I put off telling you guys about my work because I am afraid that it will just be another reklamo session. It is a custom practice to exaggerate the hardships one might meet in a first job and I am trying to be classy by setting myself apart from this practice, for as long as I can--working in broadcast is not a bed of roses. If ever it is, it is a bed of really thorny roses and one is pressed down against it by anvils.

Instead, I have decided to do this: a few days ago, Cattan was asking me to post a story here. Well, this is the first part of the story I am currently working on. I have actually finished it but I think it is too long to be posted. Besides, I am currently reworking it. So for any comments and constructive criticism (which I will so much appreciate) you may reach me through supercharlie69@yahoo.com or you may leave your message at the tagboard.




Picture this: me sitting across from her. Now, imagine me: a paper cup suspended just below my lips. My other hand should be restless. It was itching to stroke back hair that just grew back. Lola always said that I was just another pathetic kid trying to be a punk. Couldn't even call me a punk; always stated through an angle of a failed attempt. It wasn't my idea, you know, mowing my head about a year before. It was Hunter's. I called your mother Hunter. Well, she'd dumped me anyway so screw me for allowing that to happen. "Oh Oslo, you're just too...too antiseptic--but it's not you, it's us." Exact words.

And then someone said that still staying friends with Hunter was going to be easy. Your uncle Zurich. He was drunk or high or whatever then but his words sank in like they were the Gospel of Matthew. Or something Bono had just said in a recent press conference. Found him by the door, Zurich. I just came in from work--I was working graveyard shift; he was self-employed, he'd always said. He was self employed but was in lola's pay roll, but I think that was a secret. I drove in and he was balancing himself by leaning on the doorknob. I had to twist the key for him. You'd think I'd know better, that I'd stop listening to Zurich. The two of us may have had shared a womb for nine months but that doesn't mean he knows as much as I do. He grew up here among these people.

All of them, not like mama: forty-five year old Catholic schoolgirl-wonder who had chosen to run away from them, from here, to run away with the man of her dreams. Once, I called her Ma, and that started an entire discussion. Bottomline was to always call her mama, accent on the second syllable. (But you don't have to call me papa. Call me whatever you like. What's hip there? Erpat? Whatever.) But mama also had her one-sentence moments. When I told her about Hunter, and I sure babbled a lot of stuff, the only thing she cared to say was "you're seeing a girl named Hunter?" I could almost hear her heart palpitate from across kilometers upon kilometers of highway. And she was on the speaker phone.

"Mama, you named your children Oslo and Zurich," I said.

"Oslo and Zurich happen to be nice cities, hijo. The two of you were made there, you know. I don't know exactly where, but your father and I spent some time in Denmark and then in Switzerland some nine months before you were born." And I was so sure she was nodding while over-sharing this, glint in her eyes and everything. Of course the capital of Denmark is actually Copenhagen; Oslo is in Norway. Priceless was the relief over my parents committing this mistake--being Oslo was far out, yes, but it was definitely better than being called Copenhagen. What, Hagen? Hag? Coppie? Kids could be cruel. Imagine, if mama and papa had chosen to have their honeymoon in Africa, I would have been Madagascar instead of Oslo. If they had enough money to take a sidetrip to France, I would have been Paris. If they hadn't any money at all, I might have been Vigan or Manila, depending on the extent of their poverty.

I said to myself, you better stop here. I decided not to tell her about the small detail concerning my hair. Probably the best decision I had ever made. Finding out the etymology of myself was already too much.

The small detail concerning my hair? Hunter had a point to illustrate one night so she produced a hair clipper and slid the black contraption against my head. Old folks might call that delirium. I said nothing as she did that. I just sat there and listened to the vrrrr of the clipper and to her undirected ramblings: "And then they took you. They took you! Ampoocha, you...you are so stupid. You're one stupid girl, Hunter! How can you allow this to...to... Fuck.." She made no sense, no sense at all, yet I still remember every word. I felt the clipper press harder and harder against my scalp then after a while I started to wonder if she still remembered that I was there. And I forced myself to believe that the feelings might stay because of that.

The next day, she dumped me.

That changed nothing, really--being dumped. I'm still on-call. I was a boyfriend on-call then but after the break-up, I became just plainly, eternally, on-call. So I showed up for "coffee." That's what Hunter called it: coffee. She would send a text message saying "coffee." One-word text message. It actually meant "Hey I need you right now my life is all fucked up so you better come here at the coffee shop in my condominium building to buy me coffee while I use you as a freakin shock absorber." (I could almost hear her say it all in one breath.)So imagine me doing exactly just that.

Helpless-looking girl across the table--look at her, luminous under these lights, saying: "Shush. I'm pregnant." So to avoid the humiliation of being interrupted in mid-talk I raise the cup to my lips but I don't take a sip, bearing that sting of boiling liquid against sensitive skin. Froth sticking to my lip. I wait five beats. I anticipate. I put on that understanding and excited face.

She is pregnant. What's new? She's always been, anyway. The two of us might be making some action and she would get pregnant right there and then. She would stop licking me wherever she was licking me and would go on to ruminate as I slumped placidly on the backseat of the van, or wherever it is we may be doing it. And I wait. I anticipate. Same old-same old.

Pregnancy is such a common occurrence. Back in school, I've encountered more shocking announcements of various forms of pregnancies. The one that still clearly resonates is the one with the head magistrate for the School of Humanities. I still remember how a shrill shriek issued from the lavatory one day. I turned my head and found her waving three strips of paper. "Positive, Positive, positive!" Old people might have called her delirious. Seven months after, the entire batch watched her march up the stage with her belly sticking out through the slit of the toga. I swore I saw Father Dunne squint his eyes as he handed her the diploma. Apart from her and this former blockmate who had his girlfriend pregnant back in sophomore year, there had been other stories and rumors about classmates, batchmates or schoolmates, neighbors and countrymen, and fellow earthlings my age going the family way.

(Among these stories, his was the funniest, former blockmate's. He did it once, and once was all it took...)

But then, those are different stuff altogether. Hunter was pregnant, yes. She always thought she was. We could just be sitting side by side on a park bench, and she would say that she was pregnant with whatever. Or we could be having coffee at the coffee shop just below her apartment, just like now, and she would announce that she is pregnant while I'm giving heartfelt, well-thought-of advice. "Shush. I'm pregnant." And so, just like old times, I put myself on hold. I raise that paper cup of overpriced macchiato to my parted lips in anticipation of the violent birth: "I don't know what love is."

Yes.