“WHY must the Filipino be a squatter in his own country?” said the man. He spoke with an audible enough voice, but not the sort of which is used day by day by the vehicular dispatchers serving the commuting public. Besides, he seemed thin. Payat siya. I mean, there are thin dispatchers, but these have wood-hard bones that possess a push-about drive unbecoming of the man now on the microphone. We had him on tape, as did his adversaries before us. For the next sequences, the man shook hands from door to door within the community of his legitimate congressional candidacy. Such a traditional politician’s gesture it was, except that he seemed quite too thin to be the man doing such a traditional thing.
At one point, he explained something to a group of wits-sharpened gin drinkers who had bare knees, elbows and ankles. The man wanted to be thorough. At the same time, he humbled himself as he got conscious of his own starting to avail of his little audience’s third minute. His decrescendo prompted a quick refutal by one of the folks, “No! What we need is to vote for you!” This and the supreme approval of all else around the lowly table smacked of a candour unknown in the country’s central business district.
The human rights defender Henrietta Rosales spoke. At least, she now has gotten to sit in Congress. As she discussed the man’s immense organizational abilities, thanks to his sound theoretical grounding, Ferdie Baron smilingly rooted in front of the monitor screen. “E-TA! E-Ta,E-ta e-ta!”
Of course, there came the inevitable part of the video. Even the penultimate phase of the non-fiction narrative carried out an argument well-known to all of us, even before the PLAY button had been pressed.
The parade footage was the only part of the film in which sweeping, panning shots were taken. I mean, there were packed crowds at the plaza scenes of campaign and protest, but I guess there were no big buildings in which the camera man could prop himself up into so as to stand back at a vantage point in which more than a hundred heads (not just thirty) could be framed into the display. Flags there were. Many of them larger in scale than the international flags posted in front of the U.N. complex corner-set a few avenues away. None of the thumbnail-size US flags on Ralph Lauren clothes worn by many high school and college students.
The demonstrators clogged Recto Avenue, but unlike floodwater, they had a definite, singular steady flow, like a brown river in slow, digital but massive motion. Besides, floodwater carries the minor possibilities of pesky sicknesses. The crowd supporting the slain congressman-to-be could have been a potion to stave off the social cancer.
Although most of those marching were unknown soldiers, there was Armando Malay. “He’s an RA,” said said Ferdie, Ferdinand Baron that is, not the other Ferdie, Fernando Carubio, his friend who became editor-in-chief of The Pilipino Scholar, our school organ.
Then came the sequence featuring the martyr’s fat lady of a wife, Lydie.
“She never married after the assassination,” said old fat Rhoda, Rhoda being naïve as to how Lydie would in fact marry another man a few years later.
________________________________________Kabanata ng Kabataan
How did these youths now attendant to the video, along with some dozens of other folks, get together to form Layag (Liberatory Allied Youth Action Group), which did not even quite last as long as the rock band The Sex Pistols? How come they never even wrote songs, just dilute poems (i.e., John Carlos Trias’s “These are the Locks I want to Lick.”)
Well, one fine weekday, when cows still roved the Pamantasang Rajah Mudah Suliman campus, a young man by the name of Butch Goricetta was on a wheelchair. Unlike Hammond, another chairborne pedestrian, he wasn’t quite into turning his own wheels. He was driven by Ferdinand Baron, a man of thick but kempt hair. They ran into Oliver Mabutu, a bespectacled, bald-headed rock fan who couldn’t even buy his own electric guitar, and was rather too scared to smoke marijuana as a matter of habit. Heck, the last time that Oliver smoked marijuana was when a certain party at a small neighborhood just got too boring (It didn’t help, not especially when a fellow smoker insisted on keeping Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” playing on the audio component, rather than a murky plastic-cased AC/DC cassette that Oliver had eyed ever since getting into the sala.).
“I’m tired,” said Ferdie.
“We’re almost there,” said Butch.
“Need help there?” said Oliver.
“No, it’s OK, we can handle this,” said Ferdie.
Oliver walked on a bit, before pausing to stare at a Northwest Airlines stewardess then disguised as the PRMS student that she had been. “Wow!” he said. Bernie looked back at him.
The girl noticed Oliver staring at her. The cellular phone did not yet enter into the Philippine market back then, so she could not pretend to be busy noodling with text messages. Fortunately for her, an Aurora-IKOT jeepney was just passing so she got right aboard it. Oliver was going to follow her, but Ferdie yelled, “Huy!”
Now, Oliver did the looking back. The jeepney slipped away when Oliver threw another glance at it, so he crossed the street A. Roxas again to again engage with Bernie and Butch.
"You, ha!" said Ferdie, on the look-out.
“I know her,” said Oliver.
The two other guys looked at him, as if he were some hot, new interesting thing running on TV.
“By the way, I’m Ferdie,” said he of thick, kempt hair, although his name was an object that Oliver did not at all crave for as he did that of the babe who just slipped away.
“I’m Butch,” said the other.
“Where are you off to?” said the taller of the two. Yes, even if Butch got up on his feet, Ferdie would still be the taller. Oliver was the tallest of the three, however.
And it was this tallest one who did say, by way of reply, “I’m just going off to eat.”
“Well, that makes you better off,” said Ferds, “At least you have money to go buy some food for yourself.”
“Actually, I’m going to eat at my aunt’s place.”
“Take us along,” said Ferds, just by means of jest, which Oliver took well, having thought to himself, “It was her that I had just wanted to take along.”
On the earnest side, Ferdie said, “By the way, maybe you’d like to join this informal organization we’re now forming up.”
“I already have orgs,” said Olive.
“Any frats? We ourselves are barbarians.”
“No.”
“What orgs?”
