“Hapit-hapit”

I WAS introduced to sex by way of Disney movies.

In the late 1970s, when there was a new Disney animated film at the Mever theater, Papang treated my sister and I to a Saturday trip in his 1964 blue Volks Beetle to Colon. 

We parked at a gasoline station that reeked of piss and petrol. The fumes always made me want to “jingle”. I was always optimistic that perhaps this would turn out to be the movie we would view thrice before Papang ushered us out of the theater. 

In those days, a movie stub was a ticket to a cinematic watch-for-as-long- as-you-can binge.  Papang, though, did not want his daughters to be in Colon when night fell and the pimps and “prostis” replaced the peanuts-and-newspaper vendors at street corners. 

Walking back to the gas station, my palpitations post-Disney would start again as soon as I took a whiff of the addictive amalgam of newsprint, ink, and body heat. The Ybañez news stall was covered from wall to wall with newspapers, magazines, and paperbacks. 

My sister and I would squeeze past the men who rented a newspaper to read or swat the air with while chatting with other readers sharing a bench. We were limited to one comic book but choosing which one to buy from the cornucopia in front of us is one of my earliest memories of desire.

I chose the Illustrated Classics, Tarzan, DC, and Marvel for their full-color drawings, later switching to Looney Tunes because, though printed in black and white, the publications offered “monster editions, with extra 25 pages of gags”. 

Then I discovered that for the price of an imported comic book, we got three or more Tagalog “komiks” that were fanned out on the sidewalk. I quickly picked my favorites, written in either the “wakasan (finished)” or “itutuloy (to be continued)” style. 

Our companions at home also read the “komiks” because the romances and the supernatural tales were molded in the same plots we followed on the transistor radio. Since Papang never glanced at the “bakya (lowbrow)” culture, he missed how love on the air and in “wakasan” pages took the “simang (diverted)” route from virginal sighing and courtly wooing.

A common phrase often said half in joke to couples returning home is “uli diretso, ayaw na hapit-hapit”. Teasing the unmarried about diverting for a quick motel tryst before going home reflects our elliptical culture of keeping sex in the interstices of the moral and the decent.

Writing this on May 28, the International Day of Action for Women’s Health, I hope for greater openness about sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). Pop culture harbors biases and subversions, the Disney evasions and the garish truths stepping out from the shadows.

Source of the image of the "Anak ni Zuma" cover of the "Aliwan" komiks: Philippine Komiks Database.com

(mayettetabada@gmail.com)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s May 30, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Macoy’s blues

IN pre-Edsa Philippines, the media fell into two groups: establishment and alternative. In the first were mass media owned by the cronies of the dictatorship, who practiced the freedom of the press for as long as the reportage did not antagonize the censors and lead to midnight visits, disappearances, and shutdowns.

Like many Filipinos who turned to alternative media for realities denied or glossed over in the “komedya (farcical media),” Papang and I listened religiously to the AM radio broadcasters who did not water down their “bomba” like the attack-collect, defend-collect (AC-DC) “balimbing nga oposisyon (starfruit representing turncoats and the fake opposition)”. 

In our home were copies of “Jingle,” “Mr. &.,” “Veritas,” “Inquirer,” and “Malaya”. The hodgepodge of alternative publications reflected not just the censorship by authorities but the lack of logistics backing the attempts of the mosquito press to crack the state-manufactured veneer of the “Bagong Lipunan (New Society)”.

Coining the slur, Ferdinand Marcos claimed he tolerated the “mosquito press” because they stung but did little damage to the monolithic dictatorship. Papang was loyal to the “Inquirer” broadsheet but copies of the paper “with balls” (his sincere, if backhanded, praise for Eggie Apostol’s fiercely independent newspaper) quickly ran out on the streets even if newsboys kept these under piles of the bloated-with-ads Big Three: “Bulletin Today,” “Daily Express,” and “Times Journal”.

Despite Macoy’s dismissal of the mosquito press, batches of anti-government publications were regularly confiscated by authorities. When he would come home with no paper or a replacement, Papang joked that the mango raisers in Guadalupe bought again the “Inquirer” for wrapping unripe fruits as protection from the “peste sa kinabuhi (fruit flies),” which he often said aloud in case Big Brother was eavesdropping.

In high school, my favorite was “Jingle,” a magazine that contained the lyrics and guitar chords for popular songs. I liked the “Grin Page,” which introduced me to toilet humor, green jokes, and anti-government cartoons from contributors. 

Contradicting the establishment media were the “Jingle” back pages, a freedom wall for Filipinos discontented by bad music, bad reviews, and bad administration. The magazine’s music review scale featured a cherub for “superior,” the highest rating; and a fly for the lowest review, summed up as, “forget it”.

