"With her, I now had a future," he said. And so they planned. He clinched a number of overseas projects, wanting badly to prove to her friends that she could haul him out of his prurient milieu.
Asked to produce a passport, he admitted to her he had also been in and out of Japan as a host, using different passports of various look-alikes. He didn’t have one of his own because his mother never registered his birth.
Realizing how much having a family would mean to him, she offered to trace his parents so he would find his true identity. Taking her cue from friends, she pulled strings through diplomatic circles and began tracking down his serviceman-father. Unfortunately, just before she began getting feedback from the US, the storm broke.
Failing to get the usual check-in call at 4 a.m., she rang his cell phone one morning, and a woman answered, but immediately hung up when she asked for him. When she rang back, he answered, obviously quite drunk. He denied he was with a woman. Even as she tried to explain herself, he rudely switched the phone off.
Hurt, she managed to shrug off the incident, knowing he’d call when he was sober. And by that afternoon, he did, asking her to forget the incident since he did not want to cause her undue pain. He was even smarting from some claw marks on his back, he claimed. But something nagged at her from inside, so she calmly asked him to lay down his cards once and for all.
Yes, he had been married before, he said. But his wife had left him a year ago to shack up with some Japanese men. Yes, he was still entertaining customers, but only because he had bills to pay which he did not want her to shoulder. He had lost a car through an unredeemed bank mortgage, and he wanted a new one. He was used to a luxurious lifestyle where money knew no limits. And yes, he had three women that morning, who left their marks on him.
Humbly, she asked him to bear with her insecurities, and simply be truthful since she would somehow understand and accept. But they had just settled their differences and were planning to work on his birth certificate the following day when his mobile rang, and he curtly asked her to put down the landline so he could call the customer. It was the same woman of that morning’s incident – who now had access to his unlisted number and his home.
Totally confused, she asked him why the other woman was so privileged. Instead of answering, he told her he was tired of her questions and that they should just forget each other since she never meant anything to him anyway. He slammed down the phone.
Desperately, she tried to call him several times, but he refused to talk to her and just told her it was the end. She tried to reach him, at work, but he let one of the other dancers take the phone, and together they bombarded her with obscenities such as she’d never heard before. Shocked and speechless, she could only plead one last time to see him at Baclaran Church. He did not even bother to reply.
Endlessly, she cried – devastated. It broke her spirit. Her morale took a dive. All her dreams came crashing down.
She had been afraid to talk to him at first – afraid to hold him, to love him, to lose him. But she did. And she may never know if it was because of money, or women, or simply because he was in a world where things moved too fast that he couldn’t even feel.
She still passes by Tramo every now and then. But she can only stare at the neon lights as the sounds from within swirl through her head.
"Here now, setting your groins on fire to the music of Michael Bolton – Bikini Boy number 13 – Antonio!"
"You came to me just like the dawn through the night
Just like the shining sun
Out of my dreams and into my life
You are the one... you are the one...
Said I love you but I lied..."
Yes, in his world, nothing was real.
And maybe, just maybe – he was simply being Harry.
With Sandra’s story, quite honestly, I started to change my mind. In the meantime that there are no exclusive bars for women, they can actually go to gay bars – but at their own risk. There are a thousand Harrys lurking in the darkness just waiting for Sandra, Helen, Tony, Gus and Lola Madonna.