SHORT FICTION
I should have never answered that phone call. I could have probably saved myself from this. I hate going to funerals, they make me all shaky and stuff. I hate everything that reminds me of death and dying. I mean what’s to like about it right?
But I guess I have no choice but to come here. It’s Vanessa after all.
“Charm,” Auntie cried as she hugged me. “Vanessa, she’s… she’s gone now.”
“I know Tita.” I told her, almost nonchalantly.
Vanessa was my other half. No, she’s not my twin. It’s just that we’ve been so close calling each other best friend just wouldn’t do. So for us, we are half of each other. Weird huh? But we’re not into anything occult and stuff.
“It’s such a sad thing,” I heard one of the guests say. “She was so young.”
I peered into the coffin and saw her. She looked like a wax dummy. That’s what I’ve always thought about dead people in coffins, wax dummies. And Vanessa was the biggest wax dummy of all.
“Bitch.” I whispered, “look at you now, looking like wax. I told you before didn’t I?”
A month before, Vanessa called me up to tell me about a photo shoot she had somewhere.
“You should have heard the photographer!” she said ecstatically. “He said I photographed like a dream!”
“Yeah!” I said. “Good for you.”
“You’re so mean! You dismiss me so easily!”
“Well, what do you want me to say?” I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I had all this deadlines to meet and she was just going to rant about her perfection. “You won’t photograph like a dream forever you know!”
“I know! But I won’t let that time come.”
“Charm,” Auntie said suddenly, “would you be kind enough to give a little eulogy? Who would know Vanessa outside the house but you?”
“Well, sure.” I said with a faint smile.
Now what to say about Vanessa? Vanessa – is a model. One of those beautiful girls you see in photos. Long eyelashes, prominent cheek bones, pouted lips framed in a perfectly shaped face. Of course, not to state the obvious, she has long legs, and a long torso. She never gains too much weight because, well, she would rather have you know that she’s a genetic mutant who does not gain weight no matter how much she eats. But in truth, she’s bulimic. I don’t think her mother knows though. She likes partying and enjoying her life to the fullest. Getting wasted and getting high are not in her book though. She says she feels like her soul is being stolen when alcohol and all those other toxins are in her system.
“Oh please! I never said that! I said that those toxins will kill off my perfect cells and make me age faster!”
Oh yeah, that’s what she said at my birthday party. She was so pissed at her boyfriend, James, for making all those jokes about her saying that she lost her soul. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him yet.
In any case, that’s Vanessa. She’s a nice person, she’ll give anything she has for the people she cares for. But Vanessa is obsessed about beauty.
“Look at my mother,” she said once.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m looking.”
“Would you have thought she used to be a beauty queen?” she asked me while she was drinking her fruit shake.
“Well,” I answered. “Yeah!”
“But you wouldn’t think she was that beautiful now. She’s so old. She has all those lines on her face. And would you look at those legs!”
“You’re too hard on your mom! You know, one day, you’ll get old and fat and…”
“Stop saying those things!” she slapped my arm. “I promise that I will never look like that!”
Ok, now where was I? Oh yeah, obsessed with beauty. I probably should scratch that out. People should remember her as…
“People should only remember the beautiful me!” she said. “I won’t let people remember me like an old lady with a cane.”
“That’s not really far from happening you know.” I told her. “With your bulimia and stuff, you could die young.”
“That would be nice! I won’t have to see myself go ugly!”
“How do you ever face yourself in the morning?”
“With a smile!”
… as… a person who likes to see beautiful things and has beautiful dreams. Ugh! That is so ugly. She is so going to kill me. Heck! She’s already dead.
Now, what if I tell them – looking at her now, you see a beautiful girl at the prime of her youth sleeping soundly, dreaming of a better future, and probably, she’s just waiting for that prince of hers. But Vanessa never liked Sleeping Beauty.
“I never really liked this story,” she used to say. “It has such a sad ending.”
“What’s so sad about the prince and the princess getting married?” I used to ask her.
“And what’s so happy about that?”
“Getting married? I don’t know. You tell me.”
“She could have slept forever. She could have been forever beautiful in the memory of the people that had known her.”
“Right…”
“I mean think about it. She could have just slept and died sleeping. She wouldn’t feel pain. Most of us don’t have that luxury of dying in your sleep.”
“That’s morbid.”
“Hmph! I bet you I can be a better Sleeping Beauty!”
Yeah, I guess telling people that she’s a young beautiful girl sleeping through the ages might not upset her that much.
“She was such an angel,” Auntie suddenly said. “I just wished she didn’t die that way.”
“She died alone huh?” I said. She must have overdosed herself and slept.
“No,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes. “James killed her.”
Monday, June 9, 2008
Cloud Journeys
NON-FICTION
I will be spending the next hour and thirty-five minutes of my birthday strapped to my seat, on board a commercial flight for Manila. Nine months earlier I was in the same tight spot, figuratively, except that I was homebound then. This trip I surmise is going to be as melancholic as the clouds today and as bleak as my big dreams.
While most everyone is rushing to put some last touches on their summer itineraries, I on the other hand, am in the midst of concluding my final days notice at work as head hunter-slash-fulltime girl assistant. At a time when colleagues are just about starting to build up their respective work portfolios and curriculum vitae I find myself tendering my yet second resignation in less than a year.
It seems ironic now how being thousands of miles high up in the air makes me feel more pinned down to the ground than ever. The clouds look fluffy enough, why do I feel like an overweight crazy caterpillar? Why don’t I feel sedated and invulnerable when I’m inside a pressurized mega machine that detaches me from the clutters of the Earth?
