Walking around Manila I spot casualties everywhere I go: dissolute
middle-aged white guys with pot bellies wearing the standard tourist
uniform of thongs, shorts, and T-shirt. Asian women accompany them,
sometimes a third their age, sometimes a few paces back, sometimes
holding hands. Their faces are blank, but their thoughts are loud and
clear: I'm feeding my family. I'm helping my sister through college.
I've been here alone on business for six weeks. Every day, every time I
walk out of my hotel, cabbies approach me and ask if I want to meet "a
college girl" or see girls at a bar or visit Angeles, the town near the
old American base where foreigners go to find prostitutes. I'm not
singled out because of an obvious aura of despair or anything like that
— any white male is approached in this way. I've been tempted, I admit.
My wife and I have not made love for over a year and then not for six
months before that. But it's hard to be attracted to a woman whose eyes
say, "You're only a meal for my family."
I've been married for ten years. I have a child. I'm thirty-nine years old, and
saddled with the usual American debts and regrets that make
inertia more palatable than revision. Also, I'm a writer and I hate
clichés — I've been hearing about the cliché of the male
mid-life crisis half my life. Everywhere you go in the Philippines, sappy
American songs about love are playing. In the taxis, the movie theaters,
the buses, in restaurants and bars. The songs are the worst. Captain and
Tenille. Afternoon Delight, for God's sake. And awful Filipino songs that
actually make Afternoon Delight sound like "Eine kleine Nachtmusik."
Lyrics like, "I want to be your candy man. Let me take you to bouncy
land." When Karen Carpenter died, her soul entered a karaoke bar in
Manila. But after a while, the songs get under your skin.
Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia" is playing when I meet Sarah: "Cecilia, you're
breaking my heart, you're shaking my confidence daily." I've only just arrived
in Manila and meet her at the trendy restaurant where she
works. She's been trained as a teacher, but is having second thoughts.
Through a friend she's found a job at this upscale restaurant, not as
a GRO (Guest Relations Officers — women out to please and profit from foreign
businessmen), but as a bartender. The owner of Sarah's restaurant forbids his
employees to date any of the customers, an unenforceable rule, but one that
Sarah strictly adheres to. Her English
is very good, and I feel so comfortable in her presence that I could talk
to her all night. I tell her I'm married. I show her pictures of my family.
She has a boyfriend. We talk a bit about my writing and it turns out that
she once met the Filipina woman who is the subject of the book I'm currently
writing. We talk so long, she gets in trouble with the manager.
She's different from other Filipinas I've met. She's darker than most,
and like most of the citizens of the world, Filipinos look down on
dark-skinned people. Skin-lightening salons are a common sight in the
mega-malls of Manila. Instead of giving in, Sarah flaunts her darkness. She
has incipient dreadlocks in her hair and wears colorful beads in them — on the street, she's
mistaken for a foreigner. Other Filipinos think she's Jamaican or
Cuban. They speak in English to her. She laughs or gets angry when she
overhears passersby whispering about her in Tagalog. She tells me she's
never had a Filipino boyfriend.
One day, Sarah and I go for an afternoon snack together, during her break
time. Halo Halo, it's called. A Filipino specialty, a pudding-like
concoction of various fruits and sweetened root vegetables. Maybe it's
the Halo Halo that does it. Or maybe Valentine's Day sends me round the
bend: almost a national holiday in the Philippines, second only to
Christmas. No one wants to be "a lonely Valentine" in the Philippines,
but I am. Lonely in the land of love. The guards at my hotel look at me
disparagingly that night as I walk past them alone. Or maybe I just
imagine it.
For ten years I've hung on, like this is some kind of lifeguard test: how long can you hold
your breath underwater? Ten years? A
lifetime?
In high school, I was the kind of guy who would awkwardly ask his date if he
could kiss her. In Tagalog, the word for love and the word for expensive
are the same: mahal. As the old saw goes, if you have to ask the price,
you probably can't afford it. One day Sarah and I go swimming
together at a local hotel, and in my high-schoolish way I make a poolside
confession of my "feelings" for her. What I say is this: "Would you think
I'm terrible if I told you I was developing feelings for you?" The most
tortured sentence I've ever uttered. "No, I wouldn't think you're
terrible," she says, but she laughs off my feelings, says I just miss my
family. Maybe she's right, I think, and I resolve to be just friends as I lie
in a deck chair and spend the rest of the afternoon just
watching her swim.