“Ligang Makatarungan...” (the Justice League of Filipino School-Youths, that was, although Olive failed to indicate he himself had left that group by then.)
“I came from there, too,” said Ferdie, “How come we didn’t meet up there?”
“I left last year, because of Gogo...”
“Augusta?”
“Yes.”
“Oh...”
“Well, if you liked LM, you’ll like our org even better,” said Butch.
“What’s it called?”
“That’s one of our surprises in store for you... YOU can even help us decide the name.”
“Let’s go meet later at Acacia Dorm this 6:30 p.m.”
“Sounds good,” said Olive.
Butch looked up from his wheelchair, tilting his head, then smiling.
Ferdie couldn’t explain it, but he knew this new guy would come along. Heck, he and Butch weren’t going around campus expressly to recruit people. They had enough people already, but something on Olive’s face triggered Ferdie to open up the invitation.
“Look at that! We were just going to see John [Carlos Trias, that was] back at the dorm, and we already scored a new recruit,” Ferdie told Butch, fresh and proud.
“We’re fishers of men!” said Butch.________________________________________
Oliver came sharp at 6 p.m., with a stuffed stomach even. Ferdie saw him a few minutes later, himself still not having eaten, although he did not bring this up anymore to the new guy.
“You smell great,” said Ferdie, warmly.
“Oh, it’s not my fragrance. I actually found it on my Uncle Javy's dresser, (I should have pocketed the bottle Olive thinks to himself.) but he’s now in the States--- Sanfo.”
“Sanfo?” asked Ferdie, “That sounds new!” mistaking the name for that of the fragrance. He knew there were such fragrances as Calvin Kleins Eternity, Obsession et cetera and Ralph Lauren Polo Classic, ads for the likes of those had scrawled upon his petty eyes which would ever so frequently leaf over pages of English language Filipino broadsheets for news (such as the Manila Orbiter and the Prailen clan’s Priority NewsPost)--- not that he ever got to try so much as a sampler for such fragrances. Of course, if the print ads he had seen were on the all glossy-paged magazines rather than on local newspapers, there would have at least been a fold-in sample for him to get an inkling of such fashionable sensations.
“San Francisco,” said Olive, “My uncle’s now teaching there in a community college.”
“Sorry, the Sanfo we know of is Frisco in Del Monte, Quezon City,” said Ferdie, laughing at the joke of his own short-worldedness. “I’ll just go fetch Butch from his room. Don’t you leave! By the way, this is Ferds, my namesake. He’s the current editor of the Pilipino Scholar.” Ferds number 1 left.
“Hi, I’m Fernando Carubio,” said Ferds number 2.
“Oh, another Ferdie,” said Oliver.
“Actually in the province, I’m Nando, but here in Suliman, they call me Ferdie, too,” explained the guy. “You. What are you doing here?” said this Fernardo Carubio.
“The other Ferdie, Ferdinand Baron, invited me to come over here.”
“So it happens,” said this whiter-skinned Ferdie, “that you were merely dragged along into this thing. Most of us people here have been through something else.”
Oliver didn’t count on that something being of too much import. LAYAG was a new organization. Everyone helping in its starting out should be taken on an equal footing.
Fernando continued to speak in a raspy, unsingable MIT-er’s voice, not that he came from the great school, although he did become summa cum laude of BS Sociology in PRMS. This second Ferdie knew some little things that Oliver did, too, so the two got to keep talking to each other for a few minutes. Then came just what Fernando Carubio had been waiting for, better than a brilliant idea or insight on either of their behalves--- the presence of Charong... homely but familiar.
Ferdie C. gave his last two words to Oliver then went over to the newly-come old timer.________________________________________

Kabanata Pasear
Night it was, and a Friday, and the moon was almost full, waxing early was it Philippine schools’ second semester. Herminio Sotero Gatella, coming from his fraternity brother’s boarding house, was walking the streets of the Cama de sal cocktails and coffee district. He had heard something of this place from the airline tourism magazine Friendly Islands, copies of which he had leafed through in his uncle’s gasoline station. According to Ranielle Dorado, whose Friendly Islands column (“Vista Dulce”) Min could easily spot from issue to issue, Cama de sal was a warm and modest venue for uncrowded entertainment. Cama de sal came to be during the Spanish regime in the Philippines. Pocketfuls of Iberian peninsula stock, tailed by local island-born mestizos, would drink cups of either hot chocolate or Marca de Moreno beer in an ambience of scented candles set on brass holder sticks, if not glassworks. There was the Dos Frailes, where the Esplendidos, the Gauzons and other families of the gentry would come to gather. Los Gallinazos was where writers would get drunk surrounded by paintings, paintings done by artists from Binangonan, Rizal, Los Baños, Laguna and Lieco de Manila Art School. Sometimes there were paintings of women winnowing rice. Other times there were portraits of prominent Filipinos (like Don Jaime Hirayco y Gatbangon) who commisioned such paintings. The favourite of the bilingual Capampangan and Spanish poet Miguel Pamintuan were the paintings of clouds.
None of the Cama de sal establishments lasted deep into the American Regime. Cama de sal was revived by Julieta Polo Nalko around 1969. It was an overdone revival. Whereas Julieta Nalko deprived Cama de sal of its erstwhile fresh sea breeze, which she grossly alienated via her land reclamation project (decades later re-assumed by a fellow godmother to her in a number of high society weddings, Emma Austria Torres, who herself would become President of the Philippine Republic in 1998, doing what Julieta could not do in 1992, when she lost to Aquil Tamaco Enriquez), the First Lady Julieta brought in with her crème-gowned matrons such flowing infusions of parfums francaises as they daintily sipped on glasses of Chateau de Rieubryant or Don Ybarqueña champagne.
