ThisEmptyChair

mouth mouth mouth mouth mouth
is the antarctic arctic's south?

smile smile smile smile smile
is a kilometer longer than a mile?

all you are is a mouth all you are is a smile
just sitting by you is a waste of my while

17aug05
-paeng
for a classmate who actually
believes she's interesting

“So?” He said through a deep, tired sigh—without trying to hide exasperation.

He sat there across the table staring at me like an investigator from a bad action movie. Eyes ablaze. Jaw muscles tensed. Legs crossed. Cigarette between fore and middle finger while thumb and the rest of his right-hand fingers tried to keep a stale cup of coffee from spilling in his anger. He was purposefully staring at me. Studying me. Predators like cats never studied their prey as meticulously as I know he was doing me then—and with such loathing. Hatred is a loud neon sign that stands in brave contrast to the gloom of human relations. It does not just reveal itself, it proclaims itself.

I fixed my eyes at the stirring universe and the dance of quasars between where I was sitting and the filthy floor. Him I kept in the corner of my eye. Silence walked majestic in the room. Not the kind that reigns inside churches but the iron-handed fascist that overlords the cemetery. My mouth was stitched from within and welded from without. Hard-pressed on keeping my thoughts from spilling like an angry white water. On the other hand, He, my investigator, in his anger couldn’t say another word.

But after what seemed like a complete revolution of the universe, my cold-blooded examiner broke his silence. His trembling hands betray his lousy impersonation of a patient man.

“So?” He asked for the nth time as he took a last drag from his nearly-burnt out fag. From where I sat, he looked to me like The Red Bull from Peter Beagle’s Last Unicorn. The industrial smoke coming out of his nostrils complemented the roaring fury in his infernal eyes. Thank heavens we wasn’t foaming the mouth. He would be charging at me anytime now, I said to myself, and pin me against the wall to break my spine if not my silence.

Despite myself, I took a bite from what now looked like my unmotivated tuna sandwich (it was as interesting as last week’s news) and chewed it with the gusto of a hepatitis B patient, and continued stargazing at the kitchen floor. It took a valiant effort to be swallowed. Then I took a sip of my hot coco. If the sandwich was horrendous, the choco was bloodcurdling. But I could swear these were wonderful—amazing even. They have always been. What happened to my meal, then?

He happened.

A fissure began to run across His mirthless face. Ah, that sinister grin. He had had a hand on the ruin of my meal. I knew it. Shapes of things to come. He will have a hand on the ruin of everything I most enjoy. Everything. Moments of quiet soliloquy. Shift of rain to drizzle, or dusk to night. Parmesan on pasta. Cinnamon on my coco. Bonus tracks on CDs. Bird on a wire. A kid whistling. Everything. He’d ruin everything.

It was how it would be if I didn’t deal with him soon.

I decided to face him then. I raised my eyes and directed it towards his direction.

But where was he? How could he have vanished into thin air and leave only a piece of crumpled table napkin? I could still feel his presence like a rank odor. He was about. But where?

“So?” I heard him say again, fading, coupled with the suppressed laughter of a knave finding a method to slay his king.

He was gone. Nothing. Nowhere. One never gets to see and study him directly. He is a shadow, forever scurrying away and dancing outside the province of light. One can see him only from the corner of one’s eye, never in front.

I could hear his goading “So,” in my head. It was unsettling. A small black stain on a divine white shirt. A dent on the hood of a brand new car. A splinter in the mind.

So my (un)kind and (un)helpful counselor has deserted me just as when I decided to give in to his single-worded badgering. So much for fairy godmothers or guardian angels. Guilt as an intolerant counselor efficiently counsels without counseling. That darn unwanted visitor.

I abandoned my meal—decided to rid myself of the mountain that sprang from the marbled floor of my restless head.

31July05, 457am.

My hostile room.

I have a fascination for boxing. I don’t play it, I just enjoy watching them pugilists slug it out like a pair of Neanderthals. I know. It’s barbaric but so are chismis shows with nothing to offer but scandals left and right—and they deserve a different story altogether.

