Bet On The World

Tony

Rich Hippie

“Calm down, people! All of you will get your pay!” I reassured my employees at the bar. “I haven’t got my money yet. As you all know, we don’t make that much money because this bar is just for sophisticated and artistic people. You know these people don’t make a lot of money,” I smiled while I said this.

“It’s all right, Tony,” Nico said, a little bit disappointed.

“What about you, Janice and Macmac?” I asked my other two employees.

“Ser, we really need the money,” Macmac said, while Janice nodded. “Our kids need the money for their school supplies and their projects.”

“Mac, Janice, I can only give you both 2 thousand pesos for now. Is that okay?" I asked, looking intently at Mac as if I was only talking to him and not his wife. And then the two left.

“What’s the problem? Why are you short on money?” Nico asked.

“I got very excited and bought a new car and invested in a new business! One that is going to make me some money and not lose it,” I said to him while looking at my watch.

“Are you regretting putting this bar up?” Nico asked, smiling.

I said, “No, I like this place. This is my safe haven. I don't regret any of my decisions!” I said with vigor and integrity, like I was talking to a bunch of people trying to guilt me into saying I regret it.

“All right. I thought you were growing to hate it here,” Nico said, gulping down his half-full beer.

“No way, man! This place will be remembered as a place of peace and love, an expression of freedom, a sophisticated and artistic place. Like some of those places where the beat writers recite their poems and folk singers sing their songs,” I said, looking at my almost empty bar.

All You Need Is Love

My father has a lot of money! He’s friends with the president. The time the president visited our house, my father made us wear all our fanciest clothes and my mother and sisters wore all their jewelry. My hair is slicked-back like it’s been licked by a cow. I was 11. My father wore his hair like mine or, more accurately, I wore my hair like his. He wanted me to be just like him. I wanted to be like my older brother. He left for America at that time because he wanted freedom. He wanted to go there because he said all the best art and artists came out of America. We read their literature, we listened to their music, we copied their style, we copied everything about them. I wanted to go there with him. But I didn’t know what he was talking about then. I didn't know anything about literature or music, I was just a kid.

If you thought my father was cruel, no, he's not! He’s just your typical educated Filipino. He just wants his boys to be just like him and my sisters just like my mother – submitting.

My father is aloof, but only to his kids. Not to his friends. They’d drink at our minibar in the house and they’d talk about the state of their businesses.

One night, I asked him if he thought about my brother. He said, “not really. He'll be back here after his odyssey in America,” and then patted my head three times because if he patted it more than thrice, that’s showing affection and that’s not his job, it's my mother’s.

My mother is from a good family. She didn’t really like my father but he desired her, so everything was fixed between my father and my grandfather. My mother once was a Mutya ng Pasig in the early ‘60s. I saw her photo from that contest hanging and looked at her photo on the table simultaneously. The photo is black and white and she wore a suppressed smile like that of Mona Lisa. The photo is mysterious and beautiful.

As time wore on, I became more and more like my brother. But I don’t want to do it in another country. I want to be here. I don’t want to be an artist there. As he said, the promised land for an artist is New York. You can be with the most daring artists there. But I said to myself, I don’t want to be like him and leave the country. Sure, there are more exciting people there, but we have some here too. I’ll just do my art here and find some people just like me, who do art because they want to do it and love it, not because of money, fame or recognition.

Tony B. Goode

I certainly was not good. I was rebelling. I didn’t listen to my father’s practical advice. I wanted to be an artist, not a guy sitting at a desk hitting on his secretary.

“Tony, don’t be like your brother,” he said, with no emotion whatsoever.

“I’m here aren’t I? So, I’m not like him!” I said, indignantly.

“You’re turning into him. Stop this nonsense now,” he said, calmly.

“I’m not like him. I’m still studying, right? So I wasn’t him.”

“But you can’t do anything to that degree! Creative writing? It’s very easy to write. Why would you want to waste four years of your life learning about books? You could’ve been a very good lawyer.”

I didn’t reply to what he just said.

I wrote poetry, short stories, and essays. I didn’t really care about social injustices. All I cared about was my writing. It’s okay if you write about the injustices of rich people. I didn’t care about any of that. All I want to write about is the self, the body, the desire. There are just too many subjects in the world to just talk about injustices, I said to a classmate once, who wrote a very worn out dialogue of a poor man with his fellow poor neighbors attacking the rich people and the landowners of their barrio.

“That’s good and all, but I’m not really interested in that area,” I told him.

“It’s all right. I didn’t write stories for you. I wrote it for the people. The common people,” he said, sarcastically.

“I’m a common person,” I said, smiling.

“You said it yourself in front of the class that all you wanted to write about was the self, the body, and the desire. That you don’t care about social injustices at all, so you’re not a common person–It’s not a compliment,” he said.

“You know what, Pablo? I admire that you think what you write matters. I admire your commitment. I’m just not interested in your writings.

“I don’t think it, I know it! I know that it matters! I want people like me to know that they are heard and that I know what they are going through, and that I’m going to expose the abuser of these people through my writing – these people are a social cancer,” Pablo said, with burning passionate eyes.