Yes, it was Mrs. Nalko who brought back Cama de sal, before Mr. Nalko undid it. With Bernardo Nalko’s presidential decree of curfew, even established Cama de sal patrons could not enjoy themselves. Heck, anyway, for as much as Nalko was concerned, Cama de sal had been infiltrated by communists, such as Menandro Zaldivar Benito, who was so good a customer in Guevara Grill, he even bought beers for fraternity brothers, just to keep him company. He only stopped doing so, when he shifted his investments to the young lady he courted and eventually married, Maria Cristina Pisonco, who took it upon herself to become a founding mother of the Delta Kappa sorority affiliated with the Kappa Doble fraternity. DK stood for dalagang kumikilos (maidens mobilized), whereas Kappa doble was for kabataang kumikilos (youths in action).
Orange Honey was a cafe established only by the late 1980’s. Its interior had the colours becoming of many coffee shops with its browns along the walls. Facing Gozum Street was its gas-bulb sign announcing the café name next to the graphic of a martini glass with an olive. Walking on the street, Min looked across. He saw gay men. They wore body-fitting shirts, shirts well-inspected each sewn together from whatever part of the world: Egypt, Mauritius, even Marikina. One wore a collarless neck-buttoned long-sleeved all-cotton cloud-gray shirt with pencil-gray stripes running across. Another’s shirt had a red trimming for the neckline and the short sleeve-edges whilst three-thread-wide black and white stripes alternated across the body of the shirt. An actress from showbiz vodka-drunk rested her unerect body on the hood of her Honda Accord. All the while, nobody noticed Min noticing them. Well, he didn’t step into the cafe, which hardly had anybody that deep Friday night, except eight bodies so full and satisfied of themselves. A meek-bodied waiter stood by the entrance door. He didn’t notice Min either, not that Min tried to get noticed.
Min was still a man feeling his way through this City of Man. He knew, however, this city was an easy one in which to score a jeepney ride. He saw a sizeable outlet of Donut Robot, but what should he a young, handsome man be doing at a donut shop late at Friday night? He knew he had to go through this experience, having to go out at night, being a college student in the city to which he was no native.
Of course, Min had asked his Suliman Cama de Sal chapter fraternity brother Wesley to accompany him just going about, but Wesley said he would just stay home reading his Mortimer Chemistry cheap reprint textbook.
“You can stay here, as much as you want to, brod,” Wesley had told Min several times that night, but Min insisted on prowling the streets of Cama de sal, even by himself.
After prowling through Romero and Gozum streets, and ending up not stopping for a drink anywhere, Min decided to go back to Wesley’s boarding house, the Pope John Paul II Youth Palace down Felipe Agoncillo Road. The palace had been instituted in 1985 to take in out-of-school youths. By 1993, it had been privatized however, and catered instead to FEU, University Belt and a handful of Suliman Cama de sal students.
The security guard recognized Min from hours back that night, so he did not ask for an ID or visitor’s purpose, but this...
“Pare, tumagay naman tayo diyan! (Hey, man! Let’s go have a shot)...” the guard reached out to Min a little serving of Marca de Claro’s gin.
Min accepted, wanting to be a good shot to this little chief of security. Min stuck around in the security guard’s post, not himself being in a rush to go back to Wesley’s room, not expecting the room-owner to be still awake, anyway.
The guard introduced himself as Joel. Min read from his nameplate that he was Joel Balabag. Min introduced himself as well. The gin tasted sharp, but there was a chaser of Sprite with squeezed calamansi (a small citrus fruit) to follow. There was also a pulutan (food to go with booze) of Humpy Dumpy flavoured corn chips.

Kabanata Manaña
It struck 9:30 a.m., still too early for Oliver to assume the narrative point of view, or at least that of the speaker. He will start to peer at his room-mate’s desk clock only by 10:14, although the clock had rung 5:30 in the morning. The next Layag meeting was to be at 11:00 that day.
Olive noticed all his three room-mates get up and leave that morning without his bothering to bid them farewell. One of them Jun Zabato, on his way out to the library for a Saturday session, even slammed the door of that very room which harboured all them four misfits. That didn’t even pry Olive’s eyelids open.
More than seventy minutes, Olive felt the urge to start waking up, that is, to stretch his consciousness to more than an attention span lasting for mere seconds. Justice was smoking. Justice was his newer room-mate.
The tickling of Justice’s cigarette smoke nearabouts Olive’s grimy as yet unbathed arms and upper body actually unfolded the fellow’s sleep, although this guy felt no annoyance--- inspiration to the contrary.
Olive looks at the room-mate Elmer Toribio’s desk-clock the second time for this morning, but he had been nudging his head to get a reading-ready view. More easy to his side was the face of Justice, standing up, facing him. Olive now looked at Justice well some twenty unconscious minutes after the guy had been giving him a close presence. Olive smiled. Justice grinned.
Justice waited for Olive to raise his upper body and twist to say, “Ang sarap ng tulog mo (You seem to be enjoying your sleep).”
Olive grinned wider, got up from his cushion, then got down the upper bunk which was where his bed was propped up.
Justice took him by the shoulder. “You might fall down,” he said.
Olive knew that Justice wanted to gel with him, but his itch to shower then attend the Layag meeting was just too great.
“I’ll just go take a shower, buddy.”
“No problem,” said Justice.
Olive took a shower, and he didn’t make it quick. Heck, I was well on time last night, he thought, Time for me now to be fashionably late. Besides, today’s a Saturday. He noticed a signed note on the right-hand shower wall.
It is hereby forbidden
to pollute the shower floor
with ANYTHING!!
-Death [Sgd.]
