THE VORTEX

In the 1990s, I lived in a rented studio apartment in a building in the Makati central business district. It was by no means a luxurious residence; the architecture was reminiscent of Soviet asylums, and the identical flats looked like the setting for David Lynch’s movie, Eraserhead. The building’s main attractions were the low rent and proximity to corporate offices, shopping centers and banks. I could walk home any time, day or night.

At the time most of my friends were still living with their parents, so by default I was the independent one. We had a party after my friends passed the bar exams. That’s when I formulated my Theory of Devolution: the more alcohol you consume, the lower you go down the evolutionary ladder. You start out as homo sapiens, but after several drinks, walking upright takes more effort. That’s the Simian stage. Many drinks later, you’re crawling on the floor. That’s the Reptile stage. You start making loud and pompous statements — the Politician stage. You swim on the floor — the Fish stage. Finally you pass out on the nearest surface. You’ve devolved into a Rock. My theory was demonstrated by dear friends who are now in respectable professions such as the law and banking. I hope writing never becomes a respectable profession.

Some of my fondest memories of the place involve walking home from the video rental place in the basement of Makati Cinema Square with three or four laser discs under my arm. It was good to have that half-hour walk before going into a movie-zombie state for the next six to eight hours. In that apartment I watched dozens of movies including Wings of Desire, Notorious, Dead Ringers, Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, The Grifters and The Last Temptation of Christ, which was available in a plain white cardboard jacket.

I remember watching Cinema Paradiso with a classmate who had become a filmmaker. He wept copiously throughout the movie. The last time I saw him a few months ago, he voiced the suspicion that his concept for a film had been stolen. It was about a rat who becomes a chef. My classmate was convinced that the good people of Pixar had somehow hacked into his computer and taken the screenplay that would become the acclaimed blockbuster, Ratatouille. I said, “Really? How interesting,” and slowly backed away.

In 2006, long after I’d moved out of that apartment, I was hanging out with two friends and got to talking about places we had lived in. That’s when I discovered that we had all lived in the Eraserhead building, but at different times. Not only that, but we had occupied adjacent studio units: 914, 915 and 916. We had been neighbors, in a time-warp sort of way.

Bert had lived in Apartment 915 in the late ‘90s. It was all right, until his hearing became super-sensitive. The building had thick walls and doors, but he started hearing every door, drawer and window opening and closing in the next apartment.

He went next door and politely asked the neighbor to tone down the noise. The neighbor said that as far as he knew, he had not been slamming doors or making any sort of racket. However, he would try to keep the noise level down. Bert thanked him and returned to his apartment. The noise started up again.

This time it wasn’t just the doors, drawers and windows. Bert could hear every lock clicking, every chair scraping against the floor, every newspaper rustling as the page was turned. It was like having bionic ears, except that he couldn’t tune anything out. He had become... Eraserhead. Was he actually hearing the sounds, or was he imagining that he heard sounds? Either way, it was shredding his nerves.

This auditory torture went on for weeks. Just before Bert ran amok or realized there was a tiny woman singing inside the air conditioner, his unwanted superpower went away. It was as if nothing had happened.

Cookie Monster lived in Apartment 916 at the turn of this century. He was working on a project at a nearby hotel, and after a particularly busy day, he asked his assistant to bring his bag back to the apartment. “Here’s the key,” he said. “It’s unit 916. Just leave the bag on the table, then come back here.”

The assistant went off with the bag and returned a half hour later with the key. “Everything in order?” Cookie Monster asked.

“Yes,” the assistant nodded.

“You put the bag on the table?” Cookie Monster asked.

“Yes,” said the assistant. “In Apartment 901, just like you said. The door right beside the elevator.”

“I said 916! 916!” Cookie Monster cried.

“But the key opened 901,” his assistant pointed out.

So Cookie Monster hurried home, stood at Apartment 901 and rang the bell. There was nobody there: it was an office and everyone had gone home. He put the key to 916 in the lock of 901, and true enough, it opened the door. He dashed in, retrieved his bag, and ran out, locking the door behind him. The last thing he needed was to be accused of stealing his own bag.

Then it occurred to him: If the key to 916 also worked for 901, did it mean that it would work for all the other apartments on this floor? What about the apartments on other floors? What if all the locks on all the doors of all the apartments in the building were identical? That would make every tenant’s key a master key, and one could enter any apartment at will. He could pick any apartment, walk in, rearrange all the furniture and leave. He could systematically drive all the other tenants bonkers by pretending that a poltergeist or a pack of gremlins had been messing with their possessions. Once he had ascertained the daily schedules of the other tenants, he could even “live” in their apartments while they were away, and invent new identities to correspond with each different residence...

This was too much power for one person. The next day, Cookie Monster called the building administration and reported what he had found. He cannot remember if they changed the locks, but he never tried opening other apartment doors again. As for the building, it has been torn down, so this precious information is no longer of any use. Except for a story I’m writing.

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