Post by ernesto thaddeus m. solmerano on Jun 19, 2007 22:29:19 GMT -5
19
by Jesus Q. Cruz
The Great God Pan pinned down the nymph with his hairy bulk, his goat-feet kicking away the stones from the earth, his scaly-hands grasping the breasts of his captive who struggled to squeeze herself from her abductor who had spirited her away from her sylvan bower this mid-afternoon as she gamboled with her sisters in the sun, their frolic unknown to the woman fumbling in her black bag in vain for the brass butterfly pin, her protection against marauding males in a megacity where she worked in a mall, her fear she could not share with Korean bimbos at the canteen who had been giggling to the anecdotes of a handsome socialite but who had now retired to their quarters for the night except one who had jumped into the young lothario’s silver Porsche for a moonlit ride on the coastal road along Dive Camp 2 in Anilao.
“Good gracious, Mr. Zorilla! Are you writing a myth? You are joining a short story contest and I need you to win at least a consolation prize. And what are the Korean girls doing in your piece? Bimbos? Watch your language. The girls have already submitted their entries and I assure you, dear boy, they’re very good.”
Blah, blah, blah.
“Dr. Flores, Ma’am, I have never written a short story before. I’m trying to figure out how I can insert in my opening paragraph that there is an ancient jukebox in the canteen, that a Madonna hit is playing, that a sleepy waiter is trying to keep himself awake by turning the volume full blast, drowning out the sound of the sea, of the surf on the shore.”
“Are you trying to do a Proust? A beginner should stick to basics. Don’t try anything pretentious.”
“You’ve encouraged us, Ma’am, to read as much as we can of Poe, De Maupassant, Chekhov, but I am not aping them. I’m doing an original, a Zorilla, get it, you bitch?
It’s bad enough that I’m enrolled in this fly-by-night dump which is what Erpat can afford. But do I need to go along with this pretense at culture of this diploma factory?
I’m lucky to have a mother who inspired me to read when I was in grade school.
“Perk up, perk up, Mr. Zorilla. We have a deadline to meet…”
Blah, blah, blah…
The Great God Pan relaxed his hold when he sensed that the nymph had thrown back her head in submission. He saw her trying to turn her head to one side because she did not want to look at his face gloating over his conquest, but he held her head so that she could not avoid looking straight at him. With thumb and index finger, he pushed open her left eyelids. Now he was on top of her and inside her as he had wanted her to be. In total control, he began the age-old rhythmic dance of desire between her thighs which opened like a sea anemone, up, down, up, down, with a deliberately slow tempo slower than the jazzy beat of Jennifer Lopez from the jukebox and more in time with the surge of the sea on the shore.
“Stop! Wait a second, Mr. Zorilla. If the jukebox is playing in full volume, can the sound of waves be heard by the guests in the dive camp? This is inconsistent.”
Inconsistent, I disagree! But this old bag has a point, damn!
“I’ll clean this up, Ma’am.”
“You see, Mr. Zorilla, the beginning of a short story is the most important part. Everything that follows flows from it.”
“I don’t agree, Dr. Flores. I prefer to start at the end. Then I should know where my story is going, right?”
My remark catches the old crone off guard. She crinkles her brows and a million lines materialize on her face.
Why is the female of the species so sensitive about revealing her real age? Dr. Flores once boasted that she was an exception.
“I am 47, and I’m proud of it.”
47, I disagree! She has to be 60, if she’s a day!
I make no secret to being a male chauvinist pig.
“Listen up, guys!“ Mike Ortiz III addressed his Omega brods and from his tone, everybody knew he had something important to disclose.
“You remember how we conducted our hazing at my place because the school did not allow it on campus and we all had to swear to a code of secrecy? Well, I have a proposition to make which demands that I invoke once again our oath.”
When Mike’s side-kick put on his blue bikini trunks and a winning smile, he had already spotted his target, the woman in the scarlet one-piece swimsuit standing knee-deep in the water. He squared his lean shoulders, threw out his bony chest, squeezed in his spongy belly and feeling his 5’2’’ swelling up ten inches more, strode toward his prey like Achilles and his battering ram at the gate of Troy.
“Here I come!”
“Is your story about rape?” Dr. Flores glares at me. “I’ve told the class to stay off certain subjects. No love story, please. I can’t stand corn…”
Blah, blah, blah!
“No, Ma’am. It’s about a chance meeting on the beach.” It’s about a one-night stand, if you know what that means. “In fact, it has a moral” I flash the old bag an angelic smile.
