late summer, one of those days when you wish you were born almost anywhere in the world except ‘Pinas. Even Syria. The opposition was ISM, the final score was 0-0 and, as I said, someone hit my love’s head. Worse than that, I think she expected me to do something about it—remonstrate or something. But at Rugby in Laguna you don’t remonstrate about anything. You just get on with life and all that it throws, or hits, at you. There’s no point to complaining.

The last time I took a friend to watch Rugby, there was no hitting. The club has changed its image. So we were hit-free. It was a viciously hot, horrible, dry afternoon in mid-November. The opposition was Xavier. And the score was, naturally, 0-0.

It almost wasn’t 0-0, though. Midway through the second half Xavier should have had a penalty, but the referee missed it. What happened was this. One of Xavier’s irritating, perky, little forwards (who’s now my seatmate during Linggwistiks class) burst through into the area and our lumbering hapless defender kicked the shit out of him, then took out a machete and flailed at his neck and then shot him three times in the back and spat upon his cold corpse.

OK, so I exaggerate. But not by much. Clearly the ref thought a penalty would spoil the thematic trope of cumulative, unrelieved, mind-numbing tedium. Or maybe he wasn’t watching the game but was instead transfixed by the girls seated on the side, pretending to be interested.

My older friends keep on telling me that it’s no use trying to get women interested in the things that matter to you. They won’t understand. No sexual deviation or perversion you might wish to inflict could possibly bamboozle or horrify them more than Rugby in Laguna. You could urge them to go with you in a rakrakan to the max mosh and they’d probably object but, even so, they would probably get the point, however repellent it might be. But our little interests, our little hobbies, our weird obsessions, our boy stuff: that’s private and should remain so. The best thing we can do is keep them hidden from view and even, at times, deny that they exist at all. But we blunder ahead regardless, certain that the very thing they find attractive about us is the very thing, in fact, they’d rather not know about. “Love me,” we whisper tenderly over the beer, “love my incipient autism.”

Here are some more consuming obsessions that I would personally not tell a girl about: membership in the local Dragon Boat team; addiction to Knoxville’s Jackass; anything to do with table tennis, or racecar driving, or rubber shoes, or pet fish, or the complex processes by which one might accumulate a large sum of money. Computers.

And of course the reverse is true, too. I read somewhere once that gender differences in the behavior of children as little as three weeks old have been detected. Baby boys will exhibit enthusiasm and excitement when shown what we might call things on a television screen: railway locomotives, airplanes, footballs, a PS2 running Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas etc. Whereas little baby girls become animated and beside themselves with interest when shown what we might call people. In other words, the sort of stuff that interests us in later life is hot-wired and very, very different for men and women. Your girlfriend’s equivalent to your Hero Clix collection is, in fact, her best friend—probably that sarcastic beeyatch who is forever sending your girlfriend text messages which she won’t show you. You should no more be expected to share to her affection, or interest, than she should be expected to watch Rugby in Laguna on a filthy afternoon in April. Or sit rapt to attention listening to Fat Boy Slim.

Way Ahead

Is Roger Federer the best player ever?



It’s the way he wins, as much as the fact that he keeps on doing it, which has earned Federer the awed respect he currently commands. At 23 his shot-making is flawless: his game has no obvious weaknesses. Coincidentally or not, he is the only ranking player who doesn’t use a coach, having fired Peter Lundgren in Dec 03, just before he won the Australian Open.

Federer’s is not a power game: he can’t match Roddick’s 150mph serve, he doesn’t bother with double-handed ground strokes and he says he feels a lack of killer instinct at the net. But as anybody who watched him obliterate Roddick in the Wimbledon final knows, Federer is the most gracefully aggressive player on the international circuit today.

His “inner game” has drawn as much praise recently as his precision stroke play. Big crowds, big matches, big points—nothing seems to faze the guy.