Olive knew that the notice was penned by Ben Vergara from the other bunk-filled room using the same comfort room. Indeed, Ben did not change the thick marker’s penmanship from what he had used for his postings in the other bunk-filled room, drawings he made on math notebook graphing paper and tacked onto his closet door.
Olive didn’t feel guilty at all. He wasn’t the one using shampoo by sachets. A skinhead he was, and all he did was soap his own bald head, and when the soap bar got all tiny as a potato chip, he didn’t leave it all neglected on the floor, but rather always planted it back onto the soap nook, although he didn’t bother buying his own soap dish.
When Olive re-entered the squeezy bunk zone, Justice was still smoking another cigarette. This time it annoyed Olive, but he thought, heck, I’m leaving the house in a jiffy, anyways.
Olive put on his contact lenses (a convenience that Ben had convinced him into committing to), and retreated back towards the shower room until he faced his own closet, opened the doors to substantially cover his body as he fitted his briefs through underneath the green-and-white-striped towel still wrapped around his waist. By the time he had put on his Guess? jeans (the second pair he had ever bought used from Joseph Nevel, who claimed they did not fit himself when he tried them just after his aunt gave them to him as a present--- damn Aunt seemed never to get it right, year in and year out; Joseph’s friends knew that the guy’s waist been what it was from freshman year to Joseph’s prompt graduation from Suliman come 1996, but the Aunt had actually been forcing her beloved nephew to lose inches from his waistline, thinking that an imported pair of this Diesel, and that Guess? might do the trick: well the jeans didn’t inspire Joseph to go lose inches. It were the jeans that got themelves lost, in exchange for some pocket money which Jospeh spent most gleefully on reamfulls of cigarettes and cheap sports expenses at the older Suliman University Alumni Association bungalow bowling-and-billiards complex--- Alberto hall, that is), he partially closed the closet door on the left while he grabbed a faded deep blue single-colour collared cotton sports shirt from the closet’s right-hand opening. Soon later, he waved goodbye to Justice, who saluted him a farewell.________________________________________
Oliver opened his wallet inside the jeepney. Where was Ninoy? He had one last Ninoy Aquino five hundred peso bill last night. Of course he had several smaller bills, and definitely more than enough coins to pay the friggin’ jeepney. Olive by no means would memorize all the crumpled bills he’d have in his wallet, but when the order of magnitude of the cash would be an one-thousand or a five-hundred peso bill, Olive wouldn’t lose track off that as a matter of oversight.
It of course occurred to him to bid the jeepney driver to stop, and run back to the Casa Esguerra and ask Justice the “What the fuck of it?” but his eagerness to attend this new Layag thing transcended even the substantial cost of such loss of money. Adrenaline rushed in Olive, he looked at the wrist of uniform-dressed saleslady for SyMart riding the same jeepney at the opposite bench, and read the time correctly upside down and at angle from her watch, without saying a word to her, thus failing to know of the fifteen-minute offset she had put on its time. Olive felt he would make the hour for the meeting give or take a couple of minutes, so he did not stop, get off and turn back to Casa Esguerra at that point, and go start an hours-long ordeal of Whudunnit?
“Are you going in?” was asked by yet another passenger of the Jeepney Driver.
“Yes,” said the driver, who would have to say again so a couple of times more for subsequent shuttle passengers.
“Outpost!” called the jeepney driver. Olive got off, although he could have waited for the vehicle to make a hairpin loop around the next Campus outpost, had he known that he still had eight minutes to kill before the designated hour.
Olive crossed Bocobo avenue past the porridge, tripe and deep fried cube-sliced soy bean curd booth-stand of Manang Elsie into the as yet ungated foot of the hill presenting the University Bookstore, and the Office of Student Regent Sahlee Cariño over at one extremity, and on the other side the asphalt ramp-slope leading to Lorena Barros Hall, and the Supply Deliveries Entrance for the University Food Service canteen at the base of Wenceslao Vinzons Hall.
“OK, let’s start to get to know each other,” said Ferdie Baron.
“Hi! I’m Kaprina,” said one girl.
“Our nation’s grace,” said Aldwin, not at all offending the girl, whom he had known since last year.
“Ha. Ha,” continued she. “That’s Kaprina with a K, not a C.”
“Like Rogelio Sikat or Sicat,” said Artus.
“Kaprina Semilla.”
“Actually she was born and Christened with a "C", but she's been using the 'K' since high school.”
“You guys already know me,” said one guy.
“Butch!” chorused all but Olive.
“Oh, yeah! Butch,” occured to Olive.
“More properly known as Butchoy,” said Aldwin, still fixing his eyes on that guy.
“Or most formally as Butchiquoy,” said Chana, likewise.
“Actually, he was baptized Manolo,” said Fernando Carubio, with the sober seriousness that helped him soon later clinch the editor-in-chief posts of first The Pilipino Scholar (Suliman University’s official school organ) and then The Philippine Law Gazette.
“I’m Oliver.”
“What’s your nickname?” asked Kaprina.
“Olive.”
“Olive? Isn’t that a girl’s name?” said someone whom only Olive had not known right then and there among the fifteen odd people at hand. She was Chana. “Shouldn’t you be named like... Bitoy?” she said.
Charong laughed, delighted at the beginnings of discopulative malice.
“Why do you need to be called Olive? Are you a fag?” said Fernando, although the Tagalog of his second sentence (Bakla ka ba?) at least had the play of alliteration.
Olive listened to the giggles, then added, “I’m from the Department of Sociology.”
“Oh, so you know...” popped in a guy who would later introduce himself as Ched, “...oh, I forgot her name.”
“None of you now!! None of you now!” cackled Ched’s friends.
“So, next week, we meet over there at Lorrena Barrenos?”
“It’s Lorena Barros, Olive,” said Fernando Carubio.