“Indeed! I had not expected that of you, Mr. Zorilla. But is it Christian morality when you are writing about pagan demigods and nymphs? And a man flirting with Korean ladies in a beach resort?”
“This story is about a romantic encounter which the main protagonist raises to the level of myth. I’m aiming for a paradox.”
“I don’t see that, but there seems to be more of you than meets the eye.”
I give her another beatific smile. Does she suspect that I’m pulling her leg? I cannot imagine her expression as that of a lamb being led by the noose to the slaughterhouse.
“You are going to get it now, you bitch!” muttered the man in the blue trunks.
“Hi, my name is Al. Are you with the excursionists from SM Manila?”
Al—that’s good. For one who wanted to remain a mysterious stranger to his preys, he was fantastic.
Al, ha? The woman who was knee-deep in the water blinked at him as she tried to guess his first name. Albert, Alvin, Alfonse? She wanted to give him hers but he didn’t ask.
“Yeah, I’m with the group.”
“I knew it! The moment I spotted you, I recalled that I had seen you before.”
Oh, yeah? Esme grinned. How did you see me at the Lady’s Department? Were you looking for lingerie?
Liar, she thought. Men are such pigs. She could still feel the paws of her stepfather back in her barrio in Leyte when her mother was away at a teacher’s workshop in Tacloban. She had yielded to her boyfriend in high school on the beach one night but he had shoved her roughly away afterwards. And her supervisor at the mall was a pervert. She had seen him in the women’s dressing room exposing himself.
“Aren’t you giving away your story too soon, Mr. Zorilla? I’ve taught your class all about foreshadowing but you need to exercise restraint.”
I’m not giving anything away. I’m only weaving the motifs of the story. And that’s no secret…
The Grand Knight of the Omega Crusaders had sworn all the brods to a covenant of silence. Mike could not repeat often enough that if they were unmasked, they would be dishonored and expelled from the university. They had to take a vow of secrecy.
Within a period of one year, each brod was to screw as many different broads as he could. The winner gets the pot and be Grand Knight the following year.
Mike lived in a Georgian villa in Alta Vista. He drove a Porsche. He was gifted with the face and figure of a matinee idol and he had a natural charm that at the dive camp, he had all the Korean girls giggling over him as he told his tale about the Arab who had to keep running back and forth between the camel’s mouth and the animal’s hind side as if they understood with their meager English.
I have some trouble too with my own English. Often I find myself groping for words. I have written that Al has begun his seduction of the woman in the red swimsuit but he is still far from working her into an amorous mood. The song with the jazzy beat by Britney Spears from the jukebox did not inspire romance.
All at once, as if in response to his need, the clouds unveiled the full moon.
“Look! The moon!”
Al called out to the woman as he stepped into the cold water over the rocky sand to get to her side.
“You know the ancient Greeks believed that the moon was a goddess, the sun’s twin sister…”
The woman looked at him with the dumb eyes of a cow.
From the terrace, Mike could make out in the moonlight the two figures, their feet knee-deep in water. He tried to be always a good friend to Don, which was what the brods called him, not Celedonio.
Friend he was not to Don, his familiar, valet, man-Friday, messenger, and when necessary, his footstool, shoe-shine boy and Frankenstein monster.
Three years before, he was speeding in his old Mustang along Quezon Avenue, both hands on the steering wheel, one hand of the bitch he picked up in a bar inside his fly, squeezing his tool, when an old goat darted across the road. He jammed the breaks too late. He rushed the old man to the nearest hospital where his victim was treated for serious injuries until the man was released five months after on crutches. The least he could do was to send the old man’s son to the university, his own alma matter no less.
Dr. Flores raised her eyes from the page, smiling.
“What?” Is this old bag leering at me?
She only shook her head at me and turned to my manuscript again.
Mike was amazed at the speed and ease with which his protégée absorbed learning like a sponge. He did not let him take the same classes as the brods and he. He enrolled Don in useless subjects like Humanities, Peace Education, Ethics, and Mythology which absorbed him no end.
For Don who had attended only public schools in the seedy side of the city, Mike’s university was a haven, an oasis. He did not mind that the brods snickered because Mike’s hand-me-downs were two sizes bigger on his skinny shoulders. He did not mind that they all bossed him around. Because where it really mattered—in the shower room—after the game, he towered above them all including Mike who was never in the showers with the rest of the brods.
How could Don convince the brods of his supremacy over them all when they knew nothing of Hephaestus and his domain in Sicily where the crippled smith forged the fiery spears of Zeus in the mouth of Vesuvius, the rivers of lava streaming from its flaming crater in a surge of volcanic passion?