In GQ Sport he says, “The mental aspect of my game is a huge advantage and it used to be a huge disadvantage, because I used to be very impulsive on court, screaming, shouting, throwing the racquet. I had to figure that out. My low was very low. I knew I was losing too much energy acting that way. I had to take time, you know. Become a man.”

Screw it



I heard in a forum that was aimed towards educating first-time voters yesterday that one should vote for the Government and if not satisfied, march against it. They call it the big antiwar demo “democracy in action”—as if voting were not. But the truth is that both demonstrations and elections are definitive of modern democracy in that millions of people say what they want, and are ignored.

Everything now seems a long way from the dawn of democracy, when the heads of every Athenian household would walk down the marketplace to debate whether or not to build a theatre or go to war with Sparta. If they’d known that within 3,000 years the process would have been reduced to a system by which people vote for shit they don’t want and then grumble about it, I doubt they’d have bothered.

To be honest, I just wouldn’t vote. Not because there’s no one good out there, but because democracy is a lot of bollocks. Altruists whinge that it’s our duty to vote ‘cause most people aren’t lucky enough to live in a democracy and we have to support it, but that’s crap.

Democracy is a culturally loaded construct in whose name the worst evils have perpetrated. It is something America wants to foist on other countries against their will so as to implant friendly administrations that will provide cheap oil. Iraq doesn’t want democracy. It doesn’t know what it wants. That’s why 111 parties stood in its general election. The Sunnis, who didn’t bother to vote, are ahead of us in political thought because they knew they were a minority and couldn’t win—so why be implicated in a Shia hegemony that wants to slaughter them? They have no interest in our stupid system of elected dictatorships.

Communism is routinely assumed to have failed. But democracy has also failed, if a bit less spectacularly. As the man said (I forgot which man), “Marxism was too good an idea to be wasted on a lot of drunken Russians”—and democracy was too good an idea to be wasted on us.

Jesse and Celine is forever, even if love ain’t.

I remember watching Before Sunrise with someone who kept grabbing me in there. “You’re like dessert,” she whispered in my ear as Jesse tells Celine, “I don't know, I think that if I could just accept the fact that my life is supposed to be difficult. You know, that's what to be expected, then I might not get so pissed-off about it and I'll just be glad when something nice happens,” and I thought, “Hey, this is awesome but stop mashing it.” When Celine says the line, “I like to feel his eyes on me when I look away,” she suggested that we fool around. It made me furious. She had no notion of the gift I was opening up to her, a real window to my soul. Before Sunrise for Christ’s sake: one of the pop-culture cornerstones that make up my id. I could have played her Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana, loaned her The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, taken her to see The Sketch by Victorio Edades, which, as a little boy at the National Museum, I stood before, transfixed.

Some people fear that they are no more than the sum of their cultural reference points: the books read, films seen, the posters on the walls, and records on rotation. I am happy to admit this. What then remains for a Dracula of pop culture when love is over? What of the books loaned, the records recommended? What gets passed to the next lover, what gets sold for cash at a garage sale? When a relationship ends, I sell none of it, filing it all away for future reference, marveling at how the most dreadful person can turn you on to the most beautiful music or film. These gifts, given in ego—this is me, this is me, have some more of me—are like transferable tattoos. These books and videos, they are stronger than those ephemeral fights, even the ephemeral fucking.

Years after the grabber, I was with a girl younger than me, and I wanted her to see the film with me before we parted. I sat next to her and watched her face as she watched. We did part ways that week, as I sensed we would, and as sad as I was, I was never sorry that I had introduced her to that film. She was special enough and sensitive enough. She understood what I was giving her. When the Dalai Lama dies a new one is born the same day. She became, in my head, the Dalai Celine. It has been a year since it ended with the Dalai Celine. She gave me a lot of music, turning up on my doorstep flushed with excitement, carrying a Tower Records bag. For the first three months after the breakup I kept the CDs she gave me hidden in a cupboard, then moved them like a premature baby first to the nursery and then “home,” the shelves above my desk: More Parts Per Million by The Thermals. Guitar Romantic by Exploding Hearts. Fever to Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

It amazed me, as it always had, that there could be so much out there I had neither heard nor heard of before my lust introduced me to it. It can feel frightening at first—if there are so many records I didn’t know about, perhaps there are whole worlds out there, too—yet, when lust is over, it becomes comforting. Perhaps there are whole worlds out there.

