marshmallow nuns, choirs, stolen babies, and cocks

Driving with friends from Pasig to Makati on a Sunday afternoon, the sky overcast and wrung dry of emotions. My bladder shrieking in agony. Sitting over coffee mixes invented by an increasingly commercialist society while listening to an old friend tell the story of his gastro-intestinal disturbance that has reached up to his respiratory tracts. Might be asthma, the doctor said. My doctor-friend, sipping her black coffee beside me, rambles on about some medical shit that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Realizing I’m the only one in the table who hasn’t seen The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway yet (the stage musical, not the melodramatic movie version). Nope, seeing the Paris Opera House doesn’t count. The old friend with gastro-intestinal shit has seen Aida too.

Relief after peeing. Driving back to Pasig to pick up another old friend. Chitchat on jobs and job hunting. Life and fucking. Babies and husbands and wives. “My baby is so cute,” she blurts out. “You should seriously check if it were really yours. There must’ve been a mix-up at the delivery room,” I reply. An old hag suddenly materializing out of nowhere, demanding that we back off the car so as not to block her sidewalk kiosk of crude oil. Crude behavior. Polite response. Do the elderly have the right to become bitches? It comes with age, perhaps?

Hitting shuttlecocks which my doctor-friend simply calls ‘cocks.’ “Now where the hell did our good cocks go?” Struggling to re-learn a game I haven’t played for centuries. Trying to cheat in vain. Trying hard to find the right moves to execute that damn smash. Still couldn’t do it. Maybe I should stick to swimming. Or eating. Losing. Winning. Losing again. And again. The talent to cheat needs to be sharpened regularly like a pencil. Thinking of joining Dionne and the rest of the gang next Saturday. 'Should play and practice without my bitchy friends yelling “Idiot!” or “Stupid!” or other Tagalog unprintable expletives every time I miss the freaking cock. Missed again. Damn cock. Next time, I’d just play with my own cock. Sweat. Drenched shirt clinging on my slender body. Reddened torso. My allergy to temperature change kicks in again.

Receiving a post card from Paris from a French friend who's finishing her memoire (that's thesis to us, Americanized neo-colonials). Rooftops and chimneys of immeubles résidentiel, très français. Suddenly missing al fresco cafés with blazing heaters under large beach umbrellas. Narrow, cobbled streets. Warm winter gloves and Russian seatmate with bad breath. Ésperant que je peux y rentrer.

Choral recital in a Conservatory headed by a nun who, according to a student, looks more like a blob of marshmallow that grew arms and fingers. Just arms and fingers. Wobbling marshmallow nun that smiles a lot. And plays the piano too. Talented marshmallow. Swelling chorus that hinted at something grander. Unsure altos and brassy tenors. Good singers, nevertheless. Or good choirmaster? Bad French accent. Chuck the French song if you couldn’t pronounce it right, for Buddha’s sake. Renaissance polyphony, acceptable. Sacred music, passable. Negro spirituals, needs more soul, more body, more Negro-ness (with apologies to African Americans for such a politically incorrect term). Enjoyed it immensely, though. Congratulating my friend, the choir master, for a job well done. No, don’t give me your huge, yellow balloon. It’s their gift to you. Marshmallow thinks she's the pope and starts smiling to everyone.

Listening to Jekyll and Hyde CD, which the old friend with gastro-intestinal shit has burned for me. Realizing that its attempt at epical melodic progressions is too tacky. An attempt, that’s what it is. Formulaic and bland. Good songs, individually, but lacks cohesion as a whole. No recurrent themes. Cheap swells. Horribly pop treatment. Pastiche of musical influences from various periods. Lack of identity? It can be improved. There is promise. Great promise. I’d still want to see it staged here. Picking on it but still playing it. Singing This is the Moment with Dr. Jekyll. A song popularly bastardized by a local singer who won in a local singing competition on local TV.

Arm muscles ache terribly. Too much badminton. Too much pretense on the court, smashing that freaking cock. Damn. 'Can’t play with my own cock now.

Updating one's blog is a bitch. Realizing it’s far too taxing to dwell on details. Typing continuously without much thought. Forgetting self-censorship or self-editing. Ending this lousy post with a period.