A few days later, on her day off, we take the bus to Olongopo, near an
old U.S. naval base, to go snorkeling for the day. At the beach
we're surrounded by a gang of vendors selling crafts. They won't leave us
alone and there's nowhere to safely store our belongings while we swim.
So I rent a room for the day — this is supposed to be a day trip. She
has to be back at work the next morning.
The hotel room has a leftover valentine stuck on the door. The other
people in the hotel don't care what we're doing. They're used to it. An
American sits in the lobby complaining loudly to the hotel clerk,
a Filipino, that he's been screwed in his retirement plan. I'm standing
in a corner. Sarah sits on the bed, watching me pace. We've just returned
from snorkeling. An old man and his grandson took us on their banca to a
nearby island where we snorkeled for a few hours, though there were
hardly any fish and trash littered the sea floor. We posed awkwardly for
a photo that the old man took of us. He naturally assumed that she was my
kasintahan (main squeeze). On the banca ride back, I watched Sarah shiver
in the breeze, staring off into the water, her bead-filled hair lifted
behind her, and I thought, Usually, I wouldn't forgive myself if I did
anything, but this time I won't forgive myself if I do nothing.
And now in this air-conditioned room in Olongopo, I'm making one last
goofy song-inspired declaration of my feelings.
You know, I don't think I'm feeling this because I miss my family.
I like you — but you're married.
She tells me I'm making her nervous. She asks me to sit down. She tells
me she's sleepy and wants to take a nap. Her shift ended at 3 a.m. last
night. She's snorkeled half the day. And now this makulit (persistent)
American is giving her a headache. What am I doing? I don't know. I'm
exhausted, too. We lie down together, fully clothed, sleep for an hour,
and when I awake, I look at her, take her hand. She takes my hand, and I
lean over her and we kiss, the longest kiss I've ever had. I didn't know
it was possible to kiss this long. I slowly bite and suck each of her
fingertips, trace her ear with my tongue, work my way patiently down her
body. We make love in ways that have been off-limits to me for ten
years. I haven't even seen my wife naked above the bed covers in
all that time. Sarah says the two of us click, and this is
true. We click. After we make love, she says, "Do you think I'm
terrible?"
"I think you're wonderful."
We eat lunch at a nearby place called Pumpernickels, owned by a German,
maybe a former casualty. Sarah and I sit on the patio listening to a
Minah bird as garrulous and makulit as me. Kumain ka na? Have you eaten yet? The first
Tagalog phrase I commit to memory. Taught to me by a
Minah bird in a cage. No matter what you answer, it asks the same
question. The Minah bird speaks as a lover might, and Sarah, enthralled,
answers as though he might really understand her.
Pangit, the bird says. Ugly.
Anything but ugly. And then, "What's your name?"
Sarah.
We stroll along the beach at sunset, arm in arm. We walk to the end of a
sandbar. The tide is coming in and I think we can walk no further, but
Sarah spots a further sandbar a hundred feet out. She wades in fearlessly
and I follow helplessly. We stand on the sandbar with the water swirling
around us and again we kiss as the water laps our feet. On the walk back,
we watch the hills around us burning to make kaingins: fires burned by subsistence
farmers from the little that's left of the forest so they can feed their
families. The fires are lovely; the results devastating.
It's impossible to resist love in a place like this — not in spite of
the danger but because of it. Bravely, you ignore irony and the little
reminders of your tendency towards self-destructiveness. You snorkel and
see trash on the sea floor, hardly any fish. You stroll along the beach
holding hands and watch the kaingin fires burning on the
already-denuded mountainsides. And make love in a room with a
sickly valentine hanging on the door, maybe self-deluded, but gloriously
so. Back in Manila, she comes to my room. The hotel guards smirk at us
both — I'm not imagining that. I've succumbed. I'm not so strong, after
all. She starts coming to my hotel room every night after her shift ends,
in the afternoon after her shift ends, whenever she's free. I forget
about my business, neglect it. We're secretive. She banishes me from her
restaurant for days on end. She doesn't want her coworkers to suspect
anything, but they suspect anyway.When I'm allowed back, one of her
friends whispers, "Here's your best friend," when she spots me.