“Now, now, my dear boy! You’re going overboard. Don’t forget to apply restraint…”
Blah, blah!
by Jesus Q. Cruz
The Great God Pan pinned down the nymph with his hairy bulk, his goat-feet kicking away the stones from the earth, his scaly-hands grasping the breasts of his captive who struggled to squeeze herself from her abductor who had spirited her away from her sylvan bower this mid-afternoon as she gamboled with her sisters in the sun, their frolic unknown to the woman fumbling in her black bag in vain for the brass butterfly pin, her protection against marauding males in a megacity where she worked in a mall, her fear she could not share with Korean bimbos at the canteen who had been giggling to the anecdotes of a handsome socialite but who had now retired to their quarters for the night except one who had jumped into the young lothario’s silver Porsche for a moonlit ride on the coastal road along Dive Camp 2 in Anilao.
“Good gracious, Mr. Zorilla! Are you writing a myth? You are joining a short story contest and I need you to win at least a consolation prize. And what are the Korean girls doing in your piece? Bimbos? Watch your language. The girls have already submitted their entries and I assure you, dear boy, they’re very good.”
Blah, blah, blah.
“Dr. Flores, Ma’am, I have never written a short story before. I’m trying to figure out how I can insert in my opening paragraph that there is an ancient jukebox in the canteen, that a Madonna hit is playing, that a sleepy waiter is trying to keep himself awake by turning the volume full blast, drowning out the sound of the sea, of the surf on the shore.”
“Are you trying to do a Proust? A beginner should stick to basics. Don’t try anything pretentious.”
“You’ve encouraged us, Ma’am, to read as much as we can of Poe, De Maupassant, Chekhov, but I am not aping them. I’m doing an original, a Zorilla, get it, you bitch?
It’s bad enough that I’m enrolled in this fly-by-night dump which is what Erpat can afford. But do I need to go along with this pretense at culture of this diploma factory?
I’m lucky to have a mother who inspired me to read when I was in grade school.
“Perk up, perk up, Mr. Zorilla. We have a deadline to meet…”
Blah, blah, blah…
The Great God Pan relaxed his hold when he sensed that the nymph had thrown back her head in submission. He saw her trying to turn her head to one side because she did not want to look at his face gloating over his conquest, but he held her head so that she could not avoid looking straight at him. With thumb and index finger, he pushed open her left eyelids. Now he was on top of her and inside her as he had wanted her to be. In total control, he began the age-old rhythmic dance of desire between her thighs which opened like a sea anemone, up, down, up, down, with a deliberately slow tempo slower than the jazzy beat of Jennifer Lopez from the jukebox and more in time with the surge of the sea on the shore.
“Stop! Wait a second, Mr. Zorilla. If the jukebox is playing in full volume, can the sound of waves be heard by the guests in the dive camp? This is inconsistent.”
Inconsistent, I disagree! But this old bag has a point, damn!
“I’ll clean this up, Ma’am.”
“You see, Mr. Zorilla, the beginning of a short story is the most important part. Everything that follows flows from it.”
“I don’t agree, Dr. Flores. I prefer to start at the end. Then I should know where my story is going, right?”
My remark catches the old crone off guard. She crinkles her brows and a million lines materialize on her face.
Why is the female of the species so sensitive about revealing her real age? Dr. Flores once boasted that she was an exception.
“I am 47, and I’m proud of it.”
47, I disagree! She has to be 60, if she’s a day!
I make no secret to being a male chauvinist pig.
“Listen up, guys!“ Mike Ortiz III addressed his Omega brods and from his tone, everybody knew he had something important to disclose.
“You remember how we conducted our hazing at my place because the school did not allow it on campus and we all had to swear to a code of secrecy? Well, I have a proposition to make which demands that I invoke once again our oath.”
When Mike’s side-kick put on his blue bikini trunks and a winning smile, he had already spotted his target, the woman in the scarlet one-piece swimsuit standing knee-deep in the water. He squared his lean shoulders, threw out his bony chest, squeezed in his spongy belly and feeling his 5’2’’ swelling up ten inches more, strode toward his prey like Achilles and his battering ram at the gate of Troy.
“Here I come!”
“Is your story about rape?” Dr. Flores glares at me. “I’ve told the class to stay off certain subjects. No love story, please. I can’t stand corn…”
Blah, blah, blah!
“No, Ma’am. It’s about a chance meeting on the beach.” It’s about a one-night stand, if you know what that means. “In fact, it has a moral” I flash the old bag an angelic smile.
“Indeed! I had not expected that of you, Mr. Zorilla. But is it Christian morality when you are writing about pagan demigods and nymphs? And a man flirting with Korean ladies in a beach resort?”
