Menthol-Guy

BIG NIGHT (Jordan Herrera, Jaycee Parker)

“Punta kang Big Night namin ha.”

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I’m stuck in a coffee shop with brats laughing their mouths off like they own the goddamn place. What’s more: when they laugh, they lean backwards to the point that it shakes our goddamn table. They’re just really loud that they totally destroy the supposed-to-be atmosphere of a coffee shop. I think they’re rude, especially the loudmouthed girl and all. Like Lindsay Lohan on coffee and coke, twice the bulk, yet just as uncivilized.

These guys are so insensitive. You get a coffee to relax. But with these kind of guys in a coffee shop sitting near you, it’s stressful. I really mean it.

Anyway, it’s June and I’m busy. I’m jogging lately. I’ll probably hit the gym–as what Mom advised me to do, which was also rude beyond measure (but I think she just gives a damn with me, being the Pilates expert and all)–but that I’ll do that sometime in the future. Not today, no.

I’ve junked everything from movie-watching to book-reading. I’m halfway with a Norman Mailer book entitled An American Dream, and though the book’s just promising enough, I still can’t buy a time for it.

I don’t have any love life right now (but a prospect which leaves me giggling and smiling for a night) and I’m quite inactive with my organization.

I’ll probably leave this blog for a few more days until I find my urge to write.

An uncle once told me, probably out of shock for five, six long interminable years of longing, with the familial head-to-toe scan, that it took him a while to remember that it was me–not Dad–who’s visiting to review his eldest (my cousin) for the UPCAT.

“Man, you’re just like your Dad. You look exactly–and I mean exactly–like your Dad thirty-five years ago!” I winced out of embarrassment for my uncle and Dad had a massive dispute two years ago, and that meant that if he were to have a gun right now he’d pick a revolver and lock it under my jaw.

It was funny that ever since I was born, I consider stray remarks regarding my resemblance to Dad an insult. A very personal insult. “No, I look like Mom! Right, Mom? I look like you!” Mom would nod and smile, and her dimples would show, and goddamnit I didn’t have her dimples.

In this blog I’ve been very careful not to disclose anything about Dad, though a couple of mentions can be searched but anything close to personal can be considered vague, if not pointless. Backed up with reasons, my mind tells me I should leave Dad. Nest in my dorm, probably work at the coffee shop–the typical teenage runaway scenes where the protagonist embarks on a bus, smokes non-stop, chit-chats some random seatmate, just like old Holden. Catcher in the Rye.

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I was in a T-shirt and shorts and a huge backpack–the kind of backpack you see in Amazing Race worn by contestants–that day. It was hot. Something tells me it’s around ten in the morning, and all the smoke and the fumes and the perspirations of the crowd blend and stay stagnant in the air.

And this guy, this guy who’s wearing this gray shirt with a Tanabe print on its chest, his old face adorned with reading glasses, thick lenses, cargo shorts–just your ordinary guy. He approached me. Of all people.

“Do you know, by any chance, if Sim cards sink in the water?”

“Well,” I said, taken aback. “I think so. Yes, I think so.”

“Really? I was thinking about it for some time now. I left the Sim card on the pocket of my laundered pants and realized I left it there. I had to find the Sim card then realized that it might have sank deep in the water. So now I’m asking you. Do you think Sim cards sink in the water?”

I thought it was just a casual nonsense question but upon hearing his explanation I assumed that he was serious with this, that he was clearly gathering his thoughts to compose such a question.

“Well, I think it depends on how the Sim card sinks. I mean, it’s the density and all. I don’t know if it’s dense, but if the surface–”, I stopped, trying to think of a not-so-esoteric explanation, “but if it sinks straight to the water, it might sink. If it sinks parallel to the water–like a bed or something–then maybe it might float.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks, buddy.” He walked across the street to the other side and the next thing I know I didn’t see him anymore.

That morning experience left me thinking that maybe it was lifted directly from a Murakami novel, but I don’t know.