“Okay! Take it easy, Rizal!” I said, trying to make it light, but instead of making it light I made it worse by mentioning Rizal!

“He doesn’t have anything to do with it!” he screamed.

“Truly, you’ve read him, right?” I asked.

“Of course I’ve read Rizal! Who doesn’t?!”

“Right! So you know I was just joking, right?”

He just walked away after that. I wasn’t making fun of him. I was just tired of all the Rizal copycats! Be original for God’s sake! Like, okay, I know that my father is evil for letting the squatters of Manila just drag them out of there and didn’t put them in any relocation place. I already know that and I hate him for that too! Are you satisfied?

No? You’re not? That’s okay, I’m not here to please you, I’m here to write about myself! Me me me me me me me me me me!

Sympathizer by Pablo Dimakulangan

When I was a boy, I would walk in the woods barefoot. I wouldn’t feel like I was alone. I was with Mother Nature. The feeling of being in the jungle of possibilities. Then, one day, a battalion of soldiers came into our little barrio. They’d say “where are you hiding the communists?” to every household.

I would play hide and seek with my friends Totoy and Nene. We can hide there in the woods for hours and whoever’s ‘taya’ or the seeker, would need to have a lot of patience finding the two remaining players. Before the game starts, the players need to play "maiba taya’. Totoy’s palm is facing down while mine and Nene’s are facing up. Totoy’s taya. We started the game at 3 in the afternoon and it was dusk and the only person that he found was me.

“Where do you think she’s hiding, Jun?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. We departed right there near the lake,” I said.

“Do you think she has gone home already?” he asked, searching for her left and right.

“Maybe, you know, because last time I heard her mother was whipping her with a tsinelas and I heard her cry,” I said, doing the same thing.

“Let’s go home?” he asked.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we walked home not thinking about her.

We lead a very simple life. My father was a farmer and my mother was a tailor. We wait for what my father will bring home and we eat what my mother cooked. It’s just like any other night. I went home, held my father and mother’s hand and put it on my forehead and said ‘good evening’. The food was ready. My mother fried dried fish, eggplant and shrimp paste. My father asked me, “Where did you go?” While chewing the food in his mouth. I said, “we played hide and seek.” While dipping the fried eggplant in the shrimp paste.

“Are you with Nene?” He asked, while breaking the fish in half.

“Yes. But we thought she got bored hiding and went home,” I said, looking at his face. “They’re gone,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Her father came here earlier and asked where her daughter was, and I said ‘maybe they’re with Jun and Totoy’ and he just hurried to where you three would always play.”

“And where are they now?” I asked.

“We don't know but the soldiers that came here said that they were part of a communist group up there in the mountains,” he said, drinking his water.

“Stop. Stop talking, we’re eating here. Don’t disrespect the table,” my mother said.

And so we stopped talking. After dinner, I asked my father why there are people like that and he said it was because they want to help us to make our country better. I didn’t know what to make of it. Is my father a communist too or is he just a sympathizer?

One afternoon, news broke out that Nene and her family were dead. The capitan of the barrio told us that they fought the soldiers, that the soldiers saw them and called them and instead of stopping, Nene’s parents brought out a gun and fired in their direction. The Capitan is escorted by soldiers. I couldn’t remember who said it but I heard a voice that said, “when the moon is out I’ll come by your house and talk.”

My father, after we ate our dinner, went out. That’s the last time I saw him. My mother, the next day, got the news that my father had been shot to death by the soldiers. She wailed and wailed until she couldn't utter a sound and her eyes were too dry to let a tear out. After a week of crying and lamenting. The men in our barrio built a bamboo bed and we laid his body there, burned it and let his soul sail in the sea. It’s not my father’s wish to burn his body, but Capitan said that we can’t bury his body in the cemetery, because he’s a communist. So my mother said, "let's burn his body and let his memory live in our hearts and minds.” The people of our barrio agreed. Did all the people agree or just the communists and the sympathizers? That I don't know.

She seemed not to know that I was still alive, that I was there. She didn’t ask me how I was feeling, she just wallowed in her own sadness and grief, not knowing that I was hurting too. After some time, my mother would just wake up, do her tailoring, cook food and leave it on the table for me to eat. We never eat together anymore. When I was out there in the fields, she would send somebody to bring me lunch.

One night, my mother was waiting for me. I saw her sitting on the floor and sewing some kind of uniform. I bowed down and reached for her hand and put it on my forehead. I washed my hands and sat on the floor where our dining table was. I started eating and she looked at me intently and said, “Anak, I want you to avenge your father and finish what he started with his comrades.” Then and there she said that as if, after my father died, we were talking. I wasn’t even finished swallowing what I put in my mouth. I looked at her and said, “Nay, I can’t do anything about that. Tatay died because he broke the law. I just want to live a simple life. You know that I’m courting Isay and her father demanded I give him 5 thousand pesos for me to marry her daughter,” I said, then drank water. “They have women there in the mountains,” she said, as if that would convince me to join the group. “Your father would be very upset if he heard this.” I told her that ‘if he heard what I said he would be very proud of me and if he heard what you just said he would be very upset with you.’ Then she stopped talking to me and headed to her bed.