One day she calls at midnight and tells me she's not going to show up,
that she's going to go out dancing with some friends. She won't
tell me why and she hangs up. I panic. I throw on some clothes and comb
my hair. I'll meet her at the restaurant, find out what's wrong. I open
the door of my room and she's standing there, laughing.
We fly to postcard-perfect Boracay together, with its beaches that are
supposedly the best in the world — it's true, but it's not true, too.
Like everything else in the Philippines, it's been overused, and now the
waters are polluted with colloforms and the white sand is a little gray
in places. Shorts and T-shirt and thongs seem right here. Sarah buys me
a tie-dye bathing suit and a muscle shirt and thongs, and the
transformation is complete. I have become what I dreaded. Sarah catches
me laughing. She asks what's so funny and I tell her.
"But it's okay in Boracay," she says. "It looks natural here." As we make
love, the songs flood me, all golden oldies: Wise men say, only fools rush
in . . . Oh yes, I'm the great pretender . . . All my bags are packed,
I'm ready to go, the taxi's waiting outside the door . . . I can't say I
feel guilty because I don't. I have become a lover of clichés.
Give me a stupid song and I'll sing it. I want to be your candy man. Let
me take you to bouncy land. But I haven't lost my mind completely. I
still have a sense of humor, a sense of irony, of consequence. I know
when I return to the States, I will either enter the great re-education
camp that is my marriage or head to the hills and burn kaingins for miles. But right now,
there's a joy in me that
seems impossible to lose, even if I know it will soon be replaced by pain
and confusion.
I'm trying not to think about any of this. Right now, I'm rubbing oil on
Sarah's back and I marvel at how relaxed her muscles are. Sarah is the
first person I've ever met whose body isn't contorted into a
question mark of tension and anxiety. I marvel at her shoulders, her skin — it all gives under my palms, as
though I'm kneading water, the waves
breaking outside our room.
— any white male is approached in this way. I've been tempted, I admit.
My wife and I have not made love for over a year and then not for six
months before that. But it's hard to be attracted to a woman whose eyes
say, "You're only a meal for my family."
She has a boyfriend. We talk a bit about my writing and it turns out that
she once met the Filipina woman who is the subject of the book I'm currently
writing. We talk so long, she gets in trouble with the manager.
She's different from other Filipinas I've met. She's darker than most,
and like most of the citizens of the world, Filipinos look down on
dark-skinned people. Skin-lightening salons are a common sight in the
mega-malls of Manila. Instead of giving in, Sarah flaunts her darkness. She
has incipient dreadlocks in her hair and wears colorful beads in them — on the street, she's
mistaken for a foreigner. Other Filipinos think she's Jamaican or
Cuban. They speak in English to her. She laughs or gets angry when she
overhears passersby whispering about her in Tagalog. She tells me she's
never had a Filipino boyfriend.
American sits in the lobby complaining loudly to the hotel clerk,
a Filipino, that he's been screwed in his retirement plan. I'm standing
in a corner. Sarah sits on the bed, watching me pace. We've just returned
from snorkeling. An old man and his grandson took us on their banca to a
nearby island where we snorkeled for a few hours, though there were
hardly any fish and trash littered the sea floor. We posed awkwardly for
a photo that the old man took of us. He naturally assumed that she was my
kasintahan (main squeeze). On the banca ride back, I watched Sarah shiver
in the breeze, staring off into the water, her bead-filled hair lifted
behind her, and I thought, Usually, I wouldn't forgive myself if I did
anything, but this time I won't forgive myself if I do nothing.
and I follow helplessly. We stand on the sandbar with the water swirling
around us and again we kiss as the water laps our feet. On the walk back,
we watch the hills around us burning to make kaingins: fires burned by subsistence
farmers from the little that's left of the forest so they can feed their
families. The fires are lovely; the results devastating.
me laughing. She asks what's so funny and I tell her.