“Oh, right. I have another org in the same building,” said Olive, smiling.
“Then you should have gotten the building’s name right,” Fernando went on.
“OK, OK,” was the way Ferdie Baron cut right in.________________________________________

Fernando Carubio bade farewell. He had to go back to the College of Law building, Malcolm Hall. He would just walk. Wala siyang coche. He did not have a car, that is. Anyway, Ferdie #2 didn’t seem to make a habit of carrying around a bag, just one law book at a time, sometimes the Penal Code, sometimes Civil Law, but he never stashed any of either in a bag, nor was he to be noticed with a notebook to go with it, but hell, he got great grades.
Ferds #1, Ferdinand Baron once again, did have a bag, although his dorm (Acacia Residence Hall) was just across the street, Reginaldo Capiral Street. Out of it, he drew a can of sardines (one among three easily seen with his unzipping the knapsack) and a can-opener the sort of which doesn’t have a gear-wheel.
“Supper, guys?” he said to those left: Olive and Domingo Baile. The girls had already given word that they were going off somewhere, the Happy Rollers Diner in Delta, with its retro-American theme of roller-skating waitresses, milkshakes and bacon cheeseburgers.
“Sure, I’ll go get mine, too,” said Olive, “There are stores down the hill along Balara for that, right?”
“Oh, well... It’s OK,” said Ferds #1, “Just get from us over here!”
Ferdie opened a second can just right after saying that. Aldwin doled out paper plates to Olive and Domingo Baile (Domingo was the only non-student resident of Lorena Barros Hall’s Room C. Not only was Domingo not a student of Suliman University, but he was just fifteen-years old, looking like twelve. He had dropped out of the second grade of primary education as of the moment he was now supping with Olive, Aldwin and Ferdie).
“There are no Kappa Doble brods around now,” said Ferds.
“Why are you on… oh, yeah, you aren’t. Who among us LAYAG’ers are?” asked Olive, stuttering.
“Elvar and, well you’ll get to know the rest of them,” said Ferds, who could have well named eight right then and there, but he wanted to hold off on this just now.
“Is Freddie Boy one?” asked Olive. Aldwin nodded in acknowledgement. Inggo just kept chewing on the sardine he had stuffed into a piece of monay bead.
“Why didn’t you guys go join yourselves?” asked Olive.
“Takot kami sa ganiyang mga bagay,” said Aldwin, meaning they were scared of such things.
Ferdie Baron already knew most of Katapangang Kapatiran brads batched circa 1991-1994 A.D. hanging out in the Justice League of Filipino School-Youths hut as they organized protests against Philippine President Aquil Tamaco Enriquez, who may not have been the human rights violator the way that Bernardo Nalko was (his predecessor Pepe Tomas’ predecessor) and Emma Austria Torres (his successor Ismael Dygico’s successor) would be, but they (Filipino school-youths of the National Democratic mindset) felt that he was waging psychological warfare against them, although the Filipino socio-economic middle class regarded Enriquez as their darling, who would strengthen the Philippine Peso against the U.S. dollar and improve infrastructure throughout the nation.
Freddie Boy was one of the Kappa Doble brods who had served in the Justice League of Filipino School-Youths (Ang Ligang Makatarungan ng Pilipinong Kabataang Kamag-aralan) before leaving, or was it perhaps the bulk of the Justice League of Filipino School-Youths which is to be construed as having broken away from PUNTRA (Partidong Unipikado ng mga Nasyonalista para sa Tunay na Repormang Agraryo). PUNTRA was the student council candidaturial party that wrestled it out with CONUS, which was the student council candidaturial party of richer school kids. Many saw CONUS as a front for the Beta Lambda College of Law-based fraternity, as the top seats for running typically went to members of that fraternity. Rich kids from other fraternities (such as Mu Gamma and Omega Delta) ran in the student council elections as “independents”--- although they had their fraternities’ machinery to rely on for printing flyers and posters, as well as spreading a good word of mouth for their brod (brother) candidates.
The Ligang Makatarungan was founded more than a full score of years back as part of the United Front against then President Bernardo Nalko. It was the Manila Orbiter newspaper which took upon the gesture of christening the Liga with an English name, and the Prailen-run Priority NewsPost soon followed suit, outdoing even the Orbiter in granting interviews and front-page coverage to the Liga and especially its leadership. The Orbiter mis-spelled Gogo Augusta’s name once (having his first name as Gogel) and that was it, every forty days or so Gogo M. Augusta as chairperson of first the League and then DAGSA and ultimately as Party-List Congressional Representative for Lapiang WATAWAT (Walang Takot, Walang Atrasan/No fear, No Backing Down Progressive Political Party) would be mentioned somewhere on PriorityNewsPost’s front-page, often even getting a head-and-chest photo shot of himself as a pinky-nail-sized face (whereas full body shots of haute bourgeoise politicians were not wanting, such as those capturing Senator Benson Uzon dancing with the Movie Screen Goddess Daisy Ragraño).________________________________________
Olive felt great on his jeepney ride going home. He did not feel so alone, although no one could accompany him on his commute per se. Ferds Baron, who seemed to him the budding group’s unelected president, an Ur-president, if you will, and Aldwin did escort him to the waiting shed. His new friends were dormers, right inside the Suliman Campus, and he--- well, he was a boarder, someone who pays more, without necessarily getting a sweeter deal, but a boarder he was even just before the Age of Condominium Brats.
Olive came back to Casa Esguerra, his boarding house.