Notwithstanding the emotional suicide and often terrible headaches I get whenever I travel, I am in fact able to look at the world from a soaring perspective, rather literally. My personal realities come rushing to me like the black and white Sampaguita movie re-runs I used to watch with my sisters during summer afternoons in the early 90s. They seem far away and forgotten, but are in fact as real and unsettling as the occasional turbulence that shakes me from my reverie throughout the flight. But it does not throw me off my seat or have me reaching above for the oxygen mask. As in the comfortably dormant years after college that was punctuated only by my episodic delusions of becoming a writer, nothing significant really took off. My previous occupations have served as quick fixes, like a cup of coffee to help finish the job on time when all I needed was a really nice sleep. And when a trip to the nearest coffee place is too expensive, I stand at the edge of a cliff and freefall a.k.a. write my resignation letter. It’s a vicious cycle, I grab the next available job there is anyway. Looking back, one really complex question I’ve been asked during a job interview is “What brings you here?” And I’m thinking how many more similar questions can I take before I stop chasing after clouds? I tend to forget where I’m going or why I’m here or why I even bother getting up in the morning, and so I go wherever the wind carries me—worse, I take an airplane. Recently I realized that I love waking up to our dogs’ wet snout against my face, the over excited barks and frantic tail-wagging. But for how long, before I start feeling like a stranger to myself again, and by reflex create pivotal moments, box everything—my clothes, photos, friendships—beat traffic, head to the pre-departure area and just flee.
There is something romantic about departures and arrivals amidst a sea of anonymous faces but pretty much the same anxious and animated expressions. Coming out of the airport terminal with my battered luggage in tow and a soundtrack playing in my head must mean that I survived. I could have died but I didn’t. This is a gift and I’ve been given another chance to be miss sunshine once more, to wash my hair, to wear pretty dresses, to dog-sit, to be with my family, to find meaning in God’s works.
I am 25 years old and I have a job interview in a few hours. It was drizzling when I left my hometown this morning but looking out the tiny window now, Manila seems sunny enough. This flight may just take me to where “permanent” and “commitment” will no longer be scary words.
* * *
My name is Chrismae J. Laolao, 25 years old. I grew up in Zamboanga City and graduated with a degree in BA Communication Arts at the University of the Philippines in Mindanao, Davao City. I’m not very crazy about flying.
I will be spending the next hour and thirty-five minutes of my birthday strapped to my seat, on board a commercial flight for Manila. Nine months earlier I was in the same tight spot, figuratively, except that I was homebound then. This trip I surmise is going to be as melancholic as the clouds today and as bleak as my big dreams.
While most everyone is rushing to put some last touches on their summer itineraries, I on the other hand, am in the midst of concluding my final days notice at work as head hunter-slash-fulltime girl assistant. At a time when colleagues are just about starting to build up their respective work portfolios and curriculum vitae I find myself tendering my yet second resignation in less than a year.
It seems ironic now how being thousands of miles high up in the air makes me feel more pinned down to the ground than ever. The clouds look fluffy enough, why do I feel like an overweight crazy caterpillar? Why don’t I feel sedated and invulnerable when I’m inside a pressurized mega machine that detaches me from the clutters of the Earth?
Notwithstanding the emotional suicide and often terrible headaches I get whenever I travel, I am in fact able to look at the world from a soaring perspective, rather literally. My personal realities come rushing to me like the black and white Sampaguita movie re-runs I used to watch with my sisters during summer afternoons in the early 90s. They seem far away and forgotten, but are in fact as real and unsettling as the occasional turbulence that shakes me from my reverie throughout the flight. But it does not throw me off my seat or have me reaching above for the oxygen mask. As in the comfortably dormant years after college that was punctuated only by my episodic delusions of becoming a writer, nothing significant really took off. My previous occupations have served as quick fixes, like a cup of coffee to help finish the job on time when all I needed was a really nice sleep. And when a trip to the nearest coffee place is too expensive, I stand at the edge of a cliff and freefall a.k.a. write my resignation letter. It’s a vicious cycle, I grab the next available job there is anyway. Looking back, one really complex question I’ve been asked during a job interview is “What brings you here?” And I’m thinking how many more similar questions can I take before I stop chasing after clouds? I tend to forget where I’m going or why I’m here or why I even bother getting up in the morning, and so I go wherever the wind carries me—worse, I take an airplane. Recently I realized that I love waking up to our dogs’ wet snout against my face, the over excited barks and frantic tail-wagging. But for how long, before I start feeling like a stranger to myself again, and by reflex create pivotal moments, box everything—my clothes, photos, friendships—beat traffic, head to the pre-departure area and just flee.
There is something romantic about departures and arrivals amidst a sea of anonymous faces but pretty much the same anxious and animated expressions. Coming out of the airport terminal with my battered luggage in tow and a soundtrack playing in my head must mean that I survived. I could have died but I didn’t. This is a gift and I’ve been given another chance to be miss sunshine once more, to wash my hair, to wear pretty dresses, to dog-sit, to be with my family, to find meaning in God’s works.
I am 25 years old and I have a job interview in a few hours. It was drizzling when I left my hometown this morning but looking out the tiny window now, Manila seems sunny enough. This flight may just take me to where “permanent” and “commitment” will no longer be scary words.
* * *
My name is Chrismae J. Laolao, 25 years old. I grew up in Zamboanga City and graduated with a degree in BA Communication Arts at the University of the Philippines in Mindanao, Davao City. I’m not very crazy about flying.
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