Writers long ago and far away

In my boyhood was ring bearer in three weddings that all ended up failed marriages, quite a rabid confession to make even if now recalled in staid lucidity.

The first of these grooms Tandang was one of the rising writers of his generation, a student of my dad’s at university in Diliman in the ’60s, and I guess I made an impression on him when he visited the house once with his beer swigging posse and the little boy tried cautioning them about “the black thing.”

Was it aura I was seeing or merely the effect of reading too much Maximo Ramos and “The Creatures of Midnight,” that handsomely illustrated volume that kept many a childhood night sleepless or if we did doze off, filled with vivid nightmares.

Not to rub it in but the fact of the three failed marriages with his as bueno mano cracked Tandang up, made him remark wryly, well maybe you should not have been a ring bearer. But I was, not only that but one who was able to see the black thing.

I mention Tandang because we’re still waiting for the completion of his novel, “The Bicycle Chronicles,” parts of which were posted by a bosom buddy, let’s call him Viktor Fravati, on that shifty and shiny social media platform Facebook, just search it and get the drift of the novel memoir in progress.

Viktor and Tandang were able to speak on cellphone, cell sites vibrating between Taclobo and Vergara and made these writers of long ago and not so far away wonder where all this load came from, as if king harvest had surely come.

Flash forward to the 21st century, two score and three and heard Viktor is in hospital in Dumaguete or its outskirts, nursing an infarction. Last I saw him was pre-pandemic, brought him cake and a bottle of red for his 77th, just before finishing his first automemoir forever in progress and revision, was it called Z or the memory of trees.

Trees and tartanillas, one or the other will carry you home, Viktor a creature of midnight himself in his insomniac ways, might have said. He has since been discharged, his daughter posting a photo of a walker underneath a chico tree.

Who can forget the sort of cult that rented a room in his house, which he wrote about as flash or found fiction or both, the dog Shazzam barking in background and the tape recorder playing an endless loop of weeping. The excerpt subtitled “Children of the Abat” was meant for an anniversary issue of a newspaper, but did not make it for obvious reasons – not exactly wholesome reading. Strangely the members were all women, likely lookers of the rustic kind, whose plunging necklines revealed the color of muscovado.

In the year 19-forgotten I asked Viktor, who could play chess blindfolded and simultaneously, calling out his moves from another room, if he knew whatever happened to Pelrico’s, the dry goods store near the Dumaguete City market that specialized in taping services of popular music. The Doobie Brothers’ “Echoes of Love,” or else “It Keeps You Running,” which the rather stingy proprietor jealously guarded as if protecting his merchandise from intruders.

Well, my friend said, it’s been closed a long time ago, went the way of the elements in that sea of sweet potatoes, dagat ng camote, in that part of town. But if you do write something about Pelrico’s, make sure you post it, the O in the logo resembling a vinyl record. The proprietor could resemble a cult member that rented a room in Taclobo.

Viktor has a godson named Athelstan, who must be a grown man by now. Athelstan’s father once asked about progeny, at the time we still had none.

In his novel Fravati wrote about an episode that occurred during lunch break in the ad agency where he worked, a foray to a toro or live sex show in the underside of Manila, where he caught the eye of the woman in the midst of performance, but he had to shift gaze and instead stare at the tattoo of a blue god on the shoulder of the man mounting her. An unforgettable fire worthy of Kosinsky, Durrell or Pynchon, themselves blue gods of fledgling writers back in the day.

In the summer of ’73 lived in a house on Rovira Street in Dumaguete, accompanying my old man for the workshop. Mornings were spent walking to the nearby Silliman farm beach for a swim, after which was breakfast of giniling omelet and sausage at the house of our hosts the Sagarbarrias. On a second floor room heady with the scent of ylang-ylang, one could hear the gurgling of a baby named Tricia, which sound Viktor described as the sweetest.

The same summer Viktor kissed a fellow called Gemma with a towel over her head, and an adolescent boy watched while another fellow AZ Jolicocker lost a shoe while swimming fully clothed in the sea off Apo Island.

Jolicocker whose ankle was massaged by a pretty woman in wraparound sarong, after spraining it due to horseplay with another karate aficionado.

What I’m saying is that some scars are meant to last but so long as they remain scars then that’s all right.

There are worst things in life than failed marriages, Viktor and Tandang will tell you while swigging hypothetical beers at the basement of the Manuel Wee Sit building in Zamboanga City, and that is if the marriage never happened at all, ring bearer or no ring bearer in search of the elusive black thing.