Olive walked into the 381 Bocobo Avenue entry mouth. The Avenue had several entry mouths, some led to apartment alleyways; in front of Abadia Verde, were two particular entry-mouths a walk apart from each other. These tucked away the informal settlers (“squatters”), the greater part of whom subsisted thanks to each other (for who else would buy individually-retailable sticks of any of five brands of locally-manufactured cigarettes, with matching pieces of adult menthol candy, from the tight, intimidating squalour of Miriam and Manalo Alleys than a fellow community-member?--- well there were sporadic tokenist charitable visits by PRMS students from ---- Heaven forbid!--- ICTUS and the Student Catholics Action ). The informal settlers of Miriam and Manalo Alleys were blessed with the absence of winter in Philippine climate. More so, their houses were not even half as prone as other poor urban Filipinos’ shanties, which would break apart, and have parts flying (galvazined iron ridged ceilings, unfinished plywood walls, and all) during any of the Philippine meteorological year’s several typhoons. What has protected Miriam Alley (only since the apotheosis of President Aquil Tamaco Enriquez back in 1992) from any winds blasting from the South was the then ongoing construction of the now-thriving Roque Hechadia condominium building--- not that the Roque Hechadia was to any human intention built to protect the paupers’ houses a bottle’s throw away from its foot.
As Olive approached Casa Esguerra, he heard a girl’s unpleasant muttering from the upper floor of another 381 Bocobo Ave. unit, 381-A, that is, a ladies’ residence. The hell should he care what that girl’s boarding house was called, or what the girl said, he was going to confront Justice, and he could do it alone.
Olive reached over the waist-high alumnimum wire mesh gate and pulled the bar open. The front door of Casa Esguerra, as usual, was fully swung open, with Egay guarding the entrance. Egay was a chair-ridden person, but unlike Butchiqoy, his chair didn’t roll on wheels. Egay was an alert person, but he was one of the Philippines’ very rare cases of outright illiteracy. Egay wasn’t blind, and we could say, he was fortunate to be born into the middle-class Esguerra family, but whatever sufficiency there was to Esguerra blood, he ended up with less his due with the genetic dice-roll.
Olive greeted Egay. Egay responded.
“Is your family home?”
“Wala sila dito. Bumili sila ng pagkain (They’re not here. They’re off to buy some food),” said Egay.
All the while, Egay kept squatting on his cold, white-painted metal chair, his eyes never opened wide, his chin held up maintaining a gentle, rocking oscillatory motion.
“Okay, brod. I’m just going upstairs,” said Oliver, tapping on Egay’s shoulder.
As he was up the stairs, he heard Egay speak in his typical husky voice, “They’re not here. They went to get some food.”
Olive was right in guessing, without having to check himself, that Egay was still facing the entrance, rocking his well-trimmed head as usual.
Olive entered the room, and found no one there. He put his stuff onto his table, then rounded out to the second floor’s two-other open-access rooms (The third room belonged solely to a decidedly polite and curt Chinese guy who always kept his door locked whether he was in or out of it, even when he was using the common shower). Olive didn’t find anyone there now, not that all those absent went together to one single dining place. Ben dated his girlfriend Che in WayToGo Total Experience Mall along Ed de los Santos Abagnot Avenue. The faggot Jonathan Martin Seguerra (islands apart from being in any way related from the Esguerras) escorted the Ilongga Jewel Orillan for a Dutch treat. Jonathan had hardly much for a student’s allowance, but he spent it on his escorting Jewel and a couple of other province girls (all aware of his faggotedness) now and then, to his demise. An outing would cost Jonathan as much eleven days’ worth of his allowance. On non-outing nights Jonathan would put himself through the hours with cheap bottles of local brandy or Marca de Claro gin, instead of buying himself a square meal. Doña Carmelita Esguerra, noticing his poor maintenance would every so often invite Jonathan to sup with the other Esguerras at the main dining table. Jonathan would mystically not take anything to eat or drink from the table, but would all too willingly stand by chattingly the table, not straight and sober, but so much a fag he seemed moist with tears he didn’t shed but rather exuded as vapour from his whole body frame, as he mouthed such harangues of gabbledy-goob too useless to bother quoting.
Doña Esguerra would not, however, ever, ever outrightly rebuke Jonathan, to whom she would only gently speak her pieces of advice.
Well now, it was just approaching 9:30 p.m., with only one other man in the house, and Olive was already growing sleepy. He flopped around his grimy mattress, checking for the Ninoy bill, even looking at the bunk below him, and the floor below that lower bunk. Nope, no Ninoy five hundred peso bill.
Olive prayed by his table (thanking Him for a chance to work with a fresh group of fellow students, then praying for all his sisters and their parents down in Melbourne, Australia, and also for Justice). With that done, he climbed his bunk, then lay down to sleep.________________________________________
Morning came, and room-mates surfaced before Olive’s eyes, which he had both opened this very morning before any one’s alarm clock sounded. Olive rocked to the left, then to the right of his securely-margined upper bunk. He got down the bed ladder, and somehow drew a loudened snore from Jun Zabato still fast asleep.
Olive felt he could catch mass, so he checked the wallet now in his closet for jeepney fare, as he was too groggy to walk all the way down Bocobo Avenue to reach Libong Inalay: Simbahan ng mga Tunay na Kristiyano, formerly known as La Paroquia del Perpetuo Socorro (Well, that name didn’t last perpetually. It was in the mid-1980’s that the priests from Saint Francis University, who celebrated mass there--- interspersed by celebrations conducted by foreigner priests they themselves often invited, priests from Nigeria, Italy, Micronesia and other places--- got their Filipino selves together, and presented themselves to the newly-apotheosized Cardinal, His Eminence Jose Maria Guerrero Chan. The Cardinal had come to recognize several of their faces from the canonization rites he helped officiate in the honouring of the then Blessed, now and fovermore Saint, Lorenzo Ruiz.). There was enough loose change, so Olive gleefully took a shower.