“This story is about a romantic encounter which the main protagonist raises to the level of myth. I’m aiming for a paradox.”
“I don’t see that, but there seems to be more of you than meets the eye.”
I give her another beatific smile. Does she suspect that I’m pulling her leg? I cannot imagine her expression as that of a lamb being led by the noose to the slaughterhouse.
“You are going to get it now, you bitch!” muttered the man in the blue trunks.
“Hi, my name is Al. Are you with the excursionists from SM Manila?”
Al—that’s good. For one who wanted to remain a mysterious stranger to his preys, he was fantastic.
Al, ha? The woman who was knee-deep in the water blinked at him as she tried to guess his first name. Albert, Alvin, Alfonse? She wanted to give him hers but he didn’t ask.
“Yeah, I’m with the group.”
“I knew it! The moment I spotted you, I recalled that I had seen you before.”
Oh, yeah? Esme grinned. How did you see me at the Lady’s Department? Were you looking for lingerie?
Liar, she thought. Men are such pigs. She could still feel the paws of her stepfather back in her barrio in Leyte when her mother was away at a teacher’s workshop in Tacloban. She had yielded to her boyfriend in high school on the beach one night but he had shoved her roughly away afterwards. And her supervisor at the mall was a pervert. She had seen him in the women’s dressing room exposing himself.
“Aren’t you giving away your story too soon, Mr. Zorilla? I’ve taught your class all about foreshadowing but you need to exercise restraint.”
I’m not giving anything away. I’m only weaving the motifs of the story. And that’s no secret…
The Grand Knight of the Omega Crusaders had sworn all the brods to a covenant of silence. Mike could not repeat often enough that if they were unmasked, they would be dishonored and expelled from the university. They had to take a vow of secrecy.
Within a period of one year, each brod was to screw as many different broads as he could. The winner gets the pot and be Grand Knight the following year.
Mike lived in a Georgian villa in Alta Vista. He drove a Porsche. He was gifted with the face and figure of a matinee idol and he had a natural charm that at the dive camp, he had all the Korean girls giggling over him as he told his tale about the Arab who had to keep running back and forth between the camel’s mouth and the animal’s hind side as if they understood with their meager English.
I have some trouble too with my own English. Often I find myself groping for words. I have written that Al has begun his seduction of the woman in the red swimsuit but he is still far from working her into an amorous mood. The song with the jazzy beat by Britney Spears from the jukebox did not inspire romance.
All at once, as if in response to his need, the clouds unveiled the full moon.
“Look! The moon!”
Al called out to the woman as he stepped into the cold water over the rocky sand to get to her side.
“You know the ancient Greeks believed that the moon was a goddess, the sun’s twin sister…”
The woman looked at him with the dumb eyes of a cow.
From the terrace, Mike could make out in the moonlight the two figures, their feet knee-deep in water. He tried to be always a good friend to Don, which was what the brods called him, not Celedonio.
Friend he was not to Don, his familiar, valet, man-Friday, messenger, and when necessary, his footstool, shoe-shine boy and Frankenstein monster.
Three years before, he was speeding in his old Mustang along Quezon Avenue, both hands on the steering wheel, one hand of the bitch he picked up in a bar inside his fly, squeezing his tool, when an old goat darted across the road. He jammed the breaks too late. He rushed the old man to the nearest hospital where his victim was treated for serious injuries until the man was released five months after on crutches. The least he could do was to send the old man’s son to the university, his own alma matter no less.
Dr. Flores raised her eyes from the page, smiling.
“What?” Is this old bag leering at me?
She only shook her head at me and turned to my manuscript again.
Mike was amazed at the speed and ease with which his protégée absorbed learning like a sponge. He did not let him take the same classes as the brods and he. He enrolled Don in useless subjects like Humanities, Peace Education, Ethics, and Mythology which absorbed him no end.
For Don who had attended only public schools in the seedy side of the city, Mike’s university was a haven, an oasis. He did not mind that the brods snickered because Mike’s hand-me-downs were two sizes bigger on his skinny shoulders. He did not mind that they all bossed him around. Because where it really mattered—in the shower room—after the game, he towered above them all including Mike who was never in the showers with the rest of the brods.
How could Don convince the brods of his supremacy over them all when they knew nothing of Hephaestus and his domain in Sicily where the crippled smith forged the fiery spears of Zeus in the mouth of Vesuvius, the rivers of lava streaming from its flaming crater in a surge of volcanic passion?
“Now, now, my dear boy! You’re going overboard. Don’t forget to apply restraint…”
Blah, blah!