These days, whenever the playback from Malacañang reminds me of Macoy tunes, I remember the fly and the mosquito. And Papang fake-whispering, “peste sa kinabuhi”.

Source of image: nme.com

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 0917 3226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s May 23, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

Little bird

“‘Sesame Street” was brought to you today by the letter ‘M’ and the number ‘7’…”

I watched the “Sesame Street,” a show intended for preschoolers, long after I thought of myself as a child. 

I knew intimately the “people in the neighborhood” of Sesame Street long before I knew the first names of a few people on the street where I actually lived for some 25 years.

When Papang caught me watching another rerun and suggested switching off the TV set to save power, I heard his voice in a tiny echo from a long way down inside the trash can where my favorite, Oscar, nurses his grouches. 

Of course, Oscar likes to seem nasty. Deep inside, though, he waits, like me, for someone with whom to pass the time. 

I love Bob, Maria, and Mr. Hooper. The human adults though never became as simpatico as Ernie and Bert, as free and easy as Cookie Monster, and as mesmerizing as the Count. 

And Big Bird. The yellow bird towering above a nest behind a wall that was a crazy quilt of discarded doors once left me ambivalent. I found his simple nature frequently annoying but often felt guilty for dismissing this oversized young bird as a “bird-brained” simpleton.

It has been a long time since I went back to the ‘hood. A world governed by acceptance and harmony, by the exploration of letters and numbers, is light years away from my universe of acrimony wrapped up by news reports and pandemic updates. 

Strangely, it is a character I half-despised that brings me reassurance. Recently, I found myself almost in tears after disposing the carcass of a bird that the cats turned into a toy. 

After an excursion into the streets, Kitkat came with a gift for her kittens. Its neck broken, the bird was not eviscerated, which made a bit of improvement over the headless, wingless, legless roaches later cleaned up by the ants.

The small dun bird looked at peace, its head tucked under a wing. Then Wiggy, the young cat, claimed the carcass, tossing this then catching it in mid-air, and rolling with it. The hunt, perhaps, is a timeless story mothers tell their children in the feline version of show-don’t-tell. 

Caught up with chasing a deadline, I later found the cats and kittens covered in a drift of feathers. The body was quickly scooped and buried but the feathers, slight and light and multitudinous, defied the broom. 

The slightest sweeping motion tossed each feather into the air. Each feather settled back. The cycle began again. 

Beyond its brief life, the bird left reminders that being is more than mass. Death does not put out the lights. In the endless exhalation is release to the vast and infinite.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s May 16, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”

House of women

I HAVE long been inducted as a furlol, acting as a “lola” or grandmother to grandchildren of different species.

Five days after giving birth, our “aspin (asong Pinoy)” Noki left her young to my watch to run, dig in the garden, and bark at startled passersby.

The three puppies, veterans now at nursing and napping, have come to resemble fat spitting Cebuano chorizos rolling and snuffling on the kitchen floor. When they squeal, I leave my work even though I am certain I locked the door and double-checked to make sure that the other aspins and “puspins (pusang Pinoy)” do not slip in while Mother is enjoying her “me” time.

Newborn kittens slip out soundlessly from their mothers, latching on then curling to sated sleep with preternatural composure. Kitkat, unblinking veteran of four litters and counting, reminds me of women lying in darkened, too hot rooms, forbidden to rise except to rinse in a medicinal bath of leaves as one heir after another slips out.

Puppies come with acoustics. They arrive with a wet sucking sound, as if blowing a raspberry at my attempts to be of use to their panting mother (labor started the night before and the puppies appear two to three hours apart).

At less than a week, the puppies’ flipperlike limbs, so pink as to be translucent, wiggle and hint of dreams stuttering like old movie clips behind still furled eyelids.

Minding the sleeping newborn of our rescued cats and dogs clenches something inside as bliss from watching these creatures dream is tempered by a clear-eyed realization of the world awaiting those eyes when these finally open.

A descending order of priority guides many Filipinos in choosing home companions: purebreds are valued more than abandoned strays; dogs, desired more than cats; and males, preferred over females.

Not helping the female of the species are the fees charged by private veterinarians: spaying is twice more expensive than neutering, with the actual cost depending on the weight of the animal and presumably the amount of anesthesia to be used.

In our household, the kitchen is the busiest as a revolving-door nursery. Two months after Kitkat and her four kittens moved out, first-time mother Noki moved in. Rem, Noki’s sibling, has yet to “show” after mating. Kitkat’s daughter, Wiggy, is safe inside the house for now, but spaying is looming as an option.

