Menthol-Guy

@Marciano’s

The bestfriend and I went to Greenbelt and dined at Marciano’s for dinner, though our primary purpose is to arrange her debut-party either at Bedspace or at Temple Bar. :P

_{Woody Allen’s Linguine: made of creamy white sauce, obviously linguine, and chicken rolls (like cordon bleu) wrapped in prosciutto. It’s especially heavy for pasta but the creamy sauce separates it from your ordinary carbonara. Really good!}

_{Something like pescatore with seafood on it. I forgot the dish’s name. It has this lemony soup and clams and everything.}

_{Better than Yellowcab’s version: this one’s much more crusty, its tomato sauce Italian-sour, and almost, if not quite, the same with the REAL Manhattan pizza. Almost authentic.}

I want to stash myself away this sembreak

I’m reading Harp by John Gregory Dunne, the one I mentioned during my geek talk about Joan Didion and her husband and the dichotomy whatsoever.

“These clothes are dirty, right?” It’s Dad.
“Yeah.”
“And this one?”
“No. It’s out of the hamper.” It’s obvious.
“Then maybe you should bring it out to the maid at the laundry room.” His tone is suggestive and coercive–an imperative.
I didn’t budge for a while. “Hang on a sec, I’m reading.”

Time passed.

“Do you really think your Mom would call today?” He would always stress your Mom like he wasn’t really the husband of my Mom. It’s normal these days.
“I have no idea.”
“Sure?”
I nodded, an attempt to dismiss his interrogations. All I know, I’m reading John Gregory Dunne’s Harp since August and I’m not even halfway.

I want a terrace branching out of my room. Sure, we have a terrace but it branches out from the sala and the kids play Monopoly and urinate around it the way dogs mark their territories. You wouldn’t dare reading anything in that piss-filled terrace and auction-related shouts. So I want a terrace with wooden planks and plants and a guitar or something, a radio, and the breezy day blowing by, free from piss and naughty kids–a place where I could read solemnly and without laundry-related distractions. (A more brilliant idea: I could just toss my dirty clothes from the terrace below.) I want some place in the house where I could be stashed and segregated away from the affairs of the house.

If not a terrace, I want a signage to be hung at the doorknob that would warn Dad that “contemplative reading inside, fuck off.” That’s too long a word, so maybe the word “is reading” could suffice. It might just do it.

Circle of Friends thing going on

“Goddamn hamburgers,” I said thickly. I always thicken my cuss words–it was more of a figurative add-on than emotional sincerity. “Does she think molds are edible?” She, referring to the maid. I quickly threw the disposable plastic container together with the uncooked hamburger chunks from the fridge, then I marinated Dad’s liempo (his all-time favorite) with teriyaki sauce and calamansi. Our maid brought with her a friend, who happened to be a maid from a neighbor’s house, and reported happily that her friend stealthily went away from their mansion as what I’ve heard. She had “escaped,” and that, I think, is the right term.

“Naglayas po kasi siya, pahihiramin ko lang po ng damit.”
“Sure,” Dad said. I dashed pepper over the liempo. It sounded as if we even helped the maid to escape from the house, but if I would be asked, I wouldn’t mind.

Our maid happened to be in charge of everything from the laundry, housekeeping, groceries up to bill-paying, though at weekends and during semestral breaks I am in charge of the cooking to lessen the oppressive weight of the tasks. Though I could oftentimes see her at the garage sitting on top of a stool talking to someone on her cellphone. She was thirty-something, a widow, a fanatic of pocketbooks (which was interesting, truth be told, despite the fact that the pocketbooks are mostly Esperanza-ish type of novels) and a cellphone freak. She told me they do have this friendship thingy with the rest of the maids in the subdivision, like an Association of Homesick People or something like it. “Good,” I said. “At least you have this Circle-of-Friends type of thing going on–aiding each other during times of escape.”

I’m not the type of a person who would underestimate or degrade maids, but I am not also the type of a person who would have a certain advocacy with Inday jokes which caters to pro-maid stuff. I’m neutral about them. Most of them are dedicated (I stress with most, since some actually abuse the kindness of their superiors) and hardworking, despite their frequent watching of Daisy Siete and other noontime shows like Wowowee–which was definitely one of their top priorities, a fact I can’t help but mind. It may sound defensive but I have nothing against them.

I just really hope her cellphone would stop ringing in one whole day.