It’s my father and uncles who introduced me to this sport back when television had four legs, antennas, and a curtain to boot. The entire maledom in our small neighborhood used to come to our house to watch Ali punish yet another heap of meat. And that’s all most of his opponents are reduced to at the end of most matches: a heap of meat.

And who could forget the now infamous Mike Tyson whose fights covered by local networks are always, and I do mean always, characterized by advertisements running way longer than the fight itself. How few punches would he throw today? Four? Three? Two? One? The maledom would be wondering in unison. The bell, of course, would signal the start but then his opponent would be drooling on the floor, eyes rolling, faster than you could say, “How much is in it for you, Don King?” I would listen to their commentaries. Specially my uncles’. About the footwork. The jabs. The left and right hooks. The arm span. The dodges. The tale of the tape. The whole nine yards. I’m fascinated.

My favorite punch? The uppercut. That deadly blow that always comes from nowhere and sure as hell would turn an opponents eyes rolling like the wheels of a slot machine as his head spin like roulette. Ah, uppercuts. So sneaky. Nobody. Nobody, not even Ali nor Tyson could survive a carefully calculated, precisely aimed, and perfectly executed uppercut.

Neither could I.

And who would have thought that, years later, uppercuts would follow me to Law School? I got some mighty uppercuts from the San Antonio Spurs and my professor today and it sent me reeling home feeling like a slowly sapping balloon. For the pocketful of cockiness I had with me to school today, I got what I probably deserve.

I went to school confident that the Pistons would bag Game 5 of the NBA Finals. Robert Horry was first to deliver my wet blanket. Then 7pm came to remind me of school. I came to the classroom thinking I am as fully prepared as a GI Joe being sent to Nam. Believing that I have read more than most of my classmates did, I walked into our classroom with the swagger of Ace Ventura not knowing what was to come.

Our professor characteristically came late. As his routine goes, he re-ran for us the discussion we previously had and went on to shuffle our classcards, draw a card, and read a name. It was a girl classmate first to be drawn. He made her talk for 25minutes about a topic he previously said we would be skipping today. The fucker lied. He made her sit only after—I know—what seemed to her like forever.

10 minutes to go. Yes! Shuffle. Draw. Read a name.

“Lopez, Raphael?” He looked up, looking for his latest game.

THE ODDS!!!

Houston, The Shit has hit the fan. I repeat. The Shit. Has hit. The fan. Holy bitch of satan, Batman!

Panic replaced the blood in my veins. It’s okay, ‘Eng, you’re ready for this, I told myself. Inhale. Exhale. You’re ready for this. Only I wasn’t.

I’m toast. He kept upping the tempo every time I gave him what seemed to me like a correct answer—upping it every time until I had nothing more to say. He exhausted me. The creature played me well. He boxed a slugger when the slugger was boxing him. His uppercut couldn’t have been launched at a better time. I’m toast. I’m toast. I’m toast.

The antichrist played me well. He asked me also about the topic which he said we’d skip today, starting from the easy (jabs) to the sweat-invoking (left and right hooks) to the whatthef**kyatalkin’bout?!?!? (uppercuts)—all the while he had this sinister grin on his face that seemed to say, “You’re too dumb to have made it to second year.”

My world was spinning. Slowly then faster and faster and… In a way, I felt like a turd being flushed down the toilet. He looked at his watch. I looked at mine. The whole class did. It’s contagious. It’s always contagious. Like yawning. 8:06pm, it’s over. I’m saved by the bell!!! So I thought.

“One more question,” He said ruthlessly. Like a cat playing with its meal, a mice.

Heavens. One more question. The straw to break the camel’s back. The drop of water to burst the dam. The snowflake to trigger the avalanche. The second uppercut, the one that thaws the brain and drains it of all self-respect. My tongue tripped as my lips flipped in search of the answer that never in that moment my jiggled brain could deliver.

8:15pm. I got floored.

Good-bye, cocky boy. Game over. You got TKOed.

He stood up. Gathered our classcards. Said a prayer. Walked out of the room and took one fleeting, almost undetectable glance at his latest kill, this heap of meat.

20 June 2005. Monday. 11.49pm.