After he was done bathing, noone still awake, the two guys he saw snoozing looked quite sound in their sleep; Elmer and Jun didn’t look like they had been drinking; they rarely did. As for Jonathan, he wasn’t in the room.
Olive peeped over into the room which had been harbouring Justice. Only Ben was there. Ben was still asleep. On Ben’s desk was yet another food place receipt bound to be tacked onto his inner closer door, where he “tallied” up his dates with Che. That must have been the fellow’s idea of scoring.________________________________________
As he went downstairs, his landlady waved at him. She wasn’t after his rent, but Olive approached her anyway to share his thoughts about the recent incident of his pocket money having gone missing.
________________________________________

Kabanata Dos. F
“Here we are again… at Room C,” Aldwin told Twen, while putting a chimp’s grip on her tiny arm. Twen (little Miss Wentworth Gracian) was yet another cigarette-spinning stalwart of the PUNTRA student council candidaturial party.
“We need to draft our constitution for Layag,” said Ferdie.
“I’ll go help,” said Olive. Olive never got to be the law student that Fernando Carubio and Eddie Hermoso were, but he still felt well about carrying in his head some snatches of the Queen-toasting Australian constitution (This he had been taught in Melbourne high school, which most of the Mabutu siblings ended up attending).
Heck, Olive even sort of participated in the drafting of the Suliman University Task Force Streetchildren constitution, although the composing of this was predominantly the work of geodetic engineering student Cyrim Alechem who eventually abandoned SU TFS even before the constitution she had been so pushy about had been signed. Cyrim contented herself in her latter Bachelor of Science years being a groupie for the Nu Kappa Nu fraternity.
“First, we need a preamble,” said Olive.
Chana, Ferdie and Aldwin knew that as well, but didn’t acknowledge.
Ferdie started drawing scratch on his notebook paper.
“How do we lay down the articles, sections and chapters?” said Olive out loud.
Chana and Rhoda mumble.
“Any more ideas, guys?” Olive went on.
“That’s all for now,” said Ferdie.
“Can’t we do more?” said Olive.
No voices replied, not even a “Like what?”--- just the rustling of hands reaching for playing cards. Twen called out the name of the game. The rest agreed. Olive did not even get to the press the point that it was just 6:46. The card playing and small talk of everyone else would stretch out to past 10:21 p.m.
Dell Riadero talked with his fraternity brothers, quite apparently. Three of the five in their sub-party were wearing their frat shirts. KK was what the shirts flashed out, in loud Palatino type--- no reference to retarded group of dunce-heads erstwhile known as the Ku Klux Klan… KKK in Pilipino history stood for the Kataas-taasang Kagalang-galangang Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan, all K as Ka being prefixes supplemented by -an suffixes. The first two “ka-” + “-an” being equivalent to the superlative “most.” The third “ka-” + “-an” indicates the bracketing of an entity noun into or within another noun. It was this Pilipino KKK that Menandro Benito Zaldivar had in mind when he insisted back in 1970 that the fraternity he was to found would use two K’s for its name.
Ched lay down with Twen. Ferdie Baron lay down near Inggo, who rested his head upon a used grade-school workbook wrapped in plastic long since turned murky.
How Olive wanted to sleep with his fellow Layag’ers here in LBH Room C, but he still had to go settle matters with Justice. Olive told Ched he had to go, but he didn’t feel like telling him nor anyone in Layag just now about how his money was stolen right in his own boarding house, although within himself, he did quite look forward to telling everyone in LBH once he got to the bottom of this ordeal of theft. Ched bade him, “Take care,” while Aldwin just looked on.

Olive walked right by to the tricycle stand.
“Tatlo pa (Three more)!” was what the vehicular dispatcher pointed out to him.
Olive did not want to squeeze in just yet. Let two other passengers commit themselves before I go hop in myself, he thought.
He wasn’t hungry. He just smoked a cigarette. This would make the dispatcher tolerate his holding off sitting down in the tricycle cab.
“There we go!” spotted the same dispatcher: a triplet and couples of commuters coming down Capiral street.
Let them have it, Olive thought to himself, walking off the curb, crossing to the other side of Bocobo, while the dispatcher had changed his focus to the new prospective passengers.
Olive realized that he had barely more than ten pesos all in all with him. He could afford to ride, but why not save the money instead? He walked past Suliman’s high school, smoking a couple more cigarettes, then past the Simbahan del Perpetuo Socorro; he crossed back to the West side of Bocobo Avenue when he reached the Getty Gas Station, where many months later they would set up a convenience store that would be the darling of the good-looking clientelle of Plains Royale.
For now, there were just cars filling up gas in the Station--- that is, pump boys were giving full service to all the customers coming up.
Olive threw a look at Mom’s Choice Supermarket. A perfect name it was for the establishment, Olive thought, for where else do the choicest moms go? That was how Olive felt about the supermarket’s name. Was this supermarket not where ace Filipino fictionist Luis Joaquin Katigbak set up his story about a young man’s unconsummated interest in a young mom, the baby of whom uncontrivedly handed the chap an oh-so-phallic rattle?
Even while Olive was walking past the Northmost of Bocobo Avenue’s three pizza franchises, his mind still lingered on the many pretty moms he’d always see in the supermarket. There was this one: whose face was pretty much how Dolly Parton’s would come to look like (with the perk of cheeks, grandeur of eyelids, resolve of eyes and lip movement) for her 2003 concert, except that Dolly Parton had big blonde hair, whereas this… if Olive could only get her name… had charming black shoulder-length hair. Olive had no idea that this particular supermom had been the object of Emmanuel Lacaba’s poetic courtship: Eman Lacaba who took up a gun and stood up for farmfolk in the mountains.