Once upon a time my buddy Steve made the world’s most halfhearted attempt to kill himself over a girl: eight aspirin pills and a long sleep. When he woke up, me and our friend Diego, took him to Le Ching where he ate five platters of hakao. Steve introduced me and Diego to Bruce, the archetype of masculinity. We’d come to his house and we’d lie in the couch and watch Springsteen concert films and he’d sigh, “I love you, Bruce!” then turn to us: “Not in a gay way. I just want to hug him.”

The three of us were going to take a road trip, listening to Springsteen on repeat, but we ended up taking the trips alone. I have no idea what happened, but Darkness On The Edge of Town still makes frustration and sorrow turn, in my mouth, to a smooth beer, swirled, enjoyed, wallowed in. And on the cover of the record, which hangs in my bedroom, Bruce looks, with his dark curly hair and white V-neck T-shirt.

It feels very different when the parting is acrimonious. What I would give—a Shylock’s lump of flesh—to take back having played Darkness on the Edge of Town to that tart who squirmed during Before Sunrise.

When someone you love dies, it is common to take on some of their traits in order to keep them alive. The loss of love is like mourning, instead of tics you keep the records, books, movies.

The girl, who if such things exist, was the love of my life, gave me nothing. No books, no records, although she always promised to. I had no cultural help. All I had was her. I could not understand it when it ended. There was no Franz Ferdinand to help me, no Marillion, no unsung Altman movie. Well, there’s one thing: one night when we were about to watch Before Sunrise she ran out to pick up two tubs of FIC avocado ice cream at the convenience store that I had passed a hundred times but never entered. “You’ve never had a FIC avocado ice cream?” she gasped. When her sister was pregnant she became addicted to the stuff. She did midnight runs for her and now she was doing them for me, who was trying very hard not to fall but still grateful for ice cream in May. She brought it back and we watched Before Sunrise, at the end of which she turned to me and said, “I want to make love to you when you’re 80.” She had put her finger on my fixation with the movie, which is quite simply: “Isn't everything worth doing in life a way to be loved a little more?”

The last night we spent together she walked me from one stall of FIC to another, downing three cups in one hour. In her frozen frenzy she was painting herself as a girl who consumes, who takes what she wants when she wants it, who throws caution to the wind. She is none of these things. But here, in a tiny gesture, she offered a vision of how our relationship could have been.

Movies, books, and records, fixed, pinned like spiders, unchanging and serene, are never going to melt. Thinking of her I take just a few licks of a FIC—it is enough, it is too much—and then throw it in the trash. Jesse loves Celine. There. So I’ll always know where it is.

Saturday

After watchin' Bewitched and rummaging the streets in pursuit of, umm, a convenience store, Michael and I went to Twin Towers for Nic's despedida party before he leaves for Amsterdam on Wednesday. I’m glad I did—the crowd was the best, met a lot of friends, and the beer the beer!

Thanks to Joel for all the photos.

A Post-It

For two buddies: Thank you for making my life awesome these past few days. More adventures!


For you: Better be fo real. ;) (Subtitle: Please don’t mess with me.)

Totally Random

Last Saturday’s Super revelry was awesome. Check out the stories and photos of Fuzz and Pammy! Now!!

The last week has been incredibly amazing, exhausting, creepy, and unbelievably wild.

Friday was Film class midterms, which was four hours long! It was grueling and shaat but I enjoyed and learned loads of stuff. It was one funny sight when our class emerged from the basement classroom—with everyone looking so intoxicated yet relieved that it was all over.

