RiverWilde

It is always easy to tell if she is, to borrow her own word, screwed, because she is a legion when she is just that. Every word coming from her mouth, as she puts it, would snowball into a tiny version of herself that if you catch her during one of those chatty episodes, you would end up teetering on the floor like crazy for fear of stepping on or, worse crushing one of those dainty little clones of my closest friend, Kris.

Which explains why I always make it a habit to deliberately pace her down when she begins her outpouring because the more she becomes conscious of her kilometric confessions, the more she becomes aware of her imagined lunacy. Here we go, friend. Catch them if you can.

I tell you it’s no joke attending to a nervous wreck of a friend on the one hand while chasing on all fours her imaginary doubles on the other.

Last night I woke up to her frantic knockings just when I was about to slip into the deepest cycle of my sleep. When I opened the door, groggy with bubbles of premature dreams haloing my head, she pushed me to the edge of my bed and grabbed something from the air before she went into some kind of a pricking spree. I felt stupid for ducking at her imaginary pin.

I feel like feeling screwed. I gathered around her and stayed up for a good part of the night helping her pull herself off of another screwer. It’s still about the same old screwing Joey, married with kids. The problem with ancient issues like Joey is that you feel like you age tremendously each time the story unfolds as you bear the weight of both prejudice and paranoia on every pore of your skin. You may at one point think it would be better if you give her a shock of electro-convulsive therapy or something but, sometimes it’s futile shaking her up to jolt her back to her senses. Sometimes you just have to wait and age with her, new and ancient screwers all in.

There is no stopping me this time. I am out to prove to the world that I love Joey…and nothing else matters... I believe Kris not so much as a listener struck by her uncommon boldness and honesty but as a friend feeling for her and wanting to protect her from the plagues of the world. She should be preserved for all her worth – innocence and all that’s profound, consuming and draining at the fringes of its uniqueness.

When nasty rumors started flying around, I was damned for taking a not-so-popular stand. My other set of friends thought I should be krissified back to back with my Cause and thus put an end to an era of mesmerism and quixotic allegiance. Why, it did feel like challenging the windmills to a duel because aside from not knowing who our real enemies were, we oftentimes would end up in the quietness of our rooms questioning – If God is love why do bad things happen to loving people? – as if God was our absentee barangay chairman working part-time as a peddler of pirated CD’s along Juan Luna in Divisoria.

I know I have defied my mom, my family and by God, now it’s the sanctity of my father’s legacy some malicious people are lobbying against… But as you see I am no more or less dictated by the promptings of my own moral duties than he was.

Ninong was a great guy. There is no denying. The magnanimity of his contribution to humanity is just too sacred to be dragged into the arena of all these senseless trifles. But if what I am fighting for makes me anything less of a human being, then I don’t know anything about humanity anymore…

Tita, her mother, called me the other night and in between sobs she managed to discuss with me the merits of her role as a mother. Tell me, Erik, has my motherhood come to a disgraceful fall? I wanted to stay longer than the echo of her saddest sigh and would have waited for it to bounce back with a cheerful note but it broke out into a chilling muffled cry.

I knew Kris had been crying when I chanced her inside Studio B blankly watching the production staff and crew bustling about in their usual pre-production routines for the morning talk show on TV - Mornings with Kris and Korinna. When she saw me, she took me to a corner and asked if I have checked out the papers for the day. Behind those crafty cosmetics, no amount of concealer could tone down those bags of frustrations weighing down her sparkling brown eyes now filming with tears. She reached for a ply of facial tissue from me but a gaffer heavy with stuff inadvertently bumped her from behind. Her reaction was surprisingly gracious than usual as the culprit went about his business unmindful of her transgression. They can’t make me. No. The world is just out to test me. I know people are taking sides now. But I am standing my ground, they will see.

We had lunch together after the show. The day looked ominous with streaks of gray clouds and cold drafts of wind wafting through the cafeteria. At the peak of the midday buzz, a bottle of soda slipped from the busboy’s hold, in an instant the supervisor fussed over the incident. I turned my head and behind us, a starlet was sobbing quietly as her talent manager threw himself into a fanning frenzy. I knew he was mad as hell. You know as much as I do there is no money to be had from all these sweety-tweety acts. Why can’t you just do what I want you to do – kiss and suck your way up and tell on them later, huh?

She was reading M. Scott Peck’s A Road Less Traveled and when she raised her eyes to me, I told her she still has got all the luck in this world – a girl who has a point of view and can speak her mind anytime anywhere it pleases her – who can match that? She is fast becoming an icon for women I know not afraid to go against the flow by putting the mouth where the heart is. Erik, you and I deserve a talk show of our own, a show that should put into use our unequalled grit and candor. What do you think? I said no thanks but I love my ungrateful bumming and writing job. Yeah but when are you going to come out and rescue me with a decent story all of my own? I need your side, buddy. When I reminded her that she has never sided with me yet, even long after my separation with Jao, she just told me my moment would come.

With all her connections in and around the industry, my side would not matter anymore vis-à-vis those big names. Each of them has in one way or another made it a point to chime in their cent’s worth of opinion regarding the matter. It is eerily funny how a whole nation finally gets to think and act together by a single thread of showbiz controversy.

We parted as soon as her mobile phone rang. It was Joey. A very pressing need necessitates her rushing to his side. I asked if she wanted me to come with her. She said no which actually sounded like yes now but damn myself for not forcing her to tag me along.

I headed straight to M-, where I met Jao, a second-run movie house along R- Ave. I settled in one of those rickety loveseats and for all I cared it felt like I was surreally home in the heavenly arms and volcanic lips of some stranger in that bug-infested paradise.

I turned on the news and took a shower the minute I got to my room. In the middle of my own self-purging ritual, the water stopped. Then the sound of TV flooded into my ears. Kris Aquino files charges against live-in partner Joey Marquez. I dashed to the set and watched ashen-faced Kris in her jeans and brownish body-hugging blouse authentically sad without makeup on fidgeting with a tear streaming down her cheek as she settled in the corner of the van that was to take her to Camp Crame for the medico-legal examinations. And I thought – O my, all hell has broken loose now, girl. Here we go. Give the world the needed shot of shocker.

My phone was ringing off the hook but I didn’t mind it. I wanted to take in all of the details of this another showbiz milestone. Yet again my mind drifted off with Kris, my best friend, who suddenly barged in to my room, wailing like a siren with arms flailing every which way. I slapped her with a wad of facial tissue but she did not stop.

“What have I done? What am I gonna do now? Joey is leaving me…” She threw herself into the throes of the worst of her over-animated brand of depression.

“For Christ’s sake, Kristina Dimacali Aquino, if this help is what you need, listen to me…You are not Kris Aquino! You are just her namesake who happens to have a disturbingly deep liking for all that is Kris Aquino! Girl, stop all these self-inflicted mental anguish and for once let’s act like you are you – sweet and smart production assistant for Morning Girls…and me – like the old bum of a writer-friend who wants nothing but the best for you in your TV production career….Come on, you can’t go on like that…You are not the real Kris Aquino! Your boyfriend is not really gonna leave you but he told me if you insist in calling him Joey, a name he resents vehemently, he might just do anything that would please him…Come on, don’t disappoint us – me, Tita and Ninong…a Presidential Awardee, and pride of Siquijor…”

Sometimes, being Erik does have its downsides too. But having Kris for a friend is just too much for me to even begin entertaining them one by one, like this compelling mania to count my fingers, one, two, three…

-end-