How Olive wanted to shop in Mom’s Choice, but he didn’t have any money, except to buy perhaps a packet or two of Lucky Me Instant “Pancit Canton.” He walked on, past Lagakang Pilipino (where he’d have to wait for his allowance a couple of weeks from now), past Darwin’s billiards hall, past Movie Club video rental store (where the beautiful-legged Maricar Benitez worked, his schoolmate in Suliman--- but not tonight), past Shooters computer gaming café, past Dayrit’s burger restaurant…

Olive reached Casa Esguerra just before midnight, but people were awake. Cynthia was taking care of her brother Egay while Doña Esguerra watched on.
Upstairs, Jun Zabato was studying his Samuelson and Nordhaus Economics textbook. Patrick was curling up a 25-pound dumbell, and Jonathan… well, he was asleep, drooling and smelling of Marca de Claro gin. They had on the radio Yano’s chart-topping hit, “Banal na Aso.”
“Where’s Justice?” Olive began, “Have you guys seen Justice?”
Justice creeped in from the adjoining room.
“Fuck you, Justice!” “Where’s my money, tanginaka?”
Olive shoved Justice in the chest.
“I didn’ take…”
Olive swung his kamao (fist) at Justice’s pisngi (cheek).
“What the fuck, pare,” said Justice.
“Kinuha mo `yung alawans ko, punyeta ka! (You took my allowance money, you jerk-off!)” Olive, well, explained.
“What do you mean?” said Justice. Jun and Patrick are now looking on.
“Pinagbibintangan mo ba si Justice (Are you accusing Justice)?” said Patrick, “Mag-ingat ka, pare. (Be careful of what you’re saying, partner.)”
“Kinuha mo `yung pera ko n’ung naliligo ako! (You took my money while I was taking a shower.)” Olive pointed out.
Justice shook his head. By now, Doña Esguerra and Cynthia have come up to check on the situation.
Olive kicks Justice in the stomach. Patrick restrains Olive. Jun holds back Justice. Jonathan, still laying down, starts to open his eyes to the commotion.
“Tama na iyan (That’s enough),” said Doña Esguerra.
“Ano ba’ng nangyari dito? (What’s happened here),” Cynthia asks.
“Sabi ni Olive, kinuha daw ni Justice and pera niya,” says Jun.
“Magkano naman (how much)?” asks Cynthia.
“Limang-daan,” says Olive. Justice stares at Olive bitterly.
“Naku! Malaki-laki naman iyan (My, that’s quite a big sum)!” Cynthia says.
“`Sus, kadaku!” exclaims Doña Esguerra.
“hindi ko naman kinuha, ma’am,” says Justice.
“Nagsisinungaling siya (He’s lying)!” says Olive.
“`Susmariosep! Kung hindi tayo nagka-alaman ngayon din, isisipa ko kayong dalawa dito sa boarding house,” said Doña Esguerra in her heavy make-up and thickly-cut jewelry.
“Umamin ka na. gago ka (Admit it, you idiot),” says Olive.
Justice keeps silent.
“Tatawagan ko iyung mga magulang niyo,” says Doña Esguerra.
“Nasa Australya ang mga magulang ni Olive,” says Jun.
“Kahit na (Even then),” says Doña Esguerra.
“Akin na ang telepono,” Doña Esguerra commands that the boarding house’s wireless handset be sent to her. Bebeng, one of the Esguerras’ househelp, runs down the stairs to fetch it. She’s back in twenty seconds.
“Nasa akin ang numero ng Mommy ni Justice. Sinulat ko sa address book. Bebeng, paki-kuha!”
Bebeng runs down the wooden staircase once again, but before she comes back again…
“Teka! Teka!” says Justice, “Aminado ako. Asshole ako. Kinuha ko ang pera ni Olive dahil kinailangan ko para sa teksbuk.”
“Wala ka naman sa eskuwela ngayon, `di ba, Justice” says Jun.
“Oo nga! Kaalis mo lang ng trabaho sa Jollibee. Di ba’t sinabi mo na naghahanap ka lang ng bagong trabaho?” says Cynthia.
Justice keeps silent.
“Nasaan ang pera, hijo,” asks Doña Esguerra.
“Naigastos ko na po (I’ve spent it already),” says Justice.
“Nasaan ang teksbuk (Where’s the textbook)?” asks Cynthia.
Justice keeps silent again, then he reaches into his pocket and draws out a hundred and forty pesos in bills.
“Eto ang natira (Here’s what’s left),” says Justice.
“Tarantado ka! Magnanakaw nga! Sinungaling pa!” Doña Esguerra grabs what she could of Justice’s short hair and starts pulling it as if she were tearing out weeds.
“Araykupu (ouch!)” says Justice.
“Inay, tama na iyan (Mom, that’s enough),” says Cynthia.
To end it, Doña Esguerra smacks Justice’s pisngi with one big blow of a slap (sampal).
“Go apologize now!” said Doña Esguerra.
“Oliver, sorry for taking your money,” says Justice.
“Where’s the rest of it,” asks Olive.
“I’ve spent it already. Sorry,” says Justice.
Doña Esguerra calls up Justice’s mom, who comes over within eighty minutes and reimburses Olive for the rest of the three-hundred and sixty pesos. Olive thanked her.
Olive, Justice and Justice’s mom went to the Perpetuo Socorro church. It was a Filipino now celebrating the mass, Father Rolando Bernap of the Order of Franciscans.
Father Bernap’s homily was a good one. It didn’t have any strained quality, as it so happened that Father Rolly was quite happy with the way President Aquil Tamaco Enriquez was running the country, not that Father Rolly voted for Enriquez. Father Rolly was quite happy in an election where Partido Royal (what became of Bernardo Nalko’s SIWALAT party) lost.
Olive felt great.