The next morning, I got the news that she went into our Capitan’s house and shot his whole family down. The soldiers weren’t there to protect him and his family. After that, my mother went into the mountains to join the group.

After selling our one cow, pigs and chickens, I got the money to pay out Isay’s father. We got married. I was 25 and she was 18. After 3 years, we got our own little boy and girl. They were twins. It’s like my father and my mother again, except with twins. Isay was a tailor and I was a farmer.

The relatives of Capitan from Manila moved here. And they claimed that the land that my farm and my house was on was theirs. Their lawyer gave me a notice that we needed to pack up, and if we’re still there in a week they will be forced to drag us out of there. My wife and I didn’t know what to do, we weren’t educated like these people. We only know the basics; how to read and write.

After a week, we were still there, and a jeep full of soldiers came walking into our little house. Some were outside and circled us. And the lawyers came inside and said, ‘Do you need us to drag you out or are you going to get out of here on your own accord?’ We walked out and when my wife and kids were on the carabao cart rolling away from our old house. I came back and told them that I had left something inside. I raised my left hand and pointed to them. That’s the signal. There were bullets flying everywhere. The soldiers didn’t anticipate that a hundred rebels would be there waiting for them. They only had 15 soldiers, so they lost. We took everything they had. Boots, guns, bucket hats, and a jeep. The lawyer died too.

Now I’m in the mountains with my mother and my family. “Your father would be proud,” she said and hugged me. We’re living peacefully here. We move from mountain to mountain and encourage the farmers and the people in the barrio to join our cause. Some would say no and just give us vegetables and animals to cook and some don’t want to have anything to do with us. Some would join and some would just say that they’re with the cause but they can’t join.

Doo Wop Night

I was listening to a song called Come Softly to Me by The Fleetwoods, and I got the idea of having a doo wop night. I invited all of my friends and hired a band that would play the instrumentals. The doo wop night will be on Saturday. Nico is okay with it. He said he would play songs by Ricky Nelson and I nodded with agreement.

Janice and Macmac were cleaning the bar when I came in. There’s a black and white photo of a couple from the 1950s on the wall with a text that says ‘Doo Wop Night’. It's the poster that I created for the event. I looked at the makeshift stage and the band was setting up, and Nico was with them. They wore a flannel shirt, blue jeans and dress shoes; they also were wearing the slick back hair of the time. Just perfect for the theme. Nico is dressed like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause: a red windbreaker, a white shirt, blue jeans, and boots. I smiled, looking at him.

It’s 8 pm and some of the people that I invited were there. They didn’t fit in. They wore casual outfits. It’s okay, I didn’t tell them that they needed to dress like they’re from the mid 20th century. Julia, though, walked in, all dressed in black; black sunglasses, black beret, black pants, black doctor martens, and black turtleneck. She came up to me and said, “what do you think?” I said, “You look good and mysterious.”

The band started playing the instrumental for the song, Poor little fool. Nico started to sing and he imitated Ricky Nelson. But he can’t be like him because he’s wearing the costume James Dean wore in rebel without a cause, though they are equally attractive. Ricky Nelson and James Dean, I mean. He has a fascination with these pop culture icons. That’s what I like about him.

There are maybe 10 people there inside the bar. Most of them were my friends, and most of them saw the poster on the wall outside and gave it a go. Julia and I were sitting with each other. “Is he good?” I asked her.

“Yeah, he's all right. I like the way he sings.” She replied, looking at him.

“Did you sleep with him?”

“What?” She said, looking confused.

“I saw you two talking outside that night,” I said.

“So?”

“Nothing, I’m just asking.”

“Yeah we did and he just walked out on me, didn't leave any note or didn’t call me after or whatever,” She said, swirling the drink in her hand.

“You seemed so upset about that? Did you like him?” I asked, examining her face.

“Yes, I did. But I think he has some personal issues that he needs to overcome first before jumping into a relationship.”

“Oh, you can fix him, right?’’ She just looked at me.

“I don’t think I can fix him,” she said, looking at me.

“Of course you can! Look at what you did to his father!”

“Shut up,” she said, worried that Nico would hear. I smiled at her. She rolled her eyes at me. “Now, I’m going to sing a song called Lonesome Town by Ricky Nelson,” Nico said after performing 5 songs. He grabbed his acoustic guitar, played the intro and closed his eyes. He sang, looking at Julia.

Julia looked uncomfortable instead of being thrilled that Nico was looking at her while he was singing his song. She’s looking at me as if asking if he’s done looking at her. It’s so funny. I whispered that he was not looking anymore. She looked at the stage and saw that he was still looking at her, and she smiled at him awkwardly. She gazed back at me and muttered something like a curse. I laughed. She went outside for a smoke. Nico was done with his last song and he said, “that’s all for tonight for me, thanks for listening.” He put his guitar on the guitar stand and walked out of the bar. He didn’t even look at me. He came back looking confused. He grabbed his guitar and put it in the case and walked out.

I went outside to see if Julia was still there but she was gone. I thought maybe they talked and didn’t go well. Maybe she asked if they could go back to her apartment and I took his face confused when, in actuality, he was full of ecstasy inside?