Mister DJ, Can I Make a Request?

Last Friday afternoon, I went on a field trip to the armpit of Valenzuela with Doc Luis Gatmaitan, Bing Tresvalles of the CCP and a fellow Canvas awardee, Don Gonzales. The four of us climbed into the Doc's car from McDo Monumento (grazie, CCP, for the cheeseburgers, fries and sundae cones) and fought through sticky traffic on ridiculously narrow roads to get to the Far East Broadcasting station, where we were to record interviews for the Doc's radio storytelling show "Wan Dey Isang Araw".
It wasn't my first time to do a recording, having been invited last year to talk about two older books, but in spite of having talked into that same microphone in two sessions past, I still can't guarantee that I made any sense at all on this third radio appearance. All I can really be certain of is that my voice automatically downshifts one octave in the soundproof booth. I can make myself sound like a buxom brunette who just got out of bed in a teeny-weeny satin teddy. Now you know why deejays always sound so much better than they look.
The actual recording of the interview portions for my book "The Rocking Horse" and Don's "Ang Batang Maraming Bawal" took only about an hour at most, but we ended up staying at the station till late in the evening. After wrapping up work, we invaded the control booth, had the technician produce a pair of headphones, and then took a bunch of pictures on three separate digital cameras. After that, we went on a tour of the rest of the station, ending up in the archive where rows and rows of shelves are stocked with tape reels, cassettes and LP's from as far back as the fifties. I was rummaging in a random shelf when I found, sitting amongst obscure orchestra albums, an LP that ought to be a collector's item for the cover picture alone: "Nora Aunor: Noon at Ngayon".
My fabulous find put everyone into a frenzy, and soon we were all hunting in the shelves for more OPM on vinyl. Eureka! We found one golden oldie after the other. Pilita! Dulce! Cristy Mendoza! Yoyoy Villame! The Rainmakers! The Nailclippers! Manilyn Reynes! Jamie Rivera! Sharon Cuneta (pre-Gabby!)! Gary V! Louie Heredia! Dingdong Avanzado's "tatlong bentesingko" album!
I remember when LPs were still in use back when I was a freshman in college. I remember saving my allowance to buy a 12" remix of Swing Out Sister's "Fooled By A Smile". The cd burst into the market by the time I was a senior, and then it was goodnight for the turntable stereo. Our station tourguide says all the obsolete material in the library will be converted to digital format before they get tossed in the can. No question that the music of a bygone era ought to be preserved. Pity, though, that the shell it came in can't be saved as well.

Who Are the Perverts in Your Neighborhood?

Last Thursday I came home at half past twelve in the evening after dinner with friends. I locked up my garage gate, but I left my main door open, with just the screen door shut and barred. The garage lights weren't turned on, but from where I was sitting I could see the outline of the washing I had left hanging on a rack. I was sitting at the dinner table with the cat in my lap at 1:00 a.m. when I saw the peg set hung with a bunch of socks and a single pair of panties swaying back and forth in the dark. At first I thought it was the wind, but I found it odd that I didn't even feel a breeze coming in through the door. That was when I realized that there was a hand thrust in from the townhouse next door, and it was grabbing at the washing. I started yelling and running for the door, and when I yanked at the peg set, the hand disappeared into a small hole in the plywood sheet covering the grill that separates my garage from the one next door. The townhouse next to mine has been under renovation, and there have been carpenters staying there for the past several months. I'm pretty certain that it was one of those laborers who tried to snatch my stuff of the pegs, and I have no doubt that it was the single pair of knickers he was after and not my socks, because it was the only one that had been removed from one of the two pegs that it had been hanging from. My skin crawls at the thought of any of my things at the hands of a sick pervert, especially that of a smelly shit-for-brains construction worker. I've had to endure cat calls and impolite stares from the crew next door for months and I ignored all these things because that's the way these people usually are; bluster with no brains and zero manners. As long as they kept off my space, I was all right. But after this incident, I'm afraid of being targeted for more than just simple underwear theft. I'm not easy with the idea of coming home alone late at night, and I've taken to locking myself in and closing all of my blinds at all hours. I intend to purchase a can of mace as soon as I possibly can, and have asked around as to how I can legally acquire a gun. Someone once observed to me that I was far too paranoid; padlocking the gate all the time and putting the theft bar on my steering wheel when the car was parked in the garage. For a while I was convinced that I held far too much distrust for my own good, and let down my guard for some time. But now I think I may have been completely right to think that every neighborhood, no matter how safe it may seem, will one time or another be visited by someone of evil intent. I don't intend to be a sitting duck the next time someone invades my space. I will shoot, and I'm not even going to think twice.

Ten Minutes

There's this doctor I had a huge crush on, until 6:10 pm today. I've only talked to him twice; once when I had my ankle checked, and once more when my mother went to see him about a pain in her leg. I was given an opportunity to go sashaying into his clinic one last time, to bring a gift from my mom, who he didn't charge because she was a fellow doctor. Gladly, I accepted the errand, thinking I might bat my eyelashes at a man for once in my life and probably get something going. During the last few days of my scheduled errand to the good doctor's office, I rehearsed all the variations of the probable conversation, got my hair cut and cellophaned to wash out the gray, and paid extra attention to the pores of my face to prevent a breakout of zits. Most notably, I found the time to squeeze in a cleaning at the dentist, because I couldn't stand the idea of smiling at him again with a mouthful of coffee stains on my teeth. When I couldn't contact my old dentist at the Heart Center, and Mission Doc was only a day away, I bit the bullet and went to a hole-in-the-wall dentist clinic located thirty steps away from my office. I knew I was not in a good place when I saw that the lady dentist didn't have an assistant, and her equipment appeared to have been around since 1970. But I opened my mouth anyway, and let her rip. I really don't know whether it was my 18 months of accumulated tartar that was to blame, or if I unluckily wandered into the clutches of the most hamfisted dentist in the entire nation, but that cleaning was the bloodiest thirty minutes of my entire life. Every time I spit into the bowl, I saw red. And when the lady dentist handed me a mirror to check her handiwork, the blood clinging to the edges of my gums made me look like I had just bitten someone's neck for dinner. I paid her 300 bucks and went straight to the drugstore for a bottle of Bactidol, silently vowing never to betray the perfectly lighthanded Dr. Arquiza again, even if he charges twice as much and suffers from a defective telephone.

Today was the day I executed Mission Doc. I made sure that every inch of me was spanking clean (including my now-bloodless teeth), and I put on my skinniest jeans and a shirt reserved only for matters of great personal significance. I walked into a puff of Kenzo Flower. I called ahead and told the secretary that I would drop by at 5:30. On the way to the hospital, I lost several minutes each to a tie-up at East Avenue, a slow crawl at Crame, and to a barreling convoy of some asswipe politician coming through the Shaw-Edsa underpass. When I finally arrived at the clinic at 6:10 in the evening, the secretary was just closing up the office. She told me I missed the doctor by ten minutes, and she asked whether I hadn't run into him on his way out. I wish I did, dearie. I wish I did. And so ends another fantastic fumble by the Twisted Spinster. Perhaps I'll find all of this funny tomorrow, but right now all I feel like doing is going to bed without brushing my teeth. Good night, Metro Manila, and don't wake me up until noon.