I used up a total of two bluebooks, two pens, four long bond papers, and six pages of yellow pad for illustrations. It was a fun test to take, often blitzed by errant questions like, “Rewrite the ending of Ging (plot: young little girl, poor family, sings and dances, gets discovered by some lady, catapults to stardom, and blah-di-blah), with Ging turning out to be a lesbian kid and Michael Jackson flying in from the U.S. to kidnap her.” I’M NOT KIDDING. It was crazy.

That night went to Fuzz’ Mild Seven party in Manila DJ Club. I didn’t know what to expect, so imagine how hyped-up I was with what turned out to be a raaaaaad night with great people. Check out Manila’s Most Stylish’s blog for the photos and buzz. O ha.

Thank you to Gino, Lizette, Jenna, Vic, Celine, and Marco for the great stories, frenziedly random laughter, and dandy drinks.

So many discs, so little time

V.A.
The Agents of Impurity


Inside a package that looks like a 7’ single, I found a bootleg and a CD, both curated by Kenneth Goldsmith, creator of the online resource www.ubu.com. It’s about words, or non-words, maybe about poetry, although it seems to me that poetry has always been one of the most difficult things to define. Maybe ‘cause it’s not just about definition, too free to get stuck in some common form. So even typescript numbers on paper, or forming questions like “Did your ears pop?” “Who took my toothbrush?” “When is a question a form of order?” can seem new, when they’re handled carefully. About my ears, yeah, they popped, ‘cause they were tickled by people like Antonin Artaud, Vito Acconci, Dokaka, Niel Mills… Stoppin’ now, don’t want to give away too much.

Rusty Santos
The Heavens


Before I start talking about The Heavens, let me ask you this: what do you think about a fashion brand starting a music label? You might be thinking that it would be just too fashionable, that they should keep on doing clothes and not stick their noses into what is maybe not their cup of tea. But you need to know that United Bamboo (the NY fashion brand) is as good a diligent dilettante as they are at what they’re already famous for. The Heavens, a third album by Rusty Santos—mostly famous for his collaboration work with Animal Collective—is a dry, dusty, gently dizzying lo-fi/analog drift. A new kind of cowboy is born—the one who sat by the peyote.

Will update in a few with last night’s wickedly bang-up thump!

Passing By

I really really feel like writing a loooong entry about everything that's happening in the past week but it's 11:30pm and I have to do my Math homework! Rarr I'm such a good schoolboy.

Just came from Taft, interviewed Sandwich, Twisted Halo, omg Cambio, Silent Sanctuary, and omg omg Sugarfree. Tonight, more than any other, I felt like that kid in Almost Famous--following around those music gods with a recorder, pen and paper. In the next two nights, I'm gonna be doing the same thing and I'm just totally overwhelmed.

Everything has been pretty crazy these past weeks and I'm just really having loads of fun. Everyone has been so nice, every piece seems to fit just right.

Saturday was just awesome and I'm gonna try to write about it here next time.
Thank you thank you thank you for making that night memorable, you know who all of you are. Hope to see all of you soon!

Rush Update!

I'm so excited for Choco Factory tomorrow and last week was awesome 'cause I saw my batchmates and it was really great and some of those that I don’t even know started asking me how I was and it was just great and seeing all my classmates and signing each other’s yearbooks and chatting about the usual and seeing La Salle which still looks outrageously awesome and I got a new original DVD of Orange County and I was f-ing sick last week and I went to the office heavily drugged—ended up not writing anything but it was fun ‘cause we laughed so hard talking and eating Embassy food and I cut two classes because I wanted to watch Rockstar INXS and Southpark and last Sunday I was supposed to watch Wedding Crashers with the YeahYeahs but I didn’t ‘cause I stayed at home and watched Alonso die on the tracks (no championship points at all!!) and I just got a text from someone and now I’m really happy and today my Math teacher approached me after class and she gave me Nick Hornby’s 31 Songs which is the most awesome book in the world and now I have to run and walk outside and I wanna eat vanilla ice cream and WATCH CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY!!!!!! THAT’S SIX EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!