five minutes into the train ride, i was glad i didn'’t smile when i first saw them. these two old pinoy fairies sitting across me in a train lumbering to a little township near pennsylvania.
me, there because i agreed to help welcome a college classmate in a party thrown by another friend who lives in this quaint hamlet requiring some three hours of train ride from where i live. them, i don’t know. looked like they were just out for a day trip people, old ones, take out of whimsy now that the sun is out more frequently.
and ever since the train pulled out of grand central, the two never stopped talking. i mean, this pair of aging pinoy queens just twaddled on. i worked the night before and i planned on catching some two hours of sleep in the train. and there went my plan.
first they talked about their respective employments. but that was only when our train was still underground. as soon as we surfaced to glorious sun, they were tommyrotting about what they unabashedly called their papas.
oh my boyfriend, he doesn'’t want me to smoke anymore, the one in high waisted pair of denims told his companion. his friend made a face before answering, oh, your phantom boyfriend.
really, he insisted, he said that after he finished with university. his friend, the one with three thick yellow necklaces, each with credit card sized pendants, cut him off midway. oh, your scholar.
the one wearing those mommy jeans was miffed. faggot, you’re just bitter because nobody wants to be with you not unless you pay them.
this made the multi-necklaced fairy to snort. faggot, my jimmy, we'’ve been together since i left for the states. and when i get to manila next month, he'’ll surely be there waiting for me.
of course, his irritated friend said, dollars for a lousy bang, which hustler is fool enough to say no to that? even to a geriatric queen like you?
the two looked steamed at each other now. and for a while there, i thought they would stop talking to each other the rest of the way. or at least until my stop comes.
but as soon as a beautiful boy walked by, they soon were toshing again. each one claiming in their artful ways that it was him that the gorgeous guy was eyeing and trying to hook up with.
not that i don’'t believe in young boys hooking up with old faggots. but the guy who just walked by looked like one of those perpetually unclothed abercrombie models and the two of them, well, they'’re prunes, pinoy pitted prunes.
i made a show of fidgeting in my seat hoping this would at least pipe them down. but to no avail.
i consoled myself with watching the rural landscape asserting itself now more forcefully outside. houses got to be sparser as farm barns appeared more frequently. half an hour before my stop, we passed by a township that had these numerous deserted industrial looking sites, all chainlink fenced. like former nazi death camps.
two weekends ago, i went to the 66th street barnes and nobles to scout for a neruda omnibus collection. this friend we'’re welcoming, he’'s a huge neruda fan.
while there, i chanced upon this cookbook purportedly written by women who died in nazi concentration camps during world war II. it was just mind boggling. the idea of these women about to be thrown to their deaths compiling dream recipes.
it didn'’t make sense to me at first. but later, much, much later, i realized that by conjuring up good stuff from their gentler past, these women, through their dream recipes, were resisting boldly the great evil that was hell bent in obliterating their culture, their identities.
i looked at these two old fags and it was horrifying to see how time ravaged them. i could not even allow myself at first the thought that there was a time that both of them were young, vibrant and was desired truly by other young, gorgeous men.
and little by litte, as my stop nears faster and faster, i gave in to this huge need to listen to their prattle. this need to listen to witnesses to identities, to lives that ultimately, like mine, will be blotted out.