One too many birthing to book and only one kitchen-cum-nursery. Fortunately, I dislike cooking.

While Noki took a break to just be a dog and dig up dirt, we checked her puppies. Cheers, I greeted her when she returned to take over the furlol: Your girls are hangry (hungry and angry).   

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu's February 28, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, "Matamata"  

WIP

THE NARROW notebook I carry around for jotting has beautiful paper and Japanese characters I cannot read. Since I love this cream paper the color of churned butter that is a joy to write on and smell, I can live with symbols I can only guess at.

Recently, I discovered at the back of the notebook a page with a list of initialisms in Anglicized and Japanese forms. 

WIP stands out. In English, it means “work in progress”. The phrase can mean a draft for rewriting by the writer or polishing by an editor.

The Japanese characters for WIP are still three, which, I am guessing, illustrate the essence of each word in the acronym. 

These three symbols intrigue this non-Japanese reader. The first character looks like crochet needles with bits of yarn hanging as if a knitter hastily put down the needles to check if the pot of rice she put on boil hours ago has not run dry.

There is never an ideal time to write. In between chores, duties, distractions, and excuses, I have even tried the proverbial trick of waiting to write until the children are asleep. By that time, I am also asleep.

The second symbol seems to be a mad woman caught in the crosshairs of a web of yarn, reminding me of every sentence I ended up writing after a whole day of reading and thinking. At the extreme end of the spectrum languishes my long-suffering editor, CTL (not an initialism but her actual newsroom acronym), who often returned my copy because I wrote more than the news hole could fit. 

Hovering somewhere between a yawnsome trickle and a destructive torrent of words, the fluctuations undergone by a WIP are more maddening than my battle with pounds and kilos. 

And the last Japanese character in the translated WIP resembles a small plate mounted on a stick, like the labels a gardener sticks before a row of seeds to jog memory when the future brings the impressive fruits of her labor. 

Writing an essay takes a person to places not foreseen. This is a form that thrives on digressions.

Even more disorderly and disruptive is the use of the “I”. In an essay, the “I” is more than a point of view looking outward. It is an interior digging towards light at the end of the tunnel. Or into the septic tank.  

The reason WIP occupies my mind these days is a project I am undertaking with other women writing about organizing, supporting, and sustaining community pantries in the south. 

If you have a WIP to contribute, please email your essay to mayette.tabada@gmail.com.

A friend speculates that the community pantries may be long gone before the stories see print. But as the wonderful Japanese ideographs suggest, a story-in-the-making is a measure against forgetting. Long live, storytellers!

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s May 9, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”    

Boomerang

 

I READ the stories I like. When I cannot find these stories, I write them. 

Forged one summer when my younger self ran out of books to read and my exasperated father made me read twice the novels before he returned these to friends (“in case you skipped to the ending”), this self-help principle seems to be rendered obsolete by the endless stories streaming online.  

Obscure, literary magazines priced beyond my budget now mirror their content in obscure, literary websites that give free unlimited access or a certain number of free articles per month for subscribers. 

Online public libraries have deep virtual shelves that include every bookworm’s fantasy, from the out-of-print to the highly popular titles that are never on the shelf in a brick-and-mortar library. 

Digital reservations perfectly work because the marvelous robotic librarians never sleep and carry out without glitch their program to abet the electronic traffic in books.

As a reader, I look for the divergences that connect and the connections that diversify, which reading brings as true rewards. We are chosen by our stories as much as we select the stories we read. 

Once, I posted a picture of two boomerangs found in a Japan surplus store after I was tagged by a friend to post 10 photos for 10 days, with no explanations except for the theme of the “love of travel”. The idea of “travel” bemused me as our community had just entered another enhanced community quarantine (ECQ).

Seeing my boomerang post, another friend inquired on Messenger if my boomerangs were functional or decorative.  I picked up the boomerangs because of their handpainted images of ancestral creatures from Dreamtime, which, according to the Australian aboriginal myth, is where creation began.

L. explained to me that a functional boomerang that returns back to the thrower has a slanted inner arm. She knew this because her father used to make boomerangs. 

And then she told me one of the Dreamtime myths behind the first boomerang. At the start of life, all creatures walked on fours because the sky was too low for upright walking. When a man came upon an unusual piece of wood, so straight and beautiful, he used this to prop up the sky.

The sky stays where it is now. The piece of wood, though, had become bent and ugly. Thinking it was useless, the man threw it away.

“It came back,” narrated my friend. May the stories we release to the world find their way back to renew us.

(mayette.tabada@gmail.com/ 09173226131)

* First published in SunStar Cebu’s May 2, 2021 issue of the Sunday editorial-page column, “Matamata”